In my various and sundry travels around the web I came across the following paean to Scarlet, the Goddess of Procrastination, on the website of the neopagan Ecclasian Fellowship. (It also shows up on the blog of PaganWitch.com.) There doesn't seem to be much in the way of GoP jewelry out there, although I gather that finished items would be sacrilegious.
Worlds collide for me in this post from Spicy IP, which keeps track of intellectual property developments in India, which, among other things, discusses the recurring trope of analyzing legal evolution in terms a shift from Lakshmi (the goddess of wealth) to Saraswati (the goddess of knowledge).
Michele Mossop, via
Mother issues are a sign of a healthy child. That, at least, is the conclusion of a recent university study, which found that children who openly resist their mother's command reflect an emerging mature sense of self. Children who merely comply, however, exhibit a lack of self-confidence and a proclivity toward depression, traits likely to have unfortunate ramifications throughout their adult lives.
Which raises an intriguing question about what the jewelry pictured here represents more generally about religious culture. It's a pendant of the Blessed Mother from the Synchronicity Foundation, a new age faith led by an initiated Vedic monk named Master Charles. MC claims to be experiencing unique visions of this divine figure, the maternal spirit that animates the world.
As Ellen Dissanayake astutely illustrates in Art and Culture, religion tends to embody values of maternal care-taking that have a distinct evolutionary advantage, particularly the importance of transcending a narrow sense of self. As intrinsic to our development as this is, what should we make of those who elevate the nurturing mother metaphor to the highest form of good? Are they creating a religion where the followers never grow up?
Halfway through the work week and getting a bit worn out? Many churches try to help by holding a midweek prayer meeting, which gives people a chance to connect, encourage and recharge.
While the midweek meeting particularly thrives within more conservative churches, that is not always the case. The picture above shows a rosary used in Wednesday meetings at San Francisco's Ebenezer Lutheran Church, a feminist community of faith. The gold figure on the end is a woman, but it is not Mary or a saint--this is a Goddess Rosary.
At herchurch.org, the Church provides an extensive explanation of the theology behind the Goddess Rosary, from female metaphors of the divine to reconstructionist Christian feminism. It also describes in depth the midweek rosary prayer meetings, where people recite this variation on the "Hail Mary":
Hail Goddess full of grace.
Blessed are you
and blessed are all the fruits
of your womb.
For you are the MOTHER of us all.
Hear us now
and in all our needs.
O blessed be, O blessed be. Amen
And blessed art thou, Jennifer Rose Emick of About.com's excellent Alt Religion site, for sending this link!
CONTROVERSY EXTRA: Although the Goddess Rosary has been around for a while, it has recently become a cause celebre among more traditional Christian sites in the blogosphere. Is the use of goddess imagery in Christian feminism "rank heresy"? If the problem is borrowing from "pagan" imagery, is mainstream Catholicism's devotion to Mary any more orthodox? And is laughing at people and calling them "kooky" the hallmark of Christian love?
I report. You decide.