Chandra Alexandre (editor) - Pagan, Goddess, Mother

PAGAN, GODDESS, MOTHER

PAGAN, GODDESS, MOTHER

Edited by Nan Jordan & Chandra Alexandre

Pagan, Goddess, Mother

Edited by Nan Jordan and Chandra Alexandre.

Copyright 2021 Demeter Press

Individual copyright to their work is retained by the authors. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

Demeter Press

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Website: www.demeterpress.org

Demeter Press logo based on the sculpture Demeter by Maria-Luise Bodirsky www.keramik-atelier.bodirsky.de

Printed and Bound in Canada

Cover artwork: Mary , Acrylic on Canvas, Asia Morgenthaler
Cover layout and typesetting: Michelle Pirovich
eBook: tikaebooks.com

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Pagan, goddess, mother / edited by Nan Jordan and Chandra Alexandre.

Names: Jordan, Nan, editor. | Alexandre, Chandra, editor.

Description: Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: Canadiana 20200376233 | ISBN 9781772582642 (softcover)

Subjects: LCSH: Motherhood. | LCSH: MothersReligious life. | LCSH: Paganism. | LCSH: Goddess religion.

Classification: LCC HQ759.P34 2021 | DDC 306.874/308829994dc23

For our children now and yet to come.

With love,

Nan

To my mom and daughter.

Prema,

Chandra

Acknowledgments

Nan: Writing a book is surely an act of birthing and mothering; it is a calling to bring new word worlds into life through our labours while acknowledging both the challenges and joys of raising the sweet child before us. I, thus, want to acknowledge and thank Dr. Sarah Whedon, who first approached me with the idea for this book, inviting me to coedit this anthology with her. I was to take a secondary role in its birthing, as Sarah began the editorial process with the authors. Sarahs academic background and spiritual pathway is in Pagan studies, and my own are in womens spirituality and Goddess studies. We began complex conversations via email on the topic of forwarding the experiences of mothers in these connected yet diverse spiritual communities, which are often marginalized or little understood outside of their own lived terrains. When Sarah needed to step back from coediting the anthology, I was left with a book partway through and with her original vision. I was able to step into to the challenge of raising our child-book with the support of my new coeditor, Dr. Chandra Alexandre and continue on with this heartfelt work, feeling the blessings of forwarding the many mother voices in this text.

I want to thank Chandra for her input and support. I also very much thank all our authors for their amazing, insightful, and moving writing about this important topic and for their patience with us as editors. My gratitude continues with thanks to my husband and daughters, the loves of my life, who are ever supportive of my creative writing life, typing away as I do on this cosmic sewing machine.

Chandra: Ive felt blessed to have been part of this anthology under Nans leadership and Sarahs vision. Its been a hard and joyful experience, as is much to what we give birth in this world. My appreciation to those who stepped up to write and create with us and to those upon whose shoulders we stand is great. In service to the larger birthing of a healed and whole world, I offer my appreciation to my own family for their support as I make my contributions. Thank you to the readers too, now, for taking in these many and varied gifts. May your own journeys be fulfilled within Her embrace.

Nan and Chandra: Our combined thanks and gratitude especially go out to Dr. Andrea OReilly and Demeter Press for gracefully moving through this project with us and, as always, for holding much needed publication space for vital mother voices in feminist scholarship.

And to you, Mother Goddesses everywhere, in gratitude for and with your creative presencesat times both nurturing and fierce in your directionswe give thanks for all experiences of love and support in our efforts, birthing us along the way.

Contents

Section 1
Priestess, Witch, Artist, Midwife: Mother Stories

Mamapriestess
Molly Remer

Finding My Footing as a Witch and a Mother
Sarah Rosehill

Remothering and the Goddess
Asia Morgenthaler

Minks
Elizabeth Cunningham

Section II
Scholarship from Pagan Goddess Motherlines

I Do Not Want to Be a Goddess
Kusumita Mukherjee Debnath

The Path of the Cold Hearth-Stone: Reflections on Sex, Saturn, and Solitary Working
Georgia van Raalte

Section III
Empowering Spirited Mother-Daughter Lineages

My Persephone
Jennifer Lawrence

Goddess Is Mother Love
Nan Jordan and Chandra Alexandre

Death and the Mother: Integrating Death into a Pagan Family Life
Cory Ellen Gatrall

Introduction

Nan Jordan and Chandra Alexandre

I am the Mother of all things and my love is
poured out upon the earth

I who am the beauty of the green earth and the white moon
among the stars and the mysteries of the waters,
I call upon your soul to arise and come unto me.

For I am the soul of nature that gives life to the universe.

From Me all things proceed and unto Me they must return.

Let My worship be in the heart that rejoices, for behold,

all acts of love and pleasure are My rituals.

(From Traditional Charge of the Goddess by Doreen Valiente,
adapted by Starhawk)

This book gathers creative voices, stories, and scholarship from the forefront of Pagan and Goddess-centred homeswhere Goddesses, divine Mothers, female embodiment, and generative life cycles are honoured as sacred. Pagan and Goddess spirituality are distinct yet overlapping traditions, lived through diverse communities in North America and beyond. Those who inhabit these spaces have much to say about deity as mother and about human mothers in relationship to deity. This anthology puts Pagan and Goddess mothering into focus by highlighting the philosophies and experiences of mothers in these movements and spiritual traditions. By doing so, we hope to generate new ways of imagining and enacting motherhood.

Questions informing this collection are as follows. How do mothers in contemporary Pagan and Goddess movements negotiate their mothering roles and identities? How does devotion towards Mother Goddesses empower and/or affect the lived experiences of mothers and feminist practices of mothering? As editors, we wondered how Pagan- and Goddess-centred mothers engage in, and are affected by, their particular spiritual leadership through practices of ceremony, ritual, magic, priestessing, as well as through living connections with nature, the more-than-human world, the Earth as Mother, and our own bodies. We were curious to know how Pagan- and Goddess-centred mothers interface with dominant religions, the public sphere, social institutions for children, community leadership, and social justice movements. We were curious especially because Pagan and Goddess spirituality are not mainstream religions, nor are they accepted as such. Adherents often co-create new pathways, subcultures, or countercultures in life and spirit. Practitioners may or may not belong to particular communities or faith-based groups and may even practice traditional religions alongside their Pagan and Goddess spirituality.