& YOUNG

SHARMA
RELIGION

This set of frank and searching essays...

is
impressive for the depth of its historical material

HER VOICE, HER FAITH

and the breadth of its humanistic vision. This fine
collection of learned yet accessible writings
should be in virtually every library.
Booklist

They say religion is a personal and private affair. But

when a woman believes in a tradition, she ›has a rela
tionship to that faith beyond her sacred space. Religious
traditions historically poor treatment of women has lead
many to question why they believe. How has› their tradi
tion either embraced and enlightened, or excluded and
confined women throughout history?
Her Voice, Her Faith
presents the personal and historical perspectives of
women who not only live their faith day to day, but who
also know their religion s history with women in general.

KATHERINE YOUNG is professor of religion at McGill

University where she co›edits
Annual
the Review of
Women in World Religions
. Her research centers on
South Indian religion and new scholarship on women and
religion. In addition, she is a member of the McGill Centre
for Medicine, Ethics and Law, through which
› she recent
ly published a major study of euthanasia.
ARVIND
SHARMA is professor of religion at McGill University in
Montreal. Born in India, he completed his ›doctoral stud
ies at Harvard University, where he studied
› under the reli
gious historian Wilfred Cantwell Smith at the Center for
the Study of World Religions. He has taught at the
University of Sydney, Australia, as a colleague of the

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Her Voice, Her Faith

Her Voice, Her Faith

Wo m e n S p e a k
o n Wo r l d R e l i g i o n s

A rv i n d S h a r ma
K at h e r i n e K . Yo u n g
E d i tor s

A MEMBER OF THE PERSEUS BOOKS GROUP

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Paperback first published in 2004 by Westview Press.

Find us on the World Wide Web at www.westviewpress.com

Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:

Her voice, her faith: women speak on world religions / Arvind Sharma, Katherine
K.Young, editors.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8133-6591-0 (hardcover: alk.paper)
1.Women and religion. I. Sharma,Arvind. II.Young, Katherine K., 1944-
BL458.H45 2002
200'.82—dc21
2002015755

ISBN 0-8133-4257-0 (paperback)

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National
Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48–1984.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 Contents

Preface by Arvind Sharma vii

Introduction by Katherine K.Young 1

1 Hinduism, by Vasudha Narayanan 11

2 Buddhism, by Rita M. Gross 59

3 Confucianism, by Terry Woo 99

4 Taoism, by Eva Wong 119

5 Judaism, by Susannah Heschel 145

6 Christianity, by Mary Gerhart 169

7 Islam, by Riffat Hassan 215

8 Goddess Spirituality and Wicca, by Wendy Griffin 243

Notes 283

Bibliography 297

About the Contributors 307

Index 311

v
 Preface

To appeal to one’s common human-
ity is to appeal to something profoundly moving. However profoundly
moving though, it is not unambiguous, for although our common hu-
manity inspires us, it also obscures one fundamental fact about human-
ity—its even split into men and women.When asked to respond simply as
a human being, what if someone asked—as what, as a man or a woman?
Of course one can speak with a common voice but it is not the same
voice. Isn’t one able to tell whether one is talking to a man or a woman by
the voice alone?
To appeal to one’s faith is also to appeal to something profoundly
moving—but although it is profoundly moving, it too is not unambigu-
ous. For although one’s faith inspires, it also obscures another fundamental
fact of humanity—that there are many faiths. Of course one could talk of
what these faiths have in common but they are not the same, a fact that
becomes even more obvious when the faithful begin to talk to each other.
Once it was possible to take men alone as the main sample of the hu-
man race and the Christian faith as the prime sample of all faiths. But
what could be taken as axiomatic in the imperial and rationalistic glare of
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has become problematic in the
discriminating dawn of the twenty-first, which reveals these samples as
merely examples.To be a man is only one example of what it means to be

vii
viii preface

a human being, and to be a Christian as only one example of what it

means to be a person of faith.
Her Voice, Her Faith is an attempt to unite these two new perspectives,
and its various chapters are the offspring of their union. In this book
women rather than men give voice to different faiths—both Christian
and non-Christian—and we hope you enjoy being a part of this valuable
conversation.
Arvind Sharma
 Introduction
Katherine K.Young

Something phenomenal—Indeed,
historically unprecedented—happened in the second half of the twentieth
century. Women recovered their religious history and challenged negative
stereotypes that had become so deeply embedded in the authority of scrip-
tures and their commentaries that they seemed to be about female nature
itself. The cutting-edge scholarly contributions were built upon solid
knowledge of ancient languages, both scriptural and vernacular, the detec-
tive’s eye for clues to the real world of women, scrutiny of male accounts
for bias, and a relentless search for texts by women and about women that
had been ignored, marginalized, or reinterpreted to disguise their creativity.
Because much of this development occurred in the United States (or
was inspired by the women’s movement there), I am tempted to call this,
in the spirit of the history of American religion, “a great awakening,”
adding it to other great American awakenings such as the eighteenth cen-
tury’s awakening of religious piety and the nineteenth century’s religious
fervor that transcended sectarian and denominational lines. In our present
context, the term “awakening” has been expanded to include women’s
awakening to their religious histories and practices and their awakening to
the fact that now many religions are included in a new American religious
movement that is challenging the idea that secularism is here to stay. In
addition, the word “awakening” is apropos for our topic because it is a

1
2 introduction

quintessentially spiritual term (used for the great moment of realization

by Buddhas, Hindu yogis, Taoist immortals, Jewish kabbalists, Christian
and Muslim Sufi mystics, and other spiritual adepts).The word brings our
story directly to the context of insiders of the world religions—here as fe-
male spiritual seekers in their own right, as doers of family and commu-
nity rituals, and as scholarly interpreters and leaders.
The United States has become a different religious place in the sec-
ond half of the twentieth century, and into the twenty-first. Diasporic
communities have transformed the religious landscape with mosques,
Hindu temples, and Chinese Buddhist shrines—proud visual emblems of
identity and sacrality.1 And women, in turn, have participated in the
women’s movement, one of the great social transformations of our time.
Women have also converted to religions such as Buddhism and Wicca. It
is fitting, therefore, that Her Voice, Her Faith should celebrate this new vi-
sion of women and world religions in which personal epiphanies begin
the journeys that help us to hear in a new way.
A lot of world history is covered in the following chapters. By way of
introduction, permit me to set the scene with several broad historical
strokes, which also helps us to understand where we are now.
Religions of large-scale societies covered in this book—Judaism,
Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism—
have several distinguishing phases. First, they are influenced, either directly
or indirectly, by early civilizations. This already tells us much about the
frame of our story about women and world religions. Early civilizations
are informed by a class-based society with social and economic inequali-
ties in the form of social hierarchies: exploitation by the elite to extract
surplus foods, goods, and labor; political power to maintain stability; sym-
bols, usually drawn from religions, to conceptualize status and authority;
and a professionalized memory either through written records or oral
transmission. Men held most of the official and bureaucratic positions, in-
cluding those in religions. Even though women still had some public visi-
bility, they were subordinate to men both in public and, with respect to
men’s decision-making authority, sometimes within the home as well. As
Bruce G. Trigger writes, “The early civilizations were societies in which
inequality was accepted as a normal condition and injustice viewed as a
personal rather than a systemic evil.”2 Hierarchy was dependent on com-
mon recognition of rank and for that status symbols were necessary: spe-
 introduction 3

cial clothing, jewels, multistoried dwellings, monumental architecture, and

sophisticated art.3 Hierarchy affected women by making some women su-
perior and others inferior. In addition, when male high status was defined
by having multiple women (as concubines or wives) and/or by secluding
them (as non-laborers under male control), elite women’s lives were pro-
foundly affected. Hierarchy was rarely challenged because there were ob-
vious benefits to the new state system and its tributary relationships
including political protection from acquisitive and militarily aggressive
neighbors and disruption in the means of production, mainly agriculture
and trade, on which all lives depended. For women, this meant economic
security and personal protection, something that had been sorely lacking
in the chaotic transition from small-scale societies to the unbridled indi-
vidualism of chiefdoms and fledgling kingdoms.
In early civilizations, there was no clear line between deities who per-
sonified natural forces and deceased ancestors; in other words, the super-
natural mirrored much of the natural and social worlds.4 The cosmos was
simple: a small, short-lived, or unstable earth, sometimes surrounded by an
ocean and one or more celestial and subterranean realms, all of which
might be encompassed by an ocean or abyss or chaos. Deities, which in-
cluded both gods and goddesses (though the latter were already being
marginalized), were rarely omnipotent or omniscient, they were vulnera-
ble to age, suffering, and loss of power. They were also jealous and could
harm people. More importantly, they were dependent on human beings,
especially for offerings and rituals.
The consolidation of these early civilizations had a major effect yet
again on the lives of women. Male power was consolidated in the public
realm. Whereas the previous phase still had some queens, female traders,
businesswomen, and priestesses, these were even more marginalized or
disappeared altogether.5 Because early civilizations made specialized
knowledge possible, it should not surprise us that the consolidation of
male power in the public realm had as its corollary male control of educa-
tion and literacy (where that had developed). What is striking is the male
exclusivity of this domain. Whereas male dominance in war (because of
male size and strength), agriculture (because of the upper-body strength
needed to push the plough), and long-distance trade (because of freedom
from pregnancy and lactation) is understandable, male exclusivity in edu-
cation seems to be without good reason. Although women were told that
4 introduction

because of their “nature” they were lacking in reason, we know this to be

otherwise.The argument that education was not possible for women be-
cause of their reproductive role is not convincing (even childhood educa-
tion was denied to many women and literacy could easily be combined
with domestic roles). Rather, it seems that literacy, and by extension, spe-
cialized knowledge was especially important for urban men whose bodies
no longer had a functional role and identity had to be defined in a new
way.When mind replaced body for elite urban men, it became an expres-
sion of high status and was made exclusive by allowing literacy and spe-
cialized education only for boys and reserving roles such as scribe,
bureaucrat, and philosopher only for men.The exclusivity of this new do-
main was buttressed by a rhetoric of female intellectual inferiority, rheto-
ric made convincing by the fact that without literacy and education
women were indeed intellectually inferior—a feat of culture, however, not
a dictum of nature.The prejudice went that women, as laborers and repro-
ducers, had bodies, and that men, in turn, had minds. Of course, most men
also paid the price of this hierarchical system. Many were conscripted by
kings to wage battle with massive loss of male life, and defeated warriors
were killed outright or forced into slave or indentured labor. Many were
forced into arranged marriages, and many, even most, were illiterate, too. If
the minds of elite men had prestige, the bodies of ordinary men, even
when of functional importance for society, were controlled by others, and
were fast declining in status.6
This basic frame of androcentrism, created mainly by elite men, be-
came embedded in the religions of the day to provide ultimate authority.
The turn to male gods was complemented by an increase in their inde-
pendence and transcendence, sometimes resulting in monotheism and
usually in a male priesthood that defined the values for society—includ-
ing the roles for women and men. The worldview was now framed, by
and large, through his eyes and the role of elite women became even more
limited to motherhood (though it was eulogized—in positive apprecia-
tion of this essential role but also, no doubt, in compensation for opportu-
nities and dignities denied). Because upward mobility meant imitating the
elite, this hierarchical model became replicated as groups sought to in-
crease their status.
But curiously, this frame, which has been dubbed patriarchy, was soon
challenged by branches of some of the very religions that were providing
 introduction 5

authority for it (what started out as reforms occasionally resulting in new

religions). Sometimes hierarchy was criticized—both Jesus and Buddha,
for instance, befriended prostitutes and criticized the corruption of
priests. Sometimes hierarchy was circumvented altogether by alternative
lifestyles such as wandering asceticism or following a path believed to
lead to another realm, such as heavens characterized by equality or a type
of transgendered state altogether.The fact that specialization, built in part
upon classification, had led to distinctions of nature, society, and the su-
pernatural in Near Eastern, Graeco-Roman, Indian, and Chinese civiliza-
tions during the first millennium B.C.E. made the world more complex
and created more possibilities. Some women, too, became ascetics. Some
heeded the call to join monastic communities, which set themselves apart
from the dominant hierarchical society and opened the doors to literacy
and education. Some contacted deities directly through possession and
prophesied. And some preserved goddess traditions. The pages of this
book are filled with a new cast of actors in history. In short, the world re-
ligions discussed in this book have inherited both the patriarchal frame
and its critique, which gave rise to countercultures or reforms. Even
though some of these were short-lived, the emerging culture was suffi-
ciently complex that it could always inspire new adaptations or reforms.7
We could even argue that those religions that could no longer inspire the
allegiance of women and undergo reforms died on the world scene. One
major trait of the religions represented in this book, after all, is that they
are still today living religions. And after two or more millennia that is no
small feat.
All this has informed the story of women and world religions, but it
could not be seen clearly through women’s eyes until the modern pe-
riod.8 The Enlightenment’s ideas of liberalism and egalitarianism inspired
women’s critique of hierarchy. Democracy, socialism, and Marxism sub-
sequently inspired movements for national liberation in general and
women’s liberation in particular. The industrial revolution contributed
machines that equalized the bodies of men and women in the labor
force as did the development of birth control. Small families were valued
in postindustrial societies, and this released women from all-consuming
reproductive roles. Finally, and most importantly, from the 1960s large
numbers of women went to university and many received Ph.D.s. At
the same time, many traditional religious schools opened their doors to
6 introduction

female students and religion departments educated others and then went
on to hire them. The fact that they have been increasingly joined by
women of diasporic communities is absolutely critical for the insights
provided by this book.
Inclusion of the insider’s perspective in the study of religion is just
now coming of age.9 This is the first book written exclusively by insider
women (as scholars and practitioners) on the topic of women and world
religions. This new perspective leads us to new understandings. In her
chapter on Hinduism, for instance,Vasudha Narayanan talks about her fa-
vorite experiences growing up in an orthoprax Sri Vaishnava household in
Chennai (Madras), India. Her lived experience inspires her to reorganize
the vast, complex content of this religion to capture distinguishing fea-
tures of contemporary Hinduism (especially as lived by women) rather
than a romp through historical periods and philosophical systems that
leaves one wondering just who a Hindu today might be. Rita M. Gross
speaks frankly and eloquently about her “awakening” in 1973, which led
her from teaching about Buddhism as a professor to actual practice of
meditation.This awakening, however, was not without its existential prob-
lems because on the surface it appeared that women in Buddhism were in
the background, a situation that conflicted with her own feminist con-
cerns for the empowerment of women.This essay bears testimony to how
scholarship can help to reconcile such apparent contradictions by finding
more facts and meanings within a spiritual tradition that lead to deeper
understandings and insights into what women need to recover from the
past or what to revise for a faith of the future.Terry Woo takes us inside a
poignant moment of her life that embodies a Confucian family tradition:
her father’s parting words of wisdom to her as she leaves Hong Kong for
study in America. The journey is more than one of crossing continents.
The further she travels away, the greater her search backward intellectually
and spiritually to rediscover the roots of identity.Taking Confucianism se-
riously once again after decades of its being maligned by Communists (es-
pecially on the topic of women) is a daunting task. But here again the
tools of scholarship help Woo to recover, understand, and sift the tradition
for her future (and perhaps that of others within her community), thereby
meeting her father’s parting words that she must put back into the com-
munity what has been given to her. In her chapter on Taoism, Eva Wong
speaks of her own spiritual practice (which at certain stages must be re-
 introduction 7

lated specifically to female bodies) and knowledge of oral traditions

through the female line of spiritual adepts of Taoist meditation to com-
plement the textual (land largely male-oriented) sources. Susannah Hes-
chel helps us to empathize with the experience of some Jewish women of
being excluded in Orthodox circles from the recitation of key prayers at
the sensitive time of mourning (though her chapter shows how other
forms of modern Judaism have been inclusive).And the chapter on Chris-
tianity by Mary Gerhart deftly weaves the rich history of Roman Catholi-
cism—the author’s own tradition—which has been neglected in other
accounts of women and Christianity with other branches of the religion.
Riffat Hassan reminds us all how important mothers have been in en-
couraging their daughters to explore the educational opportunities of the
modern world, which they themselves had been denied in the name of
tradition. But easier said than done, Hassan reveals to us. Despite her up-
bringing with wealth and status, her journey through knowledge into
freedom and personhood had its trials. It meant fierce debates and going
back to the scriptures to find out for herself what they said and how they
spoke about and to women. Sometimes it’s mothers, sometimes it’s a pro-
fessor’s students who point to new paths, and sometimes it’s both.The lat-
ter was the case for Wendy Griffin, who accepted her student’s invitation
for the class to join a ritual celebrating the spring equinox.This led to re-
search on Wicca and then into her gradual recognition that this orienta-
tion spoke to her in a spiritual way, a way that also seemed like going
home, back into her childhood experiences of a summer girls’ camp run
by her mother. As in Wicca, there were meditations in nature, silent pro-
cessions, and myths spoken around the campfire. Given that the authors
have had to be ruthlessly selective for the space assigned, they have ac-
complished quite a feat: to give us entrance to religious worldviews, not to
mention the insider women’s take, and make us want to learn still more.
These developments have produced some intriguing paradoxes. De-
spite men’s virtual control of the public sphere of religion over many cen-
turies, we find that they have had to turn to women’s knowledge on
occasion for an authoritative voice. This reminds us that orality, too, is
powerful and can be transmitted through the generations—in this case,
mother to daughter or female guide to female student—contributing
thereby to women’s reputation as wise and knowledgeable. Another para-
dox is that women’s entrance to mass literacy and scholarship has made
8 introduction

possible the literate record of women’s oral traditions. This is especially

true of those scholars who use their training in the anthropology of reli-
gion to record women’s memories of customs and wisdom and their ac-
tual rituals, spirit-possessions, and spiritual journeys.
In my estimation, it is important to present a nuanced picture of
women and world religions in order to avoid the extremes of those who
criticize the world religions as unredeemably patriarchal and blame all of
women’s and society’s problems on the sheer malice of men—the seedbed
of misandry.10 This book shows how those women who are insiders to the
world religions struggle with these issues. It also shows how they struggle
with conflicts between continuity (encompassing both identity and spiri-
tuality) and discontinuity (the need for reforms, especially for inclusion not
to mention leadership, in what were once exclusive male spheres). But this
book also brings to attention the traditions of some marginalized religions
where women once were or still are central to the vision of religion.
An enormous interest in primal religions of small-scale societies has
emerged as women recover their macro-history. Goddesses abound in
many of these religions, as do priestesses, female shamans, and other custo-
dians of ritual and community identity. Many primal religions are marked
by an integral worldview that deeply connects nature, society, and the su-
pernatural. And some are also marked by a spirit of egalitarianism. All of
this has become terribly relevant to women of contemporary Wiccan
groups in their search to recover knowledge of women’s religious lives
and to learn from it when reforming the present.
Her Voice, Her Faith documents neglected voices. It was first necessary
to get the “female” voice up to strength so it could really speak again.
Now, curiously, this voice is so strong in some feminist circles that it is pro-
ducing female-centered (gynocentric) worldviews to replace the old male
(androcentric) ones. Despite their prevailing androcentrism, the latter were
a mix of premodern, general human, and specific male (elite) perspectives.
Some of us now recognize that there is still much to be learned about
maleness (through modern science) and masculinities (through the phe-
nomenology of private male experience, male embodiment, and societal
role impositions). Ironically, the particular male voice needs to be strength-
ened today in some ways ( just as women have had to do this for them-
selves so men must take up the task) and women need to empathize with
the new insights that this has to offer.The goal, as I see it, is stereophonic
 introduction 9

sound.When both the male and female voice become of equal strength (in
a balance that also considers the contributions of both insiders and out-
siders), we may begin to see for the first time three-dimensional religious
worlds—fully of the two genders (and multiple cultures) but also of the
human dimension that transcends their particularities—and then we may
begin to see the one world of us all. This goal, of stereophonic sound, I
hope, will inform the religious voices of the future. And from them, of
course, may come another great awakening!
 1

Hinduism
By Vasudha Narayanan

When I was a child in South India,
my favorite festival was Navaratri, dedicated to three goddesses, Sarasvati,
Lakshmi, and Durga. Navaratri, which means “nine nights,” begins on the
new moon that falls between mid-September and mid-October and runs
through ten days. A room in our house would be set apart and filled with
exquisite dolls for plays about the goddesses. Elaborate tableaux were put in
place to depict stories from thousands of years of Hindu texts. In the center
of the room were large images and clay dolls of the goddesses.As we set up
the many scenes, my aunts or my grandmother would narrate tales con-
nected with the tableaux. Some Hindus celebrate Navaratri to mark the
victory of the goddess Durga over the buffalo-demon Mahisha. Others, es-
pecially in northern India, think of it as the time when Rama, the divine
incarnation of the Lord Vishnu, battled with the demon Ravana.
Every evening during this fall festival, women and children wearing
soft, bright silks visited each other, admired the kolu, or display of dolls,
played musical instruments, and sang songs in praise of one or another of
many Hindu deities, from the repertoire of South Indian classical music. It
was a joyous time of festivity, music, elegance, and beauty—a glorious cel-
ebration of womanhood.The last two days were dedicated to Sarasvati and
Lakshmi. These were special holidays, and we did not have to go to
school. Large pictures of the two, draped with garlands of fresh flowers,
were kept in front of the display of dolls.

11
12 her voice, her faith

On the day dedicated to Sarasvati, we solemnly put in front of her all

our musical instruments, writing devices, selected textbooks, and the kolu,
to be blessed by her for the year to come. We did not read or write that
day: we relaxed while Sarasvati did the work, blessing every pen and pen-
cil, the lonely typewriter, the string instruments called vinas, and every
one of our science, geography, and algebra books.The next day, the victo-
rious tenth day (Vijaya Dashami), is dedicated to Lakshmi.
But first we had to finish Sarasvati’s business. After a ritual bath early
in the morning, we lit lamps and incense, bowed down before her, picked
up our pens and wrote “Sri” to begin the new scholarly year (this was not
the calendrical new year) with an auspicious word. New prayers and
pieces of music were learned; new knowledge was to be acquired that day.
Even as children, we knew that Sarasvati was the goddess of learning and
Lakshmi was the goddess of all good fortune; and on the last days of the
Navaratri festival, the fortune of learning, the wealth of wisdom, and the
joy of music were given to us, every year, by the grace of the goddesses.
Victory was ours, for the rest of the year. After the victorious tenth day,
the dolls returned to their boxes in the attic, and the pictures of Lakshmi
and Sarasvati went back up on the walls in the family room.
Most Hindus learn about their religion through stories, music, and
dance, going to temples, and participating in rituals, festivals, and pilgrim-
ages. These are the first entry points and, for many, all the religion that
they will get in life. In general, most Hindus living in India do not worry
about religious doctrines, fixed times of prayers, or a historical unfolding
of events.
Many introductory texts on Hinduism take the reader through an im-
portant and standard list of topics. These include the origins, that is, the
Indus Valley Civilization, the Indo-Aryans; the earliest religious composi-
tions starting with the Vedas and the emphasis on sacrifice; philosophical
enquiry in the Upanishads; the two epics; the Bhagavad Gita, which is part
of one of the epics, law books, the caste system, stages of life, six systems of
philosophy; the important philosophers of Vedanta (Shankara, Ramanuja,
Madhva, et al.); the devotional (bhakti) movement; and then fast forward
to reforms in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.This conceptual sys-
tem is not one that we can necessarily label as just “male”; the credit for
this descriptive list is shared between the high-caste brahmin male schol-
ars, well versed in Sanskrit, who collaborated with the British in the pro-
 hinduism 13

duction of the Hindu traditions, and Western scholars influenced by En-

lightenment paradigms of history and religion. These lists are neither
wrong nor unimportant, but they do exclude the experiences of women
and the millions whose knowledge of religious phenomena has not come
through the Sanskrit language or Brahmanical modes of perception.
I write both as an academic and as a woman who was raised in a par-
ticular Hindu tradition, or sampradaya, called the Sri Vaishnava, theologi-
cally, and Ayyangar, socially. Having lived in a relatively orthoprax
household in India, I found it difficult to reconcile my understanding of
the Hindu tradition with the depictions of it in Western textbooks. Many
studies of religious traditions in the West begin with questions of history,
prophets, leaders, and beliefs. As a Sri Vaishnava Hindu woman, I grew up
associating my tradition with culinary customs, distinctive names for
foods, performing arts, rituals, and localized pilgrimage centers. In this
chapter, we will look at rituals and situations that most Hindus will be fa-
miliar with in some manner and put them in perspective to enhance our
understanding. The four sites I have chosen are homes, weddings, temples,
and funerals.
Most Hindus are fond of the saying “Hinduism is more than a reli-
gion, it is a way of life,” whereas most introductory texts and Western un-
derstandings of the tradition have focused on the “otherworldly” issues
such as karma, reincarnation, and the idea of a Supreme Being. Hindus
will tell you that the closest word in Sanskrit for religion is dharma.
Dharma is more ambiguous and far reaching in scope than religion itself.
Coming from the root dhr, meaning to support or to sustain, it is most
popularly translated as righteousness or duty. And yet, in other contexts, it
may mean the way to salvation or liberation (moksha), ethics, and much
more.The M. Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary gives seven-
teen meanings: religion, the customary observances of a caste or sect, law
usage and practice, religious or moral merit, virtue, righteousness, duty,
justice, piety, morality, sacrifice, and so forth. From a Western understand-
ing, however, the many books on dharma containing these topics are of-
ten not considered part of religion.These topics include human behavior
(acara), justice (vyavahara), and repentance/atonement rites (prayascitta).
Other classifications are more elaborate. Pandurang Kane, the twentieth
century’s pre-eminent writer of the history of dharma, starts his second
volume on the subject with the “Topics of Dharma Shastra” (Dharma
14 her voice, her faith

Shastra: texts on dharma) and includes the duties of the classes and castes
of society and stages of life; sacraments from conception to death; the du-
ties of the different stages of life; the days when one should not study the
Vedas; marriage; the duties of women; the relationship between husband
and wife; ritual purity and impurity; rites of death and rituals for ances-
tors; gifts and donations; crime and punishment; contacts; inheritance; ac-
tivities done only at times of crises; mixed castes; and so on. Although this
list is extensive, it does not exhaust the other areas that the term dharma
covers (Kane, volume II, chapter 1, pp. 1–2).
Texts on dharma have always been only selectively followed, and local
customs have tempered the rule of the books. In some parts of India,
dharma texts such as the Manu Smriti were not well known, and certainly
large parts of them were ignored (Kishwar). Although Hindu traditions
are portrayed, and quite correctly in some instances, as being patriarchal,
the system has built-in mechanisms to allow for dynamic reinterpretation.
This wiggle room can serve to legitimatize progressive action.The Vedas,
the tradition of the epics and puranas, actions of the righteous, and finally
doing what is dear to one’s soul—that is, to act after much thought and
according to the dictates of one’s conscience—all these are the sources of
dharma (Kane volume I, part I, p. 7, 1968). The last of these allows
women, or anyone who may feel marginalized, to appropriate or redefine
rituals. Particular theologies of traditions or schools (sampradaya), which
depend on historical theologians for the interpretation of sacred texts,
may emphasize carefully argued worldviews.The succession of teachers in
each school will espouse and teach the philosophy of that tradition.Thus,
the teachers in the Sri Vaishnava community say that the universe is the
“body” of God, teachers of Advaita assert that there is only one reality, and
followers of Madhva declare that God and the soul are distinct.The theol-
ogy may be nonnegotiable, but there will be more latitude in modes of
prayer and worship, which can be redefined by women.

THE HOME FOR THE HINDU TRADITION

Many Hindu sacraments, rituals, and festivals are conducted at home, and
from some perspectives a Hindu can be very religious without ever leav-
 hinduism 15

ing the house. Spatially, there may be a special room, or at least an altar, set
apart for worship (puja). Several days in a year may be spent in the cele-
bration of major ritual festivals. Religious rituals associated with birth, pu-
berty, pregnancy, and death take place at home. It is here that a child will
first hear stories from the Hindu epics or encounter them through televi-
sion broadcasts. It is here that the most enduring associations between re-
ligion and food will be made, the first prayers learned. It is in the home
that Hindu tradition has been transmitted primarily for women.
A Hindu child’s earliest exposure to her or his religious tradition
comes from seeing daily rituals at the puja altar, with its many pictures and
images of local gods and goddesses, as well as those brought as souvenirs
on distant pilgrimages. Every day, or even twice a day, the mother may
light an oil lamp in front of this altar.The women may draw symmetrical
geometric designs with rice flour in front of the altar or in front of the
house.These patterns are also drawn outside shrines in South Indian tem-
ples. Family members may recite prayers regularly; there may be copies of
holy texts or prayer books that people may read or recite. Red powder,
known as the kumkum, may be taken from the altar and placed on one’s
forehead. Flowers and fruits may be offered to the deities on the altar and
then used by the devotee.
There are other simple acts that straddle the grey area between reli-
gion and culture. One of the first acts a child is taught when he or she is
barely a year old is to join the palms together in an act of adoration.This
act, which is common in the West only during acts of prayer, is called a
namaskara or namaste (literally, “I bow before you”) in India and used
when greeting people or when praying. There are many other such
practices that form part of this vast religious culture. Putting a mark on
your forehead as part of your daily routine indicates auspiciousness or
which Hindu community you belong to. You must eat, give, and receive
with your right hand; it is disrespectful to give with your left hand—the
right hand is used for all socially acceptable actions but the left for
cleaning the body. You should bow down in front of elders and seek
their blessings on important occasions. Elders should bless younger peo-
ple with standard phrases or wish them all happiness.The list of rituals is
long, and many of them are internalized by the time a child enters
school, but it is through these simple acts that one participates in the
larger Hindu culture.
16 her voice, her faith

DEITIES AND FESTIVALS

Hindus narrate stories about Vishnu, Shiva, or the goddesses, sing about
them, and dance their stories in many cultural performances.The perform-
ing arts are one of the main vehicles for expressing Hindu religious culture.
In the diaspora, learning classical dance like Bharata Natyam becomes one
of the main ways in which the child learns about Hindu culture.
Birthdays for the gods Krishna and Rama and stories associated with
their lives are most popular all over India. Hindus consider Rama and
Krishna to be incarnations of the Lord Vishnu, one of the most important
deities in India.Vishnu (the one who pervades) is mentioned in the earli-
est literature, the Vedas (ca. 1750 B.C.E.), but became popular at a later
time. Many of the gods spoken about in the early Vedic hymns have now
been forgotten. By the beginning of the Common Era,Vishnu was con-
sidered to have incarnated to earth several times. In the popular versions
of these narratives, he is said to have come down nine times and is pre-
dicted to come again one more time at the end of this cycle of time.
Vishnu’s first incarnation in this series is said to be as a fish. In a story
reminiscent of many flood narratives,Vishnu wanted to save Manu, a pi-
ous man, his family, and seven rishis (holy men) from a catastrophic flood.
Manu gets all of them and the seeds of all animals into a boat, harnesses it
to the divine fish, the form that Vishnu has taken, and rides out the flood
(O’Flaherty, pp. 181–84).
Some of the most popular stories a child will hear, the songs she will
learn, or the dances she will see will be connected with Rama and
Krishna.The story of Rama is told in the Ramayana (The Way of Rama),
a Sanskrit epic from the fifth century B.C.E. and an integral part of Hindu
culture. Rama is married to Sita, a beautiful princess, popularly considered
the incarnation of the Goddess Lakshmi. Because Lakshmi and Vishnu are
inseparable, she incarnates every time Vishnu comes down to earth. Rama
is exiled because of a family intrigue; Sita and Lakshmana, Rama’s brother,
accompany him to the forest. Here, Ravana, a king of Lanka, lusting after
Sita, kidnaps her. After an epic battle, in which Rama is helped by Hanu-
man (a wise, divine monkey who is also a popular Hindu deity), Ravana is
killed and Sita returns to Rama. Rama and Sita then return home to Ayo-
dhya and are coronated. Rama’s rule of the kingdom is held to be paradig-
 hinduism 17

matic, as are his filial piety, the loyalty of Sita, and the devotion and service
of Hanuman.
Krishna is considered the eighth or ninth incarnation of Vishnu, de-
pending on which text you read, and is beloved in India and in many parts
of the world, where members of the International Society of Krishna
Consciousness (ISKCON, more popularly known as the Hare Krishnas)
and other Hindus live. Children are told about Krishna’s divine birth, his
magical childhood, his mother’s and foster mother’s love for him, his mis-
chievous pranks, his dancing the autumnal moonlit nights away with the
young cowherd girls he grew up with, and his philosophical counsel to his
cousin and peer, Arjuna, on the battlefield. The enchanting evenings of
dance are emulated in autumn in some communities in India. The battle
to destroy the forces of evil is celebrated annually. One such festival is
Deepavali (Diwali), the festival of lights, celebrated with great enthusiasm
by Hindus all over the world.
Deepavali and Navaratri are two of the best-known home celebra-
tions. Deepavali (literally necklace of lamps) is celebrated on the eve of the
new moon that falls between mid-October and mid-November.Although
most Hindus observe it, the reasons for celebration differ among the vari-
ous regions. Hindus from some parts of northern India believe that Lord
Rama returned to Ayodhya after his victorious battle with the evil Ravana
that day and that the kingdom lit lamps all over to mark the celebrations.
In other parts of India, it is believed that Lord Krishna fought a long bat-
tle with Narakasura (demon of hell) and won the battle on the dawn of
this new-moon day. To commemorate this victory of good over evil, Hin-
dus in every home let off fireworks, mimicking the noise of Krishna’s war
against evil, and light lamps to celebrate the victory of light over the forces
of darkness. Special sweets and candies are made at home; new clothes are
bought and worn. In some parts of South India, Hindus believe that the
sacred river Ganga is spiritually present in all water. Early on the morning
of Deepavali, even before dawn, people take a special ritual bath using oil
and fragrant herbs, and some communities greet each other with the
rhetorical question: “Have you bathed in the waters of the Ganga?”
Bathing in this river is said to purify a human being, and one begins this
day with this physical and mental purity. Hindus from Gujarat celebrate
their new year at this time (most others celebrate it in March or April).
18 her voice, her faith

Hindus from Punjab spend the nights in ritual gambling and invite Lak-
shmi, the goddess of good fortune, to their houses. In most parts of India,
gifts of dried fruits and sweets are given to friends and cash bonuses are
given to employees. In some states like Bengal and Kerala, the festival is
the most important of the year.
In general, in most parts of India, goddesses are worshipped during
Navaratri. The celebrations in Calcutta are communal and in honor of
the Goddess Durga. Many Hindus who are devotees of her think that
she is the manifestation of the Supreme Being. Like other rituals that are
celebrated to mark particular stories, here too there is one that speaks
about the victory of good over evil. The buffalo-demon Mahisha was
terrorizing human beings, and none of the gods could subdue him.The
energies of Brahma,Vishnu, and Shiva—the three male gods important
in many of the Sanskrit texts—combined, and out of this power
emerged Durga (unapproachable), the mighty Goddess. Beautiful and
strong, she came striding on a lion.The demon tried to woo and marry
her; she rejected him with contempt and after a battle lasting nine nights
and ten days, she emerged victorious. This victory is celebrated on the
last day of the festival, the Vijaya Dashami (the victorious tenth day). In
Calcutta, it has become a practice for each part of the city to make a gi-
ant effigy of the goddess, usually set against a modern contextual back-
ground. For the days of the Durga Puja (worship of Durga), this effigy is
thought to possess divine energy, and at the end of it, all the effigies are
taken to the river Ganga and ritually immersed. There, her energies re-
turn to the universe.
In parts of South India, Sarasvati, Lakshmi, and Durga are all wor-
shipped during the nine days. In the South Indian states of Tamilnadu,
Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh, the festival is very much a home celebra-
tion, and very much a women’s celebration. Here, in some castes and
some communities, women put up temporary altars in the largest room in
the house. Several steps, usually seven or nine, of altars are set up in each
house, covered with cloth to resemble gallery seats and adorned with
beautiful dolls. Traditional clay dolls of deities intermingle with secular
dolls. Once set up, the whole area becomes sacred. This display of dolls,
the kolu (royal court), is said to be the divine court of the deities. Toy
trains, mini-waterfalls, parks, tiny gardens are all created as works of art, all
 hinduism 19

in the main room of the house. For the next nine days, this functions es-
sentially as the family altar. Food offerings are made to the deities, and
prayers said. Once the display is set up, the line between secular and sacred
dolls is obliterated, and the whole area is sacred.Viewed from the locus of
devotion, any space, any object can be seen as diffused with or as a con-
tainer for the divine. And yet others consider these displays to have peda-
gogical or entertainment value; displays teach, instruct, offer pleasure and
joy. Women go from house to house in the evenings to visit and admire
the doll displays. Singers trained in classical music sing songs, in honor of
the goddess.Through sight and sound, the goddess is glorified and praised.
The creative energies of the goddess are venerated in Gujarat, where
she is celebrated in her non-iconic form, that of a flame that shines bright
through a clay pot that has ornamental orifices. This is the garbha, or
womb, and women sing joyous songs and dance around it all evening and
night.Women do this dance every night of the Navaratri and during any
auspicious ritual at home and in the community. The garbha is followed
by the ras lila, a circular dance with sticks, performed by men and women.
Whereas the garbha glorifies the goddess, the ras, which has been popular
in the last few centuries, re-creates the magical atmosphere of the fall
nights when Krishna danced with the cowherd girls. Both these dances
are traditionally domestic in nature but over the years have become mega-
events in local communities.
Durga and many other goddesses are worshipped all over India.
Though the names and nature of the goddesses may have changed, some
of these practices have likely survived for more than four millennia. The
goddess and a buffalo figure (the antecedent of Mahisha) first appear in
the Indus Valley Civilization, also known as the Harappa Culture, around
3000 B.C.E.The earliest archaeological evidence of Indian culture is found
along the banks of the river Indus (which in Sanskrit is sindhu, the word
from which both Hindu and India derive). The Indus Valley Civilization
was contemporary with Mesopotamia and probably traded with it. Al-
though the script of this civilization has not been deciphered to every-
one’s satisfaction, seals found in this area indicate that there was goddess
worship and veneration of a deity who is later identified as Shiva.The In-
dus Valley Civilization died out around 1750 B.C.E., and it was at about
this time that the Vedas, the earliest scriptures of the Hindu tradition, were
20 her voice, her faith

composed.The worship of the goddess, therefore, likely had its origins in

the earliest cultures of India.

PERFORMING ARTS

Over the millennia, educated Hindus have recognized four Vedas as au-
thoritative.The Vedas were composed between 1750 to the sixth century
B.C.E. and then transmitted orally over the generations. In the philosophi-
cal and ceremonial traditions in India, there has been a continuous tradi-
tion of using some sections of the Vedas as sources of authority and
reciting some hymns daily for over three millennia. Music and dance are
supposed to be derived from the ancient text Natya Shastra (Treatise on
Dance) composed by Bharata Muni, at the beginning of the Common
Era, and many consider it the Fifth Veda, a scripture that, when followed,
will lead one to the supreme goal of salvation or liberation.
Most Hindus, however, have not generally been familiar with large
tracts of the Vedas and many of the archaic deities mentioned in them.
And so, over the centuries, a few other seminal texts have been considered
to be the Fifth Veda. The epic Mahabharata (ca. 500 B.C.E. to 400 C.E.),
which along with the Ramayana, recounts one of the most beloved narra-
tives of the Hindus, and the Natya Shastra have been counted as the Fifth
Veda by Hindus at various times.
Worship in the Hindu tradition includes music from the time of the
Vedas. The mystical syllable om is considered the beginning of sound in
the universe and a manifestation of the Supreme Being. Knowledge of the
proper nature of sound and its expressions are therefore considered to be
religious knowledge. The Vedas specify the different kinds of pitch and
tone by which the verses are to be recited.
Classical music in South India has been for the most part religious in
nature. Treatises on music speak of a divine line of teachers, beginning
with Shiva and Parvati, and also mention worship of Sarasvati as the pa-
tron goddess of the fine arts. Some Hindu texts say that Vishnu and Sri are
manifested as Nada Brahman or the Supreme Being in the form of sound.
Sound, if properly controlled and articulated, can lead one to a mystical
 hinduism 21

experience, and the sound of the music is considered as important as the

lyrics. Nadopasana, meditation through sound, has become popular as one
form of religious practice.The Supreme Being is supposed to manifest di-
vinity on earth in the form of sound, just as an icon is a visual representa-
tion of the divine.
Singing and dancing can function in various ways to take one closer to
a higher state of consciousness or even to communion with the deity.
Some may understand the lyrics or the emotions conveyed in religious
dances as giving rise to devotion in the audience; others may think of the
“flavors” of emotions as heightening their consciousness; still others may
think of just the pure movement and the music, even when devoid of any
lyrics or emotions, as being divine. Dancers frequently depict stories from
the Ramayana and the Mahabharata as well as the beloved narratives from
later scriptures called the Puranas. The many Puranas (Purana means “an-
cient lore”) were composed primarily in the first millennium of the Com-
mon Era.These books extol deities who had become very popular by then,
including Vishnu, Shiva, and Devi, especially in her form as Durga.

THE LUNAR CALENDAR, FOOD,

FEASTING, AND FASTING

Many of the festivals celebrated at home occur on dates calculated accord-

ing to the phases of the moon. Hindu calendars are lunar but adjusted to
the solar year, so, like Easter or Yom Kippur, they come at the same time of
the year, though not on the same dates. Navaratri, in fact, coincides with
the nine holy days starting with Rosh Hashanah of the Jewish calendar in
most years, though occasionally they may occur one lunar cycle later.
Apart from festivals, every lunar cycle is marked with days of fasting and
feasting at home. On the eleventh day after the new moon (ekadashi),
many people, especially the followers of the god Vishnu, stay away from
grains. Fasts, like many rituals, come in various forms: some involve absti-
nence from all food and water or from grain only or certain vegetables
like eggplant, which are considered to be filled with seeds, and therefore,
potential life forms; or all sour foods. Other kinds of ritual fasts permit the
22 her voice, her faith

eating of only fruits.Women in many parts of India observe special days of

fasting and feasting in connection with votive rituals called vratas.
These rituals, which involve a day or more of strict fasting, are done in
honor of specific goddesses and for various purposes (Pintchman).Women
from Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, dressed in their wedding finery, observe
the Karva Chauth fast, which usually comes soon after Navaratri.They fast
from dawn to dusk and break their fast after seeing the rising moon.This
fast is undertaken on the fourth day of the waning lunar cycle between
October and November and is done to pray for and preserve conjugal
happiness. Other fasts are done for the welfare of the family.There are reg-
ular fasts like Ekadashi, which men and women observe, and special ritual
fasts that only women observe. Although some of these ritual fasts occur
in a patriarchal context (prayers for the husband or son), some scholars see
even these as empowering to women (Pintchman, McGee, Pearson).
Food is central to the practice of the Hindu tradition; next to wed-
dings, food commands the most space and energy of the writers of the
texts on dharma. In practice, specific lentils and vegetables have to be pre-
pared for specific occasions. In Tamilnadu, for instance, these are prepared
for happy (auspicious) occasions and others for inauspicious events and
rituals such as those connected with death. Contrary to popular percep-
tion, most Hindus are not vegetarian, but certain castes and communities
may avoid fish, fowl, or meat. Onions, garlic, and mushrooms are not con-
sidered to be part of a pure diet by many followers of Vishnu; early texts
on dharma have a blanket decree against these foods. Right eating is not
just what you can eat or avoid; in the texts on dharma as well as in ortho-
prax houses, it involves issues such as the caste and gender of the cook
(preferably male and high caste, or the lady of the house, except at times
when she is menstruating); the times you may eat (twice a day, not during
twilight times, not during eclipses, and a wide variety of other instances);
not eating food cooked the day before; and so on. In earlier times other di-
rectives were also in vogue; in detail, some of these equaled or even sur-
passed those given in many Confucian texts.The order of food courses in a
meal, the direction in which the diner must sit (preferably facing east or
north), how much you may eat (the number of morsels depending on
the stage of life), the materials with which the eating vessels should be
 hinduism 23

made, what is to be done with left-over food—were all topics for discus-
sion. Many such directives, and some that were common to the local re-
gion, were followed for centuries.
There were several strict rules concerning with whom you may dine
(and the ideal is to dine alone!). Silence was recommended for the time of
dining except to inquire after a guest’s needs. Most texts say—and this was
followed till probably the mid-twentieth century—that one may dine only
with people of the same caste and with people one knows. It was believed
in many circles that one shares the sins of the people one dines with, espe-
cially if one sits in a single row with them. Even up to the time of India’s
independence, college food services in South India were divided along
simplified caste lines—with dining halls for brahmins only, and separate
ones for non-brahmin (vegetarian) and non-brahmin (non-vegetarian).
The greatest amount of discourse involved forbidden foods, which
varied through the different time periods and among authors. It is gener-
ally agreed that most people ate meat, even beef, possibly up to the begin-
ning of the Common Era. It is a matter of some controversy whether
Indians ate beef during the time of the Vedas and whether the cow was a
protected animal then, but it seems to be fairly well accepted that most
Indians ate other kinds of meat and fowl. Several writers have noted that it
is remarkable that a whole culture seems to have slowly given up meat
eating or at least that meat eating ceased to be the norm after the first
centuries of the Common Era. In popular understanding and by fitting a
template from philosophical discourses on what we eat, food, like people
and even deities, is said to tend toward three characteristics: purity (sattva),
energy and passion (rajas), sloth and stupor (tamas). Although this is not
clearly discussed in the early texts on dharma, most Hindus have tried to
fit in food regulations with these categories.
The home is also the location of many domestic sacraments.The birth
of a child is celebrated as an auspicious event, but the mother and the
family are said to be in a state of “ritual pollution.” Death is inauspicious
and also ritually polluting to the family. Other rituals, such as those associ-
ated with pregnancy, are celebrated with joy at home. Among domestic
sacraments, the wedding is treated at great length by the writers of
dharma and is celebrated with considerable sanctity and social pomp.
24 her voice, her faith

THE HINDU WEDDING

Weekend newspapers in India have supplements devoted to matrimonial

advertisements, which resemble, to some extent, the personal ads in the
United States.The worldwide web has also gotten into the act, with sites
for ads. Most ads are placed by the bride or bridegroom’s parents and
mention the potential bride or groom’s physical attributes, education, oc-
cupation, horoscope, community, sub-caste, clan, and language. Let us ex-
amine two such ads, from the June 20, 2000, on-line edition of a
newspaper.

# 1 ALLIANCE INVITED for B.Tech. (Mech), MS (Engg. Me-

chanics), Project Engineer, Detroit, USA, H1-Visa Holder, Tamil
Iyer, Parasara, Brahacharanam, Sadhayam, Suddha Jadhagam, 28/177,
from Iyer girls, professionally qualified, articulate and good looking.
Boy visiting India August 2000. Respond with horoscope, bio-data,
family details. Box No. xxxx, Hyderabad- 500016.
# 2 VADAGALAI ATHREYAM Poosam, 32/ 170/ 15,000, B.Com,
owns business/house in Chennai with Mars (Eighth place) seeks
suitable unemployed graduate girl from same sect only. Reply with
horoscope, details to Box No. Chennai–600002.

The diligent South Indian reader will immediately recognize that the
advertisers are looking for brides of the brahmin caste.The key words here
are Iyer in the first ad and Vadagalai in the second. Iyer is a term used for
brahmins from the Tamil-speaking area—specifically followers of the the-
ologian Shankara (eighth to ninth centuries C.E).Vadagalai indicates that
the family is Tamil-speaking brahmin and belongs to a community (sam-
pradaya) that follows the theologian Ramanuja (eleventh century).
The caste system has been one of the main features of religion in
South Asia. Caste is used as shorthand for thousands of stratified social
communities that have developed over the centuries. The beginnings of
the caste system can be seen in the Hymn to the Supreme Being that is
part of the Rig Veda, one of the four Vedas (Purusa Sukta v. 12—Rig Veda
10.90).The Hymn enumerates the priestly, ruling, mercantile, and servant
classes—the four varnas (literally, colors):
 hinduism 25

From his mouth came the priestly class,

from his arms, the rulers.
The producers came from his legs;
from his feet came the servant class.

Although the origins of the caste system can be seen in these verses
from the Rig Veda, it is probable that, long before their composition, a
stratification of society had already taken place. From the simple fourfold
structure eventually arose a plethora of endogamous social and occupa-
tional divisions, so that today in India, there are more than 1,000 jatis
(birth groups).The English word “caste” comes from the Portuguese, who
used “casta” to refer to the various sections of Hindu society.The modern
word signifies both the four broad varnas and the minutely divided jatis,
although Western scholars sometimes translate varna as class and jati as
caste.
By the first centuries of the Common Era, many treatises on the na-
ture of righteousness, moral duty, and law had been written. These were
the Dharma Shastras, and they form the basis for later Hindu laws. The
most famous of these, the Manava Dharma Shastra, or the Laws of Manu,
probably codified around the first century C.E., reflect the social norms of
the time.We see the caste system firmly in place.Women had slipped to an
inferior position from the relatively high status they had had in the Vedas.
When reading Manu, we must understand that the prescriptive behav-
ior he records for the various castes was seldom followed strictly (Kish-
war). In a similar vein, we have to take his pronouncements on women
with a grain of salt.
According to texts on dharma, only the brahmins—the priestly class
of society—had the authority to teach and learn the Vedas. The term
“priestly,” by the way, is used loosely here; not all members of this com-
munity were priests. Frequently, they were in the business of teaching and
counseling; some specialized in domestic rituals; a few conducted temple
services. Even when not engaged in religious pursuits, they held the
power and prestige generally associated with spiritual learning. The mo-
nopoly that the brahmins exercised in teaching the Vedas orally was jeal-
ously guarded, and for centuries these hymns were not written down.The
second caste in the traditional list is the rajanya or royal class. Kings and
26 her voice, her faith

rulers emerged from this group. Eventually the term rajanya was replaced
with the better-known word kshatriya. The men from this community
were allowed to learn but not teach the Vedas.Their dharma was to pro-
tect the people and the country.The kshatriyas generally traced their an-
cestry either to the lineage of the sun (surya vamsha or solar dynasty) or
the moon (chandra vamsha or lunar dynasty), both going back to the
primeval progenitors of humanity—a classic instance of a ruling class
seeking legitimacy by invoking divine antecedents. Even usurpers of
thrones began to trace their ancestries in this way. In the Hindu tradition,
both then and now, lines of claimed biological descent are all-important.
The kshatriya families held the power of rulership and governance, and
rituals of later Hinduism explicitly emphasized their connection with di-
vine beings.
The mercantile class (vaishyas) was to be in charge of most commer-
cial transactions. According to the codes of law, they, like the ruling class,
had the authority to study but not teach the Vedas.They were to rear cat-
tle, trade, and deal with agricultural work.The power of wealth and eco-
nomic decisions lay with this community.
The last class mentioned formally by Manu and in the other texts on
dharma is the shudras, generally translated as “servants.” The Dharma
Shastras say that the duty of a shudra is to serve the other classes, especially
the brahmins. Shudras who desire to obtain good karma are advised to
know their duty, to commit no sin, and to imitate the practice of virtuous
men without reciting sacred texts. The shudra was not allowed to accu-
mulate wealth.There was no area of power that the shudra could tap into;
a shudra could be respected because of his or her old age and for no other
reason. It is also important to note that the caste system is far more com-
plex and flexible than the descriptions in the dharma texts—for example,
a caste of wealthy landowners, the Vellalas, though technically a shudra
caste, has wielded considerable economic and political power in the south.
There are hundreds of castes now in India and similarly, hundreds of
communities. For instance, although the people in the first two ads are
both from the brahmin caste, and both Tamil-speaking, they come from
different social communities that follow different theological traditions
and will not generally intermarry. The two communities follow two dif-
ferent theologians, Shankara and Ramanuja. The followers of Ramanuja
worship Vishnu and Lakshmi (also known as Sri) and are called the Sri
 hinduism 27

Vaishnavas. Sri Vaishnava is the name of the community or theological tra-

dition; members of it may be of different castes, and in the case of the ad-
vertisement above, happen to be brahmin. These brahmin Sri Vaishnavas
are further subdivided along sectarian lines. The beginnings of this split
came about through differing emphases in theological interpretations in
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and again crystallized as different
social groups (Vadagalai or northern sect and Tenkalai or southern sect).
For some centuries, there was no intermarrying between these subgroups
of the Sri Vaishnava community; only recently have intermarriages oc-
curred.The person who has placed the advertisement is, however, conser-
vative; having identified himself as a Vadagalai, he has invited correspondence
only from the same sect.
Sometimes caste and community may conflate or community may be
emphasized more than caste.Thus, communities like Vellala, Reddy, Kallar,
or Nadar emphasize those names, and one may not be sure if these are
castes or communities. Some of these caste/communities cross religious
lines; in many parts of Gujarat and Rajasthan, one finds common castes
between the mercantile communities of the Hindu and Jain traditions.
Similarly, in South India, the Nadar and Vellala castes/communities are
found among Hindus and Christians.The following advertisement in the
same list as the earlier two is an example:

#3 C.S.I. NADAR, B.E. (Civil), 22/160 cms, very fair, beautiful,

daughter of Senior Engineer seeks Doctors/ Engineers. Box xxxx

Here, CSI stands for Church of South India, an umbrella group that
contains many Protestant denominations, and Nadar refers to the specific
caste to which the potential bride (who is identified as having an under-
graduate civil engineering degree, B.E.) belongs. Caste, therefore, is a
strong institution among many religions of South Asia, including Hindus,
Jains, and Christians.
There are groups that are technically “out” of this caste structure—
people who, over the centuries, have been called outcastes or untouch-
ables.The Sanskrit name for these many groups was panchama or “fifth
[group],” the group outside the fourfold caste system. At various times,
reformers have tried to integrate people from these groups into society.
Ramanuja (c. 1017–1137), for instance, is said to have called them
28 her voice, her faith

Tirukulattar (sacred clan) and Mahatma Gandhi named them Harijan

(Children of God). Since independence, the name “scheduled caste” (SC)
has been the administrative and social category. Harijan is seen as patron-
izing and has been shaken off in favor of the term Dalit (protestor).These
groups were, in the past centuries, discriminated against by other castes
and frequently lived outside the villages. People from many such groups
converted to Christianity, but the caste followed them; today there are SC
Hindus and SC Christians. Government quotas in education and job op-
portunities have helped alleviate past inequities. In the following adver-
tisement, again from the same crop of matrimonials, the potential
bridegroom says he is SC:

#4 HINDU SC, AD, DGO, Doctor, 27/ 163, Employed- Private

Hospital, Chennai, expects alliance as Doctor/Engineer/Govt. Exec-
utives. Send horoscope: Box xxx Chennai–600002.

The code AD stands for Adi Dravida, an umbrella term for people be-
lieved to have descended from the indigenous inhabitants of India.These
“outcastes” are seen both as people who did not belong to the caste sys-
tem, and also as those who did not belong to the four large (theoretical)
divisions of the society. In the past, they had to perform the least desirable
tasks in a village, tasks that were considered ritually polluting. In ancient
Tamil society, for instance, those who beat the large village drums (parai)
were considered to be polluted because the drums were made by stretch-
ing animal hides over large frames. The drummers (paraia) were consid-
ered to be outcastes; from them comes the English word pariah.
There is one final social classification that we need to take into ac-
count before we move to other issues that make up a Hindu’s identity.
This is a relatively minor one, but which, like much else in the Hindu tra-
dition, goes back to the Vedic period and pertains to weddings, especially
in the so-called higher castes. This is the notion of gotra. Gotra literally
means cow-shed or cow-pen and is said to refer to a physical and spiritual
joint family of followers of holy men (rishis or seers) who intuitively per-
ceived the Vedas and transmitted them.There were seven such traditional
rishis, and eventually an eighth one was added. Many high-caste people
consider themselves to be part of these lineages and use the gotra name in
all their sacraments and rituals to identify themselves. Gotra names have
 hinduism 29

been transmitted through male descendants. Women have the gotras of

their fathers and then their husbands. Marriages within the same gotra are
forbidden by Hindu law. Originally a brahmin institution, gotras became
part of the higher castes’ identity for many centuries, but today in many
parts of India, the concept is confined once again to brahmin communi-
ties. In some matrilineal communities such as the Bhants of Mangalore,
gotras are not followed. In the first matrimonial advertisements above, the
bridegroom is of the Parashara gotra, and in the second, the advertiser be-
longs to the Atreya gotra.Thus, only women belonging to non-Parashara
gotra can apply to the first and non-Atreya gotra to the second.

Horoscope and Astrology

Jyotisha the (knowledge of the stars) was a form of astronomy-astrology to
do with determining auspicious and inauspicious times, casting of horo-
scopes, and so forth. In ancient India, it was considered a distinct branch
of knowledge ancillary to the study of the Vedas (vedanga). It is very much
connected with the practice of the Hindu tradition. In many families,
even now, a detailed horoscope is cast soon after a child’s birth; in some
castes and communities, this may be used in later years to be “matched”
with a potential matrimonial mate. In some communities, the time and
date of a child’s birth is cross-referenced with the almanac, and the child’s
name may be chosen to have a numerical value or start with a syllable
harmonious with this moment of birth.The movement of the planets and
stars are studied in detail, and when a person experiences, say, a series of
setbacks in her career, or is not able to find a right partner in life, an as-
trologer may be consulted. The astrologer will tell you that either Saturn
(Sani) or Mars (Sanskrit: Mangala; Tamil: Chevvai) is positioned where it
shouldn’t be and then recommend a series of remedies to alleviate the
problem. Many South Indian temples, following a custom that began to
be popular toward the end of the first millennium C.E., have an altar with
the personification of the Nine Planets (Nava Graha). Devotees propitiate
these nine planets regularly in an effort to ward off evil influences and
maximize good vibrations. The nine are not completely congruent with
Western lists of planets; the Indian list excludes the Earth, and includes the
30 her voice, her faith

sun, the moon, Venus, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and two “planets”
called Rahu and Ketu, identified as the ascending and descending nodes
of the moon.
In orthoprax households, horoscopes of the potential bride and bride-
groom are matched before they even meet.This is said to ensure compat-
ibility of personalities and to balance out good times and bad in the
course of the married life. The first such compatibility match is with the
star that a person is born under.This is determined by where the moon is
at the time of one’s birth. Twenty-seven constellations are recognized as
birth stars. If we look at the first two advertisements, the names Sadhayam
and Poosam (referring to stars in the Aquarius and Cancer signs) denote
the birth constellations. After negotiating the obstacle course of caste,
community, subsect, and gotra, one then comes to the issue of compatibil-
ity of stars. By a quick reckoning, one can figure out if the stars of the po-
tential mates are compatible. If everything fits, then one takes it a step
further to see if the horoscopes match in detail. Mars is the big offender in
many of these wedding matters, and so in the first two advertisements, we
see a shorthand reference to the principal feature of the person’s horo-
scope. “Shuddha jadagam” (clean horoscope) in the first advertisement
and “Mars in the eighth house” in the second immediately alert the
bride’s family as to what kind of horoscope is needed to balance the
bridegroom’s birth chart.
With all that we have learned in the last few pages, let us deconstruct
one of the two ads again.The words in brackets describe the information
in the categories we have discussed.

# 2 VADAGALAI [This word is shorthand for three categories; the

term indicates it is a subsect of the Sri Vaishnava community and that
the person is a brahmin caste.] ATHREYAM [gotra] Poosam [birth
star] 32/ 170/ 15,000 [personal details: bridegroom is 32 years old, is
170 centimeters tall, and earns 15,000 rupees a month], B.Com,
owns business/house in Chennai [continuation of personal details:
college degree, occupation, wealthy enough to own house] with
Mars (Eighth place) [horoscope detail saying that Mars is hanging
around a tricky house in the horoscope] seeks suitable unemployed
graduate girl from same sect only. [The bride should be the same
 hinduism 31

subsect; i.e.,Vadagalai, Sri Vaishnava community, brahmin caste] Re-

ply with horoscope, details to Box No. Chennai–600002.

Once all the criteria are met, the young man and woman may meet
under carefully chaperoned circumstances. If they like each other (either
party can opt out easily at this stage) and decide to get married, the families
proceed with the preparations for the ceremony.The number of rituals and
the time frame involved in conducting weddings depend on the class, caste,
community traditions, and economic factors. In the early twentieth cen-
tury, rituals in brahmin weddings in South India lasted five days. In the
early twenty-first, most of them last from a few hours to half a day, and in
many urban families, a Western-style reception is added to the festivities.

The Wedding
In the Hindu tradition, the wedding ritual is a sacrament. The texts on
dharma describe sacraments, starting with pregnancy rituals to death rituals.
Many of them begin discussions on sacraments with the wedding.The San-
skrit word for sacrament is samskara, which means “to make perfect.”A wed-
ding is a kalyana, which means “happiness, good fortune, auspiciousness ”; it
is also known as vivaha (to lead home); in Tamil, it is known as manam,
which means (union between two lovers). Although love is not generally a
criterion in the choosing of a mate (as we saw in the matrimonial ads),
many ancient texts speak about its beauty. Love was considered to be very
important in ancient Tamil literature; in one poem, a young girl says:

Bigger than earth, certainly

higher than the sky,
more unfathomable than the waters
is my love for this man . . .
Kuruntokai 3 (circa first–second century C.E.), in Ramanujan

The auspicious marriage is a way to fulfill obligations to society. The

texts on dharma, which hold an upper-caste male as the norm, say that a
32 her voice, her faith

man has an obligation in life to marry, raise children, and fulfill his debts
to his community. According to these texts, a man is born with debts to
the sages, the gods, and the ancestors.A wife helps repay these debts.With
the performance of correct domestic and social rituals with—and only
with—his wife, a man pays his debt to the gods; by having children, the
debt to the ancestors is discharged. A wife is a man’s partner in fulfilling
dharma, and without her a man cannot fully perform his religious obliga-
tions.A woman and her husband are partners in fulfilling religious obliga-
tions, partners in the acquisition of wealth and fortune, partners in the
enjoyment of sensual pleasures. Thus, through a marriage a man and a
woman become companions in the pursuit of spiritual and material goals.
Within the Hindu tradition, a man can only perform religious rituals if his
wife is by his side.
Although the sacred texts mention dozens of wedding rituals (starting
with the engagement/betrothal rites) and many more local and family
customs have been added to these, only a few are absolutely crucial. Al-
though some of the rituals performed today are common to most Hindus,
a few are unique to individual communities. Let us look at the specific ex-
ample of the Sri Vaishnava community of South India.

Pre-Wedding Rituals
Although the attendant rituals differ in many parts of India, most Hindus
begin the wedding ceremony with a prayer, usually to Ganesha, for a
smooth conduct of the ritual. In Sri Vaishnava weddings, however,Vish-
vaksena, the commander in chief of Lord Vishnu, is worshipped; offerings
of incense, sandalwood, and flowers are made to ensure the success of the
ceremony.
Before the start of rituals at home or in temples, participants recite
important mantras for the evocation of purity. This ritual of purification
(punyaha vachanam) is done to protect the primary participants in the rit-
uals and for peace. The wedding rituals begin with a Vedic ritual called
Aupasana Homa, the kindling of the household fire and the preparation
for the daily domestic worship. This fire sacrifice is done during the
householder stage of life. Fire (Agni) is important to the Hindu home.
 hinduism 33

Agni is therefore recipient of sacrificial offerings and the witness to all do-
mestic rites and ceremonies.The priest invokes the presence of God, who
is manifested in the Divine Light of Fire. He consecrates the fire with
hymns, surrounds it with darbha grass (sacred grass), and chants. The
bride’s father makes offerings to Agni.
All significant Hindu sacraments take place near a sacred fire (agni:
cognate with the English ignite). Its importance goes back to the time of
the Vedas, more than 3,500 years ago. Early Vedic rituals were done around
an altar of fire.The sacred fire is lit during those milestones of growth and
aging—aging that begins in the prenatal state. Fire is the eternal witness to
life and to the major sacraments of life. The fires are lit when a man is
sixty years old, and again when he is eighty years old. In many parts of
South India now, women also celebrate these birthdays with all the atten-
dant homas or sacrifices.

Wedding Rituals
At the beginning of most Hindu rituals, the officiating priest and those
performing the ritual formally declare the coordinates of the land and the
time in which the rite takes place.These words are part of the sankalpa, or
the declaration of intention to do the ritual. Such coordinates are in cos-
mic frameworks.The land is identified with one of the dvipas or islands in
puranic cosmology, and the time span is given as a moment that occurs in
a span of millions of years.
The celebrant first announces the name of the kalpa (a span of 4.32
billion human years, which is equal to one day in the life of the creator god
Brahma) and then fine-tunes it to a shorter time period called the mana-
vantara, a span of approximately 306,720,000 human years, named after the
primeval man,Vaivasvata. The celebrant then notes that this is first part of
the kali yuga (this immediate cycle of 432,000 years).The name of the year
is mentioned (Hindu calendars go in sixty-year cycles and each year has a
name), followed by a Sanskrit term to indicate whether the sun is in the
northern or southern hemisphere—followed in turn by the zodiac sign,
the season, the month, the phase of the moon, the week, and the particular
stellar constellation where the moon is that day. Finally, the celebrant says
34 her voice, her faith

that this day is an auspicious one, one fit for weddings.Thus, cosmic time,
calendrical time, and auspicious times are all noted in the declaration of in-
tention to complete the rituals with divine blessings.
The order of the rituals varies in different parts of India, but many
rites are widely performed. In earlier days, the bride and bridegroom
would be brought in by their maternal uncles.The couple now exchange
garlands of fragrant flowers as a symbol of their sharing the fragrance of
life. In epic narratives of svayamvara (the choosing of a bridegroom by the
bride), the garlanding of a young man by a woman showed that she had
chosen him as her husband. In the Sri Vaishnava tradition, the woman
poet-saint Andal (eighth century C.E.) is said to have worn garlands and
offered them to Lord Vishnu with love. The sharing of the garlands is a
symbol of the intimacy to come as well as a symbol of the victorious gar-
land worn by fortunate bridegrooms.
The bride and bridegroom sit on a decorated swing. As the swing
gently sways, women sing melodious songs recalling the auspicious wed-
dings of Sita, Gowri (Parvati), and other goddesses. In South India, this rit-
ual ends with women circling the young couple with lighted lamps.They
pour a thin thread of water as a protective boundary, to keep away evil in-
fluences.The women wave little balls of rice and throw them in different
directions to ward off the evil eye and shield the couple from harm that
may come from any direction. Following this, the bride and bridegroom
tie amulets on their wrists, again for protection.
Many of the mantras recited during the wedding ritual are from the
Rig Veda and have been used in Hindu weddings for over three thousand
years. The bridegroom prays to the Vedic gods Varuna, Brihaspati, Indra,
and Surya to remove all defects from the bride. Hindus do not worship
these Vedic gods today, but many may believe that the God they worship
manifests as these deities. In the Vedic mantra that is recited now, the
bridegroom asks for a long marriage filled with love and children and tells
the bride:

May you never throw a fierce glance at [me] during your married
life; do not be hostile to [me]. Let us not pull our oars in different di-
rections. Be compassionate to animals; cheerful in your tasks as the
mistress of the house; the mother of brave [children], blessed with
 hinduism 35

long life; the source of happiness in the house. May you bring pros-
perity to our livestock!
O Lord! make [my bride] blessed with children and fortune.
Giver her ten sons and may her husband become her eleventh one!
My bride! may you be as a queen [samrajni] to your father-in-
law, a queen to your mother-in-law, a queen to your sister- and
brother-in-law!
May all the guests present here unite our hearts! May we be calm
and united! May we be peaceful and unite together like the rivers
mingling [in the ocean and losing their separate identities]. May we
be like breaths united with the body. May we be united like the Lord
and his creation. May we be united like the teacher and his disciple.
May we love each other and be loyal to each other through our lives!
(Rig Veda 10.85.44–47)

The bridegroom then wipes the eyebrows of the bride with a piece of
darbha grass, symbolically wiping away all defects, saying “I cast away all
inauspicious influences [alakshmi] which may harm my life.”
The bride’s parents prepare to give her away. The bride’s father asks
the bridegroom to sit facing east, the auspicious direction of the rising sun
and rising fortunes. He washes the bridegroom’s feet and offers him a
mixture of sweet substances to eat (madhu parka). During the kanya dana,
or the “gifting of the young girl,” the father of the bride sits down and
gives her away to the bridegroom reciting words from the Ramayana. In
this epic, the words were spoken by Janaka, the father who gives away his
daughter Sita in marriage to Rama:

This is Sita, my daughter; she will be your partner and companion in

all religious obligations, your companion in faith. Take her and be
blessed.Take her right hand in yours; she will be faithful to you, and
be as close to you as your shadow, forever.

Saying that, the bride’s father gives her away by ritually pouring water
on the couple’s hands. In South India, the bridegroom ties a sacred thread,
blessed by all the elders in the hall, around the bride’s neck. This sacred,
auspicious thread (mangala sutra), which is sometimes called a wedding
36 her voice, her faith

necklace, is the equivalent of the wedding ring for the bride. The thread
has gold pendants with emblems of Vishnu and Lakshmi on them. The
bride will wear this wedding necklace for the rest of her life. As he ties it,
the bridegroom says:

This is a sacred thread [which is a symbol] of my long life. I fasten it

around your neck. O beautiful lady! O lady with auspicious qualities!
May you see a hundred autumns [with me].

In northern India, the bridegroom anoints the bride’s forehead with a

red powder called sindur; this is the symbol of her married status. The
central ritual of the wedding itself is the holding of hands (panigrahana)
and the taking of the seven steps around the fire (saptapadi). The bride-
groom holds the bride’s hand in his and recites mantras to various Vedic
gods (Bhaga, Aryama, Savita, Indra, Agni, Surya,Vayu, and Sarasvati), while
holding her hand. He prays that they enjoy longevity, children, prosperity,
and harmony. He concludes this recitation by rejoicing thus:

Agni, the Radiant One and other divine beings have given you to
me so that we may, together, do what is right and what befits our sta-
tion in life. . . .
May the divine wind, he who blows in all directions and who is
the friend of the golden fire on which we prepare our food, blow
your thoughts in my direction. . .

In the most important rite of the wedding, the bride and the bride-
groom take seven steps (saptapadi) around the fire together. The bride-
groom says:

Take the first step; the lord [Vishnu] will follow you. You will not
want for food for the rest of your life.Take the second step.The lord
will guard your health. Take the third step; the lord will follow you
and see that you may observe all religious rituals. Take the fourth
step; the lord, following you, will grant you happiness.Take the fifth
step; the lord will follow and grant you prosperity with cattle and
kine.Take the sixth step; let the lord follow you and let us enjoy the
 hinduism 37

pleasures of the season. Take the seventh step, the lord will follow
you.We shall worship together.

Through these mantras, he asks Lord Vishnu to bless the bride with
food, strength, piety, children, wealth, comfort, and health.
After taking the seven steps, the bridegroom says:

You have taken seven steps with me; be my friend. We who have
taken seven steps together have become companions. I have attained
your friendship; I shall not forsake that friendship. Do not discard our
relationship.
Let us live together; let us think together. We have come to a
right and fitting stage of our lives; let us be happy and prosperous,
thinking good thoughts.
Let there be no difference in our hopes and efforts; let us attain
our desires. And so we join ourselves [our lives]. Let us be of one
mind, let us act together and enjoy through all our senses, without
any difference.
You are the song [Sama], I am the lyric [Rig], I am the song, you
are the lyric. I am the sky, you are the earth. I am the seed; you shall
bear my seed. I am thought; you are speech.
I am the song, you are the lyric. Be conformable to me; O lady
of clear, sweet words.You who are so precious, come with me; let us
have children and attain prosperity together. May there be auspi-
ciousness.

The bride and bridegroom are now officially married. The Laws of
Manu say: “The Vedic mantras for the wedding ritual of the joining of
hands mark the attainment of the wife; but wise people say that the [sacra-
ment] is sealed in the seventh step” (Manu Smriti 8:227).
The couple sit on the western side of the sacred fire and conduct their
first fire sacrifice together. The bride places her right hand on her hus-
band’s body so that she gets the full benefit of the ritual.There are prayers
again to various Vedic gods to bless the marriage and asking for a long
married life, health, wealth, children, and peace of mind, with freedom
from worries.The bridegroom repeats a petition that has been enunciated
38 her voice, her faith

earlier. He asks, with dry humor, that Indra bless them with ten children
and muses that he will be the eleventh child of his bride in their old age:
“Dashasyam putram dehi, patim ekadasham kriti!” Others interpret this
line as indicating that the husband is born again through the wife.
The bridegroom then holds the right toe of his wife and gently places
her leg on a flat grinding stone (ammi).Touching her right foot he says:

Stand on this stone, be firm and steady as this stone. Stand conquer-
ing those who oppose you while you do your work according to tra-
dition. Be firm about your rights, firm as this stone and be
victorious. Be patient with those with whom you do not get along.

The bride, helped by her brother, feeds the flames of the fire with
parched rice and prays for a long life for her husband; may he see a hun-
dred autumns, she says again.
In the concluding rituals, the bride and the bridegroom are blessed by
the elders of the community. A final, auspicious arati—the waving of a
camphor light in a circle—is done to bless them. Later in the evening, the
newly married couple are taken to see the stars in the sky. They are shown
the polestar (dhruva).They pray that, just as the polestar stays constant and
unmoving while the planets and stars swirl around it, they too remain
constant and protected from enemies.
Next, they are shown a star in the sky known to Hindus as Arundhati.
The constellation of the Great Bear is known in India as the seven sacred
sages (rishis).Vasishtha is one of the seven sages. For most Hindu commu-
nities, Arundhati, his wife, is a symbol of fidelity. She is identified as a
companion star to one of the seven that form the seven sages (Great Bear)
constellation. Just as the companion stars remain close together through
the years, the young couple is urged to stay together forever.
There is much in the wedding ceremony to show that the Vedic cul-
ture is largely patriarchal. A girl inherits her father’s gotra ritually and
adopts her husband’s after her marriage. A father “gives away” his daugh-
ter, arguably with his wife by his side. In the Ramayana, Sita, Rama’s wife,
follows him to the forest; her parents have “gifted” her to Rama, and have
to tell her to be his partner in dharma. Sita has been a model for many
generations of women, a model that is being questioned now by many
Hindus today. But just looking at the wedding rituals, we see that there is
 hinduism 39

a great deal of companionship that is envisaged in the mantras; after the

most important ritual of going around the fire, the bridegroom petitions
that they live long as friends and as companions.
The wedding is supposed to be auspicious and refers to prosperity in
this life. It is seen in terms of wealth and progeny, along with the symbols
and rituals connected with these. Cattle, elephants, kings, married women
with a potential for bearing children, and rituals connected with birth and
marriage are said to be auspicious.These are connected with the promo-
tion of three human goals—dharma (duty), artha (prosperity), and kama
(sensual pleasure)—recognized by classical scripture.There is also a second
level of auspiciousness connected with the fourth and ultimate goal, mok-
sha (liberation), and the path leading to it.The two levels of auspiciousness
have been implicit in Hindu religious literature and rituals. In many con-
texts, women have auspiciousness in different degrees, which determine
the levels of their acceptance.
In the classical literature of the Dharma Shastras and in practice, it is
auspicious to be married and fulfill one’s dharmic obligations.A sumangali
is the ideal woman with the ideal amount of auspiciousness, who can be a
full partner in dharma, artha, and kama, through whom children are born,
and through whom wealth and religious merit are accumulated. She is
called grihalakshmi, or the goddess Lakshmi of the house. She is the most
honored woman in traditional Hindu society, especially if she bears chil-
dren, and is adorned in various rites. Conversely, in many sections of
Hindu society, a widow has been considered inauspicious, a bad omen to
anyone encountering her. Even in educated, reform-oriented circles, ves-
tiges of this attitude remain. Traditionally, the higher the widow’s social
caste, the greater the discrimination.Till the middle of the twentieth cen-
tury, South Indian brahmin widows underwent tonsure, a complete shav-
ing of the head. The so-called higher castes were considered the trend
setters in attitudes to women. Thus, the humane attitudes and freedom
theoretically accorded by tradition to women in the lower castes were not
always manifested in practice. In their eagerness to imitate the higher
castes, the lower castes also subjected their women to negative treatment.
As we keep noting, however, there are many exceptions even to these
general practices regarding widowhood. Even though most high-caste
widows in the last two thousand years did not remarry and were not al-
lowed to remarry by the dictates of the texts of dharma, in some brahmin
40 her voice, her faith

communities of Gujarat, widows regularly practiced remarriage (mehta)

up to the nineteenth century. Many widows were great benefactors of
temples and charitable institutions.
The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw efforts to improve the lot
of higher-caste widows.These have aimed to keep pace with legal reforms,
such as the 1829 proscription of sati (the practice by which widows of
some communities in India sometimes burnt themselves on their husband’s
pyre) and the 1856 legalization of widow remarriage.The efforts of Pandita
Ramabai (1858–1922) and Mrs. (“Sister”) Subbulaksmi were noteworthy,
as were the editorial exhortations of several leading newspapers.The legal
age of marriage has been raised, lessening the number of child widows. Ed-
ucation for all women, especially for young widows, has been encouraged,
but acceptance and achievement of reform are painfully slow.

The Wedding: Theological Perspectives

In many Hindu theistic theological traditions, the Supreme Being is con-
sidered a male deity—generally envisaged as Vishnu, Krishna, Shiva, or
Murugan, a popular, handsome South Indian deity. The human soul is
portrayed in thousands of poems and songs as a young girl passionately in
love with a young man (the deity) who plays fast and loose with her.
There are brief moments of ecstatic union and long intervals of excruciat-
ing agony in separation. Modeled on classical Tamil poems of love and war
written around the first few centuries of the Common Era, vernacular
poems composed in South India between the sixth and seventh centuries
C.E. portrayed the human soul as the lover waiting for the beloved.
These romantic sentiments are seen in the work of Andal, who in one
poem recounts a dream in which she marries Vishnu.This poem is still re-
cited in all weddings of the Sri Vaishnava community, and frequently the
bride is dressed to look like Andal, with her distinctive hairstyle and gar-
lands. Andal did not want to get married to a human being and treat her
husband as God; she wanted God as her husband. She composed two po-
ems, the Tiruppavai (The Sacred Lady or The Sacred Pavai Ritual) and the
Nacchiyar Tirumoli (The Lady’s Sacred Words). The rituals of the wed-
ding are discussed in great detail, and many are still performed. According
 hinduism 41

to the Sri Vaishnava tradition, Andal is said to have had her wishes ful-
filled and indeed became the bride of Vishnu. But it is not only Andal
who is the bride of Vishnu; in some theistic theologies, all souls are the
bride of the Supreme Being. Male poets assume the stance of a woman
speaking to the beloved. And most classical dances contain at least one or
two pieces in which the performer shows “her” passion for the lover seen
as Vishnu or his incarnation Krishna, Shiva, or Murugan.
The depiction of the Lord as the male lover and the soul as female has
to be seen against other perspectives as well.There are Hindu traditions in
which the Supreme Being is a woman, a goddess. In many poems and
texts, the supreme goddess is hailed with fervor as “Mother.” Unlike the
male deity, in general, the Goddess is not addressed in a romantic way by
the devotee. Do we then interpret situations where the devotee identifies
himself as a lovesick woman as a projection of social patriarchy in the hu-
man-divine relationships? There is no doubt that many of the cultural
tropes are held over in theological formulation. However, the picture is
not quite so simple. To think of the theological relationship as a replica-
tion of a patriarchal culture is to miss the richness of the poetry and the
drama of longing. The bonds between the divine and the human being
imitate some human relationships without being limited to patriarchal
structures. The Supreme Being can be conceptualized as male, female,
half-man, half-woman, and beyond sexual identity. In some Shaiva tradi-
tions, Shiva is called Ardhanarishvara, the Lord who is half female. Icono-
graphically, this form of the Supreme Being is seen as literally and
physically half male and female; the left half of this form is female (the
Goddess Parvati) and the right half is male (Shiva). Even in the long po-
ems where the male poet identifies himself as a female, the Supreme Be-
ing is not always seen as a lover who must come and get the beloved.
Sometimes, the “female” devotee identifies herself as the mother of Kr-
ishna or Rama and the Lord is seen as a child. So the Supreme Being is
both gendered and beyond gender. Even when thought of as a male, he
could be a child, a lover, a father, a mother, and a counselor.
Some texts say that while the human being is male or female, the
essence of the soul is neither (Leslie).Thus, the lover-beloved relationship
is only one of many possibilities in the play between the human being and
the deity in the poetry of male and female devotees. Andal, Mira, and
other women poets explore many of these relationships.
42 her voice, her faith

Andal is by no means the first woman poet in the Hindu tradition. In

the Rig Veda we encounter Ghosa,Apala, and Lopamudra, who composed
hymns to various deities. Starting with the eighth century, women poets
like Andal, Karaikkal Ammaiyar,Akka Mahadevi, and others rejected mar-
ried life and dedicated passionate poetry to Vishnu and Shiva.These saints
have been honored and venerated in the Sri Vaishnava, Shaiva, and Vira
Shaiva traditions in many Hindu communities. Over the centuries, many
women have also been patrons of temples. Like homes, temples are nerve
centers of the many Hindu traditions.

THE HINDU TEMPLE

The Hindu Temple of Atlanta, Georgia, is a majestic building with loom-

ing towers similar to many that one may encounter in South India. It is a
place for worship, for eating blessed food, and meeting friends—a com-
munity center where one can learn classical dance and music. In the tem-
ple, there are inner shrines, each dedicated to a particular deity in the
Hindu pantheon.
Between 1991 and 1992, Hindus coming from many states of the
southeastern United States installed icons in the Atlanta temple with tra-
ditional rituals and fanfare. Once installed, the icons are considered divine
presences of the deity.The priests, at various intervals or at the conclusion
of every cycle of the rituals, wave a camphor light in a circle to illuminate
the form of the deity.This central ritual of adoration, known as the arati,
touches many chords in the worshipper. The flame reveals the visage of
the deity whom they know is unknowable and has yet graciously de-
scended to Earth. The light from the flame reminds some that the
Supreme Being is pure light, and reality, consciousness, and bliss. Many
Hindus recite a short Sanskrit prayer from the Upanishads (the last sec-
tions of the Vedas) composed around the seventh century B.C.E.:

Lead me from unreality to reality

Lead me from darkness to light
Lead me from death to immortality.
 hinduism 43

The texts from which this prayer is drawn identify the Supreme Being
as the “light of lights” and as ineffable. And yet, over the centuries, most
Hindus have preferred to think of the Supreme Being in a theistic mode,
as one who makes himself accessible to human beings in a perceivable
form. Thus, when seeing the arati flame, some Hindus, who think of the
God Vishnu as the Supreme Being, may remember the verses composed
around the seventh century C.E. by two poet-saints in Tamil. For centuries
many orthodox people had held that the Sanskrit Vedas were only to be
recited and learned by male members of the upper castes of society; the
Tamil verses, however, could be recited by anyone:

With the earth as the lamp,

the sweeping oceans as melted butter,
and the sun with the fiery rays
as the flame;
I have woven a garland of words
for the feet of the Lord,
who bears the red flaming wheel,
so I can cross the ocean of grief.
Mudal Tiruvantati 1
(Poykay Alvar, circa seve nth c e ntury )

The second poet transforms the metaphor so that the earth is not the
lamp, it is his love; the fuel is not the melted, clarified butter (or ghee), but
his love:

With love as the lamp,

passion as the ghee,
a mind melting with joy
as the wick,
with my soul dissolving,
I lit the blazing flame of wisdom
for Narana.
I, who desire the wisdom of Tamil.
Irandam Tiruvantati (Bhuta alvar, circa seve nth ce ntury)
44 her voice, her faith

Prayers in temples are frequently from Sanskrit texts, but, in some re-
gions, local languages like Tamil have been used side by side with Sanskrit
for many centuries, and some hymns like the ones quoted above have
been considered to be the vernacular equivalent of the Sanskrit Vedas, that
is, of trans-human origin. In these verses, the poets portray Vishnu as a
deity worthy of devotion. The first verse shows him bearing a flaming
wheel in his hand—a wheel used as a weapon against evil. It ends with
the hope that the Lord’s flaming discus-wheel will destroy the poet’s
ocean of grief. In many of the theistic traditions of Hinduism, grief is
generally understood as stemming from not understanding the soul’s true
nature and as located in the continued cycle of birth and rebirth that
every soul endures.
In Atlanta, as elsewhere in the diaspora, temples are set up by different
communities from various parts of India, and the flavor of each is very dif-
ferent. A few miles away from the Hindu Temple of Atlanta is a temple
called Shakti Mandir—devoted to various forms of a Supreme Being, the
Goddess, and houses not one but many manifestations of the Goddess.
The main deity in the Hindu Temple of Atlanta, however, is Venkateswara,
a popular name for the Hindu God Vishnu in Tirupati, a famous pilgrim-
age center in South India. In many parts of India, a Hindu deity that has a
generic name like Vishnu, Shiva, or Devi may also have a local name.The
shrines inside the temple house Padmavati (She of the Lotus Flower), a lo-
cal name for the Goddess Lakshmi, and Andal. In the Hindu Temple of At-
lanta, as in the Hindu Temple at Pittsburgh, Andal is identified as an
incarnation of the Earth Goddess.There are other shrines for the Goddess
Durga and one for Ganesha, who shares his space with an icon of Lord
Shiva.There is a little platform in a corner for the Nava Graha, the presid-
ing deities of the Nine Planets. Saturn and Mars, particularly, are consid-
ered to have malefic potential, and special rituals have to be done for them
if they happen to be transiting in some path that adversely affects one’s
horoscope.There are no congregational prayers in this temple; it seems to
be more of a cafeteria-style approach, with devotees gathering near the
deity of their choice and offering prayers either individually or through a
priest.This is typical of many temples in India, although in some worship
services, especially in the North American continent, some temples with
devotees from northern India have chosen to adopt a congregation style
of worship.
 hinduism 45

As part of the worship, the priests in the Hindu Temple of Atlanta re-
cite the many names of the God or Goddess, each describing a divine at-
tribute or form, and offer the devotees fruits or flowers considered to be
blessed by the deity. In the other temples in Atlanta that attract devotees
from northern India, as the rituals conclude and the lamp is being waved
in front of the deity, devotees may sing a hymn that has recently become
popular,“Jaya jagadisha hare” (Victory,Victory to the Lord).
Most Hindus ask the deity for earthly and material favors such as
health, wealth (bhukti), and liberation (mukti). Frequently, in many of the
temples built by people from northern India, as the camphor flame is
waved in front of the deities and the song is in progress, a collection plate
is passed around. Donation (dana) is an important part of the religious rit-
uals in the field of dharma.
The whole town surrounding any temple is said to be sacred. Every
tree, every stream near the precincts of the temple exudes this sense of sa-
credness. Bathing in a sea, river, stream, or pond near the temple is said to
grant salvation. In South India, every village temple will have a story of
how the Lord or the Goddess revealed him/herself in that place to a par-
ticular devotee. Pilgrims believe that they will receive divine grace by re-
membering the stories of the devotees whose wishes were fulfilled in the
past and in worshipping that local deity in a particular way.This grace will
eventually give one liberation from the cycle of life and death.
The temple itself is like a port of transit, a place from where a human
can “cross over” (tirtha) the ocean of life and death. Many temples and
holy places are near bodies of water—oceans, streams, rivers, and springs.
When such a body of water was not readily available, temple architects
dug a deep well or pool and used it for ritual purposes. Scholars note that
some of the places that seem to have been important in the earliest period
of Indian history—possibly around 3000 B.C.E.—are still considered to be
sacred sites charged with power. In other words, there is a continuity in
the palpable manifestation of the sacred.The sanctity of places, however, is
not frozen and immutable; while a few places like Srirangam and Varanasi
have been continuously sacred for almost two thousand years, the popu-
larity of a place in the past was dependent on political expansions and the
caprice of emperors and royal patronage.
Another example of this dynamism and innovation is seen in the growth
of goddess temples in Tamilnadu. In the early 1970s, devotees belonging to
46 her voice, her faith

several Hindu sectarian traditions joined together in Besantnagar, a suburb of

Madras, and built a temple devoted to eight forms of Lakshmi.This form of
worship, glorifying female power, is rooted in tradition, but one that has a
new life today, using a conventional framework that is also innovative. In this
temple we do not find the customary separate shrines for Vishnu and
Sri/Lakshmi. Rather, there are eight small shrines arranged in a clockwise
circle, one of each of the eight Lakshmis, and in the ninth shrine we find
Vishnu and Lakshmi together sharing the same space. In other words,Vishnu
is the “consort,” rather than the presiding deity in this temple. There is no
other earlier example of such a temple in which Lakshmi has been given
primary place.
Although traditionally Lakshmi is a popular deity, her being portrayed
in eight iconographically different forms is a relatively new phenomenon.
The eight Lakshmis are seen as manifestations of Sri, and some of them
represent her powers. In a song that became popular at the same time as
the temple was built, we see Sri as primeval (adi Lakshmi), as the goddess of
grain (dhanya Lakshmi), as being fearless and giving fearlessness to her
devotees (dhairya Lakshmi), as one who is worshipped by elephants (gaja
Lakshmi), as giving one progeny through her favor (santana Lakshmi), as
being victorious and making her devotees so (vijaya Lakshmi), and as be-
stowing knowledge and wealth (vidya Lakshmi and dhana Lakshmi). Al-
though these attributes and descriptions of Sri are all found in traditional
literature (along with a dozen others), the emergence of these eight in pre-
cisely this combination is quite new. Devotional songs on cassettes, poster
pictures with the eight Lakshmis, prayer pamphlets with songs to her, and
water pitchers with the Lakshmis carved around them have also made their
appearances as support artifacts and are sold around the temple.
In the mid-1970s in Mel Maruvattur, a village about fifty miles from
Madras, the temple of Adi Para Shakti (the Primordial Great Powerful
Goddess) truly broke new ground for women. A revelation to a young
man who lived in this village proclaimed that land to be the place where
the Goddess abides. The Goddess, it is said, announced that although the
skin of her devotees may be white, red, brown, or dark, the blood that runs
in them is always red. To denote the equality among all devotees of the
Goddess regardless of sex, caste, or race, her followers wear red when they
worship her in the temple. For miles around the temple, one can see
truckloads of worshippers or a solitary pilgrim walking sedately, all head-
 hinduism 47

ing to the shrine of the Goddess, all wearing red. Nor does the innovation
stop there; in contrast to most brahmanical temples, menstruating women
can worship here.

Purity and Impurity

Rituals, places, and people are all considered to be auspicious or inauspi-
cious, pure or impure. Some kinds of purity and impurity may be generic
and more or less always associated with certain places; for instance, a cre-
mation ground, because of its continuous association with corpses, is al-
ways impure. Death and things associated with it are usually impure.This
impurity, when associated with people, is temporal; for instance, the family
of a dead person is said to be in a state of impurity and cannot go to a
temple or conduct normal rituals, but that impurity is lifted after a specific
number of days.
Although death is inauspicious and impure, some events, like the birth
of a child, are happy and auspicious but nevertheless impure. In other
words, after the birth of a child, the extended family, drawn on patrilineal
lines, is considered to be in a state of impurity for a varying number of
days, depending both on the sex of the baby (a longer period of impurity
with the birth of boys) and the proximity of blood connections of the
family member to the parents of the child. Matters of purity and impurity
associated with death and birth are discussed at length in the Dharma
Shastras.
In addition to birth and death being associated with impurity, men-
struating women are said to be impure. During menstruation, therefore,
especially in the “upper castes,” women are considered impure and are
prohibited from participating in regular household work and ritual mat-
ters. In many communities, the woman used to be reintegrated into the
household only after a purifying bath after four days. Most of these re-
strictions are no longer followed, especially in the diaspora. However,
most Hindu women still do not go to the temple while menstruating. It is
this prohibition that was lifted in the Mel Maruvattur temple.
While menstruation is connected with ritual impurity and women are
not supposed to participate in religious activity but then, as usual, certain
48 her voice, her faith

examples in Hindu tradition seem to be striking exceptions—for example,

the story in the Mahabharata of Princess Draupadi’s surrender to Krishna.
Draupadi is married to the five Pandava brothers. The oldest, Yud-
hishthira, gambles away his kingdom in a game of dice. He finally stakes
the freedom of his other brothers, himself, and his wife and loses it all to
his foes, the Kaurava brothers. Dusshasana, one of the Kauravas, then drags
Draupadi into the royal court. Draupadi is menstruating. The Kaurava
brothers declare her to be their slave and viciously try to remove her
clothes, which technically belong to them. Draupadi asks for justice, chal-
lenging the elders in the court, but no one comes to her aid. Her five hus-
bands, all heroes of the epic, seem powerless. The third brother, Arjuna,
arguably one of the best warriors of India, stands by helpless as the Kau-
ravas begin to strip his wife. Draupadi sees no help against this abuse; in
despair, she throws up her arms and surrenders herself to Krishna, seeking
his protection. Krishna miraculously appears to her, and her garment
seems to be never ending even as the wicked Dusshasana tries to pull it off
of her.
The thirteenth-century theologian Pillai Lokacarya sees Draupadi’s
surrender to the Lord as paradigmatic. In speaking about the ritual of pra-
patti, or surrendering to Vishnu, he says that one does not have to seek rit-
ual purity, such as having a special cleansing bath. He cites two examples
and then showcases the incident of Draupadi. If one takes Draupadi’s sur-
render as a model, we see in the Hindu tradition a way of bypassing the
ritual injunctions if one has devotion for the Supreme Being. Although
the restrictions concerning menstruation may seem to rise from the patri-
archal discipline of the Dharma Shastras, an epic as early as the Maha-
bharata shows a way in which devotion overrides the ritual injunctions
of texts.

Patrons of Temples
Women, especially those from royal families, were liberal benefactors of
temples and other institutions. In the year 966, in Tiru Venkatam (Tiru-
pati), Samavai endowed money to celebrate some festivals and conse-
crate a processional image of the Lord, a silver replica of the main deity.
 hinduism 49

A record of her endowment is inscribed in stone; it concludes with the

phrase “Sri Vaishnava raksai” (by the protection of the Sri Vaishnavas).
Within a short time, Samavai endowed two different parcels of land, one
of 4 hectares (10 acres) and the other 5.4 hectares (13.3 acres), and or-
dered that the revenues derived from these were to be used for major
festivals. She also gave a large number of jewels to the temple and asked
that these be used to adorn the image of the Lord. Of all temples in In-
dia today, the temple at Tirupati has the largest endowments and sources
of revenue.
And Samavai was not an isolated example. The queens of the Chola
dynasty (c. 846–1279) were enthusiastic patrons of temples and religious
causes for the Shaiva community of South India around the tenth century.
At that time, a South Indian queen, Sembiyan Mahadevi, gave major en-
dowments to many Shiva temples. Such generosity implies a certain inde-
pendence of lifestyle and finances. Apart from queens and royalty, many
other kinds of women also endowed temples. Obviously, the record of
such activities has to be integrated with our reading of scripture and ha-
giography to get a more complete vision of women’s religious roles (Orr).
Although most Hindu communities worship in temples, not all do.
The Vira Shaiva tradition, for instance, which reveres the eleventh-century
teacher Basava, rejects the importance of temples. In the nineteenth cen-
tury, Ram Mohun Roy and Dayanand Saraswati, leaders of new move-
ments within the Hindu tradition, also rejected the worship of the
Supreme Being in iconic forms in temples.
Who are the religious leaders in the Hindu tradition? Are they male
or female? Traditionally, the priests in the temples were male brahmins,
and they performed prayers on behalf of devotees and celebrated rituals
for the community. Most of them simply trained by apprenticeship. An-
other specialization for some of these male brahmin priests was to serve
their “clients” at home and perform domestic sacraments. In most cases
these priests were not theologians or philosophers; nor did they have a
ministerial role to play for people who came to the temples. They were,
and are, specialists in ritual.
Most Hindus may point to gurus or teachers (acaryas, who practice in
traditional lineages) or even learned narrators of epics (who weave theol-
ogy and ethics into their expositions) as leaders. Although these were, in
the past, largely men, in recent years women have been evident in all these
50 her voice, her faith

fields.There are web pages for many women gurus and harikathas (narra-
tors of Vishnu stories). Women like Anandamayi Ma and Ammachi have
been powerful gurus in the twentieth century. Devotees of these gurus ar-
gue that the teachers are not teachers by choice; they are either highly
evolved or enlightened souls or an incarnation of divine being.Thus, the
question of gender is, they say, not relevant.
Many women gurus preach from Hindu temples in the diaspora. In
India, they tend to work from their own ashrams or sanctuaries and fre-
quently attract hundreds or thousands of devotees each day. These devo-
tees come to get a glimpse of their teacher or hear her. The gurus teach
about how one can get detached from one’s family, friends, and career and
achieve mental equanimity. Detachment from life and attachment to a de-
ity is frequently stressed; these, they say, will lead you to moksha.

DEATH AND LIBERATION

Although weddings are auspicious from the viewpoint of most Hindus,

death and funeral rituals are all inauspicious and impure.The ritual impu-
rity is contagious if there is a death in the family; even if you go to a fu-
neral, your are considered to be impure.A cleansing bath or pouring water
over your head will ritually cleanse you of this impurity. Although the
texts on dharma wax eloquent on this purity and pollution and one ob-
serves it in practice, from the viewpoint of one who wants liberation,
death is indeed auspicious.

Funeral Rituals
Most Hindus cremate the dead. Cremation takes place very soon after
death—in many cases within a day.The body is washed by the women in
the house and the forehead is anointed with sacred marks.The dead body
is laid on a bier, and the family priest begins the rituals at home itself.
Family and friends garland the body and frequently bow down in respect,
facing south, which is considered the direction of death. At the cremation
 hinduism 51

ground, the pyre is lit; the ashes are collected the next day and eventually
immersed in the ocean or in the Ganges.
In almost all cases, it is the son, or a close male relative, who does the
funeral rites. In some areas, women do not even go into the cremation
ground. However, as in so much else, there are exceptions. In families
without sons, daughters do the funeral rites. Although this custom was
hardly ever followed in the last two millennia, it is more and more com-
mon. Such behavior, moreover, is not without precedent in Vedic times,
when a man sometimes appointed a daughter as a putrika, a daughter who
functions like a son in ritual matters.This daughter, or sometimes her son,
officiated at funerals. Rig Vedic verse (Rig III.31.1), which is rather diffi-
cult in structure, can be interpreted to mean that there is a practice of de-
claring a daughter to be one’s son (Kane, vol. 2, part 1, pp. 435–36).
Although this does not take away from the patriarchal structure and
norm, it shows that, in this ritual, gender issues were fluid.
Even if a man did not so appoint a daughter, the traditional sources of
dharma or righteous action are flexible enough to allow room for innova-
tive action. The Vedas, the tradition of the Epics and Puranas, actions of
the righteous, and finally doing “what is dear to one’s soul” (atmatushti)—
that is, acting after much thought and according to the dictates of one’s
conscience—these are the stuff of which dharma is made.Thus, while the
son is favored in many of the texts and in practice in many communities,
the sources of dharma allow reasonable interpretations by which a woman
can go far beyond the dictates of the text.
Most Hindus believe that the soul is immortal.The soul is encased in
a human body that perishes; but the atma, or soul, is imperishable. At
death, one merely discards one’s body and eventually takes on another.
The classical location of this doctrine is in the Bhagavad Gita.

The Bhagavad Gita

and the Ways to Liberation
The Bhagavad Gita, one of the holiest books in the Hindu tradition,
speaks of loving devotion to the lord and the importance of selfless action.
In it, Krishna instructs his cousin Arjuna (who is generally understood to
52 her voice, her faith

represent any human soul who seeks spiritual guidance) on the nature of
the human soul and God and how one can reach liberation. Written
around 200 B.C.E., the Bhagavad Gita eventually became part of the Ma-
habharata. It is frequently printed separately, and many people own a copy.
For centuries people learned it by heart.
In verses that are still recited at a Hindu’s funeral, Krishna describes
the human soul as being beyond the reach of human senses and thought;
it is not affected by the sense organs or physical nature. Just as a human
being casts off old clothes and wears new ones, so too does a soul discard
bodies and assume new ones.This process continues through the ages un-
til the soul is finally liberated from the cycle of birth and death.The soul
does not die when the body dies; it is never born and never killed. In later
centuries, people have interpreted the soul as being beyond gender.
In the Gita, Krishna describes three ways to liberation (or as some
Hindus believe, three aspects of one way to liberation) from the cycle of
births and death: (1) the way of action, (2) the way of knowledge, and (3)
the way of devotion. Each way (marga) is spoken of also as a discipline
(yoga).The way of action (karma yoga) entails the path of unselfish action;
one must do one’s duty, but it should not be done either for fear of pun-
ishment or hope of reward.The right action should be done without ex-
pectation of praise or blame. For example, one is to study or do good acts
because it is correct to do so—because it is one’s duty (dharma) to do so,
not because other people will reward and praise one for it.
Acting with the expectation of future reward leads to bondage and
unhappiness. On one level, such actions instigate further action, and thus
further karma is incurred, for one is never satisfied when one reaches a
goal. One may long for a promotion, for more money, or to be loved by a
particular person, and when one acts with these goals in mind, one may
meet with disappointment and react with anger or grief. Even if one is
temporarily successful, the goal that has been reached is replaced with an-
other.Thus the thirst for material success is never quenched. Instead, one
succeeds only in accumulating more karma, which leads to further re-
birth.
Indeed, on one level (according to other books of the time), even the
karma one gets from performing good deeds is ultimately bad and causes
bondage because to enjoy the good karma, one has to be reborn. One
Hindu philosopher calls good karma “golden handcuffs.”Therefore, one is
 hinduism 53

to act according to one’s dharma. Krishna urges Arjuna to act without any
attachment to the consequences.Then evil will not touch such a person,
just as water does not stick to a lotus leaf. All actions are to be offered to
Krishna. By discarding the fruits of one’s action, one attains abiding peace.
Krishna also talks of the way of knowledge (jnana yoga): through the
means of attaining scriptural knowledge, one may achieve a transforming
wisdom that destroys one’s past karma.True knowledge is an insight into
the real nature of the universe, divine power, and the human soul. Later
philosophers say that when one hears scripture, asks questions, clarifies
doubts, and eventually meditates on this knowledge, one achieves libera-
tion. Krishna tells Arjuna that just as fire reduces firewood to ashes, so, too,
does the fire of knowledge reduce all karma (actions) to ashes.
The third way is the most emphasized throughout the Bhagavad Gita:
the way of devotion (bhakti yoga). If there is a general amnesty program
offered to those who sin, those who have a karmic overload, it is through
the way of devotion:

Even if a sinful person adores me with exclusive devotion

He must be regarded as righteous . . .
Quickly his soul becomes righteous and
He gets eternal peace . . .
My devotee is never lost. . . .
(Bhagavad Gita 9:30–1)

Ultimately, Krishna makes his promise to Arjuna; if one were to sur-

render to the Lord, he will forgive the human being all sins:

Letting go all dharma, take refuge in me alone;

I shall deliver you from all sins; do not grieve.
(Bhagavad Gita 18:66)

These are held to be “almost the last words” of the Bhagavad Gita, and
thus the ultimate teaching of this work. Absolute surrender to Krishna is
advocated, and the karma built up over many lifetimes will be erased by
his grace.
The Bhagavad Gita is one of the most popular Sanskrit texts, and its
popularity is attested to by the number of imitations it has spawned.The
54 her voice, her faith

Isvara Gita is very similar but casts Shiva as the supreme deity. The Devi
Gita commends surrender to the Goddess. Such works have never at-
tained the status of the Bhagavad Gita.
Although devotion is exalted in the Bhagavad Gita and many other
texts, some philosophers like Shankara have held that it is knowledge that
leads one to liberation. Of the many well-known theologians in the
Hindu tradition, most are male. However, a careful look at Hindu history
will reveal not only many women poets (such as Tarigonda Venkamamba,
circa 1800–1866) but many women who wrote prose treatises or seem to
have participated in discussions or even debates on philosophy. These
women sought the ultimate knowledge that would lead them to immor-
tality.
There are also many women philosophers. In the Upanishads,
Maitreyi, the wife of the philosopher Yajavalkya, questions him in depth
about the nature of reality. Gargi Vacaknavi, a woman philosopher, chal-
lenges him with questions in a public debate. There were probably more
women composers and philosophers, but they are not noted in the texts.
In time, possibly because the Vedas were transmitted orally, many parts of
the text, including verses composed by women, were lost. It is also possi-
ble that the women’s compositions that came after the Vedas were sup-
pressed when literature became more androcentric, but women continued
to be involved with poetry and philosophy.
Tirukkoneri Dasyai, a woman philosopher who is not much known
in India, lived in the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries and wrote a beau-
tiful commentary, Garland of Words, on the ninth-century Tamil poem
Tiruvaymoli (Sacred Utterance), which the Sri Vaishnava community
considers to be revealed. In her commentary, written in the manipravala
style (a combination of Sanskrit and Tamil), she quotes the Vedas and the
other Sanskrit texts profusely.Although a lot of these quotations may have
been learned through ritual usage and commentarial exposition, the jux-
taposition of vernacular and Sanskrit revelation along with ritual and
commentary seems to have provided a milieu where men and women in
Tirukkoneri Dasyai’s community, but presumably elsewhere too, had ex-
tensive access at least to those parts of the Vedas that had theological and
salvific import.Tirukkoneri Dasyai had access to this vast learning and was
able to express herself creatively; this alone makes her a felicitous example
 hinduism 55

of a learned and articulate woman from one prominent Hindu tradition.

In her work, she reiterates over and over again the idea that

Samsara is a vast ocean that no one can cross.You Great Lord should
make sure we cross it. [The Lord] stands as a surety for those who
have transferred their burden of salvation [to him or their teachers],
he is the raft, the ferryman who takes them across [the sea of life and
death]. He will alleviate the burden of all. (Tirukkoneri Dasyai:
Comment on Tiruvaymoli 2.8.1; 42)

The paths of devotion, knowledge, and selfless action are open to the
human being.Yet, from the viewpoint of devotion, it is the Supreme Be-
ing who is said, as in the verse above, to deliver a person from the endless
cycle of samsara. In matters of liberation, it does not matter if one is a man
or woman; all are eligible for it.

REFLECTIONS

Reflecting upon Jewish feminist writings, Davidman and Tenenbaum

speak about three stages. They identify the first as when women scholars
examine traditional wisdom from the standpoint of women and establish
the groundwork for the critique. In the second stage, there is an attempt
to fill in the gaps of our knowledge of women by studying their lives ac-
cording to the categories created by traditional male scholarship. This is
based on the assumption that traditional categories of analysis will be ade-
quate for the understanding of women’s experiences. However, most
women scholars now believe that these concepts and theoretical frames
miss out on what is distinctive about women’s experiences. Many women
simply did not or were not allowed to do traditionally male tasks. Conse-
quently many women remained invisible. Davidman and Tenenbaum say,
“Thus, correcting for this invisibility of women involves not simply
‘adding women and stirring,’ but reconstructing the model of scholarship
in each discipline and across disciplines” (Davidman and Tenenbaum, p. 2).
The third stage of feminist knowledge is the development of a scholarship
56 her voice, her faith

that begins with women’s experiences, focuses on women, and places

them at the center, not the margins.The stages are not sequential but con-
tinuous and spiraling.
This approach involves asking new questions and reconceptualizing
conventional categories. It is based on using gender as a crucial analytic
tool. The notion of gender presupposed here is constructed and inter-
preted in many ways now, some of which challenge the feminist enter-
prise that Davidman and Tenenbaum are involved in. But if we accept for
now the framework that they propose and use it as a template for under-
standing Hindu traditions, we can see where we are in the production and
interpretation of knowledge.
The task is compounded for the study of Hindu traditions because we
are critiquing categories and materials that have come from two sources—
categories of religion based on Enlightenment models as well as tradi-
tional Hindu literature, most of which was composed by men who
believed they were of a high caste—and also dealing with Western expec-
tations that these texts are to be taken seriously.To study Hindu traditions,
we can start with internal categories, but these need not necessarily be
women-friendly. And using feminist strategies for interpretation may not
fit the Indian cultures.
Many recent articles have critiqued Hindu traditions and have gone
into the issues of “adding women and stirring” (Young, Patton, Findly,
Dehejia, Kishwar, McGee, Narayanan 1999 and 2001, and above all Tharu
and Lalita). Many others, including Kishwar, Pintchman, and Patton, also
challenge the paradigms and begin to place women centerstage in study-
ing the Hindu tradition as a religious tradition.The entire process is still in
the early stages, and, as Davidson and Tenenbaum note, the stages are not
sequential but continuous and spiraling.
There are many areas in the Hindu tradition to which a woman can
look for encouragement and hope. The first is the historical factor. After
patient researching, one can find women who made a mark in tradition-
ally male spheres.Thus, the list of women poets, philosophers, and patrons
grows longer by the year. And we are finding more and more evidence of
women who performed rituals normally thought done only by men.
The second is in the philosophical sphere. According to at least some
texts, the soul is without gender, and so, ultimately, in the quest for libera-
 hinduism 57

tion, gender is irrelevant. In some literature and the performing arts, souls,
whether they belong to male or female bodies, may be gendered as fe-
male, leveling the field in the potential for liberation.
And finally there is the sphere of social institutions, and it is here that
we look to the field of dharma. Although the traditional lists of the
sources of dharma point to various sacred texts, the fourth source is of
crucial importance for us. These are actions that would be sanctioned by
appeal to atmatushti, or the happiness of one’s soul, an appeal to one’s
conscience. This alone, even if we did not have earlier precedents for
women, gives institutional room for women to live their religious lives to
the fullest potential. Hindus have, over the centuries, been able to keep
their tradition vibrant, to interpret sacred texts, and assimilate and adapt
practices from the ancient Indus Valley Civilization to the age of the Inter-
net.The articulation of a faith with the voicing of a full range of possibili-
ties and opportunities for men and women is the need of the day.
Classical Hindu texts give the impression of being immutable, but
Hindu practices have been fluid and flexible, allowing for adaptations, as-
similation, and adjustments. Concepts, rituals, even gods and goddesses
have evolved and faded away; others have endured for millennia. Devotion
and wisdom are still sought-after goals, even as they were three thousand
years ago.
Since Vedic times, Sarasvati has captured the devotion of human be-
ings who long for knowledge and, ultimately, transformative, experien-
tial wisdom. As a personification of the sacred river Sarasvati, she
cleanses and purifies sullied bodies and confused minds; as a goddess she
grants the joy of learning, the pleasures of music, the power of knowl-
edge, and the bliss of devotional wisdom. Every fall, during Navaratri, as
I place her picture on the altar of the kolu, along with Lakshmi, the ra-
diant goddess who bestows enjoyment and liberation, and instead of the
pens and pencils put my floppy disks in front of them, I have the peace
of knowing that all chips of knowledge become the goddess’s abode, be-
come blessed by them. All knowledge and transformative wisdom are
said to flow as gifts from the goddess Lakshmi. As Sarasvati continues to
flow through time, she clarifies and uplifts, and as the river of knowledge
that is ever moving and ever growing, she will someday gently transport
us to the other shore.
 2

Buddhism
By Rita M. Gross

Stories about the Buddha’s life are
lovingly retold in all Buddhist cultures. Among those stories, none is more
frequently remembered than how Siddhartha Gautama, soon to become a
Buddha (Enlightened Being), sat under the Bodhi Tree, defeated all the as-
saults of Mara, the Buddhist Tempter and Spoiler, and attained enlighten-
ment.This story often includes an incident in which Mara taunts Gautama,
claiming that he has not practiced generosity in the past and has no right to
his seat. Mara’s hosts testified for their leader, but being alone, Gautama had
no one to witness for him. Touching the earth with the fingertips of one
hand, he called upon the Earth Goddess to testify to his generosity in
countless previous lifetimes. She rose up and squeezed an ocean of water
from her hair as testimony, whereupon Mara and his armies withdrew. To
this day, a favorite icon of the Buddha shows him sitting under the Bodhi
Tree in this Earth Touching Mudra gesture. Another icon, popular in
Southeast Asian Buddhist countries, depicts the Earth Goddess wringing
out her long hair.
This story, with the Buddha in the foreground and the Earth Goddess
in the background, is typical of most Buddhist records. Most people know
of the Buddha, who attained enlightenment and founded the Buddhist re-
ligion, but even many Buddhists do not know how he called upon the
Earth Goddess at that crucial moment or how she helped him. Bud-
dhism’s foreground highlights men, historical events, and philosophical

59
60 her voice, her faith

thought, explaining why many people think of Buddhism as a male-dom-

inated religion.
I studied Buddhism for years before I became interested in practicing
Buddhism. I was already teaching university courses on Buddhism when
it occurred to me, in the midst of immense personal anguish, that this re-
ligion might actually be “true” because its explanations of why so much
suffering occurs and what could be done about it were so cogent. This
awakening occurred in 1973. By then, I had already written some of the
earliest work on women and religion in the current feminist movement,
and women’s issues were my most existential concern.A religion in which
women were so much in the background was not initially appealing. But
its dharma (central teachings) took hold and explained my life to me as
nothing else ever had. As I began to explore Buddhism more personally, I
realized that I was hooked by this dharma, that its relevance and power to
make sense of things far overpowered Buddhism’s unimpressive record on
gender equity. I also realized that eventually I would have to reconcile the
relevance of Buddhist teachings with its historical male dominance, a task
I undertook in Buddhism After Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis, and
Reconstruction of Buddhism and other writings.
My years of study and reflection upon Buddhist history and ideas have
yielded two generalizations. Buddhist teachings and symbols are gender-
inclusive and gender-neutral or gender-free, rather than male-dominant
or female-dominant. Nevertheless, throughout Buddhist history, its insti-
tutional setup has favored men over women as teachers, students, monas-
tics, and meditators, the pursuits most valued and honored in Buddhist
cultures.These two conclusions will be apparent time after time as we sur-
vey Buddhist history and teachings. The story of the Buddha and the
Earth Goddess has been repeated over and over in the history of Bud-
dhism. But without the Earth Goddess, the Buddha would have had no
witness to his generosity.Without women, Buddhism would not have sur-
vived, not simply because women give birth, but because their presence is
essential to every Buddhist context. As with every religion, about half of
all Buddhists have always been women. For most Buddhist women, life
consisted of motherhood, housework, and pious lay devotional practices, a
situation no different from all major religions of the last three thousand
years.Women were more essential as mothers and donors than as students
or teachers of the dharma. Often, their main religious activity was giving
 buddhism 61

food to monks seeking daily alms, but if women, who are in charge of do-
mestic affairs, do not give food to the monks, the monks would starve be-
cause monastic rules prohibit them from farming or handling money.
The most important Buddhist ritual in a woman’s life would be her
monastic ordination, if she took monastic vows. But relatively few women
became nuns; many more men became monks. Nevertheless, the institu-
tion was there—an escape hatch from unbearable domestic situations, a
point to which we will return in the final section.Women with a genuine
spiritual calling faced greater difficulties than those faced by men.Women
were usually discouraged from following a spiritual calling, whereas men
were encouraged to follow it. But, as we will see, some women did perse-
vere and became highly respected practitioners, especially in early Indian
Buddhism and in Vajrayana Buddhism, in India and in Tibet. Interestingly,
almost all named Buddhist women are from these two periods and places.
Many fewer named women exist in the records of Mahayana Buddhism in
India or East Asia, or in Southeast Asian Theravada Buddhism. Earlier
Western accounts of Buddhism totally omitted women, intensifying the
impression that Buddhism is a male religion. In such a situation, it is diffi-
cult to know how much of women’s invisibility is due to Western scholar-
ship on Buddhism and how much is due to Buddhism itself.
Recently, another element has entered the picture. All forms of Bud-
dhism are now being practiced in the West by Westerners.Among Western
converts to Buddhism, women and men participate on a relatively equal
basis in all aspects of Buddhism.The sole exception is that senior Western
teachers are more often men than women, though there are some women
senior teachers in all forms of Buddhism. Buddhism became popular in
the midst of a strong feminist movement. Like myself, many women were
attracted to Buddhism by its philosophies and meditation practices, but
repelled by its seemingly male dominance and male chauvinism. Those
who chose to pursue Buddhist disciplines nevertheless began to look
more critically at conventional Buddhist practices than had ever been
done before. Many troubling things were found, leading many to ask how
a religion with such lofty views and practices could have so overlooked
half its members. But critique and construction go hand in hand.Western
Buddhists not only discuss what is found wanting but suggest how to rec-
tify the situation. A relatively small but influential body of such literature
had grown up around these topics.
62 her voice, her faith

Western and Asian Buddhism are in close contact. Asian Buddhists,

pressed to explain why women had been so overlooked, began to look
more critically at their own practices.A Buddhist women’s movement ad-
vocating reform is now in place in most of the Asian Buddhist world. For
many Asians, the most obvious issue is restoring the nuns’ full ordination
in countries where it has been lost. Better support and education for nuns
is also an important agenda.

I: BUDDHISM IN INDIA AND BEYOND: HISTORI-

CAL AND INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENTS

Though subject to some discussion, the Buddha’s dates are usually given as
563–483 B.C.E. Born into a royal family, he lived a life of ease and luxury
until becoming disturbed by the suffering his indulgent lifestyle masked.
He abandoned his family and future career as king to seek liberation, to
seek contentment beyond suffering and understand the riddle of life.After
six unsuccessful years and many teachers, he finally sat under the Bodhi
Tree and, as narrated above, attained enlightenment on the May full moon
night of his thirty-fifth year. For the rest of his long life, he was a monastic
wandering teacher, gathering a large following of disciples, monastic and
lay, male and female. Given the long-term impact of his movement, he
would have to be judged one of the most important people ever to have
lived.

A: Early Indian Buddhism

Like any long-lived religious tradition practiced in various cultural set-
tings, the many forms of Buddhism are significantly different from each
other. Early Indian Buddhism is an important foundation for all of them.
Monasticism, still central to most Buddhist cultures, goes back to Bud-
dhism’s beginnings. World renunciation—leaving behind the ties, cares,
and privileges of one’s family and career—was common and controver-
 buddhism 63

sial in India of the Buddha’s time. Prince Siddhartha was by no means the
only young man to do what he had done; he was only the most success-
ful.When Buddha became so enlightened, he was a celibate, propertyless
world renouncer, and most who achieved enlightenment under his guid-
ance were also world renouncers or became so immediately. It was taken
for granted in ancient India that anyone, male or female, caught up in the
busyness, emotional bondage, and stress of family and career could not
find spiritual liberation or ultimate peace. However, the monastic com-
munity remained in close contact with the lay community. Daily alms
rounds provided economic survival for the monks and nuns, and monas-
tics provided religious instruction to the lay community.
However, the nuns’ community was not immediately established.
Though the Buddha did not observe caste restrictions, allowing men from
any caste to join his community, and although the contemporary Jain
movement already included women world renouncers, the Buddha did
not initially welcome female monastics. Three years after his movement
began, the Buddha’s foster mother asked to be admitted to the order. She
was refused, with the comment that it is inappropriate for women to re-
nounce the world. She and her followers persisted, cutting off their hair
and donning the ochre robes characteristic of the monastic community.
They then walked barefoot until they found the Buddha and his monks.
They were again refused ordination, but the Buddha’s attendant Ananda
took pity on them, noting their sincerity; these were court ladies unaccus-
tomed to physical distress and their barefoot walk left them in rough
shape. He took their case to the Buddha, asking him if women could at-
tain the liberated state. When the Buddha answered positively, Ananda
asked why, if women could be liberated, they would not benefit by re-
nouncing the world? The Buddha then relented, though the texts add a
vicious coda. Nuns were ordained only on condition of accepting eight
special rules in addition to the monastic code.These rules formally subor-
dinate all nuns to all monks without regard for seniority or attainments.
Furthermore, it was said that because women had been accepted into the
monastic sangha, the Buddhist religion would last only half as long as it
would otherwise. Contemporary scholars debate whether these com-
ments actually came from the Buddha or from later monk editors, given
that the earliest Buddhist texts were not written down for about three
64 her voice, her faith

hundred years. Whether or not these edicts actually came from the Bud-
dha, they have influenced how Buddhists thought about and treated fe-
male monastics for millennia.
The stories of early Buddhism depict a wandering community; only
later did monks and nuns settle in permanent dwellings. Monastic rules of
discipline emerged gradually in response to predicaments in which monks
and nuns found themselves.The Buddha frequently taught both monastics
and lay people, giving rise to the large earliest Buddhist canon. Among
these works are the Theragatha—the Songs of the (Male) Elders—and the
Therighata—the Songs of the (Female) Elders. The latter text, attributed
to nuns of the Buddha’s day, may be the only canonical text written by
women in world religious literature.
The social forms and teachings of early Indian Buddhism spread
throughout the Indian subcontinent and beyond India into Sri Lanka by
the third century B.C.E. One of the most famous Buddhists of this era was
Emperor Ashoka, who ruled from 270 to 230 B.C.E. He was not born a
Buddhist, but converted after winning a bloody war to consolidate and
extend his kingdom.The carnage and suffering he saw caused a change of
heart, after which he renounced warfare and hunting, promoted religions
in general and Buddhism in particular; historical evidence suggests that he
was genuinely concerned about the well-being of his subjects. He is also
credited with sending Buddhist missionaries around the then-known
world, including some to the Middle East. No historical records of mis-
sionaries to the West have been found, but scholars have long speculated
about their possible influence on some strands of Western thought. In any
case, other missionaries were more successful; the Sri Lankan Buddhist
community traces its origins to Ashoka’s son and daughter, who founded
the monks’ and the nuns’ orders, respectively. From this evidence, we
know the nuns’ sangha was a routine part of Buddhism at this time; seem-
ingly, it was expected that if a monks’ sangha was begun, a nuns’ sangha
would also begin.
At this time, and some centuries later, Buddhism in India was under-
going the profound intellectual changes that led to the development of
Mahayana Buddhism. But these newer movements did not succeed in Sri
Lanka. The older forms of Buddhism eventually spread to the rest of
Southeast Asia: Burma,Thailand, Laos, South Vietnam, and Cambodia. But
 buddhism 65

through the vicissitudes of history, the nuns’ ordination lineage eventually

died out both in Sri Lanka and in India.1 A nuns’ order may once have ex-
isted in Burma, but it died out centuries ago; there are no records of fully
ordained Buddhist nuns in any other Theravadin Buddhist countries.
Buddha’s teachings have few, if any, direct applications to gender. In
themselves, they are not more appropriate for or relevant to men than
women.Women, like men, have been attracted to these teachings for mil-
lennia. To understand why women are attracted to Buddhism, we must
know the basics of these teachings.
The key teachings of early Buddhism consist of the Four Noble
Truths, the Three Marks, and Interdependence (pratityasamutpada). The
words “suffering,” “ignorance,” and “grasping” appear repeatedly in all of
these formulations of dharma. Suffering is the First Truth and the first
mark; ignorance is at the root of the Second Truth and is the first of the
twelve links of interdependence; grasping, as the cause of suffering, is the
second Noble Truth and is a key link in the twelve links of Interdepen-
dence. In keeping with Indian thought in general, Buddhism sees igno-
rance as leading to grasping, which causes suffering.Thus, the fundamental
liberating option offered by Buddhism is to overcome ignorance and thus
end suffering, for oneself, but also, ultimately, for all sentient beings.
These key teachings are unique to Buddhism, but to understand them
fully, one must remember that Buddhism adopted much of the world
view already dominant in India of the sixth century B.C.E. Samsara, often
translated as “cyclic existence,” involves the claim that the universe is
without beginning or end but goes through countless cycles of emer-
gence and destruction.There is no resting place in this eternal cyclic exis-
tence, for everything in samsara is always changing. Everything changes in
accord with karma, the unalterable law of cause and effect, which in In-
dian thought pertains to both the moral and physical universes. Karma
could be likened to a bank account; one makes deposits of good and bad
deeds and withdrawals consisting of good or bad fortune. Positive deeds
result in a more fortunate rebirth, as a human being, for example, while
negative deeds result in a less fortunate rebirth, as a hell-being, for exam-
ple. Countless numbers of sentient beings migrate continuously through
the various realms of samsara in accord with their karma. All Indian reli-
gions, including Buddhism, also teach that there is a way to undo this
66 her voice, her faith

eternal roaming. Buddha’s distinctive teachings, the Three Marks, the Four
Noble Truths, and Interdependence, deal with how to undo endless wan-
dering in samsara.
Because both the First Truth and the First Mark are about suffering,
Buddhism has often been accused of being a “pessimistic” religion. Bud-
dhists counter that this focus on suffering is not pessimistic but realistic.
But suffering is not regarded as the essential trait of existence, a mistaken
interpretation often made by those whose understanding of Buddhism is
superficial. Buddhists emphasize that it is conventional ways of living, based
on grasping and self-cherishing, that are inevitably permeated with suffer-
ing, not living itself. If grasping and ego-fixation are left behind, one will
experience contentment and bliss. Suffering is the byproduct of grasping,
which occurs only because of ignorance. Thus, the most important word
in the fundamental Buddhist analysis of existence is not “suffering,” but
“ignorance.” Ignorance of what? Ignorance of impermanence, of the lack
of a permanent abiding self, ignorance that there is no essence, soul, or en-
tity that endures through all the flux of experience. Because of this funda-
mental ignorance, which results in grasping for security and permanence
and for assurance that personal identity is everlasting, suffering occurs.
When it is fully realized that everything is impermanent, including per-
sonal identity, there is no grasping, and, hence, no suffering.
These Buddhist insights are most easily understood through thorough
contemplation of the Three Marks, or fundamental characteristics, of all
existence: impermanence, suffering, and egolessness. It is easiest to begin
with impermanence because impermanence is so undeniable and so obvi-
ous; everything is subject to “birth, old age, sickness, and death,” as a com-
mon Buddhist formula puts it. The fact of unending impermanence is
easily conceded intellectually, but resisted emotionally, psychologically, and
spiritually. Herein lies the genesis of suffering. Buddhists have never
claimed that there is no pleasure, contrary to popular caricatures of Bud-
dhism; instead, it is claimed that there is no permanent or lasting pleasure—
a critical difference.
This cycle of suffering caused by grasping for permanence despite
pervasive impermanence reaches its culmination in the thirst for personal
immortality, in the desire to find a permanent abiding self that survives
death or travels from one life to the next.The mark of egolessness, the lack
of any permanent abiding self, is one of the most difficult Buddhist asser-
 buddhism 67

tions to comprehend and assimilate; it goes completely against the grain of

habitual psychology and most religious teaching. Buddhism claims that if
we look carefully and dispassionately into our experience, we find only an
assemblage of various parts, not a coherent, unchanging whole. These
parts, called the Five Skandhas, are form (the body), feeling (pre-concep-
tual reactions of attraction, aversion, or indifference), perception, mental
formations (basic mental patterns), and consciousness. The last of these
five is most often taken to be the self, but it is easy to point out that con-
sciousness is exceedingly impermanent, lasting only a fraction of a second
and utterly irretrievable thereafter. Buddhists suggest that if one wants to
look for permanence in human experience, the body is more enduring
than any of the mental factors, but no one would pin their permanent en-
during self to their body, which so obviously changes and dies. To argue
even more pointedly, one might ask of the believer in personal immortal-
ity,“If you are immortal, tell me which one of you is going to be immor-
tal? The one you are now? The one you will be when you die? The one
you are at your best moment in life?”
According to Buddhism, it is not that we become egoless when we at-
tain enlightenment. Egolessness is the basic reality of our existence, but
unable to abide in that open expanse, we constantly try to create a self,
which continually falls apart, but which we, nevertheless, think needs pro-
tection. So we set aside territory for ourselves and defend it against others.
This cycle, unless broken by enlightenment, goes on forever. (Buddhists
do assume the continuity of karma in past and future lives despite the lack
of a permanent unchanging self.) To contemplate this claim thoroughly
will show that, if Buddhists are correct, all suffering, from the sting of be-
ing insulted to all-out warfare, is due to self-cherishing.
These same ideas are repeated, but also amplified, by the other most
basic Buddhist credo—the Four Noble Truths. The First Noble Truth is
that suffering is inevitable in conventional life—a life characterized by
self-cherishing.The Second Noble Truth is that suffering is caused by de-
sire, by grasping, clinging, compulsion, or addiction to self and to pleasure.
But, because suffering has a clearly identifiable cause—clinging—suffer-
ing ceases when its cause is abandoned.This is the Third Noble Truth, the
truth of cessation. Experienced as a gap in the rush of self-perpetuation, a
glimpse of unconditioned ease and contentment, Buddhist spiritual disci-
plines are about making this openness more familiar and more habitable,
68 her voice, her faith

until one rests there continuously. Nirvana and nibbana are the Sanskrit
and Pali terms applied to this state of egolessness.
The Fourth Noble Truth maps the path for the practitioner who
wants to quell the fires of self-cherishing and find contentment and peace
in unadorned, naked reality.The Eight-fold Noble Path consists of Right
View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood,
Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration. These eight
are often summarized as the practice of Wisdom, Morality, and Medita-
tion.They are the essentials of the Buddhist way of life.
Moral conduct is the basis upon which the rest of the path must be
built and consists of not harming other beings in so far as that is possible.
For example, Right Livelihood requires one not to engage in any occupa-
tion that causes harm to others—a precept that, if taken seriously, would
significantly impact how global capitalism is practiced. Right Action in-
volves basic commandments found in all religions, and Right Speech in-
volves avoiding many misuses of speech more subtle than out and out
lying—gossip and idle chatter, for example.
Although morality is universally expected of Buddhists, in traditional
settings, meditation is more often a specialty of the monastic community,
though lay meditation movements are now gaining strength. Its medita-
tion practices make Buddhism distinctive among world religions and at-
tractive to many Westerners. In most forms of Buddhism, meditation is
considered essential for attaining any level of realization, any stabilization
of the basic awake state beneath ego-grasping.There are many varieties of
meditation, and all meditation teachers stress that meditation is better
learned from a living teacher than from a book, but some generalities can
be provided.The student is first instructed to place the body in the correct
posture, usually an upright, cross-legged posture (though meditation can
be done in a chair). In meditation, the mind is given an object upon
which to stabilize, usually one’s breath. One is instructed to place one’s at-
tention on the object of meditation and to return to that object when the
focus is lost. Finally, meditation instruction involves knowing what to do
with the seemingly ceaseless thought process. Contrary to many peoples’
expectations, meditation is not about stopping thoughts, which is impossi-
ble, but about not being totally at the mercy of one’s willy-nilly thought
process. When thoughts occur, one returns to the object of meditation
rather than pursuing, judging, or entertaining the thought. Slowly, slowly,
 buddhism 69

the mind stabilizes and can stay put.The calming effect of this process can
be used for anything from simple relaxation for better health to providing
the basis for seeing the nature of ultimate reality.
Morality and meditation practice are the necessary prerequisites for
developing Wisdom (prajna). In Buddhist perspective, wisdom is not a
static body of knowledge to be memorized and recited, but genuine in-
sight into the nature of things. In the context of early Indian Buddhism,
prajna consists of tasting egolessness personally and knowing the peace of
mind that it brings, rather than simply providing flawless intellectual argu-
ments proving the truth of egolessness.
The final building block of early Buddhist teaching is Interdepen-
dence, the twelve links of pratityasamutpada, or the inexorability of cause
and effect. Once the cause has been activated, the result will inevitably
follow. This teaching is also about the possibility of reversing the process
of cause and effect, of shutting down the ever-turning wheel of samsara
by not activating the causes, by not making the leap from feeling to grasp-
ing. Most important, this teaching demonstrates that nothing in samsara
stands by itself, independent of the whole conditioning network of all
other phenomena. Everything is interdependent with everything else and
nothing is independent. In contemporary times, this teaching has been
used as the basis for a Buddhist environmental ethic and a global eco-
nomic and political ethic.
Clearly, these early, basic Buddhist teachings are gender neutral and
gender inclusive. Some feminists have claimed that the teachings about
ego and egolessness are irrelevant to women living under patriarchal con-
ditions because such women need “more ego” not “less ego.” But this
claim totally misses the Buddhist meaning of the terms often translated as
“ego” and “egolessness.” Egolessness has to do with an open-ended, non-
forceful, spontaneous way of being beyond our usual boundaries; ego has
to do with any style of being in the world, whether of self-aggrandize-
ment or of self-effacement, that blocks such freedom and openness. In
Buddhist terms, even a self-effacing victim has an ego—the ego of a self-
effacing victim—and the solution is not to develop “more ego,” as some
feminists would think, but to drop self-effacement in favor of true ego-
lessness.
On the other hand, these basic teachings contain a devastating cri-
tique of any system of gender hierarchy, including those perpetuated by
70 her voice, her faith

Buddhism throughout its long history. How can clinging to privileges

conferred by gender or concepts of what it means to be a woman or a
man be anything except the self-cherishing that basic Buddhist teachings
so thoroughly critique? The Buddha saw through the self-cherishing of
economic or racial caste privilege. But he let stand the self-cherishing in-
volved in fixed ideas about gender and the ways in which women were
limited by those fixed ideas.That a religion so thoroughly devoted to dis-
mantling conventional ego would be blind to the way in which fixed and
limiting ideas about gender reinforce ego is shocking.

B. Mahayana Buddhism
By five hundred years after the time of the Buddha, a new Buddhist
movement, calling itself Mahayana (Large Vehicle) Buddhism, became es-
tablished in India and was spreading to East Asia.This form of Buddhism
is (or was) dominant in China, Tibet, Japan, Korea, and North Vietnam.
Though historians would not accept the claim, Mahayana legends state
that the Buddha himself taught Mahayana doctrines, but arranged for
them to be hidden for five hundred years when he realized that most of
his followers did not have the spiritual development required to under-
stand these doctrines. Mahayanists take this legend quite seriously. The
beloved Heart Sutra is the text about which this story is told, and the
place where he gave this short discourse is a pilgrimage site.The meaning
behind the legends is more important in the long run; Mahayanists insist
that whether or not the historical Buddha taught the Mahayana, its inno-
vations are a logical outgrowth of the Buddha’s early teachings.
The central Mahayana innovations involve an ethical ideal—the bod-
hisattva path—and a series of philosophical proclamations—the Madhyamika
and Yogacara schools. Mahayana Buddhism also developed a new under-
standing of Buddhahood, the Trikaya (Three Bodies of Buddha) doctrine,
which led to the development of a vast pantheon of mythological Buddhas
and Bodhisattvas and profoundly affected Buddhist art, ritual, and popular re-
ligious practices.
The Bodhisattva is someone who vows to attain “complete perfect
enlightenment” for the sake of all sentient beings. Packed into that phrase
 buddhism 71

is an array of claims and aspirations.The Bodhisattva is not practicing pri-

marily to end future rebirths in samsara. According to early Buddhism,
once one fully overcame the causes of suffering—grasping and igno-
rance—one would not be reborn but would instead experience nirvana—
a state that Buddhists refused to define further. Mahayanists decried this
ideal as still based on self-cherishing, claiming that it would be more self-
less and compassionate for an Awakened One to remain in samsara, help-
ing those who do not understand why their lives are so pain filled and
unsatisfactory to discover the dharma.The Bodhisattva vows to remain in
samsara for as long as samsara lasts, for the sake of the peace and well-
being of all sentient beings. Furthermore, according to Mahayana Bud-
dhism, this resolve is in accord with basic human nature. Despite countless
lifetimes of ego-filled imprinting, humans still retain as their most basic
heritage, the longing (bodhicitta) to benefit beings, themselves included.
Thus compassion, a more active practice, comes to have the same impor-
tance in Buddhist ethics as does non-harming, the primary virtue of early
Buddhist ethics. In Mahayana thought, this Bodhisattva path became in-
credibly long, with many detailed stages of practice and realization.
Mahayana Buddhism claims to open the Buddhist sangha more
widely.Though monasticism continued to be central to all Mahayana Bud-
dhist societies, Mahayana social ethics proclaim that dharma is fully avail-
able to one and all, lay or monastic, male or female. These statements
suggest that the Indian Buddhist community had become rather male and
monk dominated, a supposition borne out by the many anti-women com-
ments that had become common in Buddhist writings. It is unclear if Ma-
hayana writings actually reflect a social reality that respected women and
lay people more highly or in which they had more opportunities, but
many Mahayana sutras center on a lay hero, and women and girls are often
represented as being more knowledgeable about dharma than their male
interlocutors. In many sutras, a female demonstrates her highly realized
state by changing instantaneously into a male. However, in one of the most
famous incidents, a woman instead changes her male taunter into a woman
and then asks him (now her) to find the essence of the femaleness that
would limit her ability to understand the dharma. (We will analyze this
story in depth in the concluding section.) Two thousand years ago, some
Mahayanists clearly recognized that one implication of Buddhism’s doc-
trine of egolessness is that, if there is no fixed personal self, then certainly
72 her voice, her faith

there can be no fixed female or male self that limits and determines what
men or women can or cannot do spiritually and intellectually.
Mahayana philosophical teachings have a similarly expansive quality.
Early Buddhist thought had focused on the lack of a personal self or soul
beneath the changing currents of karma. Mahayana teachings expand that
analysis to cover all phenomena with their doctrine of emptiness (shuny-
ata). Emptiness, Mahayanists point out, is not some mysterious vague non-
substance, but only the logical extension of the analysis that led early
Buddhists to posit egolessness.Things, thought of as entities or substances,
disappear under rigorous analysis, whether that analysis pertains to the self
or to the phenomenal world “outside” the self. Despite the potential that
its teachings, wrongly understood, could easily lead to nihilism, Mahayana
Buddhism posited universal emptiness. Mahayana thought fearlessly pro-
claims that nothing exists at all, if by “existence” we mean that something
is independent of causes and conditions, unchanging, and permanent.
Rather, everything really is interdependent with everything else, which
means nothing does or can exist in and of itself. Thus the most famous
line of the Heart Sutra, perhaps the most famous line of Mahayana Bud-
dhist thought proclaims,“Form is emptiness; emptiness is also form. Form
is no other than emptiness; emptiness is no other than form. In the same
way, feeling, perception, formation, and consciousness are empty.” Finally,
the Heart Sutra draws the ultimate logical, but scary conclusion.There is
“no suffering, no origin of suffering, no cessation of suffering, no path, no
wisdom, no attainment and no non-attainment.” No wonder Mahayana
legends say that when the historical Buddha proclaimed this sutra many of
his disciples had heart attacks, which is why he decided to keep these
teachings hidden until later. In the Buddhist context, such teachings were
not meant merely as abstract philosophical analyses.These teachings pro-
mote ultimate freedom from grasping and suffering. Religious people of-
ten cling fiercely to ideology, to religious “truths,” and such clinging
causes immense suffering. Therefore, even the most basic teachings of
Buddhism are said to be empty. Far from being depressing or nihilistically
promoting a lifestyle of “nothing matters, anything goes,” emptiness, prop-
erly contemplated, brings a sense of openness, freshness, ease, and appreci-
ation into life. It becomes the echo that puts every experience into
perspective.
 buddhism 73

Mahayana refinements of the meaning of emptiness were the speciality

of the Madhyamika school of thought. Almost as old as the Madhyamika
school is the Yogacara or “mind-only” school, which complements Mad-
hyamika by discussing how the mind and the phenomenal world work in
the context of emptiness. This school especially focuses on consciousness
and meditation practice. The Yogacara school minutely analyzes how the
eight consciousnesses create samsara when operating in their confused or
fixated mode, and how meditation practices can undo those distortions.
Equally important to this school is the reality that after one thoroughly
assimilates emptiness into one’s being and gives up making one’s self and
the world substantial, experience still continues. Emptiness is not a mere
negation or blank. Rather, an enlightened mind experiences without dis-
tortion or grasping.Yogacara explorations of “pure perception”—how an
empty perceiver perceives an empty world—are of central importance to
even later developments in Buddhist thought and practice in Vajrayana
Buddhism.
Many other ideas important to Mahayana Buddhism originated with
the Yogacarins. They first developed the idea of Trikaya—usually trans-
lated as the “Three Bodies of the Buddha,” but much less misleading if
understood as “three levels of Buddhahood.” As already mentioned, this
concept had major implications for Buddhist art and popular religion.Ac-
cording to this teaching, the historical Buddha was an instance of one
kind of Buddhahood (nirmanakaya), the kind that is a human being who
perfects the practice of the path and can serve other human beings as a
visible example of the possibility of liberation. He was not the first nor the
last such Buddha.Another level of Buddhahood could aptly be referred to
as “mythical Buddhas and Bodhisattvas” as the term “myth” is used in reli-
gious studies.These sambhogakaya beings are quite advanced on the path;
the Buddhas are already enlightened and have conjured their Buddha-
realms as a result of their infinite merit, whereas the Bodhisattvas (who
have taken the Bodhisattva vow) are well beyond the level of humans in
the six realms of samsara. These various beings are also visible, though to
most humans, they are visible only through art or visualization practices.
They personify the primary Mahayana virtues of wisdom and compas-
sion.And this is one of the places in which feminine imagery enters Bud-
dhist art and practice. Some of the most important and beloved
74 her voice, her faith

sambhogakaya Bodhisattvas are female—Prajnaparamita, Kwan-yin, and

Tara. Finally, there is the abstract dharmakaya level of Buddhahood. Im-
personal and all-pervading, this ultimate level of Buddhahood is synony-
mous with emptiness and suchness.
Another concept that originates with the Yogacara school is essential
for tying the whole vast project of the Mahayana together. Why would
human beings, so burdened with their samsara-filled lives, even aspire to
be concerned for other beings or to expend the money, time, and energy
that is required to practice the spiritual disciplines that lead to experienc-
ing emptiness? The answer is Buddha-nature (tathagatagarbha), the inher-
ent pull toward sane, compassionate living that Mahayana Buddhism
claims as the fundamental birthright of all existence. Without conviction
of that indwelling Buddhahood, very little else of the Mahayana Buddhist
project makes sense. And one can ask why, if that indwelling Buddhahood
pertains to the whole of existence, women have been treated as second-
class, inferior beings incapable of serious Buddhist practice in so many tra-
ditional Buddhist social settings.
Like earlier forms of Buddhism, Mahayana Buddhism spread beyond
India, first to China, eventually to Korea, and finally to Japan. Buddhism
probably made its way into China by the beginning of the common era,
spreading very slowly at first. China already had a highly developed liter-
ate culture and its own religious traditions of Taoism and Confucianism;
Buddhism did not seem to fill any gaps in Chinese culture or religion.
However, after 320 C.E., when northern China was overrun by invaders
and the Chinese court moved south, Buddhism began to flourish in both
parts of the divided kingdom. When China was reunited in 581, Bud-
dhism became one of the most important cultural forces in the new dy-
nasty.The next three hundred years represent the heyday of Buddhism in
China, the period when the great schools of Chinese Buddhism devel-
oped and when Buddhism was the dominant cultural and religious force.
Buddhist fortunes suffered a reversal in 842–845, when a rabidly anti-
Buddhist emperor tried to exterminate the religion by destroying temples
and shrines and forcing thousands of monks and nuns into lay life.
Though he did not succeed in wiping out Buddhism, the religion never
regained much influence among the elite classes, which returned to Tao-
ism and renewed Confucianism. Buddhism did remain significant as a
popular religion, however.
 buddhism 75

Once Buddhism became truly established in Chinese culture, Chinese

schools of Buddhism developed. The major Chinese innovation involved
forming separate schools from the many strands in the complex mosaic of
Indian Buddhism. Thus, Chinese schools of Buddhism were much more
specialized than their Indian predecessors had been.
One major tactic of Chinese Buddhist schools was systematizing the
great mass of sometimes mutually exclusive Buddhist teachings and texts
inherited from India. Called the “eclectic” schools, the T’ien T’ai and
Hua-yen movements divided the Buddha’s teaching career into stages and
correlated various important texts with different periods of his teaching
career. Why had the Buddha taught different things at different times?
Simple. He was a skilled teacher who knew how much his students could
assimilate without being overwhelmed, and he taught appropriately. Both
T’ien T’ai and Hua-yen selected a text claimed to be the Buddha’s defini-
tive teaching.
The Meditation School, better known by its Japanese name—Zen—
than its Chinese name—Ch’an—is a second specialization in Chinese
Buddhism.This school, founded by Bodhidharma (470–520), a semi-leg-
endary Indian meditation master, is famous for its paradoxical questions,
for innovative teaching techniques, and for insistence on direct experience
of emptiness over philosophical knowledge of the treatises on emptiness.
This school also stresses that each being is fundamentally Buddha, but
must awaken to that fact. Meditation is regarded as the most effective
method to promote that goal.
Finally, devotional Buddhism, Pure Land Buddhism, became an impor-
tant part of Chinese popular religion.This is a Buddhism of “other power,”
not “self power,” the “other power being Buddha Amitabha,” an already en-
lightened Buddha whose Buddha-field is called the Western paradise. His
Bodhisattva vow included the aspiration, after becoming enlightened, to
use his great store of merit to create a “Pure Land” into which rebirth
would be easy, requiring only devoted chanting of Amitabha’s name, and in
which reaching enlightenment would be easy. Furthermore, there would
be no unfortunate rebirths in this Pure Land. As a result, all who were re-
born there would be reborn as males; female rebirth was thought to be un-
fortunate, an idea to be discussed later in depth.
As in Sri Lanka, monastic institutions for both men and women were in-
troduced relatively early. Because monks cannot confer monastic ordination
76 her voice, her faith

on women by themselves, it was necessary to bring Buddhist nuns from

abroad for the first ordinations. In 429 and 433, nuns from Sri Lanka traveled
to China to help ordain thousands of Chinese nuns.This ordination lineage,
unbroken to the present day, is important for attempts to renew nuns’ ordina-
tion in Buddhist traditions that have lost it.Today, in Chinese communities
outside mainland China, the nuns’ orders are flourishing, with many more
women than men currently being ordained as monastics.
The Chinese practice of not demanding exclusive loyalty to one reli-
gion led to an interesting practice among elite classes.Traditional Chinese
mores dictated strict separation between men and women; men ran the
public world and women dominated private realms. After 845, Chinese
men of the elite classes were overwhelmingly trained in Confucian classics
and were taught to reject Buddhism. But women from these same classes
often became ardent Buddhists; that religion offered them much more
than did male-dominated Confucianism. These women were often espe-
cially devoted to Kwan-yin, the female personification of compassion.
Buddhism spread from China to Korea in the fourth century, where
its story is quite similar. It spread very slowly at first, became quite domi-
nant in the period 935–1392, and then was repressed by the government
for the next five centuries.The Meditation School became the dominant
form of Buddhism in Korea. Interestingly, despite repression of Korean
Buddhism for many centuries, the Korean nuns’ order survives to the
present day. Chinese influence was also significant in Vietnam, especially
North Vietnam. Again, the Meditation School is the most important
school, and the nuns’ ordination lineages are still alive.
Though Japanese Buddhism also came from China, initially by way of
Korea, distinctive forms of Buddhism developed there. Buddhism did not
enter Japan until 552 C.E.; it came as part of a diplomatic gift from a Ko-
rean king, who highly recommended Buddhism to the Japanese court as a
religion that, if practiced, would safeguard the Japanese nation. A major
Japanese clan immediately sought to implement the Buddhist practice, in-
cluding making arrangements for Japanese monks and nuns to be or-
dained. When a plague broke out, Buddhist practice was forcibly
discontinued. But when that did not quell the plague, Buddhists were al-
lowed to resume their practice. During the regency of Prince Shotoku
(573–622), Buddhism became well established.
 buddhism 77

Two themes predominate in Japanese Buddhism. First, Buddhism de-

veloped a complementary relationship with the indigenous Shinto tradi-
tions, which meant that the constant tension between indigenous and
imported traditions so destructive to Chinese Buddhism was significantly
mitigated. Today, most Japanese people would accept the slogan “Born
Shinto, die Buddhist.” Buddhism has become the religion dealing with
death and ancestorhood—predominant concerns in Japanese religion. As
such, it has a place in the lives of most Japanese, even if they do not regu-
larly practice Buddhist disciplines. Second, distinctive Japanese schools of
Buddhism developed, usually with some initial impetus from Japanese
who had studied in China. The first major development occurred when
Saicho (767–822), a monk fleeing corruption at established Buddhist cen-
ters in Nara, founded a new monastery on Mount Hei, northwest of Ky-
oto, the new capital. Saicho returned from advanced studies in China as
the major Japanese promoter of T’ien T’ai, or Tendai in Japanese.This sect
flourishes to the present day, and newer movements in Japanese Buddhism
frequently sprang from it.The common practice of banning women from
Japan’s holy mountains, not lifted until the nineteenth century, began at
this time. Its purpose was to ensure monks’ celibacy, but its effect was to
popularize beliefs that women are spiritually inferior, polluting, and per-
petrate lack of celibacy among monks.
Shingon Buddhism, the Japanese form of Tantric Buddhism (to be
discussed in the next section), was also introduced at this time. Kukai
(774–835), one of the most brilliant, prolific, and beloved Japanese Bud-
dhist teachers, went to China the same year as Saicho (804), but he found
the ultimate teachings of the Buddha in Tantric Buddhism. (Tantric Bud-
dhism existed in China at that time, but soon died out there.) He came
back to Japan to found his monastery on Mount Koya, southwest of Ky-
oto and much more remote.2 Though prolific as a scholar, he was also a
religious pilgrim and helped make religious pilgrimage an important
practice in Japan.
Political changes in Japan in 1185 led to the next period of creative
development in Japanese Buddhism. During this period, the final three
most important movements in Japanese Buddhism—Zen, Pure Land, and
Nichiren—developed. All three schools were founded by monks who be-
gan their training on Mount Hei, became disillusioned by the rampant
78 her voice, her faith

corruption that had developed there and left to start three very different
reform movements.
Though he did not found the first Zen temple in Japan, the most fa-
mous and important person in the development of Japanese Zen is Dogen
(1200–1253). Orphaned at the age of seven, he resolved to become a
monk when the reality of impermanence impressed him deeply as he
watched incense smoke rising at his mother’s funeral. At the age of four-
teen he was ordained on Mount Hei and quickly mastered everything
they taught but still felt that his quest for understanding was incomplete.
He could find no one in Japan to answer his questions, so in 1223, he left
for China. Finally he found a Ch’an master whom he trusted and began
intensive Ch’an practice. After experiencing the Awakening so central to
Zen practice, which he called “the dropping away of body and mind,” he
returned to Japan in 1227 and began to teach Zen. Eventually, he was
forced to move to Eihei-ji, the remote site that is still a principle training
monastery of Soto Zen Buddhism.3 Dogen, one of Japan’s most important
Buddhist thinkers, wrote eloquently of the spiritual equality of women
and men, even suggesting that monks should become the disciples of nuns
who were already awakened.This advice was largely ignored, however.
The basis for Pure Land teachings has already been discussed. However,
in Japan, this school became more distinct than it was in China and made
important innovations in Japanese religious life. The practice of reciting
Amitabha’s name far predates the development of Pure Land as a separate
school. It is part of Tendai practice and popular Buddhism in general. But in
Pure Land Buddhism, it is to be one’s only practice; nothing else is neces-
sary, and it is even presumptuous to think that one’s own study, meditation,
or merit-making could save one. It is necessary only to have faith in the Pri-
mal Vow of Amida (already discussed) and recite his name in utter faith and
devotion.Two men who were once monks on Mount Hei were prominent
in establishing Pure Land as a distinct school: Honen (1133–1212) and
Shinran (1173–1262). Of the two, Shinran’s innovations were more decisive.
After many years of frustration with celibacy, he experienced a vision of
Kannon (Kwan-yin) telling him he should marry and that she would help
him in his new ministry.After he married, he refused to become an ordinary
lay practitioner. He continued to teach and preach, claiming that all Pure
Land practitioners are “neither monk nor lay.” Some centuries later, Shin-
ran’s innovations became standard Japanese practice in all denominations.
 buddhism 79

Japanese Buddhist priests usually undergo a period of monastic training, af-

ter which they return to serve a local temple inherited from their fathers,
expecting their sons to succeed them eventually. Many would consider Pure
Land Buddhism to be the prototypically Japanese form of Buddhism.
Finally, the Nichiren denomination was founded by Nichiren
(1222–1282). He too initially studied on Mount Hei but broke with the
Tendai school. He taught that the Lotus Sutra alone should be regarded as
Buddha’s true teaching, whereas Tendai Buddhism studies and respects
many other sutras, even though the Lotus Sutra is regarded as the Bud-
dha’s ultimate teaching. Nichiren also taught his followers to recite the
phrase “Homage to the Lotus Sutra” as their major religious practice.
Nichiren taught that this form of Buddhism alone is true and that all
other forms should be prohibited. He predicted that Japan would become
a Buddha-land on earth, from which true Buddhism would spread over
the entire world if his recommendations were followed. These views
brought him opposition, and he was exiled and almost executed. His sect
survived, however, and in the twentieth century has given rise to one of
the most successful “new religions” of Japan.
Apparently, there have always been Japanese nuns, even though a nun’s
ordination in accord with the ancient Indian monastic rules has never
been performed in Japan. However, men’s ordination in accord with those
ancient rules also died out, making the lack of formal women’s ordination
much less problematic. In Japan, ordination ceremonies and vows are
identical for men and women, though it is said that nuns usually keep the
precepts more strictly than monks.They usually do not marry or drink al-
cohol, whereas monks usually do. Nuns can and do head temples and per-
form all the ceremonies of their tradition, but they have a harder time
getting the economic support required to maintain a temple. In addition,
priests’ wives live in the temples with their husbands and can be involved
in many temple activities.

C: Vajrayana Buddhism
Meanwhile, back in India, Buddhism was still developing, as Vajrayana or
Tantric Buddhism slowly emerged. Some would argue that this is the
80 her voice, her faith

most “feminine” form of Buddhism. Certainly it has more overtly positive

female symbolism than any other form of Buddhism. Its history also
records significant numbers of highly revered women, though many more
men than women are remembered. Many essential Tantric teachings and
practices are secret, to be revealed only to qualified students, making it the
most difficult form of Buddhism to study accurately.Vajrayana portrays a
world that seems so imaginary and yet unimaginable, a world that makes
little sense in a rational context. The Vajrayana mythical universe is ex-
ceedingly full, well beyond that of Mahayana Buddhism; every imaginable
kind of being resides there. Vajrayana is a fanciful and fantastic world,
dense with symbolism.The key to that symbolism, conferred in initiation
and the practices that follow initiation, makes the Vajrayana world make
sense.Without that key, one could easily be quite lost.
The first step to accurate understanding of Vajrayana Buddhism is re-
membering that it exists in the context of Mahayana Buddhism. Every
Vajrayana ceremony begins with renewing the Bodhisattva vow to be-
come enlightened for the sake of all sentient beings and ends with dedi-
cating to all sentient beings the merit earned by doing the ceremony.The
belief system of Vajrayana Buddhism is almost identical with that of Ma-
hayana Buddhism. It is often said that the point of Vajrayana Buddhism is
to speed up one’s progress on the Bodhisattva path, which is eons long in
the Mahayana view. What distinguishes Vajrayana is its symbolism and its
meditation-rituals, both of which are significantly different from anything
found anywhere else in the Buddhist world. Both can be shocking and in-
comprehensible to outsiders, and Vajrayana Buddhism is often viewed
negatively, both in other parts of the Buddhist world and by Western
scholars. However, the prestige of the Dalai Lama, frequent visits to the
West by Tibetan teachers, and a recent outpouring of accurate books on
Vajrayana Buddhism have changed this stereotype considerably.
Without a doubt, Tantric Buddhism is best known for its use of ex-
plicit sexual symbolism, but uninitiated voyeurs usually draw wildly inac-
curate conclusions about “tantric sex.” Graphic sexual symbolism is
central to all forms of Vajrayana Buddhism. Practices in which one visual-
izes oneself as deities in sexual union are common. Physical sexuality has
been used as practice in Vajrayana Buddhism. But it is an advanced secret
practice that is incomprehensible outside the complete context of
Vajrayana.The sexual symbolism that so piques the curiosity of outsiders is
 buddhism 81

quite straightforward. The feminine principle represents Wisdom while

the masculine principle represents Compassion. Their union represents
the inseparability of Wisdom and Compassion, which need to be devel-
oped equally.Their twoness represents duality—always the mistaken con-
ventional understanding of things that cause all suffering, but their
oneness as a couple transcends that duality into non-duality, reality as it is.
However, non-duality is not monism. Oneness does not mean that dis-
tinctiveness disappears into a bland gray expanse. Rather, this is what
scholars of religion call “two-in-one” symbolism—a flash of insight that is
actually impossible to put into words, but which is communicated quite
well by this central Vajrayana symbolism of dyadic unity. Sexual union is
only the most obvious symbol for such dyadic unity, which Vajrayana
Buddhism claims is found in all facets of experience.
Vajrayana meditation is also different from other forms of Buddhist
meditation. The quiet sitting that most people associate with Buddhist
meditation is basic in Vajrayana. In addition more colorful forms of medi-
tation have developed. They include chanting and a ritual orchestra. As
they chant, the meditators are visualizing—a meditation technique that is
omnipresent in Vajrayana Buddhism.When the chanting stops, usually the
meditators pick up a mala (a string of beads with which one can keep
count of the numbers of recitations) and begin to recite mantras. Mantras,
also common in Hinduism, are short, non-rational formulae that invoke
the essential meaning and power of the deity being visualized. Finally, this
form of meditation involves ritual implements and various gestures (mu-
dras). The two hands hold two primary ritual implements, a bell and a
scepter.The bell held in the left hand is feminine Wisdom and the scepter
is masculine Compassion; when the hands cross in a mudra, that represents
union.
The origins of Vajrayana Buddhism are difficult to ascertain. As with
Mahayana Buddhism, Vajrayana legends say that the historical Buddha
himself taught Vajrayana, but only to a select group of students, who passed
it down their lineage until the times were right for Vajrayana to be more
widely disseminated. Some legends say Buddha taught Vajrayana Bud-
dhism at some point after his enlightenment experience, but others say
that Buddha was actually enlightened through Vajrayana methods before his
experiences under the Bodhi Tree. He then displayed his renunciation,
battle with Mara, and enlightenment at Bodhgaya because he realized that
82 her voice, her faith

that was the only example with which most people could relate. Some ac-
counts even state that he became enlightened while still living in the
palace, as he engaged in ritual sexual intercourse with his wife. Why
would such legends be important to Vajrayana Buddhists? Like Mahayana
stories, they make the essential point that these practices are not innova-
tions, but the full unfolding of the implications of the Buddha’s teachings.
No form of Vajrayana Buddhism has ever taught that Vajrayana can stand
alone.
Historians, who do not accept these legends, find evidence that some
form of Vajrayana Buddhism existed by the second century C.E. The so-
called lower Tantras were being committed to writing by the sixth cen-
tury, while the so-called higher Tantras, the ones usually practiced in
contemporary Vajrayana Buddhism, only began to be written down in the
eighth century. Vajrayana Buddhism undoubtedly began as a radical lay
movement that included women and all social strata, from the most to the
least respected. The movement was radical also in its rituals, deliberately
flaunting well-established Indian religious practices such as not eating
meat or drinking liquor. Practitioners are said to have met in charnel
grounds and other ritually impure places, where they included sexuality in
their repertoire of religious methods, sometimes claiming that sexual ex-
perience is necessary to the experience of realization. Most scholars sug-
gest that the Buddhist Tantric movement borrowed heavily from
Hinduism.Vajrayana Buddhists stress that the two Tantric movements may
look similar but are fundamentally different. Nevertheless, the influence of
Hinduism on Tantric Buddhism is undeniable to anyone who knows both
traditions.
A major figure in the early development of this movement was
Princess Lakshminkara, who led a Tantric circle of male and female disci-
ples from all levels of society. Married off into an unsatisfactory marriage,
she finally escaped by feigning insanity and took refuge in a cremation
ground where she meditated. As is typical for Tantric legends about im-
portant founders, she had visions of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and
was initiated personally by them. She then returned to her homeland to
present the teachings they had given her. Soon similar circles were wide-
spread and by the eleventh century many Siddhas (accomplished ones)
wandered through India. A collection of legends about eighty-four espe-
cially prominent Siddhas is still important to Tantric practitioners. By the
 buddhism 83

eleventh century, most Siddhas upon whom the legends focus were men.
Most of them practiced with a female companion who is not portrayed as
a mere ritual implement. Usually the story ends when they go together to
the “realm of the dakinis”; one does get to the realm of the dakinis on the
basis of someone else’s achievements. This phrase is further evidence of
the importance of females—both mythical and human—in Vajrayana
Buddhism. Dakinis are enlightened female energies; the term is used for
both humans and those who rule the “realm of the dakinis,” a celestial
realm that figures in many Vajrayana legends. Most important, most male
Vajrayana leaders of this early period were initiated by females, sometimes
human, sometimes celestial.
In its last flourish of glory before dying out in India, Buddhism gave
rise to great monastic universities, the most famous being Nalanda. The
curriculum focused on complex and subtle systems of Mahayana philoso-
phy while the discipline was strictly monastic. Wandering lay Yogins (an-
other common term for Siddhas), who often viewed scholarly learning as
an impediment to realization and practiced sexual yoga, had no place in
these universities. Nevertheless, the popularity and profundity of Va-
jrayana Buddhism eventually led to syntheses between the monastic cur-
riculum and the most esoteric and flagrantly sexual Tantric texts. Scholars
claim that in the context of monastic Vajrayana Buddhism, the practice of
visualizing sexual union was substituted for the real thing, because monks
could not engage in literal sex. It is also claimed that for a good meditator,
there would be no difference between the two. If sexuality was not sur-
rounded by deep and profound symbolism before this development (and I
suspect it was), such symbolism certainly developed in this context and
continues in the contemporary practice of Vajrayana.
This tension and synthesis between yogic and monastic Vajrayana Bud-
dhism, the last development within Indian Buddhism, was being taken to
Tibet at this time, just ahead of Muslim invaders who burned Nalanda
University and assured the demise of Buddhism in India. This form of
Buddhism became the lifeblood of Tibetan culture until the mid-twentieth
century when China took over Tibet and curtailed Buddhist practice.
Buddhism first came to Tibet with the Chinese and Nepali co-wives
of an early king. But Buddhism gained only a toehold at this time. In the
eighth century, Buddhism become more firmly established when Tibet’s
first monastery, Samye, was built in Lhasa.The story demonstrates well the
84 her voice, her faith

synthesis of monastic and yogic Buddhism typical of Tibet. A great Indian

scholar from Nalanda University, Shantarakshita, was invited to preside
over building the monastery, but natural disasters, attributed by the local
population to the displeasure of local deities, occurred and construction
was stopped. Shantarakshita went back to India, sending in his place the
famous Indian Siddha Padmasambhava to tame the local deities.This plan
worked; Padmasambhava subdued the hostile local deities and construc-
tion was completed.
Up to this point Tibetan accounts of what happened and accounts by
Western historians agree; after this point they diverge radically. According
to Western accounts, Padmasambhava stayed in Tibet only a few years and
was forced to leave Tibet due to the court’s displeasure. Tibetan accounts
are vastly different; Padmasambhava is magnified into one of the most im-
portant figures in the history of Tibetan Buddhism, a second Buddha,
who introduced numerous Vajrayana initiations and practices into Tibet,
gained twenty-five major disciples, composed and buried many hidden
“treasure texts” (terma) to be discovered later when needed, and lived in
Tibet for many years before his body ascended into the light.Tibetan sto-
ries about Guru Rinpoche (his Tibetan name) also tell of his foremost stu-
dent and consort,Yeshe Tsogyel.According to lengthy accounts of her life,
she is as remarkable as he is. She is rarely mentioned in Western historical
accounts of early Tibetan Buddhism, but Tibetans could not imagine
telling the story of Guru Rinpoche while omitting that of Yeshe Tsogyel.
If there is no historical woman behind these texts, it is remarkable that Ti-
betans would have developed such rich stories about her.
Whichever story is told, both agree that this was the “first propaga-
tion.” In the ninth century, the growing power and influence of Buddhist
monasteries led the king to try to limit their power. In the power struggle
that ensued, the king was assassinated by a monk and political chaos re-
sulted. The monasteries were deserted. For a period of about a hundred
years, some Buddhists continued to practice, but with little cohesiveness
or organization.
The “second propagation” began with a familiar theme; the great In-
dian scholar Atisha (982–1054) was invited from an Indian university to
rejuvenate Buddhism. He and his Tibetan students founded the Kadam
monastic order, a strict scholastic order important in the later develop-
 buddhism 85

ment of Tibetan Buddhism. From this time until the end of Indian Bud-
dhism, there was a good deal of traffic between Tibet and India.The traf-
fic went both ways; Indians came to Tibet to teach, and Tibetans went to
India in search of teachings.Two Tibetans are especially important because
the texts and practices they brought back quickly generated two of the
four main orders of Tibetan Buddhism. Drokmi’s (972–1074) texts and
teachings eventually became the basis of the Sakya order and Marpa’s
(1012–1096) of the Kagyu order.
Marpa’s primary student, Milarepa (1040–1123) is one of Tibet’s
most beloved figures, rivaling Padmasambhava in popularity. His story is
striking. As a young man he successfully learned black magic and totally
destroyed the household of his uncle, who had usurped Milarepa’s
mother’s property. He realized that killing so many people, for any rea-
son, would bring very bad karma. Only expiating the bad karma during
this life and then attaining realization would avert this fate. His quest for
a competent teacher took him to Marpa, but instead of immediately
granting him initiation, Marpa subjected Milarepa to hard labor for six
years. These stories are among the most often retold by Tibetan Bud-
dhists. Milarepa was at the point of suicide several times before Marpa fi-
nally granted him initiations and sent him off to practice in remote caves
high in the mountains. (Long solitary retreats in remote caves became an
important practice in Tibetan Buddhism.) He survived on nettles, turned
green, and almost died of starvation, but he persevered. A gifted poet, he
wrote many poems about meditation and the state of realization. Col-
lected as the Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa, they are among the
beloved Tibetan literature.
Eventually, Milarepa became famous as a highly realized Yogin and at-
tracted many students. His principal student, Gampopa (1079–1154) was a
Kadam monk before he became Milarepa’s student. As Milarepa’s student,
he studied Tantric teachings going back to Naropa through Marpa. Gam-
popa, who held both the scholastic and the yogic lineages, is the founder of
the Kagyu order, which includes both monastics and Yogins. The third of
the four orders, the Nyingma (Old Order) was systematized at this point. It
stems from lay practitioners who claimed to have retained the practices and
teachings of the first propagation.Therefore, they claim Padmasambhava as
their founder. In this order celibacy is not especially promoted and most
86 her voice, her faith

of its great adepts had wives or consorts, a practice that continues to the
present day.
To complete the story, the last major player to enter the scene was the
Gelug order, founded by Tsongkhapa (1357–1419), one of Tibet’s greatest
philosophical minds and author of many treatises on emptiness. He was a
reformer; by then many monks had wives or consorts and he was dis-
gusted with what he saw as lack of respect for Buddhist ethical principles.
Because he was ordained as a Kadam monk, the Gelug order combines
the Kadam school’s strict discipline with rigorous study of teachings on
emptiness.Today the Gelug school is best known for its spiritual head, the
Dalai Lama, Tibet’s most famous Tulku. The uniquely Tibetan practice of
finding young boys said to be incarnations (Tulkus) of recently deceased
masters and training them from early childhood to fill that role was well
in place by the time of Tsongkhapa, declared later to be the third Dalai
Lama.
The period of the second propagation included one important
woman teacher, Machig Labdron (1055–1145).Though she did not found
her own lineage, she discovered a uniquely Tantric practice, chod (cut-
ting). In this practice, done alone at night in frightening places, meditators
visualize themselves being cut to pieces as an offering to needy hungry
sentient beings.The purpose of the practice is a radical cutting off of any
remaining ego clinging. Chod is said to be the only practice that origi-
nated in Tibet and was later taken to India, reversing the usual flow of
teachings. Several versions of Machig’s story can be found, but all agree
that for a time, she took a consort and had several children.
As for less renowned women, the four Tibetan orders included
monastic institutions for women. The nuns’ full ordination did not reach
Tibet, but the novice ordination did. Because the clothing worn by Ti-
betan novices is not noticeably different from that of fully ordained
monastics, lack of full ordination for nuns is nowhere nearly as apparent as
in Theravada Buddhist countries. As in most other parts of the Buddhist
world, the support, respect, and training given to nuns was inferior to that
given monks. But the tradition of solitary yogic practice also was available
to women; in these situations, women were more on a par with men, and
advanced, skilled women meditators were respected and could be sought
out as teachers, though usually people studied with male Yogins. Finally,
the mothers of Tulkus were highly respected and treated very well.
 buddhism 87

II: IS BUDDHISM MISOGYNIST OR PRO-WOMEN,

NEITHER, OR BOTH?: THE PROBLEMS AND
POLITICS OF INTERPRETATION

Having surveyed the historical and intellectual development of Buddhism,

we are now in a position to discuss the problems and politics of interpret-
ing what Buddhism actually says about gender. In the contemporary
world, religions usually claim they treat women well. Because the treat-
ment of women has become a highly contested issue, no religion declares
that it mistreats women or wants to be perceived as if it did. But claims are
made about every religion, by both insiders and outsiders, that its women
face real obstacles and difficulties. Often the same religious phenomenon
is evaluated both as an obstacle to women and as evidence that their tradi-
tion has their best interests at heart. Or it may be claimed that a specific
practice has nothing to do with intentionally obstructing women, that
given nature and biology, no alternatives are possible. Claims about
whether a religion treats women well or poorly depend upon the values
and perceptions of those making the claims. Thus, the often-asked ques-
tion of whether Buddhism is good or bad for women has no real answer.
In this section, we will examine several important Buddhist teachings,
texts, or practices that affect women directly, and explore in more depth
what are the limits and the possibilities of the Buddhist tradition.

A: The Woes of Female Rebirth

Most Buddhists throughout history probably believed that it is “bad
karma” to be reborn a woman. But what does this mean?
We have already emphasized that the Buddha accepted pan-Indian
ideas of karma and samsara without question. For traditional Buddhists,
the question is not whether rebirth occurs but how it works. Good con-
duct produces fortunate rebirths and negative deeds unfortunate ones. So
the statement that it is bad karma to be reborn as a woman contains two
assumptions. First, to be a woman is less fortunate than to be a man. Sec-
ond, this less fortunate rebirth is due to negative deeds in past lives.
88 her voice, her faith

When most people, especially women, not already familiar with this
statement first hear it, they regard it as a very hurtful, negative statement
about women. Many hear it as meaning that something is fundamentally
wrong with women. Anger or frustration, especially on the part of people
personally interested in Buddhism, is common.The statement seems to be
in accord with the generalization that Buddhism favors men over women.
But what is claimed? What makes female rebirth woeful? Is there
something wrong with women, or is there something wrong with the
cultural conditions under which women are forced to live? Are women
bad? Or do women have difficult lives? If they have difficult lives, is that be-
cause of inherent female biology, or because of the social context within
which they live? All these possibilities have been proposed in Buddhist
texts.
Definitely, female rebirth was sometimes thought to be negative be-
cause women were thought to be inferior. Common Indian stereotypes
persisting to this day expect women not to be interested in spiritual mat-
ters, to be more materialistic, and definitely more lustful than men. In the
Buddhist value system, this means women are inferior beings. Both
women’s bodies and women’s minds were said to be inadequate and de-
fective. Diana Y. Paul, quotes The Sutra on Changing the Female Sex. The
Buddha is speaking:

The female’s defects—greed, hate, and delusion and other defile-

ments—are greater
than the male’s . . .You [women] therefore should have such an in-
tention. . . . Because
I wish to be freed from the impurities of the woman’s body, I will
acquire the
beautiful and fresh body of a man.4

Because of supposed inherent inferiority of women, it was claimed

the Buddha would never be a woman, nor could a woman become a
Buddha while in her woman’s body. Asanga, an important Mahayana
thinker, explained why.“All women are by nature full of defilement and of
weak intelligence. And not by one who is full of defilement and of weak
intelligence is completely perfected Buddhahood attained.”5
 buddhism 89

However, the dominant view is, not that women are bad, but that
women are unfortunate. These misfortunes were classified as the “five
woes” and the “three subserviences.” The five woes are “that she must
leave her family at marriage; that she must suffer the pain of menstruation,
pregnancy, and childbirth; and that she must always work hard taking care
of her husband.”6 The “three subserviences” were common to both Indian
and Chinese culture. A woman was never to be independent; she must al-
ways be subservient to some man: in youth, her father, in maturity, her
husband, and in old age, her son. Both these lists concede that part of what
makes a woman’s life so difficult is male dominance, not womanhood itself.
This insight did not need to wait for twentieth century feminism; the an-
cient Buddhist idea of the misfortune attending female rebirth includes
that assessment. Concerning the evaluations that female physiology is
woeful, these assessments were made by men; many women might not
agree that menstruation, pregnancy, and childbirth are always woeful.
An unsentimental portrayal of women’s lives in societies that pro-
duced this assessment of the woes of female rebirth could hardly draw any
other conclusion. Married off young and without birth control, women
experienced numerous pregnancies that often ended with a dead infant or
young child. Infant mortality rates were high and so were maternal death
rates. Upper-class women lived among many co-wives and mistresses,
while lower-class women worked very hard at the family occupation.
Daughters were less welcome than sons, were not educated, and were
taught that they were morally weak and without spiritual potential. Men
always controlled them.The physical difficulties of their lives were proba-
bly unavoidable, given the technology of that time. But the cultural and
social negativities added to their physical difficulties would make life truly
unbearable. Merely living in a society with cultural stereotypes of women
as inherently “full of defilement and of weak intelligence” would make
life woeful.
Because Buddhism emphasizes compassion, the Buddhist religion
sought to ameliorate the pain of women’s existence. But ancient Bud-
dhism saw no way of doing so within this lifetime. Rather, to experience a
better life, women needed to be reborn as men and this need was ad-
dressed. How? Women needed to fulfill the obligations put upon them in
this life as women and be careful about their moral conduct. Religious
90 her voice, her faith

piety and devotion were also means to that goal, and in some cases,
women were given specific practices that would promote male rebirth.
Most important, however, was the compassion of various mythic Buddhas
and Bodhisattvas who took care that in their Buddha-lands, women’s con-
ditions would be unwoeful. Amida’s Primal Vow, so important to Pure
Land Buddhism, was the most famous such promise. In his vow he aspires
that in the paradise he creates after he is enlightened, women could be
free of female rebirth.

Blessed One, may I not awaken to unsurpassable, perfect full

awakening if,
after I attain awakening it is the case that women in measureless,
countless,
inconceivable, incomparable, and limitless Buddha-fields in all
regions of universe
upon hearing my name have serene thoughts of faith, generate in
the mind the
aspiration to attain awakening, feel disgust at their female nature and
yet are reborn
again as women when they leave their present birth.7

It is common for male-dominant religions to regard male dominance

positively, to claim that it improves not only men’s but also women’s lives.
But classical Buddhism already contains a “feminist” position concerning
the value of male dominance, recognizing that male dominance is one of
the conditions that make women’s lives woeful. Western Buddhists have
added another suggestion to the problem of solving the woes of female
rebirth.Western Buddhists are uncomfortable, not with the judgment that
women’s lives under present circumstances are woeful, but with the tradi-
tional solution to that problem. Instead of changing females into males in
the future, why not change the predominant condition that make female
rebirth woeful in the present, male dominance?
By looking closely, we see how subtle a seemingly simple statement
can be.We also see how a statement that first strikes most people as nega-
tive toward women can be quite the opposite—a powerful tool for cri-
tiquing the system that makes women’s lives more difficult than they need
to be because of a social system that favors men over women.
 buddhism 91

B: Monasticism: Does It Help or Hinder Women?

Throughout Buddhist history, the monastic lifestyle was regarded as the
most appropriate, if not the only possible way to pursue serious Bud-
dhist practice.The curriculum of practice and study required for signifi-
cant progress toward liberation requires time commitments unavailable
to lay people busy with family and careers.The one-pointed, serene state
of mind needed to pursue that curriculum is more easily attained in the
disciplined environment of a monastery than anywhere else. For those
with families and careers to worry about, distractions abound, and dis-
traction is the opposite state of mind from one-pointed calmness.These
values developed in ancient India, where they were not unique to Bud-
dhism, but they have been transferred to every culture to which Bud-
dhism has spread. (They were significantly modified in Japan, and it
remains to be seen whether monasticism becomes common in Western
Buddhism.)
The virtues of the monastic lifestyle are not readily apparent to many
contemporary people. Many think that monasticism involves self-denial,
and that monks and nuns regard sexuality and ordinary economic activi-
ties as “bad” and monasticism as morally superior. Many claim that the
lifestyle would be extremely uncomfortable and unpleasant, and that
celibacy would be the most unpleasant aspect of monasticism. (Many
monastics do not regard celibacy as a great deprivation.) Why would any-
one do this to themselves, many have often wondered!
In Western cultures, women thinking about what it would be like to
be a nun are especially quick to dismiss the values of that lifestyle. They
remark that because monastics don’t have sex, they must be hostile to
women. They can easily fuel their case with numerous misogynistic
quotes from male monastics, both Christian and Buddhist. They often
claim that abolishing monasticism improves women’s status and that
women have higher status in religions that do not include monasticism.
Both assertions are questionable. Buddhist nuns have not fared as well as
Buddhist monks in any period of Buddhist history, though in contempo-
rary Taiwan, that generalization is being tested. It is more important, how-
ever, to consider nuns in comparison to laywomen, not in comparison to
monks, and to ask what women’s lives in traditional cultures are like with
and without the monastic option.
92 her voice, her faith

A negative side effect of some monasticism is virulently misogynist at-

titudes. Men experiencing difficulties with celibacy, or even monks expe-
riencing sexual arousal but not tempted to break their vows, often project
their sexual feelings and desires onto women, who are then blamed for
arousing them. Their logic seems to be “if it weren’t for women, I
wouldn’t feel this way—it’s their fault.” The Buddha said that nothing is
“so enticing, so desirable, so intoxicating, so binding, so distracting . . .
such a hindrance to winning the unsurpassed peace as a woman’s form.”8
(He also said the same about women’s attraction to men.)
To counteract enticement provided by their form, women are vilified.
An early Buddhist monk who saw a dancing girl while seeking alms pro-
claimed,“I had gone into town for alms and was going along when I saw
her—ornamented, nicely dressed, laid out like a snare of Mara.”9 Buddha
says to a monk who had sexual intercourse with his former wife only to
beget an heir for his parents:

It would have been better, confused man, had you put your male
organ inside the mouth
of a terrible and poisonous snake than inside the vagina of a
woman. It would have
been better, confused man, had you put your male organ inside the
mouth of a black
snake than inside the vagina of a woman. It would have been better,
confused man,
had you put your male organ inside a blazing hot charcoal pit than
inside the vagina
of a woman.10

The self-reflection so central to monastic culture encourages men to

realize that they are the ones who are tempted by women.Therefore, it is
up to them to acknowledge their own vulnerability to what is fundamen-
tally an internal experience. Finally, it is up to the individual monk
whether he experiences undistracted tranquillity, or agitation and distrac-
tion. It is the monk who experiences the enticement of the female form.
To read these passages as being about women misses the point. They are
about monks’ desires and frustrations. In many passages though, monks do
take responsibility for their own attraction to women. It is clear from such
 buddhism 93

texts that language about male desire and about women is inextricably
woven. Because monks are struggling with their desire, the object of their
desire must be made unattractive. How much this has to with women them-
selves rather than male desire is a moot point.
Furthermore, such projections are not unique to monks, undercutting
the argument that monasticism breeds misogyny. In many cultures, with
or without monasticism, women are held responsible for male sexual
arousal, which makes women, shrouded in heavy clothing and behind
walls, the keepers of sexual morality for the whole society. In many con-
texts, including the modern West, women have been blamed for sexual in-
fractions.While it is no longer common to say of a rape victim that “she
was asking for it,” until quite recently it was not uncommon. If in non-
monastic settings, women are held responsible for men’s sexual feelings, it is
not surprising that horny monks would draw the same conclusion.
Whether or not women live in religious contexts that include monasti-
cism, the results of being the object of male desire are the same. She is told
to go away, cover up, become invisible, stop tempting men, or suffer the
consequences.
To my knowledge, there is no parallel literature written by women or
nuns, in which celibate women lust after men.This fact is especially inter-
esting, given that women were thought to be more sensual than men in
many Buddhist contexts and men often portrayed women as the sexual
aggressors. But Buddhist women wryly comment that it makes no sense
to favor male monastics over female monastics or to oppose the reintro-
duction of nuns’ ordination. Women, they say, are the natural monastics
because they have far fewer problems with celibacy than do men!
For women, the major problems are whether a nuns’ community is
available and gaining permission to become a nun. Many women would
like to take vows, but the ordination lineages have died out or there may
be no nunnery in their community or no economic support for them.
Even if the lineages and the nunneries exist, women’s families may be re-
luctant to let them be ordained.The family would lose the woman’s eco-
nomic value without gaining much in return. If a son becomes a monk,
the family earns prestige and respect, but having a nun in the family
brings little status.Widespread stereotypes that women lack spiritual inter-
est or ability also play their part. If women believe these stereotypes, they
will not even think of becoming a nun, but more often a woman would
94 her voice, her faith

be pressured to be realistic about her abilities and get married instead. In

the stories of women who become nuns or solitary renunciants, the motif
of struggle to begin their vocation is common.
The scant literature about nuns that recounts their inner life is filled
with expressions of relief and freedom.This, in itself, is not surprising; in a
setting that recorded little about women’s religious lives, probably no one
would bother to write the autobiography of a disgruntled nun.These ex-
pressions of relief and freedom are crucial to understanding what monasti-
cism can do for women. One nun named Mutta, whose story is in the
early text called The Songs of the Women Elders, exclaims:

I’m free. Ecstatically free

I’m free from three crooked things:
the mortar
the pestle
and my hunchbacked husband
All that drags me back is cut—cut!

In the same text, another nun, identified only as Sumangala’s mother

rejoices:

I’m free
Free from kitchen drudgery
No longer a slave among my dirty cooking pots
(My pot smelled like an old water snake)
And I’m through with my brutal husband
And his tiresome sunshades
I purge lust with a sizzling sound—pop
“O happiness,” meditate upon
this as happiness.11

These two poems express very well the pain of these women’s lives
before they became nuns. They faced hard, boring work they had not
chosen, and domestic violence, at least on the part of Sumangala’s mother.
Becoming a nun frees women from both, giving them the time and the
instruction to develop their own gifts, including spiritual ones. Though
these poems do not discuss it, becoming a nun also liberates women from
 buddhism 95

the prospect of unwanted pregnancies. Younger nuns often remark that

they appreciate their lives as nuns because otherwise they would already
have several children.Women in modern cultures, who have many options
and can remain single and economically independent, often do not appre-
ciate how liberating becoming a nun could be. In almost every cultural
situation until recently, nunhood was women’s only alternative to mar-
riage. In traditional religious cultures that do not include monasticism,
women have no options.They will marry, usually to a man who is chosen
for them, and they will remain in that marriage no matter how difficult it
is for them—unless their husbands abandon them, in which case their
economic situation will be difficult indeed.
The final justification for a women’s sangha is that women experience
the same genuine spiritual vocation that leads men to become monks.The
story of how the nuns’ order was founded clearly demonstrates this moti-
vation. It would be inaccurate to portray the nuns’ sangha merely as a
refuge from domestic problems, nor would it survive if that were its only
reason for existence. Providing options for women is important; central
among these options is the ability to live out a spiritual vocation rather
than to be forced to abandon it simply because one is a woman.All things
considered, the existence of monasticism seems to be more positive than
negative for women.The major negative spinoff of monasticism—misog-
yny—is equally present in non-monastic contexts. The positive function
of providing more options for women, especially the option to pursue a
spiritual vocation, far outweighs the negative spinoff.

C: Are Women Capable of Enlightenment?:

Shariputra and the Goddess
Mahayana Buddhist texts detail a raging battle over the question of how
far women could go on the Bodhisattva path. Buddhists often thought
that the solution to women’s problems was future rebirth as a man. It was
also argued that a woman could go only so far on the path toward en-
lightenment, after which she would have to become a man. But that point
was subject to dispute. Many texts suggest that a woman is already en-
lightened as a woman, but because people will not take her seriously, she
96 her voice, her faith

must change herself into a man.12 In these cases, the flaw is with society,
not the woman. However, in one of the best-known texts of Mahayana
Buddhism, the Vimalakirtinirdesha Sutra, the woman challenged by a male
elder demonstrates that she does not have to become a man to be enlight-
ened. The setting for this dialogue is Vimalakirti’s palace, where a “god-
dess,” meaning only “revered female,” is debating with Shariputra, one of
the elders among Buddha’s first disciples. They have been debating for
some time, and Shariputra is impressed with the goddess’s understanding
of the most difficult Buddhist teachings. So he issues a challenge:

Shariputra: “Why don’t you change your female sex?”

Goddess: “I’ve been here twelve years and have looked for the in-
nate characteristics of the female sex and haven’t been able to find
them. How can I change them? Just as a magician creates an illusion
of a woman, if someone asks why don’t you change your female sex,
what is he asking?”
Shariputra: “But an illusion is without any determinate innate
characteristics so how could it be changed?”
Goddess: “All things are also without any determinate innate char-
acteristics, so how can you ask,‘why don’t you change your female
sex?’”

Then the Goddess, by supernatural power, changed Shariputra into a

likeness of herself and herself into a likeness of Shariputra and asked:
“Why don’t you change your female sex?”
Shariputra, in the form of a goddess, answered:“I do not know how I
changed nor how I changed into a female form.”
Goddess: “Shariputra, if you can change into a female form, then all
women [in mental state] can also change. Just as you are not really a
woman but appear to be female in form, all women also appear to be fe-
male in form but are not really women.Therefore the Buddha said all are
not really men or women.”
Then the Goddess, by her supernatural power, changed Shariputra
back into his own form. The Goddess questioned Shriputra: “Where are
the female form and innate characteristics now?”
Shariputra: “The female form and innate characteristics neither exist
nor do not exist.” 13
 buddhism 97

Though the Mahayana ideas about emptiness that underlie this inter-
change may be difficult, the basic point is easy to grasp. One cannot infer
anything about levels of intellectual or spiritual attainment from physio-
logical sex. In fact, women only appear to be women and men only ap-
pear to men, as is demonstrated by Shariputra’s experience of being
changed from a man to a woman and then back again.
The key phrase in understanding this dialogue is “innate characteris-
tics.” The key to understanding emptiness is understanding that nothing
exists by itself, or is “innate.”Today, people might say there is no “essence”
underlying what we experience. Everything exists only in a matrix of in-
terdependence and impermanence, constantly shifting and changing.
Something that is “innate” is uncaused and always stays the same. So for
women or men to have “innate” female or male characteristics would
mean that there is something invariant, some trait that all men but no
women always have, and vice versa. (The text is not talking about biology;
it is talking about psychology and intellectual or spiritual capacities.) Fur-
thermore, this “innate” characteristic could not be the result of culture or
social conditions; it would have to exist, uncaused, in all men but no
women, and vice versa. But that nothing whatsoever possesses innate, in-
herent existence is the whole point of the Mahayana teaching of empti-
ness. If nothing whatsoever possesses inherent, innate existence, then by
definition, women and men could not possess “innate” traits that define
and limit them, that hold them forever in the same position.That is why
Shariputra can be changed into a woman and back again. And he is the
one who needs to experience this lack of “determinate innate character-
istics,” because he is the one who believes in them. Though the Goddess
could have changed herself into a man, as did many other female heroes of
Mahayana texts who were placed in her position by men skeptical of
women’s abilities, she did not take the burden of male skepticism upon
herself.

III: BUDDHISM IN THE FUTURE

When one studies the history of any religion, one is impressed by the
amount of change a religion can undergo, its “shape-shifting” possibilities.
98 her voice, her faith

Buddhism has changed significantly in its long history. Due to many new
influences and challenges, Buddhism stands poised to develop even more
as it moves into a new cultural setting, and as the interactions between
Asian and Western Buddhists increase.
Not only is Buddhism in a new world. So are women and men, espe-
cially in terms of how they relate with each other and the possibilities for
each gender. Inevitably, new patterns of gender relationships will interact
with Buddhism in this new phase. Among Western Buddhists, significant
attention is placed directly on Buddhism and gender. But even without
conscious attention to the issue of gender, changes are inevitable, simply
because both men’s and women’s lives are changing.The Buddhist world-
view helps because it is fundamentally open regarding gender. The story
of Shariputra and the goddess represents the basic Buddhist view of gen-
der. Like all else, sex, gender roles, and stereotypes are without inherent,
innate, fixed characteristics. Buddhist institutions and popular thought,
however, are another matter. Gender roles and ideas about gender have
been quite fixed and rigid. Some pessimists and conservatives claim that
such institutions can not or will not change. But the evidence of the his-
tory of religions is the opposite.There is no inherent, essential reason that
Buddhism can not change in the direction of greater gender equity in the
future. Furthermore, since change is inevitable in any case, why not direct
change in a direction that brings Buddhist institutions more in line with
its vision, rather than the other way around?
 3

Confucianism
By Terry Woo

It was 1971. I was nineteen. My fa-
ther and I were riding the Star Ferry across the harbor in Hong Kong.
Usually very much the quietly responsible Confucian patriarch of few
words, my father surprised me with this bit of family education or chia-
chiao before I left for Beaver College in Philadelphia:
“You’re going abroad to study soon. I have given you the best that I
have been able to. It is as if I’ve kept you in a cage, feeding you, teaching
you how to be in the world. Now, it is as if I’m opening up the door of
the cage; I’m letting you fly out into the larger world. I won’t be there, by
your side, to take care of you anymore. I’ve taught you the basic notions of
how to treat people well and be loyal to your friends. But now I’m telling
you that sometimes these rules will not hold. In the future, there will be
occasions when you will believe and/or do something that your friends,
family, and the other people around you will disagree with or deem
wrong. If only one or two people tell you it’s wrong, think again but go
ahead and do it. If many people tell you that it’s wrong, you should listen
to them carefully and reconsider your position and only then go ahead
and do as you intended. And if everyone you know thinks you’re wrong,
but if you’ve seriously considered the merits of their opinions and you still
think you are right then you should go ahead and do what you had de-
cided. But you should be very careful in thinking your own position
through.”

99
100 her voice, her faith

He then went on to say: “I don’t know how your life will turn out.
On the chance that you will be successful, you must always remember
where you come from.You must put back into the community what has
been given up to you.” Only lately have I realized how Confucian my fa-
ther’s words were. He valued independent judgment through study and
reciprocity through the remembrance and respect for elders in the form
of ancestors, parents, teachers, and friends. In this remembering, humility
is necessarily recognized through our indebtedness. Further, as my father
put it when referring to my work: “Many philosophers have tackled the
questions you are now working on. They haven’t been able to reach a
consensus or come up with one right answer.Who do you think you are
that you should have an answer?”
And so it is with a sense of immense indebtedness that I dedicate this
exploratory essay on Confucianism and women to my father specifically,
my elders more generally, and my communities past and present.

INTRODUCTION: RITUAL OBSERVATION OF

FILIAL PIETY OR HSIAO THROUGH
ANCESTOR VENERATION

It is difficult to know what sort of uniformity, if any, there was in the per-
formance of rituals pertaining to hsiao across time and geography.The pri-
mary festival days for ancestor veneration or pai tsu-hsien1 remain marked
on the Chinese lunar calendar even to our time, but the rituals themselves
have in many cases been abandoned. Rituals pertaining to formal and pub-
lic performances of ancestor veneration, chronologically traced through
the lunar calendar, begin with the celebration of New Year, which begins
on New Year’s Eve with the all-important annual family dinner or t’uan-
nien fan.2 No married daughters are to be present;3 they would have vis-
ited the day before, and were expected to be with their husband’s family on
the last and most ritually significant meal of the year.
At midnight, the patriarch and matriarch of the family receive ritual-
ized gestures of respect in the form of prostrations or bows and good
 confucianism 101

wishes for the New Year from all the junior members of the household.
This ritual of hsiao is continued on New Year’s Day with the presentation
of family members to ancestors who are understood to be present sym-
bolically through ancestral tablets.The ancestral tablet is a vertical stand on
a broad base; it is sometimes mounted into the wall in temples. It is typi-
cally not more than eight inches high and four inches wide; it always has
an inscribed name and sometimes a photograph of the deceased.Women
were not allowed to participate in parts of this ritual in late dynastic
China.When and why the exclusion came about is unclear.The Buddhist
notion of women’s impurity may have influenced the performance of this
Confucian ritual.4
The Clear and Bright Festival, or Ching-ming, which occurs on the
third day of the third month, is the first of three times during the year
when descendants enact rituals of veneration in public by visiting their
ancestors’ graves, where food and flowers are often offered and the sites
cleaned. I am not aware of special prayers that would be rendered to one’s
ancestors on these occasions; the attitude of sincerity or ch’eng and rever-
ence or ching is what is considered to be of primary importance.The sev-
enth day of the seventh month, which is known as the Festival of Ghosts
or kuei chieh, is the second occasion for visiting the graves of one’s ances-
tors. The universal aspect of ancestor veneration is marked during this
time by offerings to souls, often women who were unmarried or had no
sons and who therefore would have received no ancestral offerings.They
are believed to be wandering in a realm that impacts on the living when
the gates of purgatory are opened on this day—it is believed that the
ghosts can harm the living.5 The first day of the tenth month is the third
occasion in which the ancestors’ graves are attended to. Paper effigies of
warm clothes in addition to mock paper money are provided so that one’s
ancestors will not have to go without them during the winter months in
the spirit world.
It is difficult to say to what extent these practices have been contin-
ued; and I know of no effort to re-conceive and modernize these rituals.
Only time will tell how and when, or if, these popular practices and the
literary tradition will come together to bring forward a re-energized and
revitalized Confucianism.
102 her voice, her faith

CONFUCIANISM IN MODERN TIMES

Confucianism is a tradition under stress. It is under stress because an aspir-

ing chün-tzu (exemplary person) who wants to enact rituals6 in addition
to those described above, which reflect her exercise of cultivation of the
mind/heart or self-cultivation, hsiu-hsin, and the investigation of things,
ko-wu, no longer has the extended family and the state intact, Confucian-
ism’s two most significant theaters in which to continue her performance.
If construed in the spirit of self-cultivation, this exercise of examining
women and the practice of filial piety, hsiao, can be understood as an en-
gagement in the investigation of things.7 A Confucian who is aspiring to
be an exemplary person8 would traditionally try to practice these two dis-
ciplines everywhere, at all times, and especially within the family and state,
ultimately for the benefit of all. The very acts of scholarship, of studying,
and that of the academic “ritual” of researching, questioning, analyzing,
and writing can be seen as one form of these two Confucian practices;
and as Fingarette might have it, it is one aspect of the Confucian “sacred”
that overlaps with the Western-defined “secular.”9
Self-cultivation, prevalent and omnipresent in Confucianism, is one of
the threads weaving early and late Confucians together “not only for aes-
thetic development, but for moral strength, the social good, and spiritual
insight.”10 The ideal traditional Confucian teacher teaches her students
how to get on in the world; her duty goes beyond merely describing and
singularly conveying information about the world; she nurtures foremost
the practice of reciprocity, an element core to the development of Confu-
cian social values. The focus on self-cultivation for a Confucian woman
through work, careful speech, right behavior, and modest appearance en-
sures a practice that is firmly rooted in the self, the family, and the com-
munity; the secular practice is based, however, on the belief in an
all-pervasive Way or Tao, which is immanent in the world but yet tran-
scends it.11
To understand Confucian practice more carefully, I will analyze the
elemental idea of filial piety as found in The Classic on Filial Piety for
Women or Nü Hsiao Ching. The Classic is introduced with the funda-
mental five tuan or beginnings, and heart-minds or hsin, influenced by
Mencius: that of benevolence or jen, righteousness or i, ritual or li, wis-
dom or chih, and trustworthiness or hsin. Other documents will also be
 confucianism 103

used; and for the sake of easier reading, it will be assumed that filial piety is
a central, unbroken, and uncut thread that can be traced through the cloth
of Confucian teachings.12 The definition of hsiao in the Book of History
or Shu Ching is stated as “simply being kind as to a younger sibling.”13
This evolved over two millennia into Wang Yang-ming’s (1472–1529) uni-
versal understanding that “the clear character of filial piety will be mani-
fested” only when one loves all parents.14
Even though the individual thread of filial piety continues to be
strong, two other threads within the tapestry of Chinese ritual tradition
for women have been cut and removed. First, the empress, who was the
symbolic head of Confucian womanhood, no longer exists because of the
historical overthrow of the feudal government and creation of a modern
Chinese government in the twentieth century. Second, the extended fam-
ily has in many cases disintegrated and been replaced by the nuclear fam-
ily, undermining the importance and power of older women in their roles
as grandmothers. For this reason, unfortunately, writing about women and
the practice of Confucianism cannot be straightforward; it cannot be
“What Confucianism Said About and Prescribed for Women.”
Without community and state rituals, women’s contributions to soci-
ety are not formally integrated and recognized. In dynastic China, the em-
press embodied the importance of women’s work by the performance of
the Ritual of Silkworms or Ts’an-li. This ritual symbolized the value of
women to the empire as providers of cloth and related goods through
their cultivation of mulberry trees, nurturing of silkworms, and manufac-
turing of silk. Moreover, without the broader framework, Confucianism
can only remain a “personal” choice in philosophy and is irrelevant to the
larger society in which an aspiring chün-tzu lives. For Confucianism to
function fully as a religion, it needs to be determined if rituals can be
made central to social interactions again and how and what kinds of ritu-
als should be proposed and developed.
It is unclear to me what being a modern15 Confucian woman means
when she is disestablished from a Confucian state and family. First, as noted
earlier, there is no longer an empress who participates in rituals such as the
Ritual of Silkworms, which established the primary and essential place and
role of women in a Confucian empire,16 as the yin within the comple-
mentary polarities of yin and yang. Second, within the family, also central
to the performance of rituals, the disappearance of the empress is echoed
104 her voice, her faith

by a parallel disappearance of the once pervasive ancestral tablet.This do-

mestic ritual of veneration, of paying respect to one’s mother and/or
grandmother with incense, flowers, and fruits is performed on different
occasions like the common celebration of New Year but also on special
occasions like the presentation of a new bride into the family.
With the slow disappearance of the once ubiquitous ancestral tablet
comes a diminished sense of ancestral continuity, particularly in the role of
the mother, grandmother, and great grandmother at the heart of the fam-
ily. The real flesh-and-blood presence of mothers and/or mothers-in-law
within families clearly continues to mark the biological fact of female an-
cestry.What I refer to here is the ritually unacknowledged importance of
women as the roots of the family, specifically as the first teachers of chil-
dren and the ministers of the inner realm of the extended family and clan.
It is difficult to say how many Chinese families around the globe still
maintain their ancestral tablets. It is clear, however, that many factors have
contributed to the demise of these tablets, which symbolize the presence
of ancestors.
The causes of this discontinuity are complex. Oddly, there is the sense
of cultural inferiority and national self-loathing that was most evident in
the May Fourth Movement in 1919.The May Fourth Movement is con-
sidered to be the Chinese Enlightenment. It was during this period that
Confucianism came to be seen as the li chiao (ritual teaching) that canni-
balized human beings. Ibsen’s Nora, from A Doll’s House, was adopted as a
symbol for all the oppressed in China, both men and women.The popu-
larity of Christianity, which is ambivalent about ancestor veneration, has
also contributed to this demise. Political upheaval17 caused by movements
like the Cultural Revolution have displaced and separated family mem-
bers, making it impossible to maintain the familial structure so necessary
to the performance of certain rituals. Economic migration, like political
upheaval, also changes or destroys the familial structure, most often
through Western cultural influences present in the countries of choice like
Canada and the United States. Finally, advances in the high-tech indus-
tries, which favor and reward the skills of the young, change the economic
power relations within a family and disrupt traditional structures.
The breakdown of state and family rituals has special repercussions for
women. Unlike the male literary tradition that has a rich textual tradition,
there are relatively few texts for women.18 A woman’s Confucian tradition
 confucianism 105

is one of attending to family members high and low, old and young, far
and wide, by making sure that they are clothed and fed properly. It is also
a practice of caring for the family altar, offering incense and fruits, and
preparing for feast days. Therefore, a woman’s Confucianism is more one
of doing and devotion than of study and exegesis even though the foun-
dational principles of the teaching are the same for women and men alike.
The erosion of formal and institutional foundations is not the only el-
ement threatening the survival of Confucianism. It has a dubious status as
a religion in part because of the absence of a revealed canon, and finally its
quasi-philosophy is seen as pedestrian when compared to its Greek coun-
terpart.19 In defense, Mou Tsung-san, a self-confessed modern-day Con-
fucian, writes that the “Confucian emphasis was never on God and
prayer” and hence did not develop along the lines common to religions
that are based on emotional cries for help. (33–35) Even if there is no di-
vinity in the Western sense of creator and final arbiter, there is certainly a
notion of an all-powerful Heaven and Earth or Tien/Ti in Classical Con-
fucianism,20 which was replaced by the concept of the Supreme Ultimate
or T’ai-chi in eleventh-century Neo-Confucianism. Moreover, scholars
such as James Legge, David Nivison, Roger Ames, and Julia Ching have
pointed out that the concerns of Confucians are recognizable as religious.
Most pertinent is Fingarette’s belief that what Western religions accept
and divide into secular and sacred does not hold for Confucianism; as the
title of his book suggests, Confucius and the tradition based on his teach-
ings conceive of the secular as sacred.
Addressing the issue of whether Confucianism is a religion, Mou
writes that the fact that

Confucianism can provide a guide for daily life means that it fulfils
one of the duties which make it a religion. But this is not the only
function of religion. It still has another and more important function.
A religion must serve as a motive force for the upward movement of
the human spirit, and as a guide to the life of the spirit. (Mou 26)

The pervasiveness of Confucian rituals marked life’s passages like

birth, adolescence, marriage, and death; encompassed specific elements
within society like the affairs of the military; included also the etiquette of
everyday life that defined the parameters of hospitality and elements such
106 her voice, her faith

as the veneration of ancestors and worship of spirits. All these, Mou sug-
gests, meant that religious rules were not devised in addition to secular
rules.This is the reason why China has no special religious ceremonies.21
This is, of course, not exactly right. A Confucian can simultaneously
be a Buddhist or Taoist, participating in the numerous special religious
ceremonies. And, perhaps, this Confucian acceptance of difference is one
of its most important and attractive features; a characteristic that should be
maintained and encouraged, especially in a world filled with religious
strife.22
Although it remains a point of interest whether a person23 was ever
exclusively a Confucian—that is, the adherent of only one religion or
teaching, as the Chinese term chiao is understood—it is important to
stress that Confucianism’s acceptance of hierarchical plurality and its lack
of a divinely sanctioned dogma stand in contrast to the Western sensibili-
ties of exclusivity24 and equality.25 Because of this, Confucianism is often
challenged to define itself and forced to accommodate itself to another
teaching. Historically this happened during Confucianism’s first en-
counter with Buddhism when the latter was imported from South Asia.
Contemporary Euro–West Asian religious ideologies like Buddhism
have enjoyed a certain success and have posed the crucial question to
Confucianism and those who believe:What is Confucianism’s relevance to
the modern world? Of course, the question is not for me to answer. We
are just at the start of the incursion of the Far West, which is most conve-
niently captured in its Greco-Judeo-Christian values, into Chinese cul-
ture; this violent burst of the Far West into Chinese cultural space is a
watershed in Chinese history. From here on in, it is and will be very diffi-
cult, if not impossible, for Chinese teachings to be credibly evaluated apart
from Western teachings. As to the issue of women, suffice it to say that
much work needs to be done in order that Chinese women be rescued
from scholarly exotica.26 It is important to note here that no self-professed
Confucian woman has written confessionally from inside the tradition.
Okada Takehito, a Japanese Confucian, thinks that the name of a tradi-
tion or more pointedly, the survival of its name in relation to its content, is
unimportant.What is important is that “true understanding of human na-
ture is the object of religion in the modern world, and this is the role for
Confucianism as well.”To him, the two are synonymous. He believes that
without religious depth,
 confucianism 107

Humankind cannot know its true character.Without this possibility of

knowing the true character, it will build its world and meaning from
the self-directed and self-centred motives that are a part of human
consciousness, the (human heart or) jen-hsin, rather than the root and
foundation of such consciousness, the Tao-hsin [heart of the Way or in
West Asian terms, God’s Way]. Under these conditions the very survival
of humankind is at risk. (Taylor 1990, 145)

Mou shares Okada’s perspective. He writes that Confucianism calls

upon human beings to fulfill their nature, for if human beings do not ful-
fill their nature, they fall and become as beasts. (32) Here is a potential
point of contention for a contemporary Confucian woman; the teaching
has understood the natures of women and men to be different. For exam-
ple, women were deemed to be like Earth while men were like Heaven.
This kind of thinking has had a tremendous impact on the understanding
of the nature of woman in China. For example, a woman would be cate-
gorized under yin and associated with the night, cold, winter, moon, pas-
sivity, and so on.
These notions are encouraged and reinforced by an important text,
The Book of Changes or I Ching, which describes the Heaven or ch’ien
hexagram as “creative” (Wilhelm 3) and the Earth or k’un as “receptive.”
(Wilhelm 10) These are the first two hexagrams in the book and represent
male and female respectively. Being associated with Earth, women were
seen to be passive and multiple; men, on the contrary, being associated
with Heaven, were thought to be active and singular.These notions there-
fore justified polygyny, the practice of one man having many wives.
Mou then goes on to describe another feature in Confucianism that is
presumably the same for men and women; he writes that Confucians

see human existence as a process of moral perfection, its final goal

being sagehood and the attainment of goodness. Its teachings, there-
fore, are not developed with deity as their central theme. Rather they
are developed on the basis of how [a human being] is to embody and
manifest the Way of Heaven in order to perfect [her] virtue.

T’ang Chun-i, another modern self-professed Confucian like Mou,

has a somewhat different view. He criticizes later Confucianism for being
108 her voice, her faith

“too centred on human beings to the detriment of having neglected the

understanding of the material world and the exercise of control over it.”
He believes that the “significance, for Confucius, of combining (human
beings)27 with Heaven and Earth, and of regarding (them) as having access
to both, was that Confucius was able to encompass the spirit of Jesus,
Sakyamuni, and science.” (T’ang 52) One might imagine T’ang to be sym-
pathetic to historical developments that have lessened the burdens of hu-
man beings, in particular for women, for whom improved material
circumstances translate directly into easier lives because they no longer
need to bear so many children, die in childbirth, and suffer from sundry
gynecological illnesses.
Confucianism admits no revealed scriptures even though it embraces
the ultimate supremacy of Heaven and Earth over human beings.28 Men-
cius (ca. 372–289 B.C.E.) is recorded as saying that “If one believed every-
thing in The Book of History, it would have been better for the History
not to have existed at all.”29 This statement of skepticism recognizes hu-
man fallibility; Heaven and Earth may be omnipotent and omniscient, but
human beings are not. So ultimate authority does not rest in the books
recorded by humans. In addition to this Mencian declaration, Hsün Tzu
(310–238 B.C.E.) elaborates on the varying degrees of human fallacy. On
the subject of ritual, he has this to say:

. . . the sacrificial rites30 originate in the emotions of remembrance

and longing, express the highest degree of loyalty, love, and reverence,
and embody what is finest in ritual conduct and formal bearing.
Only a sage can fully understand them. The sage understands, the
[exemplary person]31 finds comfort in carrying them out, the offi-
cials are careful to maintain them, and the common people accept
them as custom.To the [exemplary person] they are a part of the way
of man; to the common people they are something pertaining to the
spirits. (Watson 110)

Hsün Tzu states clearly that all human beings do not share the same
quality of intelligence and religious or spiritual capacity. Individual differ-
ences are thus understood as manifestations of internal differences; reason-
ing from this, a Confucian would not be surprised that some choose
atheism, others agnosticism, and still others various schools of religion and
 confucianism 109

numerous forms of devotional practices. Furthermore, it would make no

sense to a Confucian to try to homogenize religious beliefs and practices
either by education or persecution. People, as history has shown, will re-
vert eventually to folk practices and/or choose different spiritual paths ac-
cording to their inclination. For example, there is the resurgence of
“religion” or “superstitions” in countries with very different histories, cul-
tures, and civilizations. In Iran and the United States, Islamic and Christ-
ian fundamentalisms have taken hold; in the latter, on the other end of the
spectrum, are also numerous syncretist New Age groups. In China, the
new religious movement Discipline of the Wheel of Dharma or Fa-lun-
kung has become popular; and there has been renewed interest in tradi-
tional religions such as Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and Taoism.
Contrary to predictions by Western philosophers, religion is very far from
dead.
There are profound implications for women in Mencius’s skepticism,
Hsün Tzu’s understanding of innate differences, and the evidence of the
persistence of the religious impulse. If all classical writings are not to be
adopted uncritically, and if women understand and learn from them in
different ways, then there is a huge task ahead for Confucians. Teachings
that are unjustifiably hostile to women will have to be trimmed or rooted
out; the status and roles of women will have to be reconfigured positively,
taking into account assumptions of differences and hierarchy.
In a surprisingly modern understanding of li, Hsün Tzu notes that
rites, and by extension various aspects of religions, are a means of satisfac-
tion.32 It is a way of apportioning resources among people. Not only are
there unequal intellectual and spiritual capacities, there are also social dif-
ferences and economic inequality. After all, Hsün Tzu observes that the
“very existence of Heaven and Earth exemplifies the principle of higher
and lower.”33 He goes on to say that “Where ranks are all equal, there will
not be enough goods to go around; where power is equally distributed,
there will be a lack of unity; where there is equality among the masses, it
will be impossible to employ them.”34
In other words, non-differentiation will breed disorder. For example, if
we were all managers, there would be nobody to do the clerical work. On
the contrary, if we were all clerks, there would be no one to organize the
overall process. If all were treated equally, those who are bright may feel no
motivation to do their utmost; those who are inclined to indolence would
110 her voice, her faith

see no reason to work harder. Egalitarianism as an ideal is honorable, but in

execution it remains extremely and formidably complex. Given the variety
and the many foibles of human personality, equality in the face of arro-
gance and hatred, for example, will make the masses unemployable. For
example, one can imagine that many will want only to be leaders, disbe-
lieving that they are not as good as others, and many will want revenge ex-
acted through just and proportionate means.
In classical Confucianism there is, instead, a humanism that recognizes
that “Heaven has its constant way; Earth has its constant dimensions; the
chün-tzu has [her]35 constant demeanor.”36 Inconstancy is therefore a part
of the human condition:“Order and disorder are not due to [Heaven]”;37
nor by extension to the exemplary person. It is the small-minded and
petty person or hsiao-jen38 who causes chaos; and yet, it is also the hsiao-
jen who has the potential which is in every person to bring about har-
mony by behaving like a chün-tzu.

“NOBLE” AND “MEAN” IN THE CLASSIC ON

FILIAL PIETY FOR WOMEN

We encounter here one of the most troublesome ideas for contemporary

people who are sympathetic to Confucianism. Expressed in terms of
women, the notion of hierarchy, of high and low emphasized by Hsün
Tzu has traditionally implied inferiority of the wife to the superiority of
the husband. Harvard scholar Tu Wei-ming dismisses this hierarchical
structure in the family; he writes that the “authority of the husband over
the wife, which resulted from blatantly patriarchal conditioning, has no
redeeming feature.” Examining the relationship of husband and wife
within the three bonds or san-kang, he notes that

authority here means something different from either authority de-

rived from status as in the ruler-minister relationship, or authority
derived from age as in the father-son relationship.The husband-wife
relationship is contractual and, therefore, not irrevocable.The Confu-
cians acknowledge divorce as an unhappy eventuality in some mar-
riages . . . (Tu Wei-ming, 132) [T]he value of distinction [between
 confucianism 111

the husband-wife relationship] is based on a principle of mutuality.

The underlying spirit is not dominance but division of labor. (Tu
Wei-ming, 127)

Tu then says that some commentators argued for the equality of the
wife and the husband by citing linguistic grounds: that the character for
“wife,” ch’i, which is pronounced in the first tone, is etymologically from
the homophone “equal,” ch’i, which is pronounced in the second tone.
He suggests that the distinction asked of husband and wife probably
comes from the concern that “conjugal intimacy may breed nepotism
which may, in turn, lead to social irresponsibility if the interests of the nu-
clear family supersede concerns for other family members and the larger
community.”39
Tu’s reaction to the traditional marriage structure is understandable.
The husband should not demand absolute obedience from the wife.Tu’s
position is supported by The Classic on Filial Piety for Women, which
while clearly stating that the husband is in the senior or tsün position
(as in “The person of husband is Heaven. How can [you] not serve
him?”) also continues with “Heaven’s brilliance exists because of Earth’s
gain.”40 It also states that when the husband is “not behaving according
to the Way,” he should be cautioned; and that a wife should obey a hus-
band’s command only when he is correct.41 So the rigid conventional
understanding of absolute obedience is not necessarily the textual un-
derstanding. It is analogical thinking run amok or familial tyranny gone
unchecked.The alignment of women with subservience or p’i in passiv-
ity, obedience, and other such so-called feminine characteristics, may be
overzealous and misguided, but I believe that the theory of high and
low is not altogether wrong when differences in ability and talents are
considered.
When Pan Chao tells her readers in The Admonition to Women (Nü
Chieh) to place themselves below all the senior members in their hus-
band’s family and to serve the junior members with reverence and sincer-
ity, Pan is offering strategic advice. A young wife newly married into an
extended family is at the mercy of everyone. She must cultivate her situa-
tion in a way that will be beneficial to herself in the long term. In other
words, she is literally in a “lower” position because she has very little
socio-economic power even if she might in time exercise emotional and
112 her voice, her faith

psychological power over her husband. If we take self-preservation and

protection to be the starting point or the rationale for the power differen-
tial in the traditional marriage, the perspective on subordination, obedi-
ence, and service must change.42 Even in today’s world, when a young,
inexperienced man or woman joins his or her new marital family, humil-
ity and deference would be expedient.
To reverse the traditional relationship, a woman in a contemporary
family may be the sole breadwinner and the man, by choice, a stay-at-
home husband and father. In such a case, he would be in the “lower”
socio-economic position43 that is similar to the one for a traditional Chi-
nese woman. In an ideal situation, the husband and wife would treat each
other with mutual respect naturally, according to the Heart of the Way or
Tao-hsin. However, should that not be the case, the Confucian parameters
would suggest that the husband might, as the “Earth” or lower partner
within the relationship, contribute to his Heaven or wife’s brilliance. Put
another way, the wife must provide for her husband because, as the more
economically powerful partner in the relationship, she must be responsible
for her husband; moreover, if the husband is more cultivated than she is in
exemplary behavior, he is obligated to guide her along the Way as the
minister of the inner realm within the relationship, as in the case of the
wife in a traditional Confucian spousal relationship.
What I am suggesting here is that tsün and p’i can be construed dif-
ferently under various situations.Whereas biology used to be the most ob-
vious parameter, we might nowadays use the socio-economic parameter
as the standard within one marital circumstance without allowing it to
become the absolute standard. In other words, I propose that different
measures of tsün and p’i can be used even within one relationship, bring-
ing into consideration the complexity of high and low conceived within
categories such as the intellectual, psychological, economic, and spiritual
capacities, to name just a few.
Expressed through reciprocity (shu), benevolence (jen)44 must remain at
the heart of the marriage. The core of the marital relationship cannot
change. For both husband and wife, their cultivation of themselves as exem-
plary people (chün-tzu) must remain central. Most importantly they are to
be good and responsible toward each other; as chün-tzu they do not com-
pete.The Classic on Filial Piety for Women puts it this way:“When the hus-
band has a hundred tasks, the wife [works along with him] with one will.”45
 confucianism 113

And, when a woman serves her husband,“she puts up her hair to greet him;
thus she has the dignity of [the interaction between] a lord and his minis-
ters. In pouring water for her husband to wash his hands, and in offering
food, there is the respect between father and son. In announcing one’s re-
treat before going, there is the way of older and younger siblings. Being sin-
cere over time, there is the trust between friends. Having no blemish in
word or deed, there is thus the capacity for managing the home. Prepare
yourself with these five attributes; then you can serve your husband.”46
Dignity, respect, righteousness, sincerity, and trustworthiness are the
characteristics a woman or junior partner serves with. The husband and
wife, in assessing their own variants of tsün and p’i, can thus remain com-
plementary and respectful of each other even if their realms of responsi-
bilities are different.47

THE CHÜN-TZU IN THE CLASSIC ON

FILIAL PIETY FOR WOMEN

The self-cultivation required for such an ideal and harmonious marriage

begins with the process of becoming an exemplary person.The Classic on
Filial Piety for Women48 clearly describes the ideal actions and attitudes of
the exemplary person. It begins by stating that her focus is hsiao because
the “filial person affects [even] the ghosts and spirits,49 and moves Heaven
and Earth.There is nothing that its essence does not reach, and it uses the
way of husband and wife as the beginning of all relations.”50 In section
seven, Three Beginnings or Talents (San Ts’ai), which include Heaven,
Earth, and Human Being, there is a description of what a chün-tzu should
do: stand with Heaven and Earth and complete them. Implicit in this is
the assumption that the “human being is not something we are; it is some-
thing that we do, and become.”51 Jen is, therefore, an achievement; just as

the love and loyalty of a husband for a wife, however intense it may
be at first, is relatively amorphous and impoverished in content as
compared to what it may become over the course of many years of
married life through crises, good fortune and sheer routine. . . . Suf-
fering . . . and acting are what shape a man. (Fingarette 48)
114 her voice, her faith

The cultivation of jen is no different for a woman than for a man.

Several parts of the treatise are, in fact, taken from The Classic on Filial
Piety or Hsiao Ching. For example, with exactly the same words, “hence
the brilliance of Heaven is because of the gain of Earth,” the Nü Hsiao
Ching is drawn and tied to the male literati culture.The women’s Classic
marks the consolidation of an integrated, complementary but separate
women’s Confucian tradition. It is comprehensive in drawing from the
available sources, using not only the Hsiao Ching and Mencius but also
drawing from classical Confucian texts like the I Ching for the comple-
mentary ch’ien and k’un and The Book of Poetry and The Book of His-
tory for epigraphic quotes on historical women. Moreover, Lady Ch’eng
also draws from Han Confucian texts such as Liu Hsiang’s Biographies of
Women or Lieh Nü Chuan, Pan Chao’s Admonitions to Women, and
Tung Chung-shu’s Yin-yang Confucianism.
How should a chün-tzu cultivate jen? She is exhorted to avoid lazi-
ness, attend to rites, and act with universal love. She does not forget her
obligations of filial piety and kindness, manifesting them in virtue and
kindness. She is to be deferential, respectfully yielding, and not argu-
mentative. She does not compete, and demonstrates good and bad with
ritual and music. Above all, an exemplary person knows what is prohib-
ited.52 As Cheng I, a prominent Neo-Confucian, reports, his mother re-
fused to take their sides even when he and his brother Ch’eng Hao
(1032–1085) were right when they argued with others. She said, “The
trouble is that one cannot bend and not that one cannot stretch out.”53
A chün-tzu begins her cultivation in the family, traditionally the
woman’s sphere. Confucians see the home as the soil from which the
exemplary person grows; it is here where a child begins her personal de-
velopment which is rooted in jen. In a passage attributed to Yu-tzu is
this observation:

It is a rare thing for someone who has a sense of filial and fraternal
responsibility to have a taste for defying authority. And it is unheard
of for those who have no taste for defying authority to be keen on
initiating rebellion. [Chün-tzu] concentrate their efforts on the root,
for the root having taken hold, the way will grow therefrom. As for
filial and fraternal responsibility, it is, I suspect, the root of [jen].54
 confucianism 115

Although the recurring theme here is harmony (he), we should not

be lulled into thinking that Confucianism is naïve and believes that har-
mony should be achieved at all costs. Its earliest advocates lived and devel-
oped their philosophies during a war-torn era. Mencius’ doctrine of the
Mandate of Heaven or T’ien-ming is a sober reminder that rebellion is
sanctioned when the conditions demand it.55 It is stated in the Lün Yu
1:12 that “when things are not going well, to realize harmony just for its
own sake without regulating the situation through observing ritual pro-
priety will not work.”56 Nevertheless, the fundamental objective of Con-
fucianism remains clear: harmony.
The expectation of harmony is a broad societal one.The wife, or the
junior partner, is said to have failed even if the marriage is “harmonious as
the harp and lute” if she fails to do the following:“When in a position of
privilege, do not be proud; when in a lowly position, do not be disorderly.
When among your own class, do not compete for advantage and become
proud and thereby endanger yourself.”57 “He” must be fostered not only
within a marriage or a family, but most importantly within the larger
community. Harmony is not conceived of as a result of equality or the
struggle for equality; rather, according to Hsün Tzu’s understanding, it en-
compasses hierarchy, in the sense of all people doing their own different
and unequal acts.
The duties for women within each class are therefore different. The
empress and concubines are to be fecund without being lascivious, pro-
viding the emperor and the people with many virtuous descendants and
potential heirs.The wives of officials are to be impartial in assessing their
own achievements.They should also be astute in evaluating what goes on
around them.They are to “assume responsibilities calmly and act in an up-
right way in order not to lose rituals so that descendants can be harmo-
nized and the ancestral temples preserved.”The expectations of the wives
of the heads of state are less administrative.They are to establish a standard
in their behavior, thereby setting the tone of the community.58 True to the
Confucian belief that the chün-tzu is like the wind and the hsiao-jen like
grass,59 upper-class women are enjoined to be leaders, working alongside
their husbands to set the standard for the society at large. The private
sphere here is thus not understood merely as the family but Families, that
is, all families in the empire.
116 her voice, her faith

Understood this way, the upper-class woman’s reach is wide indeed.

As a counterpart to her husband, she is expected to exert influence over
the mass of ordinary people of the empire. In contrast, the expectations
from a common woman are simpler: “Put others first and yourself last.
Look after your parents-in-law by weaving garments, making sacrifices
and offerings at the altar.”The remark that “women do not participate in
public affairs; they rest in the cultivation of silkworms and weaving,”
quoted from the Shih Ching, is here used only for lower-class women.60
Upper-class women, women of privilege, are expected to work for the
benefit of the state, just as their husbands do, but in the “private” realm of
the family.The Nü Hsiao Ching is unequivocal about this.True to form,
drawing on “Tradition,” it says this:

During ancient times, a good woman used hsiao to govern the nine
degrees of kin. She dared not abandon the wives of the lowly and the
young; how much more, then, her younger siblings. . . . She who uses
the service of her parents-in-law as family governance would not
dare to insult even the chickens and dogs, how much more, then, her
avoidance of ridiculing hsiao-jen.That is why they gain the approval
of high and low. She who uses the serving of her husband to manage
the inner quarters dare not lose the respect of the servants, let alone
then, the respect of a chün-tzu. . . . If the distinction between wealth
and poverty are not generated, disaster will not be created. That is
why a good woman uses hsiao to govern the high and low ranks.61

This emphasis and preoccupation with “he” is understandable when

one understands classical Confucianism’s development in the midst of
chaos. Confucius, Mencius, and Hsün-tzu lived during the turbulent
Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods from 500 to 300 B.C.E.
Their teachings were not adopted as state ideology until some two hun-
dred years later during the Han dynasty.Their works again fell into disfa-
vor as Buddhism and Taoism gained strength from about 250 C.E., only to
begin regaining influence during the middle to the late T’ang in the 850s
and then more broadly during mid to late Sung period, around 1200,
when the northern tribes were threatening the peace and stability of the
Chinese empire. This foundational sense of “getting along with each
other” is, perhaps, where Confucianism is still relevant in spite of its insti-
 confucianism 117

tutional disintegration. One might hypothesize that the institutions can

be rebuilt, as Confucius tried to rebuild them, when one has grappled
with and understood how harmony can be achieved. And how is it to
be achieved? Confucians would offer that it is fundamentally and ini-
tially achieved through the rituals of filial piety (li) within the home.
After all, “Achieving harmony is the most valuable function of observ-
ing ritual propriety.”62
In the meantime, Tu Wei-ming has legitimately criticized the tradi-
tionally exploitative and patriarchal elements within Confucianism. A re-
vised Confucianism needs to be drawn out—one that will conserve and
elaborate on the ideas of tzu-hsiu, ko-wu, “he,” the complexity of tsün
and p’i, and how women and men in their many roles throughout life can
create and maintain a stable and safe community. New emphasis must be
placed on the character development of the senior partner, and a careful
exposition of a woman in her responsibilities as an older sister, wife,
mother, aunt, corporate president, political leader, to mention a few exam-
ples, needs to be started.
Finally, there must be a critical look at the foundations of Confucian-
ism. Where are the boundaries to this Confucian remark on hsiao from
The Analects 4:19: “In serving your father and mother, remonstrate with
them gently. On seeing that they do not heed your suggestions, remain re-
spectful and do not act contrary. Although concerned, voice no resent-
ment”?63 Is this one root of the traditional tyranny? Or is this one of the
first elements in the cultivation of a chün-tzu, a person “who most per-
fectly having given up self, ego, obstinacy and personal pride,” follows the
Way rather than profit?64
This tension between practicing deference and condoning despotism is
taut; and the dilemma is not a new one. Ch’eng I, quoted by Chu Hsi in
the Reflections on Things at Hand [Chin Ssu Lu], wrote that “when par-
ents have the nature of an average person and their love and hate do not
violate principle, the [child]65 should obey them.” As with Confucius’ re-
marks, Ch’eng’s pronouncement demonstrates the crucial need for contin-
ual and critical inquiry—in this case, to analyze what “principle” might be.
Much work needs to be done in resuscitating Confucianism—a Confu-
cianism that maintains but conceives anew community rituals that will en-
courage the acceptance of differences and recognize the necessity and
importance of plurality symbolized by the notions of superior and inferior,
118 her voice, her faith

forceful and mild, noble and mean.This is important to women especially

as an alternative in a world that is enamored mostly by convenience and
material success, stresses conformity and allegiance to one group or an-
other, and thrives on the jingoistic “If you’re not with us, you’re against us.”
It is also important because at the heart of Confucianism are rituals that ac-
knowledge the work and vitality of women to society; these rituals can be
re-choreographed to symbolize the essentially reciprocal and complemen-
tary nature of all human relationships. At the beginning and at the end,
Heaven and Earth remain mutually brilliant.
 4

Ta o i s m
By Eva Wong

The train from Hong Kong
arrived in Beijing on a blustery day in autumn.As I stepped onto the plat-
form, I was met by two blue-robed Taoist priests who welcomed me to
White Cloud Monastery, where I would be attending classes on Taoist phi-
losophy, religious ceremonies, and the arts of health and longevity. White
Cloud Monastery is the seat of the Chinese Taoist Association. Founded
sometime during the thirteenth century, it was closed during the Cultural
Revolution of the 1960s. Now it is not only open but is recognized as a
Chinese national treasure and is protected by the Beijing municipal gov-
ernment.Today, the monastery is an educational as well as a religious cen-
ter, and Taoist practitioners from all over the world come here to further
their studies of Taoism.
In southeast China, in Kiang-su Province, there is a range of moun-
tains known as Mao-shan. Mao-shan was home to the earliest Taoist
mountain retreat communities. These communities date back to the fifth
and sixth centuries and were built by the followers of Shang-ch’ing Tao-
ism. This school of mystical Taoism was founded by Lady Wei Hua-ts’un
of the Eastern Chin dynasty (317–420 C.E.), who is considered by many
to be the most remarkable woman of her generation. Over the years, in
my wanderings in Mao-shan, I have met the teachers of Shang-ch’ing
Taoism—most of them elusive hermits—and have learned from them the
techniques of mystical ecstasy.

119
120 her voice, her faith

In Hong Kong, the festival of Ch’ing-ming occurs in the rainy days of

spring. Traditionally, the Chinese honor their ancestors by visiting the
graves and making offerings at the family shrines. For many Taoist tem-
ples, this is a day of prayer and ceremony. Women and men in Taoist re-
galia chant and conduct services on behalf of filial sons and daughters
who have asked the temples to recite liturgies for their dead ancestors.
Many Taoist clergy and devotees who participate in this festival are
women. Some are musicians, some are chanters, and some are leaders of
the ceremonies. Often, entire ceremonies are conducted by female clergy.
On one of these festivals, I asked a woman how she felt about leading the
most important ceremony in the festival. She replied that she was only do-
ing what her female predecessors had done for hundreds of years.
My own journey into Taoist spirituality is not the result of an interest
in Taoism developed during my adult life but a continuation of spiritual
training that started when I was a child. I grew up learning the Taoist wis-
dom tradition from my family. I first learned about Taoism from my
grandmother, who told me stories of Taoist immortals. We would sit on
her bed, and while she sewed, she would tell me the lives of Taoist women
and men who had attained the highest levels of spiritual cultivation.These
stories had a deep effect on me, for in my youthful mind, these realized
beings were the kind of people I aspired to be.
After I learned how to read, I discovered, to my delight, numerous
novels and newspaper serials on the Taoist immortals. Stories of Taoist im-
mortals are very much a part of Chinese culture. It is impossible to grow
up in a Chinese community and not know about the Taoist immortals, for
their lives are dramatized not only in books but also in Chinese opera,
films, and television.
My interest in Taoism did not wane when I got older. My granduncle
was a practitioner of the Taoist arts of health and longevity, and at fourteen
I began to learn meditation and ch’i-kung from him. By this time, I was
deeply attracted to the Taoist philosophy of living in simplicity and in har-
mony with the natural world. I read the Taoist classics—the Tao-te-ching,
Chuang-tzu, and Lieh-tzu—and decided to follow this wisdom tradition
of my ancestors.
Taoist spirituality focuses on cultivating a healthy body and a clear
mind.Thus, ch’i-kung, martial arts, calisthenics, and meditation are all in-
tegral to the practice of Taoism. Taoism is also a religion, for it believes
 taoism 121

that a close relationship exists between humanity and the sacred powers.
By performing the correct rituals, humanity renews and strengthens its re-
lationship with the deities, and thus ensures peace and harmony in the
world.Above all,Taoism is a philosophy of practical living that advocates a
lifestyle of simplicity, non-interference, and quietude.
I am a female practitioner of the Taoist spiritual tradition. I believe
that as a Taoist practitioner, I can provide non-practitioners with a per-
spective on Taoism that cannot be obtained from scholars who are not
practitioners. Being a woman, I can also give both practitioners and non-
practitioners a view of Taoism different from the one that has been tradi-
tionally presented by its male practitioners.
In a survey conducted by the Taoist Association of Taiwan in 1961, it
was estimated that at that time there were 56 million people who claimed
that their preferred religion was Taoism. Over 90 percent of them lived in
China (the People’s Republic), Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia,
and more than half of these devotees and practitioners were female.
For a religion in which the majority of its adherents are women, it
seems strange that very little is known about the history of its female
practitioners. Were Taoist women rare in the history of China? How ac-
cessible is the information about them? What are their contributions to
the development of Taoism?

THE PROBLEM OF HISTOR Y

Anyone who attempts to learn the history of women in Taoism is faced

with several problems. First, historical records are not objective. Whether
an event is included or excluded from written history will depend on the
interest, and some would even say the ideological motivation.
Second, most scholars use The Twenty-four Histories of China (the
collection of historical records written through the centuries by imperi-
ally sanctioned scholars) and The Taoist Canon (the collection of the
scriptures of Taoism) as the authoritative sources for studying the history
of Taoism in China. Since the history of China was written by Confucians
in a Confucian society, one would suspect that Confucianism, not Taoism,
occupied the “center stage” in the “official” history of China. Thus, in a
122 her voice, her faith

society where Confucian scholars wrote the histories and Confucianism

regulated the mode of thinking and social behavior, one would not expect
Taoism to be given the same treatment as Confucianism in the history of
Chinese thought.
Third, most of the texts collected in The Taoist Canon were written
by male practitioners; only a handful were written by female adepts. The
relative invisibility of women in this authoritative source of Taoism has led
many to believe that female Taoist practitioners have been rare and that
their contributions to the development of Taoist thought and practice
have been negligible.
Why is there so little information about Taoist women in The Taoist
Canon? I think there are two reasons.
First, the Canon was edited by men, without any input from women. In
traditional China, women were not allowed to participate in the civil ser-
vice, and the men who compiled The Taoist Canon saw no reason to con-
sult with any woman, let alone the female practitioners of the Taoist arts.
Second,The Taoist Canon is the “written tradition” of Taoism.There-
fore it contains only the teachings of those who are literate. In view of the
nature of education in traditional China, this meant that women did not
have much chance to contribute to the “written tradition” of Taoism.The
education system was closely tied to the civil service, and since women
did not participate in the civil service, they rarely received formal educa-
tion.Thus, in traditional China, the educated woman is an exception, not
the norm. Even in the early twentieth century, given the same socioeco-
nomic level, men were more likely to receive formal education than
women. My grandfather and my granduncles were all trained in the Con-
fucian classics whereas my grandmother and my grandaunts could barely
read the newspapers.
Because literacy in traditional China was the privilege of men, it is
unlikely that women would have had much opportunity to write about
their training and their spiritual experiences. In the biographies of the im-
mortals, we find that many Taoist women were illiterate, and many lived
their lives in the shadows of their husbands and fathers.The few who were
educated all came from the nobility and the wealthy families. Given these
problems, how can we study women in the history of Taoism? There are
various sources of information that we can use.
 taoism 123

The first is the biographies of the immortals.There are many sketches

of Taoist women in the biographies of the immortals written between the
second and the seventeenth centuries. Although short, these sketches are
important: they tell us that in the history of Taoism, female practitioners
are not rare, and that many women attained levels of spirituality that are
comparable to their male counterparts.
Our second source of information about Taoist women is the biogra-
phies of important male Taoist adepts (advanced practitioners) who
learned from female teachers. The Yellow Emperor was said to have ac-
quired his knowledge of divination, military strategy, and the compass
from the Lady of the Nine Heavens, who was a female deity.The Emperor
Shun was taught by the daughter of his predecessor. Fei Hang, a highly re-
spected alchemist and magician of the first century, was taught by a
woman. Li Ch’üan, a Taoist magician and a provincial governor of the
T’ang dynasty (618–906 C.E.), was the student of Li-shan Lao-mu (the old
wise woman of Li Mountain).The spiritual mentor of Ma Tan-yang, one
of the Seven Masters of the Northern Complete Reality School of the
Sung dynasty (960–1279 C.E.), was his wife Sun Pu-erh. From these
records, we know that women were not only practitioners but also teach-
ers of the Taoist arts.
The third source of information about Taoist women comes from
novels, folklore, and the yeh-shih (literally, wild history), chronicles that
are not recognized by the Chinese scholars as “legitimate” historical
records. The folk novel Seven Taoist Masters, which describes the life and
times of Sun Pu-erh, the best-known female Taoist practitioner of the
Sung dynasty, is an example.
The fourth source of information about Taoist women is the writings
of the female adepts themselves. These include Sun Pu-erh’s poems and
treatises on meditation and internal alchemy, Lady Wei Hua-ts’un’s famous
Shang-ch’ing classics on meditation and mystical union with the deities,
and the collected poems of female adepts Sun Pu-erh and T’ang Kuang-
chen.The writings of female practitioners are an invaluable source of in-
formation about Taoist women and their level of spiritual development.
Unfortunately, female authors are rare. The female adepts who did not
leave records of their lives or their training are forever lost in the shadows
of the past.
124 her voice, her faith

Using these sources of information mentioned above, it is possible to

recover the hidden history of women in Taoism. This history is best
viewed in the context of three landmark events in the development of
Taoist thought and practice:

• The Mother Empress of the West becomes a Taoist deity circa second
century C.E.
• Lady Wei Hua-ts’un and the founding of the Shang-ch’ing School of
Taoism in the fourth century
• Sun Pu-erh and the emergence of female internal alchemy in the thir-
teenth century

The acceptance of the Mother Empress of the West into the Taoist
pantheon of deities was a landmark in the development of Devotional
Taoism.Today, over 60 percent of Taoists are followers of Devotional Tao-
ism. The devotees express their devotion by chanting the names of the
deities, by participating in the rituals, by making offerings, and by asking
the deities for guidance and protection.The strength of a devotional reli-
gion is built on the faith of its devotees, and the overwhelming majority
of the followers of Devotional Taoism are female. These female devotees
would make the Mother Empress one of the most popular deities in Tao-
ism, elevating her to the highest echelon of the Taoist pantheon.
The founding of the Shang-ch’ing School of Taoism by Lady Wei
Hua-ts’un in the fourth century led to the emergence of Mystical Taoism.
Although Shang-ch’ing Taoism ceased to be a distinct lineage during the
Ming dynasty (1368–1644 C.E.), its influence on the development of
Taoist thought and practice is not lost. Today, many Shang-ch’ing rituals
are practiced in Taoist temples and monasteries. Moreover, the Shang-
ch’ing techniques of swallowing saliva, breath control, and directing the
flow of energy in the body have been incorporated into many forms of
ch’i-kung and Taoist calisthenics that are practiced today.
It is not far-fetched to say that Sun Pu-erh’s innovations in female in-
ternal alchemy have changed Taoist spiritual training forever. For the first
time in the history of Taoist practice, gender differences in the internal en-
ergetic structures are acknowledged and separate training methods are de-
signed to address these differences. It is to the credit of Sun Pu-erh and her
 taoism 125

successors that there are now separate programs of training for women and
men in Taoist sects that practice the alchemy of internal transformation.

THE MOTHER EMPRESS OF THE WEST

The Mother Empress of the West (Hsi-wang-mu) is one of the most im-
portant deities in Taoism today. She is the highest female deity in the
Taoist pantheon and is subordinate only to the T’ai-shang Lao-chun (the
incarnation of Lao-tzu), who is the highest deity in the Taoist religion. In
Taoist religious literature, the Mother Empress of the West is described as
the original breath of the Great Yin and the counterpart of the Lord of
the East, who is the original breath of the Great Yang. Although the
Mother Empress of the West is the ward of all female practitioners of the
arts of longevity and immortality, both male and female adepts need to
obtain her permission before they can enter the immortal realm.This is a
plane of existence inhabited by deities and mortals who have earned the
privilege of living forever. In ancient China, immortality literally means
“eternal life” in both body and spirit. Later, immortality came to mean the
liberation of the spirit to a higher plane of existence after the bodily shell
has run its course.
In the religious icons, the Mother Empress of the West is accompanied
by female attendants who carry trays of Peaches of Immortality. She her-
self carries two treasures—a peach and a pill that resembles a round pearl.
Each treasure, if eaten, can turn a mortal into an immortal.
The Mother Empress of the West was an ancient folk deity before she
became a Taoist deity. She was known as the Golden Mother or the
Mother Empress and was the custodian of the immortal lands that were
believed to be nestled in the K’un-lun Mountains in western China.
If the Mother Empress of the West was not originally a Taoist deity,
how did she come to occupy such a high position in the Taoist pantheon?
To answer this question, we must first understand the nature of Chinese
religion.
In China, the belief in deities and immortals existed long before Tao-
ism became a religion during the second century.There are two kinds of
126 her voice, her faith

deities: pre-creation and post-creation.The difference between an immor-

tal and a deity is in their power and status in the Taoist pantheon. An im-
mortal can be thought of as a lesser deity. Some immortals were spirits of
nature who became sentient and attained immortality by absorbing the
energy of the land; others were mortals who became immortal by practic-
ing the arts of longevity and immortality. It is possible, however, for im-
mortals to be “elevated” to deity status if they performed miracles or were
responsible for leading mortals to the Tao. In fact, after the immortals Lady
Ho Hsien-ku and Lady Wei got deified, they occupied a higher rank in
the echelon of deities than some of the pre-creation deities like the gods
of thunder and wind.
The Mother Empress is a pre-creation deity. Legends tell us that she is
the incarnation of the primordial vapor of the West and the counterpart
of the Emperor of the East, who is the incarnation of the primordial vapor
of the East. These two deities constitute the two primordial energies of
West and East, that nourish and protect all things. The Mother Empress
and the Emperor of the East are also the teachers of humanity. Many leg-
endary shaman-rulers of ancient China were said to have journeyed to the
immortal realms to learn from them. These included the emperors Yao,
Shun, and Yü of the legendary times.
Even before the Mother Empress became a Taoist deity, she was asso-
ciated with the western immortal realm of K’un-lun. Two Chinese em-
perors—King Mu of the Chou dynasty (1122–221 B.C.E.) and Wu-ti (the
Martial Emperor) of the Han (206 B.C.E.–219 C.E.)—were said to have
met her and to have asked her for the gift of immortality; however, she did
not permit either of them to enter the immortal lands.
It is in the story of Wu-ti’s encounter with the Mother Empress that
we find important clues about female deities before the rise of Taoism as a
religion. The story tells us that the Mother Empress visited Wu-ti in his
palace on the emperor’s birthday, gave him seven peaches, and told him
that the peaches came from a tree that yielded fruits only once every three
thousand years.When Wu-ti asked that he be taught the arts of immortal-
ity, he was rebuffed by Lady Shang-yüan, a subordinate of the Mother
Empress, who told him that he could not be given the secrets of immor-
tality because he was greedy and cruel.
From the story, we can first surmise that by the second century B.C.E.
(during Wu-ti’s reign), the Mother Empress was already a popular and
 taoism 127

powerful deity: both women and men needed her permission to enter the
immortal realm. Second, we can surmise that at least by the end of the
reign of Wu-ti, Lady Shang-yüan was also perceived as a powerful deity:
she scolded the “martial emperor” as if he were a wayward child.
Like the Mother Empress, Lady Shang-yüan was an ancient deity. Her
name Shang-yüan means “early season.” In ancient China, the year was di-
vided into three segments—an early season (shang-yüan), a middle season
(chung-yüan), and a late season (hsia-yüan).Today, these three seasonal di-
visions are still observed within Taoist communities. The early season
refers to the period between the fifteenth day of the first lunar month and
the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month.Within this season is the im-
portant festival of spring planting. As the ruler of the early season, Lady
Shang-yüan controls the success of the spring planting and therefore the
prosperity of the nation. A common citizen who has offended her or has
lost her favor would lose his fortunes that year. However, an emperor who
lost her favor would lose his mandate to rule, and this loss of mandate
would be reflected in untimely rains and poor harvest.
Thus, the Mother Empress and Lady Shang-yüan were already popu-
lar folk deities even before Taoism became a religion. However, after they
became Taoist deities, their power and status increased, and they became
rulers of the celestial realm with thousands of subordinates, clerks, and
messengers. This happened around the third to fourth centuries. By the
end of the fourth century, the Mother Empress was considered as the
source of inspiration of many Taoist scriptures, suggesting that she had be-
come an important and authoritative high deity in the Taoist religion.
Four hundred years later, in the T’ang dynasty (618–906 C.E.), the
Mother Empress’s status as a Taoist deity would grow even more: she was
the deity responsible for gathering the sages of the world into the immor-
tal realms, supervising all the covenants made between humanity and the
deities, evaluating the faith and devotion of believers, presiding over audi-
ences and banquets in the celestial realm, and transmitting the sacred
scriptures to worthy mortals. She was also the teacher of sagely emperors,
devoted believers, and the patron of all those who practiced the arts of
longevity and immortality.
Before becoming a Taoist deity, the Mother Empress had a modest
palace and retinue of female attendants. After becoming a powerful Taoist
deity, she not only had a group of daughters who were powerful deities
128 her voice, her faith

themselves, but was also in command of thousands of celestial messengers

and clerks.
After the incorporation of the Mother Empress into the highest levels
of the Taoist pantheon, many other prominent Taoist women were added
to the roster of deities and immortals. The following are biographical
sketches of some of the most renowned female Taoist deities and immor-
tals in the history of Taoism.
Ho Hsien-ku (Lady Immortal Ho) is probably the most famous
woman immortal and deity.We know much about her from the biograph-
ical sketch in The Complete Biographies of the Immortals:

Her name is Ch’in. She is the daughter of Ho T’ai, a county magis-

trate in Kuang-tung Province. She lived in the T’ang dynasty during
the reign of the Empress in a village near a stream named Cloud
Mother. . . . She was seen often running along the mountain paths.
Her gait was fast and light. She left home in the morning and re-
turned in the evening, bringing back mountain fruits for her
mother. . . . The T’ang Queen Mother (Wu-hou) invited her for an
audience but she disappeared on the way to the capital. Later she as-
cended to the sky in broad daylight. . . . She also appeared to a local
judge in Kuang-tung Province; the judge later reported this incident
to the emperor.

From this biographical sketch, we know that Lady Immortal Ho was a

significant female Taoist adept during her time: she was famous enough to
be invited by an empress of the T’ang dynasty.The Empress Wu-hou was
no ordinary queen mother: she dominated the politics of the court and
was even more powerful than the ruling emperor. So, her invitation was
no trivial matter. The biography also states that she appeared to a local
judge.This again was something unusual given the political and social cli-
mate of the T’ang dynasty. In a Confucian society, women were rarely al-
lowed to voice their opinions, let alone meet with government officials.
For Lady Immortal Ho to have met with a local judge and for the judge
to consider the incident important enough to report to the emperor, she
must have been an immortal of high stature. This proved to be true: she
holds the title “Supervisor of the Female Path—the Primal Ruler of the
Azure Vapor.” Finally, we are told that like many Chinese women, she was
 taoism 129

a filial daughter: even after she had acquired her magical powers, she did
not neglect to bring food to her mother.
Another important Taoist female deity is Chiu-t’ien Hsüan-nü (The
Mysterious Lady of Nine Heavens), who was teacher to the Yellow Em-
peror, one of the most revered sage rulers of ancient China. A student of
the Mother Empress, she was instructed by the deities to help the Yellow
Emperor unite the tribes of China into a nation. It was her gifts to the Yel-
low Emperor—magical objects that included the compass, books on div-
ination and military strategy, pearls that glowed like lights, flags of power,
feathers of power, and magical swords—that allowed the Yellow Emperor
to defeat evil bandits, unite the tribes, and restore peace to his country.
Tung-ling Sheng-mu (Sacred Mother of Tung-ling) was another
prominent Taoist female deity.A mortal who became a local deity, she be-
came famous enough to be included in The Complete Biographies of the
Immortals. Her biographical sketch reads:

Native of Hai-ning. She learned from Liu Kang and attained the Tao.
She can change into any shape and can sometimes be invisible. She
encountered a man named Tu who ridiculed her abilities.The sacred
mother was always helping the poor and the needy. Tu complained
to the local magistrate. He said that the sacred mother spent too
much time fighting evil spirits and neglected to tend her household.
The magistrate arrested the sacred mother and threw her in prison.
Later, she flew out of her cell, leaving only a shoe on the window sill.
The people of the village built her a shrine and prayed to her for
help. A green raven is often seen hovering around the shrine. If you
were robbed and prayed for help, the bird will lead you to the thief ’s
home. Thus, in that area, people are not greedy and do not take
things that are not theirs. Even today, in the region of Hai-ning, there
are few thieves and robbers.This is because many robbers have been
found either drowned or killed by wild animals, and petty thieves
have been plagued with misfortunes.

The first thing we learn about the Sacred Mother of Tung-ling from
this biographical sketch is that she was a magician-vigilante. She started out
as a local hero and later became the local protector.The biography also gives
us valuable information about the kind of society she lived in.We are told
130 her voice, her faith

that she was taken to the court and accused of not “spending enough time
to tend her household.”Today, we would find it hard to believe that such
accusations could be directed at a woman in a court, but in traditional
China, this was not unusual. These social values lasted well into the Re-
publican years.
Mah Ku is probably the most popular female immortal among the
Chinese. Her biographical sketch in The Complete Biographies of the
Immortals reads:

The daughter Mah Chiu.There was a drought in autumn. Ma Chiu

made the people work all night to build the city wall, allowing them
to rest only when the cock crowed. Mah Ku, seeing the suffering of
the people, imitated rooster calls. Soon, all the roosters in the village
were crowing as well, and the people were allowed to rest.When her
father learned what she had done, he tried to beat her. Mah Ku ran
away and entered a cave to cultivate the Tao. Later she ascended to
the sky near the stone bridge in the outskirts of the town.The bridge
was later named Bridge of the Immortal.

There are several female immortals by the name of Mah Ku. How-
ever, the Mah Ku of this story is my favorite. She is extremely popular
with the Chinese and has been a central figure in Chinese opera, movies,
and television dramas. I first heard of Mah Ku’s story from my grand-
mother, who learned it from her mother.
Mah Ku was an unusual woman. In a society where fathers demanded
absolute obedience from their daughters, she opposed her father to help
people who were suffering from her father’s cruelty. Moreover, she was
not intimidated by her father.When he tried to beat her into submission,
she escaped and ran off to cultivate the Tao by herself. It is likely that the
bridge in her hometown was renamed by the people in honor of her
courage and integrity.
Cheng Wei’s wife was also an unusual woman. In The Complete Bi-
ographies of Immortals, she is described as

The wife of Han dynasty official Cheng Wei. Cheng loved the Taoist
arts of alchemy. He married a woman with the family name of Fang.
When Cheng did not have a robe for his audience with the emperor,
 taoism 131

his wife conjured up two bolts of satin.When Cheng tried to refine

gold from base metals, he was unsuccessful.When his wife put mer-
cury into the cauldron, gold appeared. Cheng was astonished and ex-
claimed, “You have the secrets of the Tao. Why didn’t you tell me?”
His wife replied, “To succeed in this, it must be in your destiny.”
Cheng tried to bribe his wife with money and land but she did not
disclose anything. Then Cheng plotted to force her to succumb to
his wishes. His wife found out and said to him, “The secrets of the
Tao are transmitted only to the right person, even if you had only
met him casually on the street. If the person is unsuitable, the Tao is
not transmitted, even if refusal means being torn apart limb by limb.”
Smearing her face with mud, she feigned madness and ran away from
home naked. Eventually, she shed her bodily shell and vanished.

In this biographical sketch, we learn that Cheng Wei’s wife com-

pounded minerals to manufacture pills of immortality. She had her own
laboratory and experimented with alchemical techniques of turning mer-
cury into gold as well. As the wife of a government official, she was not
poor. Moreover, the family needed to have disposable income to support
the alchemical laboratories of both husband and wife. It is also likely that
Chang Wei’s wife was literate, because she needed to understand the for-
mulas for compounding mercury and to keep track of the minerals used
in alchemical experiments.The biography does not hide the fact that she,
not her husband, was the one destined to succeed in attaining immortal-
ity. However, despite her achievements, Cheng Wei’s wife, whose maiden
name was Fang, was not addressed as Madame Fang, but was simply re-
ferred to as “Cheng Wei’s wife.”This shows that in traditional China, even
women with remarkable abilities often lived in the shadows of their hus-
bands.
The biographies of female deities and immortals reveal important in-
formation about women in the history of Taoism: the female deities and
immortals occupy just as important positions in the Taoist pantheon as the
male deities, and women were as adept as men in all aspects of Taoist spir-
ituality.
From the middle T’ang onward, a new and different kind of female
immortal emerged: women who attained immortality by meditation and
by ecstatic union with the deities.This change was brought about by the
132 her voice, her faith

rise of Shang-ch’ing Taoism in the fourth century. The incorporation of

Shang-ch’ing practices into mainstream Taoism in the next seven hundred
years would make Shang-ch’ing Taoism one of the most powerful influ-
ences in the history of Taoist thought.

MYSTICAL TAOISM

Lady Wei Hua-ts’un of the Chin dynasty (265–420 C.E.) is recognized as

the founder of the Shang-ch’ing School of Taoism.We are told that Lady
Wei Hua-ts’un was born into a wealthy family in Kiang-su Province (in
southeast China). From an early age, she studied the Taoist classics, prac-
ticed breath control, experimented with various diets, and was adept at
yogic techniques of cultivating longevity. When she announced that she
wanted to leave the family to learn the arts of immortality, her parents for-
bade her.At the age of twenty-four, she was married to a nobleman at the
orders of her father. After her marriage, Lady Wei gave birth to two sons.
When they were able to start families of their own, she built herself a re-
treat and devoted the rest of her life to studying and practicing the Taoist
arts. For a brief period of time, she served as a teacher of religious cere-
mony in the Celestial Teachers’ School (a form of organized Taoist reli-
gion founded by Chang Tao-ling and his descendants in the second and
third centuries).
Not too long after becoming a recluse, Lady Wei was visited by the
immortal Wang Pao, who transmitted to her the technique of attaining
immortality by merging with the deities in mystical ecstasy. It was said
that Lady Wei eventually mastered Wang Pao’s techniques and, at the age
of eighty-three, ascended to the sky in broad daylight. In addition, the
Taoist legends tell us that after she became an immortal, Lady Wei contin-
ued to study with the Mother Empress of the West, and was finally deified
and awarded the title Lady Wei, Guardian of the Southern Mountains.
In her biographies, Lady Wei Hua-ts’un is identified by her maiden
name Wei, not Liu, her husband’s family name.The scriptures that are at-
tributed to her all bear the name Lady Wei. This suggests that Wei Hua-
ts’un was well-known in the Taoist community of her time. It also
 taoism 133

suggests that in the latter part of the Chin dynasty, women’s status within
Taoism had improved. This was also evidenced by Lady Wei’s high rank
within the clerical echelon of the Celestial Teachers’ School.
In the history of women in Taoism, the most important influence of
Wei Hua-ts’un is seen in the change of methods used by female Taoist
practitioners to cultivate longevity and immortality. Consider the follow-
ing biographical sketches of these female immortals.

Immortal Hua-ku (the Flower Lady) lived during the T’ang dynasty
and was a follower of Shang-ch’ing Taoism. It was said that when she
heard that there was a shrine dedicated to Immortal Lady Wei Hua-
ts’un in the area where Lady Wei ascended to the celestial realm, she
journeyed there to seek inspiration. While meditating at Lady Wei’s
shrine, she saw the immortal appear, telling her that south of the
shrine was a lake fed by nine winding rivers.The Flower Lady found
the site and ordered the local Taoist priest to gather flowers and pre-
pare a ceremony. After the site was consecrated, she and seven other
female practitioners continued to conduct ceremonies there. The
music, chanting, and the fragrance of the flowers were said to travel
far beyond the shrine. The community of female devotees of Lady
Wei grew, until there were twenty-seven members who lived there
permanently to tend the shrine.

This biography contains important information about Taoist women

who followed the spiritual path of Shang-ch’ing Taoism. First, we learn
that by the time of the T’ang (618–906 C.E.) and the Sung (960–1127
C.E..), Lady Wei Hua-ts’un was acknowledged as a deity and there were
shrines dedicated to her. Second, the Flower Lady’s pilgrimage to Lady
Wei’s shrine suggests that Wei Hua-ts’un had become a role model and a
patron of female Taoist practitioners during the T’ang. Third, the Flower
Lady, a woman adept,“ordered” a male practitioner to gather objects for a
ceremony that she, not he, conducted.This shows that by the time of the
T’ang dynasty, there were Taoist religious communities led by women,
with men serving as assistants. Finally, out of the Flower Lady’s devotion, a
community of female Taoist recluses was founded. Although this commu-
nity was not as organized as the Taoist nunneries founded several hundred
134 her voice, her faith

years later, it nonetheless tells us that there were enough independent and
motivated women who could and would leave their families to live in a
religious community.
Fei Yüan-ching was also a follower of Shang-ch’ing Taoism.The leg-
ends tell us that she was a daughter of a county magistrate and was very
intelligent.As a child, she learned the classics and wrote poetry. Moreover,
unlike many young women of her age, she was not interested in jewels
and beautiful clothes and wanted to study the Taoist arts instead. When
she asked her father to build her a meditation retreat, her parents built her
a small hut in the garden and supplied her with incense and a female assis-
tant. At the age of twenty, Fei Yüan-ching’s father wanted her to marry a
man named Li Yen.When she told them that she would rather spend her
life studying the Tao, her parents said,“It is your duty to be married. After
your marriage, you can continue to study the Tao. Even Lady Wei Hua-
ts’un was married before she ascended to immortality.”
After her marriage, Fei Yüan-ching continued to meditate in her re-
treat. One night, her husband heard several female voices coming from his
wife’s meditation room. He looked through the window and saw his wife
talking with two young women.When he asked who these women were,
he was told that they were immortals. The women had told Fei Yüan-
ching that she was not destined to spend her life with her husband in the
earthly realm.The next evening, another female immortal visited the cou-
ple’s home and promised to give them a son. A year later, three days after
Fei Yüan-ching gave Li Yen a son, she was carried to the West on a cloud
in the company of a group of female immortals.
The biography of Fei Yüan-ching contains several important clues
about Lady Wei’s influence on the Taoist women of the T’ang and Sung
dynasties. First, it establishes that Lady Wei was a famous figure in the
Taoist communities of the time. She was a role model for Fei Yüan-
ching, who, like Lady Wei, wanted to build a retreat and practice medita-
tion. Second, Fei Yüan-ching’s parents cited Lady Wei as an example of a
filial daughter who fulfilled her duty as a wife before immersing herself
in Taoist cultivation. However, Fei Yüan-ching’s parents were more un-
derstanding than Lady Wei’s father, who did not consult with his daugh-
ter before he married her off.Third, Fei Yüan-ching’s husband appeared
to be an understanding man who did not oppose his wife’s spiritual in-
 taoism 135

terests. This is a far cry from Cheng Wei, who was jealous of his wife’s
talent.
It is interesting that in the biographies of Taoist women, many mortal
men were depicted as “villains”: Cheng Wei tried to force his wife into
giving him the alchemical formulas; Ma Ku was beaten by her father for
disobedience; and the Sacred Mother of Tung-ling was the victim of a
vengeful man. Moreover, in the stories, the women were portrayed as in-
dependent, courageous, strong, and superior to the men in both skill and
character.This is interesting because the biographies were written by men.
If there was a patriarchal bias in documenting the lives of female immor-
tals (which I think there was), we would expect the men to have been
presented more positively in the stories. A closer examination of the sto-
ries reveals, however, that the male characters in the biographies would
have been condemned as “villains” in mainstream Confucian society as
well: Confucianism does not endorse the beating of women, or treachery,
or rape, or vengeance.Thus the “villains” in the stories were not “male vil-
lains,” but simply “villains.” Even a patriarchal society would have no trou-
ble presenting them in a negative light.
Another thing that is obvious from the biographies of Taoist women
is that the women of the early times (pre-T’ang) had authoritative fathers
(Ma Ku’s father) and husbands (Cheng Wei) who did not care about their
feelings and their interests. By the T’ang dynasty, we begin to see more
understanding husbands and supportive parents.This suggests that the so-
cial and cultural view of women in general and of women who pursue
spiritual interests were changing in the Sui (589–618 C.E.) and T’ang
(618–906 C.E.) dynasties. Although women specifically did not enjoy
equal status with men in politics and public life, they were beginning to
have more freedom in spiritual cultivation. By Sun Pu-erh’s time four
hundred years later, women’s status in the spiritual community had im-
proved even more: Taoist nunneries were established, and many of them
received endowments from the imperial coffer.
Thus, while Taoist women are outnumbered by men in the biogra-
phies of the deities and immortals, they are not as “invisible” as we have
been led to believe.The biographies are a valuable source of information
about the lives and times of Taoist women from the Han to the Sung dy-
nasties. However, the last biography of immortals was written in the Ming
136 her voice, her faith

(1368–1644 C.E.).Therefore, to learn about Taoist women in more recent

times, we would need to turn to a different source of information—the
manuals of female internal alchemy and the writings of the female practi-
tioners of internal-alchemical Taoism.

FEMALE TAOIST INTERNAL ALCHEMY

Sun Pu-erh is probably the most famous female Taoist practitioner of re-
cent history. She lived during the early part of the Sung dynasty
(960–1279) and was one of the Seven Taoist Masters of the Complete Re-
ality School.A student of Wang Ch’ung-yang (the founder of the school),
Sun Pu-erh was said to have attained the highest level of enlightenment
among the seven chosen students of the master.
Sun Pu-erh’s life has been dramatized in the famous folk novel Seven
Taoist Masters. We are told that she was married to a wealthy merchant
named Ma Yü. Intelligent and compassionate, she developed an interest in
the Taoist spiritual arts at an early age. Both she and her husband became
students of the Taoist master Wang Ch’ung-yang, and later each estab-
lished their own Taoist sect. Sun Pu-erh is considered the founder of fe-
male internal alchemy. Recognizing that the energetic structures and the
internal transformational processes are different for women and men, she
developed special techniques to help women cultivate body and mind and
attain longevity.
Internal alchemy is concerned with transforming three kinds of inter-
nal energies in the human body: procreative/generative (ching), nourish-
ing/vital (ch’i), and consciousness/spirit (shen). To cultivate and refine
these energies, the practitioner must understand the properties of these
energies and know how to produce and transform them inside the body.
Thus, the internal alchemist must be knowledgeable and sensitive to gen-
der differences in anatomy, physiology, and energetic structures.
Sun Pu-erh’s contribution to female internal alchemy lies in her un-
derstanding that women need a separate program of internal-alchemical
training and that they need encouragement and support to overcome the
social stigmas that hinder their spiritual training. She asserted that women
have a natural disposition toward the Tao because they embody the essence
 taoism 137

of tranquility and softness.Today, about 20 percent of those who claim to

be Taoist are practitioners of internal alchemy. Less than a quarter of them
are female. Of the female practitioners, the majority live in China.
As a female practitioner of the internal alchemical arts, I would like to
make this Taoist practice more well-known in the West. I would also like
to describe the nature of that training from the perspective of a practi-
tioner, so that women who are interested in pursuing this form of Taoist
training will know what to expect. Training in female internal alchemy
can be divided into four stages.

1. Building the Foundation—

Cultivating Stillness and Tranquility
Women should begin their training by cultivating their natural disposition
and intrinsic nature, which is stillness and tranquility.This is especially im-
portant for young women.
The Mother Empress of the West’s Ten Precepts on the True Path of
Women’s Practices (believed to be written by Sun Pu-erh) advises the fe-
male practitioner:

In her youth she should be quiet and not wild. . . . If she is peaceful
and tranquil in her life, if she can follow the rules of womanly behav-
ior and be natural in her stillness, then this substance (generative en-
ergy) will remain close to its prenatal nature and return to its primal
unity. . . . But unfortunately, the common girl is ignorant, childish,
and attracted to action. She engages in games and wild careening.
Her spirit becomes confused and her true energy becomes unstable.

Second, women need to free themselves from social pressure and be

focused in their spiritual training.The Answers to Questions Concerning
Cultivation says:

Men are yang in nature. Their energy is difficult to control. For ex-
ample, if it takes a man three years to control the flow of the energy,
the woman will accomplish it in one. . . . Moreover, she can do it
138 her voice, her faith

with less effort. . . . However, women need to be especially strong,

motivated, and disciplined. . . .Then they will be able to accomplish
the task.

Third, women need to free themselves from sexual desire and mood
fluctuations. The text Cultivating Stillness for Women—also written by
Sun Pu-erh—says:“If women realize the value of their health and life and
do not succumb to the wishes of the opposite sex, then it will be easy for
them to attain health and longevity. . . .They must first sever their attach-
ment to sexual desire before sitting down to meditate.”
Fourth, women need to have supportive families and understanding
teachers.The Mother Empress of the West’s Ten Precepts on the True Path
of Women’s Practices states:“There is no lack of gifted women. Unfortu-
nately they do not have wise parents, or teachers, or supportive friends.
Thus, their thousand gifts are wasted.”
These excerpts from the classics of female internal alchemy assert that
women, because of their natural disposition toward stillness, actually have
fewer obstacles in building the foundation for training in internal
alchemy. Men, on the other hand, need to develop the “feminine” quali-
ties of tranquility and receptivity before they can begin their training.This
is probably why many Taoist monasteries use art and poetry to help their
male novices develop inner calm and reflectivity. Modern women in
Western society may not have the kind of social pressure the women of
traditional China had, but in many contemporary households, it is still un-
common for women to leave the spouse on evenings or weekends to at-
tend meditation or martial arts classes. Thus, compared to men, women
may still have more obstacles to overcome before they can train seriously.

2. External Strengthening—
Transforming the Skeletal Structure
Once the foundation of inner peace is built, the next stage is to strengthen
the body. This stage of training in particular needs to take into account
 taoism 139

sexual differences in muscular-skeletal physiology. The goal of external

strengthening is to prepare the body for cultivating and circulating inter-
nal energy. This entails changing the skeletal structure. Almost nothing is
written about this stage of training, so I shall discuss these processes from
my own experiences.
First, compared to men, women in general have smaller bones and
weaker muscles. Therefore, in external strengthening, the initial focus for
women is to build larger bones and stronger muscles. Typically, women
will need to work harder than men in this aspect of training.Taoist calis-
thenics, postures, and the internal martial arts (such as T’ai-chi ch’uan) are
used for this purpose.
Second, women’s tendons are more elastic than men’s. Thus, in gen-
eral, women are more flexible. This means that women will find it easier
to increase, maintain, or even regain flexibility. Men, on the other hand,
must not reduce the amount of stretching after they have achieved the de-
sired level of flexibility, or their tendons will lose the elasticity.
Third, women tend to have a stronger and more flexible spine because
structural skeletal strength is required to carry a fetus. Spinal flexibility and
strength are important for later stages of internal alchemy because a major
channel of energy circulation (the tu meridian) is aligned with the spinal
column. However, the programs of training are different for men and
women. While both women and men need to develop spinal flexibility,
women will achieve the goal faster. Moreover, once women attain the de-
sired balance of spinal strength and flexibility, they should reduce the
amount of spinal stretching, or spinal strength will decrease. Men, on the
other hand, need to maintain their regimen of training to maintain spinal
flexibility.
Fourth, women and men have different pelvic structures.Women have
a wider pelvic bowl compared to men because the female pelvis is built to
carry a fetus. Therefore, it is easier for women to widen the pelvic bowl
further and open up the pelvic joints to prepare for meditation in the
higher stages of internal alchemy.
Thus, in general, it is easier for women to achieve external strength-
ening than men. Given the same motivation and amount of training,
women will complete the stage of external strengthening faster than men.
140 her voice, her faith

3. Internal Strengthening—“Slaying the Dragon” and

Circulating Energy in the Breast and the Womb
The goal of internal strengthening for both females and males is to culti-
vate the three internal energies—procreative/generative (ch’ing), nourish-
ing/vital (ch’i), and consciousness/spirit (shen).
Generative energy is the primordial energy of creation; in the body it
is manifested as procreative energy. In females, the mundane form of this
energy is the menstrual blood; in males it is the seminal fluid.Vital energy
is the primordial energy of nourishment. In the body it is manifested as
breath, and it is the same for females and males. Spirit energy is the pri-
mordial energy of consciousness. In the body it is manifested as original
(the empty) mind, and it is the same for males and females.
Because generative/procreative and vital/nourishing energy are both
linked to female and male physiology, the process of internal strengthen-
ing is extremely sensitive to gender differences in physiology (manifested
in the physical body) and energetic structure (manifested in the subtle
body).
Both men and women begin the process of internal strengthening by
preserving, refining, and transforming procreative energy. The woman’s
method of preserving and refining generative energy is called “slaying the
dragon.”
“Slaying the dragon” refers to stopping the flow of menstrual blood; it
is, however, not equivalent to menopause. The menstrual flow is the
“mundane” form of female generative energy.When a woman reaches pu-
berty, the primordial generative energy that she was endowed with at
birth is transformed into energy for procreation. If the energy is not used
for reproduction or the nourishment of the fetus, it will flow out as men-
strual blood.
The Mother Empress of the West’s Ten Precepts on the True Path of
Women’s Practices tells us that

At age thirteen, fourteen, or fifteen, the woman’s primordial energy

is plentiful and her “true blood” is full. She has the one yang embod-
ied in the yin.This is when the light of the full moon is resplendent.
When the menses descends, her primordial energy is broken and the
 taoism 141

“true blood” will leak out. After marriage and the birth of children,
her primordial energy continues to weaken and the “true blood” is
gradually destroyed. Although every month the menstrual blood
continues to flow, in reality, it is re-injured every time the menses oc-
cur. This is why it is difficult for a woman to cultivate life. . . . The
key to a woman’s life is tied to her menses. If the menses is not trans-
formed, how can she preserve her life?

If a woman does not practice internal alchemy to conserve and pre-

serve the generative energy, the energy will continue to flow out of the
body. When this energy is gone, the aging process will speed up, and the
woman’s health will decline rapidly. This is remarkably consistent with
contemporary medical theories about women’s aging process and the loss
of estrogen after menopause.
All internal alchemists agree that it is best for a woman to begin inter-
nal cultivation before puberty. If this is not possible, then she should begin
her cultivation before menopause. Finally, those who begin their training
after menopause will have to work the hardest.
After the “red dragon” is “slain,” the female practitioner can begin the
next stage of internal strengthening. The procreative energy, which has
been transformed into primordial generative energy, is channeled to the
area of the breasts. At the same time, the energy of nourishment is stimu-
lated in the breast and transformed into the primordial vital energy. In fe-
male internal alchemy, this process is referred to as “cultivating the breast.”
The Essentials of the Golden Elixir Method for Women says, “The
woman’s life energy is in the breast. In the breasts is the essence of the
mother’s ch’i.”
When the energy of nourishment is transformed into the primordial
vital energy, the woman’s breasts become firm, resembling those of a
young woman before puberty.
With the completion of the transformation of procreative and nour-
ishing energy into their respective primordial forms, the distinction be-
tween generative and vital energies no longer exists. The two have
coagulated to become an undifferentiated energy called the primordial
vapor, which is then circulated through the body. For women, the breast is
the starting point for the circulation, whereas for men, the area between
the kidneys (ming-men or Life Gate) is the starting point.
142 her voice, her faith

With time and practice, the primordial vapor is refined and cultivated
and is stored in the abdominal area. For women, the vapor is stored in the
womb; for men, it is stored in the area of the kidneys.
When females and males complete the processes of external strength-
ening, differences in their muscular-skeletal systems—bone mass, muscular
strength, tendon elasticity, spinal strength, and spinal flexibility—begin to
disappear. When they complete the process of internal strengthening, the
subtle body, which is not gender-specific, directs the functions of internal
physiology. From here onward, female and male practitioners undergo the
same program of spiritual training.

4. Merging with the Tao

This is the highest level of internal alchemy. The distinction between fe-
male and male is dissolved as one sheds personality and aggregates to
merge with the Tao. Here, sexual, social, or physiological differences no
longer matter. In fact, one needs to shed attitudes and perspectives of gen-
der before the mind can be emptied.When the thought processes stop, the
original mind of emptiness will emerge.
Although Sun Pu-erh is considered the founder of female internal
alchemy, many techniques have been refined by her successors.Today, the
spiritual successors of Sun Pu-erh can be found in China, Taiwan, and
Hong Kong. They have survived wars, political changes, and even the
Cultural Revolution. Some are hermits living in small temples in remote
regions of China and Taiwan; some have returned to the Taoist temples
and nunneries after the People’s Republic of China lifted its ban on or-
ganized religion; some always lived in Hong Kong, hiding as “urban her-
mits.” I have been fortunate to have met and learned from some of these
remarkable women.

CONCLUSIONS

In this chapter I have tried to uncover the hidden history of women in

Taoism. I have reconstructed a history of Taoist women from biographies
 taoism 143

of deities and immortals, unorthodox histories, treatises on female internal

alchemy, and my personal experiences in spiritual training. This recon-
structed history shows us that female practitioners are not rare in the his-
tory of Taoism. It also shows that women have played important roles in
the development of Taoist thought and practice.
The goal of this chapter is not to discredit or belittle the contributions
of the men of Taoism; any great religious tradition must be built and
maintained by both its female and male practitioners. However, I hope
that in making the history of women more visible in the history of
Taoism, I have given practitioners and non-practitioners, women and
men, a more balanced view of the religious and spiritual tradition of my
ancestral culture.
 5

Judaism
By Susannah Heschel

I was a student when my father
died, suddenly and unexpectedly in his sleep one night.The shock and hor-
ror felt overwhelming, and I was grateful for the family and friends who
came to our home, brought us food, and led us through the intricate
mourning observances of traditional Judaism. Since my father’s family is
Hasidic, a very devout branch of Judaism, our religious observances were
numerous, and I was glad for that; I felt I wanted more and more ways to
express my grief. My mother and I spent the first week at home, receiving
visitors and praying three times each day the special prayer for the dead, the
kaddish (literally, the prayer sanctifying God’s name). Gradually, we emerged,
tentatively, and returned to some of our normal activities. After a month, I
returned to school, but carried my pain with me. My friends felt awkward,
and I understood that they just didn’t know what to say to me. Still, I
needed some way to express my grieving, and I thought of my religion as a
great source of comfort and support, even more reliable to me than my
friends.
According to Jewish tradition, the mourner’s kaddish (prayer for the
dead) is recited daily in the synagogue for eleven months by sons, not
daughters, and I was frequently told to leave or be treated with contempt
at synagogues I attended. My experiences are not unique, but very much
shared by numerous other Jewish women during the past few decades. In-
deed, just as we were mourning our fathers, we came to realize that we

145
146 her voice, her faith

were also mourning certain aspects of our Jewish identity that we had
taken for granted—our acceptance by the community and by the
tradition, both of which, we suddenly realized, failed to understand and
support us at a time of deep anguish. Just as we were attempting to recon-
struct our lives without a father, we also had to reconstruct our lives as
Jews.
Most Conservative and Orthodox synagogues maintain daily services,
gathering a minyan, a quorum of ten men that constitutes communal
worship. These gatherings are usually composed of elderly men who are
themselves saying kaddish for family members. The daily attendance at
services offers them a social meeting, with breakfast following the early
morning services.This was my first encounter with such groups, as I woke
up at 6 and rushed to the early morning services at synagogues near my
mother’s home or my school. I liked the idea of being in the company of
elderly men; they reminded me of my father. I expected they would wel-
come me, a young woman affirming her religious commitment. I had no
idea of the hostility I would evoke.
In some congregations, I was simply tolerated. Placed in the back of
the room, or off to one side, I was ignored. Often, one of the men an-
nounced to me the page number in the prayerbook, despite the fact that I
followed the Hebrew prayers fluently and joined everyone else for the
recitation of the kaddish.The assumption seemed to be that I knew noth-
ing, although my education in Hebrew and Jewish religious texts was
quite extensive. Sometimes, I seemed to be an irritant, as if my presence
disrupted the community.
At other synagogues, my presence was not tolerated at all. Once, while
driving to New York through Connecticut, I stopped in New Haven for
the afternoon service. I arrived a little early in the Sunday School class-
room where daily services were held, and when the elderly men arrived
they informed me that they had no place for me and that I would have to
leave. I tried to explain that I was saying kaddish, that there was no time to
get to another synagogue for services. I even offered to stand in the back
of the room, unseen.That was not good enough. I was told in plain, blunt
words:“If you don’t leave, we can’t pray.”
Not only in New Haven, but in New York, Boston, and Israel, where I
happened to visit during that year of mourning, I had similar experiences.
Indeed, in Israel, dominated by Orthodox synagogues, there was simply
 judaism 147

no opportunity whatsoever for me to say kaddish. I was banned from the

daily services of Orthodox synagogues, and the Conservative synagogues
only held services on the Sabbath. Being treated with contempt is painful
enough; experiencing a banishment from the synagogue during a period
of emotional fragility was devastating. My experience in Israel, which is
supposed to be a place of homecoming for all Jews, taught me that I
would have to abandon my Judaism to live there. Not only had I lost my
father; I had lost my sense of being a full member of my religion. Death
and institutionalized sexism hit me simultaneously.
The recitation of kaddish is a custom, not a commandment, and it has
traditionally been carried out by men. A son is traditionally called his fa-
ther’s “kaddish,” the guarantor that someone will recite the prayer for the
father.And for a father who has only daughters? Customarily, a male rela-
tive or religious student would recite kaddish in such a case. Daughters
were not part of the custom. And kaddish for a mother? Somehow her
kaddish has been less important in the tradition.
In recent generations women have become increasingly vocal about
their desire to say kaddish for a parent, spouse, or child. In a famous letter
from the early part of this century, Henrietta Szold, the founder of the in-
ternational women’s Zionist organization Hadassah, thanked a male friend
for offering to say kaddish for her father, but insisted that she would do so,
pointing out that the love she felt for her father was the crucial element of
the prayer. In the past twenty years, the difficulty of trying to recite kad-
dish for a father has become a common moment of awakening for many
Jewish feminists. Quite a few have written about their own experiences,
which have been much like my own. Encountering the sexism of Judaism
as a full blast during a period of mourning, when a supportive community
is so important, has caused many Jewish women to look more deeply at
the roots of Judaism’s attitudes toward women, and at their own commit-
ment to their Jewish faith. According to many Jewish women, myself in-
cluded, the sexism they experience from the community is unusual
because their own fathers did not treat them in a discriminatory fashion.
My father, for example, believed strongly in women’s equality and always
included me equally in prayers and other aspects of Jewish life. Indeed, he
even suggested to me that I apply to rabbinical school, long before 1983,
when women were finally ordained rabbis by the Conservative move-
ment. The contrast between his views of women’s inclusion in Judaism
148 her voice, her faith

and the views I encountered in many synagogues made his death all the
more painful, and my awareness of the sexism all the more striking.
During the year I said kaddish, I read Mary Daly’s remarkable book,
Beyond God the Father, which had been published in 1973.1 Reading that
book was an extraordinary experience for me. I was both devastated and
exhilarated. Daly explained that the sexism of religion is not rooted in in-
dividual teachings, which might be modified or eliminated, but in the
central symbols of religious faith—most importantly in the symbol of
God as male. Her book explained to me why I had been feeling so devas-
tated, which was a great relief, but it also made it clear to me that there
were no easy solutions. If anything, I felt that an abyss had opened with
the revelation of the depth of sexism and misogyny intrinsic to religion,
including Judaism.
The feminist movement has brought remarkable changes to the reli-
gious life of Jewish women. For the first time in Jewish history, women are
now being ordained rabbis, and have equality in most non-Orthodox syn-
agogues.Within the field of Jewish Studies, too, feminist theory has had an
impact. For the first time, questions about the role and status of women in
Jewish history and in Jewish texts are being asked. Recovery of women’s
history has been a dominant concern, as well as analysis of misogynous tra-
ditions embedded within Judaism’s texts.
The results of Jewish feminist studies have been mixed. Some histori-
ans have enthusiastically brought to light evidence that women partici-
pated actively in Jewish societies through the centuries, that many were
educated leaders of their communities, and that women were engaged in
religious practice as actively as men—even if their engagement was un-
dertaken in separate locations. Texts that ignore or forbid women’s in-
volvement in Judaism’s religious life have sometimes been contradicted by
historical and archeological evidence. For example, despite the patriarchy
and sexism of the Hebrew Bible, Susan Ackerman has demonstrated that
women functioned as ritual musicians and singers in the religious life of
ancient Israel.2
On the other hand, Judaism is also a religion of law and theology, and
feminist studies of those spheres have been less promising. The legal and
theological literature of Judaism produced through the centuries has been
composed exclusively by men, and reveals negative stereotypes and, fre-
quently, harsh biases toward women.The central concern of those texts is
 judaism 149

the religious life of Jewish men; women enter into the discussions insofar
as they may enhance or disturb men, but their own religious needs are not
taken into consideration. For example, although there are Jewish prayers
for all sorts of bodily experiences, there is no prayer for giving birth. A
man marries or divorces a woman; she may not take the initiative. As
Rachel Adler has pointed out, Jewish law is rooted in a “methodolatry,” an
idolatry of method that not only favors men’s interests, but often does not
even have the intellectual rubrics for considering women’s concerns.3
The dilemma for most Jewish women is that if they could simply re-
gard Judaism in a detached manner as a sexist institution, they could walk
away and not think twice about it.The difficulty is that Jewish identity is
as fundamental as gender identity; it cannot easily be abandoned without
losing a sense of oneself. Luckily, Jews are shaped by a host of loyalties, not
only to the written texts, but also to Jewish history and community; to re-
ligious beliefs and practices, but also to ethnicity, even to special foods,
jokes, and languages. Jewishness is constructed not only by the written
word, but by cultural attitudes.Thus, the basis of Judaism may begin with
the Bible and the Talmud, the collection of rabbinic law and teachings
compiled from the first to the sixth centuries, but it includes commen-
taries, analyses, sermons, philosophical and mystical treatises, and extends
to Jewish cultural memory from antiquity to the present day.That cultural
memory is recapitulated in the prayerbook and in holiday celebrations
such as Hanukkah, which celebrates the victory of the Hasmoneans over
the Syrians in 165 B.C.E., and continues, as a contemporary Jew sees her-
self or himself not only as a survivor of Hitler’s genocide, but as one of the
slaves who left Egypt under Moses’ leadership in 1600 B.C.E.
Yet the pride in such identifications is mitigated for Jewish women by
the realization that our specific experiences as women have been ignored
by our tradition, or even denigrated by it. To enter the prayerbook, with
its references to God as male, is to join the community on condition that
our femaleness is left at the door. The mitzvot, commandments of the
Bible and Talmud, considered divinely revealed law, place women in a cat-
egory strictly separated from men. Even contemporary historical surveys
of Jewish experience, including textbooks used in the college courses,
such as Jewish People, Jewish Thought, rarely mention a single woman when
covering several thousand years of Jewish history.4 It is as if Jewish women
are erased from the community, as if to be a Jew is to be a Jewish man.
150 her voice, her faith

As Jewish feminists began their efforts to recognize and overcome the

sexism of Judaism, one of their first efforts was that of recovering women’s
own experiences.Attention was paid to the few women mentioned in the
Bible as prophets, as well as to those whose lives were marked by the hor-
ror of rape and murder. New investigations of Jewish law were under-
taken, to question whether the limitations on women’s participation in
Jewish religious life were truly mandated by the Talmud, or were the result
of biased interpretations of the law. Historians attempted to uncover the
traces of women’s lives in documents and archeological artifacts, to see
how women experienced their own sense of Jewish identity, despite patri-
archal constraints.All of these efforts involved overcoming obstacles. How,
for example, could the history of Jewish women be found when all the
major extant texts of the premodern period had been composed by men?
How could rabbinic literature be analyzed by women when the schools
for studying those texts, yeshivot, were limited to male students?
Enormous changes have occurred during the past thirty years in the
opportunities afforded Jewish women to express themselves spiritually
and intellectually. Schools for training Jewish women in traditional rab-
binic texts have been opened, with the result that some women have be-
come authorities on matters of Jewish law.The academic study of Judaism
at universities has also created a new generation of women scholars, many
of whom bring feminist concerns to bear on their study of history, litera-
ture, and religious thought. Most dramatically, women participate equally
with men in the public worship at most non-Orthodox synagogues. Even
within certain spheres of Orthodox Judaism, women have created their
own prayer and study groups, abiding by Jewish law yet taking advantage
of the opportunities permitted under the law for women-only gatherings.
Indeed, the transformation of Jewish public life to include women may be
one of the most dramatic changes in Judaism of the modern era.
The question for Jewish feminists is whether the changes they are
bringing about are entirely new in the history of Judaism, or whether they
have some basis in Jewish history.
Many have described Judaism as among the world’s most sexist reli-
gions, yet others have discovered teachings that support women’s empow-
erment. One of the great difficulties has been locating appropriate sources
that reflect the reality of women’s lives. Most extant Jewish texts were
 judaism 151

written by men, and little survives to indicate the actual experience Jew-
ish women have had of their religion.
Ancient Israel emerged around 1200 B.C.E. within a larger Canaanite
society and was influenced by features of Canaanite religion, including its
worship of goddess figures.5 Both the prophetic expressions and more di-
rect archeological evidence indicate that some goddess worship existed
alongside male monotheism in ancient Israel and Judah.6 The Israelite ef-
fort, described in the Bible, to shift from polytheistic to monotheistic
worship meant the elimination of goddess figures in favor of a single male
deity,Yahweh. Despite that effort, some of the characteristics of Canaanite
goddesses can be found among the attributes of Yahweh. In addition,
some of the women leaders who appear in the Bible, such as Deborah and
Yael, assume the style of the warrior goddesses of Canaan. Archeologists,
moreover, have challenged conventional assumptions that monotheism
was widely accepted by the eighth century B.C.E. with evidence that het-
erogeneous-style worship continued long after, including worship of god-
dess figures and pagan deities alongside Yahweh.
The worship of goddesses, however, does not necessarily mean an ele-
vation of women’s social status, as the feminist biblical scholar Tikvah
Frymer-Kensky has pointed out.7 Cross-cultural studies clearly reveal that
patriarchy often produces goddesses. The presence of powerful women
within the biblical narrative more likely arises from the fact that ancient
Israelite society was not formally structured in its institutions, allowing
women a greater role to play not only in military exploits but also, per-
haps, in religious life. Biblical texts indicate that women were active both
as prophets and as ritual musicians, at least prior to the emergence of the
monarchy, around 1050 B.C.E.8 Both Miriam and Deborah, as well as sev-
eral other women, were designated prophets, and their activities are re-
lated in some detail by the biblical texts of Exodus and Judges.The advent
of the monarchy shifted the role of women as ritual musicians from the
public sphere to the private. In early Israelite history, women led the com-
munity in song to celebrate military victory; later, they became ritual
mourners and probably focused their religious activity in their homes.
The lack of female leadership, especially in the priesthood, con-
tributed to women being blamed for failures in Israel’s loyalty to Yahweh.
Several prophets use female imagery to describe what they condemn as
152 her voice, her faith

sinful behavior. Isaiah, for example, uses metaphors of jewelry and

women’s clothing when condemning religious corruption.Although con-
demning both women and men for their religious failings, Isaiah creates
associations between femininity and evil, with inevitable consequences for
the position of women within society. Biblical literature is full of these as-
sociations.9
Some have argued for a further decline in women’s religious status
during the period of the Babylonian exile after 586 B.C.E., as Judaism
came under the increasing control of both the male priestly and scribal
leadership. Others disagree, noting that Jewish women living under Per-
sian administration, which extended to Judah, enjoyed broad legal powers,
despite male control of religious life. Sixth-century papyri found at Ele-
phantine (an island in the Nile River in Upper Egypt), for example, reveal
that women had the power to divorce their husbands, despite the biblical
law that only a man could divorce his wife.10
During the Second Temple period, from 536 B.C.E. to 70 C.E., in
Palestine a variety of Jewish religious groups flourished, while the Jewish
Diaspora expanded, spreading through much of the Greco-Roman em-
pire and Babylonia. Within Palestine, women were excluded from the
leadership of the Sadducees, the hereditary priesthood that ran the
Jerusalem Temple, and from membership in the Essenes at Qumran, a
group of monastic men living near the Dead Sea who denounced the
corruption of the priesthood and believed in the imminent messianic era.
Yet, as Ross Kraemer has shown, women did play an active and sometimes
prominent role among the Pharisees, scribes who interpreted biblical Ju-
daism for application to everyday religious practices, and who constituted
the vast majority of Jews during the period.11 Women’s teachings are
recorded in the Pharisees’ texts, the Mishnah and Talmud. In addition,
women formed their own monastic community in Egypt, known as the
Therapeutae, and were active as guerrilla warriors against Roman rule in
Palestine.Women were also prominent within the many messianic move-
ments that flourished during the era, including the movement around Je-
sus. Indeed, the many female followers of Jesus indicates Judaism’s
openness to women and may be one reason why Judaism began to acquire
female converts, the most famous of whom is Queen Helena of Adiabene,
who converted to Judaism in the early years of the first century C.E., to-
gether with her son, who later became King Kzates.
 judaism 153

The destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by the Romans in the year

70 C.E. was a major catastrophe in the history of Judaism. The sacrificial
system of worship, conducted by the priests, came to an end, and Jews had
to create liturgies and religious practices to replace the Temple.Their reli-
gion was no longer practiced at a central national shrine, but at home and
in communal institutions, particularly synagogues, rabbinical academies,
and ritual baths (mikvah).The purity laws of the Bible and Talmud, which
mandated immersion in water as a cleansing of sin prior to entry into the
Jerusalem Temple, were no longer applicable. Instead, categories of purity
were limited to sexuality.12 Women were required to immerse themselves
in a ritual bath, containing collected rain water, seven days after the cessa-
tion of menstrual bleeding, with abstention from sexual relations during
menstruation and the week following. Both women and men attended
communal religious worship service, particularly on the Sabbath and hol-
idays, but women were not under obligation to pray three times a day. In-
stead, their religious influence increasingly revolved around the home, the
site of holiday celebrations over festive meals. Study of religious texts and
their commentaries became the nearly exclusive domain of men. Starting
in antiquity and continuing until the modern era, Jewish men composed a
vast literature of biblical commentaries, interpretations of Jewish law, and
works of philosophy and mysticism. If women also wrote learned texts,
they were not preserved.
The Talmud, a collection of Jewish laws and religious teachings com-
piled over several generations and written down in the sixth century, set
forth both restrictions on women’s participation in public religious life
and protections against the exploitation of women. Some feminist schol-
ars, such as Judith Hauptman, interpret the Talmud’s rulings concerning
women as advancing the status of women over what was common in
Greco-Roman society.13 Other scholars see a more complex situation, in
which women are accorded freedom in some circumstances, while re-
stricted in others. Judith Wegner, for example, points out that the Mish-
nah, the earlier stratum of the Talmud, generally excludes women from
the study of Torah and public worship, yet permits unmarried women
wide freedom in carrying out independent business transactions.14
Hauptman points out that although the Talmud allows only men to dis-
solve a marriage, it mandates a husband’s obligations to his wife in the
marriage contract. The Talmud is also relatively lenient regarding the use
154 her voice, her faith

of contraception, and even permits abortion in certain circumstances.15

Others, such as Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, Daniel Boyarin, and Miriam
Peskowitz, have turned attention away from the laws and looked instead at
the literary rhetoric of the Talmud, especially the role of gender. Some of
the Talmud’s more informal religious teachings, known as aggada, contain
negative or even hostile images concerning women, such as the warning
against men listening to a woman’s voice. Although those aggadic teach-
ings do not carry the force of law, they exerted an influence over the
imagination of the Jewish community, creating stereotypes regarding
women and men that often were translated into customs or taboos.16
While women were generally excluded from leadership within the
synagogue in the Middle Ages, it is not clear when that exclusion began.
Bernadette Brooten has discovered inscriptions from antiquity that de-
scribe Jewish women as synagogue leaders, and she has also pointed out
that no evidence exists that women sat separately from men in the ancient
synagogue.17 Her evidence contradicts the legal prescriptions of rabbinic
law, indicating that the law may not have always reflected the reality of re-
ligious practice. For example, the Talmud prohibits women from reading
the Torah in the synagogue, stating, “a woman should not read from the
Torah because of the honor of the congregation.”18 The very existence of
the prohibitions within Jewish law may actually give evidence that
women did read from the Torah, or the prohibition would not be neces-
sary. The women’s section of the synagogue may have originated in the
early Middle Ages, under Muslim influence. Once they were relegated to
a separate section, however, women frequently were led in their prayers by
a designated female leader, who also translated and explicated the weekly
Torah reading.
Both in antiquity and the Middle Ages, some women achieved posi-
tions of great economic success, accruing wealth and property. Some be-
came benefactors of their communities and held positions of leadership.
Most, however, lived in poverty, with all the constraints that poverty im-
poses.
In the Middle Ages, for the most part, Jewish women took leadership
roles in the domestic sphere of communal life. They were generally in
charge of collecting and distributing charity, and were regarded highly as
midwives and healers, serving both Jews and Christians. Because Jewish
law permits contraception, in contrast to Catholic canon law, Jewish
 judaism 155

women often had smaller families and hence greater independence than
their Christian neighbors, which occasionally stimulated anti-Jewish re-
sentments.The tendency of Jews to assimilate to the culture in which they
lived, however, meant that women were confined by the surrounding so-
cial norms of non-Jewish society.Within Christian Europe, Jewish women
were able to travel and engage independently in business, but within
North Africa and other Muslim lands Jewish women lived most often
within a demarcated domestic or even cloistered sphere until the modern
era. Although polygyny was banned for European Jews at the end of the
eleventh century, it remained common among Jews living in Muslim areas
until the twentieth century.19 Yet among Jews in Egypt, for example, mar-
riage contracts preserved from the tenth and eleventh centuries indicate a
partnership that also granted the wife the right to divorce her husband.20
At the same time, Jewish women were rarely literate, and those who were
literate were almost never taught the Talmud and its commentaries. Since
the practice of Judaism entailed the interpretation of intricate laws that
governed social and business relations, as well as religious observance,
women were not empowered to interpret and regulate their lives.
Describing sinful behavior with metaphors of femininity, the tradition
of Isaiah was continued in the Talmud and in medieval Jewish texts.
Women were regarded as fountains of sexual temptation seducing even
the most pious man if he were momentarily distracted from his study and
prayer. Gatherings of women came under suspicion; they might be prac-
ticing sorcery, and men were warned not to walk between two women or
to speak unnecessarily with any woman outside his family. Menstrual
taboos increased, especially in Christian Europe, and customs developed
that a menstruating woman should not enter the synagogue, pray, recite
God’s name, or touch a sacred book, even though rabbinic law does not
require it and some rabbis insisted that women should attend the syna-
gogue regardless of their menstrual status.21
The two major medieval movements within Jewish thought, philoso-
phy and mysticism (Kabbalah), excluded women from participating in
their composition and generated further negative images of the female.
The greatest Jewish legal authority and philosopher, Moses Maimonides
(1335–1204), permitted husbands to beat their wives, although other rab-
bis in his day did not. Further, Maimonides did not believe women pos-
sessed the faculty of reason, necessary to the attainment of divine
156 her voice, her faith

inspiration.22 In Jewish mysticism, feminine imagery involving God

abounds yet plays only a secondary role within the God. The female as-
pect of God is passive and receptive, while the male is active, and the fe-
male must remain under the control of the male or she will be taken over
by the demonic forces that supposedly lurk about her. Despite these sorts
of unfortunate details, Kabbalah provided the greatest attention to female
imagery of any Jewish literature. Central to the Kabbalistic understanding
of Jewish religious life was the requirement to reunite the separated male
and female aspects of the divinity, and that reunion should be the goal of
all religious devotions.23 Divine immanence, called the Shekhinah, is cen-
tral to Kabbalah and elaborates freely on the feminine aspects of God.
Some Jewish feminists today attempt to reclaim the Shekhinah as a female
divinity, while others find the Shekhinah’s associations with passivity and
receptivity typical of patriarchal values and unacceptable for feminist
reclamation. Also, the Kabbalah’s stress on reuniting the female and male
aspects of God reinforces heterosexism—often encouraging the oppres-
sion of women.
Spiritual devotion within Judaism was directed almost exclusively
toward Jewish men. Cultivating an inner religious life was bound up
with the study of Torah and regular worship, activities limited to men.
Yet Jewish women developed their own spiritual traditions, enhancing
the domestic activities to which they were limited. For example, books
of women’s devotional prayers contained meditations for kindling the
Sabbath lights, baking the challah (special bread for holidays), and im-
mersion in the mikvah—an observance that entails a ritual bath follow-
ing menstruation and childbirth.24 Some women adopted stringent
ascetic practices, such as staying away from the synagogue while men-
struating, daily fasting, frequent prayer, placing ashes on their heads, and
wearing sackcloth. Although such practices were not forbidden, increas-
ingly in the early modern period, some rabbis sought to limit them by
declaring that they interfered with women’s obligations toward their
husbands and children.
Women’s religious devotion, however, remained strong. During the
Inquisition in Spain and Portugal, for example, many Jews who had con-
verted to Christianity still practiced Judaism in secret. Renee Levine
Melammed has demonstrated that records of the Inquisition indicate that
women more than men were maintaining secretive Jewish religious obser-
 judaism 157

vances at home, and women were disproportionately victims of the Inqui-

sition’s torture.25 Within other parts of Europe and the Ottoman Empire,
Jewish and crypto-Jewish women ( Jews who practiced faith in secret to
avoid the brunt of the Inquisition) engaged in widespread business deal-
ings, often involving successful political and commercial connections. In-
creasingly, women from wealthier families were given secular educations
in languages, mathematics, and sometimes even music and the arts, in or-
der to enhance their abilities to engage in trade within the non-Jewish
world.26 Study of Hebrew and Jewish texts, however, was rare and limited
to women from elite families.Women unfortunately did not contribute to
the vast body of religious literature composed by Jewish men during the
Middle Ages.
Independence among women was not always regarded favorably by
rabbis. Howard Adelman has demonstrated that leading rabbinic figures,
such as Joseph Caro (b. 1448–1575), author of the most important code of
Jewish law, sought to limit women’s rights within Jewish law. Caro placed
limits on women’s right to demand a divorce from an abusive husband,
and Moses Isserles (1530–1572) viewed wife-beating as a simple domestic
dispute, rather than a sin. Increasingly, sexual intercourse was presented as
an act that should be carried out with ascetic religious devotion, rather
than pleasure and delight.27
The eighteenth century brought important changes in Jewish life.
Within Eastern Europe a new pious movement arose, Hasidism, that sig-
nificantly altered the religious values as well as communal structures of the
Jews. In Central and Western Europe, political and intellectual upheavals
introduced notions of citizenship and began the process of Jewish political
emancipation.28
Hasidism, which began in the late eighteenth century as a spiritual
movement around Israel ben Eliezer, known as the Baal Shem Tov (Master
of the Good Name), developed over the next two centuries throughout
most of Eastern Europe into communities of adherents of a particular
rebbe, or Zaddik, who advised and inspired his followers.The Zaddik held
court for his male disciples, who would leave their families to spend Jew-
ish holidays with their Zaddick. Hasidism increased the stringency of gen-
der separation, requiring head coverings for married women, and urging
men to combat any sexual thoughts that might distract them from their
prayers and study.Women were not participants in the creation of Hasidic
158 her voice, her faith

literature, nor were they taught the doctrines of the new movement. Al-
though one nineteenth-century woman, Hannah Rachel Verbermacher,
known as the Maid of Ludmir, managed to gain a few adherents through
her reputation as a miracle worker and woman of great piety, her marriage
brought an end to her leadership role.
Within Western Europe, major political changes were occurring.The
French Revolution of 1789 brought an end to the communal status of so-
cial groups and introduced the notion of individual citizenship.The mod-
ern state demanded abolition of legal privileges as well as disabilities for all
groups, whether aristocracy, clergy, peasantry, or Jews. As a result, emanci-
pation of the Jews became essential for the modern state to take shape.
Jews were granted civic status as citizens of the state, marking a crucial
transition. In Western Europe this process occurred gradually from 1789
to 1871, while in Eastern Europe it took longer, starting only with the
Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. During the course of the nineteenth cen-
tury, Jews were increasingly able to enter a secular realm, free from coer-
cive efforts to convert them to Christianity, free from laws that had long
barred their admission to schools, universities, guilds, armed services, civil
service, or other professions. Secular freedom ironically led to religious
freedom: Jews were no longer bound by the authority of rabbis, who for
centuries had been able to use the threat of excommunication to enforce
their will. Religious observance of Judaism or any other religion became a
matter of free choice. Being Jewish could be an expression of religious
faith, or simply of ethnicity.
With that freedom, being Jewish in the modern period has entailed a
wide variety of options for religious and ethnic identities. Jews choose the
extent of their religious observances, marry non-Jews, or even convert to
other religions, and growing numbers of Jews have.The authority of Jew-
ish law and of the rabbis is now a matter of choice.The modern era shat-
tered the “sacred canopy” of religious belief and practice that had
characterized premodern Jewish religious life. Both extreme piety and as-
similation into Christian culture are matters of free choice, rather than an
imposition or, as had been believed, the will of God.
Although modernity brought a decline in Jewish religious obser-
vance, it presented new denominations within Judaism that offered a
range of religious observances and beliefs. Reform Judaism began in the
early nineteenth century when individual families, dissatisfied with syna-
 judaism 159

gogue services, initiated their own worship services in private homes.

Prayers were recited in the European vernacular instead of Hebrew, music
was played on the organ, and edifying sermons were delivered weekly, in-
stead of the traditional twice-yearly sermon.Those reforms eventually en-
tered the synagogues, particularly in urban areas, beginning in Western
Europe and the United States, and became and continue to be the pre-
dominant forms of Jewish religious expression.They were complemented
by a rapid decline in Jewish observance of private religious command-
ments, such as daily prayer and dietary regulations.
Despite the radical changes in Jewish observance that were initiated in
the early nineteenth century, equality for women was not part of the re-
forms. By the mid-nineteenth century, teenage girls were given cere-
monies of confirmation along with boys, but women still sat separately
from men in the Reform synagogues. Mixed seating was introduced in
the United States in 1851 in Albany, New York, and in 1854 at Temple
Emanu-El in New York City; it only became common in the United
States after 1869, when many new post–Civil War synagogues opened, and
did not spread to European Reform synagogues until much later.Within
Orthodox synagogues, separate seating still prevails today, although a range
of styles can be found, with women seated on a balcony, or behind a cur-
tain, or in a separate room.
An offshoot of Reform Judaism emerged toward the end of the nine-
teenth century among Eastern European immigrants to the United States.
Known as Conservative Judaism, it situated itself as a moderate force be-
tween Orthodox and Reform Judaism, and soon became the largest of the
American denominations.The Conservative movement was the slowest to
grant women some rights in the synagogue services, and even today its
seminary refuses to ordain lesbians and gay men as rabbis. On the other
hand, Reconstructionist Judaism, an offshoot of the Conservative move-
ment, began in the United States during the 1930s, with a distinct reli-
gious philosophy based on the writings of Mordecai Kaplan. It quickly
became a pioneer in granting equality to women in matters of Jewish law,
permitting, for example, women to give a Jewish divorce to their hus-
bands.The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, located in Philadelphia,
was the first to welcome gay and lesbian students for the rabbinate.
Within Orthodox Judaism, which adheres strictly to rabbinic law,
women suffer the greatest disadvantages. Men have control over marriage
160 her voice, her faith

and divorce, women sit separately at synagogue services and are not
counted in the quorum for communal prayer, and heterosexual marriage
is the required norm. Homosexuality is condemned as a sin. Still, moder-
nity has brought some changes in women’s status even within Orthodox
communities. In part, fear of secular influences motivated the creation of
schools for Orthodox girls, both in Europe and the United States, to in-
culcate traditional learning as well as secular subjects within a pious
framework. Orthodox women also formed organizations to promote
Zionist and social-service causes through fund-raising and volunteer
work.Within the ultra-Orthodox communities, women’s studies of bibli-
cal texts are encouraged not for the sake of educating and empowering
women, but for maintaining their ignorance and dependence on men.
Although the modern era is conventionally assumed to have seen the
decline in Jewish religiosity and the growth in assimilation, intermarriage,
and conversion to Christianity, its impact on women has also had the ef-
fect of opening new religious opportunities for education, careers, and re-
ligious leadership. Pressure from the changes in secular society that
encouraged women and men to take advantage of equal opportunities in
education and careers affected the Jewish world, too. Classical Jewish texts,
particularly the Talmud, which had been the exclusive domain of men,
were increasingly taught to women as well, and reforms undertaken by
the synagogues began to open some avenues for women’s participation.
The emergence of secular Jewish literature also brought opportunities for
women’s Jewish self-expression through what’s known as Les belles lettres.
The secular feminist movement made the exclusion of women from pro-
fessions such as the rabbinate seem inappropriate, and pressure from Jew-
ish feminists, starting in the 1970s, resulted in a new openness to women
in Jewish religious life.
Secularization actually brought about new possibilities for Jewish
women to become involved, often for the first time in Jewish history, in
central modes of Jewish religious expression. Thanks to non-Orthodox
institutions of Jewish learning, as well as university programs in Jewish
Studies, women were able to study the Talmud and its commentaries,
Kabbalistic and Hasidic texts, codes of Jewish law, and other religious doc-
uments that had previously been accessible only to men. Pressures on Jews
to assimilate into Western norms also meant that women were given the
 judaism 161

right to lead public worship services in synagogues, eventually becoming

ordained rabbis and cantors.
Of course, however, older forms of discrimination were not entirely
erased. In the name of equality, for example, distinct spheres of women’s
traditional expression of Judaism were minimized or eliminated by non-
Orthodox Jews, such as mikveh observance (immersion in the ritual bath
following menstruation and childbirth), which declined radically in the
modern era. Certain secular movements, including Zionism, while pro-
claiming adherence to the equality of men and women, nevertheless kept
positions of leadership firmly in men’s hands.
The United States, which became the center of Jewish feminism after
World War II, had a small and relatively uneducated Jewish community
prior to the 1880s. Women received only minimal Jewish education and
were not voting members of the Jewish community. The demography
quickly shifted at the turn of the twentieth century, as over two million Jews
from Eastern Europe immigrated to the United States between 1881 and
1924. They included women exposed to political organizing and analysis,
and they quickly became major forces in the labor, socialist, anarchist, and
communist movements in New York and other cities in the early years of
the twentieth century. Rose Schneiderman, for example, was a leader of the
Women’s Trade Union League, the campaign for women’s suffrage, and the
International Ladies Garment Workers Union. However, once those move-
ments were institutionalized—as labor unions and political parties—women
were unfortunately removed from these leadership positions.29
During the early years of the Zionist movement, there was similar
ambivalence toward women. Zionism presented itself as a movement that
would revive the masculinity of Jewish men; it was thought that centuries
of study and piety and lack of physical exertion had weakened their man-
hood.30 During the early waves of immigration to Palestine prior to state-
hood, women worked alongside men in the cultivation of farmland.31 Yet
with the establishment of the State of Israel, women were not granted
proportional roles of power within the government. Instead a myth of
gender equality within the state was promoted, which covered up the re-
ality of women’s subservience. For example, although women are drafted
into the Israeli army, they are assigned subordinate tasks and kept from
combat duty.
162 her voice, her faith

After the Enlightenment era when Jews began experiencing political,

social, and economic emancipation, women managed to retain some in-
fluence in social-service charities within the Jewish communities of the
United States and Europe, collecting and distributing funds and goods,
and running schools and vocational training programs. Those activities, a
central feature of maintaining Jewish communal cohesion, became the ba-
sis for modern women’s organizations, such as Hadassah, the National
Council of Jewish Women, and Women’s American Organization for Re-
habilitation and Training (ORT), which became wealthy and powerful in-
stitutions during the course of the twentieth century.With the growth of
assimilation, women are generally more reluctant than men to abandon
religious traditions and Jewish identification.32 Paula Hyman’s description
of a strike in 1902 by New York immigrant women against a sudden rise
in the cost of kosher meat captures both the commitment of these house-
wives to maintaining Jewish traditions and the power they were able to
exert in subverting the price rise.33
Despite the increased opportunities for women in modern Jewish life,
Jewish identity is still defined by the male Jewish experience. Few women
writing modern Hebrew or Yiddish literature were accorded the same
recognition for their work as their male colleagues by the male-domi-
nated literary establishment. Women’s writings were not included in the
canon.34 Denigrated as a diaspora language by the Zionist movement,
Yiddish was also viewed derogatorily as the language of women.35 From
the writings of noted American Jews, such as Saul Bellow and Philip
Roth, to Israelis, such as Amos Oz and Aharon Appelfeld, Jewish literature
in all languages remains overwhelmingly preoccupied with male experi-
ence as the vehicle for exploring Jewish identity. Increasingly, however,
women writers are giving voice to their Jewish identity, and the works of
earlier generations of Jewish women writers are being discovered. Grace
Paley, one of the most influential stylists, Tillie Olsen, Jo Sinclair, Mary
Antin, and Anzia Yezierska are among the most highly recognized writers
of American Jewish experience, and new translations are giving attention
to the work of Hebrew women writers, such as Devora Baron.
Modern Jewish theology defined Jewish experience in male terms.
Often written in apologetic terms for a wider Christian readership, Jewish
theology defends the traditional role of women as an expression of respect
 judaism 163

for femininity. Jewish theologians from Moritz Lazarus to Emanuel Lev-

inas proclaimed the moral superiority of Jewish law, but disregarded the
ethical significance of the inferior status of women in Jewish law.36 Like-
wise, Jewish history has been almost exclusively about men’s experiences.
The standard surveys of Jewish history barely mention any Jewish women.
The Jewish Women’s Organization in Germany, founded in 1904, was
the first organizational effort to promote women’s rights within the Jew-
ish community in Europe.37 Among its achievements was winning
women’s right to vote in Jewish communal elections and establishing al-
liances with the wider German feminist movement. Its fight against white
slavery within the Jewish community was less successful, and its ties to
German Christian feminists were broken with Hitler’s rise to power in
1933.38
Anti-Semitism became a central feature of Jewish life in the modern
era, affecting religious as well as political decisions. Although Jews ex-
pected the tolerance of modernity to overcome the Christian anti-
Judaism that had led to periods of religious persecution during the Mid-
dle Ages, the rise of racial theory in the nineteenth century transformed
theological prejudice into a secular Judeophobia. Heightened during peri-
ods of economic or social unrest, anti-Semitism became a central element
within the political and social landscapes of Europe, the Soviet Union, and
the United States, reaching its culmination with the rise of National So-
cialism and the Nazi genocide of the Jews during the Second World War.
Some might ask what ideas led to such strong anti-Semitism. Modern
anti-Semitism often drew on gendered stereotypes that marked Jewish
men either as emasculated or as potential sexual aggressors.39 Jews were
considered abnormal for a variety of reasons, ranging from their lack of an
independent state to their alleged sexual degeneracy. Anti-Semites some-
times pointed to the inequality accorded Jewish women under Jewish re-
ligious law as a sign of Jewish sexual perversity. At the outset of
Emancipation, anti-Semites called for the thorough assimilation of Jews
into Christian society, but by the 1870s they feared the alleged threat of
assimilated Jews whose identity could not be readily distinguished from
non-Jews. Anti-Semites then revealed the supposed threat posed by Jews
to Christian society, complaining that Europe was in danger of being “Ju-
daized.” By the early twentieth century, Jews were compared to bacilli,
164 her voice, her faith

vermin, and rodents and calls for their extermination were expressed even
before the Nazis began their murdering of European Jews. This all
brought a virtual end to European Judaism.
The Holocaust—the murder of approximately six million European
Jews by Nazi Germans and their collaborators during World War II—af-
fected Jewish women in some ways different from men. Although Jewish
men were more likely to be killed in labor camps in Poland from 1939 to
1941, more women were among those deported from East European
ghettos to death camps from 1942 to 1943.40 At the camps themselves,
women were more likely upon arrival to be sent immediately to the gas
chambers, while men had a better chance of being selected for slave labor.
Any woman who arrived at a camp with a small child, or who was visibly
pregnant, was automatically sent to her death. Because younger Jews emi-
grated from Germany prior to the outbreak of the war, the remaining
German Jews, who were less likely to survive, were primarily elderly and
female. Still, women participated in resistance and partisan groups along-
side men and made significant contributions.Women were responsible for
an important revolt at the death camp Birkenau that resulted in the de-
struction of a crematorium.
Jews responded to this anti-Semitism in various ways.There were calls
for more assimilation, efforts to prosecute authors of anti-Semitic litera-
ture, and published defenses of Judaism. Anti-Semitism, particularly in
Russia, spurred the emigration of about two million Jews to the United
States and also inspired many Jews to become active in political move-
ments, particularly socialism and communism, that promised to end the
social and economic conditions allegedly responsible for anti-Semitic sen-
timents. Early Zionism was also motivated in large part by anti-Semitic
movements in Europe, with the belief that anti-Semitism could never be
overcome in Europe, so that Jews would simply have to leave and establish
their own state. Zionists called for the renewal of Jewish culture by estab-
lishing a homeland, and for a Jewish state that would meet other nations
on equal footing.
Even as Zionism sought to overcome anti-Semitism and inaugurate a
new era in Jewish history, it mimicked aspects of the gender stereotyping
found in anti-Semitic writings. For example, Zionism sought the creation
of a new,“muscular” Jewish man, escaping an image of traditional Judaism
and diaspora Jewish history as effeminate and emasculating. Equating the
 judaism 165

Jew with the male and with masculinity left no apparent place for Jewish
women, as Jewish feminists have pointed out.41
Efforts by women to win ordination as rabbis within the Reform
movement were initiated in the United States and in Germany in the
early twentieth century. Henrietta Szold was granted permission in 1903
to study at the Conservative Jewish Theological Seminary in New York
City, but only on condition that she not request ordination. Martha Neu-
mark was permitted to study at Reform Judaism’s Hebrew Union Col-
lege, but its Board of Governors decided in 1922 that women should not
be ordained rabbis.42 Regina Jonas, who completed her studies and exam-
inations at the liberal seminary in Berlin in 1930, was denied ordination
by the institution. Ultimately, Jonas became the first woman rabbi by re-
ceiving private ordination, in Germany in December 1935. After serving
the dwindling Jewish community in Berlin, she was deported by the
Nazis to Theresienstadt in 1942, where she continued to preach to the in-
mates until her deportation and murder in Auschwitz in 1945.
Only with the rise of the Jewish feminist movement in the 1970s did
ordination of women rabbis and the equality of women in non-Orthodox
synagogues become the norm. Sally Priesand was ordained at Hebrew
Union College in 1972, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College or-
dained Sandy Sasso a rabbi in 1974, and the Jewish Theological Seminary
ordained its first woman rabbi, Amy Eilberg, in 1984. At present, each of
the denominations is experimenting with revised liturgies that attempt to
use inclusive gender language.
Within the Orthodox community rabbinical ordination of women
continues to be rejected, although some liberal Orthodox congregations
have appointed women in official pastoral and teaching positions. Ortho-
dox women have also begun to form women’s prayer groups, which meet
regularly to expand women’s engagement in public worship within the
constraints of Jewish law. These, in turn, have been condemned by some
Orthodox rabbis as contrary to women’s duties under Jewish law. Ortho-
dox women who have gained fluency with rabbinic texts have also chal-
lenged those interpretations of Jewish law that leave women in an inferior
position, particularly in relation to marriage and divorce laws. Some are
now becoming official advisors to women who are petitioning Orthodox
rabbinic courts in regard to marriage and divorce. Even among ultra-
Orthodox women, education of girls and women is respected, although a
166 her voice, her faith

recent study by anthropologist Tamar El-Or suggests that ultra-Orthodox

women are taught just enough to distract them from a serious education
and maintain their general ignorance of central features of rabbinic law.43
Despite what appears to be a greater degree of sexism within Orthodox
Judaism, however, significant numbers of non-religious Jewish women
have been attracted to the Orthodox community during the past several
decades.44 According to sociological studies by Lynn Davidman and De-
bra Kaufman, most women report that they are attracted by the strong
sense of community and family that they find within the Orthodoxy.
Within the State of Israel, women’s religious rights are much more
limited.The Orthodox rabbinate, which controls all Jewish marriages and
divorces, has condemned non-Orthodox forms of Judaism as illegitimate.
Indeed, efforts by women to pray as a group at the Western Wall have been
rejected, not only by the rabbinate, but also by the secular Israeli courts.
Groups of women, and groups of women and men, who have sought to
hold prayer services at the Wall have been subjected to serious verbal and
physical abuse.The inequality of women and men within the Israeli mili-
tary service, combined with the centrality of the military in Israeli life, has
also contributed to a social position of women’s inferiority within the
state. However, a growing number of institutions in Israel have trained
women in the study of traditional Jewish texts, particularly Talmudic law.
Many have been serving as advocates within the religious courts on behalf
of women fighting for marriage and divorce rights.
The equality of Jewish women taken for granted in the United States
is rarely found in contemporary Europe. Great Britain’s small Reform
movement, which ordained a woman rabbi for the first time in 1975, has
endorsed the principle of gender equality. Elsewhere in Europe, however,
Jewish worship exists almost exclusively in its Orthodox forms. Only one
woman rabbi serves a congregation in Germany, and one in France, and
many who have sought to obtain pulpits have been rejected.The legacy of
the Holocaust is often invoked by Jews opposed to women’s rights, on the
grounds that respect for Hitler’s victims requires that pre-Nazi Judaism be
preserved intact.
As the Jewish feminist movement flourishes in the United States, its
products are numerous, and its positions are not unified. There are many
texts of feminist commentaries on the Bible, as well as feminist liturgies
and rituals. Feminist Passover Haggadahs, for example, abound, interpret-
 judaism 167

ing the Exodus from Egypt as a model for women’s liberation. Marcia
Falk, who seeks to eliminate all personal attributes associated with God,
on the grounds that any attribution of personality will reify divine mas-
culinity, has published an alternative, feminist prayerbook in which God is
addressed using inclusive language that attributes neither gender nor per-
sonality to the deity.45
Jewish feminism has also brought into being a tremendous body of
work on women and Judaism. While historians are primarily concerned
with discovering forgotten aspects of women’s history, feminist scholars
are also reconsidering the nature of Judaism in light of women’s experi-
ence. As women increasingly take active roles in all facets of Jewish life,
from secular political involvement to leadership as rabbis, Judaism will un-
dergo the most radical transformation it has faced since the Roman de-
struction of the Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 C.E. Given the ability
of Jewish identity to survive such radical challenges in the past, there is no
doubt that Judaism will emerge strengthened by feminism. Indeed, it is
precisely the creative tension between feminism and Judaism that has en-
riched contemporary Jewish religious life and thought. What is perhaps
most remarkable is how rapidly changes have occurred for women in Ju-
daism.When I said kaddish for my father in 1973, few synagogue congre-
gations would tolerate me. Now it is clear that no woman will ever again
be denied the possibility of saying kaddish, or of participating fully in syn-
agogue life, or find the books of classical Judaism closed to her. For Jewish
women, feminism has come as a great promise and an enormous relief.
Feminism has infused women with a new sense of opportunity, and has
brought the talents and insights of women to positions of leadership. Most
important, feminism signals the intense engagement of women in Jewish
creativity. A revolution has occurred in the practice of Judaism, one that
was unimaginable until recent generations, and one that will remain a
permanent feature of Jewish life. The kaddish that I recited was not only
for the death of my father, but also for the death of Judaism’s exclusion of
women.
 6

Christianity
By Mary Gerhart

Valerie Saiving Goldstein (1921–
1992), while a student at the University of Chicago Divinity School, wrote
an article on the concepts love and sin by male theologians. She began the
article with two assertions:

I am a student of theology. I am also a woman. Perhaps it strikes you

as curious that I put these two assertions beside each other, as if to
imply that one’s sexual identity has some bearing on his theological
views. I myself would have rejected such an idea when I first began
my theological studies. But now, thirteen years later, I am no longer
as certain as I . . . was then, [that] when theologians speak of man,
they are using the word in its generic sense. It is, after all, a well-
known fact that theology has been written almost exclusively by
men. . . .1

Saiving suggested that male theologians, unconfident that they could

practice selfless love, thought of love as a woman’s rather than a man’s
ideal; correlatively, they understood the sin of pride as a temptation for
men, since they thought women were not expected to have achieved any-
thing in a man’s world to be proud about.2 Saiving’s 1960 publication be-
gan a new wave of feminist studies, outside as well as within religious
studies, in the United States. Her article was more influential than Eliza-

169
170 her voice, her faith

beth Cady Stanton’s The Woman’s Bible,3 a compilation of Old and New
Testament texts with a scathing and often witty feminist commentary on
their denial of equal rights and respect to women published six decades
earlier. Saiving provided the impetus for systematic investigations based on
gender differences and quickly spread to other fields as well.
Stanton’s The Woman’s Bible and Saiving’s “The Human Situation: A
Feminine View” were both interpretations different from men’s interpre-
tations before or since. My own interpretation springs from my belief that
women, as well as men, have had some sense of alternative horizons and
held a range of beliefs at any given time during the almost two millennia
of Christian history.4 Changes do not take place without the preexistence
of some kind of diversity. Women’s relationship to Christianity does not
reveal a linear progression: rather, a couple of steps away from old con-
straints, a couple of steps backward, then a strong step forward again. Just
as the women who had elected Stanton president of the Women’s Con-
vention refused to endorse The Woman’s Bible and then voted to remove
her from office in 1898, some Christian women today think that they
have enough of a voice in the church and oppose moves such as the ordi-
nation of women. On the whole, however, there has been a steadily grow-
ing recognition that gender should be neither a privilege nor an obstacle
for admission to ministry and that women’s voices need to be heard in
liturgical and policy-making events, despite the reticence of some church
leaders to change ecclesiastical structures sufficiently to include women’s
voices as full participants.
Writing four decades after Saiving, whom I was privileged to know as
a colleague, I will foreground the voices and work of Christian women. I
am most interested in specific women’s lives and their own responses to
major religious events of their times. Did they notice the events without
questioning? Were they able to use events productively? What legacy did
these women leave? My view does not assume that a majority or even a
predominant view tells the entire story. Indeed, the knowledge that voices
have been lost can be a dangerous memory. The study of Christian
women has passed through at least three stages: heightening awareness of
the extent of women’s oppression and the need for gender equality; re-
trieving texts by and about women; and re-understanding the texts as pro-
viding information about women—creative, courageous, tragic, and
witty—as well as providing a paradigm for understanding oppression. It
 christianity 171

has been said that the root of all oppression is sexual oppression—mean-
ing that if it is permissible to oppress women, then the oppression of other
groups is easy to justify because anyone can be treated as a women.At the
same time, Christianity is the story of repeated attempts to live out a vi-
sion of new possibilities. Failures, even repeated failures, have not dimmed
the original vision.
Apart from the midrash presenting both the specialness and common-
ality of Jesus’ birth and childhood, the first momentous description of Je-
sus occurs early in the Gospel of Luke. It shows him coming to the
synagogue to pray as he usually did. This time, in his first public appear-
ance, he reads a passage from Isaiah from the scroll given to him:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because God has anointed me to
preach glad tidings to the poor . . . to proclaim release to captives,
and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to
proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord. (Luke 4: 16–21)

What happens in the subsequent three years of his life is encapsulated

in this announcement and expanded in the gospel (the “good news”) nar-
ratives.The fact that Christianity grew out of the intensification of mean-
ings that surrounded the event of Jesus Christ and the women and men
who were his followers has meant that those meanings have been re-ex-
pressed for better and for worse for 2000 years. Today it is impossible to
represent all of those meanings.The contemporary world is highly differ-
entiated, and what is “Christian” must be compared and contrasted with
the alternative visions (secularism, liberalism, other religions, and individ-
ualism).This difficulty could be partially set aside if it were not for a sec-
ond difficulty—what is “Christian” is itself plural both at its origin and
today—not to mention that each contemporary form of Christian tradi-
tion has a history.What follows are both fragments and interpretations of
the fragments that I find most provocative.
Jesus radicalized what was newly emerging—the spirit-dimension of
religion—by both his behavior and his language. At an early age he was
“lost” to his family while he spoke with rabbis in the temple and as-
tounded them with his wisdom. At a wedding party he agreed to his
mother’s request to replenish drinks but after he asserted that he didn’t
care if the wine ran dry. He left his acquaintances at the beginning of his
172 her voice, her faith

public life to live in the desert for over a month where he survived only
on what was available.
Shortly before he was taken captive, he left his close friends to pray
alone in a garden. He advised people not to strain after possessions or even
the basic necessities of food, drink, and clothing—but rather to trust that
these things would be given if people attended to the life of the spirit.
In the same vein, he inspired the principle that one’s nationality, par-
ticular gender, and social status should not make a difference in the new
community of the spirit. People experienced Jesus as model or index of
how to live. It is interesting to speculate whether Jesus would have been
emulated had he been a woman. If part of the attention drawn by Jesus
had to do with his breaking gender stereotypes, would a woman’s break-
ing her gender stereotypes have been noticed?
Jesus offered one alternative among other reform movements within
Judaism. His lifestyle within a non-familial community also ran counter to
Greco-Roman and traditional Jewish culture. Non-traditional gender as-
sumptions in the Gospels are in tension with patriarchal structures in both
worlds. Jesus is criticized for keeping company with women, tax collectors,
sinners, and prostitutes: Doesn’t he know who she is? asks the crowd of his
relationship with Mary of Bethany. Mary of Magdala is portrayed in apoc-
ryphal literature as someone he praised publicly for understanding him and
as a leader among the apostles, especially after Jesus died.5 In the Gospels
he announces that these social outcasts will participate in the reign of God
before those who see themselves as righteous. He not only announces that
the reign of God belongs to the poor in spirit—among whom have always
been great numbers of women and the children they care for—but he pre-
dicts that the rich will find it extraordinarily difficult to enter this realm
and that someday the poor in spirit will inherit the Earth. For sick and
crippled women and men, Jesus restored humanity by vanquishing dehu-
manizing powers, demonizing forces, and destructive spirits.
What were the reasons for Jesus’ death in his early 30s? The Gospel
accounts of his death emphasize that he taught truth and righteousness
and that his miracles were done out of compassion rather than from self-
aggrandizement. Jesus apparently made religious observances subordinate
to the practice of truth and justice. He disappointed those who wanted
him to lead an uprising of Jews against Roman occupation, and he was
perceived as a threat by religious leaders to their continued collaboration
 christianity 173

with Roman power. References to curious, cowardly, and faithful women

and men abound in accounts of his trial and passion. After his ignomin-
ious crucifixion as a common criminal between two thieves, only women
came to visit his tomb the third day after his death. According to the text
the women were charged with the responsibility of telling the other disci-
ples that his body was no longer in the tomb. (Peter, in the apocryphal
Gospel named after him, questions why Jesus’ message had been transmit-
ted by women—indicating Peter’s assumption of a male prerogative.) In
the narrative accounts of his mysterious appearances, two results are clear.
His frightened followers became courageous proclaimers of his life
and message, and from being a local figure Jesus became present and ac-
cessible to all people in all times.The vision of Jesus was accompanied by
his presence—his promise to be with those who lived in his way until the
end of their days, his presence as the living, dying, and resurrected Christ
in the Eucharist celebrated weekly by the growing communities, and the
identification by Christians of Jesus with other people, especially the poor
(“Whosoever does this to the least of my brethren does it to me”).
During the founding years, noble and landed women used their
houses and their status to create new Christian communities.A strong case
can be made that women exercised many kinds of leadership in the earli-
est Jesus movement and the missionary efforts of the first and second cen-
tury while the earliest communities were organizing themselves within
and beyond house churches. Some have regarded Paul as the founder of
Christianity in the sense that, unlike Jesus, who wrote nothing, Paul com-
posed the first texts, the Epistles, that were to become canonical in the
new religion. In this view Paul founded the churches addressed in his let-
ters and chose companions to help minister to them. In fact, several house
churches were in existence before Paul was shocked into changing his life
from one of persecuting Christians to one of proclaiming Christ.We now
know that some of Paul’s companions on his missionary journeys were
women. Christian women, either alone or with their spouses, provided
the houses that served as Christian gathering places. Many women are
named prophetesses in the early church and accorded special privileges.6
In addition, the earliest practice of drawing lots to determine roles from
meeting to meeting gave women equal eligibility. Because they went un-
mentioned in traditional interpretations of the texts, however, these cru-
cial roles played by women have been diminished or entirely overlooked.
174 her voice, her faith

A dominant patriarchy was not an immediate development within

Christianity. It came about slowly and with difficulty. Specific women, like
Prisca (or Priscilla), went on missionary journeys and, like Aphia of
Colossae, Nympha of Laodicea, and Lydia (from Thyatria) in Philippi, led
the early house church communities.7 At the same time the young Chris-
tian communities were urged by Paul to choose conservative practices
with respect to women in general.Women should not speak in church as-
semblies, their heads should be covered.The single reason given for these
gender-differentiated rules was that it was against nature for women to
have authority over men, an argument supported by quotations from
Genesis. However, in some communities, notably in Greece, women were
ordained to the deaconate to instruct women catechumens and to assist
with the baptism of women. Deaconesses also carried the sacrament of the
Eucharist to women shut-ins and had special privileges in handling and
transferring sacred vessels. However, only male priests could administer
ecclesiastically scheduled rituals. Even in the early church, when the order
of widows (constituted by enrollment) and deaconesses (who were or-
dained) was active in the early church, the restrictions placed on them
were much more onerous and the privileges and honor less generous than
those prescribed for male bishops.
The new Christian communities were more likely to be diversified
with respect to class, race, and gender than were their religious contempo-
raries (the Roman state religion, Judaism, Mithraism). The revolutionary
text reflecting and encouraging this diversity was Paul’s Letter to the
Galatians:

For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is
neither male nor female for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if
you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to
promise. (3:27–29)

This passage from Galatians is thought by many to be a fragment of an

early baptismal formula. For the early Christians, gender equality was not
a goal in itself. This passage encouraged many to challenge the prescrip-
tions of both state and church on what women were permitted to do and
led to different positions for women, because of Christian views.Written
 christianity 175

texts, such as Galatians, were of less importance in their culture than they
are for ours. In their culture, 96–98 percent of the general populace were
not literate nor would they have considered themselves deprived because
they could not read or write.
For today’s readers, Galatians carries a liberationist mandate. For the
early Christians, however, it probably meant that any individuals having
fulfilled the requirements of the catechumenate can be accepted within
the community and that none will be excluded because of their race, their
social status, or their sex. This openness stood in contrast to Judaism for
which racial identity was primary (even though conversion was also im-
portant in this period), to Mithraism for which occupation and gender
were primary, and to Roman state religion for which hierarchy and family
were primary (in spite of its tolerance of other religions). This attempted
openness to all distinguished the Christian religion as one of the first
“universal” religions and accounts for its having had “global” appeal right
from the beginning. It is also notable that the earliest Christian communi-
ties came from different parts of the economic spectrum as well as from
different lands—present-day Israel, Italy, Greece, Syria, and northern
Africa.
Greece, for example, today sees itself as the true birthplace of Chris-
tianity. Its national history is intertwined with religious feast days. The
Greek national holiday is celebrated on the day of the annunciation of
Mary’s pregnancy, and religious images such as resurrection appear in pop
songs as well as on church walls.
Although they contributed disproportionately to what became the
Christian mainstream, Syriac Christians have been a minority throughout
history. In the first century they spoke a dialect of Aramaic, the language
of Palestine, and lived in southeast Turkey. Syriac Christian culture and
language spread throughout the Mediterranean Christian communities in
the first and second centuries. By the fifth century, Syriac Christians in
the East existed within Zoroastrian, and later within Persian, Byzantine,
and Muslim majorities. In western Syria, Roman rule was replaced by that
of Muslim Turks. Many splinter Christian groups originated in Syria—
the Marcionites, Valentinians, Messalians, and Manichaeans. The biggest
crisis within Syriac Christianity came in 451 C.E. over the question of
how to understand the divine and the human “natures” of Christ so that
neither was diminished. Most Syriac Christians rejected the Chalcedonian
176 her voice, her faith

outcome of the debate, backed by the Orthodox, and only recently have
the Oriental-Orthodox Syriac churches begun dialogues with Greek and
Russian Orthodox.
The written canonical texts about Jesus and the lives of his followers,
the earliest of which existed side by side with the oral tradition and other,
non-canonical, texts, are likely to have been composed between the year
50 C.E. (the approximate date of Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians in north-
ern Greece, believed to be his earliest letter) and 90 C.E. (the date sug-
gested for the Gospel of John). Of all the texts written during and after that
time—including the Qumran Scrolls and apocryphal texts such as the
Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mary—those ultimately included in
the canon of the New Testament were the four gospels (by Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John), 21 Letters (13 by Paul or his followers, others by James,
Peter, John, and Jude), the Acts of the Apostles, and the visionary Book of
Revelation (by John). After centuries of assuming that all of these texts
were authored by men, some scholars have entertained the possibility that
Acts may have been authored by a woman rather than by Luke.What was
known of Jesus and his followers initially was primarily through the modes
of communication common at the time—eyewitnesses, word of mouth,
memory by and of witnesses—although some references are to be found in
the work of Jewish and Roman historians, such as Josephus and Pliny the
Younger. But by the mid-second century and from then on to the present,
what was known of Jesus was primarily through the interpretation of writ-
ten texts. Christians decided by the middle of the second century to keep
both the Hebrew Testament and the New Testament (about 3.5 times
shorter) as canonical scriptures and continued to interpret the New in rela-
tion to the Old and vice versa.The shift to written texts was more signifi-
cant for women than has been traditionally understood.
One of the current issues in the study of Christianity is that of
“voice.” Most people are surprised to learn that almost 250 Christian
women (that is, women who regarded themselves as Christian) authored
texts or remnants of texts over the first 15 centuries—authors whose
writings have been available in editions accessible to the general public
since 1800.8 This evidence is remarkable in light of the fact that, before
Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in 1437, only a small fraction
of the population was literate. Some males were educated because of
 christianity 177

their status in society. Other males were trained as scribes for business and
legal transactions and for correspondence. Scribes taken into captivity
usually continued to work as scribes. Some females were educated, usually
along with males in particular families. If instead of marrying they entered
a female monastery, they had a better chance, up to the time of the found-
ing of universities, of becoming literate. Even though this number of texts
by Christian women is small compared to the number of those by men, it
is far greater than one might expect when compared with the number of
texts by women in the general population before or during that time.
Some have found evidence that women’s voices have been diminished
or lost in the first- and second-century transition from orality to writing
in the canonized written texts. In the Synoptic Gospels, for example, the
ratio of miracle stories that involve men to those that involve women is
33:10.
These stories involving men are also two to three times longer than
those about women, and in them men converse back and forth with Jesus
much more than do women. And although the sex ratio in brief action
stories is four to three in favor of women, even in them women act but do
not speak.They are portrayed as examples for men who observe and talk
with Jesus about them.9
Besides public announcements by town criers, culture and tradition
were communicated largely by male and female story-tellers. Nursemaids
and mothers educated and entertained children with stories. Street per-
formers and story-tellers were hired by temples and synagogues to bring
people in to worship. I used to wonder why the early church kept all four
Gospels with all their overlaps, differences, even contradictions. One ex-
planation has to do with this story-culture, which habitually celebrates
and retains different versions of its cherished stories. Christians were pro-
claimers of as well as listeners to the stories that became the tradition. Sev-
eral of these stories were most likely introduced in the repertoire by
women. A radical shift happened when the tradition of orality changed
into text.
What we glimpse is a tradition changing from a predominantly “oral
subculture, with full participation and leadership open to all regardless of
status and gender”10 during its first century to a culture in which writing
became authoritative in its second century.
178 her voice, her faith

One of the burning questions for Paul and other leaders was raised by
the fact that both Jews and Gentiles were joining the Jesus-movement.
Henry Chadwick summarizes the problem as follows:

Faith that Jesus was God’s anointed prophet and king [Messiah] was
basic to self-definition for the first church. The Christians did not
initially think of themselves as separate from the Jewish people. . . .
God’s call was to the Jew first. The call to Gentiles was a disputed
matter for a time. To the earliest Christian communities Jesus was
not the founder or originator of the community of God’s people,
but the climax of an already long story of a divine education of hu-
manity through the special illumination given to the prophets of Is-
rael. To interpret his significance they turned to the Hebrew sacred
books, the Mosaic law as well as the prophetic writings. . . . Like
some Greek-speaking liberal Jews, the early Christians read the
prophets as foretelling a universal mission of the Jews to illuminate
all peoples.Yet the law imposed prescriptions apparently designed to
mark off the Jews from other nations. The Christians believed that
by the death of Jesus, the suffering servant of Isaiah, God had
formed a new covenant not only with the Jews but with all peoples
of the earth.11

The requirements of being Christian were in continuity with what

Jewish followers of Christ did as Jews. Jews attended the synagogue and
celebrated the breaking of bread and drinking of wine with those who
were identified as being faithful to Jesus’ vision. But issues of diet and of
ritual circumcision gradually became contentious and divided the com-
munity.Who determined whether or not the communal meals were to be
kosher? And did non-circumcised males wishing to join those communi-
ties of former Jews, now also Christians, have to be circumcised as part of
the initiation ritual?
In retrospect, it was probably more a question of ritual than of doc-
trine that eventually divided those Jews and Christians into meeting sepa-
rately. What we have in the texts is a story of this dispute, not between
Christians and Jews, but among those who were recognized as the leaders
of the Christians—namely, Paul, James, and Peter. Yet it is reasonable to
think that the leaders of the house churches—both women and men—
 christianity 179

successfully accommodated diverse practices of members in the house

churches before the dispute gained momentum and sides were taken. Per-
haps some of the dissension can be related to the demise of the house
churches and the use of larger buildings, such as basilicas, for Eucharist
and worship.

MARTYRS, ASCETICS, EMPERORS,

PATRIARCHS, 150–325 C.E.

The most significant opportunity for women’s liberation from compul-

sory marriage and child-bearing came about with their embrace, equal to
that of Christian men beginning in the first century, of martyrdom and
later of the ascetic life. The religious rituals of both Roman and Jewish
women were centered in the home or in the synagogue. Funerary inscrip-
tions name some Jewish women as officers of first-century synagogues,
but it is not known whether they officiated in ritual services or, as is more
likely, administered some aspect of synagogue organization, such as fi-
nances. In early Christianity, we see Jewish and Roman women breaking
away from traditional roles—in defiance of Roman state religious man-
dates and Roman and Jewish family expectations.
In the earliest church “virgin” was a central symbol of single-minded
dedication of women and men to depending on Christ rather than on or-
dinary domestic structures.The term “monk,” dating to 324 C.E., seems to
have emphasized the geopolitical dimensions of that orientation. Never-
theless, Christian women very early in the tradition created spaces for
themselves to pursue lives of prayer, contemplation, and good works.
There are stories of wives and husbands reallocating their wealth and oc-
casionally changing the form of their relationship to each other.There are
letters of Paul negotiating the situation of women and men who wish to
lead a Christian life with or without the consent of their spouses.We find
women turning their houses into convents and women living in their
own family houses as if in a convent.The virgins of the early church were
largely independent in the sense that they established their own range of
ascetic practices and seem to have been corrected by the church authori-
ties only when they appeared to exceed what was healthy.
180 her voice, her faith

In the past three decades, our understanding of early Christianity has

grown tremendously.As Gillian Cloke writes:

For this has long been the problem with this period [the patristic,
350–450 C.E.] and this topic of study: for years, even centuries, the
thought, decisions and writings of the churchmen of the patristic age
have been influential entirely in self-referential terms. . . . But no
thought arises out of a vacuum. All ideas are the product of an envi-
ronment and in this case, the fathers’ thought-processes were the
product of a female environment. . . . These great men of their age
were bought and sold by women . . . . For this is the crux of what I
discovered when I was researching for this study: the absolute ubiq-
uity of these “holy” women—once one starts to look for them. It is
not possible—or it should not be possible—to separate them from a
study of the patristic age, for they are everywhere: humble women
from the lowest levels of the social strata adopting harsh lives as her-
mits with such frequency that priests and monks tripped over them
at every turn; middle class Hausfraus planting ideological trip-wires
in the consciences of their children and turning out priests, monks
and bishops by the seminary-load; on up to the elite women of the
very top-drawer who gave up on secular life and their worldly pos-
sessions to such an extent that they precipitated economic crises at
the heart of the empire.12

Cloke finds women questioning, challenging, taking initiative in both

their domestic and public arrangements.That women not only got Jesus’
message but acted upon it is amply evident in the texts of the Fathers and
in texts and stories by women and men who were informed by the new
vision (New Testament).They believed that they would have life and have
it abundantly, that it was worthwhile to sell everything they owned, give it
to the poor, and accept his invitation to “Come, follow me.” Stories
abound about men and women adopting either an hermetic or a com-
munal life. Indeed, in many instances women’s monasteries were less regu-
lated than men’s, especially if the women were convented in their own or
some other woman’s house.
For the first three centuries, renunciation and celibacy were among
the major spiritual models for all Christians—spiritual values that are re-
 christianity 181

flected in the stories that model lives of the faithful either literally or sym-
bolically. Perpetua, a contemporary of the Stoic philosopher Justin, gave a
first-person account of her trial before martyrdom.
Justin, Irenaeus, Clement, Tertullian, and Origen laid the foundation
for doing theology in a way that was tolerated and usually enriched by the
best philosophical thought of the time. But the early theological debates
are punctuated by the accounts of persecutions.
Before Christianity became legal (313 C.E.), Christians were in danger
of suffering martyrdom if they refused to give obeisance to the state gods,
including the emperor. In the Acts of the Apostles 8:1–3, Paul, before his
conversion, is reported to have “laid waste the Church, and entering
house after house, dragged off the men and women and committed them
to prison.”
Tacitus, the Roman historian, reports that in the gardens of Nero at
night, the bonfire-lit spectacle of Christian men and women torn to death
by dogs was open to the public. Clement of Rome marvels that women,
as well as men, among the Christian elect “suffered terrible and impious
indignities and thereby safely completed the race of faith and, though
weak in body, received a noble reward of honour.” According to a recent
tabulation of 950 Christian martyrs and confessors mentioned by name or
anonymously in ancient texts, 177 are women, 170 clergymen, 70 soldiers,
and 540 ordinary men. Some women and men were unable to stand the
torture, but stories of stunning courage are emerging.13
Two stories are of special interest—the first because of characteristics
that make it highly probable that it was written as well as narrated by a
woman. It is the story of Febronia, a 22-year-old woman, raised in a con-
vent, who because of her extraordinary beauty and holiness was hidden
from all visitors unless ordered by the abbess to speak with a visitor.
Febronia was taken captive by persecuting soldiers, and the account of her
resistance to an arranged marriage is as gruesome as her courage.The de-
tails of physical labor and education in the convent, the portrayal of
women’s friendships as sincere, intellectual, fervent, and philosophical, and
the bonding between laywomen and religious, married and unmarried as
they recognize what they had in common make it an extraordinary text.A
second story is about Pelagia of Antioch, a prostitute who becomes Chris-
tian after meeting a bishop notable more for his humanity than his eccle-
siastical authority. In this story the bishop is also extraordinary for his
182 her voice, her faith

defense, in the company of his fellow bishops, of Pelagia’s candidacy for

conversion. Several features of this story are remarkable: one is that Pela-
gia’s waiting period for baptism is waived because of her fervor; and a dea-
coness is summoned to stand witness for her before her initiation as a
Christian. On the night before she leaves the community that has received
her, Pelagia goes to the holy bishop, strips before him, and asks to be
clothed in some of his garments. From that time she lives an ascetic life,
disguised as a man until her death in the city.
On the whole, the stories show that during times of peace the life of
Christ in the Gospels was the model for the stories of extraordinary
Christians whereas during times of persecution, the death of Christ be-
came the model.The striking feature of these martyr stories is that adver-
sity appears in the form of something that is insurmountable.The best of
these differ from stories in which adversity occurs but is either decisively
overcome only as a result of one’s own or another’s personal heroism or in
which adversity is victorious only at the expense of personal defeat.These
stories of good tidings, whether they end in victory or defeat, have—in
addition to detailing the utmost in personal effort—the extra element of
recognition of “extra power,” “fellow traveler,” “graceful assistance,” and
“angelic uncanniness.”
The story of Olympias, granddaughter of Ablabius, who had served as
consul and prefect in Constantine’s first senate, is a good example of an-
other kind of story. After her husband died, Olympias rejected the Em-
peror Theodosius I’s attempt, for political reasons, to have her marry into
his family, opting instead to give her property away and to become an as-
cetic. She was punished by having her property removed from her control
and put into a guardianship so that she could not give it away. She eventu-
ally was able to give much of it (the rough equivalent of $900 million) to
the church.
Becoming ordained a deaconess, she went on to “maintain” Nectar-
ius, the bishop of Constantinople. Elizabeth Clark sees Olympias’ with-
drawal of her fortune from the state—as later that of Melania the
Younger— as symbolic withdrawal of the female body from “the breeding
of future aristocrats.”14 She had, as one writer put it, a different goalpost in
mind. From these texts, it is clear that basic standards were based on the
performance of men as these exceptional women were often labeled as
“men.”
 christianity 183

The surprise and wonder at women’s victory over the physical chal-
lenges of martyrdom reveal a culture that depended primarily on physical
assets to survive travel, warfare, and political intrigue. During this time,
one’s very being was identified with one’s sex and the horizons of possi-
bility determined by it. What the Christian stories show are multiple at-
tempts to break this barrier by women and sometimes by men—a father, a
lover, even a bishop. And many of these stories are exceptional and
unique. But the survival and popularity of these stories suggests otherwise.
Other stories reveal the solidarity of women in this quest to wrest for
themselves what was in the Christian view the most perfect form of hu-
man life—that of giving one’s life for others in the new dispensation, as
God had in Jesus Christ. In her remarkable book, Church Fathers, Indepen-
dent Virgins (1991), Joyce Salisbury shows not only how certain women ig-
nored patristic gender prescriptions but how they actively created
alternative ones. Salisbury finds these alternative ideals in four kinds of
stories: women gaining freedom from social expectations, freedom of
thought, freedom of movement, and freedom from gender identification.
Another way to know if Christians brought about change for women
can be learned by studying Christian women’s earliest extant writings.
Records on women in the fourth century show that they abandoned
many of the classical models of womanhood for the increasing appeal of
a life concentrated on the holiness ideal of Christianity.15 There are, of
course, inconsistencies and ambiguities to be found among these records.
We find an aristocratic Roman woman plotting to kill her husband for
some slight offense then suddenly diverted from this plan when she was
seduced by another man. She then accuses her husband of treason. We
find other women awaiting trial for fornication and adultery, taken naked
to their deaths if convicted, or often committing suicide while impris-
oned. We find Christian women described as heads of convents, passing
the nights in prayer (for example, Lea), neglectful of their appearance
(Asella), abstemious in appetite, and profligate in giving away their pos-
sessions.The same woman might have been in both groups at one or an-
other time. And women from the bottom to the top of the social classes
left the first group to join the second in the later fourth and early fifth
centuries. Married women were primarily the subjects of Roman histo-
ries, and their actions were primarily against others. Christian women
were willing and able to devote themselves to improving their spiritual
184 her voice, her faith

lives, and their activity was primarily for the good of others. The best-
known Christian male leaders—Jerome, Basil, Origen—wrote panegyrics
about many of the women they knew and treatises on the behavior of
women in general. Oddly there was a gap between the ignorance and
fear of sexual differences and their magnanimous admiration of women’s
spiritual and physical achievements.16
There are those who belittle the orders of widows or deaconesses.
They see in it little more than parish assistants or ministers by accommo-
dation for reasons of sexual propriety whereas others present them as sig-
nificant as full-fledged formal positions defined in the church hierarchy.
The second-century church father Origen comments that Paul, in Ro-
mans, teaches with authority that even women are instituted deacons in
the Church. . . .”17 and the several Eastern (including the Syrian) bishops
considered the Apostolic Constitutions (Book 8) to order them to “ordain
also a woman deacon who is faithful and holy.” Although ordination to
the deaconate might have been an accommodation on the part of men,
the very existence of deaconesses challenged the social and political as-
sumptions of the day and precluded women’s absolute exclusion from for-
mal positions of leadership within the church.18
Virgins and martyrs were neither feminists, enjoying a golden age of
liberty, nor oppressed victims of patriarchy. In Roman Catholic, Eastern
Orthodox, and some Protestant churches, they have been and continue to
be an intrinsic part of monastic life. When Antony (251–356) withdrew
from society into the desert to follow the Christian way, he helped his sis-
ter enter a women’s community in Alexandria.This detail, which has tra-
ditionally highlighted Antony’s founding the hermetic way of life, also
suggests that women’s communities predated this event.When Pachomius
(286–346) founded what is regarded as the first “full-scale” religious com-
munity, he founded it as a mixed community for both women and men
who wished to devote themselves to lives of poverty, chastity, and obedi-
ence. Nevertheless, the desert hermit tradition is permeated by its deni-
gration of women—possibly as an expression related to the hermits’ fear
of not being able to live chastely.
The genius of early Christianity was to perceive that spirit, heart, en-
thusiasm, and hope, even in the face of obstacles, are the sine qua nons of
human beings at their best and that people are inspired to the extent that
they have a vision that graciously surpasses the status quo. The accumu-
 christianity 185

lated power of the Roman state was replaced with the imminence of
Christian apocalypse (“you know not the day nor the hour”) and of es-
chatology (“then I shall know even as I am known” [1 Cor 13:12]).

FROM ROME, OUTWARD BOUND: 325–700 C.E.

According to Paul, love—of God and of human beings—was the key

characteristic of Christians.“Love one another as I have loved you.”
Saying one loves God is not enough. If you do not love your neighbor
whom you can see, how can you claim to love God whom you cannot
see? Even though all others will know you are Christian by your love for
one another, the experience of loving is frequently one of self-correction
and purification of desire.This tension between the seen and the unseen,
the mandate and its fulfillment, gave rise in the fourth century to new
questions along with new practices. Christmas, for example, came to be
celebrated as a liturgical feast in the Roman church in addition to that of
Epiphany (which is still the major feast day in the Eastern church), with
increased attention on children as a result.
The first major event after Constantine became sole emperor of the
West in 313 C.E., was the Council of Nicaea held near his palace in 325
C.E., twelve years before his baptism.The gradual change in the status of
Christians, after Constantine’s accession, from that of a persecuted mi-
nority to a fast-growing majority became a source of worry to thought-
ful people who saw that it could now be profitable for a person to be a
Christian. But consolidation of doctrines was just as much a problem.
Both problems can be seen in the gathering at Nicaea of representatives
of the Greek Eastern churches, Alexandria and Antioch, and two legates
of the Roman church.The major question, arising from the need to clar-
ify references to Father, Son, and Spirit found in the Hebrew Bible and
Christian Testaments, was that of the status of the Word, as Jesus is called
in the Hellenistic Gospel of John, in relation to the meaning of godhead.
Dissension had arisen regarding the way “Son of God” was to be under-
stood. The council adopted the ambiguous phrase “identical in being”
and denounced those who thought that the phrase opened the door to
other misunderstandings as heretical. These were the questions asked: Is
186 her voice, her faith

Jesus fully divine and co-eternal with the Father? Is he really kin to the
Father? And the formal answers were yes, Jesus is fully divine, he exists
from the beginning of time with the Father, and he is the Son of the Fa-
ther. Encouraged by his mother after the council to identify the holy
places of Jesus’ life in Palestine, Constantine began to endow Christian
churches rather than pagan temples: the Church of the Resurrection (to-
day called the Holy Sepulcher) in Jerusalem, and the Church of the Na-
tivity in Bethlehem. He also built St. John Lateran and St. Peter’s basilicas
in Rome and a new Eastern capital, Constantinople, at Byzantium, to be
the “new Rome.” (From the fifteenth century, Moscow has been thought
of in Russian Orthodoxy as the “Third Rome.”) Constantine’s mother,
St. Helena, is remembered for her finding the True Cross while the
Church of the Resurrection was under construction. The cross was un-
derstood to have been made by Adam and Eve’s son Seth from wood of
the Tree of Life in the Garden of Paradise. Constantine is more honored
in the Eastern than in the Western church, but his influence on Chris-
tianity is undisputed.
But dissension continued after Nicaea, and it was necessary to call an-
other council, this time at Chalcedon in 451 C.E., to answer another set of
questions, which complemented those addressed at Nicaea: Is Christ fully
human and like us? Does he really exist as a human being? And again for-
mal answers were given: Yes, Christ possessed a human body. Yes, he is
equally of human and of divine natures. It was between the two councils
that Augustine of Africa (354–430) wrote his detailed reflections on the
Trinity. Not insignificantly Augustine credited his mother Monica’s
prayers and active piety for his conversion to Christianity.
The theology in these two council meetings, which were decisive for
how many Christians understood themselves up through the present, re-
flects a growing differentiation of genres among Christian writers. Christ-
ian understanding was from the beginning informed by Roman and,
increasingly, Greek intellectual traditions. Several genres were used by the
church fathers when they referred to women: sermons, homilies on
women; inspirational works, commentaries, exegeses, histories,Vitae, and
letters.19 Although the genres that contain the most references to women
are to be found in kinds of literature called the “lower” genres—letters,
homilies, pilgrimage accounts, martyrologies, hagiographies, and the
apocryphal acts—the industry that the church fathers took in their writ-
 christianity 187

ings about gender showed how much they depended on women. These
men were, after all, following in the Roman tradition of philosophers,
great men of letters—“part of the Christian expression of the ratio bene
vivendi, the Roman preoccupation with the good life translated into
terms of Christian duty.”20 Why did they perceive their women friends as
exceptions if not because they were exceptional? This time proves crucial
to the development of norms of what it means to be Christian. Oddly,
some women were astonishingly literal in their imitation of Christ. And
leaders issued correctives that were often clumsy and partial. The same
woman was sometimes praised and condemned by different leaders and,
occasionally, by the same leader. The church fathers’ frequently quoted
misogynist reflections on gender do not inspire confidence today; but
judging from the number and intensity of their letters, they did not seem
to have been the last word for their time either. Records show that the
early Christians coped with this tension in many different ways. Some
Christians continued on without much change from their ancestors. No
longer in danger of persecution, they continued to strive for the Pax Ro-
mana as law-abiding citizens—the major difference being that they partic-
ipated in the Christian Eucharist instead of state-mandated rituals.
Before 313, Christianity had been called a pagan religion because it
did not conform to the state religion. A reversal gradually took place as
Christianity became the religion of the majority. Others, especially
women, took advantage of the new possibilities either by refusing to
marry at all or if married or constrained to marry, persuading her partner
to have a celibate relationship. Melania the Younger and Pinianus at Mela-
nia’s urging after she had one stillbirth and one miscarriage, had such a re-
lationship.
This couple wanted to liquidate their estate and to distribute the
money to the poor. Rome, however, was in dire need of money for mili-
tary defense and even engaged in legal battles for their wealth. Others
took a more radical stance and renounced family to live a life completely
devoted to self-reform and renunciation. One extreme case was Paula,
who borrowed money to give it away, which not only deprived her
daughter of subsistence money but left substantial unpaid debts at her
death. Some fashioned a life of contemplating and loving God completely
apart from human company except for colleagues who provided for their
minimal needs. Others led a communal life devoted to the care of poor
188 her voice, her faith

and underprivileged Christian leaders.As long as lifestyles were in consid-

erable flux, some women and men entered into “spiritual” marriages, de-
pendent on each other for everything except conjugal sex, which both
had renounced under vow. The leaders of later Christian communities
continued the senator’s and philosopher’s roles of giving advice to indi-
viduals, giving sermons to communities whose conflicts were well
known, and setting down principles for the achievement of holiness.
Holiness meant perfection: control over one’s appetites, both physical
(desire for food, drink, comfort, material goods, sexual pleasure) and spiritual
(desire for esteem, recognition, power, others’ gifts). Perfection involved ab-
staining not only from all sinful fulfillment of desire, but like the rules that
formed the “hedge” of Torah, even from legitimate fulfillment that was not
strictly necessary for one’s life. Sexual relations, for example, were considered
by the fourth-century preacher John Chrysostom as “a waste of time.” Un-
derstandably, the leaders’ praising of holiness led to excesses by some individ-
uals who emulated the rules. The exaltation of virginity over marriage
resulted in a problematic, if unintentional, denigration of the state of mar-
riage. And the praise of some women for “manly” achievements divided
them from other women.The traditional Greek and Roman assumption that
women were inferior in general continued to dominate the social context
despite many obvious exceptions. Nevertheless, it seems to those who un-
derstood the meaning of being “in Christ,” the call to dismantle gender in-
equality was clear.
Less is said about married women even though the majority of Chris-
tian women were probably married. We do have the advice of John
Chrysostom to a woman who, in a spiritual marriage, found herself in
charge of the business affairs so that her husband could give his attention
to spiritual matters. Chrysostom said that, undertaken for the love of God,
attention to business matters was just as worthy a pursuit as explicitly reli-
gious pursuits.
Christians made two innovations in the area of sexual ethics. One was
the insistence on sexual fidelity on the part of both men and women—
something recommended by Roman philosophers but not supported by
the Roman state, which punished women but not men for adultery. The
other was first a disapproval, then an increasing condemnation of divorce
and remarriage, even if permitted by law. Regarding the public activity of
 christianity 189

women, when women supported Christian leaders, they were praised.

When they opposed leaders of the church, they were reviled.
Women’s actual activities can be glimpsed in “official sources” such as
church histories, canons of church councils, and church orders—especially
regarding expectations of women’s behavior in the household and in the
church.The so-called higher genre of theological treatises, however, con-
tain the least information about women although it does reveal the writ-
ers’ general views of women in normative and exegetical passages. Jerome,
Augustine, Basil, Clement, Chrysostom, and Tertullian reveal that they had
love for their “sisters” and that they had close spiritual friendships with
several women. However, none revised the ontological definition of
femaleness as passive and carnal and in opposition to the definition of
maleness as active and governed by the mind and the spirit. Ambrose, for
example, wrote that “a woman can’t be blamed for being as she was
born.”21
A tension developed between those who saw the possibility of tran-
scending gender differences and those who saw this transcendence as im-
possible in the present world. Unlike the crisis precipitated by the rituals
involving circumcision and food that resulted in the separation of Judaism
from Christianity, the fourth-century crisis was precipitated by rituals in-
volving the anointing of leaders and labor practices. The leaders of the
Christian communities condemned Eustathius’ followers (340/41) and
the Messalians (c. 390) for violating certain ascetic principles: the two
groups claimed that they had reached a state of apatheia that allowed them
to ignore the difficulty of controlling the passions. In this new freedom,
they rejected work as a worldly concern, lived by receiving alms, and in-
vented new feasts and models to celebrate other than the martyrs and can-
onized saints. Perhaps the heretics’ most grievous departure from
established practice was their criticism of hierarchical structure as prevent-
ing those advancing in it from “truly leaving the world,” as contrasted
with their own lifestyle that, they claimed, was in accord with the original
principles of the Christian movement.22 This claim was at best ambiguous
because as soon as the initial founding phase of fringe groups—such as the
Montanists, Encratites, Apotactics, Eistathians, Messalians, or Euchitai—
had passed, the breakaway groups were forced to adapt themselves to the
constraints of nature and society.The extremes of the climate forced them
190 her voice, her faith

to settle; settlement required rudimentary organization, and a process of

institutionalization set in, mirroring more or less precisely that of the
“great Church”—which had after all undergone a similar transformation.
The very people who thought they could develop a communal resist-
ance to hierarchization initially included women as leaders but later, for
various reasons, reverted to the tradition of male leadership. Another re-
curring surprise is the discovery that frequently the leaders of what be-
came fringe heretical groups were individuals who had previously had
long-standing friendships within the great Church. The failed friendship
of Basil of Caesarea and Eustathius, in 373, is an example of the adage that
internal enemies are more dangerous than external ones. Nevertheless,
what is very clear is that the ascetic movements in the early church had
immense influence on the development of doctrine.
From the beginning, after the first generation of his companions, at-
tempts to follow the example of Jesus were of three basic types of ascetic
life: men and women who practiced harsh asceticism and who, rejecting
society, took up wandering; men and women who practiced asceticism in
their own homes in the midst of a family life; and those who led settled
lives in communities of men and women. The latter—including some
bishops and clergy—were located in urban areas and were engaged in
practical and useful service to others.They were vocal in matters of doc-
trine and ecclesiastical appointment matters and were described by the
fourth century theologian, Gregory of Nazianzus, as megas bios (which has
been translated as “prone to turbulence”) as compared with eremikos bios
(translated as “solitary”).
It has been suggested, however, that “megas bios” could as well have
been translated as “mixed” rather than “turbulent”: that is, as mixed com-
munities of men and women who participated actively in society as com-
pared with ascetics who were solitary.23 There are several textual
references to mixed communities from the beginning. In the Life of
Theodotus and the Seven Virgins, male and female Montanists refer to them-
selves as martyrs, apostles, and catechists.They wrote “catholic letters,” and
had female bishops and female presbyters in their community. Another
community in Seleucia, the parqenwn of the blessed virgin Thecla, is
identified as the “retreat of a female saint” in the account of Gregory of
Nazianzus who stayed there for four years after the death of his father and
after the dissension over his appointment as bishop. In her famous account
 christianity 191

of her pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Egeria records a large enclosure sur-
rounded by a thick wall with “monasteries beyond measure of men and
women.”24 At the same time, it does not run contrary to the records to
think that women were in the forefront of many of the groups who be-
came troublesome.
The record of women’s influence on males who were leaders in the
“great Church” is becoming ever more clear. Similarly, there is no good
reason to ignore the charges made by these “fathers” against the fact of
women’s prominence in the break-away groups. Some scholars think that
the attraction of so many women to heretical and schismatic sects in the
third and fourth centuries may have been a backlash against the second
century churchmen’s attempt, as recorded in the Letter of Timothy I, to
increase “eligibility” requirements on widows and deaconesses, thus re-
ducing the number of women who could have public roles in the “main-
stream church.”
In traditional studies of early Christianity, the line between heretical
and orthodox is clear.The reasons given by the orthodox for pronouncing
certain positions heretical in both the East and the West—for example, the
Gnostics for their dualism on the origin of good and evil, the Manicheans
for their denial of the physical suffering of Jesus, the Marcionites for their
rejection of the Old Testament and three of the Gospels, the Montanists
for their claim to continuing revelation—all seem to validate the Ortho-
dox church’s decision to reject these competing alternatives. But recent
studies have shown that an additional reason was operative in many of the
declarations of heresy: namely, the sects’ willingness to give positions of
authority and leadership to women. Particular groups of Christians at-
tempted to assert the dominance of their own theological and social mod-
els in situations of profound religious pluralism and ambiguity.”25 To join
these groups, men had to renounce participation in public secular life. Be-
cause women rarely expected to have a public secular role, they gained a
voice in the ascetic community.To the extent that women resisted subor-
dination and privatization, they were seen as usurping the role of men and
therefore as destabilizing male/female and public/private distinctions, and
to the extent that men did not resist women’s participation in the ascetic
community, they were seen as feminized.
Monastic life was the model for spiritual life, with solitaries appending
themselves to a particular monastery. In the East, Pachomius’ Rule was the
192 her voice, her faith

first and together with Basil’s Rule has provided the basis for all other
monastic orders. Basil was the grandson of Macrina the Elder, who with
her prominent and wealthy family lost all her possessions during the per-
secution of Maximus. Basil’s sister, Macrina the Younger, founded the
monastery that became the model for his own in Cappadocia. The first
monastic rule in the West to gain widespread acceptance was that of St.
Benedict of Nursia (480–527). A contemporary of his, Cesarius of Arles
(c. 470–542), wrote a rule for nuns at the request of his sister (Cesaria), but
his and other attempts to write a rule for women failed.When the Anglo
Saxons first converted, there are accounts of many solitaries with varied
backgrounds: Drythhelm left wife and children; Columba became a
prince in exile; Aiden was an activist with retreats into solitude; and
Christina of Markyate fled a betrothal that was against her wishes. Al-
though the first solitaries learned from other solitaries, “sayings” came to
be written when, after invasions by barbarians, the solitaries’ need for a
spiritual father could no longer be fulfilled by a person.The early lives of
the Fathers, rewritten by the author of Ancrene Wisse, for example, were
read with different presuppositions and concerns by the solitaries and
with different results.
The vision kept alive by the Christian community from beyond the
Roman empire to Frankish territory was, at its best, varied, large, and pro-
ductively imaginative surely because it included women as significant fig-
ures from the beginning and through its history. That women’s inclusion
was problematic should not be used to detract from their importance.

CONVERSION AND CONFLICT: 700–1054 C.E.

In traditional histories of this period, Christianity becomes inextricable

from its relationship to Islam or from the drifting apart of the Eastern and
Western churches. Four other developments also caused a sea-change
within Christianity. The fall of Rome to the barbarians in 410 C.E. left
much work to be done to reconstruct the territory of the former Roman
empire.The absence of a strong central political structure made the situa-
tion in the West significantly different from that in the East where the em-
peror and the patriarch were accepted, up to the middle of the sixteenth
 christianity 193

century, as counterparts with interlocking responsibilities.The Jews in the

West, for example, found themselves without the protection of a consis-
tent policy and instead were subject to the vagaries of local governments.
The rapidly expanding missionary activity and the established centers of
Christian identity had reciprocal effects on each other. The eighth
through the eleventh centuries saw invasions of these centers by Magyars,
Saracens, and Vikings.
So we must ask what was the effect on Christianity of missionary
work like that of the famous Boniface and Anskar as they learned to ac-
commodate the military threats posed by the variously warlike and ag-
gressive Franks, Saxons, Gauls, Frisians, Danes, Swedes, Bohemians,
Hungarians, and Slavs in western, northern, and eastern Europe. Besides
the monasteries organized and built in this period, the formation of nu-
merous parishes also gives evidence of vibrant local Christian communi-
ties. The growth and subsequent defeat of the iconoclastic movement in
the Eastern church at the beginning of this period decisively shaped the
future of Christianity and quite possibly that of Christian women.The ap-
parent contradiction between fear of women as temptations to men’s
chastity and commonality between women and men with respect to spir-
itual ideals continued from before.The threat to eliminate human images
of the sacred from the Christian tradition was also a threat to one of the
few existing public representations of women on an equal scale (even if
not frequency) with men.
There was a change in spirituality from the time of early Christianity
to the eleventh century—a focusing on the ritual consumption and vol-
untary restriction of food. In early Christianity the Eucharist was at the
center of a communal meal. For Christians from the beginning, eating the
bread and drinking the wine was “not only to be mystically and individu-
ally fed with the bread of heaven, it was also to be present at sacrifice . . . a
death that was simultaneously glory and resurrection.”26 Concomitantly,
fasting was a weekly act of preparation for this weekly meal, a 40-day
preparation for the feast of the resurrection, a seasonal coming back to life
after death by winter.When Christians voluntarily experienced hunger to
recognize the threat of famine to all living things and to offer to God the
tithe of the harvest, they thereby expressed thanks and prayed for contin-
ued bounty and fertility. Food, however, is culturally located more in
women’s than in men’s domains of control. Because women’s space was
194 her voice, her faith

traditionally the home—also the space where food is prepared—it was less
disruptive for women to enter communal monastic life than for men.
Men’s space was traditionally the public square; to renounce a life lived in
the public sphere for one lived within a monastery was more different and
less continuous than was a woman’s decision to take vows. Food became a
likely candidate for a woman’s renunciation as a manifestation of differ-
ence from her former life in the world. Stories of women’s self-denial
with respect to food (men’s stories were fewer and on the whole less ex-
cessive) stretch from the early anchoresses through the High Middle Ages.
The greater number, however, are from the eleventh through the four-
teenth centuries.27
In Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, written in the early eighth century,
Hilda of Whitby appears, along with 19 other women—fewer than the
number of men included but not less respected and emulated by later
readers. Hilda was 66 when she died, having spent her first 33 years as
fully secular, and the ensuing 33 as abbess of Hartlepool and then Whitby,
which she also built.
Many men came to be instructed by her. She taught them to love to
study the Scriptures, and several decided to be ordained because of her
guidance and example. Hilda and her company were among those who
participated in the Synod of Whitby, which was called to settle the ques-
tions of the date of the celebration of Easter, the tonsure, and other mat-
ters. Bede summarizes several of the arguments but does not record
whether women spoke during the proceedings.
The relationship between Islam and Christianity was preceded by a
history of Arab-Christian relations. Originally, Arabs controlled the desert
between Rome and Persia with efficient military organizations. After
Rome and Persia suppressed the Arab caravan cities, Arabs were readily
absorbed into the Eastern Roman empire, and large numbers of Aramaic-
speaking Arabs who became Christian during the third to fifth centuries
were included in the Syriac church.The old Arab military aristocracy and
the Christian Byzantine church influenced each other mutually. In the
fifth century, however, Nestorianism (Persian-Syriacs who held Jesus to be
two separate natures and Mary to be mother only of one) and Mono-
physitism (Byzantines who, in reaction to Nestorianism, held Jesus to have
only divine nature) complicated Arab-Byzantine relations.
 christianity 195

After the founding of Islam among Arabs in a part of Arabia, the first
Muslim expansion, in the seventh century, was an expedition into the rest
of Arabian territory and its borders for the purpose of establishing unity
among the Arabs. On the borders the Byzantines and Persians counter-
attacked to protect the territories that they ruled, but they were deci-
sively defeated more because of their own internal weaknesses than
Muslim military strength. With this unexpected victory over the Byzan-
tines and Persians, the Muslims invaded Spain, France, Africa, and Byzan-
tium.The campaign in Byzantium ultimately failed, but by that time the
Muslims were positioned to advance in the ninth century into Sicily,
from which they invaded Italy and Constantinople for a second time.The
West rallied in the eleventh century to regain Spain, but the Byzantines
were defeated by the Seljuks in 1071. The Crusades, thought by many
scholars to have been overrated in terms of Christian-Muslim conflict,
began 25 years later.
While the Western church was expanding in the ninth century to the
north and west, missionaries of the Byzantine church went to the Slav
people outside the empire. Cyril and Methodius translated the Greek
Bible, which was used exclusively within the Byzantine, into Slavonic—
the first known instance of the Bible in the vernacular. Christian churches
were built in Bulgaria, Serbia, and Russia, but in Moravia, Latin missionar-
ies succeeded in drawing converts to the Western church. To understand
the division that occurred between Eastern and Western Christians, we
must go back to 330, when Constantine built Constantinople as “New
Rome”—the center of the Byzantine Church—except for a disastrous
57-year occupation by Western Crusaders in the thirteenth century—un-
til it was captured by the Ottoman Turks in 1453.The effects of this occu-
pation—during which those who thought of themselves as responding to
the Eastern church’s request for help in defending the holy land them-
selves turned into marauders—are still evident among many Greeks, for
example.When I visited women’s monasteries in Greece and in conversa-
tion let it be known that I was Roman Catholic, one of the interviewees
responded that she did not see how I could possibly understand their lives
as Orthodox Christians. Nuns in other monasteries, on the other hand,
welcomed my questions and regarded that part of the history of the rela-
tionship between the two churches as terrible and sad, but over.
196 her voice, her faith

The seventh council had to choose whether the Christian tradition

would be iconic (using images) or aniconic (renouncing use of images).
The iconoclastic controversy raged from 726 until 780 and resulted in the
vicious destruction of many valuable icons. Two women played crucial
roles in bringing the controversy to an end. Empress Irene called the
Council of Nicaea (787), which ratified the iconic tradition in Christian-
ity by defining the difference between worship (latreia) given to God
alone and the appropriate veneration of icons. Empress Theodora put an
end to the second, lesser spate of violence from 815 to 842 by her restora-
tion of damaged icons in 843. Her settlement of the conflict came to be
known as the “triumph of Orthodoxy” in the East. The precedent that
these two women rulers set for taking active roles in reconciling decisions
has unfortunately been virtually ignored in both the Western and the
Eastern churches.
Relations between the Eastern and Western churches continued to
deteriorate and, following an initial clash between Pope Nicolas I and Pa-
triarch Photius, the papal legate to Constantinople and the patriarch
Michael Cerularius issued anathemas against each other in 1054. These
condemnations were taken as evidence of a formal break between the two
churches until they mutually revoked them in 1965 during Vatican II.

EARL Y MEDIEVAL PERIOD: 1054–1400

This period manifests amazing ambiguity with intentions and results.Three

general features characterize the period. Because Western Europe was al-
most entirely Christian, leaders began to consolidate Christian practices
and beliefs that before had been administered locally or regionally. For ex-
ample, Benedictines began to hold general chapters and to establish
“daughter” houses, that is, new religious houses, founded by monks and
nuns of an established monastery, which maintained administrative ties
with the older house.The administration of parishes, chapters, and collec-
tion of tithes, which until then had been restricted to religious houses,
were now put under the direction of laypeople. Church leaders undertook
reform of clergy with respect to patronage and cohabitation with women.
In the twelfth to thirteenth centuries, the rise of the universities corre-
 christianity 197

sponded to other “internationalization” movements. Before the founding

of universities, the level of learning was relatively high in men’s and
women’s monasteries.
However, only men’s orders sent their most gifted members to be ed-
ucated at universities. The effect of this difference grew such that in 200
years the level of learning within women’s communities was low for the
first time in the Christian tradition. In spite of the benefits of the shift to
theory from earlier symbolic and metaphysical expression, laypeople too
were affected by the potential split among philosophy, theology, and spiri-
tuality. Unlike Orthodoxy in the East, which was thought to have tri-
umphed with the restoration of icons by Empress Theodora, the European
church was ambivalent in its response to Reform movements within—
sometimes supporting their efforts (e.g., the Beguines, Franciscans, and
Dominicans), at other times treating them as heretics (for example, the
Waldensians, the Beguines, and Cathars or Albigensians)—often depend-
ing on the reformers’ attitudes toward the authority of the church as well
as on their beliefs. Nevertheless, what happened in the early Medieval
period was a microcosm of what was to come in the next.
There were three major reforms of monastic life between 909 and
1226, the first having occurred in France when Cluny was founded in
909.The second was led by Bernard of Clairvaux, and the third—a major
structural change—was inaugurated by Francis of Assisi and Dominic of
Padua. Women participated in all three reforms, especially by founding
their own orders.
Clare and her sisters, for example, founded several houses but main-
tained a special relationship with Francis and his brothers. In Germany,
Hildegard moved the women’s Benedictine community away from the
monastery at Disibodenberg—although not without opposition—to a
new women’s monastery at Rupertsberg in 1150.The categories “monas-
teri aperti” (open monasteries) and “clausura” (closed) included a broad
range of types of communities (mulieres religiosae, mulieres de penitentia,
sorores, pinzochere, bizoke, mantellate, terziarie, monache do casa, mona-
celle, sante, and santarelle) even after Boniface VIII’s decree in 1298 that
“all nuns . . . shall henceforth remain in their monasteries in perpetual en-
closure”—exceptions were permitted—and until Pius XI’s Counter-Re-
formation bull imposed “clausura” on all women’s communities in the
sixteenth century. The great influx of women into religious life can be
198 her voice, her faith

seen in England, for example, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
when the number of nunneries burgeoned: 10 abbeys continued from be-
fore the Norman Conquest and 132 nunneries were founded or newly
reorganized after the Conquest, mainly from 1100 to 1250. This number
is comparable to the Cistercian Order, which grew from 344 to 530
abbeys from 1153 to 1200.28 It is assumed that, with few exceptions, nun-
neries in Western Europe established before the Conquest followed Bene-
dict’s Rule. In 980, for example, Jutta took up the life of hermitess on a
hill near a hermitage at Disibodenberg in Rhineland.
One of the women who came to study with her was the ten-year-old
Hildegard of Bingen.When Jutta died, Hildegard was elected abbess, and
the community of men and women, electing to follow the Rule of Bene-
dict, built a new monastery, the ruins of which still exist today. Hildegard
preached in parish churches up and down the Rhine, and her writings
(among others, a theological compendium, three books of visions, a book
of physical things, a book of medicine, a book of songs, and numerous let-
ters to popes, kings, and lay men and women) are becoming widely
known today. The most important theologian of this period was Thomas
Aquinas, a Dominican, who taught at the University of Paris.
Many monasteries were “double monasteries” (a community of
monks and a community of nuns, established on the same site but usually
within different boundaries, observing the same rule, and together form-
ing a single legal and religious body)29: sometimes for reasons of proxim-
ity, sometimes for helping with physical labor needed in maintaining the
buildings and land, and because of the lay status of the religious women in
need of ordained men for celebrating the liturgy and administering the
sacraments.Women also needed the patronage of men to found commu-
nities, as can be seen in The Life of Christina of Markyate, where support
from hermits, bishops, archbishops, and an abbot was solicited to stabilize
the small group of women who formed around Christina of Markyate.
Church law, however, has most often discouraged men and women reli-
gious living together or in proximity.
The Council of Agde in 506 forbade men to place nunneries “in the
neighborhood of men’s cloisters for fear of Satan’s cunning and people’s
gossip.”30 Nevertheless, allusions to a community of women linked with a
monastery, or to brothers, monks, or canons have been found throughout
the history of religious orders up through the Middle Ages.
 christianity 199

At first gender symmetry prevailed between women’s and men’s reli-

gious communities.Then backlash against equality occurred in the twelfth
century. Augustinian canonesses continued to resemble cloistered nuns
while Augustinian canons became quite different from monks. Dominican
and Franciscan nuns were also cloistered. That is, their lives were not
much like the itinerant friars even though both Clare and Francis, her
friend and spiritual brother, are equally lauded for their practice of
poverty. Besides the women in convents who were associated with the
new praxis, other women in the twelfth century became renowned for
their charitable service: they took no vows, followed no traditional rule,
and made a life together in small houses called béguinages. Others, called
beatas, were religious women who did not have enough money for
dowries for convents.They wore the habit and followed the rule of a par-
ticular community and lived either at home or with other beatas.The do-
main of their piety was the parish church and the streets where they
counseled prostitutes, visited women’s prisons, and did other charitable
work. Some became hermits or religious leaders of small congregations;
all were watched carefully for disorderly tendencies.
We know about lives of women from documents such as hortatory
sermons, prescriptive treatises, theological tracts, charters of monasteries
(including deeds and titles of lands), and especially the detailed visitation
records of Archbishop Eudes Rigaud in Normandy in the thirteenth cen-
tury. Monks and nuns apparently shifted their allegiance to individual
monasteries quite often. Their activities, the sex of the monastic popula-
tions, and their geographic location did as well. Many of the new move-
ments required imitation of the apostles, which meant basically being
poor and preaching while wandering.
With all that was going on in this period, one might wonder why so
little change took place on the issue of gender. Some clarification can be
found in Hélöise’s argument against Abelard’s offer of marriage after he, an
abbot, and she, an abbess, had been disciplined for their violation of the
vows of chastity: in Abelard’s account she argues that having children
makes a career in philosophy improbable:

What possible concord could there be between scholars and domes-

tics, between authors and cradles, between books or tablets and
distaffs, between the stylus or the pen and the spindle? What man,
200 her voice, her faith

intent on his religious or philosophical meditations, can possibly en-

dure the whining of children, the lullabies of the nurse seeking to
quiet them, or the noisy confusion of family life? Who can endure
the continual untidiness of children? The rich, you may reply, can do
this, because . . . their wealth takes no thought of expense and pro-
tects them from daily worries. But to this the answer is that the con-
dition of philosophers is by no means that of the wealthy, nor can
those whose minds are occupied with riches and worldly cares find
time for religious or philosophical study. For this reason the
renowned philosophers of old utterly despised the world . . . and de-
nied themselves all its delights in order that they might repose in the
embraces of philosophy alone.31

Hélöise cannot think of any way that Abelard’s marrying her would
make his life better. Of course, the passage may also be read as implicitly
revealing her own realization of the cost to herself of having already had a
child and that marriage would go contrary as well to the demands of her
own intellectual life. Further on, Hélöise observes that at the time virgin-
ity for both women and men was still considered to be the ideal religious
way of life even though perfection was also deemed possible for those
who had chosen the married state.

LATE MEDIEVAL CHURCH, REFORMATION,

AND ENLIGHTENMENT: 1400–1800

What has been called the Reformation, or Reformations, is more accu-

rately understood as one of several reform movements within Christianity.
Until recently, histories of European religion in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries were written as though women were invisible, except for the
two English queens, Mary of Scotland and Elizabeth, who as women lead-
ers, were respectively reviled by Protestants and Catholics.Today we know
that women were actively involved on both sides of the debate. In the
1530s women defended St. Nicholas Priory with pitchforks against the
king’s messengers who had come to destroy it. In the changing of royal
heads, women on both sides suffered martyrdom although more men than
 christianity 201

women died because those who held public office and exercised power
were most likely to be visible to the opposing regency. But in the gradu-
ally changing doctrinal and ritual requirements of the English church, for
example, women were among those who suffered martyrdom because of
their personal beliefs.
The leaders of the three major Protestant reform movements in the
sixteenth century acted primarily as individuals. Luther, a former Augus-
tinian monk, in 1517 nailed his 95 theses of dissent on the door of the
church in Wittenberg, where he taught at the university. Although Henry
VIII wrote a refutation of Luther’s theses in 1521, the conflict with the
papacy over his divorce and remarriage prompted him to reject the au-
thority of the pope and, in 1534, to declare himself head of the English
church. In 1536, Calvin finished writing his Institutes, a systematic unifi-
cation of Luther’s points of dissent into a Protestant theological vision. Of
the three, Calvin has the most innovative position on women in the
church. Calvin held that the Pauline command for women’s silence in
church and the ban on women’s teaching are indifferent with respect to
salvation even though they are not morally indifferent.This means that if
women violate the command or the ban, they do not risk their salvation;
nevertheless, because the command and the ban are in Scripture, they do
violate decorum and therefore their acts are not matters of indifference.
The two major Reformation changes brought about within Protes-
tantism were, first, the rejection of an intermediary between God and hu-
man beings, that is, rejection of clergy as dispensers of the sacraments and
as vehicles of grace, and second, an increase in men’s authority within the
home. Both changes were detrimental to women. In the first, women lost
access to an external mediator when their domestic well-being was
threatened. In the second, the loss of women’s monasteries diminished the
crucial control—if only relative to men’s—of many women over their
persons, property, company, and lives.The growth of individualism attrib-
uted to Protestantism hardly applied to women. With respect to church
governance, however, the question of women’s role was repeatedly dis-
cussed, and reports of local solutions indicate some accommodations—al-
though in the Church of England the only lay position open to women
or men was that of church warden and in the Presbyterian church the po-
sition of elder was open only to men. In the Independent churches and
sectarian congregations where gifted people were called to ministry by
202 her voice, her faith

gathered congregations, there was no rule against women’s filling the same
role as men; nevertheless, the Pauline injunctions against women speaking
in church continued. In John Rogers’s Dublin Independent Church
women had a voice and a vote so long as they did not exercise power over
men. Women could give testimony when seeking admission, vote on the
appointment of deacons, and serve as church officers, that is, minister to
the poor, the sick, and strangers. Prophetesses (daughters were preferred to
wives) in the new congregations enjoyed certain liberties of speech but
only so long as they did nothing to challenge the male authority in the
church. Reports of some all-women preachers’ meetings gave rise to sus-
picion and mockery, and shortly after, in 1645, Parliament passed an ordi-
nance forbidding lay preaching. Anne Laurence concludes that the
seventeenth-century English fear of women exercising authority over
men was more restrictive for women than were the attitudes of the Ro-
man church toward pre-Reformation heretics, such as the Lollards (who
had women preachers),Wyclif (who stipulated that any layperson, includ-
ing any woman, could celebrate Mass), the Waldensians, and Cathars. Al-
though Reformation theologians wanted to raise the status of marriage as
an ideal, they did not think of it as spiritual or religious. Their teachings
on marriage and virginity differed from those of the early church fathers,
and the divines were just as contradictory when applied to women. Patri-
cia Crawford thinks that “the Protestant emphasis on the value of mar-
riage for women was based on misunderstanding of the Catholic doctrine
of virginity”32 since by this time virginity in Catholicism was understood
more as spiritual than physiological, and married women and widows
were thought to have the same capacity for holiness as virgins.
Two reasons account for the narrowing of what was possible for
women in English Reformation churches: there was general agreement,
based on a precise reading of Pauline epistles, that women could not exer-
cise authority over men, and a distinction was made between ministry and
jurisdiction. In the pre-Reformation church, anyone could baptize and
everyone could receive Communion, so it was conceivable that women
could administer the sacraments (even if they were permitted to adminis-
ter only one sacrament). In the Church of Reformation, however, the ad-
ministration of sacraments became part of church jurisdiction (as distinct
from ministry) because their reception was restricted to certain people, so
it was inconceivable that women could exercise this kind of authority
 christianity 203

over men. To curb women’s expectations that they could be part of gen-
eral church governance, women-only religious meetings were forbidden
in the New England synod of 1637. To the extent that there were net-
works of refuge among women, they had to go underground. Dorothy
Hazard, for example, made it possible for a woman to bear her children in
her husband’s parish so that she did not have to undergo the impositions
of churching and the like laid upon them by other parsons.
Nevertheless, beginning with the testimony of their conversion expe-
rience, middle-class Quaker women who could afford child-care regularly
acted as itinerant preachers as well as within their own meetings. In addi-
tion, Reformed churches increasingly thought of their clergy as commu-
nicating the scriptures and the words of God rather than as administering
the sacraments.
Teresa of Avila (1515–82), named in 1969 the first of now three
women “doctors of divinity” in the Roman Church, is a classic example
of someone who used the existing structures of religion in her time for an
alternative place to live without giving herself over to what she perceived
to be the mediocrity of the status quo. During the maelstrom of the In-
quisition in Spain initiated by Ferdinand and Isabella and feebly condoned
by Pope Sixtus IV, Teresa defended herself by using the gender stereotypes
of timidity, ignorance, and weakness, but her ironic view of this strategy
often shows through:“In the case of a poor little woman like myself weak
and with hardly any fortitude, it seems to me fitting that God lead me
with gifts, as he now does, so that I might be able to suffer some trials He
has desired me to bear. But servants of God, men of prominence, learning,
and high intelligence . . . when they don’t have devotion, they shouldn’t
weary themselves.”33
Teresa of Avila languished for twenty years in a Carmelite convent be-
fore she began to make progress with the help of a friend, Peter of Alcan-
tara. From that point on she traveled all over Spain, reforming and
founding new structures for women in which they could reach a saner
spirituality than in the old structures. She was outspoken about the un-
equal opportunities of women and men and made gender equality a prin-
ciple of divine complexity:

It seemed to me that, considering what St. Paul says about women

keeping at home (Titus, 2:5), (I have already been reminded of this
204 her voice, her faith

and I had already heard of it) that this might be God’s will. But [God]
said to me,“Tell them [Teresa’s critics] that they are not to be guided
by one part of Scripture alone, but to look at others; ask them if they
suppose they will be able to tie my hands.”34

Teresa grew to be able to discern and transform into strengths the lia-
bilities relating to gender and self-hatred. She advised religious women to
abandon trivial behavior and being feeble. She did not hesitate to draw
upon gender stereotypes to make her point: “resemble strong men; . . . if
you will do what lies in your power, the Lord will make you so virile that
you will astonish the menfolk” (II, 70).
In some ways, the sixteenth century was initially one of gain for
women. Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536) urged all Christians to study
the Scriptures. Both he and René Descartes (1596–1650) supported trans-
lation of the Bible into the vernacular and declared specialized training
not necessary to write philosophy and theology. Cardinal Ximénez Cis-
neros supported bibles for convents and granted women larger roles in the
administration of convents.Then groups, calling themselves Illuminists or
alumbrados, many with women as leaders, began meeting in homes and
emphasized the capacity of individuals to be illuminated. Teresa’s lifetime
spans that of the misogynist entrenchment against these anti-clerical
movements: she saw the meaning of “mulierculae” shift from “unlettered,
can read only vernacular” to “silly woman who presumes to read and un-
derstand the literal and spiritual meaning of the scriptures.”Teresa moved
between the orthodox and the heterodox,“holding the explosive theolog-
ical issues of her day in oxymoronic tension, and came perilously close to
losing all.”35 Her autobiography was under investigation for thirteen years,
she was ordered to burn another of her manuscripts, and after her death
theologians for the Inquisition advised all her books be burned. In 1614,
seventeen years after her interrogation, the first step toward her canoniza-
tion was taken. But personal heroism was found not only among monastic
women. Quaker women and Seventh-day Adventist Prophetesses like
Ellen White tell how they had to overcome the self-doubt and fear of
speaking ecstatically in religious assemblies.
Catholic religious women also faced more severe restrictions during
sixteenth-century Reformation Catholicism. Reflecting this loss, the per-
centage of women saints declined from 27.2 percent in the fifteenth cen-
 christianity 205

tury to 18.1 percent in the sixteenth. The medieval church’s tolerance of

significant ambiguity in lifestyle, for example, that of the beatas and the
béguines, ceased. Religious women were forced after the reforms initiated
by the Council of Trent (1545–63) and the prelates of the Spanish Inqui-
sition to subscribe to clear rules for religious enclosures to define their re-
lationships with the world.The Jesuits, a new religious order, was founded
by a former soldier, Ignatius Loyola (1491–1556). His initial desire was to
go to the Holy Land and, by imitating Christ, to convert the Muslims. Be-
cause of the Turkish wars he was diverted to the work of education in
Rome instead.
Nevertheless, the Mother of God as ideal woman continued in both
the Western and the Eastern Church, and for some generations, men took
“Maria” (grammatically unmasculinized) as their second name.
In 1618, only 101 years after Luther’s nailing up the 95 theses, The
Thirty Years War, the result of an intractable intertwining of territorial, re-
ligious, and political motives, broke out and gradually spread throughout
Europe.Together with the Spanish Inquisition, acts of anti-Semitism, and
the persecution of witches from the fourteenth to the seventeenth cen-
turies (including the Salem witch trials in America), the Thirty Years War
is surely one of the most lamentable events in Christian history. Begun in
Bohemia by Protestant nobles against the Holy Roman Empire, it resulted
in devastating losses of population, religious and personal property, espe-
cially in Germany, and in the break-up of the empire into national states.
The best result was that the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 brought about a
new age of religious tolerance. By the terms of the treaty each state was to
adopt as its established religion the religion of its ruler.
The eighteenth century is known as the Enlightenment—with vast
confidence in the power of reason, a new kind of certitude, based on logic
and scientific deductions, and belief in progress. From their new confidence
in reason, Enlightenment philosophers challenged traditional religious
views. The university-trained religious thinkers responded in Enlighten-
ment terms, and the resulting truncated account of religion is still familiar.
Enlightenment thinkers did support women’s education and the im-
provement of women’s legal status, but many of the old attitudes toward
women prevailed in everyday life. By this time women had been excluded
from the universities for 500 years. The relationship between this exclu-
sion and the burgeoning of women mystics has yet to be studied, but it
206 her voice, her faith

seems no mere coincidence that from the twelfth century onward, female
mystics—Catherine of Siena, Julian of Norwich, Agnes of Feligno, Mar-
guerite Porete, Mechthilde of Magdeburg, Gertrude the Great, Margery
Kempe, Hadewijch of Antwerp, Jeanne Guyon—outnumbered male mys-
tics, and their writings were influenced by the new religious communities
(such as the béguines).The mystics, female and male, articulated a via neg-
ativa view of intelligence—a view immortalized in Blaise Pascal’s famous
statement, “The heart has reasons the mind knows not of.” Blaise and his
sister Jacqueline both converted to Jansenism, and in 1651 she entered the
convent at Port-Royal, which became a center of the movement. It also
seems relevant to ask whether that century’s vexed relationship between
religion and science might have been different had there been a significant
number of women scientists.
Meanwhile in America during the founding years, most of the activi-
ties of women were subordinated to the needs of home, family, and
church. However, the introduction of new strictures for Catholic women
in church manuals before the Revolution suggests that many women had
begun new practices with respect to marriage, pregnancy, and concep-
tion—a defiance of traditional sexual teaching that would increase into
the twentieth century. And although many of the colonies were founded
in protest over the lack of religious freedom, religious tolerance had to be
learned. Maryland, founded by the prominent Catholic Lord Baltimore, at
the urging of his wife, was the first to grant religious tolerance to all de-
nominations. Women like Margaret Brent (1602–c.1671), for whom the
Catholic woman suffrage society was named in 1918, were prominent in
state and church in Maryland and provided administrative and business
leadership. But shortly after Brent left office, a Puritan revolution threw
the colony into religious confusion with the result that by the end of the
seventeenth century, Maryland reverted to being a royal colony, with An-
glicanism as the established religion and public Catholic worship pro-
scribed. Chroniclers of that time omitted names of the subversives lest
they be discovered, but in the absence of parishes, it was primarily women
who provided house churches and religious instruction. Sharing a com-
mon enemy, Protestant and Catholic women undertook political and mil-
itary activities together during the Revolutionary War: women like Sara
McCalla, Mary Digges Lee, Catherine Meade FitzSimons, and Mary Wa-
ters acted as spies, saboteurs, and sometimes fought with the troops.
 christianity 207

After the Revolutionary War, religious liberty gradually became the

norm, and lay initiatives grew steadily with the number of immigrants.
Numbers of religious communities were founded by women as well as
men: religious communities were founded by Catherine Spalding, Mary
Rhodes, Elizabeth Bayley Seton, and Mother Alfred Noyes. Bishop Car-
roll wanted only teaching orders and requested that rules regarding fast-
ing and prayer be revised so that they did not detract from the work of
the Sisters.
The expansion of European interests into the Americas and Africa and
Asia beginning in the sixteenth century is inextricably bound up with
Christian missionaries whose efforts elicited a broad range of responses.
Between the two extremes of complete rejection and complete conver-
sion can be found the alternatives of syncretism (a blend of indigenous
and Christian religions), nepantilism (external conformity), dissimulation,
passive resistance, and rebellion.These missionaries also exhibited a range
of efforts, from one extreme of complete rejection of indigenous religions
to the other extreme of studying them in order to find cultural concor-
dances. Sometimes missionaries protected native populations from eco-
nomic exploitation. Other times they were as greedy for spiritual victories
as the explorers were for land and goods. Historically the Spanish/Por-
tuguese pattern of conquest, settlement, and evangelization was strongest.
Exceptions were the Philippines and Goa (India), where indigenous pop-
ulations took leadership roles. In the Congo, Angola, and Mozambique in
West Africa, for example, Portuguese missionaries supported local leaders
and Christian rituals amalgamated with traditional practices and beliefs. In
the Philippines, Christian rituals and sacraments provided a language for
transcending death, a language that fit well with the fluid world of spirits
in Tagalog debt offerings. A Jesuit college in Goa trained young Indians as
assistants to missionaries. But racial and political prejudices initially pre-
vented ordained Indians from serving as priests in Goa, and tensions fre-
quently erupted. One of the few women to be named in this colonial
history was the Congolese Kimpa Vita, who, because she saw herself as a
prophet and had a large following dedicated to the restoration of Con-
golese greatness, was executed by the Congo king, reportedly at the
request of Capuchin missionaries.
In China, Protestant and Catholic missionary efforts vacillated between
a policy toward a concordance of faiths and one that was antagonistic toward
208 her voice, her faith

Asian classical traditions. Francis Xavier and Matteo Ricci in the sixteenth
century took the first option and they and like-minded companions led to
forty thousand conversions.A 1724 ban forced Christians to go underground
until 1840. Persecution continued and in the Boxer uprising of 1900 approx-
imately 32,200 Christians died in the riots. Indigenous clergy and bishops in
China have been ordained since 1922. In Japan, waves of favorable treatment
and persecutions oscillated, with Christians being perceived as threats or as
facilitators of traditional ideals.
Early Protestant missionary efforts in the seventeenth century in-
cluded that of the Dutch East India Society in Malaysia, the Puritans and
the Society of Friends among the North American Indians, and in the
eighteenth century, Anglican, Methodist, Lutheran, and Moravian mis-
sionaries worked among the American Indians, the East and West Indies,
South Sea islands, India, and every continent except Australia.
Although the evils of missionary activity have been emphasized dur-
ing the last two decades almost to the exclusion of any redeeming fea-
tures, Stephen Greenblatt offers an interesting summary of New World
missions in the following quotation: “[The] recovery of the critical and
humanizing power of the marvelous does not magically make up for its
use in the discourse of those who came to the New World to possess and
enslave . . . but it does suggest that wonder remains available for decency
as well as domination.”36

END OF THE SECOND

MILLENNIUM: 1800–2000

This period begins in the aftermath of the American and French Revolu-
tions. Women’s religious lives as before were increasingly bound up with
national political developments. In England, for example, the 200-year-old
dissolution of Roman Catholic monasteries ended with their reestablish-
ment in the nineteenth century. In women’s communities, the distinction
between lay sister and choir nun varied considerably from one monastery
to another, but the working-class aspirants were not always relegated to
being lay-sisters.
 christianity 209

The Church found employment for thousands of women in profes-

sional full-time church work.The founder of the Sisters of the Society of
the Sacred Heart, Madeleine Sophie Barat, wrote, “In convents all are on
an equal footing.Why is the world not like that? It would be better gov-
erned and a happier place.”37 Ironically, the Virgin Mary continued as an
ideal in art and literature in anti-Catholic England, not as a woman who
questioned the will of God in the scriptures by asking “How can this be
done because I know not man,” but as a shy, modest, gentle girl who elic-
its respect. This image reflected one of the ideals of the Victorian Age,
which sought to replace religion with the new myth of women as non-
sexual child-angels.
Condescending treatment of religious women and interference in re-
ligious women’s lives by the American hierarchy increased during the
nineteenth century and contributed to the popular image of nuns as naive
children in American films. It was not until 1943 that the first program
granting the doctorate in theology to women was founded by Sister
Madaleva Wolff at St. Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana.
In late nineteenth-century France, the strong anticlericalism in do-
mestic policies can be traced to the 1870s when a rightist government and
anti-Semitic military regime brought Alfred Dreyfus, an Alsatian Jew, to
trial for treason. After a number of exposés and a retrial as corrupt as the
first, Dreyfus was pardoned. But by this time the country was hopelessly
divided and a law mandating the separation of church and state was passed
in 1905.
This law culminated a stormy history in which the Huguenots
(Protestants of the middle class) had been granted religious rights under
the Edict of Nantes in 1598 only to have to flee to other countries when
the Edict was revoked in 1685. Following the highly contested law of
1905, the movement called Social Catholicism attempted to recognize
problems of industrialization, to search for remedies through the study of
the problem and theory, and to make a commitment to the working poor
through practice.
The 1905 law was subsequently repealed largely because of the efforts
of Marc and Renée Sangnier to found Sillon (which had men’s and
women’s sections) to demonstrate its harmful effects on women. But
Jeanne Chenu with Baronne Picard founded Action sociale de la femme,
210 her voice, her faith

which became an officially registered society after a highly successful lec-

ture series, begun in women’s homes, expanded to fill a 1,000-seat lecture
hall.The society’s monthly bulletin, Action sociale de la femme, contained ar-
ticles on social issues (such as the lack of legal rights for married women),
on the possibility of a Christian feminism, and on literature.The organiza-
tion was powerful within the Social Catholic movement and strengthened
the discussion of women’s roles in society, especially in support of
women’s suffrage.
Several French Catholic upper-class women attempted to build
bridges with the working class. Mule Gahéry, Mime Lye Fer de la Motte,
Mule de Miribel, and Léonie Chaptal independently founded a series of
houses in working-class districts to help poor women with child care,
laundry services, medical care, nursing schools, and popular education.
Mule Marie-Louise and Soeur Milcent, a Vincent de Paul nun, organized
a union for women workers to improve working conditions and to intro-
duce labor reform legislation.
Perhaps the most militant women’s organization was the Ligue patrio-
tique des françaises (originally the Ligue patriotique des femme
françaises), founded in 1902 to protest the 1901 state decree banning all
unauthorized religious orders and barring all members of religious orders
from teaching. Although the Ligue was unable to get the law repealed,
they found their own voice and prepared the way for a later generation to
challenge both papal and clerical pronouncements, as well as those of the
secularist state.
Even though some of these efforts, inspired by Pope Leo XIII’s Re-
rum Novarum, undoubtedly continued the patriarchal and hierarchical
view of family, religion, and society, these women nevertheless subverted
the restrictive dimensions of Christian social doctrine by engaging in so-
cial action. They did things that were novel for women to do and thus
changed the image of women in society as a whole. By encouraging
young women to take up other careers than traditional ones, they were
among the first female trade unionists in France and the first to profes-
sionalize social services. They made Catholic women the most effective
lobby in France for women’s suffrage between the two World Wars.They
also maintained a Christian presence during a time when it was unpopu-
lar to speak as Christians, and although they may have been inhibited by
certain kinds of Christian discourse, they changed it by bringing it to bear
 christianity 211

on new situations. In addition, they were the forerunners of the priest

worker movement and the Taize brothers—individuals and communities
that lived among the industrial workers and the poor. Simone Weil,
philosopher and mystic, continued the tradition by voluntarily taking a
factory job, living among the working poor, and writing penetrating
analyses of the problem of dehumanization.
In the United States, both Protestants and Catholics initially had
strong European ties or ancestry. By the 1800s most Protestant churches
had become independent: the Episcopal Church in 1789; and the
Lutheran Church—from approximately 150 distinct groups—formed the
Evangelical Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America in 1872,
the United Lutheran Church of America in 1914, the American Lutheran
Church in 1961, and the Lutheran Church in America in 1962. The
Protestant Episcopal Church observes the Scriptures as the ultimate norm
of faith and holds as its symbols of doctrine the Apostles Creed, the
Nicene Creed, and the 39 articles of the Church of England. By 1970 vir-
tually all Protestant denominations admitted women to ordination, in-
cluding the United Church of Christ, the American Baptist Convention,
the Presbyterians, and the Methodists. In 1971 and 1973, the Anglican
bishop of Hong Kong, with the approval of his synod, ordained three
women, and in 1974, eleven Anglican women were ordained and
prompted the American Episcopal Church later to approve ordination of
women. Both Methodists and Episcopalians now have women bishops. Of
the Catholic Church, Ann Carr suggested “a new way of thinking about
the church as sacrament that might emerge if women were to be included
in the future, a model of equality and mutuality that is fully inclusive.”38
The Adventist Church, founded with William Miller’s prediction that
the world would end in 1843, reflects the more ambivalent side of the re-
ception of women among Protestant denominations. In 1863, Joseph
Bates and James and Ellen White founded the largest branch of Adventists,
known as the Seventh Day Adventists. Ordination was forbidden to
women on the grounds that they should not lead men; they could, how-
ever, act as soloists and directors of congregational singing. In the early
years of the Adventist Church, women also contributed many songs in the
gospel song tradition; their lyrics were preoccupied with care for children,
the needy, home relationships, and the suffering.When gospel singing be-
came commercialized in the twentieth century, however, the number of
212 her voice, her faith

woman composers declined, and hymn books include only a few, if any,
songs by women. In contrast to the Adventist churches, the Shakers be-
lieved that the male principle was incarnated in Jesus, the female principle
in Mother Ann Lee, the founding mother, and practiced sexual equality,
celibacy, and communal ownership of property. Mother Ann, a visionary,
used singing, dancing, and marching to move the community to religious
feeling and duty.
Gospel song derived originally from African-American spirituals and
reflected a “rediscovered matriarchy.” For the first century of their exis-
tence in North America (from 1619 to the 1740s), blacks were not en-
couraged by and large to enter Christian churches and continued their
own traditions and religions of Africa—which centered on good and evil
forces in the universe and included the Christian God, who could free
them from slavery. Black women, both free and slave, were more likely
than black men to become Christian. During the First Great Awakening
(1730s and 1740s) and especially during the Second (early 1900s), many
blacks were attracted by the evangelical emphasis on subjective knowledge
of God: amalgamating the African cosmology of spirit and body with
Jewish and Christian symbols, they founded churches with a theology of
liberation, self-determination, and autonomy. Out of these churches grew
the traditions of accommodation and protest—traditions immortalized by
black women writers such as Sojourner Truth, Phillis Wheatley, Amanda
Berr Smith, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Anna Julia Cooper, traditions that
shaped the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Historians have spot-
lighted the work of Martin Luther King, Jr., a Christian minister, and
Malcolm X, a Muslim. But it was Rosa Parks and 15-year-old Claudette
Colvin who, in separate incidents, set off the movement by refusing to
give up their seats on a bus. In King’s own view, they had been “tracked by
the Zeitgeist—the spirit of the time.”39 Renata Weems on womanists’ use
of the Bible, Jacqelyn Grant’s distinction between white women’s Christ
and black women’s Jesus, and Delores William’s retrieval of Hagar in the
Book of Genesis are examples of current developments in black womanist
theology.
Christianity in Africa continued through World War II and after as
recognizably Protestant or Catholic. Today, however, other church forms,
such as the African Independent Church, the Aratai (Spirit-church, or
African Orthodox Church), and the Sacred Order of the Cherubim and
 christianity 213

Seraphim are new combinations of Christian liturgical, symbolic, or

charismatic emphases and indigenous regional religious sensibilities. In all
of these denominations, women are trained for and exercise parish leader-
ship roles.
Among Hispanics in South America, Cuba, Mexico, and Puerto Rico,
Pentecostalism, Catholic liberation theology, and mujerista (Spanish for
“womanist”) theology all explicitly include women. For example, mu-
jerista leaders Ada María Isasi-Díaz and Yolanda Tarango emphasize praxis
(reflection with action) to make a new human world of ideas, symbols,
language, science, religion, art, and materials. A mujerista struggles to lib-
erate herself from the sexism in her own and in the dominant culture, not
as an individual but as a member of a community. She aims to understand
how racism/ethnic prejudice, economic oppression, and sexism reinforce
each other. Mujerista theology attempts to make sexism recognized by
men and women, to do critical reflection from a specific place, and to
make explicit one’s ongoing commitment either to tolerate or to resist
sexual oppression. At the same time mestizaje combines three sources—
Amerindian, African, and Spanish—in communal expressions of popular
religion, such as fairs, processions, and novenas. Since the movement is
only twenty years old, mestizajes have a vivid sense that “La vida es la
lucha” (life is the struggle).
Today the zeal to restore women’s voices at all levels of the Christian
church has burgeoned into a global chorus.To recognize this chorus is not
to devalue silence whenever it is voluntarily undertaken. But in the words
of poet Audre Lorde, whose life was celebrated in the Cathedral of St.
John the Divine in New York City on the occasion of her death in 1993,
“it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence.”40 What will be the
“place” of women in the church and society? Only women can determine
that based on their own experience.
 7

Islam
By Riffat Hassan

The story of my life began in an old
house that stood at the end of a galee, or narrow street, adjoining Temple
Road in the historic city of Lahore in what is now Pakistan. From an ob-
jective standpoint, my siblings and I were privileged children. We were
born into an upper-class Saiyyad family, and the Saiyyads, being the de-
scendants of the Holy Prophet Muhammad, are regarded as the highest
caste of Muslims, even though Muslims constantly protest against the idea
that Islam has any caste system. My father and mother came from among
the oldest and most distinguished families in the city.We lived in a spacious
kothee (bungalow) and had a glamorous automobile (when only a handful
of people had any) and a household full of servants who performed all the
domestic chores. We went to the best English-medium schools (which
were regarded as a status symbol), where we received a sound British edu-
cation. However with all of these bounties, I have few happy memories of
the house in which I was born, where I spent the first seventeen years of
my life. What I remember most distinctly about being a child was how
lonely I felt in a house full of people, and how unhappy, scared, and bewil-
dered I was most of the time.
My father was resolutely traditional and conventional. Through most
of my life I hated his traditionalism, because I understood it almost exclu-
sively in terms of his belief in gender roles and his conviction that it was
best for girls to be married at age sixteen to someone who had been

215
216 her voice, her faith

picked out for them by their parents. My mother was equally resolute, but
as a non-conformist.What made her very unusual in a traditional society,
and in my father’s house, was her rejection of the hallowed cult of
women’s inferiority and submissiveness to men. Pre-Islamic Arabs had
buried their daughters alive because they regarded daughters not only as
economic liabilities but also as potential hazards to the honor of the men
in the tribe. Islam notwithstanding, the attitude of Muslims toward daugh-
ters has remained very similar to that of their nomadic forebears. Against
this, my mother, a gifted poet with a brilliant mind, believed strongly in
women’s autonomy and independence. She protected me from being sac-
rificed on the altar of blind conventionalism and certainly gave me the
opportunity to become a “person.” Although long before I began to un-
derstand the complexities and ambiguities of the Muslim value-system, I
knew that my mother would not win any popularity contest vis-à-vis my
father. My father, who was admired and loved by so many, seemed to me
through most of my early life to be a figure of dread, representing conven-
tional morality in a society that demanded that female children be dis-
criminated against from the moment of birth.
My twelfth year was a landmark year because during it my struggle as
an activist feminist began. Until that time I had been a quiet child living
for the most part in an inner sanctuary. My second sister, who was sixteen,
was married off to a man with a lot of money and very little education.
She had tried to resist the arranged marriage but had succumbed, as most
girls do, to the multifarious, crude as well as subtle, ways of persuading
wavering girls to accept the arrangement in order to safeguard the family’s
“honor” and her own “happiness.” Seeing her fall into the all-too-familiar
trap, I experienced total panic. I was the next in line. At twelve I had not
yet learned to fight. I had not wanted to learn to fight. I simply wanted to
be left alone in my dream world, where I could write my poems and read
my books . . . but I knew then, as I know now, that if one is born female
in a patriarchal society in which girls are regarded as objects to be given
and taken, one has no option but to fight. And so I learned to fight, and
the fight continues to this day.
That year my father wanted me to withdraw from the co-educational
school where I studied and enroll in an all-girls school.Thinking with the
mind of a twelve-year-old, I believed that if I said yes to him once, I
would always have to say yes to him.Therefore, I refused and said that if I
 islam 217

was forced to leave the school where I had studied for a number of years
(and where my brothers still studied), I would not go to another school.
Fortunately my father did not force me to leave, but he upbraided my
mother constantly for spoiling and misguiding me. From that point on,
my mother believed that I had what it took to do what she had wanted to
do in her life. Much of what I am today is due to my mother’s schooling.
But, I could never become the Nietzschean superwoman with a will-to-
power she wanted me to be.
My career as a feminist theologian began—almost by accident—in
the midst of a very difficult period of my life when I had moved with my
very young child to a little-known place called Stillwater, Oklahoma. I
had a Ph.D. but very few survival skills when my search for a job that
could support me and my child, after the collapse of a marriage in which
I had invested a lot, brought me to a small university town in which I
knew no one.There, in the fall of 1974, I was asked to be the faculty ad-
viser to the Muslim Students Association (MSA) chapter at Oklahoma
State University (OSU), where I had been appointed a visiting assistant
professor in Religion and Humanities. The MSA had chapters in many
colleges and universities in the United States and Canada.
The membership of the MSA chapter at OSU consisted entirely of Arab
men largely from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.These men were so patriarchal in
their mindset that they did not allow women to become members of the
MSA. However, there was a rule at OSU whereby every student chapter had
to have a faculty adviser, and that year I happened to be the only Muslim fac-
ulty member on campus.This is how I came to be the faculty adviser to this
group of Arab men who made it clear to me from the outset that they were
not too thrilled at the prospect of working with a woman!
The MSA at OSU had a tradition of having an annual seminar in late
fall, and it was customary for the faculty adviser to make an introductory
presentation on the subject or theme of the seminar. However, in my case,
I was asked to read a paper on women in Islam which—incidentally—was
not the subject of that year’s seminar. Knowing that, in general, faculty ad-
visers were not assigned specific subjects, I resented being asked to address
a topic in which I was not much interested at that time. Furthermore, I
knew that I had been assigned this particular subject because in the opin-
ion of most of the chapter members, it would have been wholly inappro-
priate to expect a Muslim woman, even one who taught them Islamic
218 her voice, her faith

Studies, to be competent to speak on any other subject pertaining to Islam.

Despite my reservations I accepted the invitation for two reasons. First, I
knew that being asked to address an all-male, largely Arab Muslim group,
which excluded women from being even a part of the audience (though
many of the male Arabs had wives who helped them in organizing the
event) and which thought that hearing the voice of a woman unrelated to
them was haram (forbidden), all this was in itself a breakthrough. Second, I
was so tired of hearing Muslim men pontificate upon the position, status,
or role of women in Islam, while it was totally inconceivable any woman
could presume to talk about the position, status, or role of men in Islam. I
thought that it might be worthwhile for a Muslim woman to present her
viewpoint on a subject whose immense popularity with Muslim men,
scholars and non-scholars alike, could easily be gauged by the ever increas-
ing number of books, booklets, brochures, and articles they published on it.
Having accepted the invitation, I began my research, more out of a sense of
duty than with any clear awareness that I had set out on the most impor-
tant journey of my life.
Prior to engaging in any discussion of women’s issues in Islam, it is
useful to have a clear understanding of what is meant by the source works
of Islam or the Islamic tradition, since there is much confusion regarding
the range of the meaning of these terms. If one asks an average Muslim
what he or she understands by Islam or the Islamic tradition, he or she is
likely to refer to one or more of the following sources: the Qur’an (the
Book of Revelations), the Sunnah (the practice of the Prophet Muham-
mad), Hadith (the sayings ascribed to the Prophet Muhammad), Fiqh
(Jurisprudence), Madahib (Schools of Law), and the Shari’ah (the code of
laws that regulates all aspects of Muslim life). If all of the above-mentioned
sources of Islam formed a coherent, homogeneous body of knowledge,
perhaps one could include all of them in the term Islam. But this is very
far from being the case. Not only are there numerous problems of internal
inconsistency within the area of Hadith and Sunnah and the Schools of
Law, for example, but also it does not seem possible, in my opinion, to re-
solve the conflicts among the different “sources” of Islam.
The Islamic tradition, like the other major religious traditions of the
world, comes from multiple sources. The most important among these
sources are The Qur’an; Sunnah and Hadith; Ijma’; and Qiyas or Ijtihad.
Given below are points of significance pertaining to each of these sources.
 islam 219

(1) The Qur’an: Muslims believe the Qur’an to be God’s unadulter-

ated Word transmitted through the agency of Angel Gabriel to the
Prophet Muhammad, a Meccan Arab born in A.D. 570.The Qur’an con-
sists of a series of revelations that the Prophet Muhammad received over
a period of about 23 years. He conveyed these revelations without error
or change to the first body of Muslims. The revelations were recorded
during the lifetime of Muhammad, who recited the Qur’an in its entirety
before his death.The Qur’an consists of a single, standardized text in Ara-
bic, which, unlike some other sacred books, does not have multiple ver-
sions, though it has been translated into numerous languages. For
Muslims the Qur’an is the primary source of normative Islam. The belief
that there is no human element involved in the process of the transmis-
sion of revelation from God to humankind is what gives to the Qur’an its
absolute authority.
(2) Sunnah and Hadith: Next to the Qur’an, the most important
sources of the Islamic tradition are Sunnah or the practice of the Prophet
Muhammad, and Hadith or the sayings attributed to the Prophet
Muhammad. Since Islam, the youngest of the world’s major religions, is
fully historical, there is a good deal of information and documentation
available with regards to the actions of the Prophet Muhammad. How-
ever, the area of Hadith, unlike that of Sunnah, is fraught with controversy.
This has something to do with the fluid and changing nature of oral tradi-
tion itself, but there are also other reasons why many scholars of Islam
have tended to express caution, if not skepticism, regarding the issue of the
authenticity of individual ahadith (plural of hadith), or of Hadith literature
as a whole.
The Arabian Peninsula, in which Islam arose, had been the home of
nomadic tribes which had little experience of governance until they
were unified into a Muslim ummah (community) by the new religion
and its Prophet and left the shores of their homeland to encounter other
cultures. The early Muslims had remarkable success in their outward
march both eastward and westward and began the establishment of an
empire stretching from Spain to India within the course of a century.
However, in their encounter with other cultures that were very different
from their own, they had to deal with a host of problems for which they
had no ready-made solutions. It was natural for them to look for guid-
ance in what they knew best—the Qur’an, and the example of the
220 her voice, her faith

Prophet Muhammad. Eagerness to use the Prophet’s wisdom in resolving

current issues led to a frantic search for ahadith. Soon there were millions
of ahadith in circulation.This caused grave concern to the Muslim schol-
ars of that time, some of whom set out to develop a system for the scien-
tific study of the voluminous body of materials that comprises Hadith
literature. Realizing that the vast majority of ahadith were not the words
of the Prophet Muhammad, they established stringent rules for evaluat-
ing the authenticity of a hadith and the degree of reliability that could be
attached to it.
Muhammad ibn Isma’il al Bukhari (A.D. 810–870) and Muslim bin al-
Hajjaj (A.D. 817 or 821–875) were the compilers of the two most influen-
tial Hadith collections in Sunni Islam, which is followed by the majority
of Muslims in the world.Although their work was thorough and painstak-
ing, the area of Hadith literature remains problematic largely because the
average Muslim lacks scientific knowledge of this discipline, which
evolved to eliminate spurious or inauthentic ahadith.
With regards to the Hadith literature, a distinction needs to be made
between those ahadith that are in conformity with the Qur’an and those
that are not. Obviously the former must be accepted as “authentic” and
the latter as “spurious.”Those tenets of the Shari’ah that are based on the
former confirm or reinforce Qur’anic teaching and, therefore, are binding
on Muslims, but if there is anything in the Shari’ah that is based upon a
hadith that can be shown to be contradictory to the Qur’an, then it is ob-
viously not binding on Muslims. The situation regarding those areas of
human life that are not directly covered by the Qur’an but are alluded to
by the Hadith literature is more complicated. Not only must the relevant
ahadith be tested for authenticity (in terms of the reliability of transmis-
sion) according to the technical criteria established by scholars with ex-
pertise in this area, but also the context and content of the ahadith must
be scrutinized in order to determine whether the ahadith in question are
merely descriptive or also normative. Muhammad Iqbal, modern Islam’s
most outstanding thinker, distinguishing between those ahadith that are of
a purely legal character and those that are non-legal, observes:

With regards to the former, there arises a very important question as

to how far they embody the pre-Islamic usages of Arabia which were
 islam 221

in some cases left intact, and in others modified by the Prophet. It is

difficult to make this discovery, for our early writers do not always
refer to pre-Islamic usages. Nor is it possible to discover that the us-
ages, left intact by express or tacit approval of the Prophet, were in-
tended to be universal in their application. Shah Wali Ullah has a very
illuminating discussion on the point. I reproduce here the substance
of his view. The prophetic method of teaching, according to Shah
Wali Ullah, is that, generally speaking, the law revealed by a prophet
takes a special note of the habits, ways and peculiarities of the people
to whom he is specifically sent.The prophet who aims at all-embrac-
ing principles, however, can neither reveal different principles for dif-
ferent peoples nor leave them to work out their own rules of
conduct. His method is to train one particular people, and to use
them as a nucleus for the building up of a universal Shari’at (Shar-
i’ah). In doing so he accentuates the principles underlying the social
life of all mankind, and applies them to concrete cases in the light of
the specific habits of the people immediately before him.The Shar-
i’at (Shari’ah) values (Ahkam) resulting from this application (e.g.,
rules relating to penalties for crimes) are in a sense specific to that
people; and since their observance is not an end in itself they cannot
be strictly enforced in the case of future generations. It was perhaps
in view of this that Abu Hanifa, who had a keen insight into the uni-
versal character of Islam, made practically no use of these traditions.
The fact that he introduced the principle of “Istihsan,” i.e. juristic
preference, which necessitates a careful study of actual conditions in
legal thinking, throws further light on the motives which determined
his attitude towards this source of Muslim law.1

In the absence of a Qur’anic dictum on a particular issue, the degree

of authority or applicability that a hadith ought to have would depend,
then, on a number of factors with most of which the average Muslim is
totally unfamiliar.
Complex as the area of Hadith is, it has been pointed out by noted Is-
lamicists, both Muslim and non-Muslim, that Hadith is very important as
a source of law, and even of doctrine, in Islam. It has been the lens through
which the Qur’an has been seen since the early centuries of Islam. Also,
222 her voice, her faith

the significance of its emotive aspect is hard to overstate, as anything asso-

ciated with Prophet Muhammad evokes a high degree of veneration
among Muslims.
(3) Ijma’ denotes consensus of the community and is regarded as be-
ing “perhaps the most important legal notion in Islam” by Muhammad
Iqbal, who observes:

It is strange that this important notion, while invoking great aca-

demic discussion in early Islam, remained practically a mere idea, and
rarely assumed the form of a permanent institution in any Muslim
country. Possibly its transformation into a permanent legislative insti-
tution was contrary to the political interests of the kind of absolute
monarchy that grew up in Islam immediately after the fourth
Caliph. . . . It is, however, extremely satisfactory to note that the
pressure of new world forces and the political experience of Euro-
pean nations are impressing on the mind of modern Islam the value
and possibilities of the idea of Ijma’.The growth of republican spirit,
and the gradual formation of legislative assemblies in Muslim lands
constitutes a great step in advance.The transfer of the power of Ijti-
had from individual representatives of schools to a Muslim legislative
assembly which, in view of the growth of opposing sects, is the only
possible form Ijma’ can take in modern times, will secure contribu-
tions to legal discussions from laymen who happen to possess a keen
insight into affairs. In this way alone we can stir into activity the dor-
mant spirit of life in our legal system, and give it an evolutionary
outlook.2

Traditional Islam has taken the position that the Ijma’ of the first three
centuries of Islam is “protected from error” and thus binding on all future
generations and that in view of its infallibility and authority there is no
need for any Ijma’ in the present or the future. Some modern thinkers
have challenged this position pointing out that “protection from error” is
not to be understood in an absolute sense and does not amount to infalli-
bility for all times as only Allah is infallible in an absolute sense; therefore,
though the Ijma’ of a particular period or place may be regarded as au-
thoritative for that period or place it does not bind all Muslims of all times
and places. In this context, Iqbal discriminates between
 islam 223

a decision relating to a question of fact and the one relating to a

question of law. In the former case, as for instance, when the question
arose whether the two small Suras known as “Muavazatain” formed
part of the Qur’an or not, and the Companions unanimously de-
cided that they did, we are bound by their decision, obviously be-
cause the Companions alone were in a position to know the fact. In
the latter case the question is one of interpretation only, and I ven-
ture to think, on the authority of Karkhi, that later generations are
not bound by the decision of the Companions. Says Karkhi: The
Sunnah of the Companions is binding in matters which cannot be
cleared up by Qiyas, but it is not so in matters which can be estab-
lished by Qiyas.3

To sum up this point, Ijma’ that derives its sanction from a number of
Qur’anic texts (e.g., Surah 2: Al-Baqarah: 43; Surah 3: Al-‘Imran: 102;
Surah 4: An-Nisa’: 115) is an invaluable instrument of law-making by
means of which Islam can become dynamic but it has been used—unfor-
tunately—to keep Islam static through the insistence of the traditionalists
who say that only the Ijma’ of a particular time or group of people is to be
considered a source of the Shari’ah. This attitude is not defensible either
from the perspective of Qur’anic teaching, which condemns blind imita-
tion of “tradition,” or on grounds of human reason.
(4) Qiyas or analogical deduction is a form of Ijtihad that literally
means “to exert.” Describing Ijtihad as “the principle of movement in Is-
lam,” Iqbal says:

In the terminology of Islamic law, Ijtihad means to exert with a view

to form an independent judgment on a legal question.The idea . . .
has its origin in a well-known verse of the Qu’ran, “And to those
who exert We show Our path!” We find it more definitely adum-
brated in a tradition of the Holy Prophet. When Ma’ad was ap-
pointed ruler of Yemen, the Prophet is reported to have asked him
how he would decide matters coming up before him. “I will judge
matters according to the Book of God,” said Ma’ad.“But if the Book
of God contains nothing to guide you?” “Then I will act on the
precedents of the Prophet of God.” “But if the precedents fail?”
“Then I will exert to form my own judgment.” The student of the
224 her voice, her faith

history of Islam, however, is well aware that with the political expan-
sion of Islam systematic legal thought became an absolute necessity,
and our early doctors of law, both of Arabian and non-Arabian de-
scent, worked ceaselessly until all the accumulated wealth of legal
thought found a final expression in our recognized schools of Law.
These schools of law recognize three degrees of Ijtihad: (1) complete
authority in legislation which is practically confined to the founders
of schools, (2) relative authority which is to be exercised within the
limits of a particular school, and (3) special authority which relates to
the determining of the law applicable to a particular case left unde-
termined by the founders. . . .The theoretical possibility of (the first)
degree of Ijtihad is admitted by the Sunnis, but in practice it has al-
ways been denied ever since the establishment of the schools, inas-
much as the idea of complete Ijtihad is hedged around by conditions
which are well-nigh impossible of realization in a single individual.
Such an attitude seems exceedingly strange in a system of law based
mainly on the groundwork provided by the Qur’an which embodies
an essentially dynamic outlook on life.4

It is not surprising that the most profound of modern Muslim

thinkers such as Syed Ahmad Khan and Iqbal stressed the tremendous im-
portance of reopening the gates of Ijtihad at the same time as they advo-
cated a return to the simplicity and universality of the Qur’an. Iqbal
represents what I believe is the true spirit of Islam when he makes these
observations concerning the exercise of Ijtihad:

I know the Ulama of Islam claim finality for the popular schools of
Muslim Law, though they never found it possible to deny the theoret-
ical possibility of a complete Ijtihad. . . . For fear of . . . disintegration,
the conservative thinkers of Islam focused all their efforts on the one
point of preserving a uniform social life for the people by a jealous
exclusion of all innovations in the law of Shari’at (Shari’ah) as ex-
pounded by the early doctors of Islam. Their leading idea was social
order, and there is no doubt that they were partly right, because or-
ganization does to a certain extent counteract the forces of decay. But
they did not see, and our modern Ulama do not see, that the ultimate
fate of a people does not depend so much on organization as on the
 islam 225

worth and power of individual men. In an over-organized society the

individual is altogether crushed out of existence. . . . The closing of
the door of Ijtihad is pure fiction suggested partly by the crystalliza-
tion of legal thought in Islam, and partly by that intellectual laziness
which, especially in a period of spiritual decay, turns great thinkers
into idols. If some of the later doctors have upheld this fiction, mod-
ern Islam is not bound by this voluntary surrender of intellectual in-
dependence . . . since things have changed and the world of Islam is
today confronted and affected by new forces set free by the extraordi-
nary development of human thought in all its directions, I see no rea-
son why this attitude (of the Ulama) should be maintained any
longer. Did the founders of our schools ever claim finality for their
reasonings and interpretations? Never.The claim of the present gener-
ation of Muslim liberals to re-interpret the foundational legal princi-
ples, in the light of their own experience and altered conditions of
modern life is, in my opinion, perfectly justified.The teaching of the
Qur’an that life is a process of progressive creation necessitates that
each generation, guided but unhampered by the work of its predeces-
sors, should be permitted to solve its own problems.5

Having clarified what is meant by the sources of Islam, it needs to be

underscored that despite Muslim claims that Islam has given women more
rights than any other tradition, the Islamic tradition has, by and large, re-
mained rigidly patriarchal. Muslim women, like women in other patriar-
chal cultures, have seldom been able to acquire scholarship, particularly in
the realm of religious thought.This means that the sources of Islam have
been interpreted almost exclusively by Muslim men, who have arrogated
to themselves the task of defining the ontological, theological, sociologi-
cal, and eschatological status of Muslim women. It is hardly surprising that
until now the majority of Muslim women who have been kept for cen-
turies in physical, mental, and emotional bondage, have accepted this situ-
ation passively. Here it needs to be mentioned that although the rate of
literacy is low in many Muslim countries, the rate of literacy of Muslim
women, especially those who live in rural areas where most of the popula-
tion lives, is among the lowest in the world.
Between 1974 and 1984, I studied the Qur’anic passages relating to
women and reinterpreted them from a non-patriarchal perspective. I was
226 her voice, her faith

also observing during my frequent visits to Pakistan and my travels in

other Muslim countries that alarming developments were taking place
under the cover of so-called Islamization. A simple definition of Islamiza-
tion is that it is the promulgation by the governments of some Muslim
countries of laws that are designed to make them more Muslim. If one ex-
amines the contents of these laws, one finds that their primary focus is
women. In order to understand the motivation underlying the Islamiza-
tion process, it is useful to bear in mind that of all the challenges con-
fronting the contemporary Muslim world, the greatest appears to be that
of modernity. Unable to come to grips with modernity as a whole, many
contemporary Muslim societies make a sharp distinction between two as-
pects of it. The first—generally referred to as modernization and largely
approved of—is identified with science, technology, and a better standard
of living.The second—generally referred to as Westernization and largely
disapproved of—is identified with emblems of mass Western culture such
as promiscuity, the breakup of family and community, latch-key kids, and
drug and alcohol abuse. Many Muslims see emancipated women not as
symbols of modernization but as symbols of Westernization, which is
linked not only with the colonization of Muslim people by Western pow-
ers in the not-too-distant past but also with the continuing onslaught by
Westerners and Westernized Muslims on “the integrity of the Islamic way
of life.”
Many traditional societies—including the Muslim—divide the world
into private space (that is, the home, which is the domain of women) and
public space (that is, the rest of the world, which is the domain of men).
Muslims, in general, tend to believe that it is best to keep men and women
segregated, in their separate, designated spaces, because the intrusion of
women into men’s space is seen as leading to the disruption, if not the de-
struction, of the fundamental order of things. If some exigency makes it
necessary for women to enter into men’s space, they must make them-
selves “faceless,” or, at least, as inconspicuous as possible. This is achieved
through veiling, which is thus an extension of the idea of the segregation
of the sexes.
Women-related issues pertaining to various aspects of personal as well
as social life lie at the heart of much of the ferment or unrest that charac-
terizes the Muslim world. Many of the issues are not new, but the manner
in which they are being debated today is. Much of this on-going debate
 islam 227

has been generated by the enactment of manifestly anti-women laws in

Muslim countries such as Pakistan, where General Muhammad Zia-ul-
Haq promulgated the Hudood Ordinance (1979), the Law of Evidence
(1984), and the Qisas and Diyat Ordinance (1990), which discriminate
against women in a blatant manner. These laws, which pertained to
women’s testimony in cases of their own rape or in financial and other
matters and to blood money for women’s murder, aimed at reducing the
value and status of women systematically, virtually mathematically, to less
than those of men.The emergence of women’s protest groups in Pakistan
was very largely a response to the realization that forces of religious con-
servatism (aided by the power of the military government) were deter-
mined to cut the status of women down to half or less of men, and that
this attitude stemmed from a deep-rooted desire to keep women in their
place, which is understood as being secondary, subordinate, and inferior to
that of men.
In 1983–84, I spent two years in Pakistan. It was the time when Is-
lamization was at its peak and there was a deluge not only of anti-women
legislation but also of anti-women literature. Reflecting upon what I was
witnessing, I asked myself how it was possible for laws that were archaic
and unjust to be implemented in a society that professed a passionate
commitment to modernity.The answer came to me with stunning clarity.
Pakistani society (or any other Muslim society for that matter) could enact
or accept laws that specified that women were less than men in funda-
mental ways because Muslims, in general, consider it a self-evident truth
that women are not equal to men.
Because at that time I was the only Muslim woman in Pakistan who
was attempting to interpret the Qur’an systematically from a nonpatriarchal
perspective, I was approached numerous times by women leaders (including
the members of the Pakistan Commission on the Status of Women, before
whom I gave testimony in May 1984) to state what my findings were and if
they could be used to improve the situation of women in Pakistani society. I
was urged by those spirited women, who were mobilizing and leading
women’s protests in the streets, to help them refute the arguments that were
being used to make them less than fully human on a case-by-case or point-
by-point basis. However, I knew through my long and continuing struggle
with the forces of Muslim traditionalism (which were now being gravely
threatened by what was described as “the onslaught of Westernization under
228 her voice, her faith

the guise of modernization”) that the arguments being broadcast to keep

women in their place were only the front line of attack. Behind and below
these arguments were others, and no sooner would one line of attack be
eliminated than another one would be set up in its place. What had to be
done, first and foremost, in my opinion, was to examine the theological
ground in which all the anti-women arguments were rooted to see if, in-
deed, a case could be made for asserting that from the point of view of nor-
mative Islam, men and women were essentially equal, despite biological and
other differences.
As a result of my study and deliberation, I came to perceive that not
only in the Islamic, but also in the Jewish and Christian, traditions, there
are three theological assumptions on which the superstructure of men’s
alleged superiority to women has been erected. These three assumptions
are (1) that God’s primary creation is man, not woman, because woman is
believed to have been created from man’s rib, hence is derivative and sec-
ondary ontologically; (2) that woman, not man, was the primary agent of
what is customarily described as the “Fall,” or man’s expulsion from the
Garden of Eden, hence all “daughters of Eve” are to be regarded with ha-
tred, suspicion, and contempt; and (3) that woman was created not only
from man but also for man, which makes her existence merely instrumental
and not of fundamental importance.
It is not possible, within the scope of this essay, to deal exhaustively
with any of the above-mentioned questions. However, in the following
brief discussion of each question, an attempt is made to highlight the way
in which sources of normative Islam have been interpreted to show that
women are inferior to men. Of these three questions, the first is the most
fundamental.
This is so because if man and woman have been created equal by
God, who is the ultimate arbiter of value, they cannot become unequal es-
sentially at a subsequent time. On the other hand, if man and woman have
been created unequal by God, then they cannot become equal essentially at
a subsequent time.
Muslims generally believe, as seriously as many Jews or Christians, that
Adam was God’s primary creation and that Eve was made from Adam’s
rib. Although this myth is obviously rooted in the Yahwists’ account of
creation in Genesis 2:18–24, it has no basis whatever in the Qur’an, which
in the context of human creation speaks always in completely egalitarian
 islam 229

terms. In none of the thirty or so passages that describe the creation of

humanity (designated by generic terms such as an-nas, al-insan, and
bashar) by God in a variety of ways is there any statement that could be
interpreted as asserting or suggesting that man was created prior to
woman or that woman was created from man.The Qur’an notwithstand-
ing, Muslims believe that Hawwa’ (the Hebrew/Arabic counterpart of
Eve), who incidentally is never mentioned in the Qur’an, was created
from the “crooked” rib of Adam. Adam, by the way, is not an Arabic term
but a Hebrew one, meaning “of the soil” (from adamah, the soil).The He-
brew term Adam functions generally as a collective noun referring to the
human species rather than to a male human being. In the Qur’an also, the
term Adam refers, in twenty-one out of twenty-five instances, to human-
ity. Here it is of interest to note that though the term Adam mostly does
not refer to a particular human being, it does refer to human beings in a
particular way.As pointed out by Muhammad Iqbal:

Indeed, in the verses which deal with the origin of man as a living
being, the Qur’an uses the words Bashar or Insan, not Adam, which it
reserves for man in his capacity of God’s viceregent on earth. The
purpose of the Qur’an is further secured by the omission of proper
names mentioned in the Biblical narration—Adam and Eve. The
term Adam is retained and used more as a concept than as a name of
a concrete human individual. The word is not without authority in
the Qur’an itself.6

If the Qur’an makes no distinction between the creation of man and

woman—as it clearly does not—why do Muslims believe that Hawwa’
was created from the rib of Adam? Although the Genesis 2 account of
woman’s creation is accepted by virtually all Muslims, it is difficult to be-
lieve that it entered the Islamic tradition directly, for very few Muslims
ever read the Bible. It is much more likely that it became a part of Mus-
lim heritage through its assimilation in the Hadith literature. That the
Genesis 2 idea of woman being created from Adam’s rib did, in fact, be-
come incorporated in the Hadith literature is evident from a number of
ahadith. Of these, six are particularly important since they appear to have
had a formative impact on how Muslims have perceived women’s being
and sexuality as differentiated from men’s.The matn (content) of these six
 230 her voice, her faith

ahadith—three from Sahih Al-Bukhari and three from Sahih Muslim is

given below:

• Treat women nicely, for a woman is created from a rib, and the most
curved portion of the rib is its upper portion, so if you would try to
straighten it, it will break, but if you leave it as it is, it will remain
crooked. So treat women nicely.7
• The woman is like a rib, if you try to straighten her, she will break. So
if you want to get benefit from her, do so while she still has some
crookedness.8
• Whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day should not hurt (trouble)
his neighbor.And I advise you to take care of the women, for they are
created from a rib and the most crooked part of the rib is its upper
part; if you try to straighten it, it will break, and if you leave it, it will
remain crooked, so I urge you to take care of woman.9
• Woman is like a rib.When you attempt to straighten it, you would
break it.And if you leave her alone you would benefit by her, and
crookedness will remain in her.10
• Woman has been created from a rib and will in no way be straightened
for you; so benefit by her while crookedness remains in her.And if you
attempt to straighten her, you will break her, and breaking her is di-
vorcing her.11
• He who believes in Allah and the Hereafter, if he witnesses any matter
he should talk in good terms about it or keep quiet.Act kindly towards
women, for woman is created from a rib, and the most crooked part of
the rib is its top. If you attempt to straighten it, you will break it, and if
you leave it, the crookedness will remain there so act kindly towards
women.12

I have examined these ahadith elsewhere and have shown them to be

flawed with regard to their formal (isnad) as well as their material (matn) as-
pects.The theology of woman implicit in these ahadith is based upon gen-
eralizations about her ontology, biology, and psychology contrary to the
letter and spirit of the Qur’an.These ahadith ought, therefore, to have been
rejected—because Muslim scholars agree on the principle that any hadith
that is inconsistent with the Qur’an cannot be accepted. However, despite
 islam 231

the fact that the ahadith in question contradict the teachings of the Qur’an,
they have continued to be an important part of the ongoing Islamic tradi-
tion. Undoubtedly one of the major reasons for this is that these ahadith
come from the two most highly venerated Hadith collections by Muham-
mad ibn Isma’il al Bukhari and Muslim bin al-Hajjaj.These two collections,
known collectively as Sahihan (from sahih, meaning authentic),“form an al-
most unassailable authority, subject indeed to criticism in details, yet deriv-
ing an indestructible influence from the ‘ijma’ or general consent of the
community in custom and belief, which it is their function to authenti-
cate.”13 While inclusion in the Sahihan gives the ahadith in question much
weight, their continuing popularity also tells us that they articulate some-
thing deeply embedded in Muslim culture—namely the belief that women
are derivative creatures who can never be considered equal to men.
Many Muslims, like many Jews and Christians, would say that woman
was responsible for the “Fall” of man or his expulsion from paradise, al-
though nothing in the Qur’anic descriptions of the so-called Fall episode
would warrant such an answer. Here it may be noted that—whereas in
Genesis 3:6, the dialogue preceding the eating of the forbidden fruit by
the human pair in the Garden of Eden is between the serpent and Eve
(though Adam’s presence is also indicated, as contended by feminist the-
ologians) and this has provided the basis for the popular casting of Eve
into the role of tempter, deceiver, and seducer of Adam—in the Qur’an,
the Shaitan (Satan) has no exclusive dialogue with Adam’s zauj (mate). In
two of the three passages that refer to this episode, Surah 2: Al-Baqarah:
35–39 and Surah 7: Al-A’raf: 19–25, the Shaitan is stated to have led both
Adam and zauj astray though in the former (verse 36), no actual conversa-
tion is reported. In the remaining passage, namely, Surah 20: Ta-Ha:
115–24, it is Adam who is charged with forgetting his covenant with God
(verse 115), who is tempted by the Shaitan (verse 120), and who disobeys
God and allows himself to be seduced (verse 121). If, however, one looks
at all three passages as well as the way in which the term Adam functions
generally in the Qur’an, it becomes clear that the Qur’an regards the act
of disobedience by the human pair in al-jannah (the Garden) as a collec-
tive rather than an individual act for which exclusive, or even primary, re-
sponsibility is not assigned to either man or woman. Even in the last
passage in which Adam appears to be held responsible for forgetting the
232 her voice, her faith

covenant and for allowing himself to be beguiled by the Shaitan, the act of
disobedience, that is, the eating from the “Tree,” is committed jointly by
Adam and zauj and not by Adam alone or in the first place.
That said, it is extremely important to stress that the Qur’an pro-
vides no basis whatever for asserting, suggesting, or implying that
Hawwa’, having been tempted and deceived by the Shaitan, in turn
tempted and deceived Adam and led to his expulsion from al-jannah.
This fact notwithstanding, many Muslim commentators have ascribed
the primary responsibility for man’s Fall to woman. There is hardly any
doubt that Muslim women have been as victimized as Jewish and Chris-
tian women by the way in which the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic tra-
ditions have generally interpreted the Fall episode. However, it needs to
be pointed out that the Qur’anic account of the episode differs signifi-
cantly from the Biblical account and that the Fall does not mean in the
Islamic tradition what it means in the Jewish, and particularly in the
Christian, tradition.
To begin with, whereas in Genesis 3 no explanation is given as to why
the serpent tempts either Eve alone or both Adam and Eve, in the Qur’an
the reason why the Shaitan sets out to beguile the human pair in al-jan-
nah is stated clearly in a number of passages.The refusal of the Shaitan to
obey God’s command to bow in submission to Adam follows from his be-
lief that, being a creature of fire, he is elementally superior to Adam, who
is a creature of clay.When condemned for his arrogance by God and or-
dered to depart in a state of abject disgrace, the Shaitan throws a challenge
to the Almighty: he will prove to God that Adam and Adam’s progeny are
unworthy of the honor and favor bestowed on them by God, being, in
general, ungrateful, weak, and easily lured away from the straight path by
worldly temptations. Not attempting to hide his intentions to “come
upon” human beings from all sides, the Shaitan asks for—and is granted—
a reprieve until the Day of the Appointed Time. Not only is the reprieve
granted but God also tells the Shaitan to use all his wiles and forces to as-
sault human beings and see if they would follow him. A cosmic drama
now begins, involving the eternal opposition between the principles of
right and wrong or good and evil, which is lived out because human be-
ings, exercising their moral autonomy, must now choose between the
straight path and the crooked path.
 islam 233

In terms of the Qur’anic narrative, what happens to the human pair in

al-jannah is a sequel to the interchange between God and Shaitan. In the
sequel we learn that Adam and zauj have been commanded not to go near
the Tree lest they become zalimin (transgressors). Seduced by the Shaitan,
they disobey God. However, in Surah 7: Al-A’raf: 23, they acknowledge
before God that they have done zulm (transgression) to themselves and
earnestly seek God’s forgiveness and mercy. They are told by God to go
forth or descend from al-jannah, but in addressing them the Qur’an uses
the dual form of address (referring exclusively to Adam and zauj) only
once (in Surah 18:Ta-Ha: 123); for the rest, the plural form is used, which
necessarily refers to more than two persons and is generally understood as
referring to humanity as a whole.
In the framework of Qur’anic theology, the order to go forth from
al-jannah given to Adam or the children of Adam cannot be considered
a punishment because Adam was always meant to be God’s viceregent
on earth, as stated clearly in Surah 2: Al-Baqarah: 30. The earth is not a
place of banishment but is declared by the Qur’an to be humanity’s
dwelling place and a source of profit to it. The al-jannah mentioned in
the Fall story is not—as pointed out by Muhammad Iqbal—“the super-
sensual paradise from which man is supposed to have fallen on this
earth.”14
There is, strictly speaking, no Fall in the Qur’an. What the Qur’anic
narration focuses upon is the moral choice that humanity is required to
make when confronted by the alternatives presented to them by God and
the Shaitan.This becomes clear if one reflects on the text of Surah 2: Al-
Baqarah: 35 and Surah 7: Al-A’raf: 19: “You [dual] go not near this Tree,
lest you [dual] become of the ‘zalimin’.” In other words, the human pair is
being told that if they go near the Tree, then they will be counted among
those who perpetrate zulm. Commenting on the root ZLM, Toshihiko
Izutsu says:

The primary meaning of ZLM is, in my opinion and of many of the

authoritative lexicologists, that of “putting in a wrong place.” In the
moral sphere it seems to mean primarily “to act in such a way as to
transgress the proper limit and encroach upon the right of some
other person.” Briefly and generally speaking zulm is to do injustice
234 her voice, her faith

in the sense of going beyond one’s bounds and doing what one has
no right to.15

By transgressing the limits set by God, the human pair become guilty
of zulm toward themselves. This zulm consists in their taking on the re-
sponsibility for choosing between good and evil. Here it is important to
note that

. . . the Qur’anic legend of the Fall has nothing to do with the first
appearance of man on this planet. Its purpose is rather to indicate
man’s rise from a primitive state of instinctive appetite to the con-
scious possession of a free self, capable of doubt and disobedience.
The Fall does not mean any depravity, it is man’s transition from sim-
ple consciousness to the first flash of self-consciousness, a kind of
waking from the dream of nature with a throb of personal casuality
in one’s own being. Nor does the Qur’an regard the earth as a tor-
ture hall where an elementally wicked humanity is imprisoned for an
original act of sin. Man’s first act of disobedience was also his first act
of free choice; and that is why, according to the Qur’anic narration,
Adam’s first transgression was forgiven. . . . A being whose move-
ments are wholly determined like a machine cannot produce good-
ness. Freedom is thus a condition of goodness. But to permit the
emergence of a finite ego who has the power to choose after consid-
ering the relative values of several courses of action open to him, is
really to take a great risk: for the freedom to choose good involves
also the freedom to choose what is the opposite of good. That God
has taken this risk shows his immense faith in man, it is now for man
to justify this faith.16

Because there is no Fall in the Qur’an, there is no original sin. Human

beings are not born sinful into this world, hence do not need to be re-
deemed or saved.This is generally accepted in the Islamic tradition. How-
ever, the association of the Fall with sexuality, which has played such a
massive role in perpetuating the myth of feminine evil in the Judaeo-
Christian tradition, also exists in the minds of many Muslims and causes
untold damage to Muslim women.
 islam 235

The Qur’an, which does not discriminate against women in the con-
text of the Fall episode, does not support the view—held by many Mus-
lims, Christians, and Jews—that woman was created not only from man
but also for man.That God’s creation as a whole is “for just ends” (Surah
15: Al-Hijr: 85) and not “for idle sport” (Surah 21: Al-Anbiya’: 16) is one
of the major themes of the Qur’an. Humanity, fashioned “in the best of
moulds” (Surah 95: At-Tin: 4) has been created in order to serve God
(Surah 51: Adh-Dhariyat: 56). God cannot be separated from service to
humankind, or—in Islamic terms—believers in God must honor both
Haquq Allah (rights of God) and Haquq al- ‘ibad (rights of creatures). Ful-
fillment of one’s duties to God and humankind constitutes the essence of
righteousness.That men and women are equally called upon by God to be
righteous is stated unambiguously in a number of Qur’anic passages, such
as the following:

Believers, men
And women, are guardians
of one another: they impose
What is just, and forbid
What is evil: they observe
Regular prayers, practice
Charity, and obey
God and his Apostle.
Upon them will God pour
His mercy: for God
Is exalted in power and wise,
God has promised to believers,
Men and women, gardens
Where rivers flow,
To dwell therein,
And beautiful mansions
In gardens of everlasting bliss.
But the greatest joy
Is the good pleasure of God:
That is the highest bliss.
236 her voice, her faith

The Qur’an makes clear that not only do men and women stand ab-
solutely equal in the sight of God but also that they are protectors of each
other. In other words, the Qur’an does not create a hierarchy in which
men are placed above women, nor does it pit men against women in an
adversary relationship. They are created as equal creatures of a universal,
just, and merciful God whose pleasure it is that they live together in har-
mony and in righteousness.
Underlying the rejection in Muslim societies of the idea of man-
woman equality is the deeply rooted belief that women who are inferior
in creation (having been made from a crooked rib) and in righteousness
(having helped the Shaitan in defeating God’s plan for Adam) have been
created mainly to be of use to men, who are superior to them.
The alleged superiority of men to women that permeates the Islamic
(as well as the Jewish and Christian) tradition is grounded not only in Ha-
dith literature but also in popular interpretations of some Qur’anic pas-
sages. Two Qur’anic passages—Surah 4: An-Nisa’:34 and Surah 2:
Al-Baqarah: 288—in particular, are generally cited to support the con-
tention that men have “a degree of advantage” over women. Of these, the
first reads as follows in A.A. Maududi’s translation of the Arabic text:

Men are the managers of the affairs of women because Allah has
made the one superior to the other and because men spend their
wealth on women. Virtuous women are, thereof, obedient: they
guard their rights carefully in their absence under the care and
watch of Allah. As for those women whose defiance you have cause
to fear, admonish them and keep them apart from your beds and
beat them. Then, if they submit to you, do not look for excuses to
punish them: note it well that there is Allah above you, Who is
Supreme and Great.

It is difficult to overstate the impact of the general Muslim under-

standing of Surah 4: An-nisa’: 34, which is embodied in Maududi’s trans-
lation. As soon as the issue of women’s equality with men is raised, the
immediate response by traditionalists is, “But don’t you know that God
says in the Qur’an that men are ‘qawwamun’ in relation to women and
have the right to rule over them and even to beat them?” In fact, the mere
statement “ar-rijal-o qawwamun-a ‘ala’an-nisa’ ” (men are qawwamun in
 islam 237

relation to women) signifies the end of any attempt to discuss the issue of
woman’s equality with man in the Islamic ummah.
It is assumed by almost all who read Surah 4, verse 34, that it is ad-
dressed to husbands.The first point to be noted is that it is addressed to ar-
rijal (men) and an-nisa’ (women). In other words, it is addressed to all men
and women of the Islamic community. Further, in relation to all the ac-
tions that are required to be taken, the plural and not the dual form (used
when reference is made only to two persons) is found. Such usage makes
clear that the orders contained in this verse were not addressed to a hus-
band or wife but to the Islamic ummah in general.
The key word in the first sentence of this verse is qawwamun. This
word has been translated variously as protectors and maintainers (of
women), in charge (of women), having pre-eminence (above women),
and sovereigns or masters (over women). Linguistically, the word qawwa-
mun means breadwinners or those who provide a means of support or
livelihood. A point of logic that must be made here is that the first sen-
tence is not a descriptive one stating that all men as a matter of fact are
providing for women, since obviously there are at least some men who do
not provide for women. What the sentence is stating, rather, is that men
ought to have the capability to provide (since “ought” implies “can”). In
other words, this statement, which almost all Muslim societies have taken
to be an actual description of all men, is in fact a normative statement per-
taining to the Islamic concept of division of labor in an ideal family or
community structure. The fact that men are qawwamun does not mean
that women cannot or should not provide for themselves, but simply that
in view of the heavy burden that most women shoulder in child bearing
and rearing, they should not have the additional obligation of providing
the means of living at the same time.
Continuing with the analysis of the passage, we come next to the idea
that God has given the one more strength than the other. Most translations
make it appear that the one who has more strength, excellence, or superi-
ority is the man. However, the Qur’anic expression does not accord supe-
riority to men.The expression literally means “some in relation to some,”
so that the statement could mean either some men are superior to some
others (men and/or women).The interpretation that seems to me to be the
most appropriate contextually is that some men are more blessed with the
means to be better providers that are other men.
238 her voice, her faith

The next part of the passage begins with a “therefore,” which indi-
cates that this part is conditional upon the first: in other words, if men ful-
fill their assigned function of being providers, women must fulfill their
corresponding duties. Most translations describe this duty in terms of the
wife being “obedient” to the husband. The word salihat’, which is trans-
lated as “righteously obedient,” is related to the word salahiat (capability
or potentiality). A women’s special capability is to bear children, and she
carries and protects the fetus (which is hidden from the eye) in her womb
until it can be safely delivered.
What is outlined in the first part of this passage is a functional division
of labor necessary for maintaining balance in any society. Men, who do
not have to fulfill the responsibility of childbearing, are assigned the func-
tions of being breadwinners.Women are exempted from the responsibility
of being breadwinners in order that they may fulfill their function as child
bearers.The two functions are separate but complementary and neither is
higher or lower than the other.
The three injunctions in the second part of the verse were given to the
Islamic ummah in order to meet a rather extraordinary possibility: a mass
rebellion on the part of women against their role as child bearers—a func-
tion assigned to them by God. If all or most of the women in a Muslim so-
ciety refused to bear children without just cause as a sign of organized
defiance or revolt, this would mean the end of organized ummah.This sit-
uation must, therefore, be dealt with decisively.The first step to be taken is
to find out the reasons for this act of defiance and to offer counseling. If
this step is unsuccessful, the second step to be taken is isolation of the re-
bellious women from others. (It is to be noted here that the prescription is
to leave the women in solitary confinement. By translating this line,“Keep
them apart from your beds,” Maududi is suggesting, if not stating, that the
judging party is the husband and not the Islamic community—an assump-
tion not warranted by the text.) If the second step is also not successful,
then the step of confining women for a longer period of time may be
taken by the Islamic community or its representatives. Here, it is important
to point out that the Arabic word daraba, which is generally translated as
“beating,” has numerous meanings. When used in a legal context as it is
here, it means “holding in confinement,” according to the authoritative
lexicon Taj al-’Arus. (In Surah 4: An-Nisa’: 15, unchaste women are also
prescribed the punishment of being confined to their homes.)
 islam 239

Although, through the centuries, Muslims have interpreted Surah 4:

An-Nisa’: 34 as giving men unequivocal mastery over women, a linguisti-
cally and philosophically/theologically accurate interpretation of this pas-
sage would lead to radically different conclusions. In simple words, this
passage is saying that since only women can bear children (which is not to
say that all women should bear children or that women’s sole function is
to bear children)—a function whose importance in the survival of any
community cannot be questioned—they should not have the additional
obligation of being breadwinners while they perform this function.Thus,
during the period of a woman’s childbearing, the function of breadwin-
ning must be performed by men (not just husbands) in the Muslim
ummah. Reflection on this Qur’anic passage shows that the division of
functions mandated here is designed to ensure justice in the community
as a whole.There are millions of women all over the world who are desig-
nated inaccurately as “single” parents (when, in fact, they are “double” par-
ents) who bear and raise children singlehandedly, generally without much
support from the community.This surely does not constitute a just situa-
tion. If children are the wealth and future of the ummah, the importance
of protecting the function of childbearing and child raising becomes self-
evident. Statistics from all over the world show that women and children
left without the care and custodianship of men suffer from economic, so-
cial, psychological, and other ills. What Surah An-Nisa’: 34 is ensuring is
that this does not happen. It enjoins men in general to assume responsibil-
ity for women in general when they are performing the vitally important
function of childbearing (other passages in the Qur’an extend this also to
child rearing).Thus the intent of this passage, which has traditionally been
used to subordinate women to men, is in fact to guarantee women the
material (as well as moral) security needed by them during the period of
pregnancy when breadwinning can become difficult or even impossible
for them.
The second passage which mentions the so-called degree of advan-
tage that men have over women is Surah 2:Al-Baqarah: 228, which reads:

Divorced women
Shall wait
For a three-month period.
Nor is it lawful for them
240 her voice, her faith

To hide what God

Hath created in their wombs,
If they have faith
In God and the last Day.
And their husbands
Have the better right
To take them back
In that period, if
They wish for reconciliation.
And women shall have rights
Similar to the rights
Against them, according
To what is equitable
But men have a degree
(of advantage) over them,
And God is Exalted in Power and Wise.

The advantage that men have over women in this context is that
women must observe a three-month period called ’iddat before remar-
riage, but men are exempted from this requirement.The main reason why
women are subjected to this restriction is because at the time of divorce a
woman may be pregnant, and this fact may not become known for some
time.As men cannot become pregnant, they are allowed to remarry with-
out the waiting period.
In my judgment, the Qur’anic passages—in particular the two discussed
above—on which the edifice of male superiority over women largely rests
have been misread or misinterpreted, intentionally or unintentionally, by
most Muslim societies and men.There is no question that if the Qur’an is
read without patriarchal bias, it is extremely protective of the rights of
women, especially within the home. There are more laws in the Qur’an
about safeguarding the rights of all members of a family than on any other
subject. The Qur’an recognized the weak and vulnerable situation of
women at the time of the birth of Islam and aimed to uplift them in every
way. This concern for women’s empowerment was also central to the life
and work of the Prophet Muhammad.
The revolution brought about by Islam in the nomadic society of Ara-
bia, in which female children were often buried alive and in which
 islam 241

women could be sold or inherited, is illustrated very well by the outstand-

ing women who have inspired Muslim women through the centuries—
such as Khadija and ’A’isha, the wives of the Prophet Muhammad, Fatima,
his beloved daughter, and Rabi’a, the Sufi par excellence of the eighth
century.
Khadija, known in the Muslim tradition as Tahira (the Pure) and
Kubra (the Great), was the first and most important wife of Muhammad,
who remained monogamous during her lifetime. When Muhammad en-
tered Khadija’s life as a young man, she was an older widow who owned
property and engaged in trade. She employed Muhammad to take her
merchandise to Syria and was so impressed by how well he executed his
commission and by his personality that she offered him marriage.
Muhammad accepted. Khadija supported him in every way and stood by
him through the most difficult times of his life. She was the first person to
accept the authenticity of his prophetic mission, and the Prophet Muham-
mad continued till the end of his life to remember her with the deepest
love, respect, and gratitude.
‘A’isha, beloved wife of the Prophet Muhammad, is very important in
Muslim history not only because she became the Prophet’s favorite wife
after the death of Khadija but also because she is one of the major trans-
mitters of the ahadith ascribed to him.According to a well-known saying,
the Prophet said, “Learn half of the Deen (Principles of Faith) from me
and the other half from ‘A’isha.” A multi-faceted, dynamic woman,‘A’isha
is also to be remembered for her strong feminist consciousness, which is
reflected in a number of her sayings.
Fatima, the youngest and only surviving child of the Prophet
Muhammad and Khadija, is known in the Muslim tradition as Zahra (the
Radiant One) and is greatly revered. She continued the bloodline of her
father through her marriage to his cousin ‘Ali, who is regarded as the first
Imam of Shi’ite Muslims, who, after the Sunnis, are the most important
sect in Islam. Fatima is the center of piety for many Muslims, who see her
as a model to be emulated by all devout women.
Rabi’a’s figure is shrouded in legends, including stories of miracles
brought about by her intense devotion to God. But sketchy as the histori-
cal details of her life are, they point to an extraordinary personality.
Probably a fourth (rabi’a) daughter, she was born into extreme poverty.
Orphaned at a young age, she was sold into slavery for a paltry sum. She
242 her voice, her faith

served her master by the day but fasted much and spent most of the night
in praying to God. Becoming aware of her profound piety, her master re-
leased her from bondage.
Among the devotees of Rabi’a, who lived a celibate, highly austere
life, were spiritual and temporal leaders of her time. But though many
sought her prayers or guidance, she solicited no help from anyone, includ-
ing God. Her prayers, including the following, reflect her all-consuming
passion for God, which makes even Heaven and Hell irrelevant: “O my
Lord, if I worship Thee from fear of Hell, burn me in Hell, and if I wor-
ship Thee from hope of Paradise, exclude me thence, but if I worship
Thee for Thine own sake then withhold not from me Thine Eternal
Beauty.”
Rabi’a, the most outstanding Sufi saint in an age of saints, whose
name has become a symbol for women who attain the highest spiritual
station in any age, has been a source of inspiration to many mystics, in-
cluding her biographer Farid-ud-din ‘Attar who, in his famous poem
“The Conference of the Birds,” pays her the high compliment of being
the Crown of Men (Taj ar-Rijal).
As I look back on my life’s journey, I can identify some figures who
have been a source of inspiration to me.Among them, perhaps none ranks
higher than the poet-philosopher Iqbal, from whom I learned what I
consider to be the core of the message of the Qur’an. The outstanding
women of early Islam are also very important to me, as are the two real-
life women who have had the greatest impact on me—my mother and
my daughter.As I think about the debt I owe to those who have helped to
shape my mind and soul and the course of my life, I remember my duty to
present and future Muslim girls and women and renew my commitment
to do what I can to help them achieve self-actualization. I have come a
long way since my journey as a feminist theologian began in Stillwater in
1974. My Odyssean venture to make sense of my own life as a Muslim
woman through my study of the sources of my religious tradition, history,
and culture has taken me from one end of the world to the other. It was
been a hard but rewarding quest, which goes on as the struggle to create a
world free of injustice and inequity continues.
 8

Goddess Spirituality
and Wicca
By Wendy Griffin

My first encounter with Goddess
Spirituality was in the late 1980s, when a large red-headed student in my
Women and Power class stood up and announced she was a feminist Witch
and Dianic priestess, and invited the entire class to a ritual celebrating the
spring equinox. Being somewhat leery, but definitely curious, I asked a col-
league to go with me.We ended up studying and doing research with my
student’s coven for over a year.
I had read about witchcraft as an occult practice years before, but what
I had read was unrelated to either spirituality or feminism.The experience
with the coven was different.These women were clearly feminists and be-
lieved that, just as the personal was political, so was the spiritual.Women’s
sexuality and gender politics were central to their analysis. They saw
themselves as liberating women’s souls and helping to heal women and
the planet from the wounds of patriarchy.
There was no sudden conversion on my part, no Road to Damascus
experience, just a slow recognition that I was familiar and comfortable
with some of the ideas the Witches were sharing with us. It took some
time for me to realize the spiritual nature of their practice. I was not a
spiritual seeker; I had been an atheist since my early teens. But I had been

243
244 her voice, her faith

raised by a spiritual mother who never called what she did “religion.” At
her summer camp for girls in northern Wisconsin, we would have Sunday
twilight meditations by the lake, silent torch-lit processions of women
through silver birch groves, and pageants of re-created myths around the
campfire. I grew up surrounded by strong, competent, beautiful, empow-
ered women who were at peace with their environment. Encountering
Goddess Spirituality was like coming home.1
Today I practice my spirituality within a Dianic coven and, at the
same time, I celebrate the Wheel of the Year with my life-partner, who,
until he met me, was a “solitary”Witch.Although he believes Deity exists,
for me the Goddess is a human construct, a metaphor that represents the
Web of Life that connects us all. One of the major tenets of Goddess Spir-
ituality is that one does not need to believe in the Goddess to experience
Her. I do not believe, but I have experienced Her.

THE ROOTS

For a young religion, the history of Goddess Spirituality is fairly complex.

In part, this is because the practice today is made up of various distinct
strands that might even be considered a family of religions.To explore all
of these and do them justice would take a book unto itself.2 I have chosen
to focus on a very few threads that have made the most significant contri-
butions to Goddess Spirituality as we begin the new millennium.The ma-
jor element that these strands have in common is an honoring of a female
representation of Divinity, a Goddess who is simultaneously both one and
many3 and who is immanent in Nature. There is no one name for these
spiritual practitioners of this Goddess or even one everyone agrees upon
for the practice. Some call themselves pagans,4 some Wiccans,Witches, or
Gaians, and some have no word at all for themselves. Sometimes the
strands are called Women’s Spirituality, Feminist Spirituality, Paganism, or
Witchcraft. All four of these labels attempt to address specific communi-
ties within Goddess Spirituality and none are without problems.The ma-
jority of religions today are profoundly gendered, some enforcing
traditional gender roles, others transforming gender identity. Profoundly
spiritual women, many of whom are feminists, have addressed these issues
 goddess spirituality and wicca 245

of gender within the context of their own traditional religions that do not
revere female divinity. Thus to call Goddess Spirituality Women’s Spiritual-
ity may say very little indeed. And although women do outnumber men,
there are men who call upon the Goddess and attend rituals in her name.
The label of Feminist Spirituality is every bit as misleading. Although
there are strong elements of feminism in the practice and writings, there
are women who believe in the Goddess and are not feminists. They are
uninterested in identifying as such, especially younger practitioners.This is
even more prominent among the male practitioners, as might be ex-
pected. Feminism has influenced some of the strands much more signifi-
cantly in the United States than in other countries, and even there some
who reap the benefits of feminism believe there is no longer a need for it.
For the moment, Goddess Spirituality will have to suffice when
speaking of the larger tapestry of the Goddess traditions in the West.The
tapestry is of a religion, a varied collection of beliefs, a family of spirituali-
ties, a spiritual journey, and a social movement. In order to see this, we
need to examine the individual strands and ideas that go into the weav-
ing.5 I begin with Witchcraft, for though it is not the whole of the prac-
tice, it is a major part and gives shape and color to the greater whole.

THE CRAFT OF THE WISE

The milieu that gave birth to much of contemporary Witchcraft and pa-
ganism can be traced back to the late sixteenth century in Scotland and
the founding of Freemasonry.6 Like the medieval craft guilds, Freemasonry
had a mythical history and a body of secret knowledge that was taught to
initiates. What distinguished it was that it admitted members who were
not working in a specific trade, its historical claims were greater, and it was
more concerned with the ethical and moral considerations behind Ma-
sonic tradition than the trade itself. As Freemasonry spread to England
and beyond, it became known as “the Craft” and began to incorporate de-
grees of initiation. The initiations themselves grew more ritualistic, the
five-pointed star called a pentagram was adopted as a major symbol and
the four cardinal points of the compass were given esoteric significance
and employed in ritual.The eighteenth century saw tremendous growth in
246 her voice, her faith

Freemasonry, not only in numbers, but in elaborate rituals and rich sym-
bolic lore as well.
The nineteenth century presented intellectuals with a choice between
an orthodox Christianity and the new science, where humans were sud-
denly but a small part of a vast, mechanized universe.The occult offered a
middle path that promised to combine scientific experimentation with
the romantic appeal of “ancient wisdom.”7 The British revival of ritual
magic began with the founding of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia to
study the occult sciences. Members of this English Rosicrucian Society
were of a specific elite: Christian men who had achieved the highest grade
in Freemasonry. The Society for Psychical Research was founded shortly
after the Rosicrucian Society, drawing its own elite, including Prime Min-
ister William Gladstone and the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson. On its heels
came the Theosophical Society, its offspring the Hermetic Society, and
then the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
The Golden Dawn claimed to trace its knowledge back to ancient
philosophers and mysteries. It trained initiates in what were believed to be
mystical and magical systems, blending together elements from Freema-
sonry, Christianity, the cabbala,Tantra, Egyptian mythology, Greco-Egypt-
ian texts, and ceremonial magic. Members learned ritual magic that
promised to give them control of or alignment with elemental powers
that could be used for practical purposes and specific goals.This was not a
religious society but a magical one, where deities were neither wor-
shipped nor invoked to intercede in human affairs, but used to represent
certain desirable qualities and empower the practitioner.8 Envisioned as
universal, the presiding female deity wore only the lunar horns of Isis.
Though not the only goddess identified with this figure, Isis was ex-
tremely important, as Egypt was believed by many to have been the home
of magic.The major male god was Pan, favorite of the nineteenth-century
poets who saw him as the gentle yet powerful and protective god of the
sylvan countryside.
Pan’s chosen status can be attributed to several things. In 1862, a re-
tired French historian and anti-Catholic named Jules Michelet published
La Sorcière. This book claimed that witchcraft was what had survived from
an ancient pagan religion, brutally oppressed and driven underground by
the Church.Witches, who had once been great healers, held religious sab-
baths and worshipped Pan, the god of fertility, whom the Church had
 goddess spirituality and wicca 247

confused with Satan. Although never accepted by scholars, the book be-
came a popular best seller and has never been out of print. Pan, frolicking
in the woods, was a god of Nature, wild, rebellious, and joyful. His appeal
to English romantics at a time when England was undergoing rapid in-
dustrialization and urbanization was strong.Within a fairly short time, Pan
became the Horned God that some strands of Goddess Spirituality still
honor today.
At the turn of the twentieth century, millions of British men and
hundreds of women had been initiated and were working in secretive
groups that handed down knowledge and practices called the Craft, se-
crets that were believed to go back to the beginning of recorded history.9
Then another small book appeared that was to be one of the most impor-
tant texts of contemporary paganism. Aradia: Gospel of the Witches was a
collection of stories, spells, and invocations purportedly used by Italian
Witches, practitioners of the Old Religion, “the faith of millions in the
past.”10 Charles Leland, an American journalist, reportedly received the
handwritten manuscript from a young woman named Maddelena, who
served as his informant and then disappeared from his life after handing
over the Gospel.The book explains how the Goddess Diana was first “be-
fore all creation; in her were all things; out of herself, the first darkness, she
divided herself; into darkness and light she was divided. Lucifer, her
brother and son, herself and her other half, was the light.”11 From this
union was born a daughter, Aradia, whom Diana sent to teach humanity
Witchcraft and destroy oppression. Leland refers to Aradia as the Messiah,
often confused with and reflecting her divine mother.That it was a female
sent to teach Witchcraft was understandable, he wrote,“For every woman
is at heart a witch.”12
The idea that Witches were secret practitioners of an ancient religion
that passed down esoteric knowledge to initiates was a natural fit. Even
the newly formed British Folk Lore Society proclaimed its truth, and
when respected Egyptologist Margaret Murray deviated from her estab-
lished field of scholarship and presented her new work on Witchcraft at
the Society’s meetings, it was easily accepted. Published in 1921, Murray’s
The Witch Cult in Western Europe argued that witchcraft was a widespread
pagan fertility cult that worshipped a horned god of nature. Covens made
up of 13 Witches met regularly and held sabbats, religious holidays on the
old quarter days that began the Celtic agricultural seasons. Twelve years
248 her voice, her faith

later, the book appeared in the popular press, slightly reworked to be

openly celebratory and painting the Old Religion as a profoundly life-af-
firming one. Murray attempted to show that the Horned God of the
Greenwood was the oldest of all male deities and could be traced across
Europe and the Near East, all the way back to the Stone Age. Pan was
simply one aspect of this God; perhaps a more significant one was the
horned Gallic deity Cernunnos or Herne.The budding goat horns of Pan
were also the spreading antlers of the sacred stag.
Shortly after the popular version of The Witch Cult was published, a
retired civil servant by the name of Gerald Gardner returned to England
after spending many years in Ceylon, North Borneo, and Malaya. Fasci-
nated by folklore and the supernatural, he had written several monographs
while there, including one on the use of a Malay ceremonial knife. He set-
tled down on the outskirts of the New Forest in southern England, where
according to his later writings, he met a woman by the name of Old
Dorothy and was initiated into her coven of witches. In 1949, he pub-
lished High Magic’s Aid, a novel that represented some of the coven’s beliefs
and practices.The picture was remarkably similar to Murray’s, including a
primary male divinity. However, in Gardner’s novel, a priestess was neces-
sary to work with the priest in order to invoke deity.
Significantly, the year before in 1948, the acclaimed English poet
Robert Graves had published The White Goddess. Presenting his work not
as fictive narrative but as an authentic work of history, Graves linked the
changing aspects of the moon to a universal Goddess, envisioning her as
Maiden, Mother, and Crone. He argued that she was the earliest European
deity, and, using what he called the historical grammar of poetic myth, he
attempted to reveal the secrets held for thousands of years by Her initiates.
The Triple Goddess was real, he insisted, and when enough people be-
lieved in Her again, Her reign would begin in earnest.
Shortly after the British laws against witchcraft were repealed in 1951,
Gardner began to give press interviews, and in 1954 he published Witch-
craft Today, which was presented as a factual account of English Witchcraft.
The religion he described was a nature-based one in which Goddess and
God were both venerated. Practitioners were organized into covens led by
a High Priestess with the help of her High Priest. The Goddess was in-
voked into the High Priestess through a ritual act called Drawing Down
the Moon.The belief in the necessity of male/female polarity (the oppo-
 goddess spirituality and wicca 249

sition and balance of the masculine and feminine) was reflected in train-
ing, initiation, and the practice of ritual magic. Major religious festivals
consisted of eight sabbats held on the four days that marked the beginning
of the agricultural seasons and the four solar festivals celebrating the sol-
stices and equinoxes. Witches worked with energy within sacred circles
that had quarters cast in the four directions, each of which had esoteric
meanings and was linked to one of the four elements. They practiced
techniques conducive to trance and ecstasy, used ritual tools, and main-
tained a cult of secrecy, notes of which were kept in a Book of Shadows.
Gardner called this religion Wicca.13
Doreen Valiente, who was initiated as a Witch in 1953, became Gard-
ner’s High Priestess. She noticed that some passages in the rituals handed
to him by the New Forest Witches were suspiciously similar to those of
other occult groups, in particular to those of England’s leading ritual ma-
gician Aleister Crowley. Crowley, former member of the Golden Dawn
and the Ordo Templi Orientis, argued that magic was related to physics,
not religion. It was “the art or science of causing change in conformity
with will.”14 Magic occurred through putting oneself in harmony with an
interconnected universe.When challenged by Valiente, Gardner responded
that the Witches’ ceremonies had been incomplete and he was obliged to
“flesh them out” with writings and practices of others in order to make
them viable.Valiente, a writer of lyrical beauty, removed portions she felt
inappropriate or objectionable and helped to write some of the ritual in-
vocations that are still used today. Due to internal disagreements, she and a
group of supporters eventually left Gardner to form their own coven.
Although Gardner’s story of the New Forest coven was accepted by
practitioners initially, it was vulnerable to challenge.15 Drawing on the
work of those before him, and adding considerable new information and
insight, British historian Ronald Hutton’s research reveals that Gardner
was very involved in other occult groups before Witchcraft, including
Crowley’s Ordo Templi Orientis, where he was a member of the highest
level and apparently had Crowley’s approval to attempt to revive it shortly
before the publication of High Magic’s Aid in 1949. Gardner also sat on the
governing councils of both the Ancient Druid Order and the Folk Lore
Society.16
It should be no great surprise then to discover that Gardner’s Wicca
included elements from other magical traditions. Like Freemasonry, there
250 her voice, her faith

were degrees of initiation, knowledge, and skills in “the Craft” marked by

Wiccan ceremonies, a belief that all these were handed down from ancient
times, an occult significance given to the four directions, and the use of
the pentagram as a major symbol. Like the Golden Dawn,Wicca involved
women on an equal basis, performed magic for practical ends, celebrated
seasonal rites, and drew divinity from or into human beings. Similar rela-
tionships were assigned among the four elements and the four directions,
and the working tools for ritual magic were essentially the same, with the
ceremonial knife (called an “athame” by Gardner) given special impor-
tance. From Crowley came the blessing called the “five fold kiss,” the cel-
ebration of the human body, and the Wiccan code of ethics, or Rede.17 A
major Wiccan invocation is clearly adapted from Leland’s Aradia and the
image of the Horned God included Murray’s Cernunnos.
Wicca was a new counter-cultural religion under the label of the Old
Religion,18 one that sacralized Nature and the human body, understood
Divinity to be immanent rather than solely transcendent, and saw human
sexuality as a way of celebrating the Divine. Hutton believes this religion
was probably the result of a particular combination of major cultural
trends that had developed in society since 1800, trends that are still in
force today.

In religious terms, it might be said that he [Gardner] was contacted

by a divine force which had been manifesting with increasing
strength during the previous two hundred years, and that it worked
through him to remarkable effect. A secular way of saying the same
thing, more commonly found among historians, is that cultural forces
which had been developing for a couple of centuries combined in
his emotions and ideas to reproduce a powerful, and extreme, re-
sponse to the needs which they represented.19

By the early 1960s in England, networks of covens began to spread,

and different styles or traditions of Witchcraft were emerging. Individuals
appeared who claimed to have inherited their religion or to have been ini-
tiated into a tradition unrelated to Wicca. In some cases, people left Gard-
nerian covens, as they came to be called, and began their own versions of
the Craft; among the most noted was Alexandrian Witchcraft, named after
Alex Sanders. These innovations and newly appeared traditions were not
 goddess spirituality and wicca 251

greeted enthusiastically by Gardnerians, who believed their practice was an

ancient one, handed down through centuries of persecution.And by Gard-
ner’s death in 1964, the Wiccan community was torn with low-level con-
flict, a phenomenon sometimes referred to as Witch Wars.
In 1970 the Pagan Front was formed in England to promote unity
within Witchcraft and to promote the Old Religion itself within the
wider society. Supported by leaders of three different traditions, it held its
first national meeting in London in 1971.The inaugural speech was given
by Doreen Valiente. For a time the organization published a newsletter
called The Wiccan and served as a contact service for people in search of a
coven or training in the Craft. In 1981, the Pagan Front became the Pagan
Federation with regional councils and, eventually, an elected governing
committee. Leonora James, a Cambridge-trained philosopher, brought in-
tellectual rigor as the new editor of The Wiccan, and forged links between
the organization and academic scholars. James suggested that magical
techniques were a way of focusing the conscious mind, enabling it to con-
nect with the unconscious mind.This is what would allow practitioners to
transform themselves and the world around them.The move away from a
strictly fertility cult of Gardner grew even stronger when Vivianne Crow-
ley, a Jungian psychologist trained in both Gardnerian and Alexandrian
traditions, became the first secretary of the Pagan Federation in the late
1980s. Between the two women,Wicca gained an intellectual respectabil-
ity it had not possessed before.
Vivianne Crowley’s contributions are important in the development
of Wicca as a mature religion. Her nine books explore both the practice
and meaning of Wicca and of contemporary paganism. They have been
translated into German and Dutch, and will soon appear in French, Nor-
wegian, and Bulgarian.The growth of Wicca in Europe can be seen in the
annual Pan-European Wiccan Convention, an organization she began in
1990 that holds a conference in a different country of northwest Europe
every year. She and her husband Chris Crowley set up and led the Wicca
Study group, providing classes and workshops in England, Germany, and
Norway for almost a decade. In addition to her teaching and writing,
Crowley has been very active in interfaith dialogue. Building on the work
of Janet and Stewart Farrar, she teaches that healing is an important part of
Wiccan practice and belief and that training leads to personal wholeness.20
There is a deeply felt need for Wicca, she says.
252 her voice, her faith

It is to counteract imbalance—between women and men, between

men and their inner feminine, between humankind and the world
we inhabit—that the archetype of the Goddess has arisen in the
world today. Long-buried in the human psyche, the Goddess has
awoken and in dreams, visions, art and literature pursues us. Some ig-
nore her call, but many answer and through religion, magic, art, mu-
sic, poetry, craft and vision they come to Her.The Goddess lives and
all who desire may serve at Her altar.21

Druids and other pagans joined the Pagan Federation, and member-
ship grew from a few hundred to thousands. As publicity increased and
grew more favorable in the 1990s, pagan chaplains were recognized by
hospital and prison services, and at least one served in a British university.
The first academic conference on paganism in contemporary Britain was
held at the University of Newcastle in 1994, and academic scholars began
doing research and publishing in the field.
Scholars suggest that all religions mythologize their own origins, and
Witches in Britain now typically speak of the Old Religion as a metaphor
rather than a reality. Although there is a growing tendency to refer to
themselves as pagans instead of Witches, the revelations concerning the
origins of Wicca have not disillusioned practitioners. Frederic Lamond,
initiated by Gardner in 1957, insisted that it wasn’t Gardner’s magnetic
personality that attracted followers, as he lacked the charisma of great reli-
gious leaders. Nor was it the power in what Gardner said or wrote, ac-
cording to Lamond, but a

power reaching out from the experience of the rituals and magical
workings themselves, and from the deities to whom they were dedi-
cated, especially the goddess.22

As for being disillusioned, Lamond summed it up in 1997 when he

asked,

Does it matter whether a religious or magical tradition is three or

three thousand years old if it works in helping us discover the divine
spark within ourselves and cast effective spells?23
 goddess spirituality and wicca 253

WITCHCRAFT IN AMERICA

Gardnerian Witchcraft was brought to the United States in 1962 by Ray-

mond and Rosemary Buckland. Although there is some disagreement
among Witches if this was the first tradition in America, it is the first for
which there is undisputed evidence. The first Gardnerian coven was
founded in 1964, and the following year, the Church of Wicca was estab-
lish in Missouri, receiving tax-exempt status in 1972.This status is signifi-
cant as it entails certain privileges and benefits that are protected by the
courts’ interpretations of the states’ and federal constitutions.A recognized
nonprofit religious organization has the right to ordain clergy to legally
“marry and bury” and have representatives in hospitals, prisons, and the
military when requested. In addition, there are significant postage and tax
benefits, which, depending on state and county laws as well as federal, may
provide some exemptions on things like real estate or social security paid
on ministerial salaries. Perhaps more importantly, the religious nonprofit
tax-exempt status signifies that the state recognizes the religion as a legiti-
mate one, deserving of protection and privilege.When the State of Geor-
gia granted tax-exempt status to the Ravenwood Church of the Old
Religion in 1982, there was an immediate challenge to the decision. Its
status was upheld by the Georgia Supreme Court. It was a battle that was
fought more than once,24 sometimes in a colorful fashion not untypical of
Witches, as in 1970 when Italian Witch Leo Martello and the American
Civil Liberties Union took the New York City Parks Department to court
for a permit to hold a Witch-In. Over one thousand people showed up to
celebrate the victory and take part.
One year after the Bucklands arrived in America, Betty Friedan pub-
lished The Feminine Mystique. Although it took a few years for feminism
and Witchcraft to meet, when they did there was an immediate attraction
on the part of those feminists who were beginning to question male au-
thority in general, and male spiritual authority in particular. However, for
many years the attraction was not mutual.
The feminist spin to Witchcraft first became visible on Halloween,
1968.A group of black-clad women calling themselves WITCH disrupted
and, in a dramatic fashion, hexed a New York brokerage firm, the Chase
Manhattan Bank, and the Morgan Guaranty Trust. Within weeks covens
254 her voice, her faith

had sprung up in Boston, Chicago, San Francisco,Washington, DC, North

Carolina, Oregon, and Texas. In Chicago, WITCH hexed the Transit Au-
thority for raising fares. In Washington DC, the United Fruit Company
was hexed for “slave-labor practices abroad and sex discrimination in hir-
ing at home.”25 These covens were locally based, and, though they all used
the acronym WITCH, in one place it meant Women’s International Ter-
rorist Conspiracy from Hell, in another Women Infuriated at Taking Care
of Hoodlums, Women Inspired to Commit Herstory, and so on. Calling
themselves the striking arm of the Women’s Liberation Movement, the
covens were mainly concerned with doing feminist guerrilla theater. Al-
though they called themselves “witches” and their groups “covens,” they
were not Wiccan and were not held together by a religious or spiritual be-
lief system, but by the same radical feminism that was resulting in other
actions across the country. They took the name WITCH from I Samuel
15:23, which says,“For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft.”As women re-
belling against patriarchy, the symbol of the witch was a particularly pow-
erful one for them. They frequently passed out cards to women which
read in part, “You are a witch by saying aloud, ‘I am a witch,’ three times
and thinking about that.You are a witch by being female, untamed, angry,
joyous, and immortal.”26
The witch that these women claimed as their symbol was hardly
Glenda the Good from the Land of Oz.27 The witch was the rebellious
woman, empowered with secret knowledge.The witch was also a symbol
of women’s victimization and later resiliency when faced with the evils of
institutionalized male dominance. The manifesto of WITCH accepted
uncritically the writing of Matilda Joselyn Gage, first-wave feminist and
political activist who, almost one hundred years earlier, had claimed that
nine million women were put to death for the crime of Witchcraft. Fa-
miliar with Michelet’s La Sorcière, Gage had come to the conclusion that
Witches were pagan priestesses of an ancient religion, specialized in heal-
ing, and persecuted by the Church in order to stamp out female inde-
pendence.28 WITCH, despite its brief life span, linked irrevocably the
second wave of American feminism and the symbol of the witch.
The religion of Witchcraft spread in America. New covens were
formed by people who had been initiated and trained in Wicca. Others
were spontaneously created, using rituals and magical techniques created
from a combination of research and inspiration. Within traditions, coven
 goddess spirituality and wicca 255

members added their own elements, while some began new traditions al-
together, and some simply practiced on their own, gathering information
from books that were starting to appear on the market. Beginning in the
early 1970s, different groups organized pagan conferences and festivals.
Featured speakers shared stories and songs, and large rituals generated a
tremendous cross-fertilization of ideas and practices. Among the first such
events were Gnostican and national Witchmeets sponsored by Llewellyn
Publications. Simply having an “in-house” publisher who was himself
Wiccan helped to spread the word about the new Old Religion. Accord-
ing to Chas Clifton, former editor at Llewellyn,

. . . Llewellyn as a publishing house has done a lot to define Ameri-

can paganism for good or ill.Their conscious philosophy is to publish
lots of entry-level books . . . in a “shotgun” approach to see what
catches on—and also to dominate bookshelf space in stores.29

It was a successful approach for both Witchcraft and Llewellyn, which

grew from a small publisher of astrology books in 1901 to a mid-size pub-
lisher employing over 100 people and publishing more than 500 authors,
specializing in the promotion of books on various Craft traditions.
One charismatic woman who created a new tradition was Zsuzsanna
Budapest. A Hungarian immigrant who had lived in Chicago and studied
with the improvisational theater group Second City, Budapest and her
husband and sons moved to New York in order for her to attend the
American Academy of Dramatic Arts. In an interview I did with her in
1991, she told me she heard about WITCH and tried, but was unable, to
locate them. In 1970, Budapest went to southern California on a three-
week vacation. She never returned.
On the Winter Solstice of 1971, a year after she arrived in California,
Budapest and six other women created the Susan B. Anthony Coven
Number 1, a group of separatist feminist Witches. According to former
member Barbara Chesser, the group was originally a writing and study
group. Although Budapest says that her mother was a Witch who taught
her many of the practices back in Hungary, Chesser claims that she herself
discovered many of them through research for her Ph.D. in anthropology,
and it was she who brought them to the coven. Budapest began to de-
velop the role of the autonomous High Priestess, one without a High
256 her voice, her faith

Priest, and the group of women began to experiment with religious rit-
ual, combining European and British folk customs with creative improvi-
sation.Then the women decided to go public.

I said we should gather and celebrate ourselves.Well, that was a novel

idea, celebrating ourselves along with the seasons, celebrate ourselves
with the Goddess, celebrate ourselves as the Goddess. All of this was
brand new.They [women not in the coven] didn’t relate to the con-
cept of the Goddess. . . . I snuck it by them because we gave the best
of parties and they came and what happened to them was very good.
They got filled up and went home and they told everybody that the
Witches give the best of parties.They didn’t realize those were rituals
for the Goddess, and then eventually I told them what was going
on. . . . It took many years of just passing it as a party for the season
instead of saying this is a ritual for the Goddess.30

Budapest claims there were some gatherings where more than 700
women attended,

dancing on the mountaintop, jumping over fire with their clothes

off, I mean those were good times. Huge big full moon in our faces.
That was ecstasy to be had!31

This new Wiccan tradition saw the Triple Goddess as an autonomous

deity. It did not celebrate a divine male principle; practitioners were also
spiritual separatists. Men were not allowed. In creating this kind of space
where women felt safe to experiment and to simply be women without
the social constraints imposed upon them in mixed groups, the religion
reflected the many women’s consciousness-raising groups that were gain-
ing in popularity. As such, it caught on among women looking for spiri-
tual experience, and more covens formed. Budapest simply called it Wicca
until the mid-70s,32 after which time it became known as Dianic Witch-
craft, probably after the Goddess of the witches in Leland’s Aradia.33 The
fact that the Goddess Diana avoided contact with men made the name es-
pecially appropriate. Clearly, the practice was based upon or at the very
least profoundly influenced by Gardnerian Wicca.34 From the beginning,
the Dianic Craft incorporated distinctive Gardnerian elements such as the
 goddess spirituality and wicca 257

five-fold kiss used in blessing, the set of ritual tools that included the use
and name of the athame, the language and manner of casting the circle,
the association of the elements with the four directions, the eight sabbats,
and the concept of the Triple Goddess, which Gardner borrowed from
Robert Graves.
Budapest opened an occult supply store and began to give classes and
lectures. More and more women came to the rituals she and her group
organized. Her rituals were broken up twice and participants arrested for
trespassing, as the mountaintops they danced on in ecstasy didn’t belong
to them. Budapest, however, declared that the real reason they were ar-
rested was because the police couldn’t believe that hundreds of women
could get together and have a wonderful time without a single man
among them.35 Then, in 1975, Budapest was arrested for doing a tarot
reading. It made her and Dianic Witchcraft famous.
To the mainstream feminist movement, Goddess feminists had been
seen as anti-political and the still nascent Goddess Movement a drain on
time and energy that should be better invested in working for women’s
liberation. Feminist Witches were worse than an embarrassment, they
were dangerous because they made the women’s movement look too
weird and too lesbian.What Budapest referred to as “womyn’s religion”36
got no positive mention in the women’s press until Budapest herself was
thrown into jail. A small article in Ms. made her seem to be a feminist
hero. She was a martyr, a victim of and a threat to patriarchal oppression, a
real Witch. Although she lost the case, which was based on a law against
fortune telling, she considered it a “badge of honor” to be arrested for
“prophesying the future, for being a prophet.”37 The California Supreme
Court later struck down the law under which she was convicted.
The Feminist Book of Lights and Shadows, written and published by a
“hard-working collective of wimmin” in 1979, is dedicated to “Diana,
Virgin Huntress of the Night” and to Masika Szilagyi, Budapest’s mother,
who is credited with being Budapest’s inspiration for teaching the Craft to
“wimmin.” Republished in 1980 as Volume One of Budapest’s Holy Book
of Women’s Mysteries, it contains the manifesto of the Susan B. Anthony
Coven #1. It affirms a belief in an ancient peaceful era when the earth
was seen as Mother and women were Her priestesses. It explains that “ag-
gressive males” exiled from matriarchies were responsible for the inven-
tion of rape and the subjugation of women, that a political revolution was
258 her voice, her faith

impossible without a spiritual one, and that feminist Witches were part of
a necessary change in universal consciousness. Members of the coven
committed themselves to joy, self-love, life-affirmation, to teaching other
women the techniques of magic and Witchcraft, and to the Goddess of
Ten Thousand Names.38
Budapest’s group was unapologetically religious and claimed there was
a body of knowledge called magic that could be learned. This made its
manifesto significantly different from that of WITCH, demonstrating the
“progression from radical feminism to feminist religion.”39
Budapest has always been highly skilled at blending together myth
and history into moving narrative.Whether she was taught Witchcraft by
her mother and is a “hereditary” Witch, created a new tradition with a
group of feminist women in concert with the times, or was inspired by
the Divine, she is acknowledged today as the Mother of the Dianic Craft.
When she moved to northern California in 1980, she left behind a new
High Priestess,40 Ruth Rhiannon Barrett, who went on to form Circle
of Aradia (CoA). CoA is a large religious congregational community, not
a coven. As a registered nonprofit religious organization, it is run by a
board of directors, just as is required of any legally recognized church or
temple in the United States. Besides offering large public Goddess rituals
to the women’s community, it provides classes on a variety of topics,
largely on the basic techniques of Witchcraft, but also on things like
Goddess herstory, tool making, and drumming. Literally thousands of
women have taken classes in the Dianic Craft in the twenty-two years
CoA has been in existence.
Another significant source for Dianic teaching is the Reformed Con-
gregation of the Goddess-International (RCG) incorporated in Wisconsin
in 1984. RCG publishes a widely read quarterly newspaper, sponsors two
conferences and national gatherings a year, and provides a six-year training
curriculum called Cella. This is an organized program of supervised self-
directed spiritual development activities for women, with specific paths or
areas of specialization.Training is currently going on in the states of Cali-
fornia, Indiana, Minnesota, New York, Washington, Wisconsin, Texas, and
Washington, DC. Regardless of where the training takes place, all students
are required to participate in an internship in the Mother House in Wis-
consin.Women do not have to be Dianics to participate, though most are,
but only Dianics may become priestesses of the Congregation.
 goddess spirituality and wicca 259

Although not initially limited by sexual orientation, over time the Di-
anic tradition became more a practice for lesbian Witches. In part, this de-
pended on the personalities involved in individual covens. The nature of
women’s covens is such that very intimate emotional relationships are
forged there, and people are usually attracted to a particular coven because
they have a friend who is a member and feel they have something in
common with the group. At the very least, it is a place where women
hope to feel safe, though this may not always prove to be true. In addition,
this was during the 70s and early 80s, when a great deal of sexual experi-
mentation was going on in America. Although in some groups tensions
did not exist between lesbian and heterosexual women, in others lesbians
refused to even participate in rituals with heterosexual women. Of course,
these same tensions could also be seen in the political women’s movement
at the time. By the 90s, these conflicts had typically ceased to exist, and
sexual orientation was no longer an issue for Dianics in most American
groups. Although the groups remain firmly closed to men, the number of
heterosexual women increased significantly, and now the Dianic Craft is
no longer predominately lesbian.
Other Witches were initially dismissive of Dianic Witches, declaring
them far “too Dianic,” meaning too political, too feminist, and too les-
bian.41 For some time there was considerable tension, as the majority of
Witchcraft traditions emphasized a belief in the necessity of male/female
polarity in order to work magic.These groups did not consider the Dianic
practice legitimate. In addition,Wiccans still argued that their religion was
an ancient one, brought back by Gardner after centuries of Christian op-
pression. It wasn’t until recently that the origins of the Craft were re-
searched or understood. In light of the earlier understandings, the Dianic
Craft was not only seen as an upstart, but as a warped caricature of their
Craft. Covenant of the Goddess (COG), which formed in California as an
umbrella organization in 1975 to gain legal recognition for Witchcraft as a
religion, accepted Dianic covens in the early 80s, and this conflict was
fairly well resolved in the United States by the late 80s. COG represented
Witches from any tradition and created a formal but flexible national net-
work.
Circle Sanctuary, founded in 1974 and granted religious tax-exempt
status in 1980, was another significant network, one that accepted a large
variety of Goddess traditions. Circle published a newsletter, which has
260 her voice, her faith

since turned into a quarterly magazine, and holds regular training, rituals,
and one of America’s oldest pagan summer festivals on its 200-acre nature
preserve in the wilds of Wisconsin.
At first, most women came to feminist Witchcraft and Goddess Con-
sciousness through feminism. Starhawk, author of The Spiral Dance (1979),
came to feminism and Witchcraft at about the same time. Through her
writing and her position as first national president of COG, Starhawk ef-
fectively became the bridge between the various traditions within Witch-
craft.42 She had some training in Faery Witchcraft, commonly believed to
be an American tradition, and elements of this combined with her per-
sonal experiences in her widely read first book. In 1980, she teamed with
another member of a coven she belonged to in order to teach a class in
magic based on The Spiral Dance. The class was so popular that more
members of her original coven joined in the teaching, and students who
had graduated from the classes began forming their own covens. Some of
the teachers joined with some of the students to publish a small newsletter
and organize public rituals in San Francisco. By the end of 1980, this
group had formed the Reclaiming Collective.
From the very beginning, Reclaiming was unusual in that it worked
through consensus.43 There was neither High Priestess nor High Priest.
All of the Collective’s activities, from designing classes to organizing par-
ticipation in public political protests, were done in this manner. Many
people today assume that Starhawk is the group’s leader, but although she
has always been the primary thealogian and is the most famous of the Re-
claiming Collective, the group has no leader, and she herself has always ac-
knowledged that much of her own thinking grows out of the community
and is informed by others.44
Like the Dianic Craft, the Reclaiming Collective linked together the
spiritual and the political, but this was done in a very direct way that in-
volved a public display of magical protest and action. Many of the mem-
bers of the Collective and people who attended the public sabbats
participated in anti-nuclear civil disobedience in such places as the
Lawrence Livermore Lab, Diablo Canyon, and the Vandenburg Air Force
Base.Their political commitment was based firmly on their religious be-
liefs, and some of the activist Witches, including Starhawk, were arrested
for acting on these beliefs
 goddess spirituality and wicca 261

Another element that Reclaiming had in common with the Dianic

Craft was its innovative form of ritual magic. Unlike Wiccans who traced
their lineage back to Gardner, Witches trained in the Reclaiming Tradi-
tion did not believe that sexual polarity was always necessary, and they
prided themselves on incorporating spontaneity into their practice. Macha
NightMare writes,

When I first began learning Craft, the most powerful lesson I learned
from my early working was that if I listened with my heart, if I expe-
rienced in my bones and blood, if I could recognize the divine in my
own image in a mirror and in the feel of Sun on my skin, wind in my
hair, then I could tap into that inner women’s wisdom which was in-
nate. I learned that my sacred ritual acts—however they might be
performed, whatever words, gestures, tools, symbols were used—are
those of a priestess of the Goddess if I will them to be. I feel this
when the hair on my arms stands up, my scalp tingles, and I feel
rushes of energy up and down my spine. In the face of such experi-
ence, I know that I am tapping into a rich, vibrant source that reaches
deep into the center of the earth, far out into the celestial, and to the
core of my soul.45

The Reclaiming classes were so popular that in 1985, the Collective

offered a summer “intensive,” a week of concentrated classes held within
sacred space. The success of these was such that the Collective began to
rent space in rural areas, and soon the intensives came to be known as
Witchcamps. Over time, the teachers were invited to other states and
countries, including Florida, Missouri, Michigan, Pennsylvania,Texas,Ver-
mont,West Virginia, Canada, England, Germany, and Norway.The people
trained in those camps in turn trained others in their own communities,
and the teachings spread. One result of this was that Starhawk and the
Reclaiming Collective contributed greatly to making American Witches
in general more feminist and more political than British Witches.46
In the meantime, Starhawk was finishing work on a Master’s degree in
clinical psychology and feminist therapy. Her thesis was published in 1982 as
Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex and Politics. Her 1987 book Truth or Dare: En-
counters with Power, Authority and Mystery explored some of the Collective’s
262 her voice, her faith

magical techniques and provided tools for others to engage in direct magi-
cal activism.Although neither book was as popular as Spiral Dance, they pro-
vided a deepening understanding of Goddess Spirituality to readers. In fact,
Starhawk was the first to write a comprehensive theology of Witchcraft and
to articulate its ethos. There is more than just a touch of irony in the fact
that the two leading, and certainly the two most lyrical, theologians of this
religion introduced to the modern world by a man are women, Starhawk
and Vivianne Crowley.47
Today, Witchcraft is a fully developed nature-based mystery religion.
Sabbats, held eight times a year, serve to link the individual and the group
to each other and to Nature, and offer participants a regular opportunity
to reflect on their own personal growth and goals. Focus on the lunar cy-
cle reinforces the dynamic human cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth,
whether the last is seen as reincarnation or the natural recombining of
DNA.The reenactment of reconstructed myths provides meaning and al-
lows Witches to link the divine within them to the divine around them in
the natural world and denies the separation between the sacred and the
secular.Their celebration of the human body and sexuality provides truth
messages about immanence and integration, challenging notions about
mind/body dualism, and their spiritual practice makes permeable the
boundary between religion and magic.

THE GODDESS IN AMERICA

The Reclaiming and Dianic traditions have blurred the divisions between
Witchcraft and the less structured, looser spiritual weave of other Goddess
celebrants. With the Dianic training and focus upon an autonomous fe-
male deity and Reclaiming’s public rituals and Witchcamps, some of
which are women-only, many women who don’t identify as Witches have
learned to incorporate magical techniques and Craft beliefs into their
spiritual practice. But the original framing lay elsewhere.
In 1971, in the same year that Budapest’s coven announced its pres-
ence, feminist theologian Mary Daly was invited to be the first woman
ever to preach at a Sunday service at Harvard’s Memorial Church. Daly
had already gained some academic fame and notoriety from her feminist
 goddess spirituality and wicca 263

critiques of patriarchal religion, but those earlier critiques had been a call
for reform. By 1971, Daly had moved from her reformist position and
turned her Harvard sermon into a “Call for an Exodus” from patriarchal
religion.

We can give physical expression to our exodus community, to the

fact that we must go away . . . We cannot really belong to institu-
tional religion as it exists. It isn’t good enough to be token preachers.
It isn’t good enough to have our energies drained and co-opted.
Singing sexist hymns, praying to a male god breaks our spirit, makes
us less than human.48

Her sermon concluded when she left the pulpit and literally, and sym-
bolically, walked out of the church.According to Daly, hundreds of people
got up and followed her out the door.49 Later that year, she wrote, “The
women’s movement will present a growing threat to patriarchal religion
less by attacking it than simply leaving it behind.”50
By 1973, she began to use female imagery in articulating the Divine
and urged women to create religious rituals for themselves, for each to
feel her own way in her spiritual journey. In the same year, Barbara
Ehrenreich and Deirdre English condemned the Catholic and Protestant
Churches for the persecution of witches, writing that the essential charac-
ter of the historical witch-hunts was “that of a ruling class campaign of
terror directed against the female peasant population.” They were some-
what more circumspect in their estimate of people put to death for the
crime of witchcraft than other writers, saying only that there were “thou-
sands upon thousands of executions.”51 Their major argument was that the
“crimes” for which these women were really convicted were those that
dealt with female sexuality and the unauthorized practice of medicine or
midwifery. By 1978, Daly had incorporated this concept into her work,
along with Gage’s figure of nine million witches and Graves’s vision of the
Triple Goddess, and these concepts became commonly accepted parts of
American Goddess lore.
WomanSpirit magazine began to publish in 1974 as a quarterly created
by Ruth and Jean Mountaingrove in Oregon. They were aided by a
changing collective of women in various states. WomanSpirit had a signifi-
cant impact during its ten years of publication. The magazine provided a
264 her voice, her faith

forum for women to explore their spirituality through poetry, art, articles
about personal experiences, descriptions of rituals, and discussions among
women. As the writing collective was geographically diverse, the articles
reflected what was happening around the country.The editors wrote,

We feel we are in a time of ferment. Something is happening with

women’s spirituality.We don’t know what it is, but it’s happening to
us and it’s happening to other people. WomanSpirit is trying to help
facilitate this ferment.52

An event even more significant than the publication of WomanSpirit

also occurred in 1974. Marija Gimbutas published Gods and Goddesses of
Old Europe, reprinted eight years later as The Goddesses and Gods of Old
Europe. In it, the archeologist argued for the existence of a prehistoric,
peaceful, agrarian culture that was matrifocal and worshipped “a Goddess
incarnating the creative principle as Source and Giver of All.”53 This idea
was not totally new; it was first suggested in 1849 by German scholar Ed-
uard Gerhard, but not widely accepted until 1901, when Sir Arthur Evans
decided that prehistoric Crete had worshipped a single female deity who
was both Virgin and Mother with a divine child.Within a few years, other
scholars announced similar findings in Europe, and Sir James Frazer, au-
thor of the Golden Bough, extended the idea to Western Asia, adding the
image of a male son as consort who dies and returns like the grain. By the
first decade of the twentieth century, textbooks argued that the worship of
Olympian deities had been preceded by universal worship of a Great
Mother Goddess, an idea that gave substance to Robert Graves’s work that
would follow.54
Gimbutas’s contribution was to posit that this Goddess civilization
was invaded over a period of two thousand years by horse-back riding,
patriarchal warriors from a proto-Indo-European culture. During this
time, goddesses, “or more accurately the Goddess Creatrix in Her many
aspects, were largely replaced” by the male-dominated pantheon of the
Indo-Europeans.55 In her later work, Gimbutas attempted to decipher a
language in the symbol system used in the art of what she called Old Eu-
rope.56 Although her work, especially her later work, has been severely at-
tacked on several fronts,57 her books, the ideas, and the stunning
photographs they contained were devoured by women looking for sym-
 goddess spirituality and wicca 265

bols to express their own spiritual experiences.The myth of the “Golden

Age of Matriarchy” was and continues to be embraced by some practi-
tioners of Goddess Spirituality, who draw their inspiration from what they
believe is long-denied human history. Others stress that, in spite of her
somewhat problematic methodology and some of her conclusions,
Gimbutas’s contribution cannot be overestimated.58 Believing that male
dominance and warfare have always existed leaves little hope for change.
Through her use of archeo-mythology, Gimbutas helped to develop a new
paradigm that allows people to envision a peaceful, egalitarian future
based on spiritual values that resonate with contemporary human con-
cerns as we enter the twenty-first century.
Merlin Stone’s When God Was a Woman (1978) gave the nascent God-
dess movement an even greater sense of historical legitimacy. Unlike
Gimbutas, she focused primarily on the Near and Middle East, with par-
ticular attention to the Bronze Age, but she too found evidence of wide-
spread veneration of female deities. In addition, she wrote about women
as priestesses and prophets, as performers of sacred sexual rites in the tem-
ple, as keepers of sacred snakes, and as Goddess worshippers as late as 600
B.C.E.The book is her explanation for the “suppression of women’s rites.”
She explored myth and religious dogma to argue that historical events and
political attitudes led to the development of the story of the expulsion
from Paradise, the blaming of the Fall on Eve, and the resulting devalua-
tion of women. Although she specifically said in the introduction that the
book was not intended as a historical text, it was taken as one by her many
readers.
The first conference that envisioned Deity as female took place in
Boston in 1976. It began with a ritual in an old church led by a group of
Witches, who cast a circle and invoked the Goddess.59 The next goddess
conference occurred in 1978 at the University of California in Santa
Cruz. Five hundred people attended “The Great Goddess Reemerging
Conference” and heard scholar Carol Christ explain “Why Women Need
the Goddess.” Religious symbols that are almost exclusively male keep
women in a state of psychological and physical dependence on male au-
thority and create the impression that female religious power is illegiti-
mate, Christ argued. But simply rejecting the objectionable symbols on a
conscious level doesn’t work because they continue to work at a deeper
level unless they are replaced with new symbols that have meaning. She
266 her voice, her faith

urged women to “develop a theory of symbol and thealogy congruent

with their experience at the same time that they ‘remember and invent’
new symbol systems.”60 The symbol of the Goddess was offered as one
that would legitimize and celebrate female power, female will, female
bodies, and the bonds among women.There was no need to believe in the
Golden Age of Matriarchies of the past or to try and imagine what might
have been; women began to weave together dreams of what might be.61
Women rewrote the ancient myths, consciously transforming them to
reflect the values in which they believed. In some cases, these recon-
structed myths were presented as reflecting earlier stories, before invaders
came and brought with them their patriarchal pantheon of divinities.
Myth is sacred narrative, providing truth messages about the nature of re-
ality and humanity’s position within it. Traditional Greek mythology de-
scribed Pandora as Zeus’s punishment to men, a girl whose insatiable
curiosity was the cause of all of humanity’s ills. Spretnak (1978) presented
Pandora as the Earth Goddess bringing humanity an abundance of gifts in
Her great jar. In another reconstructed myth, Persephone wasn’t captured
and carried off by Hades but descended into the underworld of her own
will to do her own work of receiving and renewing the dead. Plaskow
(1979) envisioned a conversation between Eve and Lilith,Adam’s first wife
in Hebraic tradition. The first two women in the world shared secrets,
formed bonds, and established sisterhood. Stone (1979) collected stories of
goddesses from around the world, providing multicultural models for
women. Novelist Marion Zimmer Bradley (1982) rewrote the Arthurian
legend from the perspective of a priestess, a new mythic interpretation
that presented the story as the clash between Goddess and Christian cul-
tures in ancient Britain.
Language was refashioned as well. Naomi Goldenberg (1979) coined
the term thealogy to refer originally to feminist Witchcraft, but it quickly
was broadened in scope to cover all of Goddess Spirituality. Building on
amateur historian Robert Briffault’s speculations in 1927, she asserted that
the word “virgin” meant a female who was independent, regardless of
whether or not she was sexually active. Women who had never heard of
Briffault confidently adopted the usage of the term.
The first anthologies appeared that brought together scholars, thealo-
gians, poets, political activists, novelists, visual artists, and practicing
Witches. Womanspirit Rising (Christ and Plaskow 1979) and then The Poli-
 goddess spirituality and wicca 267

tics of Women’s Spirituality (Spretnak 1982) presented the diversity of

women’s insights about and encounters with Goddess Spirituality. It ad-
dressed the accusation from some feminists that Goddess Spirituality was
an apolitical “cop-out” by arguing not only that patriarchal spirituality is
unhealthy for the female psyche but that spirituality is an intrinsic dimen-
sion of the human experience. If the personal were political, how then
could spirituality be any less so?
While it might appear as though all these publications from the late
1970s and early 1980s drew from the work of Gimbutas, that analysis
would be simplistic.The reality of the “time of ferment” noted in Woman
Spirit was that there were artists working independently with Goddess
imagery, academics challenging the gendered nature of mainstream reli-
gion and religious iconography, and women giving workshops on myth,
magic, and menstruation.The bubbling up of these ideas across the coun-
try was a cauldron from which came an explosion of creativity. Many of
these books were beautifully written and easily read, which added to
their growing popularity. Source and reference books such as Barbara
Walker’s (1983) Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, promised to re-
veal hidden history and provide women with new symbols and language
to give voice to their spiritual journeys. Riane Eilser’s (1988) The Chalice
and the Blade provided an egalitarian vision of the past that was a pledge
to the future. Although the information offered to women in these texts
and others like them was vulnerable to scholarly challenge, it was never-
theless inspiring. There were striking photographs and illustrations in
books and the new Goddess magazines, performance art, installations in
small galleries, a “reclaiming” of Middle Eastern dance forms, and music
everywhere. As women explored the “Goddess Within,” they were ex-
ploring the artist within as well. In workshops for example, women not
only learned the stories of Isis, but they made sistrums to play when they
invoked her in the rituals they were beginning to create. Rituals that
were “frequently islands of beauty and magic in a sea of ordinary time”
acknowledged significant events in women’s lives, such as a first men-
strual period, a birth, a divorce.62 Women’s groups often celebrated the
Sabbats as well; Spring Equinox became the reunion of mother and
daughter through the myth of Persephone; Samheim (the Celtic Hal-
loween) was the time of the Crone. The Goddess was their energy and
their Muse.
268 her voice, her faith

Workshop leaders came from various sources; Witches, thealogians,

authors, and artists gave presentations on what they knew best. Others
came from the Unitarian Universalist Church. Cakes for the Queen of
Heaven was a program developed by Shirley Ranck in 1986 as one of sev-
eral actions taken by the Church to implement the “Resolution on
Women and Religion” adopted by its General Assembly. This ten-week
course was intended to help women explore female religious history and
its meaning for their lives. Packaged and sold nationally as a set, the work-
shop and slides were made available to facilitators around the country,
both in and outside of the Church. A multicultural program called “Rise
Up and Call Her Name” was added a few years later and included other
religions and Goddesses from non-Western cultures in response to the ac-
cusation that Goddess Spirituality was a whites-only movement.

THE GODDESS IN BRITAIN

The same ferment was occurring simultaneously in England.A handful of

women who were members of the London Women’s Liberation Move-
ment got together in 1975 and formed the Matriarchy Study Group
(MSG) with the intention of questioning the assumption that God had al-
ways been perceived as male. These mostly young, college-educated,
working-class women63 set out to look for historical evidence of matriar-
chal social organization in a scholarly manner.The members each took a
different area of twentieth-century writings to study and report on to the
collective. They were influenced by American feminists who began to
publish in this field. Stone’s When God was a Woman, for example, had ap-
peared in Britain in 1975 as The Paradise Paper. The Matriarchy Study
Group decided to publish its own research in the spring of 1977. Goddess
Shrew, the first publication, was done in journal format and included arti-
cles that ranged from birth control practices in ancient Egypt to myths of
virgin births from a variety of religious traditions. Its major emphasis,
however, was on the argument that approximately 5,000 years earlier,
there had been a “Patriarchal Takeover” that lasted roughly 2,000 years,
which resulted in the suppression of a widespread, woman-based culture,
along with its attending religious imagery, myths, and leadership roles for
 goddess spirituality and wicca 269

women. Because so much evidence had been lost, the journal informed its
readers that it would “. . . look to poetry and myth, to trees and stones, to
the form of the landscape . . . and dedicate our inspiration to the Muse.”64
Goddess Shrew was given a small mention in a national newspaper and
suddenly letters poured in from all over England asking for copies, as well
as letters from clergymen, some supporting it and more denouncing it and
demanding that its publication be stopped.The resulting publicity helped
sell more than 5,000 copies of that first issue.The collective continued to
publish, and similar groups began to form elsewhere.Although all of these
started as study groups with a political base and not as spiritual groups,
some began to do religious rituals.Tensions between individual personali-
ties arose, exacerbating the growing divergence between those who
wished to do what they saw as scholarly work and those who wanted spir-
itual practice. The original Matriarchy Study Group, after intensive work
for five years, reached burnout and disbanded.With its demise, the Matri-
archy Reclaim and Research Network (MRRN) was formed in 1981 to
serve as an umbrella for a variety of groups, including those that practiced
magic, those that wanted to do spiritual ritual, and those that preferred to
study. It began publishing a newsletter on the eight Wiccan festivals, an
unbroken record of publication that continues today. But people began to
lose interest in the study groups and wanted direct experience of the fe-
male Divine rather than the intellectual study of prehistory.
The idea of a separatist women’s culture began to attract some atten-
tion from another source in England about the same time. Monica Sjoo, a
Swedish-born artist living in England, focused on a monotheistic Goddess
by fusing the images of the Neolithic Great Goddess with the mother
goddesses of the early Bronze Age, resulting in the publication in 1981,
with Barbara Mor, of a lengthy book on the “Mother Goddess.”The book
influenced many women both in Britain and beyond, and firmly estab-
lished the idea that the Goddess was not something completely external
to the self, but something within as well.They wrote,“For a woman to be
able to recognize and love the Goddess she must be able to love herself
and the Goddess in other women. . . . Feminism means the rebirth of the
Goddess within us.”65
Visits by American members of Reclaiming encouraged the British
women, who no longer felt they were an isolated group struggling to pro-
vide evidence for the existence of the Goddess. Inspired by the visitors’
270 her voice, her faith

stories and Starhawk’s writings of Goddess rituals among American

Witches of both sexes, many of the women wanted to “make bonds” with
Wiccans. However, the strong British Wiccan resistance to feminism and
the question of single-sex rituals prevented that. Nevertheless, Jean Freer,
an American Dianic, gave a talk at a women’s Goddess celebration and in-
vited people to join a Dianic grove,66 and many did.They held rituals and
offered classes for women who were interested in learning more about
ancient goddesses and techniques of magic. In this manner, the radicalized
tradition of Dianic Wicca came to England. Unlike the American Dianic
Craft, it was never particularly well accepted. Not only did traditional
Wicca have an established presence, but the British separatist Goddess
Movement was growing.
In September of 1981, the same year that the MRRN was formed,
women began camping outside the U.S. Air Force base at Greenham
Commons, protesting the deployment of ground-launched cruise missiles.
Determined to make visible the threat of nuclear war, the women estab-
lished a peace camp where supporters could join, on a temporary basis,
those who had given up their comfortable lives to camp out, year round,
in the rain and snow, enduring the taunts of soldiers and the ridicule of
the press. At times thousands of women would show up to encircle the
base and stand witness at its nine gates.They hung pictures of their moth-
ers and children on the fence, wove a huge yarn web around the 20-mile
perimeter to emphasize that everything is connected in a fragile web of
life, and held mirrors up to the fence to reflect the “death-dealing energy
back on itself.”67 Once in 1983, a group of 44 women even infiltrated the
base itself and danced on top of a missile silo in the cold dawn. In sum,
they performed acts of magic, sometimes drawing directly upon the works
of Budapest and Starhawk. The Goddess was with them at Greenham
Commons. Although the overt action and intent involved a political
struggle at Greenham, a feminist Goddess Spirituality evolved there that
grew to overlap the antiwar activity.68 Much of this was due to the pres-
ence of women from the MRRN, who participated in the consciousness-
raising groups at Greenham. Kathy Jones, who went on to be a key figure
in the Glastonbury Goddess community, reports that several members of
her women’s group were at Greenham as well, and she credits that experi-
ence as one of the most important elements that began to bring the
knowledge of the Goddess “back” into people’s awareness. Greenham was
 goddess spirituality and wicca 271

unique for many reasons, not the least of which was that it was one of the
few places initially where groups of black and white women joined to-
gether in Goddess Spirituality.
In the mid-1980s, Shan Jayran appeared on the British scene.Trained
as a Dianic Witch, having traveled and lived and worked in a variety of
communities, including a separatist lesbian one, she claimed a colorful past
and brought an eclectic perspective to British Goddess Spirituality.
Founding the House of the Goddess (HOG), she provided training and
rituals in her London home. In 1987, House of the Goddess held a Hal-
loween event in Battersea Town Hall that was the largest gathering of
Goddess celebrants modern Britain had ever seen. Almost 1,400 people
attended from a variety of different Goddess traditions.This event set the
stage for the large public Goddess events organized by others that were to
follow.
In 1983, after her participation at Greenham, Kathy Jones was inspired
to create a play to honor the women and publicize what was happening
there. She drew upon the myth of the rape of Persephone, seeing Pluto as
the military/industrial complex that is “raping Nature and her daughters,
stealing her bounty, putting nothing back, then seducing us all with mate-
rial goods, so that we come to love him for the things he gives us.”69 This
was the first of many put on by Ariadne Productions in Glastonbury, be-
lieved to be the site of the ancient island of Avalon. Jones calls these “sa-
cred dramas,” organized by the community for the community much like
passion plays. They are a deliberate reworking of ancient myths within a
magical ritual setting whose “. . . purpose is to inscribe a mythic frame-
work for an equal partnership between women and men, where all hu-
man beings are empowered to be truly themselves. Our plays,
performances and videos give direct expression to long hidden aspects of
the divine feminine—Goddess, and to the divine masculine—God, as im-
ages, archetypes, muse and transforming divinities.”70 When I interviewed
her in 1997, Jones said proudly,“We are making magic!”
In addition to sacred drama, Glastonbury is the home of the Isle of
Avalon Foundation, a charitable organization founded by Jones to serve
the eclectic Goddess community that looks to the town as a source of in-
formation, education, and spiritual experience.The Foundation, dedicated
to helping people find their individual spiritual paths, offers evening talks,
classes, and weekend workshops on a variety of spiritual and New Age
272 her voice, her faith

topics. Glastonbury is the site of the first Christian shrine in England, and
has a romantic history that weaves together tales of pagan deities, Chris-
tians visionaries, and the magic of King Arthur’s Court. Its reputation as a
place of spiritual pilgrimage was revived with the publication of Marion
Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon, the popularity of which ensured that many
who might not otherwise be exposed to the reconstructed history would
learn of the struggle between ancient Goddess Spirituality and patriarchal
Christianity. Jones told me in 1997 that this book is one of the “huge”
reasons thousands of women come to Glastonbury every year looking for
the Goddess and hoping to experience her there.And Goddess imagery is
everywhere, from sacred drama to the surrounding landscape to tourist
souvenirs.The Glastonbury Goddess community is also rather unusual in
that it has a solid core of men who are supportive and actively involved.
An annual Goddess Conference, organized by Jones and Tina Redpath, is
open to both women and men, and draws people from all over Britain, as
well as from America,Australia, and the European continent.
These international conferences and events have recently been joined
by international “Goddess tours,” group pilgrimages to ancient temples,
wells, and ruins.Whether or not priestesses ever led egalitarian communi-
ties in the worship of a Great Goddess in the “Golden Age,” contempo-
rary priestesses in various nations are leading a growing community in
celebrating Her in Her many manifestations today.According to Asphodel
Long, of the original MSG,“the movement is immature, brash and some-
times silly. But it has immense power and veracity, and to my way of
knowing should be recognized as an authentic voice of deity.”71

THE GODDESS OF TEN THOUSAND NAMES

Before discussing the challenges for Goddess Spirituality, it is important to

mention an organization that has growing implications for the wider
Goddess milieu. In Ireland on the spring equinox in 1976, Lawrence Dur-
din-Robertson, his wife Pamela, and his sister Olivia Robertson founded
the Fellowship of Isis (FOI). Cousins of the poet Robert Graves, the trio
drew more from the heritage of Freemasonry and the nineteenth-century
Romantics than from either Witchcraft or the feminist Goddess research
 goddess spirituality and wicca 273

occurring on both sides of the Atlantic. Isis was the Goddess of Ten Thou-
sand Names, and as such, she was to represent all goddesses, and though
the gods are also venerated, the Fellowship was founded to give a com-
mon framework for all those who honored the Goddess.The Robertsons
believed strongly that a Goddess Movement was necessary to counter the
influence of male-dominated religion. But, Olivia stresses,“the Goddess is
not fighting patriarchy, She is re-introducing matriarchy. This is a loving
way.”72
It was an unlikely group, one that claimed descent from Scota, leg-
endary Queen of the Scots. Lawrence was a former Anglican Vicar, his
wife, Pamela, a mystic who insisted on the equality of all beings. Olivia
had written seven novels and studied in London to be a medium and
healer. In 1963, they had turned the family castle in Clonegal, Ireland, into
the Clonegal Centre for Meditation and Study.
The Fellowship of Isis was unique in that, from its inception, it was
envisioned as a forum where Witches, Druids, Hindus, and Shintoists
could be joined by Christians and Jews in celebrating the “reemergence”
of the religion of the Goddess. Like other strands within Goddess Spiritu-
ality, FOI insisted that the abandonment of the Goddess was responsible
for much of the horror of the modern world. But there were no vows, no
commitments to secrecy, and members were free to maintain other reli-
gious allegiances. Membership was open to anyone who agreed with the
four basic principles.The first was the belief that the religion of the God-
dess had been neglected for too long and was needed to ameliorate condi-
tions in today’s world. The second consisted of a statement that FOI
would have no ecclesiastical hierarchy.Although this is often easier to pro-
claim than practice, this principle served to emphasize the validity of the
experiential aspects of spirituality. A sincere believer was the authority of
her or his own religious practice.The titles that emerged in the organiza-
tion over time were designed to go with increased responsibilities and
FOI does not consider this to be ranking, though clearly some prestige
and power have accrued to the titles. The third principle addressed the
forum’s multi-faith nature. It was a reminder that FOI was not attempting
to start a new religion, simply recognizing that the Goddess was already
emerging and, indeed, in some places had never been forgotten.The last,
and not the least important point of agreement, announced that joy and
pleasure were gifts from the Goddess and should be celebrated as part of
274 her voice, her faith

Her worship.There was no room for asceticism and no sacrifices, whether

real or symbolic.73
The Fellowship became international almost immediately, spreading
from Ireland to Britain and the United States. A small notice printed in
Gnostica magazine in the United States one year after FOI’s founding
drew the first American members and within a very short time groups
had formed in Washington, DC, Chicago, and San Francisco. Although
solitary practitioners have always been welcomed members, FOI began to
create community through its Iseums, local groups that offer spiritual rit-
uals, such as initiation and other celebratory rites. Considered to be
“hearths” of the Goddess, each Iseum is dedicated to the Goddess or
Goddess and God of the founder’s choice, and, as such, is believed to be
shaped by the characteristics of the presiding deity. For example, one
Iseum in the southwestern United States that is dedicated to Diana the
Huntress is a sanctuary for desert wildlife and focuses on attunement with
the Earth and all her creatures. Another in Victoria, Australia, is dedicated
to the Egyptian Goddess Hathor and emphasizes healing. Iseums may
teach initiate level classes and, if the head is ordained within the Fellow-
ship, may also offer training for the priesthood. Each priestess or priest is
free to serve the Goddess in any way the individual sees fit and is author-
ized to perform ceremonies “received” by Olivia in meditation and pub-
lished for the community. Iseums are currently located in Australia, British
Columbia, Ireland, Nigeria, South Africa, United States, and Yugoslavia.
The membership of FOI is spread across 95 countries, with Nigeria
claiming the most members.
Typically, the training for priesthood is offered through a Lyceum, or
school, all of which are chartered through the College of Isis at Clonegal
Castle in Ireland. However, like the Iseums, they are shaped by the attrib-
utes of the deity to whom they are dedicated. Until very recently,
Lyceums demonstrated considerable variation in practice and focus, de-
pending on the belief system of the individual who conducted the train-
ing. In 1999, there was an attempt to standardize the curriculum to some
extent and now all Lyceums are required to provide courses centered
around the FOI liturgy. Like Freemasonry, training is marked by 32 struc-
tured degrees or levels, with an added 33 that marks a “spontaneous mys-
tical awakening.”
 goddess spirituality and wicca 275

In 2000, Olivia, in her eighties and the only survivor of the three
original founders, announced she would share the responsibility and au-
thority in FOI with an authoritative archpriesthood, made up of 32 indi-
viduals on four different continents. It is planned that when an existing
member of the archpriesthood retires, a replacement will be chosen by the
consensus of the remaining ones. The organization’s literature still insists
that this is not a hierarchy, but a division of responsibility. How this will
function in reality remains to be seen.
FOI is growing in popularity in the United States, especially among
women in the loosely structured Goddess Movement.The Church of Isis,
associated with FOI, is registered federally as a nonprofit religious organi-
zation, giving it a legal recognition few other groups in Goddess Spiritual-
ity have achieved. Anyone who is initiated into the priesthood through
the Church may obtain legal ministerial credentials and the benefits that
may accrue from setting up an affiliated Iseum. One of the strengths of
FOI is the mutable nature of its Iseums. All too often, however, that also
means there is little accountability or few standards for training. Just as
there seems to be a general move away from using the word “Witch” and
toward the word “Priestess” or “Priest,” there appears to be a move away
from the more rigorous and time-consuming training demanded by
Witchcraft and toward whatever might be required by individual Iseums.
This is particularly true of women practicing Goddess Spirituality in
groups where there is no “legitimate” clergy.
The inclusiveness of the organization continues to be a significant at-
traction. It functions just as the founders intended, allowing those who
honor the Goddess to come together in a way that many other groups do
not. It was this spirit of inclusion that allowed the Fellowship to be one of
the organizers of the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago in 1993,
along with COG, Circle Sanctuary, the pagan EarthSpirit community, and
other, more traditional, religious groups.
“There is no ‘party line’ of Goddess worship; rather, each person’s
process of perceiving and living Her truth is a movement in the larger
dance. . . .”74 Though Charlene Spretnak was referring specifically to
what was then called women’s spirituality with those words, it certainly
holds true for Witches as well. The religion is based on what one does
rather than on what one believes.75 Several years ago when a colleague
276 her voice, her faith

and I examined how doing research in this field had affected us, I wrote
that I did not believe in a divinity but I had experienced Her.76 By that I
meant that I had known those moments of magic when I sensed the Mys-
tery and felt connected to a Greater Whole. For some the Goddess is sim-
ply an intellectual concept or an archetype. Patricia Monaghan, poet and
author of numerous Goddess books, reminds us that there are also “those
for whom She is an emotional construct, a way of understanding the
varying voices of the emerging self.”77
For some She is more concrete, and belief in Her comes with certain
responsibilities. “Serving the life force means working to preserve the di-
versity of natural life, to prevent the poisoning of the environment and the
destruction of the species,” writes Starhawk.78 This is especially appropriate
for a pagan deity immanent in Nature, one who teaches believers “to con-
sider themselves and their place in the web of things, to honor the richness
and enhance the diversity of life.”79 Kathy Jones told me that “the Goddess
is returning inextricably into people’s consciousness all over the planet. It
isn’t always overt, it can be in an ecological awareness.”80 Certainly in terms
of the environment, Goddess celebrants seem to be working for Her and
becoming more political.
For still others, the Goddess is an Entity, one who may or may not
have a male consort, one who is immanent and who may also be tran-
scendent in an interconnected universe. In spite of a tendency on the part
of a small minority to pray to or worship Her, She is not usually under-
stood in terms of an external deity who intervenes. Starhawk tells us that
the Goddess doesn’t rule the world, She is the world.81 Hutton points out
that Witchcraft attempts to draw out and enhance divinity within each of
us. He does not suggest that the Goddess and God are imaginary, though
he says they may indeed be

passionate projections of the human heart and mind. . . . It may

equally well be true, however, that human belief has actually given
them life, or else that they have always existed and have been per-
ceived anew because people now have need of them.82

But if an entity, Starhawk argues the Goddess is also “constantly

changing form and changing face. Her images do not define or pin down a
 goddess spirituality and wicca 277

set of attributes; they spark inspiration, creation, fertility of mind and

spirit.”83
Budapest envisions the Goddess as “all that is female in the Universe
. . . the Universe herself is the Goddess. It’s almost like being a cell on
your own body. . . . We are part of Her, there is no separation of the
two. . . . It’s an energy, it’s a force, instead of a force, let me call Her a flow.
The flow is with us.”84 This “flow” can also be understood as Mary Daly
does, when she writes that the word “Goddess” is a verb, a “Metaphor for
Ultimate/Intimate Reality, the constant Unfolding Verb of Verbs in which
all be-ing participates, Metaphor of Metabeing.”85 If we can comprehend
how light can be simultaneously both a particle and a wave, then we can
understand that the Goddess is the flowing of energy that links all things,
that flows through all things, and so is all things. She is the singer and the
song, the dancer and the dance, the weaver and the web She weaves.
A dear friend of mine, a Dianic Witch, recently lost her 89-year-old
father to cancer. His death was long and hard in coming. She sat next to
his bed as he drifted in and out of a morphine-induced state. In order to
strengthen herself and, possibly, help his passing, she occasionally read pas-
sages out loud from The Pagan Book of Living and Dying.86 Her father had
been a nominal Christian all his life and simply assumed that his daughter
was as well. He never learned otherwise, as he was too far into his “cross-
ing” to maintain lucidity. However, at one point, inspired by something
she read or perhaps a morphine dream, he suddenly spoke up clearly and
forcefully.
“We all drink of the same milk,” he said. It was one of the last things
he ever said.

PROBLEMS AND CHALLENGES

A major strength of an experiential religion that has no agreed-upon au-

thoritative text may also be a major problem, especially when there is no
centralized form of governance.When “each [celebrant] is the priestess of
her own religion,”87 no one can gainsay another’s truth. This flexibility
may be conducive to a lack of accountability and responsibility. While
278 her voice, her faith

some people argue for karmic judgment, others want more immediate so-
lutions to situations in which an individual violates the trust of others or
is simply unstable in ways that bring conflict or unethical standards to the
community.88 There are a few forums for dealing with these problems—
for example, COG has had a standing ethics committee and recently
tightened both the membership and the grievance processes to deal with
potential problems, and Olivia Robertson has the authority to expel
someone from the Fellowship. However, actions such as these are ex-
tremely rare. Nevertheless, tensions do arise within covens and Goddess
groups. In the case of the former, the High Priestess has the final word on
resolution and there is no appeal. In the latter case, it depends on how the
group is organized, but the outcome is often painful.Thus, there continue
to be occasional Witch Wars, and the more intimate the group involved,
the more wrenching the result may be.
Other challenges have to do with the gender roles in spiritual prac-
tice. Goddess Spirituality “encourages a psychological range and flexibility
which few other modern philosophies or techniques of self-development
can provide for their female adherents.”89 Although this is true for
women, and although there is tremendous emphasis on healing and
wholeness for everyone, the role available for men does not seem to allow
them to reflect on or grow into the wholeness of their lives. At the very
least it is considerably more limiting than the image of the Triple Goddess
is for women. For example, I once participated in a ritual where a young
horned Cernunnos symbolically battled an older one, who was defeated
and driven way vanquished. Privileging male youth and virility as the pri-
mary aspects of male divinity leaves many if not the majority of men out.
There has been an attempt to incorporate the image of masculine nurtu-
rance into the godhead, most notably in the mythic image of the Green
Man, the God of Vegetation believed to be represented in Medieval foli-
ate heads. But both the Horned God and the Green Man are used as enti-
ties, identities whole unto themselves, rather than part of the natural cycle
of men’s lives.
At a conference on the Ambivalent Goddess, held at King Alfred’s
College in Winchester, England, in 1997, I heard Shan Jayran explore a vi-
sion of pagan masculinity that might address my concerns. Although she
did not speak to the limited potential for men, she saw the God as War-
 goddess spirituality and wicca 279

rior, Protector, and Sacred Fool, the latter in the Shakespearean sense in
which the Fool is the wisest man in the King’s court. I have not seen this
creative approach elsewhere, nor have I seen discussion on this issue.The
kind of Triple God envisioned by Jayran, whether it is this particular one
or not, would allow room for the growth and change that real men go
through, and allow them to experience and identify with the Divine
throughout their lives.
A different issue is that among some women’s Goddess groups, there is
no role for men at all. This may be much less acceptable to younger
women today than it was in the 1970s and 80s. Recently, a group of
young women who were going through Cella priestess training left, argu-
ing that “feminism is passé.” They abandoned the separatist vision of the
Dianics, not Goddess Spirituality. Although I strongly disagree with their
understanding of feminism, I often encounter this reaction among my be-
ginning students in women’s studies. It takes them some time to see that
being pro-woman does not mean being anti-male. However, perhaps
some rethinking is called for.Women-only groups and rituals can be very
empowering, inspirational, and, yes, magical, as I have written in the
past.90 I, for one, would certainly not want to see them disappear. But
privileging lesbian women by allowing them to share their spirituality
with their loved ones and forbidding heterosexual women from doing the
same thing is problematic in the very least.91 There may indeed be a need
for space and time for single-sex groups in order to explore the Mysteries.
But if women and men are to live together in whatever way we do on this
fragile planet, surely there is a need for us to come together as well. A
thealogy that totally excludes one sex is likely to be damaging to both, as
we have clearly seen.
There is a genuine danger in reifying gender roles, as is done too often
in Goddess Spirituality. Wholeness implies developing our full potential,
not just the socially constructed part that was assigned to us based on bio-
logical sex. In a similar manner, linking women’s spirituality and creativity
primarily to the act of birthing and making it the major sacrament as fre-
quently occurs is quite limiting.92 Rather than empowering women with
a new vision of the sources of women’s power, this uses what is really
rather conservative iconography. In its emphasis on fertility, it affirms
women’s traditional roles and ignores powerful aspects of the Divine long
280 her voice, her faith

associated with goddesses: the gift of rhythm (Inanna), the science of agri-
culture (Isis), spinning and weaving (Nephtys), education and knowledge
(Nidaba), war (Parbutta), justice (Xenia), and courage (Alencica), to name
just a few.
Finally, an increasing fragmentation within Goddess Spirituality may
be interpreted in different ways. Are people turning away from the God-
dess or is the tapestry still being woven? The phenomenon may suggest a
spiritual community still struggling to find meaning or perhaps searching
for a matrix through which to explore and contain their spiritual experi-
ences. According to religious scholar Wade Clark Roof, this splintering of
religious understandings reflects what is going on in other communities
of faith. He has concluded that we live in a culture of spiritual quest
where religious identities are malleable and multifaceted.93
Starhawk, however, believes that the considerable crossover among
members, where a Witch in one tradition may become an unaffiliated
Goddess celebrant and then a priestess in FOI, is a stitching of small net-
works that joins circles to other circles and strengthens the whole.94 Soci-
ologist Michael York refers to this as SPINS,95 a network structure that
helps to maintain continuing functional viability. He argues that it rests on
interpersonal ties among like-minded people, ties among leaders who may
change circles, activities of spokespeople, large gatherings, and a sharing of
beliefs through books, magazines, workshops, and the like,96 all of which
are present in the Goddess community.
In the fifteen years since I was first introduced to Goddess Spirituality,
I have seen people who have dropped out of groups.A very small number
disappear. More of them have joined or even begun new groups, some
seem to “take a sabbatical,” and a considerable number have found differ-
ent ways of exploring their spirituality, through things like graduate de-
grees in religious studies or psychology. I suspect the spiritual impact of
this last group will be significant in ways we have yet to imagine.
I was recently a guest at a dedication of five young women who had
been studying in a local lyceum for two years.The dedicants told me they
were Witches and had been working together as a coven for some time.
Their sponsor was a FOI priestess who had been involved with the occult
since the 60s and who, for many years, had been a Dianic Witch. Each of
 goddess spirituality and wicca 281

the young women dedicated herself that day to a different goddess, none
of them, incidentally, to Isis. The youngest, a married Latina Witch who
had just turned 20, dedicated herself to the Aztec Goddess of her fore-
mothers. Such is the eclectic and protean nature of this living spirituality.
And so the weaving continues.
 Notes

INTRODUCTION

1. Diana L. Eck, A New Religious America: How a “Christian Country” Has Become the World’s
Most Religiously Diverse Nation (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1994).
2. Bruce G.Trigger, Early Civilizations:Ancient Egypt in Context (Cairo:American University
in Cairo Press, 1993) 53.
3. Trigger 55–60; Eli Sagan, At the Dawn of Tyranny:The Origins of Individualism, Political Op-
pression and the State (New York:Vintage, 1985) 277ff; Robert Bellah,“Religious Evolution” in
Roland Robertson, ed. Sociology of Religion (Baltimore: Penguin, 1969) 262–92.
4. Bellah 267ff.
5. Katherine K.Young, “Introduction” in Arvind Sharma ed. Religion and Women (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1994) 14–23.
6. Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young, Transcending Misandry (Montreal: McGill-
Queen’s University Press, forthcoming).
7. H. Patrick Glenn, Legal Traditions of the World: Sustainable Diversity in Law (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2000) 12–14.
8. Katherine K.Young,“Introduction” in Arvind Sharma ed. Today’s Woman in World Religion
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994).
9. Arvind Sharma, To the Things Themselves: Essays on the Discourse and Practice of the Phenom-
enology of Religion (New York:Walter de Gruyter, 2001) 113–19; 169–71; 250–61; Katherine K.
Young,“Introduction” in Arvind Sharma and Katherine K.Young, eds. Feminism and World Re-
ligions (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999) 18–22.
10. Paul Nathanson and Katherine K.Young, Spreading Misandry:The Teaching of Contempt for
Men in Popular Culture (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001).

283
284 notes

CHAPTER TWO

1. For a fuller description of the Indian Buddhist nuns and an analysis of why the order
eventually died out, see Nancy Auer Falk,“The Case of the Vanishing Nuns: the Fruits of Am-
bivalence in Ancient Indian Buddhism,” Unspoken Worlds:Women’s Religious Lives, ed. by Nancy
Auer Falk and Rita M. Gross (Belmont, CA:Wadsworth, 2001), pp. 196–206.
2. Mount Koya was also closed to women until relatively recently.
3. Soto is one of the main Zen lineages in Japan; the other is the Rinzai lineage, usually said
to have been founded by Eisei.The major difference between the two is their methods of prac-
ticing meditation. Soto stresses quiet mindful sitting, whereas Rinzai is famous for koans, rid-
dles, or puzzles upon which students meditate. Both stress equally the importance of
meditation practice and awakening to one’s own Buddhahood.
4. Diana Y. Paul, Women in Buddhism: Images of the Feminine in Mahayana Tradition (Berkeley:
Asian Humanities Press, 1979), p. 308.
5. Quoted by Janice Dean Willis in “Nuns and Benefactresses:The Role of Women in the
Development of Buddhism,” Women, Religion, and Social Change. ed. by Yvonne Hadad and Eli-
son Banks Findley (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985), p. 75.
6. Chatsumarn Kabilsingh, Thai Women in Buddhism (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1991), p. 26.
7. Luis O. Gomez, tr. The Land of Bliss:The Paradise of the Buddha of Measureless Light (Hon-
olulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1996), p. 74 (Vow # 35).
8. Anguttaranikaya v,6,5. Quoted by Cornelia Dimmitt Church, “Temptress, Housewife,
Nun: Women’s Role in Early Buddhism,” Anima: An Experiential Journal I:2 (Spring 1975), p.
55.
9. Liz Wilson, Charming Cadavers: Horrific Figurations of the Feminine in Indian Buddhist Hagio-
graphic Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 94.
10. Ibid., p. 23.
11. Andrew Schilling and Anne Waldman, tr. Songs of the Sons and Daughters of the Buddha
(Boston: Shambhala, 1996), pp. 50–51.
12. Though this motif is widespread, one of the best known and influential episodes is
found in the Lotus Sutra. The eight-year-old Naga princess, who is already enlightened,
changes her physical form into that of a male when a skeptical elder declares that such an ac-
complishment would be impossible. For an introduction to and translation of the texts, see
Paul, pp. 185–90. For a feminist discussion of the text, see Gross, pp. 67–71.
13. Quoted in Paul, p. 230.

CHAPTER THREE

1. “Pai” has been translated as “worship,” which has a stronger sense of ancestors than
“gods,” and is therefore not entirely correct. I have chosen to use “venerate” because it has a
stronger sense of “respect” with a correspondingly weaker sense of divinity in the persons or
objects being “venerated.” It is true that pai is used with spirits or shen, as in pai shen, the wor-
shipping of spirits; but pai is also often used with fang as in pai-fang, to visit. Both the nuances
of “venerate” and “worship” are therefore contained in pai tsu-hsien. I appeal here to the Con-
fucian philosopher Hsün-tzu’s idea of the different levels of understanding.
2. T’uan means united, together, collective; nien is year, annual; fan can be used as rice,
meal; so that “annual family dinner” would be a reasonable translation.
 notes 285

3. When a woman marries, she marries out of her family (chia-ch’u); whereas when a man
marries, he takes a wife into his family (ch’ü).
4. For a more detailed exposition on this, see the section on Buddhism in Tak-ling Terry
Woo, “Religious Ideals, Beliefs, and Practices in the Lives of Women During the Reign of
T’ang Ming Huang,” Ph.D. Diss., University of Toronto, 2000.
5. I am not suggesting that all Chinese believe in this explanation of the ritual. Hsün-tzu’s
assessment of the different levels of understanding is again helpful here. One might expect a
sage (sheng-jen) and an exemplary person (chün-tzu) to understand this ritual quite differently
than the average person.
6. Ritual or ritual enactment (li) is one of the central tenets of Confucianism.
7. Taylor writes that self-cultivation has always been a part of Confucianism. In the classical
tradition it was with an eye to becoming an exemplary or virtuous person, chün-tzu; in Neo-
Confucianism it was to become a sage. (1986:22) The concepts of self-cultivation and investi-
gation of things both come from The Great Learning (Ta Hsüeh).
8. I am using Roger Ames’s translation here. Legge translated chün-tzu as “gentleman,”
which is not quite right because the Chinese is ungendered. An alternative translation is “vir-
tuous person,” but this is not entirely satisfactory either because it is too general and confluent
to power and virtue (te), and benevolence or compassion (jen), which is suggestive of all social
values. (Dawson, xxi)
9. In academic terms, I might say that my exercise here is at once “confessional and subjec-
tive” by taking a personal interest in the future of Confucianism; and “objective and scholarly”
in describing the traditional beliefs and practices for women in Confucianism.
10. Taylor 1990, 130–131.
11. Ibid., 127.Taylor quotes Tu Wei-ming: “Self-realization entails the task of bearing wit-
ness to the dimension of humanity which is communal and, in the ultimate sense, transcen-
dent.”
12. Confucius (551–479 B.C.E.) is not recorded as having spoken a great deal about filial
piety in The Analects (Lün Yu).When he did, he was often speaking with Tseng Tzu. For this
reason,Tseng Tzu is believed by some to have recorded The Classic on Filial Piety, on which
The Classic on Filial Piety for Women is based.The origin of The Classic on Filial Piety, like
the woman’s classic, is unclear. Another tradition has it that it was written by Confucius; an-
other that it was bequeathed by the seventy disciples; and yet another that it was apocryphal
from the Han—this last scenario is unlikely to be true since there is reference to it in The
Spring and Autumn Annals of Mr. Lu (Lü-shih Ch’ün-ch’iu). (Wang 1–2) It is, nevertheless,
accepted that this classic comes from the Confucian school.There are records to show that two
versions of the same text, the Old and New Texts (named after their scripts), existed during the
Han dynasty. (Wang 3) An early mention of filial piety is made in The Records of Rituals (Li
Chi), also known as The Book of Rituals, compiled around 206 B.C.E to 8 C.E. In the section
“The Essence of Sacrifice” (Chi T’ung), it is stated: Therefore, a filial son should serve his par-
ents in three ways: to feed them when they are alive, to mourn them when they die and to of-
fer sacrifices to them when mourning is over. . . . Sacrifice is meant to be the perpetuation of
feeding one’s parents and the continuation of filial piety. (Huang 28–29)The place of a woman
in this is as a wife and daughter-in-law. Almost a millennium after The Book of Rituals, the
Neo-Confucian Ch’eng I (1033–1108) writes that during his day, people “are careful in
choosing sons-in-law but careless in selecting daughters-in-law. . . .The choice of a daughter-
in-law is very important.Why should it be neglected?” (Chu and Lu, 173) Then some six hun-
dred years after Ch’eng I, Chang Po-hsing (1651–1725) explains Ch’eng I’s comments in this
286 notes

way:[Women] confine themselves to their own private quarters. It is difficult to know their
character. Furthermore, taking a daughter-in-law in marriage is to continue the family line.
Some ancient people predicted whether a family would prosper or decline on the basis of the
virtuous or vicious character of the daughter-in-law. The matter is of utmost importance.
(Ibid., 173–174)Put simply, if a daughter-in-law who actually manages the family is not filial
and obedient (hsiao-shun), then her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren will un-
likely be filial either because the root example they are modeling themselves on is deficient.
13. This is at the end of Section 1 in the Nü Hsiao Ching. (Woo 192)
14. On answering a question about why “the learning of the great man consists in loving
the people,”Wang in part says this:“Therefore, only when I love my father, the father of others,
and the fathers of all men can my humanity really form one body with my father, the fathers
of others, and the fathers of all men.When it truly forms one body with them then the clear
character of filial piety will be manifested” (Chan 273).
15. I am dating this to 1911, when China became a Republic.
16. I am simply describing the mechanic of ritual in dynastic China; I am neither endors-
ing nor rejecting the traditional ideas about women.
17. For example, Confucianism has become irrelevant in Joseph Levenson’s estimation. He
argues in his essay on the Well-field that with Communism, the disruption of Confucianism is
complete; he writes that “. . . Marx is the Classic, not the Rituals of Chou or Chou-li . . .And
where Marx and Mao judge no Shao is judging yet, no Mencius and no Confucius” (Levenson
287).
18. These include Liu Hsiang’s Biographies of Women (Lieh Nü Chuan), Pan Chao’s Ad-
monitions to Women (Nü Chieh), Lady Cheng’s The Classic on Filial Piety for Women (Nü
Hsiao Ching), and Sung Jo-hsin’s The Analects for Women (Nü Lun Yu).
19. Nivison quotes Julia Ching’s translation of Kant on Chinese philosophy:“Their teacher
Confucius teaches in his writings nothing outside a moral doctrine designed for the princes
. . . [concluding that] a concept of virtue and morality never entered the heads of the Chi-
nese.” (65) And Fingarette, who finally arrives at a very different assessment of Confucius, be-
gins his Preface with this: “When I began to read Confucius, I found him to be a prosaic and
parochial moralizer; his collected sayings, the Analects, seemed to me an archaic irrelevance.”
(vii) These are just two examples of one particular strain of Western opinions of Confucianism.
20. This refers to the period before the Han dynasty in the third century B.C.E.
21. Mou 27.
22. I am not suggesting that China never experienced religious strife; and I certainly do not
want to give the impression that Confucians have never mounted campaigns against their reli-
gious rivals who were most often the Buddhists and Taoists. However, the degree and fre-
quency of violence associated with religious conflict have been smaller and less frequent when
compared with the Western religions.
23. I have avoided ethnic and national identity here. Many, other than “Han” Chinese, have
been Confucian. The label “Han” is in itself problematic since it encompasses historically
“mixed” groups from what are now the northern, southern, western, and eastern parts of
China.
24. I refer here to the notion that one can only be a Jew, Christian, or Muslim at one time;
that one cannot simultaneously be a Christian Jew, or a Muslim Christian, or a Jewish Muslim.
25. This is a rather complicated issue. Suffice it to note here that the performance of ritual
based on social hierarchy is at the heart of Confucianism and that this doctrinal focus on hier-
archy contrasts greatly with the Western focus on equality before God.
 notes 287

26. I am encouraged by recent publications from Susan Mann, Precious Records: Women in
China’s Long Eighteenth Century, 1997; Lisa Raphals, Sharing the Light: Representations of Women
and Virtue in Early China, 1998; Robert Cutter and William Cromwell, Empresses and Consorts,
1999; Sherry J. Mou (ed.), Presence and Presentation:Women in the Chinese Literati Tradition, 1999;
and Dorothy Ko, Every Step a Lotus: Shoes for Bound Feet, 2001.
27. T’ang has “man” here; I have changed it to the gender-neutral “human being.”
28. I am referring to Classical Confucianism here. Neo-Confucianism shifted the concept
of the Ultimate to Principle or li. As noted earlier, Confucianism has no revealed scriptures,
though it does have a strong tradition of the “sacred” and the “divine.” See footnote 14.
29. Lau 194. I am dealing with the ideal here and not the practice. Many have treated the
words of Confucius, for example, as God-given truth so that they might as well have been re-
vealed truth.
30. Rituals for filial piety (hsiao) and more specifically ancestor veneration are a primary
part of these sacrificial rites.
31. I have changed Watson’s translation of chün-tzu from gentleman to exemplary person.
32. Watson 89.
33. Ibid. 36.
34. Ibid.
35. I have change Watson’s “his” to “her.”
36. Watson 82.
37. Watson uses “the heavens.”To be consistent with my other references I have capitalized
Heaven and made it singular. (82)
38. The small person or hsiao-jen is one who is selfish, profit-minded, seeking the best for
herself, and resorts to any means to amass what she wants. Hsün Tzu quotes an old text that
says “Order is born from the chün-tzu, disorder from the hsiao-jen.” (Watson 36)
39. Tu 127.
40. Woo 193.
41. Ibid. 199.
42. This is Chen Yu-shih’s insight from an unpublished paper delivered at a conference on
Women and Confucianism held at the University of Hawaii in 1993. I thank Professor Tu Wei-
ming for permission to use this material.
43. I am of course grossly oversimplifying here. He may be independently wealthy, and he
may also be very well trained in a particular skill, thereby making it easy for him to return to
the workforce and earn a good living.
44. See Ames and Rosemont; they propose a new translation of jen as “authoritative con-
duct.”
45. Woo 196.
46. Ibid. 195.
47. Again, I am grossly oversimplifying here. Both spouses may be working; and they may
share their chores; however, a Confucian will likely suggest that the two can never be entirely
“equal.” Here lies the crux of the matter: the senior member is obliged to look after the junior
one; and the junior one is obliged to be loyal to the senior one. One weakness in the Confu-
cian system, as Lee Rainey, Professor of Chinese Religions at the Memorial University in
Newfoundland, suggested in a private conversation on 19 June 2000, is in the lack of sanctions
against the senior member. In other words, if the husband does not perform his duties within
the traditional relationship, the wife has little recourse.
288 notes

48. Tradition has it that the Nü Hsiao Ching was written by a Lady Ch’eng, the wife of a
certain Chen Miao, who was a minor official during Brilliant Emperor or T’ang Ming Huang’s
reign. She presents this to Hsüan-tsung on the occasion of her niece’s marriage to his son Yung
Wang. It is not clear if this is a true source of the treatise.The Classic is not mentioned in the
official histories nor T’ang literature; and there is no record of a Yung Wang.The earliest date
ascribed to the Classic is an illustration by Yen Li-pen who died in 673, before Hsüan-tsung
was born. Some have argued that it was probably written close to or during the Sung dynasty.
49. In traditional Chinese culture, not only in Confucian beliefs, a person was thought to
have two souls: the heavenly soul (yang; hun), which becomes the spirit, and the earthly soul
(yin; kuei), which becomes the ghost.
50. Woo 152.
51. Ames and Rosemont 49.
52. Woo 193–94 and Lün Yu.
53. Chan, 180.
54. Lün Yu 1:2 in Ames and Rosemont 71.
55. On following the Way, Mencius said: “Those who are obedient to Heaven are pre-
served; those who go against Heaven are annihilated.” (4:A:7 in Lau 120)
56. Ibid. 30.
57. Ibid. 195.
58. The women of the imperial household are associated with “Kuan-sui,” the title of the
first ode in the Shih Ching, which is symbolic of a happy marriage, and a unicorn’s hoof or
lin-chih, which is suggestive of having many sons. (Woo 192) Ch’eng Hao uses this same ode
to explain that a happy marriage and progeny are necessary before “the laws and systems of the
[Offices of the Chou] Chou kuan can be put into practice.”
59. Lün Yu 12:19.
60. Woo 193.
61. Ibid. 194.
62. Lün Yu 1:12 in Ames and Rosemont 30.
63. Ibid. 93.
64. Lün Yu in Fingarette 79.
65. Chan Wing-tsit translated this as “son” (181); I have neutralized it to “child.”

CHAPTER FIVE

1. Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973).
2. S. Ackerman, Under Every Green Tree: Popular Religion in Sixth-Century Judah, Harvard Se-
mitic Monographs 46 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992); idem., “Isaiah,” The Women’s Bible Com-
mentary, ed. C. A. Newsom and S. H. Ringe (London: SPCK; Louisville: Westminster/John
Knox, 1992), pp. 161–68; idem.,“The Queen Mother and the Cult in Ancient Israel,” Journal of
Biblical Literature 112 (1993): 385–401.
3. Rachel Adler, “I’ve Had Nothing Yet, So I Can’t Take More,” Moment 8 (September
1983): 22–26.
4. Robert Seltzer, Jewish People, Jewish Thought (New York: Macmillan, 1980).
5. See the study by Saul M. Olyan, Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh in Israel (Atlanta: Scholars
Press, 1988).
 notes 289

6. David Noel Freedman, “Yahweh of Samaria and His Asherah,” Biblical Archeologist (De-
cember 1987): 241–50.
7. Tikvah Frymer-Kensky, In the Wake of the Goddesses:Women, Culture, and the Biblical Trans-
formation of Pagan Myth (New York: Free Press, 1992).
8. See footnote 1.
9. Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978).
10. Anthony Saldarini,“Babatha’s Story,” Biblical Archeological Review 24, no. 2 (March/April
1998): 28–33, 36–37, 72–74.
11. Ross S. Kraemer, Her Share of the Blessings:Women’s Religion among Pagans, Jews and Chris-
tians in the Greco-Roman World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); idem., Maenads, Mar-
tyrs, Matrons, Monastics: A Sourcebook on Women’s Religions in the Greco-Roman World
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988). See also Barbara Nathanson,“Toward a Multicultural Ecu-
menical History of Women in the First Century/ies C.E.,” in Searching the Scriptures:A Feminist
Introduction, ed. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (New York: Crossroad, 1993).
12. See Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert, Menstrual Purity: Rabbinic and Christian Reconstruction
of Biblical Gender (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000).
13. Judith Hauptman, Re-reading the Rabbis: A Woman’s Voice (Boulder, CO:Westview Press,
1998). For a far more critical perspective, see Rachel Biale, Women and Jewish Law: An
Exploration of Women’s Issues in Halakhic Sources (New York: Schocken Books, 1984).
14. Judith Wegner, Chattel or Person? The Status of Women in the Mishnah (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1988). See also Tal Ilan, Jewish Women in Greco-Roman Palestine:An Inquiry into
Image and Status (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1995).
15. David M. Feldman, Birth Control in Jewish Law: Marital Relations, Contraception, and Abor-
tion as Set Forth in the Classic Texts of Jewish Law (New York: New York University Press, 1968).
16. Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, The Savage in Judaism: An Anthropology of Israeli Religion and
Ancient Judaism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990); Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel:
Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Miriam
Peskowitz, Spinning Fantasies: Rabbis, Gender, and History (Berkeley: University of California,
1997).
17. Bernadette Brooten, Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogue: Inscriptional Evidence and
Background Issues (Scholars Press, 1982).
18. Talmud Bavli Megillah 23a.
19. Mordechai Friedman, “Marriage as an Institution: Jewry under Islam,” in The Jewish
Family: Metaphor and Memory, ed. David Kraemer (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989);
Avraham Grossman, “Medieval Rabbinic Views on Wife-Beating, 800–1300,” Jewish History 5
(1991): 53–62.
20. S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Por-
trayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, 5 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1967–1988).
21. Shaye Cohen, “Purity and Piety: The Separation of Menstruants from the Sancta,” in
Daughters of the King:Women and the Synagogue, ed. Susan Grossman and Rivka Haut (Philadel-
phia: Jewish Publication Society, 1992).
22. Susan E. Shapiro, “A Matter of Discipline: Reading for Gender in Jewish Philosophy,”
in Judaism Since Gender, ed. Miriam Peskowitz and Laura Levitt (New York: Routledge, 1997).
23. Elliot R.Wolfson, Circle in the Square: Studies in the Use of Gender in Kabbalistic Symbolism
(1995). See also Judith R. Baskin, “From Separation to Displacement: Perceptions of Women
in Sefer Hasidim,” Association for Jewish Studies Review 19, no. 1 (1994): 1–10.
290 notes

24. Chava Weissler, Voices of the Matriarchs: Listening to the Prayers of Early Modern Jewish
Women (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998).
25. Renee Levine Melammed,“Sephardi Women in the Medieval and Early Modern Peri-
ods,” in Jewish Women in Historical Perspective, ed. Judith R. Baskin (Detroit:Wayne State Univer-
sity Press, 1998); Heretics or Daughters of Israel? The Crypto-Jewish Women of Castile (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1999).
26. For example, see Libby Garshowitz, “Gracia Mendes: Power, Influence, and Image,” in
Power of the Weak: Studies on Medieval Women, ed. Jennifer Carpenter and Sally-Beth MacLean
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995); see also The Memoirs of Gluckel of Hameln, trans.
Marvin Lowenthal (New York: Schocken Books, 1977).
27. Howard Adelman,“Wife-Beating Among Early Modern Italian Jews, 1400–1700,” Pro-
ceedings of the Eleventh World Congress of Jewish Studies, vol. 1 (.Jerusalem: The World Union of
Jewish Studies, 1994), 135–142.
28. Ada Rapoport-Alpert, “On Women and Hasidism: S. A. Horodecky and the Maid of
Ludmir Tradition,” in Jewish History: Essays in Honor of Chimen Abramsky, eds. A. Rapoport-
Alpert and S. J. Zipperstein (London: P. Halban, 1988).
29. Charlotte Baum, Paula Hyman, and Sonya Michel, The Jewish Woman in America (New
York: Dial Press, 1976); Susan Glenn, Daughters of the Shtetl: Life and Labor in the Immigrant Gen-
eration (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991); Linda Kuzmack-Gordon, Women’s Cause: The
Jewish Women’s Movement in England and the United States, 1881–1933 (Columbus: Ohio State
University Press, 1990).
30. Michael Berkowitz, Zionist Culture and West European Jewry Before the First World War
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
31. Deborah Bernstein, The Struggle for Equality: Urban Women Workers in Pre-State Israeli So-
ciety (New York: Praeger, 1987).
32. Marion A. Kaplan, The Jewish Feminist Movement in Germany:The Campaigns of the Jüdis-
cher Frauenbund, 1904–1938 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979); The Making of the Jewish
Middle Class: Women, Family, and Identity in Imperial Germany (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1991).
33. Paula Hyman,“Immigrant Women and Consumer Protest:The New York City Kosher
Meat Boycott of 1902,” American Jewish History 70 (September 1980), 91–105.
34. Esther Fuchs, Israeli Mythogynies: Women in Contemporary Hebrew Fiction (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1987).
35. Naomi Seidman, A Marriage Made in Heaven? The Sexual Politics of Hebrew and Yiddish
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).
36. For feminist criticisms of Levinas, see Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. H. M.
Parshley (New York: Vintage Books, 1952), p. xix. See Tina Chanter, “Feminism and the
Other,” in The Provocation of Levinas: Rethinking the Other, eds. Robert Bernasconi and David
Wood (London and New York: Routledge, 1988), 32–56; Luce Irigaray, “Questions to Em-
manuel Levinas: On the Divinity of Love,” trans. Margaret Whitford, Catherine Chalier,“Ethics
and the Feminine,” and Tina Chanter, “Antigone’s Dilemma,” in Re-Reading Levinas, eds.
Robert Bernasconi and Simon Critchley (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991),
109–46; Robert Manning, “Thinking the Other Without Violence? An Analysis of the Rela-
tions Between the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas and Feminism,” Journal of Speculative Phi-
losophy 5, no. 2 (1991): 132–43; Stella Sandford, “Writing as a Man: Levinas and the
Phenomenology of Eros,” Radical Philosophy 87 (1998): 6–17; Ze’ev Levi, “Woman and the
 notes 291

Feminine in the Philosophy of Levinas,” in The Other and Otherness: Problems in the Philosophy of
Emmanuel Levinas [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1997), 204–19.
37. Marion A. Kaplan, The Jewish Feminist Movement in Germany:The Campaigns of the Jüdis-
cher Frauenbund, 1904–1938.
38. Renate Bridenthal, Atina Grossmann, and Marion A. Kaplan, eds., When Biology Became
Destiny:Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984).
39. David Biale, Eros and the Jews: From Biblical Israel to Contemporary America (New York: Ba-
sic Books, 1992), and Sander Gilman, The Jew’s Body (New York: Routledge, 1991). See also
Nancy A. Harrowitz, Antisemitism, Misogyny, and the Logic of Cultural Difference: Cesare Lombroso
and Matilde Serao (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994).
40. Studies of women’s experiences during the Holocaust, as victims, perpetrators, and by-
standers, have been collected in several anthologies, including Esther Katz and Joan Miriam
Ringelheim, Women Surviving the Holocaust: Proceedings of the Conference (New York: Institute for
Research in History, 1983); Carol Rittner and John K. Roth, eds., Different Voices:Women and
the Holocaust (New York: Paragon House, 1993); and Dalia Ofer and Lenore J.Weitzman, eds.,
Women in the Holocaust (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1998).
41. Michael Berkowitz, “Transcending ‘Tzimmes and Sweetness’: Recovering the History
of Zionist Women in Central and Western Europe, 1897–1933,” in Active Voices:Women in Jew-
ish Culture, ed. Maurie Sacks (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995) and Myra Glazer, ed.,
Burning Air and a Clear Mind: Contemporary Israeli Women Poets (Athens: Ohio University Press,
1981).
42. Pamela Nadell, Women Who Would Be Rabbis: A History of Women’s Ordination,
1889–1995 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998).
43. Tamar El-Or, Educated and Ignorant: Ultraorthodox Jewish Women and Their World, trans.
Haim Watzman (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1993).
44. Lynn Davidman, Tradition in a Rootless World:Women Turn to Orthodox Judaism (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1991; Debra R. Kaufman, Rachel’s Daughters: Newly Orthodox
Jewish Women (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1991).
45. Marcia Falk, The Book of Blessings: New Jewish Prayers for Daily Life, the Sabbath, and the
New Moon Festival (San Francisco: Harper, 1996).

CHAPTER SIX

1. Saiving 1.
2. Most women have anecdotes to illustrate this experience. At a reception for five new
faculty members, including myself, in 1972, someone began a conversation by asking me,“And
what does your husband teach?”
3. The ignoring of Stanton’s book is an example of how women’s scholarship was excluded
from serious consideration until the 1960s. Stanton’s discovery of the different treatment of the
two sexes in the Bible was contemporaneous with Hermann Gunkel’s discovery of different
styles of writing to identify northern and southern tribes in the Pentateuch. His discovery rev-
olutionized the study of the Bible; Stanton’s is not treated as revolutionary in histories of Bib-
lical scholarship.
4. Carr observes that “with some exceptions, the modern church completely resisted the
full equality of women. . . . And yet, as [the encyclical] Pacem in Terris notes, the secular eman-
cipation of women took place first and more rapidly in Christian societies.Why? Could it be
292 notes

the message of the gospel, submerged in oppressive cultural forms, acted as a leaven in surpris-
ing ways?” (34)
5. In the Western church, Mary Magdalen is conflated with the prostitute who washes Je-
sus’ feet with her tears of repentance.The Eastern church did not make this mistake and por-
trayed Mary Magdalen as a close friend of Jesus who understood him better than some other
friends and who was a leader among the apostles, especially after the death of Jesus. See King.
6. Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza 298.
7. Ibid. 177–78.
8. Kadel 16, 20.
9. Dewey 23.
10. Ibid.
11. Chadwick 22–23.
12. Cloke 6–7.
13. Quoted in LaPorte 7–8.
14. Ibid. 29.
15. Cloke 2.
16. This “gap” between what one thinks and what one does amounts to what today we call
ideology in the sense of those values, predispositions, and interests that are largely hidden to us
and that prompt the particular direction we take in all of our unreflective action. More de-
structively the gap is the scotosis or blind spot that allows injustices and abuses of power to
persist in society for centuries—long beyond what any reasonable people would imagine
could be tolerated. Nevertheless, those who blame the past for the world’s evils often forget
that lapses from the original vision during their own era are attributable both to those who
lack the vision as well as those who possess but betray it.The gap also reveals the insufficiency
of either power or law alone to right wrongs.
17. Brock and Harvey 45.
18. Cloke.
19. Ibid. 17.
20. Ibid. 22.
21. Ambrose (X, 371).
22. Elm 194–96.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid. 187.
25. Burrus 24.
26. Carolyn Walker Bynum 33.
27. Ibid. 42.
28. Morris 213. Even though he does not say so, it is reasonable to think that Morris’s
numbers designate only men’s monasteries because a few pages later he uses exclusively male
language to describe other religious orders: “In Cluniac and Benedictine houses, the best-
trained monks were those who had entered as boys, had been fully instructed in the complica-
tions of chant and ceremonial, and had seen society only from the cloister.The Cistercians and
Premonstratensians, by contrast, were recruited from among adults, men who had lived in soci-
ety and rejected its values” (220). Morris’s essay reveals the erasure by academicians of women’s
presence in religious traditions.
29. Thompson 55.
30. Ibid.
31. Abelard XV, 71.
 notes 293

32. Crawford 46.

33. Kavanaugh I:84.
34. Ibid. I:328.
35. Weber 35.
36. Greenblatt 25.
37. O’Brien 456.
38. Carr 21.
39. Cone 154.
40. Wetherilt 1.

CHAPTER SEVEN

1. Muhammad Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (Lahore: Shaikh

Muhammad Ashraf, 1971), pp. 171–72.
2. Ibid., pp. 173–74.
3. Ibid., p. 175.
4. Ibid., pp. 148–49.
5. Ibid., pp. 151–78.
6. Ibid., p. 83.
7. M. M. Khan, translation of Sahih Al-Bukhari (Lahore: Kazi Publications, 1971), p. 346.
8. Ibid., p. 80.
9. Ibid., p. 81.
10. A. H. Siddiqui, translation of Sahih Muslim (Lahore: Shaikh Muhammad Ashraf, 1972),
p. 752.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid., pp. 752–53.
13. Alfred Guillaume, The Traditions of Islam (Khayats: Beirut, 1966), p. 97.
14. Muhammad Iqbal, Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, p. 84.
15. Toshihiko Izutsu, The Structure of the Ethical Terms in the Koran (Tokyo: Keio Institute of
Philosophical Studies, Mita, Siba, Minatoku, 1959), pp. 152–53.
16. Muhammad Iqbal, Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, p. 85.

CHAPTER EIGHT

1. For a detailed description of this process, see Foltz and Griffin (1996).
2. Journalist and High Priestess Margot Adler (1986) has done the best job of this task thus
far.
3. See Long (1997).
4. All Witches are pagans and honor the Goddess, but pagan is a larger category, and not all
pagans are Witches.
5. Jorgenson and Russell (1999) see these as separate and distinct spiritualities. Others point
to a blurring of boundaries of belief among them, the similarities in practice and the individu-
als who cross comfortably from one group’s ritual to another (Griffin 1995;York 1995; Ell-
wood and McGraw 1999; Gottschal 2000).
294 notes

6. Historian Ronald Hutton (1999) has done an impressively thorough job of exploring
this history and is the source of much of the information presented here.
7. Ibid.
8. Hutton believes this distinction to be critical.
9. Ibid.
10. Leland (1990:109).
11. Ibid. 18.
12. Ibid. 114.
13. Originally spelled Wica, its etymology was believed to be related to the word wisdom.
Today, it is commonly understood to refer to changing things by “shaping or bending” energy
with the mind or human will.
14. Hutton (1999:174).
15. That was challenged by Janet and Stewart Farrar, in collaboration with Doreen Valiente
in the early 1980s,Aiden Kelly (1991), and most recently, by Ronald Hutton (1999).
16. Hutton (1999).
17. This had been significantly modified, however. Crowley’s Law of Thelema was, “Do
what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the Law, Love under Will.”The Wiccan
Rede is,“An as it harm none, do what thou wilt.”
18. There are also Witches who call themselves Traditional or Hereditary Witches who say
their religion was passed down to them through their families. Hutton believes that these prac-
tices usually turn out to have derived from the same components from which Wicca devel-
oped.
19. Hutton (1999:239–240).
20. Crowley (2000).
21. Crowley (1990:64–65).
22. Hutton (1999:250).
23. Lamond (1997:18).
24. On October 30, 1985, Congress finally defeated an attempt to remove tax-exempt sta-
tus from Wiccan churches. In 1999, a similar issue was brought up when Congressman Bob
Barr discovered that there were Wiccan covens performing religious services on U.S. military
bases. Unaware that the official U.S. Army Chaplain’s Handbook had included a section on
Wicca since 1978, Barr tried to force them off the bases and failed.
25. Morgan (1970:306f)
26. Ibid. (606).
27. As religious scholar Cynthia Eller (1993:55) points out,“By choosing this symbol, fem-
inists were identifying themselves with everything that women were taught not to be: ugly, ag-
gressive, independent and malicious.”
28. Gage (1893).
29. Clifton (2000).
30. Budapest (1991).
31. Ibid.
32. According to Hutton (1999).
33. There was another tradition also called Dianic that had both women and men. How-
ever, Budapest’s version of the Craft grew to the point where the other group became known
as McFarland Dianics, after its founder, and many Witches today are unaware that male Dianics
exist.
34. See Hutton (1999) for more details on this.
 notes 295

35. Budapest (1991).

36. Alternate spellings of the word “woman” were popular in the 70s and 80s and repre-
sented a separatist stance from men and the masculine.
37. Budapest (1991).
38. Although Budapest doesn’t mention her, this was also one of the titles of the Egyptian
Goddess Isis.
39. Eller (1993:57–58)
40. Like the Fellowship of Isis, a discussion of which will follow, many Dianics insist that
the title High Priestess does not indicate a hierarchical status, but what a woman is called who
has agreed to take on more responsibilities. Other Dianics feel uncomfortable with this title
and insist that their covens be ruled by consensus. However, there one may find Elder Priest-
esses, a title which, they argue, simply means they have been around and involved for a long
time.
41. Lozano and Foltz (1990).
42. Eller (1993).
43. Some other groups also use this procedure today.
44. NightMare (2000). See below for a description of the origin and evolution of the term
thealogy—used now to refer to Goddess Spirituality.
45. NightMare (1998:16).
46. Canadian professor of the psychology of religion (University of Ottawa) Naomi Gold-
enberg (1979) was among the first to note that, although not all North American covens called
themselves feminist, all of them supported feminist ideology to some degree.
47. Significantly, they both have advanced degrees in psychology, as does Selena Fox,
founder of Circle Sanctuary.
48. In King (1993:163).
49. Daly (1992).
50. In Eller (1993:47)
51. Ehrenreich and English (1973:7).
52. Adler (1986:186).
53. Gimbutas (1974:9).
54. Hutton (1999).
55. Gimbutas (1974:9).
56. Gimbutas (1989).
57. These arguments continue today, even within Goddess Spirituality. For excellent exam-
ples of this, see The Pomegranate: A New Journal of Neopagan Thought, numbers 6, November
1998, and 7, February 1999.
58. It should be pointed out that Gimbutas was an acknowledged and respected expert on
the prehistory of the Slavs, the Balts, and Eastern European Bronze Age cultures.
59. Adler (1986).
60. Christ (1982:77).
61. It needs to be stressed that the great majority of feminist researchers into ancient cul-
tures never argued for a Golden Age of Matriarchy but posited for the existence of cultures
that were matrifocal and/or matrilinear, fairly egalitarian, and in which Divinity was seen as fe-
male and sometimes male. For an early clarification of this, see Spretnak’s Response, in her
1982 Politics of Women’s Spirituality.
62. Eller (1993:92)
296 notes

63. In personal correspondence to me, Long suggests that despite family background, col-
lege education in the United Kingdom effectively moves someone from working to middle
class. However, and in spite of living what might be considered middle-class lives, the women
themselves insisted that they were working class (Komatsu 1986).
64. Matriarchy Study Group (1977:4).
65. Sjoo and Mor (1981:5).
66. A grove is a group numbering over 13.
67. McAllister (1988:28).
68. See Long (1994) for a review of the research on the Greenham experience.
69. Jones (1996:13).
70. Ibid. (6).
71. Long (1997:28).
72. Robertson (1975:9).
73. Lawrence disliked the image of the “sacrificed, tortured and bleeding Christ.” Olivia re-
ports that one day, before founding the Fellowship, she discovered her brother unnailing Jesus
from a crucifix in the family chapel. It was this act of “kindness” that told her she should work
with him on reintroducing the religion of the Goddess (Robertson 1975:17).
74. Spretnak (1982:xvii).
75. This was first pointed out by Adler (1986).
76. Foltz and Griffin (1996).
77. Monaghan (1997:5).
78. Starhawk (1979:11).
79. Harvey (1996:169).
80. Jones (1997).
81. Starhawk (1979).
82. Hutton (1999:51).
83. Starhawk (1979:9).
84. Budapest (1991).
85. Daly (1987:76).
86. Starhawk, Macha NightMare, and the Reclaiming Collective (1997).
87. Goldenberg (1979:93).
88. I am not suggesting that there should be a body to whom clergy or leaders should be re-
sponsible, only pointing out that challenges exist when this is not the case.
89. Goldenberg (1979:99).
90. Griffin (1995, 2000).
91. Thanks to Patricia Monaghan, who shared this insight over dinner one night.
92. This has been a continuing argument of Asphodel Long’s (see King 1993).
93. Roof (1999).
94. Starhawk (1987).
95. Segmented Polycentric Integrated Networks.
96. York (1995).
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avaramunintra krantamalai. Kanchi:V. N.Tevanatan.
Pintchman,Tracy. 1998.“When Vows Fail to Deliver What They Promise:The Case of Raja-
vanti.” Paper presented at the American Academy of Religion, Orlando, Florida.
Poykai,Alvar. 1971. Mutal Tiruvantati. In ed.Annangaracariyar, P. B., Nalayira tivviyap pirapan-
tam. Kanchi:V. N.Tevanatan.
Ramanujan,A. K. 1967. The Interior Landscape. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
______. 1982.“The Lives of Female Saints.” In ed. Hawley, John Stratton and Wulff, Donna, The
Divine Consort: Radha and the Goddesses of India. Berkeley Religious Studies Series, vol. 3.
Rangacharya,Adya, ed. and trans. 1996. The Natyasastra. Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal.
Rig Veda. Rig III.31.1. Oral tradition; usually identified by these numbers.
Tharu, Susie and Lalita. 1991. Women Writing in India: 600 B.C. to the Present. New York: Femi-
nist Press.
Vishnu Purana. See H. H.Wilson.
Wilson, H. H., trans. 1840. The Vishnu Purana:A System of Hindu Mythology and Tradition. Lon-
don: J. Murray.
Young, Katherine K. 2002.“Om, the Vedas, and the Status of Women with Special Reference
to Srivaishavism.” In ed. Patton, Laurie L., Jewels of Authority:Women and Text in the Hindu
Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 84–121.

CHAPTER TWO

Works Cited
Church, Cornelia Dimmitt.“Temptress, Housewife, Nun:Women’s Role in Early Buddhism,”
Anima:An Experiential Journal I:2 (Spring 1975).
 bibliography 299

Falk, Nancy Auer.“The Case of the Vanishing Nuns: the Fruits of Ambivalence in Ancient In-
dian Buddhism,” Unspoken Worlds:Women’s Religious Lives, ed. by Nancy Auer Falk and Rita
M. Gross (Belmont, CA:Wadsworth, 2001), pp. 196–206.
Gomez, Luis O., tr. The Land of Bliss:The Paradise of the Buddha of Measureless Light (Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 1996).
Gross, Rita M. Buddhism after Patriarchy:A Feminist History,Analysis, and Reconstruction of Bud-
dhism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993).
______,“Buddhism,” Women in Religion, ed. by Jean Holm (London: Pinter Publishers, 1994),
pp. 1–29.
Kabilsingh, Chatsumarn. Thai Women in Buddhism (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1991).
Paul, Diana Y. Women in Buddhism: Images of the Feminine in Mahayana Tradition (Berkeley:Asian
Humanities Press, 1979).
Schelling,Andrew and Waldman,Anne, tr. Songs of the Sons and Daughters of the Buddha
(Boston: Shambhala, 1996).
Willis, Janice Dean.“Nuns and Benefactresses:The Role of Women in the Development of
Buddhism,” in Women, Religion, and Social Change, ed. by Yvonne Hadad and Elison Banks
Findley (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985), p. 75.
Wilson, Liz. Charming Cadavers: Horrific Figurations of the Feminine in Indian Buddhist Hagio-
graphic Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).

Recommended Readings
Dowman, Keith, tr. Sky Dancer:The Secret Life and Songs of the Lady Yeshe Tsogyel (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984).This somewhat difficult book is an account of one of
the most important female Vajrayana Buddhists.
Gross, Rita M. Buddhism After Patriarchy:A Feminist History,Analysis, and Reconstruction of Bud-
dhism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993).The most extensive discussion of
women and Buddhism.
Paul, Diana Y. Women in Buddhism: Images of the Feminine in Mahayana Tradition (Berkeley, CA:
Asian Humanities Press, 1979). Carefully introduced selections from important Mahayana
texts.
Robinson, Richard H. and Johnson,Willard L. The Buddhist Religion: a Historical Introduction,
4th edition (Belmont, CA:Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1997).The most complete
and useful textbook on the Buddhist history and doctrine.
Skilton,Andrew. A Concise History of Buddhism (Birmingham, England:Windhorse Publica-
tions, 1994).A shorter, more accessible history of Buddhism.
Snellgrove, David and Richardson, Hugh. A Cultural History of Tibet (Boulder: Prajna Press,
1980).An accurate and readable history of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism.
Strong, John S. The Experience of Buddhism: Sources and Interpretations (Belmont, CA:Wadsworth
Publishing Co., 1995).An extensive and useful selection of Buddhist texts.
Swearer, Donald K. The Buddhist World of Southeast Asia (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1995).A very useful account of contemporary Theravada Buddhism.
Tsomo, Karma Lekshe, ed. Sakyadhita: Daughters of the Buddha (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion, 1988).
A very useful summary of the contemporary status of women, especially nuns, in the Bud-
dhist world.
300 bibliography

Williams, Paul, Mahayana Buddhism:The Doctrinal Foundations (London: Routledge, 1989).

Complete and accessible survey of Mahayana Buddhist thought.

CHAPTER 3

Ames, Roger T. and Rosemont, Henry Jr. (trans.). 1998. The Analects of Confucius:A Philosophi-
cal Translation. New York: Ballantine Books.
Bodde, Derk. 1939.“Types of Chinese Categorical Thinking” in Charles Le Blanc and
Dorothy Borei (eds.), Essays on Chinese Civilization by Derk Bodde. Pp. 141–160. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Chai, Ch’u and Chai,Winberg. 1965.“Hsiao Ching” in Ch’u Chai and Winberg Chai, The Sa-
cred Books of Confucius and other Confucian Classics. Pp. 323–334. New Hyde Park, NY: Uni-
versity Books.
Chan,Wing-tsit (trans.). 1963. Instructions for Practical Living and Other Neo-Confucian Writings
by Wang Yang-ming. New York and London: Columbia University Press.
Chen, Ivan (trans.). 1920. The Book of Filial Piety Including the Twenty Four Examples. First edi-
tion published 1908. London: John Murray.
Ching, Julia. 1997. Mysticism and Kingship in China:The Heart of Chinese Wisdom. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Chu Hsi and Lu Tsu-ch’ien (comps.). 1175.Wing-tsit Chan (trans.). 1967. Reflections on Things
at Hand. New York and London: Columbia University Press.
Dawson, Raymond. 1993. Confucius:The Analects. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
Dobson,W.A. C. H. (trans.). 1963. Mencius.Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Fingarette, Herbert. 1972. Confucius: the Secular as Sacred. New York:Torchbooks.
Graham,Angus Charles. 1989. Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China. La
Salle, Ill.: Open Court.
Huang, Chichung (trans.). 1997. The Analects of Confucius. New York, Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press.
Lau, D. C. (trans.) 1970. Mencius. Middlesex: Penguin Books.
Legge, James (trans.). 1971. Confucius. Confucian Analects.The Great Learning and the Doctrine of
the Mean. First published in 1893 by Clarendon Press, Oxford. New York: Dover Publica-
tions.
Levenson, Joseph R. 1960.“Ill Wind in the Well-field:The Erosion of the Confucian Ground
of Controversy” in Arthur F. Wright, The Confucian Persuasion. Pp. 268–287. Stanford:
Stanford University Press.
Mou Tsung-san. 1981.“Confucianism as Religion” in Douglas Lancashire. Chinese Essays on
Religion and Faith. Pp. 21–43. San Francisco: Chinese Materials Centre.
Murray, Julia. 1988.“The Ladies’ Classic of Filial Piety and Sung Textual Illustration: Problems
of Reconstruction and Artistic Context” in Ars Orientalis. 18:95–129.Ann Arbor: Dept. of
History of Art, University of Michigan.
Nivison, David S. 1996. The Ways of Confucianism. Edited and with an introduction by Bryan
W. Van Norden. Chicago and La Salle, Ill.: Open Court.
T’ang, Chun-i. 1981.“Spirit of Religion and Modern Man” in Douglas Lancashire. Chinese
Essays on Religion and Faith. Pp. 44–52. San Francisco: Chinese Materials Centre.
 bibliography 301

Taylor, Rodney L. 1990. The Religious Dimensions of Confucianism. Albany: State University of
New York Press.
______. 1986. The Way of Heaven. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Traylor, Kenneth L. 1988. Chinese Filial Piety. Bloomington, Ind.: Eastern Press.
Tu Wei-ming. 1998.“Probing the ‘Three Bonds’ and ‘Five Relationships’ in Confucian Hu-
manism” in Walter H. Slote and George A. DeVos (eds.). Confucianism and the Family.Al-
bany: State University of New York Press.
Wang,Te-shih (ed.). 1972. Hsiao Ching chin-chu chin-i. (A Modern Annotated Interpretation of
The Classic on Filial Piety)
Watson, Burton (trans.). 1963. Hsün Tzu: Basic Writings. New York: Columbia University Press.
Wilhelm, Richard (trans.). 1967. The I Ching or Book of Changes, rendered into English by
Cary F. Baynes. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Woo,Tak-ling T. 2000. Religious Ideals, Beliefs and Practices in the Lives of Women During the Reign
of T’ang Ming Huang. Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Toronto.

CHAPTER 4

Research into the history of women in Taoism is based on the following Chinese sources:

Chinese Sources
TT: from The Taoist Canon (Cheng T’ung and Wan Li addendum)
TTCH: from Hsiao T’ien-shih’s Tao-tsang ch’ing-hua (Essentials of the Taoist Canon)
NC: non-canonical texts
TT: Ch’ing-ching ching (Scripture of Cultivating Stillness)
TTCH: Ch’ing-ching yüan-chun k’un-yüan ching (The Celestial Ruler Sun Pu-erh’s Scrip-
ture on Cultivating Stillness for Women)
TT: Han Wu-ti nei-chuan (The Inner Chronicles of Han Wu-ti)
TTCH: Hsi Wang-mu nü-hsiu cheng-t’u shih tse (Mother Empress of the West’s Ten Precepts
on the True Path of Women’s Practices)
TTCH: Hsiu-chen p’ien-nan tsan-cheng (Answers to Questions Concerning Cultivation)
TTCH: Hung-shih hsien-fo ch’i-tsung (Hung’s Chronicles of the Wondrous Lives of the Im-
mortals and Boddhisattvas)
TTCH: K’un-ning miao-ching (Cultivating Stillness for Women)
TT: Lieh-hsien chuan (Biographies of the Immortals)
NC: Lieh-hsien ch’üan-chuan (Complete Biographies of the Immortals)
TT: Li-shih chen-hsien t’i-tao tung-chien (Comprehensive History of the True Immortals)
TTCH: Ling-yuan ta-tao ke (Song of the Luminous Origin of the Great Tao)
TT: Mu t’ien-tzu chuan (The Legends of King Mu)
TTCH: Ni-wan-li tsu-shih nü-tsung shuang-hsiu pao-fa (The Teacher Li Ni-wan’s Precious
Raft of Women’s Paired Practice)
TTCH: Nü-kung Cheng-fa (Correct Methods for Women’s Practice)
TTCH: Nü chin-tan fa-yao (Essentials of the Golden Elixir Method for Women)
302 bibliography

TT: San-tung yü-shu (The Jade Writ of the Three Caverns)

TT: Shang-ch’ing huang-ting nei-ching yü ching (The Yellow Court Classic of Internal Im-
ages of the High Pure Realm)
TT: Shen-hsien chuan (Chronicles of the Immortals)
TTCH: Sun Pu-erh yüan-chun fa-yü (The Celestial Ruler Sun Pu-erh’s Oral Teachings)
TT:Ta-tung chen-ching (The Sacred Scriptures of the Great Cavern
TT:Yüan-shih shang-chen chung-hsien chi (Records of the Most High Realized Beings of
the Primal Beginning)
TT:Yün-chi ch’i-ch’ien (Seven Bamboo Satchels of the Cloud Scrolls)
TT:Yung-cheng chi-hsien chuan (The Record of the Assembly of Immortals of the Celestial
City)

Recommended Readings
For the non-Chinese reader, the following is an introductory list of readings on the topic:
Cleary,Thomas. trans. and ed. 1989. Immortal Sisters: Secrets of Taoist Women. Boston: Shamb-
hala.A collection of poems of female practitioners of internal alchemy, including the writ-
ings of Sun Pu-erh.
Kohn, Livia. trans. and ed. 1993. The Taoist Experience. Albany: State University of New York
Press.A good collection of a wide range of subjects from the Taoist Canon, including bi-
ographies of the Mother Empress of the West and several female immortals.
Laughlin, Karen, and Eva Wong. 1999.“Feminism and/in Taoism,” in Feminism and World Reli-
gions, Arvind Sharma and Katherine K.Young, eds.Albany: State University of New York
Press.A view of Taoist philosophy and practice from the perspective of feminism.
Robinet, Isabelle. 1993. Taoist Meditation. Albany: State University of New York Press. Proba-
bly the best scholastic study of Shang-ch’ing Taoism.
Porter, Bill. 1993. The Road to Heaven. San Francisco: Mercury House.An interesting trave-
logue. Porter interviews female and male Taoist and Buddhist hermits in China.
Wile, Douglas, trans. and ed. 1992. Art of the Bedchamber:The Chinese Sexual Yoga Classics Includ-
ing Women’s Solo Meditation Texts. Albany: State University of New York Press.An excellent
translation of texts on sexual alchemy and female internal alchemy.
Wong, Eva, trans. 1990. Seven Taoist Masters. Boston: Shambhala.The dramatized story of how
Sun Pu-erh and her fellow students attained enlightenment and immortality.
______. 1997. The Shambhala Guide to Taoism. Boston: Shambhala.An account of the history,
systems, and practice of Taoism for the non-specialist and non-practitioner of the Taoist
arts.
______. 2002. Tales of the Taoist Immortals. Boston: Shambhala.

CHAPTER 6

Abelard. Historium Calamitatum. c. 1135.

Ambrose,“Concerning Virgins.” In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series.Vol.VI, ed. P.
Schaff and H.Wace. London and Oxford: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1893.
Brock, Sebastian P. and Susan Ashbrook Harvey, intro. and trans., Holy Women of the Syrian Ori-
ent. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.
 bibliography 303

Burrus,Virginia. The Making of a Heretic: Gender,Authority, and the Priscillianist Controversy.

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
Carr,Anne. Transforming Grace: Christian Tradition and Women’s Experience. San Francisco: Harper
and Row, 1988.
Chadwick, Henry.“The Early Christian Community.” In John McManners, pp. 21–69.
Clark, Elizabeth. Women in the Early Church.Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1983.
Cloke, Gillian.“This Female Man of God”:Women and Spiritual Power in the Patristic Age,
AD 350–450. London: Routledge, 1995.
Cone, James H. Martin and Malcolm and America. Maryknoll: Orbis, 1992.
Crawford, Patricia. Women and Religion in England 1500–1720. London: Routledge, 1993.
Elm, Susanna.“Virgins of God”:The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1994.
Dewey, Joanna.“From Oral Stories to Written Text.” In Women’s Sacred Scriptures. Kwok Pui-
Lan and Elizabeth Schüsseler Fiorenza. Continuum 1998/3, 20–28.
Isasi-Diaz,Ada María and Yolanda Tarango.“Mujerista Theology.” In Ruether and Keller.
Goldstein,Valerie Saiving.“The Human Situation:A Feminine View.” Journal of Religion 40
(1960), 100–112.
Judge, E.A.“The Earliest Use of Monchos for “Monk” (P. Coll.Youtie 77) and the Origins of
Monasticism.” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum (1977), 72–89.
Kabel,Andrew. Matrology:A Bibliography of Writings by Christian Women From the First to the Fif-
teenth Centuries. New York: Continuum, 1995.
Kavanaugh, Kieran and Otilio Rodriguez. The Collected Works of St.Teresa of Avila.Vols. I and
II.Washington: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1976–1980.
King, Karen L.“Canonization and Marginalization: Mary of Magdala.” In Women’s Sacred
Scriptures, Concilium 1998/3, 28–36.
LaPorte, Jean. The Role of Women in Early Christianity. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press,
1982.
Laurence,Anne.“A Priesthood of She-Believers:Women and Congregations in Mid-
seventeenth Century England.” In Sheils and Wood.
Mayr-Harting, Henry.“The West:The Age of Conversion (700–1050).” In McManners.
McEnroy, Carmel E. Guests in Their Own House:The Women of Vatican II. New York: Crossroad,
1996.
McManners, John, ed. The Oxford History of Christianity. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1990.
Morris, Colin.“Christian Civilization (1050–1400).” In McManners.
O’Brien, Susan.“Lay-Sisters and Good Mothers:Working-class Women in English Convents,
1840–1910.” In Sheils and Wood.
Po-Chia Hsia, R., The World of Catholic Renewal 1540–1770. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1998.
Sheils,W. J. and Diana Wood. Women in the Church: Papers of the Ecclesiastical History Society.
London: Basil Blackwell, 1990.
Thompson, John Lee. John Calvin and the Daughters of Sarah:Women in Regular and Exceptional
Roles in the Exegesis of Calvin, His Predecessors, and His Contemporaries. Geneva: Librairie
Droz S.A.
Thompson, Sally. Women Religious:The Founding of English Nunneries after the Norman Conquest.
Oxford: Clarendon, 1991.
Weber,Alison. Teresa of Avila and the Rhetoric of Femininity. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1990.
304 bibliography

Wetherilt,Ann Kirkus. That They May be Many:Voices of Women, Echoes of God. New York:
Continuum, 1994.

Further Reading
Bynum, Carolyn Walker. Holy Feast and Holy Fast:The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval
Women. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.
Carr,Anne E. Transforming Grace: Christian Tradition and Women’s Experience. San Francisco:
Harper and Row, 1988.
Cloke, Gillian.“This Female Man of God”:Women and Spiritual Power in the Patristic Age,AD
350–450. London: Routledge, 1995.
Fitzgerald, Kyriaki Karidoyanes. Women Deacons in the Orthodox Church. Boston: Holy Cross,
1998.
Kadel,Andrew. Matrology:A Bibliography of Writings by Christian Women from the First to the Fif-
teenth Centuries. New York: Continuum, 1995.
Murphy, Cullen. The Gospel According to Eve. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1998.
Ruether, Rosemary Radford and Rosemary Skinner Keller, eds. In Our Own Voices: Four Cen-
turies of American Women’s Religious Writing. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1995.
Salisbury, Joyce E. Church Fathers, Independent Virgins. London:Verso, 1991.
Schüssler Fiorenza, Elizabeth. In Memory of Her:A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian
Origins. New York: Crossroad, 1983.

CHAPTER 8

Adler, Margot. 1986. Drawing Down the Moon. Revised and expanded edition. Boston: Beacon
Press.
Bradley, Marion Zimmer. 1982. The Mists of Avalon. New York: Ballantine.
Budapest, Zsuzsanna. 1980. The Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries,Vol. 1. Revised edition. Oak-
land, CA: Susan B.Anthony Coven No. 1.
______. 1991.Taped interview by author. June 17. Oakland, California.
Christ, Carol. 1982.“Why Women Need the Goddess: Phenomenological, Psychological, and
Political Reflections,” in The Politics of Women’s Spirituality. Charlene Spretnak, ed. Garden
City, NY:Anchor Press. Pp. 71–86.
______ and Judith Plaskow, eds. 1979. Woman Spirit Rising. San Francisco: Harper and Row.
Clifton, Chas. 2000.April 17. Personal E-mail communication. Used with permission.
Crowley,Vivianne. 1990.“Priestess and Witch,” in Voices of the Goddess. Caitlin Matthews, ed.
Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England:Aquarian Press. Pp. 45–66.
______. 2000.“Healing in Wicca,” in Daughters of the Goddess: Studies of Healing, Identity and
Empowerment.Wendy Griffin, ed.Walnut Creek, CA:AltaMira Press. Pp. 151–165.
Daly, Mary. 1987. Websters’ First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language. Boston: Bea-
con Press.
______. 1992. Outercourse. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.
 bibliography 305

Ehrenreich, Barbara and Diedre English. 1973. Witches, Midwives, and Nurses:A History of
Women Healers. 2d edition. Old Westbury, NY:The Feminist Press.
Eller, Cynthia. 1993. Living in the Lap of the Goddess:The Feminist Spirituality Movement in Amer-
ica. New York: Crossroads Press.
Ellwood, Robert and Barbara McGraw. 1999. Many Peoples, Many Faiths:Women and Men in
the World Religions. 6th edition. New York: Prentice-Hall.
Foltz,Tanice and Wendy Griffin. 1996.“She Changes Everything She Touches: Ethnographic
Journeys of Self-Discovery,” in Composing Ethnography. Carolyn Ellis and Arthur Bochner,
eds.Walnut Creek, CA:AtlaMira Press. Pps. 301–329.
Gage, Matilda Joselyn. 1983. Woman, Church, and State.Watertown, MA: Persephone Press.
Gimbutas, Marija. 1974. The Gods and Goddesses of Old Europe: 7000 to 3500 B.C. Myths, Leg-
ends and Cult Images. Berkeley: University of California Press.
______. 1989. The Language of the Goddess. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
Goldenberg, Naomi. 1979. Changing of the Gods: Feminism and the End of Traditional Religion.
Boston: Beacon Press.
Gottschal, Marilyn. 2000.“The Mutable Goddess: Particularity and Eclecticism Within the
Goddess Public,” in Daughters of the Goddess: Studies of Healing, Identity and Empowerment.
Wendy Griffin, ed.Walnut Creek, CA:AltaMira Press. Pp. 59–72.
Griffin,Wendy. 1995.“The Embodied Goddess: Feminist Witchcraft and Female Divinity.” So-
ciology of Religion.Vol. 56, No. 1, Spring. Pp. 35–48.
______. 2000.“Crafting the Boundaries: Goddess narrative as incantation,” in Daughters of the
Goddess: Studies of Healing, Identity and Empowerment.Wendy Griffin, ed.Walnut Creek, CA:
AltaMira Press. Pp. 73–88.
Harvey, Graham. 1996. Listening People, Speaking Earth. London: Hurst Company.
Hutton, Ronald. 1999. The Triumph of the Moon. New York: Oxford University Press
Jones, Kathy. 1996. On Finding Treasure. Glastonbury:Ariadne Publications.
______. 1997.Taped interview by author. July 11. Glastonbury.
Jorgensen, Danny L. and Scott E. Russell. 1999.“American Neopaganism:The Participants’
Social Identities.” Journal of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. Vol. 38, No. 3, Sep-
tember. Pp. 325–338.
Kelly,Aiden. 1991. Crafting the Art of Magic. Book One. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publishers.
King, Ursula. 1993. Women and Spirituality:Voices of Protest & Promise. 2d edition. London:
Macmillan Press.
Komatsu, Kayoko. 1986.“An Empirical Study of Matriarchy Groups in Contemporary Britain
and Their Relationship to New Religious Movements.” Master’s Thesis, University of
Leeds.
Lamond, Frederic. 1997.“The Long View,” in Pagan Dawn, Imbolc. No. 122. Pp. 16, 18.
Leland, Charles G. Aradia or the Gospel of the Witches. (1890) 1990. Custer,WA: Phoenix Pub-
lishing.
Long,Asphodel. 1994.“The Goddess Movement in Britain Today.” Feminist Theology. No. 5,
January. Pp. 11–39.
______. 1997.“The One or the Many:The Great Goddess Revisited.” Feminist Theology. No.
15, May. Pp. 13–29.
Lozano,Wendy Griffin and Tanice G. Foltz. 1990.“Into the Darkness:An Ethnographic Study
of Witchcraft and Death.” Qualitative Sociology.Vol. 13, No. 3. Pp. 211–234.
Matriarch Study Group. 1977. Goddess Shrew. London:Women in Print.
McAllister, Pam. 1988. You Can’t Kill the Spirit. Philadelphia: New Society Publishers.
Monaghan, Patricia. 1997. The Goddess Path. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publishers.
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Morgan, Robin, ed. 1970. Sisterhood Is Powerful. New York:Vintage Books.

NightMare, M. Macha. 1998.“The W Word, or Why We Call Ourselves Witches.” Reclaiming
Quarterly. No. 71, Summer. Pp. 16–18.
______. 2000. Personal correspondence. Used with permission.
Robertson, Olivia. 1975. The Call of Isis. London: Neptune Press.
Roof,Wade Clark. 1999. Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Reli-
gion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Sjoo, Monica and Barbara Mor. 1981.The Ancient Religion of the Great Cosmic Mother of All.
Trondheim, Norway: Rainbow Press.
Spretnak, Charlene. 1978. Lost Goddesses of Early Greece. Boston: Beacon Press.
______, ed. 1982. The Politics of Women’s Spirituality. Garden City, NY:Anchor Books.
Starhawk. 1979. The Spiral Dance. San Francisco: Harper and Row Publishers.
______. 1987. Truth or Dare. San Francisco: Harper and Row Publishers.
______, Macha NightMare, and the Reclaiming Collective. 1997. The Pagan Book of Living
and Dying. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco.
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 About the Contributors

Mary Gerhart lectures frequently and widely on topics involving reli-
gion and literature, and theology and science. A John Templeton Founda-
tion prize-winning professor, she currently teaches at Hobart and William
Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York. She is the author of two books, in-
cluding Genre Choices, Gender Questions, and the co-author of New Maps
for Old: Explorations in Science and Religion and Metaphoric Process:The Cre-
ation of Scientific and Religious Understanding. She is the past editorial chair
of the Religious Studies Review.

Wendy Griffin is a professor of Women’s Studies at California State

University at Long Beach and the author of numerous articles on feminist
Witchcraft and Goddess Spirituality. She is the editor of Daughters of the
Goddess: Studies of Healing, Identity and Empowerment and has been a long-
time community activist, having served in leadership positions in the Cal-
ifornia branch of NOW, the Orange County ERA, and Long Beach’s
WomanShelter.

Rita M. Gross is a scholar-practitioner and a senior teacher of Shamb-

hala Buddhism. She teaches comparative studies in religion currently at
the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire. One of the early leaders of
women studies in religion and in Buddhist-Christian dialogue, she has

307
308 about the contributors

written many books and articles. Her best-known books are Buddhism Af-
ter Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis, and Reconstruction of Buddhism;
Soaring and Settling: Buddhist Perspectives on Contemporary Social and Reli-
gious Issues; and Religious Feminism and the Future of the Planet: A Buddhist-
Christian Conversation (co-authored with Rosemary Radford Ruether).

Riffat Hassan is founder of the International Network for the Rights

of Female Victims of Violence in Pakistan (INRFVVP)—an international
organization that heightens awareness regarding the scale, degree, and na-
ture of the violence being done to girls and women in Pakistan, provides
direct assistance to victims wherever possible, and eliminates the root-
causes of that violence. Hassan is one of the pioneers of feminist theology
in the Islamic tradition.When she is not teaching religious studies at the
University of Louisville, Kentucky, she returns regularly to her native
Pakistan.

Susannah Heschel holds the Eli Black Professorship in Jewish Studies at

Dartmouth College. She is the author of Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Je-
sus and editor of several books, including On Being a Jewish Feminist, In-
sider/Outsider: American Jews and Multiculturalism, and Betrayal: German
Churches and the Holocaust. She has been a frequent United Nations con-
tributor to conferences on religion and the environment. She is also co-
chair, with Cornel West, of the Tikkun Community, and contributes
regularly to Tikkun magazine.

Vasudha Narayanan is a native of India, and the president of the Amer-

ican Academy of Religion (the largest religious organization in North
America). A graduate of the University of Bombay, she currently teaches
religious studies at the University of Florida, where she is also the Direc-
tor of the Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research.

Eva Wong was born and raised in Hong Kong. She is a widely recog-
nized practitioner of the Taoist arts and a well-known translator of Taoist
texts. She is the author of 12 books on Taoism and traditional Chinese
feng-shui.
 about the contributors 309

Terry Woo grew up in Hong Kong and primarily learned what it meant
to be a Chinese Confucian from her father’s teachings at home. She cur-
rently teaches religious studies at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova
Scotia.

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Katherine K.Young is James McGill Professor at McGill University. She

publishes in the field of South Indian religion, gender and religion, and
comparative ethics. She has collaborated with Arvind Sharma on twelve
volumes on women and world religions.

Arvind Sharma is Birks Professor of Comparative Religion at McGill

University.Along with a steady stream of edited books on women and re-
ligion, he has published extensively in the fields of Hinduism and com-
parative religion.
 Index

Abelard, 199–200 American Civil Liberties Union, 253
Abortion, 154 Ames, Roger, 105
Ackerman, Susan, 148 Ammaiyar, Karaikkal, 42
Action sociale de la femme, 209–210 Ananda, 63
Acts of the Apostles, 176, 181 Ancestors, 32, 77, 100–101, 106, 120
Adam and Eve, 228–234, 265, 266 ancestral tablet, 104
Adelman, Howard, 157 Ancient Druid Order, 249
Adi Para Shakti temple, 46–47 Andal, 34, 40–41, 42, 44
Adler, Rachel, 149 Androcentrism, 4, 8
Admonition to Women, 111–112 Anglo Saxons, 192
Adultery, 188 Anskar, 193
Advaita, 14 Anthropology of religion, 8
Africa, 155, 195, 207, 212 Anti-Semitism, 163–164, 205
Aggada, 154 Antony, 184
Aging, 33, 66, 141 Apocalypse, 185
Agni, 32–33, 36 Arabian Peninsula, 219
Agriculture, 3, 26, 127, 247, 249, 280 Arabs, 194–195, 240–241. See also Men,
‘A’isha, 241 Arab/Muslim
Alchemy, 130, 131, 135. See also Taoism, Aradia: Gospel of the Witches, 247, 250,
female internal alchemy in 256
Alcohol, 79, 82 Aramaic, 175, 194
Alexandrian Witchcraft, 250 Ardhanarishvara, 41
‘Ali, 241 Ariadne Productions, 271
Alms, 63, 189 Arjuna, 17, 48. See also Bhagavad Gita
Altars, 15, 18, 19, 29, 33, 105 Art, 73, 138, 157, 209, 267. See also
Ambrose, 189 Performing arts

311
312 index

Asceticism, 5, 156, 179, 182, 189, 190, Brahmins, 12, 23, 24, 26, 27, 29, 31, 49
191, 274 widows, 39–40
Ashoka, 64 Breasts, 141
Asonga, 88 Brent, Margaret, 206
Assimilation, 160, 162, 163, 164 Briffault, Robert, 266
Astrology, 29–31, 44 Bronze Age, 269
Atisha, 84 Brooten, Bernadette, 154
Atlanta, Georgia, 42, 44, 45 Buckland, Raymond and Rosemary,
‘Attar, Farid-ud-din, 242 253
Augustine of Africa, 186, 189 Budapest, Zsuzsanna, 255–258, 270, 277,
Auspiciousness, 22, 23, 31, 39, 47, 50 294(n33)
Awakening, 1–2 Buddhism, 2, 109
Buddhahood, 70, 73–74, 88, 284(n3)
Baal Shem Tov, 157 canonical text written by women,
Barat, Madeleine Sophie, 209 64
Baron, Devora, 162 in China, 74–76, 77
Barr, Bob, 294(n24) and Confucianism, 106, 116
Barrett, Ruth Rhiannon, 258 early Indian, 61, 62–70
Basava, 49 future of, 97–98
Basil, 184, 189, 190, 192 gender issues in, 60, 61–62, 63,
Bates, Joseph, 211 69–70, 71–72, 73–74, 77, 78, 79,
Beatas, 199, 205 82, 86, 98, 101. See also
Béguines, 197, 205, 206 Enlightenment, and women;
Benedictines, 196, 197, 198, 292(n28) Rebirth, and women
Benevolence (jen), 102, 112, 113–114 historical Buddha, 5, 59, 62, 63, 70,
Beyond God the Father (Daly), 148 72, 73, 81–82, 92
Bhagavad Gita, 12, 51–55 in Japan, 76–79
Bharata Muni, 20 key teachings of, 65–70
Birkenau death camp, 164 Madyamika/Yogacara schools, 70, 73,
Birth, 15, 23, 29, 39, 47, 89, 105, 156, 74
161, 179, 203. See also Death, cycle Mahayana Buddhism, 61, 64, 70–79,
of birth and death;Women, 80, 81, 83, 88, 95–97
reproductive role of Nicheren Buddhism, 77, 79
Birth control, 5, 89, 154 nuns in, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 74, 76, 78,
Bishops, 180, 181–182, 190 79, 86, 91–95
Blacks, 212, 271 as pessimistic, 66
Bodhidharma, 75 Pure Land Buddhism, 75, 77, 78–79,
Bodhisattvas, 70–71, 74, 75, 80, 90, 95 90
Bolshevik Revolution, 158 Tantric Buddhism. See Buddhism,
Boniface, 193 Vajrayana Buddhism
Boniface VIII (Pope), 197 Theravada Buddhism, 61, 86
Boyarin, Daniel, 154 Tibetan orders, 84, 85, 86
Bradley, Marion Zimmer, 266, 272 T’ien T’ai (Tendai) and Hua-yen
Brahma, 18, 33 movements, 75, 77, 78, 79
 index 313

Vajrayana (Tantric) Buddhism, 61, 73, China, 70, 74–76, 77, 78, 83, 101,
77, 79–86 103, 116, 121, 125, 130, 131,
Zen Buddhism, 75, 76, 77, 78, 137, 142
284(n3) Boxer uprising in, 208
Buddhism After Patriarchy:A Feminist Christian missionaries in, 207–208
History,Analysis, and Reconstruction civil service in, 122
of Buddhism (Gross), 60 Cultural Revolution in, 104, 119
Burma, 64 Fa-lun-kung in, 109
Byzantium, 175, 186, 194, 195 history of, 121–122
May Fourth Movement in, 104
Calendars, 21 religious conflict in, 286(n22)
California Supreme Court, 257 White Cloud Monastery in, 119
California, University of, 265 Ching, Julia, 105
Calvin, John, 201 Ch’ing-ming festival, 120
Cambodia, 64 Chod practice, 86
Canada, 104 Christ, Carol, 265–266
Capitalism, 68 Christianity, 2, 27, 28, 91, 104, 109, 155,
Caro, Joseph, 157 163, 246, 272
Carr,Ann, 211, 291(n4) canonical/apocryphal texts of, 176
Caste system, 22, 23, 24–27, 31, 39, 43, diversity in early, 174, 197
47, 63, 70 Eastern Orthodox, 184, 185, 186,
and community, 27 193, 195, 196, 197, 292(n5)
and Islam, 215 gender issues in, 170, 172, 174, 183,
scheduled caste, 28 187, 189, 191, 199, 201, 202, 203,
See also Brahmins 228, 291(n4)
Cause and effect, 65, 69 genres of writing in, 186, 189, 193
Celibacy, 77, 78, 85–86, 91, 92–93, 180. global appeal of, 175
See also under Marriages Greek Orthodox, 176, 184, 185
Cernunnos, 248, 250, 278 and heresy/fringe groups, 189–190,
Cerularius, Michael, 196 191, 197
Chadwick, Henry, 178 house church communities in, 174,
Chalcedon council, 186 178–179, 206
Chalice and the Blade,The (Eisler), 267 iconoclastic controversy in, 193, 196
Chang Tao-ling, 132 Jewish converts to, 156, 160
Cheng I, 114, 117, 285(n12) mixed communities in, 190–191
Cheng Wei’s wife, 130–131, 135 and Old and New Testaments, 176
Chenu, Jeanne, 209 in period 150—325 C.E., 179–185
Chesser, Barbara, 255 in period 325—700 C.E., 180,
Children, 15, 23, 32, 34, 39, 86, 95, 172, 185–192
177, 185, 199, 203, 239 in period 700—1054 C.E., 192–196
child care, 210 in period 1054—1400 C.E., 196–200
child widows, 40 in period 1400—1800, 200–208
infant mortality rates, 89 in period, 1800—2000, 208–213
See also Birth Protestant, 184, 201, 202, 208, 211
314 index

Christianity (continued) foundations of, 117

Roman Catholic, 184, 185, 195, 202, gender issues in, 107, 108, 109,
204, 206, 208 110–113, 128
Russian Orthodox, 176, 186 and history of China, 121–122
stages in study of Christian women, as religion, 105
170–171 Congo, 207
Syriac Christians, 175–176, 194 Consciousness, 21, 67, 72, 73, 107, 140,
theology of, 181, 186, 189 234, 251, 258, 276
”voice” issue in, 176–177 Consorts, 84, 86
See also Jesus; Paul Constantine (Emperor), 185, 186, 195
Christina of Markyate, 198 Corruption, 77, 78, 152
Chrysostom, John, 188, 189 Council of Agde, 198
Church Fathers, Independent Virgins Council of Nicaea, 185–186, 196
(Salisbury), 183 Council of Trent, 205
Church of Isis, 275 Covenant of the Goddess (COG), 259,
Church of South India, 27 260, 275, 278
Church of the Resurrection and Craft, 247
Church of the Nativity, 186 Crawford, Patricia, 202
Church of Wicca, 253. See also Wicca Cremation, 50–51
Circle of Arcadia, 258 Crete, 264
Circle Sanctuary, 259–260, 275 Crowley,Aleister, 249, 250, 294(n17)
Circumcision, 178, 189 Crowley,Vivianne, 251–252, 262
Cistercian Order, 198, 292(n28) Crusades, 195
Cisteros, Ximénez (Cardinal), 204
Citizenship, 157, 158 Dakinis, 83
Civil disobedience, 260 Dalai Lama, 80, 86
Clare and sisters, 197 Daly, Mary, 148, 262–263, 277
Clark, Elizabeth, 182 Dance, 16, 19, 20, 21, 41, 42
Class, 2, 25, 31, 115–116, 174, 210, Davidman, Lynn, 55–56, 166
296(n63). See also Caste system Death, 15, 22, 23, 31, 47, 50–51, 67, 77,
Classic on Filial Piety for Women, 102, 105, 277
111, 112–113, 114, 285(n12) cycle of birth and death, 45, 52, 65,
Clear and Bright Festival, 101 66, 262
Clement, 181, 189 execution for crime of Witchcraft,
Clifton, Chas, 255 254, 263
Cloke, Gillian, 180 and kaddish prayer, 145, 146, 147,
COG. See Covenant of the Goddess 167
Colvin, Claudette, 212 maternal death rates, 89
Compassion, 71, 73, 76, 81, 89, 90, 172 murder of daughters/women, 216,
Competition, 114, 115 227, 240
“Conference of the Birds” (‘Attar), 242 See also Funerals; Genocide;
Confucianism, 2, 22, 74, 76, 99–118, 135 Martyrdom
and Buddhism, 106, 116 Deepavali festival of lights,
Confucius, 116, 285(n12), 286(n19) 17–18
 index 315

Deities, 3, 4, 5, 16–20, 32, 34, 36, 40, 41, textbooks on Jewish history, 149
45, 57, 84, 121, 124, 125, 246, 248, See also Literacy
265 Egalitarianism, 5, 8, 110, 265. See also
vs.Taoist immortals, 126 Equality/inequality
union with, 131 Egeria, 191
See also God; Goddesses Egolessness, 66, 67, 68, 69, 71–72, 86
Democracy, 5 Egypt, 246
Descartes, René, 204 Ehrenreich, Barbara, 263
Devi, 21, 54 Eightfold Noble Path (Buddhist), 68
Devotion, 48, 52, 53, 57, 75, 105, 156 Eilberg,Amy, 165
Dharma, 13–14, 39, 57, 60, 71 Eilberg-Schwartz, Howard, 154
texts on, 22, 25, 31–32, 39, 50 Eisler, Riane, 267
Dharma Shastras, 26, 39, 47, 48 Elephantine (island), 152
Diana, 247, 256, 274 Elites, 2, 4, 8, 76, 246
Dianic Witchcraft, 256–257, 258, 259, women, 3, 4, 157, 180
262, 270, 277, 294(n33), 295(n40) Eller, Cynthia, 294(n27)
Diasporic communities, 6, 44, 47, 50, 152 El-Or,Tamar, 166
Divorce, 110, 149, 152, 155, 157, 159, Empresses, 103
160, 165, 166, 188, 239, 240 Emptiness, 72–73, 74, 86, 97, 142
Dogen, 78 English, Deirdre, 263
Dolls, 11, 18, 19 Enlightenment, 62, 67, 70, 75, 81, 82
Doll’s House,A (Ibsen), 104 and women, 95–97, 136
Dominic of Padua., 197 See also Liberation
Draupadi (Princess), 48 Enlightenment era, 5, 162, 205
Dreyfus,Alfred, 209 Epiphany, 185
Druids, 249, 252, 273 Equality/inequality, 2, 28, 109,
Duality, 81, 103, 117–118, 191, 262. See 110, 111, 135, 147, 148,
also Male/female polarity; 160, 161, 163, 166, 170,
Yin/yang polarity 174, 188, 199, 204, 228,
Dublin Independent Church, 202 231, 236, 250, 287(n47).
Durdin-Robertson, Lawrence and See also Egalitarianism
Pamela, 272–273, 296(n73) Erasmus, Desiderius, 204
Durga, 11, 18, 19, 21, 44 Eschatology, 185
Essenes, 152
Early civilizations, 2, 3 Eucharist, 173, 174, 187, 193
Earth Goddess, 59, 60, 266 Eudes Rigaud (Archbishop), 199
EarthSpirit community, 275 Eustathius, 189, 190
Ecclesiastical History (Bede), 194 Evans, Sir Arthur, 264
Edict of Nantes, 209 Exemplary persons, 102, 108, 112,
Education, 3–4, 28, 40, 62, 122, 157, 113–118, 285(n7)
161, 165–166, 176–177, 205, 210,
280, 296(n63) Falk, Marcia, 167
co-educational schools, 216 Fall (expulsion from Garden of Eden),
religious schools, 5–6, 150, 160 228, 231–234, 265
316 index

Families, 102, 103–104, 105, 111, 114, Frazer, Sir James, 264
138, 175, 200 Freemasonry, 245–246, 249, 272, 274
Farrar, Janet and Stewart. 251 Freer, Jean, 270
Fasting, 21–22, 156, 193, 207 Friedan, Betty, 253
Fathers, 135 Frymer-Kensky,Tikvah, 151
Fatima, 241 Fundamentalism, 109
Febronia, 181 Funerals, 13, 50–51, 52, 78
Fei Yüan-ching, 134
Fellowship of Isis (FOI), 272–275, 278, Gage, Matilda Joselyn, 254
280, 295(n40) Gampopa, 85
Female symbolism/principle, 80, 81, 212 Ganesha, 44
Feminine characteristics, 111, 136–137, Ganga river, 17, 18
138, 188, 189 Garden of Eden, 228. See also Adam and
Feminism, 8, 55–56, 169, 170, 210, 216, Eve
217, 231, 243 Gardner, Gerald, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252,
and Buddhist “egolessness,” 69 257, 259
Feminist Spirituality, 244, 245 Gargi Vacaknavi, 54
in Germany, 163 Gender issues, 278, 279
Jewish feminists, 147, 148, 150, 151, gender differences in
153, 156, 160, 161, 165, 166–167 energies/physiology, 124, 139,
and witchcraft/Goddess Spirituality, 140, 141–142
253–254, 255, 257–258, 260, 266, gender politics, 243
, 268, 269, 295(n46) Jewish identity and gender identity,
Feminist Book of Lights and Shadows, 257 149, 150
Festival of Ghosts, 101 Pakistani laws concerning, 227
Festivals, 11, 12, 15, 17–18, 21, 22, 57, See also Male/female polarity;
100, 101, 120, 249, 260, 269 Marriages, husband/wife
Filial piety (hsiao), 100–101, 116, 117, relationship; Matriarchy; Men;
129, 285(n12). See also Classic on Misogyny; Patriarchy; Souls, as
Filial Piety for Women without gender;Women; under
Fingarette, Herbert, 102, 105, 286(n19) individual religions
Fiqh, 218 Genocide, 149, 163. See also Holocaust
Fire, 32–33, 37, 232 Gerhard, Eduard, 264
First/Second Awakenings, 212 Germany, 163, 164, 165, 166, 197, 205,
FOI. See Fellowship of Isis 251
Foods, 13, 15, 19, 21–23, 61, 194 Gimbutas, Marija, 264–265, 267,
forbidden/restricted, 23, 82, 159, 178, 295(n58)
189, 193 Gladstone,William, 246
See also Fasting Glastonbury, England, 270, 271–272
Four Noble Truths (Buddhist), 65, 66, Gnostica magazine, 274
67–68 Gnostics, 191, 255
France, 166, 195, 197, 209–211 Goa, 207
French Revolution, 158, 208 God, 14, 33, 40, 41, 42, 43, 55, 105, 158,
Francis of Assisi, 197 185, 188, 201, 233, 235
 index 317

feminine aspects of, 156 Gunkel, Hermann, 291(n3)

as male, 148, 151, 167, 263, 268 Gurus, 49–50
Goddesses, 3, 5, 8, 11, 12, 16, 18, 19, 22,
34, 41, 57, 151, 252, 256 Hadassah, 147
goddess temples, 45–46 Hadith, 218, 219–222, 229–231, 241
See also Goddess Spirituality; legal/non-legal, 220–221
individual goddesses Hajjaj, Muslim bin al-, 220, 230, 231
Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe Hanifa,Abu, 221
(Gimbutas), 264 Hanukkah, 149
Goddess of Ten Thousand Names, 258, Hanuman, 16, 17
272–277 Harappa Culture. See Indus Valley
Goddess Shrew journal, 268–269 Civilization
Goddess Spirituality, 243–245, 247, 273, Hare Krishnas, 17
275 Harmony (he), 115, 116–117, 120, 121,
in America, 262–268 236
conferences for, 265–266, 272, 278 Harvard Memorial Church, 262
fragmentation in, 280 Hathor, 274
in Great Britain, 268–272, 274 Hauptman, Judith, 153
problems and challenges, 277–281 Hazard, Dorothy, 203
women-only groups in, 279 Heart Sutra, 70, 72
Goldenberg, Naomi, 266, 295(n46) Helena (Saint), 186
Good vs. evil, 17, 18, 191, 212, 232, 234 Helena of Adiabene (Queen), 152
Gotras, 28–29, 30, 38 Hélöise, 199–200
Grant, Jacqelyn, 212 Henry VIII, 201
Grasping, 65, 66, 72 Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn,
Graves, Robert, 248, 257, 264, 272 246, 250
Great Britain, 166, 198, 208, 209, Hermits, 180, 184, 198, 199
296(n63) Hierarchy, 2–3, 5, 69, 106, 110, 115, 175,
British Folk Lore Society, 247, 249 189, 190, 273, 275
Church of England, 201, 202 High Magic’s Aid (Gardner), 248
Goddess Spirituality in, 268–272, 274 Hilda of Whitby, 194
Greenham Commons protests in, Hildegard, 197, 198
270–271 Hinduism, 2, 81, 273
witchcraft in, 246–252, 262 homes in, 13, 14–15, 17, 18–19, 21,
Great Goddess Reemerging 23, 32
Conference, 265–266 introductory texts on, 12
Great Mother Goddess, 264 Sri Vaishnava tradition, 13,
Greece, 175, 195 14, 32–33, 34, 40–41, 42, 49, 54
Greek Bible, 195 temples in, 42–47, 48–50
Greek mythology, 266 and Vajrayana Buddhism, 82
Greenblatt, Stephen, 208 Vira Shaiva tradition, 49
Green Man, 278 weddings in, 13, 23–42
Gregory of Nazianzus, 190 See also Vedas
Grief, 44, 145 Hispanics, 213
318 index

Hitler, 163 Interdependence, 65, 69, 72, 97

Ho Hsien-ku (Lady), 126 International Ladies Garment Workers
Holocaust, 164, 166 Union, 161
Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries International Society of Krishna
(Budapest), 257 Consciousness, 17
Homes, 114, 117, 130, 151, 159, 194, Iqbal, Muhammad, 220–221, 222–223,
226, 240. See also under Hinduism 223–224, 242
Homosexuality, 159, 160. See also on Adam and Eve story, 229, 233
Lesbians Iran, 109
Hong Kong, 120, 121, 142 Ireland, 272, 274
Horned God of the Greenwood, 248, Irenaeus, 181
250, 278 Irene (Empress), 196
House of the Goddess, 271 Isaiah, 152, 155, 171, 178
Hsün Tzu, 108, 109, 110, 115, 116, 284 Isasi-Díaz,Ada María, 213
(ch. 3, n1), 285(n5), 287(n38) Iseums, 274, 275
Hua-ku, 133 Isis, 246, 267, 280, 281. See also Goddess
Huguenots, 209 of Ten Thousand Names
Humanism, 110 Islam, 2, 109, 192, 194–195
Human nature, 106–107 and Adam and Eve, 228–234
“Human Situation,The:A Feminine division of labor concept in, 237,
View” (Saiving), 170 238, 239
Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa, 85 gender issues in, 216, 226–240
Hutton, Ronald, 249, 250, 276, 294(n18) Islamization, 226, 227
Hyman, Paula, 162 and modernity/Westernization, 226,
227, 228
Ibsen, Henrik, 104 source works of, 218–225
I Ching, 107, 114 See also Hadith; Muhammad
Ignorance, 65 (Prophet); Muslims; Qur’an
Ijma’, 218, 222–223, 231 Isle of Avalon Foundation, 271
Ijtihad, 218, 222, 223–225 Isma’il al Bukhari, Muhammad ibn, 220,
degrees of, 224 230, 231
Illuminists, 204 Israel, 146–147
Immortal Ho (Lady), 128–129 ancient Israel/Judah, 148, 151, 152
Immortality, 66, 67 Israeli army, 161, 166
Taoist immortals, 120, 122, 123, 125, Western Wall in, 166
126–132, 133, 134, 135 Isserles, Moses, 157
Impermanence, 66, 67, 78, 97 Istihsan, 221
India, 61, 65, 79, 85, 86, 91. See also
Hinduism Jains, 27, 63
Individualism, 201 James, 178
Industrial revolution, 5, 247 James, Leonora, 251
Indus Valley Civilization, 12, 19, 57 Jansenism, 206
Innate characteristics, 97, 98, 109 Japan, 70, 74, 76–79, 91, 208
Inquisition, 156–157, 203, 204, 205 Jayran, Shan, 271, 278
 index 319

Jerome, 184, 189 Kant, Immanuel, 286(n19)

Jesuits, 205, 207 Kaplan, Mordecai, 159
Jesus, 5, 152, 171–173, 176, 177, 212 Karkhi, 223
death/crucifixion of, 172–173, 175, Karma, 52–53, 65, 67, 85, 87, 278
182, 193 Kaufman, Debra, 166
divine/human natures of, 175, Khadija, 241
185–186, 194 Khan, Syed Ahmad, 224
as example, 190 Kimpa Vita, 207
Jewish followers of, 178 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 212
Jewish identity, 149, 150, 162, 167, 175 King Mu (Emperor), 126
Jewish People, Jewish Thought, 149 Kishwar, Madhu, 56
Jewish Studies, 148, 160 Knowledge, 52, 53, 55–56, 57
Jewish Women’s Organization Korea, 70, 74, 76
(Germany), 163 Kraemer, Ross, 152
John, Gospel of, 176, 185 Krishna, 16, 17, 19, 40, 41, 48. See also
Jonas, Regina, 165 Bhagavad Gita
Jones, Kathy, 270, 271, 276 Kshatriya, 26
Judaism, 2, 21, 172, 174, 189 Kukai, 77
Conservative, 147, 159 Kwan-yin, 76, 78
destruction of Jerusalem Temple, 153
emancipation of Jews, 157, 158, 162 Lakshmi, 11, 12, 16, 18, 26, 36, 44, 57
female converts to, 152 forms of, 39, 46
gender issues in, 145, 146–150, 152, Laksminkara (Princess), 82
155–156, 157, 159–160, 161, Lamond, Frederic, 252
162–163, 164–165, 166, 228 Landowners, 26
Hasidic, 145, 157–158, 160 Laos, 64
Jewish law, 148–149, 150, 154, 155, La Sorcière (Michelet), 246, 254
157, 159, 163, 165 Laurence,Anne, 202
modern theology, 162–163 Lazarus, Moritz, 163
mysticism in, 155, 156. See also Leadership, 191
Kabbalah Lee, Mother Ann, 212
Orthodox, 146–147, 150, 159–160, Legge, James, 105
165–166 Leland, Charles, 247, 250
Reconstructionist, 159 Leo XIII( Pope), 210
Reform, 158–159, 165, 166 Lesbians, 257, 259, 279. See also
Second Temple period, 152 Homosexuality
women’s organizations in, 162, 163 Levenson, Joseph, 286(n17)
See also Israel; Jewish identity;Talmud Levinas, Emanuel, 163
Justin, 181 Liberalism, 5, 171
Jutta, 198 Liberation (moksha), 20, 39, 45, 50, 52,
Jyotisha, 29 53, 54, 55, 56–57, 62, 63, 65, 73.
See also Enlightenment
Kabbalah, 155, 156, 160, 246 Liberation theology, 213
Kane, Pandurang, 13 Life of Christina of Markyate,The, 198
320 index

Life of Theodotus and the Seven Virgins, advertisements for, 24, 27, 28, 29,
190 30–31
Ligue patriotique des Françaises, 210 celibacy in, 187, 188
Literacy, 4, 5, 7, 122, 155, 175, 176, 177 compulsory/arranged, 179, 181,
of Muslim women, 225 215–216
Llewellyn Publications, 255 husband/wife relationship, 110–113,
Lokacarya, Pillai, 48 115, 135, 153, 155, 179, 201
Lollards, 202 intermarriage, 27, 160
Long,Asphodel, 272, 296(n63) remarriage, 39–40, 188, 240
Lorde,Audre, 213 See also Divorce;Weddings;Wife
Lotus Sutra, 79, 284(n12) beating
Love, 31, 34, 40, 113, 114, 147, 169, 185, Martello, Leo, 253
188 Martial arts, 138, 139
Loyola, Ignatius, 205 Martyrdom, 179, 181–182, 183, 200
Luke, Gospel of, 171 Mary of Magdala, 172, 292(n5)
Luther, Martin, 201 Matriarchy, 265, 266, 273, 295(n61)
Lyceums, 274, 280 Matriarchy Reclaim and Research
Network (MRRN), 269, 270
Ma’ad, 223 Matriarchy Study Group, 268–269
Machig Labdron, 86 Maududi,A. S., 236, 238
Macrina the Elder and Macrina the Meditation, 21, 68–69, 73, 75, 76, 131,
Younger, 192 138, 139, 284(n3)
Madahib, 218 in Vajrayana Buddhism, 80, 81, 83, 86
Maddelena, 247 Melammed, Renee Levine, 156–157
Madhva, 12, 14 Melania the Younger, 182, 187
Magic. See Ritual magic Men, 2, 3, 8, 12, 31–32, 61, 76, 83, 122,
Mahabharata, 20, 21, 48, 52 137, 138, 140, 141, 146, 147, 246,
Mahadevi,Akka, 42 272
Mahatma Gandhi, 28 Arab/Muslim, 216, 217, 218, 225
Mahisha, 11, 18 as feminized, 191
Mah Ku, 130, 135 and Goddess Spirituality, 245
Maimonides, Moses, 155 Jewish, 149, 153, 156, 161, 163,
Maitreyi, 54 164–165
Male/female polarity, 248—249, 259, male dominance, 89, 90, 156,
261 235–240, 254, 265
Manicheans, 191 maleness, 189
Mantras/mudras, 81 masculine principle, 81, 212
Manu, Laws of, 25, 26, 37 pagan masculinity, 278–279
Mara, 59, 81 primeval man, 33
Marcionites, 191 as scribes, 177
Marpa, 85 as villains, 135
Marriages, 4, 78, 95, 105, 134, 149, 155, See also Monks
158, 159–160, 165, 166, 200, 202, Mencius, 102, 108, 109, 115, 116
206, 288(n58) Menopause, 141
 index 321

Menstruation, 22, 47–48, 89, 140–141, Mother of God, 205, 209

153, 155, 156, 161 Mountaingrove, Ruth and Jean,
Mesopotamia, 19 263–264
Messalians, 189 Mou Tsung-san, 105–106, 107
Messianic movements, 152 MRRN. See Matriarchy, Matriarchy
Michelet, Jules, 246, 254 Reclaim and Research Network
Middle Ages, 154, 157, 163, 194, 198 Muhammad (Prophet), 215, 218, 219,
Midwifery, 263 240
Milarepa, 85 Companions of, 223
Miller,William, 211 wives of, 241
Mind vs. body, 4 Mujerista theology, 213
Minyans, 146 Murray, Margaret, 247–248
Miracles, 126, 158, 172, 241 Murugan, 40
Misandry, 8 Music, 11, 12, 19, 20–21, 42, 148, 151,
Mishnah, 152, 153 157, 159, 267
Misogyny, 91, 92, 93, 95, 148, 187, 204 gospel song tradition, 211–213
Missionaries, 64, 173, 193, 195, 207–208 Muslims, 83, 154, 155, 175, 195,
Protestant, 208 215
Mists of Avalon,The (Bradley), 272 Shi’ite, 241
Mithraism, 174, 175 Sunnis, 224
M. Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English See also Islam; Men,Arab/Muslim
Dictionary, 13 Mysterious Lady of Nine Heavens, 123,
Modernity, 226, 227 129
Moksha. See Liberation Mystics. See Judaism, mysticism in;
Monaghan, Patricia, 276 Taoism, mystical Taoism; under
Monasticism, 62, 64, 68, 71, 75–76, 83, Women
84–85, 86, 191–192, 197
double monasteries, 198 Nalanda University, 83, 84
reforms in monastic life, 197 Namaste, 15
and women, 91–95, 180, 184, 191. Natya Shastra, 20
See also Buddhism, nuns in; Nuns Navaratri festival, 11–12, 17, 18–19, 21,
Monks, 61, 63, 64, 74, 75, 77, 78, 79, 22, 57
92–93, 179, 180, 198, 292(n28) Nepantilism, 207
Monophysitism, 194 Nero, 181
Monotheism, 4, 151 Nestorianism, 194
Montanists, 189, 190, 191 Neumark, Martha, 165
Moon/lunar cycle, 22, 26, 30, 248, 256, Newcastle, University of, 252
262 New Forest Witches, 249
Mor, Barbara, 269 Newspapers, 24
Morality, 68, 89, 91, 216, 232, 233 Nicheren, 79
Moses, 149 Nicholas I (Pope), 196
Mother Empress of the West, 124, Nicholas Priory (saint), 200
125–128, 132, 137, 138, 140–141 Nigeria, 274
Mother Goddess, 269 NightMare, Macha M., 261
322 index

Nirvana, 68, 71 Patriarchy, 4, 5, 8, 14, 22, 38, 41, 51, 69,

Nivison, David, 105 110, 117, 135, 148, 150, 156, 172,
North Africa, 155 174, 216, 217, 225, 243, 254, 263,
Nü Hsiao Ching, 116, 288(n48) 267, 272
Nunneries, 198 and goddesses, 151
Nuns, 91, 135, 192, 195, 197, 198, 199, Patriarchal Takeover, 268
208. See also under Buddhism Patton, Laurie L., 56
Paul, 174, 178, 181, 185
Okada Takehito, 106–107 Epistles of, 173, 174–175, 176, 179,
Oklahoma State University, 217 184
Old Dorothy, 248 and women, 201, 202, 203
Old Religion, 250, 251, 252, 253 Paul, Diana Y., 88
Olympias, 182 Paula, 187
Om, 20 Pax Romana, 187
Oppression, 170–171, 213, 259 Pelagia of Antioch, 181–182
Oral traditions, 7, 8, 25, 54, 63, 177 Perfection, 188, 200
Origen, 181, 184 Performing arts, 16, 20–21
Original sin, 234. See also Adam and Eve Perpetua, 181
Ottoman Empire, 157, 195 Persephone, 266, 267, 271
Outcastes, 27, 28 Persians, 175, 195
Peskowitz, Miriam, 154
Pachomius, 184, 191 Peter, 178
Padmasambhava, 84, 85 Gospel of, 173
Pagan Book of Living and Dying,The, 277 Pharisees, 152
Pagan Front/Federation, 251, 252 Philippines, 207
Paganism, 244, 245, 247 Philosophy, 54, 56–57, 105, 155, 187,
pagan masculinity, 278–279 197, 199
Pakistan, 215, 226 Physiology, 139
Pakistan Commission on the Status Picard, Baronne, 209
of Women, 227 Pilgrimages, 77, 191
Palestine, 152, 161, 175. See also Israel Pinianus, 187
Paley, Grace, 162 Pintchman,Tracy, 56
Pan (god), 246—247, 248 Pius XI (Pope), 197
Pan Chao, 111 Planets, 29–30, 44
Pandora, 266 Plaskow, Judith, 266
Pan-European Wiccan Convention, 251 Poetry, 40, 41–42, 43, 54, 94, 123, 138,
Paradise Paper,The (Stone), 268 242
Paradoxes, 7 Political power, 2, 3, 26
Parks, Rosa, 212 Politics of Women’s Spirituality,The
Parliament of World Religions (1993), (Spretnak), 266–267
275 Polygyny, 107, 155
Parvati, 20, 34, 41 Poverty, 154, 173, 184, 187, 199
Pascal, Blaise and Jacqueline, 206 Prayer, 14, 15, 44, 49, 105, 146, 147, 149,
Passover, 166–167 154, 156, 159, 166, 207
 index 323

Pregnancy, 15, 23, 31, 89, 95, 206, 239, Rebirth, 44, 52, 65
240 and women, 75, 87–90, 95
Pride, sin of, 169 Reciprocity, 102, 112
Priesand, Sally, 165 Reclaiming Collective, 260–262, 269
Priests/priestesses, 4, 5, 8, 42, 49, 79, Redpath, Jones and Tina, 272
151, 174, 180, 211, 248, 254, 265, Reformation, 200, 201
272, 274 Reformed Congregation of the
Primal religions, 8 Goddess-International, 258
Primordial Great Powerful Goddess, Reforms, 5, 40, 62, 78, 159, 160, 196,
46 200, 205, 210, 263
Private/public space, 226 Renunciation, 62–63, 81, 180, 187, 188,
Prophets, 151–152, 178. See also under 194
Women Retreats, 85, 134
Prostitutes, 5, 172, 181, 199 Ricci, Matteo, 208
Puberty, 15, 140 Rishis, 28, 38
Puranas, 21, 51 Ritual magic, 246, 249, 250, 251, 259,
Puritans, 206, 208 261, 271
Purity/impurity, 47, 50, 82, 101, 153. See Ritual of Silkworms, 103
also Ritual pollution Ritual pollution, 23, 28, 82. See also
Purity/impurity
Qiyas, 218, 223 Rituals, 8, 12, 13, 14, 19, 21, 22, 23, 31,
Quakers, 203, 204, 208 42, 49, 57, 82, 100, 103, 117, 118,
Qur’an, 218, 219, 220, 221, 223, 224, 121, 124, 178, 189, 245–246, 256,
225, 239, 240, 242 267
creation of humans in, 228–231 and coordinates of land and time,
and creation of woman for man, 33–34
235–236 and daughters, 51
and Fall from Garden of Eden, and devotion, 48
231–234 Drawing Down the Moon, 248
Hadith inconsistent with, 230–231 single sex, 270, 279
state and family rituals, 104–105
Rabbis, 157, 158, 159, 166. See also under See also Funerals; Ritual magic;
Women Weddings, wedding rituals
Rabi’a, 241–242 Robertson, Olivia, 272–273, 274, 275,
Rainey, Lee, 287(n47) 278, 296(n73)
Rajanya class, 25–26 Roman state religion, 174, 175, 179, 187
Rama/Ramayana, 11, 16–17, 20, 21, 35, Rome, fall of, 192–193
38, 41 Roof,Wade Clark, 280
Ramabai, Pandita, 40 Rosh Hashanah, 21
Ramanuja, 12, 24, 26, 27–28 Roy, Ram Mohun, 49
Ranck, Shirley, 268
Rape, 93, 150, 227, 257, 271 Sacraments, 31, 33, 49, 174, 201, 202
Ravenwood Church, 253 Sacred Mother of Tung-ling, 129–130,
Rebellion, 114, 115, 207, 238, 254 135
324 index

Sages, 108, 285(n7) Shantarakshita, 84

Saicho, 77 Shari’ah, 218, 220, 221, 223, 224
Saints. See under Women Shariputra, 96–97, 98
Saiving Goldstein,Valerie, 169–170 Shekhinah, 156
Saiyyads, 215 Shinran, 78–79
Salisbury, Joyce, 183 Shinto tradition, 77, 273
Salvation, 20, 201, 234 Shiva, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 40, 41, 42, 44,
Samavai, 48–49 49, 54
Samsara, 65–66, 69, 71, 73, 87 Shotoku (Prince), 76
Sanders,Alex, 250 Shudras, 26
Sangnier, Marc and Renée, 209 Siddartha Gautama. See Buddhism,
Sarasvati, 11, 12, 18, 20, 57 historical Buddha
Saraswati, Dayanand, 49 Siddhas, 82–83
Sasso, Sandy, 165 Sillon, 209
Satan, 247. See also Shaitan Simplicity, 120, 121
Sati, 40 Sita, 16, 17, 34, 35, 38
Schneiderman, Rose, 161 Sixtus IV (Pope), 203
Science, 226, 246 Sjoo, Monica, 269
Scota, 273 Slavery, 212
Scotland, 245 Social Catholicism, 209, 210
Seasons, 127, 247, 249, 250, 256, 260, Socialism, 5, 164
267 Societas Rosicruciana, 246
Secularism, 1, 102, 105, 171 Society for Psychical Research, 246
Self-cherishing, 66, 70, 71. See also Solitaries, 191–192. See also Hermits
Egolessness Songs of the Women Elders, 64, 94
Self-cultivation, 102, 112, 113, 114, Sorcery, 155
285(n7) Souls, 40, 41, 44, 51, 52, 66
Seljuks, 195 as without gender, 56–57
Sembiyan Mahadevi (queen), 49 Sound, 20–21
Seven Taoist Masters, 123, 136 Spain, 195. See also Inquisition
Seventh-day Adventists, 204, 211 Spretnak, Charlene, 266, 267, 275
Sexism, 147, 148, 213, 263 Sri, 20, 26, 46. See also Lakshmi
Sexuality, 80, 81, 82, 83, 91, 92–93, 138, Sri Lanka, 64, 65, 75–76
153, 155, 157, 163, 188, 206, 243, Sri Vaishnavas, 26–27
250, 259, 263, 265 Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 169–170, 291(n3)
and the Fall, 234 Starhawk, 260, 261–262, 270, 276–277,
heterosexism, 156 280
See also Celibacy; Homosexuality; State(s), 102, 103, 158, 164, 182, 188,
Lesbians 205, 253
Shaitan (Satan), 231, 232, 233 separation of church and state, 209
Shakers, 212 See also Roman state religion
Shakti Mandir temple, 44 Status, 2–3. See also under Women
Shang-yüan (Lady), 126, 127 Stereotypes, 1, 80, 88, 89, 93, 98, 148,
Shankara, 12, 24, 26, 54 154, 163, 164, 172, 204
 index 325

Stone, Merlin, 265, 266, 268 mystical Taoism, 119, 132–136

Story-tellers, 177 number of adherents to, 121
Strikes, 162 Shang-ch’ing Taoism, 119, 124, 132
Subbulaksmi, Mrs.(“Sister”), 40 The Taoist Canon, 121, 122
Suffering, 65, 66, 67, 72, 81, 113 See also Immortality,Taoist immortals
Sufis, 241, 242 Tarango,Yolanda, 213
Sun, 26 Temples, 13, 42–47, 79
Sunnah, 218, 219, 223 destruction of, 74, 153
Sun Pu-erh, 123, 124–125, 136, 137, goddess temples, 45–46
138, 142 land surrounding, 45
Susan B.Anthony Coven Number 1, women patrons of, 48–50
255, 257 Tenenbaum, Shelley, 55–56
Sutra on Changing the Female Sex,The, 88 Tennyson,Alfred Lord, 246
Symbolism, 80, 81, 83, 118, 148, 179 Teresa of Avila, 203–204
and Goddess Spirituality, 265–266 Tertullian, 181, 189
status symbols, 2–3 Thailand, 64
in witchcraft, 245–246, 250, 254, Theodora (Empress), 196, 197
294(n27) Theodosius I (Emperor), 182
Syncretism, 207 Theosophical Society, 246
Synod of Whitby, 194 Thirty Years War, 205
Syria, 175–176 Thomas Aquinas, 198
Szilagyi, Masika, 257 Tibet, 61, 70, 80, 83–86
Szold, Henrietta, 147, 165 Tirukkoneri Dasyai, 54–55
Tonsure, 39
Taboos, 154 Torah, 154, 156
Tacitus, 181 Toshihiko Izutsu, 233–234
Taiwan, 91, 121, 142 Trade, 3, 19, 157
Taize brothers, 211 Trigger, Bruce G., 2
Talmud, 149, 152, 153–154, 155, 160, Trikaya doctrine, 70
166 Triple Goddess, 248, 256, 257, 278
Tamil speakers, 24, 26, 28, 31, 40, 43, 44, Truth or Dare: Encounters with Power,
45–46 Authority, and Mystery (Starhawk),
T’ang Chun-i, 107–108 261–262
Taoism, 2, 74, 109, 116 Tsongkhapa, 86
classics of, 120 Tulkus, 86
female internal alchemy in, 124–125, Turkey, 175. See also Ottoman Empire
136–142 Tu Wei-ming, 110–111, 117
female Taoist deities and immortals, Twenty-four Histories of China,The,
128–132, 133, 134. See also 121
Mother Empress of the West
female teachers in, 123 Ulama, 224, 225
history of women in, 121–125, 131 Unitarian Universalist Church, 268
landmark events in development of, United States, 2, 104, 159, 164, 165, 169,
124 206–207, 245
326 index

United States (continued) Weil, Simone, 211

Goddess Spirituality in, 262–268, 274 Westernization, 226
Protestant denominations in, 211 Westphalia,Treaty of, 205
Revolutionary War, 206, 208 When God Was a Woman (Stone), 265,
witchcraft in, 253–262 268
Universities, 197, 205, 252 White, Ellen, 204, 211
Upanishads, 12, 42, 54 White Goddess,The (Graves), 248
Wicca, 8, 249–250, 251, 252, 253, 254,
Vaivasvata, 33 256, 270, 294(nn 13, 24). See also
Valiente, Doreen, 249, 251 Witches/witchcraft
Vedanta, 12 Wiccan,The (newsletter), 251
Vedas, 12, 14, 16, 19, 20, 23, 26, 28, 29, Widows. See under Women
33, 36, 42, 43, 54 Wife-beating, 155, 157, 236, 238
Rig Veda, 24–25, 34, 42, 51 Williams, Delores, 212
Vegetarianism, 22, 23 Wisdom, 57, 68, 69, 73, 81, 102, 246,
Veiling, 226 294(n13)
Venkateswara, 44 WITCH, 253–254
Verbermacher, Hannah Rachel, 158 Witchcamps, 261
Victorian Age, 209 Witchcraft Today (Gardner), 248
Vietnam, 64, 70, 76 Witch Cult in Western Europe,The
Vimalakirtinirdesha Sutra, 96 (Murray), 247–248
Virginity, 179, 184, 188, 200, 202 Witches/witchcraft, 243, 244, 245–262,
meaning of word “virgin,” 266 280, 294(n18)
Virgin Mary, 205, 209 persecution of witches, 263
Vishnu, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 26, 32, 34, 36, See also Wicca
37, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 46 Wolff, Madaleva (Sister), 209
Vishvaksensa, 32 Womanist theology, 212, 213
Visualization practices, 73, 81, 83, 86 Woman’s Bible,The (Stanton), 170
Vratas, 22 Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets
(Walker), 267
Wali Ullah (Shah), 221 WomanSpirit magazine, 263–264, 267
Walker, Barbara, 267 Womanspirit Rising (Christ and Plaskow),
Wang Ch’ung-yang, 136 266
Wang Yang-ming, 103, 286(n14) Women, 14, 29, 101, 225
Wars, 3, 4, 40, 64, 67, 163, 164, 265, 280 bishops/presbyters, 190, 211
Weddings, 13, 23–42 black, 212, 271
pre-wedding rituals, 32–33 clergy, 120, 202, 203
theological perspectives on, 40–42 confining, 238
wedding rituals, 31–40 creation of, 228–236
See also Marriages deaconesses, 174, 182, 184, 191
Weems, Renata, 212 of diasporic communities, 6, 47, 50
Wegner, Judith, 153 elites, 3, 4, 157, 180
Wei Hua-ts’un (Lady), 119, 123, 124, empowerment of, 22, 150, 240, 279
126, 132–133, 134 and evil, 152, 155, 234
 index 327

founders of American religious widows, 39–40, 174, 184, 191, 241

communities, 207 women’s movements, 2, 62, 259, 263.
as grandmothers, 103, 104 See also Feminism
gurus, 49–50 women’s suffrage, 210
hermits, 180 writers, 122, 123, 162, 170, 176, 177,
and Holocaust, 164 181, 183, 198, 204, 206, 211, 212,
ideal woman, 39 249, 260, 276. See also Women,
immigrant women, 162, 164 poets
martyrs, 181, 184 See also Feminine characteristics;
military activities of American Gender issues; Nuns; under
women, 206 Enlightenment; Rebirth
mystics, 205–206, 241–242, 273 Women’s Trade Union League, 161
as patrons of temples, 48–50, 56 Worldviews, 4, 8, 14
philosophers, 54, 56 Wu-hou (Empress), 128
poets, 41–42, 54, 56 Wu-ti (Emperor), 126
prophets, 150, 151, 173, 202, 204 Wyclif, 202
rabbis, 147, 148, 161, 165, 166
and renunciation, 63 Yellow Emperor, 123, 129
reproductive role of, 4, 39, 60, 108, Yeshe Tsogyel, 84
115, 237, 238, 239, 279. See also Yiddish, 162
Birth; Pregnancy Yin/yang polarity, 103, 107, 125, 137
saints, 204–205, 242 York, Michael, 280
scholars/teachers, 55–56, 64, 86, 102, Yu-tzu, 114
123, 132, 150, 153, 167
separatist women’s culture, 269, 270, Zaddiks, 157
295(n36) Zavier, Francis, 208
status of, 25, 91, 93, 133, 135, 152, Zia-ul-Haq, Muhammad, 227
153, 160, 163, 227 Zionism, 147, 160, 161, 162, 164–165
trade unionists, 210 Zoroastrians, 175