Women's Spirituality, Women's Lives

Ellen Cole, Judith Ochshorn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317764441
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Alternative & Complementary Medicine

This enlightening book examines how the feminist spirituality movement contributes to the establishment of new paradigms of mental health for women. Women's Spirituality, Women's Lives examines possible psychotherapeutic implications for women engaged in feminist spirituality and stimulates much-needed conversation between feminist therapists and feminist theologians/ritualists. Feminist spirituality is part of the current broad challenge to accepted ways of knowing and being. This book argues that as women tell their own stories, they create rituals that enable them to feel a sense of control over the future and to move toward a kind of authority, agency, and autonomy associated with mental health and psychological well-being. Women from many cultural backgrounds and religious perspectives have embraced alternative forms of spiritual expression, based on profound theoretical challenges to mainstream religious beliefs, ranging from calls for the radical reclamation and reconstruction of religious traditions to personal involvement in goddess worship and Wicca. Women's Spirituality, Women's Lives presents theoretical, conceptual, and experiential chapters that analyze the extent to which these proliferating women's groups represent the beginnings of new norms of mental health for women. Women's Spirituality, Women's Lives presents a variety of voices, including Native American, Christian, Jewish, and Wiccan. Chapters are divided into three sections--Laying the Groundwork, Theoretical Challenges, and Living It Out--and explore a diverse array of topics such as:

• the "shouting" church and Black women's mental health
• a traditionalist Native American challenge to New Age cooptation
• a feminist group and Jewish women's self-identity
• lesbian altar-making and mental health
• feminist Wicca in the U.S. and Germany
• the martial arts and women's mental health
• the use of feminist rituals in therapy and as therapy Feminist therapists and theologians, as well as other individuals interested in feminist spirituality or alternative spirituality, will find this book a fascinating exploration of the various aspects of the spirituality of women. Women's Spirituality, Women's Lives is also an excellent reader to expand the thinking of students in classes in women's studies and religious studies.

SECTION III:

LIVING IT OUT

Women’s Spirituality and Healing in Germany

Marianne Krüll

Dr. Marianne Krüll teaches a sociology seminar at the University of Bonn. Mailing address: Graurheindorfer Strasse 16, D-53111 Bonn, Germany.

SUMMARY. The author first describes her personal experience of celebrating the eight holy-days of the year’s circle together with a group of women over a period of several years. The healing power of ritual ceremonies in the spirit of the Goddess is shown through examples of the psychodynamics of the group and of individual women. Differences between consciousness-raising and therapeutic groups are discussed. In a brief review the women’s spirituality movement in Germany is presented, mentioning some of the leading healers and writers. In conclusion a comparison between the German and American female spirituality movement is attempted.

This is our ninth year that we, a group of women living in Bonn, Cologne, and Dusseldorf, are coming together to celebrate the year’s circle, that is, the eight holy-days of the year which our non-Christian ancestors also used to celebrate: (1) the 2nd of February, Feast of Light (Candle Mass); (2) the 21st of March, Spring Equinox (Easter); (3) the 30th of April, Beltane (Walpurgis); (4) the 21st of June, Summer Solstice; (5) between the 5th and the 15th of August, Feast of Cutting and Consecration of Herbs (Harvesting); (6) the 21st of September, Fall Equinox (End of Harvesting); (7) the 1st of November, Halloween (Feast of Darkness); (8) the 21st of December, Winter Solstice (12 or 13 Holy Nights).

In the beginning our group was larger, but even now we are still nine women circling around. In age we now range from 33 to 57. Most of us are married, mothers of one to five children. In one year we had three babies in the group celebrating with us because the mothers were breast-feeding them! Others are beyond the mothering age, living alone.

When we started most of us did not know the others. All of us had the wish to learn about “the Goddess” as she was celebrated and honored in pre-patriarchal times or societies. From various sources we had heard about women’s spirituality and wanted to experience and live what we had read or heard. Starhawk’s Spiral Dance (1979) had been the main source for most of us. (We still chant from Starhawk in English: “We all come from the Goddess and to Her we shall return.…”).

Some of us are of the Protestant faith, others Catholic, one is a Buddhist, several have left their former religious affiliation. Some of us are academic women (theologians, sociologists, teachers) who began to integrate women’s studies into our fields, discovering our lost heritage. Others in our group are artists: a silk-painter, a performance actor, a meditative dance teacher. One is an expert in herbs and mushrooms. One knows much about astrology. One of us works in an educational institution and thus is in a position to invite prominent women for lectures and seminars. So, we have worked with Zsuzsanna Budapest and Felicitas Goodman from the United States, as well as with Luisa Francia, Gerlinde Schilcher (Judith Jannberg), Ute Schiran, and others from Germany. Thus, the expertise of each of us is shared by the others.

But more important than our sharing of knowledge has been our group process over the years. Mostly our meetings last one day; some last two or three days. We prefer to be outside, sleeping in tents or under the sky, but in winter we mostly celebrate in homes, some rented, some our own apartments or houses.

We usually start with a power-circle to protect us and raise our energies: holding hands and in silence calling the Goddess to be with us. Then follows a “go-round” to allow each of us to report what has happened to her since we last met. The others ask questions but refrain from interpreting or commenting. Sharing our pains and joys in our everyday lives has, in itself, a profound supporting and healing effect.

Usually a go-round lasts for several hours, so that afterwards we all need some food before continuing. Although we never plan what kind of food each one should bring, there is always just the right combination of dishes for a lavish meal or several meals when we meet for more than a day. We all take pride in preparing new dishes to surprise the others. The food is also a way for us to materially and symbolically connect with the current season of the year.

The ritual we celebrate depends on the respective holy-day and on what one or several of us particularly need, as expressed in the go-round. It may consist of our just gathering in a circle with our symbols for the four corners of the sky and the four elements in the center: a candle to represent the South and the element of fire; a bowl of water for the West; a stone for the North and for the element of earth; a feather or knife to represent the East and the element of air. But a ritual may just as well consist of several parts, such as performances, trances, dances, chanting, drumming, massaging, tarot-reading, or–particularly if we meet for more than a day-the production of objects (like woodcarvings, painted silk scarves, clay figures). Working with our inner images may alternate with the outward staging of some kind of performance.

Sometimes one or several of us are in charge of the ritual, having planned it in advance. More often we create the ritual spontaneously. Here are some examples:

1. Candle-mass in February is the time of the beginning light, of clarity and vision. As a ritual we make our candles for the next year. Bee’s wax is heated and while we “draw” our candles by dipping the wick into the liquid wax, we express our wishes for the next year. The candle keeps our “light” burning in times of darkness throughout the year. One candle is made for the whole group. The color for this feast is white.

2. Spring Equinox is a happy holy-day when tender green sprouts start to peep out of the ground and the first spring flowers are in blossom. We prepare the ground to put seeds in it, and ask Ostara, the Easter-Goddess, to let them grow. It is a time for cleansing, so one year we took baths and dried each other in a soft massage. The color is yellow.

3. Walpurgis is the feast to celebrate the new life in orgiastic joy. It is said that the witches used their broomsticks to fly to the “Blocksberg,” a mountain in central Germany. We always try to be in the open, making a fire and jumping over it, dancing, chanting, and feeling the power of spring in us and around us. It is a feast of all colors.

4. Summer Solstice is the year’s “high-time” (in German: Hoch-Zeit, also meaning “wedding”) when the Goddess and her hero join their power in erotic ecstasy. Mostly, we spend several days together celebrating the abundance of life. The color is a bright red.

5. Cutting the grain and the grass is the theme of the cutters’ holy-day. We pick herbs to be dried and kept in our homes throughout the year for protection. One year we killed a hen in a ritual to experience our power as “cutting” women, as women giving death. To some of us this meant a new form of healing: cutting off what needs to be killed in order to feed us or make room for new life. The color is a dark red.

6. Fall Equinox is harvest-time. We give thanks to the Goddess for the goods She has provided us. In one year we had three newborn babies in our midst to be grateful for. It is also a time to give back to mother earth what she needs, particularly in our times of violation and abuse of her resources. The color is brown.

7. Halloween for us is the beginning of the dark season when we honor and meet our ancestors (All-Saints’ Day in the Catholic Church), but when we also encounter the shadow in ourselves. One year we spent some hours in a grave-yard in the dark, each having to deal with her fear of the place and of her own death. The color for this feast is black.

8. Winter Solstice is the longest night, but also the birth of light. It is a time when the skies are open for good or bad spirits to reach out for us. We perform our ritual to get in contact with the spirits surrounding us. Once we spent the whole night outside wearing masks and dancing around a big fire making noise to chase the evil spirits away. In the morning we climbed up a hill to greet the rising sun (which, however, stayed hidden behind clouds!). In another year we celebrated Winter Solstice inside with a birthing-ritual during which every one of us found her way through the tunnel which the others had formed with their bodies. For one of us this was a special form of healing since she had just had a hysterectomy. We guided her through her despair of no longer being able to give birth–as helpful and compassionate midwives would help a child to a new life. Colors are red, green, and gold.

In closing our meeting each of us draws a tarot-card from Vicki Noble’s (1983) Motherpeace tarot-deck which we spread out in a circle. The card gives us an orientation for the time until our next meeting.

It is difficult to explain what kind of healing we have been getting from our ritual celebrations throughout the years, because most effects are indirect or too subtle for clear observation. I shall try to name some that have been most obvious to all of us.

We have learned to open our senses to the cyclic nature of our lives and of nature around us. This has affected our physical cycles. Menstruating women, for instance, bled at the same time, for some periods even at full moon. Birth-giving was a beautiful experience for the women who had babies (altogether nine women during the past eight years!), some of whom gave birth in their homes.

All of us went through personal crises which were eased and even solved through the help of our group. There were separations from partners, unhappy love-affairs, deaths of close family members. There were illnesses and depressive states with suicidal tendencies. There were breakdowns due to crises at work. We helped each other, through just being there and feeling deeply connected with the woman in sorrow.

Rosemarie (names have been changed to protect confidentiality) had been sexually abused as a child by her psychotic grandfather. She did not remember this and was unable to relate her adult problems to that experience. During several meetings we stood by her when her traumatic experience started to rise to her consciousness and she screamed in terror. She is strong and powerful now, with no signs of depression, mastering her quite difficult life admirably.

When Hilde got pregnant from a casual love-affair she was desperate because an abortion seemed impossible for her, although a child would have ruined her life plans. We held her and cried with her, but also talked to her. When she decided to have the abortion, one of us accompanied her to the doctor’s office and to the hospital. At our next meeting we celebrated a mourning ritual asking the child’s soul to forgive her and transform her sorrow into power. She is now studying and has taken charge of her life.

Monika is a single mother. She gave birth to her daughter at the home of Sabine. Some women of our group were present, and also Sabine’s two children. Monika’s daughter is now like a sister to them. Monika is convinced that her beautiful relationship with her daughter (now almost 5 years old) would never have been possible without our group.

There were also controversies in the group. For quite some time Carla and Katharina struggled about who had more to say in the group. Again the group offered support and security for both of them to open up and admit that deep down they had been longing for the understanding of the other instead of fighting her. The power-structure of the group changed enormously after that clarification.

Another constant problem has been to find safe places outdoors for us to meet, since in the overpopulated area where we live there is practically no place in the woods, the fields, on hills or in valleys, in caves or in castle ruins, where we can be sure of nobody coming by. Sometimes we have even been chased away from places we found.

We also had to say good-bye to several women in the group. They left for various reasons, some painful for the rest of us. We keep in contact with them, and the door is open for them to return. It was important for us to learn that separation can be overcome without bad feelings.

What is the difference between our group and other consciousness-raising or therapeutic women’s groups? I think it is our spiritual orientation. We do not only come together to help each other, but for some “higher” or “other” purpose which is not easily explainable. We call it “the Goddess.” Everyone of us feels that the spirit of the Goddess is with her or even that she is the Goddess. We feel connected with nature around us, with stones and rocks, with plants, animals, other human beings, with the whole cosmos. In the spirit of the Goddess, we accept and respect who and how we are, and we respect the other in her way of being. We may not always like how we or the others are, but knowing that the Goddess is with us, we feel that we have responsibility for “constructing” ourselves and our world in a meaningful way.

This spiritual orientation is our mutual bond and probably explains why our group has stayed together for such a long period. We feel that we are not just good friends, but that we are, so to speak, called to join our energies so that they may grow–not only for our own benefit, but for the benefit of a larger whole.

Another difference from therapeutic groups is that there is no leader in our group. Whenever one of us shows some kind of superiority over the others, she is lovingly criticized by the others, and immediately returns into the circle of equals.

It is amazing how “good or bad” and “right or wrong” change their meaning when you no longer try to hold on to one truth, as our therapeutic, religious, and scientific patriarchal belief systems force us to do. Having had academic training myself, I feel tremendously relieved to no longer have to force myself to decide which is right and which is wrong, but to be able to let things and living beings be as they are. For the theologians in our group the change is even more profound. Instead of God-Father up above watching us and punishing us for our wrong-doings, we know that we are responsible for our deeds. As the witches say, “Whatever we do will come back threefold to us,” so we better be careful not to do what we do not wish to be done to us!

A very important aspect of our spiritual work is a re-definition of womanhood. Although we continue living in patriarchal structures–most of us in marriages, having children of both sexes–we do not define ourselves as mentally or spiritually dependent on men. We reject men’s definition of women as either whore or saint, sexual object or mama.

The threefold Goddess–maiden/amazon, mother, crone–is our self-image as women throughout the life-cycle. The maiden-Goddess in mythology (e.g., Artemis/Diana, Athena) is adventurous, unattached, a virgin in her spirit, although she may be active sexually. The mother-Goddess (e.g., Demeter, Hera) is nurturing, creative, giving birth to children, but also to products of any kind. The crone-Goddess (e.g., Hecate) is the wise, the experienced one who knows the secrets of life and death. Such positive images of women’s strength have profound healing effects.

We feel that our lives are cyclic: the daily cycle with the sun rising and setting; monthly with the moon waxing and waning and with our bleeding coming and going; and seasonally through a year’s cycle. But just as those cycles return, some of us believe that our own life cycle from birth (or even from conception) to death will return. And those of us who do not believe in reincarnation trust that we are in contact with our ancesto...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• About The Editors
• Introduction
• Shall We Gather at the River
• Rosh Chodesh Dance at the Summer Solstice
• Section I Laying the Groundwork
• Women and Spirit: Two Nonfits in Psychology
• Psychological Implications of Women’s Spiritual Health
• Feminist Metanoia and Soul-Making
• Letter to a Friend: A Reflection on Connectedness and Naming
• Section II Theoretical Challenges
• There Is a Balm in Gilead: Black Women and the Black Church as Agents of a Therapeutic Community
• Social and Spiritual Reconstruction of Self Within a Feminist Jewish Community
• Identity, Recovery, and Religious Imperialism: Native American Women and the New Age
• Altared States: Lesbian Altarmaking and the Transformation of Self
• Liberating the Amazon: Feminism and the Martial Arts
• Feminist Wicca: Paths to Empowerment
• Section III Living It Out
• Women’s Spirituality and Healing in Germany
• A Search for Spirituality: A Mother and Daughter Story
• Mother Mary Ann Wright: African-American Women, Spirituality, and Social Activism
• A Class That Changes Lives
• Women’s Empowerment Through Feminist Rituals
• Re-Membering Spirituality: Use of Sacred Ritual in Psychotherapy
• Explorations of the Unrecognized Spirituality of Women’s Communion