Goddesses in Myth and Cultural Memory

Goddesses in Myth and Cultural Memory PDF Author: Emilie Kutash
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 056769741X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Get Book Here

Book Description
How have the goddesses of ancient myth survived, prevalent even now as literary and cultural icons? How do allegory, symbolic interpretation, and political context transform the goddess from her regional and individual identity into a goddess of philosophy and literature? Emilie Kutash explores these questions, beginning from the premise that cultural memory, a collective cultural and social phenomenon, can last thousands of years. Kutash demonstrates a continuing practice of interpreting and allegorizing ancient myths, tracing these goddesses of archaic origin through history. Chapters follow the goddesses from their ancient near eastern prototypes, to their place in the epic poetry, drama and hymns of classical Greece, to their appearance in Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophy, Medieval allegory, and their association with Christendom. Finally, Kutash considers how goddesses were made into Jungian archetypes, and how some contemporary feminists made them a counterfoil to male divinity, thereby addressing the continued role of goddesses in perpetuating gender binaries.

Goddesses in Myth and Cultural Memory

Goddesses in Myth and Cultural Memory PDF Author: Emilie Kutash
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 056769741X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Get Book Here

Book Description
How have the goddesses of ancient myth survived, prevalent even now as literary and cultural icons? How do allegory, symbolic interpretation, and political context transform the goddess from her regional and individual identity into a goddess of philosophy and literature? Emilie Kutash explores these questions, beginning from the premise that cultural memory, a collective cultural and social phenomenon, can last thousands of years. Kutash demonstrates a continuing practice of interpreting and allegorizing ancient myths, tracing these goddesses of archaic origin through history. Chapters follow the goddesses from their ancient near eastern prototypes, to their place in the epic poetry, drama and hymns of classical Greece, to their appearance in Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophy, Medieval allegory, and their association with Christendom. Finally, Kutash considers how goddesses were made into Jungian archetypes, and how some contemporary feminists made them a counterfoil to male divinity, thereby addressing the continued role of goddesses in perpetuating gender binaries.

The Myth of the Goddess

The Myth of the Goddess PDF Author: Anne Baring
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141941405
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 798

Get Book Here

Book Description
A comprehensive, scholarly accessible study, in which the authors draw upon poetry and mythology, art and literature, archaeology and psychology to show how the myth of the goddess has been lost from our formal Judeo-Christian images of the divine. They explain what happened to the goddess, when, and how she was excluded from western culture, and the implications of this loss.

Pagan Grace

Pagan Grace PDF Author: Ginette Paris
Publisher: Spring Publications
ISBN: 9780882140674
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 180

Get Book Here

Book Description
The gift of grace, coming to us as beauty, cannot be ordered or owned, only acknowledged and served. When events take on a mythical dimension and reverberate in the soul, then we feel grace. The three images of divinity guiding this book express the often unconscious pagan grace present in our daily lives. With this book, Ginette Paris continues the work of Pagan Meditations in reviving individual, cultural, and social life by reawakening their archetypal roots.

The Cosmos in Ancient Greek Religious Experience

The Cosmos in Ancient Greek Religious Experience PDF Author: Efrosyni Boutsikas
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110848817X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Get Book Here

Book Description
Reconstructs ancient rituals in their day/night/season combining them with relevant mythology and astronomical observations to understand the ritual's cosmological links.

The Anatomy of Myth

The Anatomy of Myth PDF Author: Michael W. Herren
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019060669X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 249

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Anatomy of Myth is a comprehensive study of the methods of interpreting authoritative myths from the Presocratic philosophers to the Neoplatonists and their adoption by the Church Fathers.

Roman Myths

Roman Myths PDF Author:
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
ISBN: 9780689838224
Category : Mythology, Roman
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Retellings of fifteen Roman myths chronicling the exploits and adventures of Venus, Aeneas, Romulus and Remus, Diana, and others.

Revelry, Rivalry, and Longing for the Goddesses of Bengal

Revelry, Rivalry, and Longing for the Goddesses of Bengal PDF Author: Rachel Fell McDermott
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 023112919X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 392

Get Book Here

Book Description
Annually during the months of autumn, Bengal hosts three interlinked festivals to honor its most important goddesses: Durga, Kali, and Jagaddhatri. While each of these deities possesses a distinct iconography, myth, and character, they are all martial. Durga, Kali, and Jagaddhatri often demand blood sacrifice as part of their worship and offer material and spiritual benefits to their votaries. Richly represented in straw, clay, paint, and decoration, they are similarly displayed in elaborately festooned temples, thronged by thousands of admirers. The first book to recount the history of these festivals and their revelry, rivalry, and nostalgic power, this volume marks an unprecedented achievement in the mapping of a major public event. Rachel Fell McDermott describes the festivals' origins and growth under British rule. She identifies their iconographic conventions and carnivalesque qualities and their relationship to the fierce, Tantric sides of ritual practice. McDermott confronts controversies over the tradition of blood sacrifice and the status-seekers who compete for symbolic capital. Expanding her narrative, she takes readers beyond Bengal's borders to trace the transformation of the goddesses and their festivals across the world. McDermott's work underscores the role of holidays in cultural memory, specifically the Bengali evocation of an ideal, culturally rich past. Under the thrall of the goddess, the social, political, economic, and religious identity of Bengalis takes shape.

In the Wake of the Goddesses

In the Wake of the Goddesses PDF Author: Tikva Simone Frymer-Kensky
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Get Book Here

Book Description
Exploring the rich and powerful symbols of religion and culture that have shaped Western thought, In the Wake of the Goddesses shows how conceptions of gender and sexualtiy developed and changed from the goddesses of ancient Mesopotamian civilizations to the one God of Biblical monotheism. 8-page insert.

Whence the Goddesses

Whence the Goddesses PDF Author: Miriam Robbins Dexter
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780807762349
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Get Book Here

Book Description


Witches and Pagans

Witches and Pagans PDF Author: Max Dashu
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780692740286
Category : Folk religion
Languages : en
Pages : 408

Get Book Here

Book Description
Swa wiccan taeca?: ?as the witches teach.' So, explained the Old English translator, it was witches who counseled people to ?bring their offerings to earth-fast stone and also to trees and to wellsprings.' His contextualizing commentary on a Frankish penitential reveals the witches? intimate association with animist, earth-based ceremonies, contradicting the now-engrained idea that they were ?wicked.' In a compelling exploration of language, archaeology, early medieval literature and art, Max Dashu pulls the covers off ethnic lore known to few except scholarly specialists. She shows that the old ethnic names for ?witch? signify wisewoman, prophetess, diviner, healer, shapeshifter, and dreamer. She fleshes out the spiritual culture of the Norse völur (?staff-women?), with their oracular ceremonies, incantations, and ?sitting-out? on the land for wisdom. She examines archaeological finds of women's ritual staffs, many of which symbolize the distaff, a spinning tool that connects with broader European themes of goddesses, fates, witches, and female power. Ecclesiastical records show that these aspects of European women's spiritual culture survived state conversions to Christianity. Witches and Pagans plunges into the megalithic taproot of the elder kindreds, and the ancestral Old Woman known as the Cailleach. It draws on priestly Frankish and German sources to trace the foundational witch-legend of the Women Who Go by Night with the Goddess'and her links to women's spinning sacraments in the orature of Holle, Fraw Percht, and Swanfooted Berthe. The book also looks at the sexual politics of early witch burnings and the female ordeal of treading red-hot iron. Anglo-Saxon ?mystery-singers? shed light on ancestor veneration in early medieval Europe.The webs of Wyrd, weavers? ceremonies, herb-chanters, crystal balls and the Völuspá: this book uncovers the authentic ethnic roots of witchcraft. Putting the common woman at the center results in a very different view of European history than the one we have been taught. Sagas, ecclesiastical canons, laws, chronicles, charms, manuscripts and sculpture show the spiritual leadership of women and the goddesses, fates, and ancestors they revered. These strands can help to reweave the ripped webs of women's culture.