Recommended Readings
Berman, Morris. Wandering God: A Study of Nomadic Spirituality. State University of NY Press: NY, 2000.
This book explores the meaning of Paleolithic art, the origins of social inequality, the nature of cross-cultural child rearing, the relationship between women and agriculture, and the worldview of present-day nomadic peoples, as well as the emergence of “paradoxical” consciousness in the philosophical writings of the twentieth century.
(Prehistory)
Birnbaum, Lucia Chiavola. Black Madonnas: Feminism, Religion & Politics in Italy. toExcel: San Jose, CA, 2000.
Black Madonnas is a prize-winning, deeply researched, historical study demonstrating ancient goddess origins of Black Madonnas, subversive peasant customs and rituals surrounding images of Black Madonnas, and their contemporary transformative cultural and political implications. (Feminism, Religion, Politics)
Birnbaum, Lucia Chiavola. Dark Mother: African Origins and Godmothers. Authors Choice Press: NY, 2001.
Birnbaum conjectures that our modern human origins are African, that primordial migrations from Africa carried a belief in a sacred dark woman to all continents. (Goddess, Anthropology)
Birnbaum, Lucia Chiavola, ed. She is Everywhere! An Anthology of Writing in Womanist/Feminist Spirituality. iUniverse, Inc.: NY, 2005.
Participants in this anthology reject the dominant culture's foreshortening of history to the relatively recent epoch of violent patriarchy. This anthology includes women's voices from many cultural and spiritual traditions across the globe from past to present. (Goddess, Women and Spirituality)
Canan, Janine. Journeys with Justine. Regent Press: Berkeley, CA, 2007.
An original collection of tales describing the adventures and epiphanies of Justine, a contemporary seeker who travels from CA to the Olympic Peninsula, NY, France, Bali and India in search of her deeper Self. On her journey to illumination, she encounters artists, lovers, saints, death, and the Goddess. (Women and Spirituality)
Christ, Carol J. Rebirth of the Goddess: Finding Meaning in Feminist Spirituality. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc.: Reading, MA, 1997.
This book is a “systematic thealogy” that beautifully incorporates the embodied, embedded sensibilities of a distinguished scholar and pioneer of the spiritual journey into Goddess religion. (Goddess, Women and Spirituality)
Davis-Kimball, Jeannine. Warrior Women: An Archaeologist's Search for History's Hidden Heroines. Warner Books: NY, 2002.
In this book Dr. Davis-Kimball creates an exciting, new global picture of a cadre of powerful women rich in knowledge and powerful in their societies. These unsung heroines now take their rightful place in the vast panorama of human history—as nurturers, soothsayers, warriors, and leaders who repelled invaders, influenced their societies and explored new worlds. (Anthropology, Sociology, Women’s Studies)
Dexter, Miriam Robbins. Whence the Goddess: A Source Book. Pergamon Press, Athene Series: NY, 1990.
Whence the Goddesses explores the sources of ancient goddesses and heroines in two ways. First, by translating works out of fourteen languages including sub-dialects with original texts in the endnotes, Dexter gives primary sources for female figures in these ancient cultures: Sumerian, Akkadian/Babylonian, Egyptian, Hebrew, Latvian, Lithuanian, Russian, Iranian, Indic, Irish, Welsh, Germanic, Greek, and Roman. Secondly, she looks at the female figures in chronological order (Neolithic, ancient Near Eastern, and then early historic Indo-European), in order to discover the prehistoric and early historic sources of these female figures. In particular, the iconography of European Neolithic bird and snake figures is explored in the discussion of early historic mythological texts, demonstrating that this iconography endured for millennia in imaging the sacred feminine. (Goddess, Prehistory)
Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. W.W. Norton & Company: NY, 1997.
In this ground-breaking work, Diamond draws together recent discoveries in fields of inquiry as diverse as archaeology and epidemiology, as he illuminates how and why human societies of different continents followed widely different pathways of development over the last 13,000 years. (Prehistory, Anthropology, Social Sciences, Early Civilization)
Eisler, Riane. The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future. HarperCollins: San Francisco, CA, 1987.
A Classic. This grand synthesis is an important new interpretation of history in the tradition of Spengler and Toynbee. Eisler powerfully reconstructs the Goddess culture and the global shift to patriarchy, drawing evidence from literature, art, sociology, archaeology, politics and economics, and synthesizing prehistory, history, present, and future into an awesome and convincing view of the human condition. (Goddess, Prehistory)
Eisler, Riane. The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.: San Francisco, CA, 2007.
The greatest problems of our time—poverty, inequality, war, terrorism and environmental degradation—can be traced to flawed economic systems that fail to value and support the most essential human work: caring for people and the planet. Renowned social scientist Eisler introduces a bold reformulation: a “caring economic” that transcends traditional categories like “capitalist” and “socialist” and offers enormous economic and social benefits. She provides a blueprint for putting this more humane and economic system at work. (Current Affairs, Anthropology, Economic Policy & Development)
Eisler, Riane. Sacred Pleasure: Sex, Myth, and the Politics of the Body—New Paths to Power and Love. HarperCollins: San Francisco, CA, 1996.
In the spirit of her provocative, bestselling book The Chalice and the Blade, Eisler passionately envisions a future when women and men face each other as equal partners and sex and spirituality are once again entwined. "This is Eisler's most stunning, far-reaching, and practical gift—both to readers and to a world that must change or perish."—Gloria Steinem. (Goddess)
Gadon, Elinor W. The Once and Future Goddess: A Symbol for Our Times. Harper & Row: NY, 1989.
Gadon provides a richly illustrated testament to the reemergence of the goddess in art and in the lives of contemporary women and men. (Goddess)
Gimbutas, Marija. The Age of the Great Goddess. Sounds True (Audio Cassette): Louisville, CO, 1994. (Goddess, Prehistory)
Gimbutas, Marija. The Civilization of the Goddess: The World of Old Europe. HarperCollins: San Francisco, CA, 1992.
This beautifully organized, lavishly illustrated, scholarly, lively masterpiece is the last major work of the late, great Marija Gimbutas. UCLA professor of Anthropology and Archaeology, Gimbutas is the most widely respected authority on ancient goddess-centered cultures. She is also a creative pioneer, bringing data and artifacts into a holistic vision of the widespread goddess-worshipping civilization of Neolithic Europe and the Aegean. Everything is thoroughly discussed and illustrated: maps, tools of daily life, dwellings, village plans, goddess images and sculptures, pottery, symbolic motifs, and so on. The Civilization of the Goddess is an indispensable compendium on early Goddess-centered cultures. (Goddess, Prehistory)
Gimbutas, Marija. The Gods and Goddesses of Old Europe: 7000 to 3500 BC: Myths, Legends and Cult Images. Thames and Hudson: London, 1974.
Gimbutas' first internationally important work thoroughly documents the art of “old Europe,” as Gimbutas calls southwestern Neolithic Europe before the advent of patriarchy. About 30,000 miniature sculptures of clay, marble, bone and gold from a total of 3000 sites (many of which she excavated herself) are presently known from the Neolithic and Chalcolithic era of southeastern Europe. Enormous quantities of ritual vessels, altars, sacrificial equipment, inscribed objects, clay models of temples, actual temples and pictorial paintings on vases or on the walls of shrines, attest and advanced woman centered civilization. This is a must-read for anyone interested in the Goddess or prehistoric studies. (Goddess, Prehistory)
Gimbutas, Marija. The Language of the Goddess. Thames & Hudson: NY, 2001.
In this richly illustrated volume, the noted archaeologist and prehistorian Marija Gimbutas brings prepatriarchal civilization to life. A pioneer in archaeomythology—the interdisciplinary field based on archaeology, comparative mythology, and folklore, Gimbutas unequivocally establishes the existence of a goddess religion in Neolithic Europe with its roots in the Paleolithic. Through the interpretation of images and symbols, she reveals these women-centered cultures, decoding the symbolic language that has remained embedded in our civilization. Illustrated with nearly 2,000 symbolic artifacts—sculptures, figurines, temple models, frescoes, vases, sacrificial containers, the book establishes the Goddess as the most persistent feature in the archaeological record of the ancient world. A symbol of the unity of all life in nature, her power was in water and stone, in cave and tomb, in animals and birds, in hills, trees, and flowers. Her main functions were life-giving, death-wielding, and regenerative. Gimbutas's magnum opus takes the existence of goddess-worshiping, earth-centered, egalitarian, and nonviolent cultures out of the realm of speculation into that of documented fact. Foreword by Joseph Campbell. (Goddess)
Gimbutas, Marija; edited and supplemented by Miriam Robbins Dexter. The Living Goddess. University of California Press: Berkeley, CA, 1997.
“The quintessence of decades of research.... This excellently illustrates the various manifestations of the Goddess in the Minoan world and in ancient Greece, among the Etruscans and the Basques, in Celtic, Germanic, and Baltic religion. The ideas of Marija Gimbutas about the 'Old European' civilization are controversial, but they are built on strong arguments and valid bases, which make it indispensable for her dissident colleagues to take heed of her writings.“ Edgar Polome, Editor, The Journal of Indo-European Studies. (Goddess)
Gimbutas, Marija. World of the Goddess. Mystic Fire Video: South Burlington, VT, 1998.
(Goddess)
Griffith, Brian. The Garden of Their Dreams: A History of Cultures and Migrants from the Great Desert. Zed Books, Ltd: London, 2001.
This magnificent history of the desert relates the human consequences of its remorseless spread. As a result of the past several thousand years, the Great Desert now stretches in almost unbroken continuity from Mauritania's Atlantic seaboard through the Middle East and Central Asia to the Great Wall of China. The author seeks to understand how the great civilizations in the original "green lands" of North Africa, Ancient Egypt, the Middle East, South Asia, and China responded and changed under the pressure of invaders fleeing growing environmental degradation in the surrounding deserts. In fascinating detail, Griffith's cultural history of the deserts of Africa and Asia shows how the expanding wasteland fundamentally reshaped people's images of nature, women, politics, and religion. (Anthropology, Prehistory)
Hua, Cai. A Society Without Fathers or Husbands: The Na of China. Zone Books: NY, 1997.
A very interesting book about the matriarchal Na of China. There are still societies at present where women's power and influence is at the center of the society. The Na represents such a society. This book dispels the notion that society always has been and always will be male dominated. Societies such as the Na, where women have power, are not mirror images of patriarchy but are societies where both women and men benefit from an ethos of peace and accommodation. (Anthropology)
Johnson, Buffie. Lady of the Beasts: The Goddess and Her Sacred Animals, 2nd revised edition. Inner Traditions International: Rochester, VT, 1994.
“This meticulously researched, beautifully illustrated study of the relationship between the Goddess and her sacred animals in ancient cultures includes discussions and lavish illustrations of the bird, lion, dog, serpent, butterfly, ewe and ram, spider, deer, fish, pig, cow and bull, scorpion, and bear. An acclaimed artist, Buffie Johnson began researching this book in the early 1940s, and as a result it is full of fresh information, inspiring and relevant on many levels: artistic, symbolic, mythological, ecological, shamanistic, psychological.”—Mimi Lobell. (Goddess)
Jongbloed, Dominique. Civilisations Antediluviennes: Bilan de 2500 ans de Recherches. ABM Editions: Paris, 2007. (In French)
Jongbloed has written a book that suggests that human history goes much further back than Çatal Hüyük, Turkey or Jericho, in the Middle East. He conjectures that civilizations could have existed as far back as 110,000 B.C.E. and he amply documents his suppositions. A very thought-provoking book. (Prehistory, Early Civilizations)
Lubell, Winifred Milius, The Metamorphosis of Baubo: Myths of Woman's Sexual Energy. Vanderbilt University Press: Nashville, TN,1994.
Recounts the story of a little known but pivotal mythological character, known in Greek as Baubo, from primitive African and European carvings and cave paintings through classical art and literature and the façades of medieval Christian churches to contemporary myth-making. Her characteristic bawdy jokes and gestures represent a female energy and power that have been suppressed or demonized by male-centered society. (Goddess)
Marler, Joan, ed. From the Realm of the Ancestors: An Anthology in Honor of Marija Gimbutas. Knowledge, Ideas & Trends, Inc.: Manchester, CT, 1997.
Thoughtful essays from a wide variety of scholars and researchers who have been influenced by the work of the late Marija Gimbutas. Very up-to-date, this book addresses many of the most pressing issues of female spirituality today. (Goddess)
Meador, Betty De Shong. Inanna, Lady of Largest Heart: Poems of the Sumerian High Priestess Enheduanna. University of Texas Press: Austin, TX, 2001.
The earliest known author of written literature was a woman named Enheduanna, who lived in ancient Mesopotamia around 2300 BCE. High Priestess to the moon god Nanna, Enheduanna came to venerate the goddess Inanna above all gods in the Sumerian pantheon. The hymns she wrote to Inanna constitute the earliest written portrayal of an ancient goddess. In their celebration of Enheduanna's relationship with Inanna, they also represent the first existing account of an individual's consciousness of her inner life. (Goddess)
Monaghan, Patricia. The New Book of Goddesses & Heroines. Llewellyn Publications: Woodbury, MN, 2002.
A compendium of 1500 goddesses from every continent and culture, and representing every imaginable archetype from warrior to mother to lover. And even this dictionary doesn't exhaust the richness of the mythic vocabulary of the feminine. Throughout the ages, people have found the image of the goddess comforting, inspiring, awesome, alluring. She is inexhaustible as well, a fountain of female imagery. (Goddess)
Mullin, Glenn H. Female Buddhas: Women of Enlightenment in Tibetan Mystical Art. Clear Light Publishers: Santa Fe, NM, 2003.
The place of female buddhas in Tibetan mystical art is profound and central. Generally speaking, in Tibetan mystical art the feminine aspect represents wisdom in the sense of the meditative consciousness and perceives ultimate reality. In other words, the female buddhas are embodiments of that wisdom and maps to the meditational and yogic technology for attaining it. (Women and Spirituality)
Neumann, Erich; Manheim, Ralph, translator. Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype. Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, 1972.
Fascinating and profound, this study of the archetype of the feminine principle from a Jungian perspective is a classic. One of his most useful contributions is Neumann's schema, which distinguishes between the Elemental Goddess and the developed goddesses, and between the physically transformative mother goddesses (positive and negative) and the spiritually transformative goddesses (also positive and negative). See also Neumann's The Origins and History of Consciousness. (Goddess)
Noble, Vicki. The Double Goddess: Women Sharing Power. Bear & Company: Rochester, VT, 2003.
Artistic representations depicting two women in intimate relations with each other, or as a single body with two heads, have been discovered in important Prehistoric centers of early civilization from locations as widespread as the Mediterranean and Aegean regions in Central Asia, India, Tibet, Mexico and Peru. The archaeologists who first discovered these figures dubbed them Double Goddesses and linked them to the ancient religion of the Great Mother. Noble validates this Great Goddess connection and she goes beyond, expanding our understanding of ancient female autonomy and sovereignty. (Goddess)
Orenstein, Gloria. The Reflowering of the Goddess, Athene Series. Pergamon Press: NY, 1990.
“In this important book Orenstein forges a powerful link between ancient history and modern art, showing how our Goddess heritage is today reemerging no only through archaeological discoveries and feminist scholarship, but in the stories and images of creative women all over the world.”—Riane Eisler. Orenstein explores and analyzes the diverse creative works in literature and the visual arts that related to the feminist spirituality movement as expressed in the archaeological studies of Marija Gimbutas. She interprets the Goddess to symbolize the Great Earth Mother and thus the book also looks at ecofeminism in the arts of the 80s and 90s. This material is introduced by chapters devoted to precursors such as Leonora Carrington and Gertrude Stein. (Goddess, Feminism)
Percovich, Luciana. Oscure Madri Spendenti: Le Radici del Sacro e Delle Religioni. Venexia: Rome, 2007. (In Italian)
In this examination of the origin of the sacred feminine before the advent of patriarchy and of the historic religions, Percovich delves into myths that have been obscured but are still strong in our archaic memories. (Goddess, Women and Spirituality)
Ryan, William; Pitman, Walter C. Noah\'s Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries About the Event That Changed History. Simon & Schuster: NY, 1999.
The tale of a massive, devastating flood appears not only in the Bible but also in other ancient writings, often in similar terms, suggesting that it records a real and singularly memorable event. Ryan and Pitman, who are senior scientists at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, think the event might have been a huge and prolonged cascade of water from the Mediterranean that broke through a natural dam in the Bosporus Strait and plunged into what was then a freshwater lake and is now the Black Sea. They present both geologic and archaeological evidence for the flood, dating it at about 6500 B.C.E. "The Bosporus flume roared and surged at full spate for at least three hundred days," they write. The cascade inundated 60,000 square miles of land, forcing the people living in the region to disperse. The book explores the question of who those people were and where they went; it also examines the tradition of oral storytelling that could have passed the flood story from generation to generation. (Anthropology, Prehistory)
Sanday, Peggy Reeves. Female Power and Male Dominance: On the Origins of Sexual Inequality. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK, 1981.
In this brilliant book, Sanday provides a ground-breaking examination of power and dominance in male-female relationships. How does the culturally approved interaction between the sexes originate? Why are women viewed as a necessary part of political, economic, and religious affairs in societies but not in others? Why do some societies clothe sacred symbols of creative power in the guise of one sex and not of the other? (Anthropology)
Sanday, Peggy Reeves. Women at the Center: Life in a Modern Matriarchy. Cornell University Press: Ithaca, NY, 2002.
Peggy Sanday has long been a dissenting voice in the debates about the universality of male dominance. This pioneering feminist anthropologist now gives substance to her arguments, redefining matriarchy and revealing the power of matriarchal symbols through the accessible ethnography of a famous matrilineal community. (Matriarchy, Gender Studies)
Saracino, Mary. The Singing of Swans. Pearlsong Press: Nashville, TN, 2006. (Fiction)
Madeleine Ross’s complacent life is about to be turned upside down. Lately weird things are starting to happen to her. Bizarre dreams haunt her sleep: women who fly through the night skies, priestesses who receive initiations, and girls who do vision quests in ancient sacred caves. (Women and Spirituality)
Steinem, Gloria. Revolution from Within. Little, Brown and Company: Boston, MA, 1992.
For several decades, Gloria Steinem has led a social revolution against injustice. In this book she sets out to restore the self-authority that such injustice has undermined – in men as well as women, across boundaries of race, class, age, sexuality and ability, using stories from her own life and the lives of others. (Spirituality, Self-help)
Stone, Merlin. When God Was a Woman. Harvest Books: Fort Washington, PA, 1978.
Here, archaeologically documented, is the story of the religion of the Goddess. Known by many names, she reigned supreme in the Near and Middle East. How did the change in women's roles come about? By documenting the wholesale rewriting of myth and religious dogmas, Stone details an ancient conspiracy that laid the foundation for one of culture's greatest shams—the legend of Adam and fallen Eve. (Goddess)
Taylor, Shelley E. The Tending Instinct. Time Books/Henry Holt and Company: NY, 2002.
For generations, scientists have taught us about the “flight-or-fight” response to stress. But is this instinct universal? Renowned psychologist Shelley A. Taylor points out that fight-or-flight may only be part of the story. Humans—particularly females—are hardwired to respond to stress differently. As Taylor deftly notes in this eye-opening work, the “tend-and-befriend” response is among the most vital ingredients of human social life. (Gender Studies, Psychology)