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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in rape

Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs

With awareness growing in America about the widespread occurrence of sexual harassment, assault, and rape impacting so many women's lives, I think often about the conversations I hear Americans having about this crisis and the pervasive absence of even superficially referring to cultures that do not historically have a culture of rape. The idea, and reality, is rarely (ever?) mentioned on social media, on radio/television outlets, in college textbooks, or in print media. Only if Americans read Indian Country Today or the individual blogs of Native American activists are they going to read about America Before Rape Culture.

No national dialogue about the time when America had no Rape Culture? Let's change that!

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Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs

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Rape culture
.

 

No, it's not a pretty phrase. But it's a fitting name for a set of institutions and ideas that steal away women's pro-creative power through physical violence, social shaming, and economic exploitation. 

 

In The Woman's Belly Book, I say pro-creative power is our body-centered power to promote creation — through childbirth, yes, and through life-affirming ways of being in every dimension.

 

Creating a cultural paradigm beyond rape is what Kim Duckett's about. How does she do it?

 


"I take women to Hel and back," she says.

 

Her vehicle for visiting goddess Hel is reviewing — and rewriting — the ancient Greek myth of Persephone’s descent.

 

"Stories lead to the heart of healing," my recent article in the Mountain Xpress, Asheville’s weekly newspaper, features Kim and her work. 

 

For whatever reason, the newspaper has shied away from relating the horrific aspects of the conventional myth to current events in the culture at large. I invite you to read the article here and add your comments online. Tell us: How is revising the myth of Persephone important for you, your family? 

 

Here's some background:

 

Kim Duckett, a.k.a. Woman Who Follows Her Heart, is an ordained Priestess and a shamanic ritualist rooted in the mountains of western North Carolina.

 

Holding a doctorate in Transpersonal and Spiritual Psychology with a focus on Feminist Theory, she’s taught women’s studies in college and university settings for thirty years. She also co-founded the rape crisis center, now known as Our Voice, that’s been serving the region’s women and men for more than forty years.

 

The Wheel of the Year as an Earth-Based Spiritual Psychology for Women names Kim’s forthcoming book. Those words also name the teaching she offers to women as she travels throughout the nation.

 

Kim describes her teaching this way in the International Journal of Transpersonal Studies:

 

The Wheel of the Year as an earth-based psychology for women is inherently feminist and also based in transpersonal psychologies. Women explore the turning points, or holydays of the Wheel, on both spiritual and psychological levels through a wide range of modalities that engage body, mind, emotion, and spirit.

 

The Wheel of the Year focuses the first year of Kim's Sacred Mystery School, a three-year curriculum in women’s spirituality. With the arrival of the autumn equinox, she invites women taking part in Mystery School to update and personalize the myth of Persephone.

 

Kim knows, as famed mythologist Joseph Campbell did, that myths validate and preserve a culture’s social and moral order. She knows, as Campbell did, that myths must change to keep pace with changing times. “Myths are teaching stories,” she says. “So it’s important to ask: What are they teaching?”

 

She begins by presenting women with the conventional version of the myth: Hades snatches maiden Persephone, rapes her, and imprisons her in his underworld realm. 

 

Does this scenario sound familiar? So many of us have similar stories.

 

Finally breaking through to national awareness with New York magazine's July cover story, scores of women have alleged that comedian Bill Cosby did Hades over decades, holding young women captive in an “underworld realm” of drug-induced loss of consciousness. They’ve alleged that agents of various cultural institutions aided and protected Cosby, keeping his actions secret, allowing him to continue.

 

Drawing on Charlene Spretnak’s research, reported in Lost Goddesses of Early Greece, Kim inspires women to recognize alternatives to the Greek myth as it’s usually told, including versions pre-dating the ones validating rape culture.

 

In a circle of mutual support, expressing themselves through dance, poetry, and drama, women create their own versions of the myth. In these, Persephone chooses to descend. 

 

Each woman acknowledges, as Persephone does, her need to deepen. She chooses to move inward, to re-member and re-collect herself, to be with her inner wisdom. In the deep, dark, womb-like realm of goddess Hel she finds a place for rest and replenishment. She meets not Hades but Hecate, the wise woman within.

 

And then she emerges, refreshed. She embodies greater clarity, more vitality, and a renewed sense of purpose. She returns with a mythic guide to her own well-being. 

 

What’s more: Women rewriting the myth of Persephone as woman-affirming stories of descent and return build the foundations for a generative, peaceable culture of life.

 

How do you rewrite the myth of Persephone? I invite you to add your own story, your own comments, here.

 

 

 

 

More info:

 

Kim Duckett
A Year and A Day Sacred Mystery School for Women
followheartkd@gmail.com

 

Charlene Spretnak

Lost Goddesses of Early Greece

 

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Posted by on in Studies Blogs

Veritas is boldly tattooed on my left forearm. In time it evolved to be surrounded by acanthus leaves and three pomegranates, creating a half sleeve down to wrist. In shades of grey, it is only augmented by single red thread.

Often, I am asked what it all means. Both the tattoo and the thread?  Many mistakenly assume I came to Qabalah through Madonna and that veritas refers to being a wino, in vino veritas or Harvard alumni whose motto is veritas. All are false. I am not a big fan of the Material Girl, or wine, and I did not go to Harvard.

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Desperately seeking Druid: The over-sexualised images in D&D fantasy games

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • J'Karrah
    J'Karrah says #
    What? You don't find a chain mail brazier, leather thong, and 9 inch platform stripper heels to be appropriate female battle atti
  • Joanna van der Hoeven
    Joanna van der Hoeven says #
    It's such a shame that you had to modify all the miniatures, isn't it? Elder Scrolls is quite good, but I don't do computer game
  • ScarletteSpider
    ScarletteSpider says #
    When i'm looking for a picture to represent my character, do you have any idea how long and hard i have to look to find a female i
  • ScarletteSpider
    ScarletteSpider says #
    would upload the picture but it won't let me, and i cannot put it on a url since many of the items i used are the intellectual pro
  • Joanna van der Hoeven
    Joanna van der Hoeven says #
    I know - it's so difficult to find good artistic representations that aren't sexist! Thinking about it further, I say hats off to

Posted by on in Studies Blogs

When mature theologians study the question without pubescent embarrassment, it is clear that there is a point at which female Goddess worship is inseparable from pornography. Try as we might to separate the sacred from the profane, and to tease out the purely biological facts of procreation from the universal hormonal urge to have a good time, we are continually faced with areas in which they become the same thing. To most spiritual Pagans, the congress of vulva and phallus is sacred - a celebration of the life-rhythms of the universe.

 

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Joseph Bloch
    Joseph Bloch says #
    Excellent stuff, Ted. Although now we have a boomerang effect from the sexual revolution of the 60's, where people are trying to e
  • Ted Czukor
    Ted Czukor says #
    Good point, Joseph. Thank you.
  • Ted Czukor
    Ted Czukor says #
    Thank you so much, Francesca. I love your Baba Yaga poem.
  • Francesca De Grandis
    Francesca De Grandis says #
    YW. Am so glad u like the poem, tu!
  • Francesca De Grandis
    Francesca De Grandis says #
    Ted, i love this celebration of sexuality's sacredness that you penned. Mind you, I am no historian, so have no idea if yr history

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

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