Ancient spiritual traditions - Goddess, Celtic, African, Hindu, Buddhist, Catholic, Greek Orthodox - are being revived and remade by women who create amazing altarpieces. Kay Turner has been exploring the subject of women's altars for over 20 years. She has found them in the studios of artists in Detroit, New York or San Francisco and kitchens and bedrooms in Mexican-American homes in Texas. The statues, flowers, pictures, photographs, amulets, stones, shells and other things that make the altars represent their makers' histories, beliefs and desires. From Mama Lola celebrating Afro-Caribbean gods in Brooklyn, to a Wiccan in California worshipping the goddess Aphrodite, Kay Turner draws out the personal stories that lie behind the altars, most reproduced here in colour, and explains their universal appeal and significance.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
For at least 1000 years, women have created home altars dedicated to their personal deities. Turner, who earned a Ph.D. in folklore from the University of Texas, has spent more than 20 years exploring this rich, cross-cultural tradition. She weaves scholarship in feminist religious studies, many interviews with women altar-makers and an obvious appreciation for this individual art form into an informative (if, at times, repetitive) and occasionally inspirational reading experience. Turner is motivated by a feminist need to discover a woman's spiritual tradition that has been neglected or dismissed by male scholars. She emphasizes how, by creating private, domestic altars, women have claimed space from public and patriarchal practices for their own individual relationships with the Divine. After a brief historical survey of the tradition of women's altars, Turner devotes the major part of her study to analyzing contemporary altars made in what she terms "folk religious practices" (those running counter to institutionalized religions). She also includes altars made by women without institutionalized affiliation, such as pagans, Wiccans and goddess worshipers. In addition, she provides a brief biography of each altar-maker in a particularly valuable appendix. For all the merit of Turner's thorough textual analysis, many readers will feel that the book's value resides in its 110 illustrations, 80 in color, since it is through these that we are allowed to enter the private space of the home altars. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
About the Author
Kay Turner has a Ph.D. in Folklore from the University of Texas, where her thesis was devoted to Mexican-American women's home altars. Her publications include I Dream of Madonna and Between Us.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Absolute Necessity,
By A Customer
This review is from: Beautiful Necessity: The Art and Meaning of Women's Altars (Paperback)
Kay Turner's Beautiful Necessity graces its readers with balance and bounty. In its image-filled pages, one finds scholarship and story, history and anecdote, ritual and spontaneity, tradition and innovation, honor and humor: in all, the elements of a living altar. For those versed in altar tradition and practice, Beautiful Necessity affirms the sacred act of connection to that larger than the self; for those new to the tradition, welcome after welcome is given. Anyone who has ever -- who hasn't? -- found or made a meaningful connection to the sacred through objects or images will see themselves reflected here. One surprise after another greets readers throughout the book: perhaps one of the biggest surprises is the enduring and unquestionable connection between the altars themselves, made by women separated by time, place and history. Turner focuses on the ritual gestures of offering -- physical, spiritual, incantatory, conversational-- and manages, through carefully distinct chapters, to bring together the whole of altar practice via attention to distinct aspects and traditions; detail after detail stands out, and still the different altars come together into a practice, a way of being. This is remarkable, since even the contemporary altars vary from ephemeral performance art installations in New York City to long-enduring, cherished domestic altars in homes on several continents. Buy the book. Read the book. Make an altar, or return to the altar you have, or to your appreciation of another, refreshed and restored by this wide-ranging illumination of spiritual and artistic practice and belief. You need this book.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Highly Recommended,
By Stacy (Southern California) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Beautiful Necessity: The Art and Meaning of Women's Altars (Paperback)
This book provides a thorough and well written discussion of various aspects of women's altars. If you maintain a home altar, you may experience a deep revelation of how women across cultures and religions have similar practices and understandings of the sacred altar space. Turner's book does a wonderful job with photographic images of altars created by women practicing different traditions, including Goddess worship, Catholicism, and Buddhism. I was unaware of how altar traditions are often passed down through women in the family or that women are the primary caretakers of altars in certain cultures. Turner's discussion of techniques that are shared by women, such as collage, was wonderful to read. I thought some of the practices I had been doing were unique to me, since I was not taught them. How great to discover women share these creative practices and approaches to the spiritual realm collectively. This book is a true gift.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful and Meaningful,
By
This review is from: Beautiful Necessity: The Art and Meaning of Women's Altars (Paperback)
Beautiful work that shows the souls of women, and how they arrange their personal space to display what is important to them. Many of the illustrations and texts focus on Mexican and Mexican-American women and their Catholic shrines/altars (this is what the author has studied the most), but there are also illustrations of Goddess, Celtic, African, Hindu, Buddhist, and Orthodox altars pictured in the book. The text is well written, but the pictures are definitely the highlight of the book.
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