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WOMEN IN THE WICCAN RELIGION AND CONTEMPORARY PAGANISM l 809 opportunities without guilt or reproach. And motherhood , while still important in matriarchal thought, is less often pictured as the work of raising children and making a home and more often seen in the miracle of biological reproduction itself. Both these changes correspond to broader differences between first and second wave feminism. There continues to be significant debate about whether or not ancient matriarchies actually existed. But there can be no question that the possibility of their existence has inspired feminist thought and action for over a hundred years, providing a new and potentially revolutionary angle on human history. SOURCES: Johann Jakob Bachofen, Myth, Religion, and Mother Right, trans. Ralph Manheim (1967). Carrie Chapman Catt, “A Survival of Matriarchy,” Harper’s Magazine 128 (1914): 738– 743. Carol P. Christ, Laughter of Aphrodite (1987). Cynthia Eller, The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Won’t Give Women a Future (2000). Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884, 1972). Matilda Joslyn Gage, Woman, Church and State (2nd ed., 1900; rept. 1972). Eliza Burt Gamble, The Evolution of Woman (1894). Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Man-Made World or Our Androcentric Culture (1911). Marija Gimbutas, The Civilization of the Goddess (1991). Marija Gimbutas, The Language of the Goddess (1989). Catherine Gasquoine Hartley, The Age of Mother-Power (1914). Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “The Matriarchate or Mother-Age,” The National Bulletin (of The Woman’s Tribune) 1–5 (February 1891): 1–7. Merlin Stone, When God Was a Woman (1976). Frances Swiney, The Awakening of Women or Woman’s Part in Evolution (1899, 1908). Frances Swiney, The Cosmic Procession or the Feminine Principle in Evolution (1906). Gregory Zilboorg, “Masculine and Feminine ,” Psychiatry 7 (1944): 266–290. WOMEN IN THE WICCAN RELIGION AND CONTEMPORARY PAGANISM Selena Fox WOMEN HAVE PLAYED a prominent part in the development of the Wiccan religion and related forms of contemporary Paganism. Many of the women who have helped shaped the religion have lived in the United States. Among the best known and longest serving of these are three priestess-author-feminists: Starhawk, Margot Adler, and Z Budapest. More information about them and several others appears at the end of this essay, following a discussion of history, forms, beliefs, and practices. Overview The Wiccan religion is a worldwide Nature religion rooted in Pagan antiquity. It has developed into its present form in contemporary times. Also known as Wicca, Wicce, the Craft, the Old Religion, and witchcraft, its practitioners are typically known as Wiccans or witches. The Wiccan religion and related forms of Nature spirituality known as contemporary Paganism incorporate revivals, continuations, and adaptations of customs, mythology , symbology, folkways, worldviews, and spiritual practices from old Pagan Europe and the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. These include the celebrations of the cycles of sun, moon, and seasons; bonfires in rituals and festivals; ecstatic dancing, drumming, and music making; feasting and celebrations; trance and meditation; divination; intuition ; magic as projected imaginal intention; and spiritual relationships with deities, ancestors, sacred places, animals, plants, Nature spirits, and other Divine forms. History In the twentieth century, several major influences converged to shape the Wiccan religion and Paganism into their twenty-first century forms. These include the writings and teachings of Gerald Gardner (1884–1964) and Doreen Valiente (1922–1999), the cofounders of Gardnerian Wicca in 1950s England; the back-to-Nature counterculture and human potential movements of 1960s America; the rise of feminism and environmentalism in the United States and worldwide in the 1970s; the development of the Pagan festival movement in the United States in the 1980s; and the growth of Pagan networking on the Internet in the 1990s. Three books by priestesses, first published in 1979, gave impetus to the growth of Paganism: (1) Drawing Down the Moon, by Margot Adler, which was the first comprehensive history ; (2) The Spiral Dance, by Starhawk, which was a practical guide to rituals and other forms of spiritual practice; and (3) Circle Guide to Pagan Groups, by Selena Fox, which was a networking tool that facilitated contact among different traditions, making possible multitradition festivals and cultural growth. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Wiccan and Pagan religious freedom victories and witchcraft imagery and themes in popular culture reflected and contributed to the growth of Paganism in numbers and visibility in society. The history of the Wiccan religion, witchcraft, and Paganism is complex. There...

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