"McVickar-Edwards, Carolyn - The Storytellers Goddess" - читать интересную книгу автора (McVickar-Edwards Carolyn)

and make them tangible.

Modern urban people, however, are becoming increasingly disconnected
from gods and values that split mind from body, soul from Earth, and
dark from wisdom. Some are inventing a new brand of culture, a new
religion. Whether they are remembering it in states of creative
trance, reconvening it from shards of history and anthropology, or
winging it in candlelit living rooms, they are re-enchanting themselves
with the Great Feminine Principle. By Her invocation, they are weaving
a web of life with strands of death and the dark. They are telling
their personal stories in the context of ritual: they are calling up
ancient knowings mixed with right-now longing for healing, communal
vulnerability, and everyday intimacy with Sister Earth. They call
their religion Goddess spirituality, Earth-centered spirituality,
Goddess consciousness, or neo paganism all refer to the present-day
revival of Earth-based religions and the sense that Earth is sacred and
divine. It is an attitude and way of life practiced by many different
ancient peoples and by groups of indigenous peoples today.

Like people from all times, we who long for the Goddess need Her
stories to know Her. This book is a collection of thirty stories about
thirty-four Goddesses from twenty cultures I have both found and
invented these stories, spinning them from bits of her story. Each
story is accompanied by an introduction that places it in cultural and
historical context, talks about the story's origin, and mentions the
props I use to invoke that story's Goddess.

A treasury of Goddess stories cannot be complete. Her shapes and lore
are too myriad for that. For me, this collection lacks at least the
story of Nu Kua, the Great Snail Woman of ancient China; the story of
Allat, Goddess of the Sun, who preceded the currently worshiped male
God Allah of Islam; and a story that honors woman-for-woman sexual love
on a divine scale.

One author's scope of time and research is bound to be limited. Other
tellers, authors, parents, and teachers will talk and talk of the
Goddess until Her lore permeates the culture. For Her face, in story
form, is as many colored as our own. Her hands are as young and as
weathered. Her truths are the paradoxical and sensual mysteries we
seek. Her stories are meant to be shared aloud. Whether shouted into
the wind at the edge of the sea, told in the candlelight of urban
indoor ritual, or read at the edge of a child's bed, these stories are
for the beginnings and deepenings of knowing Her without end.

India, Ireland, Greece, and the Middle East are severally represented;
Goddess worship in these cultures is current, close to the surface, or
closely bound up with current secular or Judeo-Christian mythologies.

Seven Goddess Principles: Truths Inside of Truths In writing this book,
I mean to sit with you at the hearth of our mutual wonder and wisdom