This book both changed my life and saved my life! I absolutely cannot have a spirituality based blog without including a review of this book. If you're a woman that has any interest at all in spirituality, faith, religions, mythology, history, archaeology, anthropology, sociology, feminism, etc., especially women's history and goddesses, then I cannot recommend this book enough!
Merlin Stone explores the role of women in ancient societies and mythologies and explores the way that goddesses, female spirituality, and women in general have been erased and had their roles altered by men throughout history. Our history and our power has been taken from us and it's about time we take it back and work to uncover the truth of our ancestors!
I know many women who are raised in religious households find it very difficult to keep in touch with their spiritual side, especially if they start to look into feminism. It's hard to realize your worth as a woman and then have to come to terms with the fact that the religion you were raised with often oppresses you and can't see that worth. For me, I was raised Catholic. Once I got old enough to think critically for myself I started thinking about the way the Catholic Church treats women. They won't even allow women to be priests, let alone hold a position any higher up in the hierarchy, such as bishops, cardinals, or the Pope. When I was little I asked my parents about this and they said, "well, women can't be priests, but they can be nuns! It's like a woman priest. Men can only be priests, they can't be nuns." and in my childish mind this explanation of separate but equal satisfied me. As I got older I realized that men could in fact be something very similar to nuns as they could be friars or monks, but women could not hold a position similar to a priest. Women may be leaders in their parish, they might volunteer for the fish fry, work in the church office, sing in the choir, volunteer at Catholic schools, organize charity and fundraising events, decorate the church for the holidays, etc. and at least in my family's parish it is almost always the women who fulfill these roles and not their husbands, but no matter how dedicated women are, no matter how hard they work, no matter how much they pray, the church will never let them actually lead their parish. They will always have to answer to a man. The church will never let them hold mass. The church will never let them rise in the ranks and hold real authority even if they become nuns. The church will never ordain women. No woman will ever be the Pope.
Now, I say "never" here because the Church itself says never, but I don't think this will actually be the case. I remain hopeful that I will live to see the day the Church changes it's stance and decides to ordain women. However, I don't think I will ever see a female Pope in my lifetime. That would be too much change too soon. But I'm hoping that little by little we'll start to see some progress.
In the meantime though, it's hard to reconcile my views on women with the church's views on women. It makes me not want to even go to mass at all. Not to mention the fact that the more I looked into different religions and mythologies, the more I realized that while most modern religions (at least in the West) hold the idea that god is a man, that wasn't always the case. In the past women were revered as goddesses and women held important roles in the temples to those goddesses. Yet somehow in the centuries since, women's role in religion completely changed to us taking the back seat to men in almost all ways. It started to seem to me like instead of making progress through time, we were actually going backward. That's what led me to pick up this book and it was one of the best decisions I've ever made. I'm serious. Go get this book right now and start reading it! You won't regret it.
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