The Civilization of the Goddess
Marija Gimbutas

The groundbreaking culmination of Lithuanian born, Harvard re-known archeologist, folklorist, linguist and ethnographer Marija Gimbutas's life work, this larger than life book brings to public attention proof of an agrarian, earth goddess-worshipping civilization in Old Europe that was destroyed by horse-riding, patriarchal sky- god worshiping warriors from the east.  Gimbutas presents archeological evidence of the existence of this goddess centered civilization based on a harmonious, non-warfare oriented agricultural economy.  Presenting a wealth of findings concerning religion, customs, rituals and art, Gimbutas establishes the existence of this matrifocal, goddess-centered civilization long before Sumer with its patriarchal hierarchy and beliefs.  Written as an academic text, you won't want to miss it…. If you want more images that will burn your retina long after you put the books away, if you want your perspective shifted even further on the roots of European culture, look at her Language of the Goddess, and Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe. Get prepared for a mythic experience.

Cries of the Spirit: 
Over 300 Poems in Celebration of Women's Spirituality
Edited by Marilyn Sewell

A rich and diverse sourcebook of poetry and prose celebrating women's spirituality in its many forms and dedicated to the sacredness of the ordinary embodied life.  Here you will find women's voices on matters central to their experience—sex, intimacy, childbirth, caretaking, household rituals, and death.  These writings represent a healing vision of the sacred that emerges from the particular consciousness of women.

Dance of the Spirit:
Seven Steps of Women's Spirituality
Maria Harris

Maria Harris teaches women how to dance to the music of their own souls and discover the spiritual steps to transform their lives. The steps of awakening, discovering, creating, dwelling, nourishing, tradition making, and transforming lead the way to a rich inner world of mystery, power, and promise to achieve a true awareness of one's own identity. When women attend to their own needs and be the women they were created to be, rather than what others expect them to be, they are nourished in a way that feeds spiritual hunger as well as physical needs

The Druidry Handbook: 
Spiritual Practice Rooted
in the Living Earth
John Michael Greer

Readers will learn more about the deeper world of Celtic antiquity with this handbook.  It offers a path of harmony through reconnection with the Earth.  This is a hands-on manual of Traditional British Druid Practice.  You can explore the Sun Path of seasonal celebration, the Moon Path of meditation and the Earth Path of living in harmony with nature.

Feminine Face of God: 
The Unfolding of the Sacred in Women
Anderson & Hopkins

This book has helped thousands of women redefine traditional beliefs and rediscover their own unique spiritual heritage. Drawn from workshops and interviews conducted across the country, 100 women share stories of their spiritual awakenings.  This book invites women to define for themselves what is sacred, both in communion with others and with the divine.

The Great Cosmic Mother
Monica Sjoo and Barbara Mor

This critical exploration of the Goddess through time and world draws on religious, cultural, and archaeological sources to recreate the Goddess religion, showing clearly that the religion of the Goddess—tied to the cycles of women's bodies, the seasons, the phases of the moon, and the fertility of the earth—was the original religion of all humanity.  This is a life changing book, however, due to the intensity of the material, you may want to read it in small doses. 

In All Her Names:
Explorations of the Feminine in Divinity
editors Joseph Campbell and Charles Muses

This important collection of essays (including Riane Eisler's "The Goddess of Nature and Spirituality," Marija Gimbutas's "The 'Monstrous Venus' of Prehistory: Divine Creatrix," Campbell's "The Mystery Number of the Goddess," Muses's "The Ageless Way of Goddess: Divine Pregnancy and Higher Birth in Ancient Egypt and China"), supplemented by an epilog of celebration, illustrates the past and present significance of Goddess. Campbell's contribution (his last completed work) indicates "that devotion to the perennial Goddess was a deep facet of Joe's Campbell's own credo." Eisler addresses with clarity what a new knowledge of our past and a partnership model of spirituality as well as the dominator model of patriarchy might mean for our future. Gimbutas gives a succinct account of Goddess based on archaeological evidence. Muses explores the contemporary relevance of ancient Egyptian and Chinese traditions.

In Nature's Honor: 
Myths and Rituals Celebrating the Earth
Patricia Montley

There are eight solar holidays that mark the turning of the Wheel of the Year.  This book explores them all—the solstices, equinoxes, and quarter days.  Patricia provides rituals associated with each.  You can learn about Imbolc, the Celtic celebration of the Earth's spring awakening, and find out about the mythology and history behind the Greek vegetation deities.

The Living Goddesses
Marija Gimbutas

A gathering of Gimbutas' definitive research on existence of goddess based religions in pre-patriarchal Europe, as well as the continuity of these traditions through the Bronze Age, the Historical Period and into modern times. She traces the presence of the goddess in Cretan, Greek, Etruscan, Basque, Celtic, Germanic and Baltic religious traditions.  Easier to read than the Civilization of the Goddess, but without the archeological images of Language of the Goddess or Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe, this is a seminal reading for any of European descent.

Myth of the Goddess
Baring and Cashford

A powerful synthesis of what we know about the goddess between the upper Paleolithic and modern times, the authors trace the evolution of consciousness by following humanity's changing attitudes toward female deities.  A good source book for students of myth, feminists and those seeking to balance masculine and feminine components of their psyches

The Once & Future Goddess
Elinor Gadon

The author weaves words and images to demonstrate the connections between ancient and contemporary art, between the goddess of the Ice Age and the Goddess of today.  The book spans prehistoric representations from Turkey, Malta, England and Crete, includes more patriarchal images from Sumer, Greece and Christianity, and concludes with the wide range of contemporary goddess artists that bring her forth today in the Western world.

Rebirth of the Goddess:
Finding Meaning in Feminist Spirituality
Carol Christ

A systematic theology that discusses the implications of belief in the Goddess for many fundamental religious questions.  Christ combines heart and intellect, melding personal experience with goddess studies and scholarship.  A must read for anyone interested in feminist theology. 

The Spiral Dance:
A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion
of the Great Goddess
Starhawk

A very important book—telling 'the rest of the story'—regarding the growth, suppression, and resurgence of witchcraft as a goddess worshipping religion.  A book of tools.  Which one will you be drawn to? 

The Spiral Path:
Explorations in Women's Spirituality
Theresa King

This book consists of 22 essays, written mostly by women and by a few men from diverse religious traditions and professional specialties, that explore connections between spirituality and a wide variety of other topics: self-image, health, nature, psychology, freedom, sex, relationships, marriage, motherhood, food, creativity, art, scriptures, prophecy, prayer, renunciation, and suffering.

Urgent Message from Mother: Gather the Women, Save the World
Jean Shinoda Bolen

In this book, Bolen blends visionary thinking with practical how-to thinking, calling women of all ages to save the planet, society, families, and bring change to the world. She calls out on behalf of the planet, Our Mother, who is desperately trying to communicate to us.

Weaving the Visions:
New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality
Judith Plaskow & Carol Christ

Follow up volume to WomanSpirit Rising—selections of key writings in feminist spirituality that re-conceptualize the central religious categories of theology in North America through a wide range of voices.  Good overview.

The White Goddess:
A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth
Robert Graves

The White Goddess is perhaps the finest of Robert Graves's works on the psychological and mythological sources of poetry. In this tapestry of poetic and religious scholarship, Graves explores the stories behind the earliest of European deities, the White Goddess of Birth, Love, and Death, who was worshipped under countless titles. He also uncovers the obscure and mysterious power of "pure poetry" and its peculiar and mythic language.

A Woman's Path:
Stories of Spiritual Growth and Awakening
editors McCauley, Carlson & Leo

More than just an adventure, A Woman's Path presents inspiring stories of spiritual growth and awakening, written by some of the world's finest women writers. Around the globe and across religions, the stores in this collection touch on common themes such as opening up, letting go, finding inner peace. It's an invitation to be mindful and daring on women's walk along the sacred path.

WomanSpirit Rising:
A Feminist Reader in Religion
Carol Christ & Judith Plaskow

Gathers the voices of the women who brought the second wave of the women's movement into the field of religion—some say this is the best introduction to western feminist interpretation of religion.  The essays included give witness to the diversity of contemporary feminist thought

A Woman's Worth
Marianne Williamson

Drawing deeply on her own experience, the author explores the crucial role of women in the world today.  She addresses topics such as beauty and age, relationship and sex, children and careers, and the reassertion of the feminine in a patriarchal society.  Cutting across class, race, religion and gender, she speaks powerfully to a generation of women in need of healing.  Good introductory/overview book for women newly interested in the divine feminine.

Women in Praise of the Sacred
editor Jane Hirshfield

An anthology of poetry by women from 43 centuries and many countries that speak to the matters of the spirit.  These poems deriving from oral and written traditions embrace the sacred and world simultaneously.

Women's Encyclopedia
of Myths and Secrets
Barbara Walker

Focuses on mythology, anthropology, religion and sexuality to uncover alternative stories behind word origins, legends, superstitions and customs.  Offers thousands of entries on magic, witchcraft, fairies, elves, giants, goddesses, gods, meanings of sun, moon, earth, sea, ideas of the soul, reincarnation, creation, sexuality, romance, death, rebirth…  Reading this book, even for a little while, causes a paradigm shift.

The Aztec Virgin
John Mini

In this book, the author makes a case for the Sacred Image of the Virgin of Guadalupe being a mystical Aztec codex, which reveals an entire system of self-development that ranges from ancient Toltec dreaming practices, to sexual alchemy, to Guadalupe's connection with the birth of the next Solar Age.  This is a beautiful, powerful, easy to read book that finally explains the power behind the image of Guadalupe/Tonanztin. 

The Cult of the Black Virgin
Ean Begg

There are over 500 images around the world of dark madonnas. In this book, the author identifies links between them and the powerful pagan goddesses of sexuality, the underworld and earth wisdom. The author also demonstrates the connection the Black Madonnas hold to the Gnostic Christian underground movement, and the cult of Mari Magdalene.  This book will redefine the way you think of the Black Virgin.

Dancing in the Flames:
The Dark Goddess in the
Transformation of Consciousness
Woodman and Dickson

A very powerful book that focuses on the transformative power and female wisdom of the dark goddess archetype, the author shares her insights from history, myth, culture, and the psyche—wherever she finds Her.  Self exiled from the dark goddess,  the source of life and death—this author states that the final task of soul-making for women (and men) today is to enter her realms, confront her power, and bring back the secret of beauty to the world. 

The Dark Goddess:
Dancing with the Shadow
Starck and Stern

This author uses various archetypes of the dark goddess to help modern women reclaim that which has been relegated to the shadow for many westerners:   getting in touch with our inner wildness, the descent to the underworld, acknowledgment and transformation of our anger, be willing to see that which we hide from others and self, just saying no to the caretaking role, reclaiming feelings, and accepting dissolution and change are a few of the places this book takes you.  

Dark Mother
Lucia Birnbaum

Combining a feminist perspective with contemporary findings of geneticists and archeologists, the author makes a case for the dark mother as earliest venerated divinity, brought out of central and south Africa in 50,000 BCE as humans began their migrations around the globe. She makes a case for Her presence in the color ochre red and the pubic V, found in caves and cliffs of all continents, including one of the founding places of Christianity, Judaism and Islam Har Karkom (Mt. Sinai), in prehistoric images, and in black madonnas found all over Europe.  She later tracks her memory in the ritual and folklore of patriarchal Europe and the US. 

Kali:
The Feminine Force
Ajit Mookerjee

Full of pictures of the fierce warrior goddess of India who springs forth in a battle to slay demonic male power, this slim but powerful book also identifies Kali as the ultimate creator and nurturer—the essence of mother love and female power (shakti).  To read about a female divinity that can hold it all—all the anger, all the love, all the power—will move you.  Not your mother's Virgin Mary, this book will ground you in the continuum of energies that is the Dark Mother. Don't miss it. 

Passionate Enlightenment:
Women in Tantric Buddhism
Miranda Shaw

This author presents extensive new evidence of the outspoken and independent female founders of the Buddhist tantric movement and their creative role in shaping its distinctive vision of gender relations and sacred sexuality.  She identifies sky dancing dakinis and yoginis (semi divine beings and women practitioners) as being part of tantric history, tantric theory, tantric circle, and tantric relationship. 

Shakti Woman
Vicki Noble

This is a passionate work on what the author calls the new female shamanism.  She integrates personal experience, dark goddess archetypes and political analysis in discussion of the female blood roots of shamanism, reconnecting to the wisdom of our bodies, divination, astrology, dreaming, altered states, and female centered sexuality.  Easy to read, but be prepared, the author packs plenty into each chapter.  See if you don't feel the call to your own inner power.

Sophia:
Goddess of Wisdom, Bride of Christ
Caitlin Matthews

Sophia: The Goddess of Wisdom is an intensely scholarly yet highly poetic work. Modern history (his story) may have buried the Great Goddess under suffocating layers of denial and revisionism, yet as we move deeper into the "sophianic millennium," scraping away the fallow ground of patriarchy, She emerges anew. Author Caitlin Matthews unveils the veiled Black Goddess (the primal manifestation of the Divine Feminine) in her many hiding places over the last several thousand years. Disempowered and hacked to pieces, she has survived in the major Western religions, philosophies, and mystery schools in many guises. With the aid of the author's trained and intuitive eye, the reader tracks Her faint footsteps through the long dark night of the feminine soul.

Tantric Visions of the Divine Feminine
David Kinsley

Academic study of ten Tantric Wisdom Goddesses of the Hindu tradition who embody attributes usually considered socially subversive. The foremost goddess is Kali, goddess of creation and destruction, the tenth goddess Kamala-Laksmi, goddess of abundance.  In between you find a wild savioress, a wisdom goddess, a warrior goddess, a kundalini goddess, a crone goddess, a goddess of magic, and more.  Not for the faint of heart, these goddesses serve as awakeners within the context of tantric worship. 

Twilight Goddess
Cleary and Aziz

This book is a guided tour of the female principle in Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Sufism, and demonstrates that the female face of the divine has never really disappeared from patriarchal religions. Whether conceptualized as deity, saint, mythic figure archetype, or abstract principle, the divine feminine is manifest in all four traditions. Take the tour and see for yourself.

Re-visioning Mainstream Traditions

In Memory of Her
Elizabeth Schussler-Fiorenza

This is a feminist, theological reconstruction of Christian origins that includes both a discussion of feminist critical hermeneutics—a critical way of reading biblical texts that takes into consideration class, power and gender and culture of the writers—and a demonstration of feminist historical reconstruction that revisits discipleship of women in the early Christian community.  A fairly academic text—it is not to be missed for its expert demonstration of a very feminist methodology.

Gnostic Gospels
Elaine Pagels

This book is a landmark study of early Gnostic Christian texts discovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945.  The author draws on those texts to illuminate the world of the first Christians and to examine the ways the Gnostics constructed God, Christ, and the Church differently than biblical Christians. Some differences include the belief that personal experience of the divine was necessary, i.e. believers could not rely on priestly intermediaries. Other passages indicate a belief in a Mother-Father God, demonstrate a different role for Mari Magdalene—as visionary apostle and companion to Christ, and belief in equality between the sexes.  After reading this book you may find yourself wondering why certain gospels made it into the bible, and others did not.  In fact, you may not think of the bible in the same way again…. 

The Return of the Mother
Andrew Harvey

In this book, Harvey unearths traces of the sacred feminine in major world religions—Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Taoism, and Christianity—and in aboriginal and indigenous wisdom traditions.  Harvey explains that only by cultivating a direct, respectful relationship with the transformative power of the divine feminine, can we alter our disastrous attitude of dissociation from nature, the body, sexuality, and the details of human life, and generate the energy and compassion to reverse the course of destruction we have set the planet towards.

She Who Dwells Within: 
A Feminist Vision of a Renewed Judaism
Lynn Gottlieb

She Who Dwells Within is a sacred scripture and ritual text, story and history, law and inspiration blended together to create a renewed vision of contemporary Judaism that allows full participation for all its members. 

Sophia:
The Future of Feminist Spirituality
Cady, Ronan & Taussig

Reclaiming the Divine Feminine from exile in the West, Caitlin Mathews explores her many ancient forms worldwide to prefigure a realistic Goddess theology for Westerners.  This book presents Sophia as the post-feminist archetype for the future, showing us the way to a practical spirituality, grounded in daily life, sacred marriage and the natural world.

Woman with the Alabaster Jar
Margaret Starbird

This author, shocked by the heresy that Magdalen and Jesus were married and their descendants carried on the holy bloodline in France, set out to refute the evidence and instead came up with further indications of the existence of the bride of Jesus—the woman who anointed him with precious unguent from her alabaster jar.  Her research includes history, heraldry, symbolism, medieval art, mythology, psychology and the Bible itself as she involves us in a quest for the forgotten feminine.

Women at the Well
Kathleen Fischer

Presents a new approach to spiritual direction, one which arises out of women's experience and reflects a feminist concern for inclusiveness, connectedness, mutuality and justice. Testimonies of spiritual directees, as well as reflective prayer exercises enrich this thoughtful work.

Psychological

Addiction to Perfection
Marion Woodman

Marion Woodman's "Addicted to Perfection" is the best of her many works. Through case studies, dreams and myths, Woodman explores the hidden causes of compulsion in the lives of men and women and shows that freedom from addiction can be achieved.  She describes how we are all addicted to perfection and to being what our parents wanted us to be. This is expressed in active addicts through the abuse of alcohol, food, and sex according to our compulsive needs for father, mother and union (in corresponding order).

Aspects of the Feminine
CG Jung

A selection of writings from the Collected Works of Carl Jung focusing on the Feminine, which in Jung's psychology, can mean 1) the consciousness of real females; 2) an aspect of the unconscious in males called the "anima"; and 3) an archetype of the creative matrix of existence in all human beings. His writings on the psychological aspects of the mother and the Kore (daughter) illustrate what Jung saw as fundamental psychological issues for all human beings.

Coming Home to Myself: Reflections for Nurturing a Woman's Body and Soul
by Marion Woodman, Jill Mellick

Jill Mellick and Marion Woodman write this book together covering a range of topics that are all part of a woman's development and individuation. issues dealing with the body and embodiment, addiction, perfectionism, trust sand receiving, finding one's voice, surrendering, being conscious of one's femininity and integrating the masculine are all included. Goddess images such as the Black madonna and Sophia are also used.

Crones Don't Whine: Concentrated Wisdom for Juicy Women
Jean Shinoda Bolen

This book is an invitation to become a juicy woman, and together with other such women to make the world a better place! Bolen speaks on the power, compassion and energy of a mature woman, and how she ca be happy in joining others to share joy, and bring change. In a culture that values youth, a mature woman could use this book as an affirmation to the power that comes with age.

Crossing to Avalon: A Woman's Midlife Quest for the Sacred Feminine
Jean Shinoda Bolen

Jungian Analyst Bolen shares her journey through Europe to find and reclaim the sacred feminine. She attributes this as part of a women's journey in the second half of life.

Descent to the Goddess
Sylvia Perera

This book is about women's freedom and the need for an inner, female authority in a masculine-oriented society. Combining ancient texts and modern dreams, the author presents a path of female initiation. As the Sumerian goddess Inanna journeys to the underworld to meet her dark sister Erishkegal, so to must modern women descend into the depths of their instincts, letting go of their old role-determined behavior and image patterns to find anew the Great Goddess and restore her values to modern culture. 

The Goddess:
Mythological Images of the Feminine
Christine Downing

This book focuses on the archetypes of the Greek Goddesses (Persephone, Ariadne, Hera, Athena, Gaia, Artemis, Aphrodite), and relates them to the lives of women today.  Each chapter focuses on quotes from ancient Greek texts and central myths to give an overview of each Goddess, as the author explores the significance of each for women in western culture.  The author blends strong scholarly research and personal reflections to create an outstanding in-depth portrayal of the goddesses and their psychological meanings.  It's a classic—one  you will return to again and again, finding new meanings continually unfolding within.  

The Goddess Within:
A Guide to the Eternal Myths
that Shape Women's Lives
Jennifer Woolger and Roger Woolger

Suppressed by patriarchal societies and Christianity, the idea of the feminine played a powerful role in ancient mythology and religion.  The notion that these goddesses archetypes (here Greek influenced) are also symbolic of characteristics that are found in individual women is the focus of this book.  These goddess archetypes seek to validate women for what they are, not what society has told them they should be, and are a source of freedom and understanding.  There is encouragement by the authors to seek balance within one's life of all the goddess archetypes.

Goddesses in Everywoman: Powerful Archetypes in Women's Lives
Jean Shinoda Bolen

As a Jungian Analyst, Bolen explores major Goddesses of the classical Greek pantheon as archetypes for contemporary women. She discusses them in detail, beginning from childhood into adulthood, including career ambitions and relationships. Bolen also talks of how to cultivate and balance them out. A monumental work that was republished twenty years after its first release. A "must read" for anyone doing self-exploration and anyone trying to achieve better understanding of the women around them.

Goddesses in Older Women: Archetypes in Women Over Fifty
Jean Shinoda Bolen

Jungian Analyst Bolen welcomes the other half of life with this book, reminding women that the way to be is juicy. She takes the Goddess archetypes of the classical Greek pantheon, as well as from other traditions and applies them to women in this phase of life.

The Heroine's Journey
Maureen Murdock

Offering a re-visioned map of the feminine healing process, this book guides the reader in re weaving the thread of her life story into a mantle of empowerment for herself, for other women, and for Gaia herself. It speaks to every woman who longs for a spiritually alive feminine self, one who is actively engaged in the world, and who embraces the masculine principle as a mirror.  Be prepared to become the heroine in your own life.

In a Different Voice
Carol Gilligan

Developmental theories in psychology have generally been built on observations of men's lives. Here, Gilligan attempts to correct psychology's misperceptions and refocus its view of female personality. The result reshapes our understanding of human experience. Carol Gilligan's work asks the basic question - is revealed wisdom about ethical decision making bias free? She demonstrates that it is not. Her final summation is that placing relationships in the larger human community constitutes a higher level of ethical decision making. Gilligan does indeed point out that women may be more likely than men to make ethical decisions based on responsibilities to others rather than on abstractions. She questions the validity of Kohlberg's conclusion that this is a lower level of ethical reasoning, and she questions this not on the basis of gender but on the basis of logic and ethics.

Leaving My Father's House: A Journey to Conscious Femininity
by Marion Woodman, Kate Danson, Mary Hamilton, Rita Greer Allen

This book features the story of three women and marks thier journey to conscious femininity, including the myths they were socialized with through fairy tales, stepping outside of the bounds of patriarchy, and their individuation. A beautifully written book.

Mother Love, Mother Hate
Rozsika Parker

Rozsika Parker, a British psychoanalyst, explores the creative potential and social suppression of maternal ambivalence. Parker acknowledges the rigidity of our construction of motherhood while parenting and women's roles are changing profoundly. She argues the importance of acknowledging the complexities of maternal experience in order to minimize the destruction of a mother's hostility for her children and in order to better understand the depth of her love for them.

Mother Worship
James Preston

From this author's perspective, ambivalent attitudes towards the mother are clearly evident in images of the mother goddess that portray her as having a dual nature—both that of the nurturing creator and the powerful, terrifying destroyer.  Though the Great Goddess is seen as a protectress, destroyer of demons, source of national identity, and agent of revolution and cultural change, this book raises questions concerning the relationship between religious symbolism and the social roles of women.  It points out that a culture that elevates the female in religious beliefs does not necessarily offer women social and political equality. This author challenges us to develop more sophisticated theories about the relationship of women's roles to religion.

The Pregnant Virgin
Marion Woodman

"The woman who is virgin, one in herself, does what she does not for power or out of the desire to please, but because what she does is true." Here is writing with a thinking heart, blending art, literature, religion and extensive case material. This work continues the author's pioneering approach on the nature of the feminine in both women and men.

Ring of Power: Symbols and Themes Love Vs. Power in Wagner's Ring Circle and in Us : A Jungian-Feminist Perspective (Jung on the Hudson Book Series)
Jean Shinoda Bolen

This can be seen as one of Bolen's most essential works. Ring Of Power provides a valuable guide to Wagner's classic Ring Cycle. Bolen's grasp of the archetypal basis for the mythology is what gives the book its power. According to Bolen, all creation comes from an archetypal base, and in The Ring, it is the symbolic sacrificing of the Sacred Feminine that drives the entire story.

The Sacred Prostitute: Eternal Aspect of the Feminine (Studies in Jungian Psychology By Jungian Analysts, Volume 32)
Nancy Qualls-Corbett

There has been a longstanding connection between spirituality and passionate love. In ancient traditions that honored the Goddess of Love, a sacred prostitute was a virgin in the original sense, meaning that she was one-unto-herself. She was a direct link to the Goddess, bringing her love to mankind. Marion Woodman explores this concept within Jungian psychology, asserting that to restore our joy, this archetype needs to be restored within our consciousness.The foreword is written by Marion Woodman.

She
Robert Johnson

What does it mean to be a woman? What is the pathway to mature femininity?  And what of the masculine components of a woman's personality?  Robert Johnson explores these questions through the ancient myth of Amor and Psyche as a tale of a woman's task of becoming whole, complete, individuated.

Voice of Her Own: Women and the Journal Writing Journey
Marlene A. Schiwy

In this book, Schiwy looks at the work of women writers such as Anais Nin, and Virginia Woolf, and says that journaling is a creative expression form that can be used to explore feelings, dreams and intuitions, as well as give women an outlet. Writings of various women are included. The foreword is written by Marion Woodman.

Woman Changing Woman
Virginia Rutter

Rutter, A Jungian therapist, explains the mythical and tribal rituals she calls upon in treating female patients who have chosen a female therapist because they seek a feminine other. Through accounts and interpretations of dreams and life events of three women patients—and of Rutter herself—the author chronicles the women's maturation as they become better able to function comfortably in modern (patriarchal) society.

Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom
Christine Northrup, MD

Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom is a gateway to deeper understanding of health and well-being.  Women have an innate sense of spirituality, an ability to attune to the wisdom within themselves and the larger whole that has been systematically ignored in medicine.  This author restores the spiritual to the medical, facilitating understanding and confidence that every woman needs in order to create a healthy and fulfilled life.

Women's Ways of Knowing
Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger & Tarule

This book examines women's ways of knowing and describes five different perspectives from which women view reality and draw conclusions about truth, knowledge, and authority.  It shows how women's self-concepts and ways of knowing are intertwined and describes women's struggle to claim the power of their own minds.  The book also looks at how the family and schools promote and hinder women's development.  It is based on extensive interviews from rural and urban American women of different ages, class, ethnic backgrounds and educational histories.

Women Who Run with the Wolves
Clarissa Pinkola-Estes

This book explores culturally diverse myths, fairy tales and stories that help  women reconnect with the fierce, healthy, visionary attributes of their instinctual nature.  Through these stories, Dr. Estes has created a new lexicon for describing the female psyche—a psychology of women in the truest sense—a knowing of the soul.

Sacred Sexuality

Aphrodite's Daughters
Jalaja Bonheim

During her travels to India to study classical dance, this author encountered an aging woman who served as a sexual priestess in the Hindu tradition of Tantra. This meeting sparked an interest in discovering the role of sexuality in women's spiritual lives, and the author went on to interview dozens of women for this profound exploration of how body touches spirit. By sharing and contemplating sexual stories in the context of the spiritual journey, this author makes a significant contribution to women's healing. This is no small paradigm shift—be prepared to be empowered and challenged by the stories.    

Healing Love through the Tao:
Cultivating Female Sexual Energy
Mantak Chia

For thousands of years sexual principles and techniques were taught by Taoist masters to a small number of people in royal courts and esoteric circles of China. This is the first book to make this ancient knowledge available to the West.  The foundation of this approach to healing love is the cultivation, transformation, and circulation of sexual energy.  This energy is creative, generative energy that is vital for the development of  vital life-force as well as spiritual energy. With techniques developed for the conservation of this energy, women's physical, mental, and spiritual well-being can be revitalized. Among the many benefits of these practices created by Taoist masters are reduction of menstrual discomfort and the ability to attain full-body orgasm. These are powerful techniques: be prepared.

Promiscuities
Naomi Wolf

In this seminal work, sexual experiences during adolescence are found to determine women's sense of their own values as adults.  The author weaves together her own experience, and a group of girls sexual coming of age stories—stories not often told—to take us on the journey back to ourselves. She also examines the shadow that conditions our sexual development: abortion, the sex industry, and the sexual violence that underlie contemporary girls struggle for womanhood, and reviews popular culture, history and the myth of female desire to demonstrate how our 'liberated' culture still fears and distorts female passion  

Sacred Pleasure:
Sex, Myth and the Politics of the Body
Riane Eisler

The author takes us on an intense winding journey from the historical relationship of women, sex and religion to the roots of dominator and partnership alternatives, from sacred sexual traditions of the past to the eroticization of violence in western culture, from the linking of sex and power to changing views of nature, the body and truth, and finally, towards a politics of partnership. A seminal work—however, a somewhat dense read.

Sacred Sexuality
Georg Feuerstein

Feuerstein delves into a wide variety of spiritual traditions—including Christianity, Judaism, goddess worship, Taoism, and Hinduism—in search of sacred truths regarding sexuality. He reveals that all of these great teachings share the hidden message that spirituality is, in essence, erotic and that sexuality is inherently spiritual. From the erotic cult of the Great Mother and the archaic ritual of hieros gamos (sacred marriage) to the institution of sacred prostitution and the erotic spirituality practiced in the mystery traditions, Feuerstein offers a wealth of historical practices and perspectives that serve as the bases for a positive sexual spirituality we are in dire need of in this modern age.

Tantra:
Path of Ecstasy
Georg Feuerstein

This author conjures up a rich world of Hindu cosmology, philosophy, and theology in his discussion of Tantra as a form of devotionalism. Tantra is much more than the sex act, rather, ritual sounds, gestures, and actions figure prominently. Feuerstein draws on the ancient texts to describe the tantric path in great detail, including realization of the subtle body, directing energy through the chakras, and, yes, sex. Taken together, this author demonstrates that tantra is a vivid, multifaceted path to self realization.

Transcendent Sex
Jenny Wade

This author demonstrates that lovemaking can be a path to soulful realization in this study of ordinary people's spontaneous spiritual awakenings through transcendent sex. Drawing from first-hand accounts of nearly 100 respondents, the author offers historical, religious and cultural traditions as background, and identifies some of the shapes mystical sex may take, including out-of-body experiences, past life regression and even enlightenment, provides warnings on the down side of altered state sex, as well as suggestions for facilitating transcendent sex. Sometimes dense reading, but worth it.

Women of the Light
Kenneth Stubbs

This is a truly radical book that documents living women bringing together spirituality and sexuality in surprising and moving ways. Nine women share their work and their insights from their lives as teachers of sacred sexuality. The sexual meditation teacher, the nurse, the erotica star, the masseuse, and others reveal who they are and their vision of the sexual and the spiritual.

After Patriarchy:
Feminist Transformations
of World Religions
Editors Cooey, Eakin, McDaniel

Oppression of women in history has often been legitimized in the theologies, ideas and images of world religions. In these critical essays, women look anew at religious structures to ask—do world religious traditions possess authentic life giving elements? Are they redeemable from structures of patriarchal domination? You won't want to miss their far reaching conclusions.

The Chalice and the Blade
Riane Eisler

The Chalice and The Blade describes a way of life based on equality, nonviolence, and harmony with nature—"a partnership way" that was the basis of prehistoric Goddess-worshiping societies and offers a model for developing a sustainable and equitable future for the modern world.

Feminism and Religion
Rita Gross

The author demonstrates how the feminist social vision has transformed religious thought, ritual , leadership, and institutions around the world—including Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Islamic, Hindu and feminist spirituality traditions. Gross identifies how feminist academic methods have not only increased knowledge of women's religious lives, but have also challenged the basic understanding of religion as a whole. An important methodology book, this also makes for good reading. You will be inspired.

Is the Goddess a Feminist?
editors Hiltebeitel and Erndl

Feminists in the West often draw upon the living goddess traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism as theological resources in the contemporary rediscovery of the Goddess. Yet, these goddesses hale from a male supremacist society. This raises the question: do these goddesses empower women, or serve the interests of patriarchal culture? Contributors to this volume discuss contemporary Indian women who have embraced goddesses as spiritually and socially liberating, as well as the seeming contradictions between the power of Indian goddesses and the lives of Indian women. They also explore such topics as the element of male desire in the embodiment of female deities, the question of who speaks for the goddesses, and the politics and theology of Western feminist use of Hindu and Buddhist goddesses as models for their feminist reflections.

The Politics of Women's Spirituality
editor Charlene Spretnak

This is a comprehensive, accessible collection of articles by the founding mothers of the movement on the rise of spiritual power within feminism. Women with their 'new' spirituality—which is the oldest on earth—are leading humankind beyond the patriarchal politics of hierarchy and separation. Topics include: what the goddess means to women, myths as models of strength, manifesting personal power with self images of wholeness, and the application of spirituality as a political force.

Raising Their Voices:
The Politics of Girls' Anger
Lyn Mikel Brown

In this book, the author confronts the image of "passivity, depression, negative body-image and eating disorders, low self-esteem, and indirect expressions of feelings" perpetuated by recent research on teen girls. In a year of meetings with groups of working and middle class girls, the author engages young women in discussions about their relationships, their feelings, and the expectations they sense around being female. The book reveals a vast difference between the role-stereotype pressure on the two groups of girls, and offers news that all girls do not acquiesce to the constrictions of American culture. The author exhorts adults to allow girls their voices, and suggests "the possibility, even under the most oppressive of conditions, for creative refusal and resistance."

When God Was a Woman
Merlin Stone

Merlin Stone provides an archaeologically documented story of the religion of the Goddess. Known by many names—Astarte, Isis, Ishtar, among others—she reigned supreme in the Near and Middle East before the rise of the pastoralist cultures. Beyond being worshipped for fertility, she was revered as the wise creator and one source of universal order. This book tells a very political story of the role the rise of the Judeo-Christian tradition played in the eclipse of the goddess, and how this ancient worship affected Judeo-Christian attitudes towards women then and now.

Women's Reality
Anne Wilson Schaef

The author covers important systemic influences on women in western culture in this book, and chapter themes are a nice overview of her approach. She begins with 'the white male system and the original sin of being born female,' goes on to 'male/female relationships in the white male system,' continues with 'keeping women in their place,' and ends with 'new ways of looking at female systems and white males,' as well as describing a 'female system of theology.' It is important to note that throughout the book she is supportive of women's changing roles without putting men down.

Multicultural

Borderlands
Gloria Anzaldua

The physical borderland the author is talking about is the Texas/Mexico border. The psychological borderlands, the sexual borderlands, and the spiritual borderlands are the other places this journey takes you, including an archetypal trip to the Aztec goddesses. Though I lived on the border for 11 years, I finally got it when I read this book. Thanks Gloria.

Buffalo Woman Comes Singing
Brooke Medicine Eagle

The author was raised on a Crow reservation in Montana and in this vibrant tale, traces her spiritual development from her first steps on the medicine path to her ongoing work today as earthkeeper and visionary, teacher and psychologist. Along the way, she explores traditions like the Medicine Wheel, healing through ritual action, dreamtime, and the moon lodge—and brings us into contact with the archetypal Buffalo Woman, who calls each spiritual warrior to her own place in the dance of life.

Goddess of the Americas
Ana Castillo

An impassioned celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe—the brown Madonna—protector of the downtrodden, who made her first appearance to Europeans in the 1500's. In a variety of forms, the contributors to this volume examine the impact this potent deity has had on the people and culture of Mexico, and her influence beyond her borders. Their work is a profound recognition of all of our need for the sacred, unwavering love of the mother goddess.

Grandmothers of the Light
Paula Gunn Allen

In this medicine woman's sourcebook, you will find an amazing collection of goddess stories from Native American civilizations across the continent. The
author shares myths that have guided female shamans toward an understanding of the sacred for centuries.

The Healing Wisdom of Africa:
Finding Life Purpose Through Nature, Ritual, and Community
Malidoma Some

A distinct and complete study of the role ritual plays in the lives of African people and the role it can play for people in the west. Through Healing Wisdom of Africa, readers can come to understand the life of indigenous and traditional people is a paradigm for an intimate relationship with the natural world that surrounds us and is within us.

In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens
Alice Walker

Alice Walker's first collection of nonfiction, she speaks out as a black woman, writer, mother, and feminist on topics ranging from the personal to the political. She writes her own work and that of other writers, accounts of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the antinuclear movement of the 1980s and a scarring childhood injury. Walker explores theories and practices of feminists and feminism, incorporating what she calls the "womanist" tradition of black women.

Jambalaya: The Natural Woman's Book of Charms and Rituals
Luisah Teish

This book is a blend of memoir, folk wisdom, and Afro-American beliefs centered on a contemporary woman's journey back to a living tradition that has survived generations. The author presents personal history and first hand experience of rites and charms that can be assimilated into the search for spiritual growth, helping open us to timeless ways to take care of ourselves, each other and mother earth. Along the way, the author shares the process by which she has come to understand the secret life of the world, and the part humanity play in these mysteries.

My Soul is a Witness:
African-American Women's Spirituality
editor Gloria Wade-Gayles

This collection of essays is a testament to the importance of religion and spirituality in the lives of African American women. Whether joyful or fierce, the writings of these women teach us about love for spirit that brings about love of self.

Ritual:
Power, Healing & Community
Malidoma Some

Malidoma Some explores the essential role ritual plays in maintaining community and examines the structure common to all ritual. By telling stories of the rituals of his native West African Dagara culture, and of his own experiences in the tribal community, he makes a case that the lack of ritual in the Western world is a fundamental reason that the fabric of society is unraveling. He invites us to enter into ritual in order to respond to the call of the soul.

SELU:
Seeking the Corn-Mother's Wisdom
Marilou Awiakta

The Cherokee Corn Mother is SELU. She is the living spirit of Corn which is the sustainer of all life. The central theme of these essays and poems is unity through diversity. The Cherokee value of creating balance with ourselves , our communities, and our world helps us to see that corn as food is a physical and spiritual sustainer of life. Marilou Awiakta is an Appalachian/Cherokee and reflects the balance of her cultures.

Woman in the Shaman's Body
Barbara Tedlock

An anthropologist and an initiated shaman, this author reveals the long hidden female roots of shamanism, and takes us on a journey from prehistoric beginnings to the work of women across the globe today. Her evidence includes African rock art, Mongolian ceremonies, and the rich Mayan record of women warriors and spirit guides. The author discusses the key differences that distinguish female shamanism, including the role of body wisdom and eroticism in shamanic trance, and spiritual powers released in childbirth and monthly cycles. You will find that this book restores women to their essential place in the history of spirituality.

Boiling Energy
Richard Katz

The focus of this ethnography is the ritual healing dance of the African !Kung tribe, where healers dance to attain "num", an ancestral/divine energy that has myriad physiological affects, including the achievement of "kia", an ecstatic altered state of consciousness utilized for healing mind, body and spirit.

Cosmic Game
Stan Grof

In this profound work, experience philosophic, metaphysical and spiritual insights from this transpersonal pioneer's non-ordinary state research of almost 50 years. Experience, as the author does, existence as the play of the cosmic creative principle that transcends time, space, and linear causality to suggest an identity of the individual psyche with the universal creative principle. Realize that identification of human beings with the divine is the ultimate secret at the core of all spiritual traditions.

Edgar Cayce:
Modern Prophet
Mary Ellen Carter

Four provocative volumes from the notorious clairvoyant: On Prophecy reveals predictions on domestic, international, psychological and scientific matters; On religion suggests how religious faith can fully develop latent psychic abilities; Mysteries of the Mind explores the varieties of human consciousness; On Reincarnation provides psychic accounts of people who have lived more than once. Not to be missed.

Far Journeys
Robert Monroe

This is an amazing para-psychological odyssey that reflects a decade of research into the psychic realm beyond the known dimensions of physical reality. Join the author in remarkable excursions out of body and into outer consciousness.

Gods In Everyman
Jean Shinoda Bolen

This is an amazing book, covering the archetypes from the classical Greek pantheon and applying them to men of contemporary times. Some of the God archetypes that are explored are power driven Zeus and Poseidon, creative Haphaestos, rational Apollo, sensual Dionysus, and the Trickster Hermes. It brings the perspective of a feminist Jungian Analyst to Men's' Psychology.

Hero with a Thousand Faces
Joseph Campbell

Perhaps his best book, this classic traces the story of the hero's journey and transformation through virtually all the mythologies of the world—revealing the archetypal hero in them all.

Healing Drum
Diallo and Hall

The author (Diallo), was raised in a culture that works, worships, lives and breathes to the beat of the drum. An instrument for transmitting knowledge, the drum is the focal point of this authors life story, and his link with the western world. In his tradition, music is a remedy for both physical and psychological imbalances, harmonizing the forces of the visible and invisible worlds.

Highest States of Consciousness
editor John White

This book attempts to find the common denominator between cosmic consciousness, peak experiences, and the transcendental unconscious. Don't miss these essays on altered states and mystical experience by important pioneers of western consciousness studies.

Many Lives, Many Masters
Brian Weiss

This Yale trained psychiatrist was skeptical when one of his hypnotized patients began recalling past life traumas that seemed to hold the key to current life crises. His skepticism was eroded, however, when she began to channel messages about the author's deceased family member, and his mission in life. A provocative read.

Of Water and Spirit
Malidoma Some

This book is about ritual, magic and initiation in the life of an African Shaman. The author's tribal way of life was destroyed when as a child he was kidnapped by a Jesuit missionary. Escaping from the seminary and returning home to his Dagara village at age 20, he was viewed by some as too tainted by white knowledge to return to tribal life. Nevertheless, he underwent an intensive and dangerous initiation, only to discover the tribal elders decreed his destiny was to return to the white world as a bridge to save his tribe.

The Shaman's Body:
A New Shamanism for
Transforming Health, Relationships
and the Community
Arnold Mindell

Drawing on his shamanic experiences in Africa, Japan and India, the author leads us on a 'death walk' through our worst fear and deepest emotional crises to wake our inner shaman—our dreamingbody. Methods for tapping the wisdom hidden in crises are meant to help us free our own internal power, and guide us in developing a shamanic approach to everyday life. The author wanders freely from modern psychotherapeutic understandings to teachings from traditional cultures, and includes exercises for integration.

Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
Sogyal Rinpoche

This reinterpretation of the classic Tibetan Book of the Dead is a manual on learning to accept death, on caring for the dying, and on spiritual growth. Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist teacher who has lived in the West since the 70's, maintains that consciousness survives the death of the body. He draws parallels between near-death experiences and the afterlife journey through the bardos, or intermediate planes between death and rebirth.

The Universe is a Green Dragon
Brian Swimme

Communicating his ideas in the form of a classical dialogue between a youth and a wise elder, cosmologist Brian Swimme crafts a fascinating exploration into the creativity suffusing the universe. His explication of the fundamental powers of the cosmos is mystical and ecstatic and points directly to the need to activate one's own creative powers.

Eat, Pray, Love
Elizabeth Gilbert

Deciding in her early thirties, that she no longer wanted the American Dream, the author divorce her husband and set off on a personal odyssey. She headed for Italy - eat, India - pray, and Indonesia - love. This account of her incredible journey draws the reader in. What an honor to share her search for God and peace.

Fifth Sacred Thing
Starhawk

At once a spiritual and political novel (like Starhawk herself), this book takes you to a world where a rich and diverse culture honors the four sacred things: earth, air, fire and water. Then it asks you to imagine the nightmare opposite: a totalitarian regime that restricts food and water, and owns women and children. As in our time, the outcome of the clash between these two forces depends on the wisdom and courage of us all.

Giving Birth to God
M