I can't remember the last time I read a non-fiction book cover to cover in 2 days! "Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine" was one of those books that once you start reading is so hard to put down. When I heard that Joseph Campbell's book on Goddesses was available I didn't think
twice and got it right away. I've read his Power of Myth, Hero with a thousand faces and have always felt he should have done the same for the heroines of Mythology. Now someone finally pieced together his lectures and writings and put out this volume which is a must read at least according to me.
As a modern, so-called liberated woman with a feminist bent of mind, I constantly juggle different roles throughout the day. My choice of career has also put me in a setting where i am always in the minority w.r.t my gender and have to negotiate work spaces that are often male dominated. To add on top of that, I was brought up in a patriarchal culture (India) and although born a Hindu and very familiar with the goddesses of the indian pantheon, i felt most of them were seen as consorts to the men in power, mostly role models for a domestic life (except for Kali of course) that left me wanting.
East or in the West women are now at exciting crossroads. I read somewhere that in the next decade 800M women are going to enter the formal economy as wage earners for the first time - majority from the so-called emerging markets! Everyone is touting the "She-economy". On the one hand, individual achievement of women is lauded and many barriers have been broken, but on the other our biological and social instinct still reigns supreme. In a non-scientific experiment i scanned through the facebook feeds of my women friends to see what topics they write about and this seemed to confirm the fact that biology and society trumps! No wonder Katniss Everdeen resonated with millions of women and girls who are looking for an alternative mythology.
How do we women (and men) find our footing in these times? What is the role of the goddess? Is it primarily biological - the giver of life? Hasn't the Goddess also been the symbol of transformation throughout history? Hasn't she also been a muse, the inspiration for creativity? You will find the answers in this book.
Campbell traces the origins of the Goddess mythology and how it differs from plantation tribes (that are feminine) and herding/warring tribes (which are more masculine). What happened when these two groups of people met? How did one mythology overtake or incorporate the other? I personally liked the section of the book where he compares the Illiad and the Odyssey and how you could view the former as masculine and the latter as feminine. He draws on all religions and shows us how these myths are universal.
It was sheer joy to read this book. At many times in my life i have had to move from one role to another and in most of these transformations i have learned something about myself, grown through that experience although some of these were very difficult circumstances. Luckily i am also married to a person who has been with me through these circumstances and has not shied away from his own transformations either. It also happened that this weekend we finished watching the final movie of the Linklater trilogy "Before Midnight". Celine struggling with motherhood, her career, reaching her 40s, feeling like not having any time for her own passions - i felt like telling her pick up a copy of "Goddesses" and let Joseph Campbell guide you through the myths of the goddesses who were and will always be.
And no this is not a self-help book, and this is certainly not a Sheryl Sandberg "lean in". JC doesn't have all the answers, but he thinks that today's Goddesses will find a way out and write their own myths. In his own words.....
"The challenge of the moment—and there are many who are meeting it, accepting it, and responding to it, in the way not of men but of women—the challenge is to flower as individuals, neither as biological archetypes nor as personalities imitative of the male. And, to repeat, there are no models in our mythology for an individual woman’s quest. Nor is there any model for the male in marriage to an individuated female. We are in this thing together and have to work it out together"
As a modern, so-called liberated woman with a feminist bent of mind, I constantly juggle different roles throughout the day. My choice of career has also put me in a setting where i am always in the minority w.r.t my gender and have to negotiate work spaces that are often male dominated. To add on top of that, I was brought up in a patriarchal culture (India) and although born a Hindu and very familiar with the goddesses of the indian pantheon, i felt most of them were seen as consorts to the men in power, mostly role models for a domestic life (except for Kali of course) that left me wanting.
East or in the West women are now at exciting crossroads. I read somewhere that in the next decade 800M women are going to enter the formal economy as wage earners for the first time - majority from the so-called emerging markets! Everyone is touting the "She-economy". On the one hand, individual achievement of women is lauded and many barriers have been broken, but on the other our biological and social instinct still reigns supreme. In a non-scientific experiment i scanned through the facebook feeds of my women friends to see what topics they write about and this seemed to confirm the fact that biology and society trumps! No wonder Katniss Everdeen resonated with millions of women and girls who are looking for an alternative mythology.
How do we women (and men) find our footing in these times? What is the role of the goddess? Is it primarily biological - the giver of life? Hasn't the Goddess also been the symbol of transformation throughout history? Hasn't she also been a muse, the inspiration for creativity? You will find the answers in this book.
Campbell traces the origins of the Goddess mythology and how it differs from plantation tribes (that are feminine) and herding/warring tribes (which are more masculine). What happened when these two groups of people met? How did one mythology overtake or incorporate the other? I personally liked the section of the book where he compares the Illiad and the Odyssey and how you could view the former as masculine and the latter as feminine. He draws on all religions and shows us how these myths are universal.
It was sheer joy to read this book. At many times in my life i have had to move from one role to another and in most of these transformations i have learned something about myself, grown through that experience although some of these were very difficult circumstances. Luckily i am also married to a person who has been with me through these circumstances and has not shied away from his own transformations either. It also happened that this weekend we finished watching the final movie of the Linklater trilogy "Before Midnight". Celine struggling with motherhood, her career, reaching her 40s, feeling like not having any time for her own passions - i felt like telling her pick up a copy of "Goddesses" and let Joseph Campbell guide you through the myths of the goddesses who were and will always be.
And no this is not a self-help book, and this is certainly not a Sheryl Sandberg "lean in". JC doesn't have all the answers, but he thinks that today's Goddesses will find a way out and write their own myths. In his own words.....
"The challenge of the moment—and there are many who are meeting it, accepting it, and responding to it, in the way not of men but of women—the challenge is to flower as individuals, neither as biological archetypes nor as personalities imitative of the male. And, to repeat, there are no models in our mythology for an individual woman’s quest. Nor is there any model for the male in marriage to an individuated female. We are in this thing together and have to work it out together"
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