Inspired by the Goddess

Carol P. Christ writes about the rebirth of the Goddess, feminism, ecofeminism, feminist theology, societies of peace, and the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete.

  • Home
    Home This is where you can find all the blog posts throughout the site.
  • Tags
    Tags Displays a list of tags that have been used in the blog.
  • Bloggers
    Bloggers Search for your favorite blogger from this site.
  • Login
    Login Login form

Announcing A Serpentine Path

"The serpentine path is the path of life, a snakelike, meandering path, winding in and out, up and down, with no beginning and no end, into the darkness and into the light."

As the year draws to a close, I am putting the finishing touches on A Serpentine Path: Mysteries of the Goddess. In the spring of 2016 it will be published by the Far Press, founded by Gina Messina-Dysert.  A Serpentine Path is the original title of the memoir of my journey from despair to the joy of life on the first Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete. It was published in 1995 as Odyssey with the Goddess, a title chosen by the publisher.

A Serpentine Path marked a turning point in my life and in my career as a writer. During the time described in my memoir I had fallen into a deep despair, sparked by the end of a marriage, the end of a love affair, and disappointment in my career. Hoping to make a fresh start, I moved to Greece. Not surprisingly, my despair followed me there. Nonetheless, as I would learn, I made the right decision, for as my Greek therapist was to tell me, I needed to learn to live in my body, not my head, and Greece was the place to learn that.I was at a crossroads in my spiritual quest. I left Christianity for Goddess feminism, yet I felt the Goddess had abandoned me. I had a contract to write the first Goddess thealogy, but as I said in a speech at I gave at Harvard Divinity School just before I made the decision to move to Greece, I was not sure of the meaning of the symbol of the Goddess. Is Goddess a personal being who cares about the world? Or the name we give to the cycles of birth, death, and regeneration in nature? My inability to answer this question led my editors to return draft of my Goddess thealogy with the comment that something was missing.

Despite having received positive and even glowing initial reviews, Odyssey with the Goddess was withdrawn from print and remaindered following a negative review in a feminist publication. The reviewer said that she did not understand how anyone who called herself a feminist could let herself be so disappointed in a love affair with a man. My editors, who were male, immediately lost confidence in the book.

Despite this deeply upsetting turn of events, writing Odyssey gave me the clarity and the confidence I needed to write my Goddess thealogy, published as Rebirth of the Goddess two years later. In living the journey described in Odyssey, I found myself, and I found the Goddess. Moreover, in the process of writing about my life, I gave birth to the authentic voice I was seeking after I became frustrated with the objective voice of traditional scholarship. Nonetheless, because it had been taken out of print, I remained slightly embarrassed by Odyssey, wondering if I had revealed too much about myself, made myself too vulnerable in the world.

Fast forward to the summer of 2015. During the spring Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete, I was urged to make all of my books available in e-book. After submitting the manuscript of my forthcoming book with Judith Plaskow, Goddess and God in the World: Conversations in Embodied Theology, to Fortress Press in August, I turned to the e-book question. My initial research led me to believe (wrongly) that a Word or PDF copy of a manuscript would be necessary to create an e-book—something I didn’t have for my earlier books. One of the women from the spring tour responded that Odyssey was her favorite of all my books, suggesting that, as it is a short book, she might be willing to type it for me.

I thought about this offer for about a week, and then decided to begin retyping the book myself with the thought that I could take out a few embarrassing details about the failed love affair. As I retyped the manuscript, I was a-mazed at the courage of my younger self, and I found that the prose was indeed “luminous” as the reviewer for Booklist had commented. I also confirmed that the insights about life and the Goddess that I described had stood the test of time.

Although my life has had its ups and downs since then, I never again fell into the deep despair of my younger years. I have learned to give up expecting life to turn out as I want it to, and in the process I found that love is everywhere if only we open our eyes. I have become ever more convinced that the Goddess is a personal being who cares about my life and the life of all other individuals in our world. There is not a single important detail in the book that I wanted or needed to change. At the same time, I thoroughly enjoyed adding a new preface and epilogue and delighted in revising the book in order to allow its insights shine through ever more clearly. I am absolutely thrilled that the book will finally be released in paperback and e-book under its original title: A Serpentine Path. This title evokes The Mysteries of the Goddess that I discovered.

For a preview of chapters in the book, see: Mysteries and Dionysian Rites.

Also published on Feminism and Religion.

Carol P. Christ is author or editor of eight books in Women and Religion and is one of the Foremothers of the Women’s Spirituality Movement. She leads the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete in Spring and Fall. Serpent art by Judith Shaw. Photo of Carol by Michael Bakas.

Cover Christ and Plaskow

A Serpentine Path: Mysteries of the Goddess will be published by Far Press in the spring of 2016. A journey from despair to the joy of life.

Goddess and God in the World: Conversations in Embodied Theology with Judith Plaskow will be published by Fortress Press in June 2016. Exploring the connections of theology and autobiography and alternatives to the transcendent, omnipotent male God.

Last modified on
Carol P. Christ is a author of the much-loved books Rebirth of the Goddess, She Who Changes, Weaving the Visions, and Womanspirit Rising, and forthcoming in 2016. Goddess and God in the World and A Serpentine Path. She leads the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete in spring and fall.

Comments

Additional information