Goddess Unmasked: The Rise of Neopagan Feminist Spirituality (Hardcover)

by Philip G. Davis (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal
Davis (religious studies, Univ. of Prince Edward Island, Canada) has written a comprehensive and revealing study of the history and development of modern Goddess spirituality. His examination of archaeological, historical, and literary evidence has lead him to conclude that the roots of Goddess spirituality lie not in prehistoric matriarchal societies, as exponents of Goddess beliefs have claimed, but rather in Western esoteric traditions and in the Romantic movement of the 19th century. Davis presents an abundance of evidence along with excellent documentation to support his theory and to point out the skewed historical paradigm presented by modern writers within the Goddess movement. While Davis's conclusions are likely to generate controversy, his work provides a thorough, well-researched, scholarly study of a new religious movement. Recommended for academic and theological libraries with collections on feminist spirituality.?Elizabeth Anne Salt, Courtright Memorial Lib., Westerville, OH
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
As a vibrant new faith, goddess worship has excited the hopes of millions weary of the repressive doctrines of traditional churches. But before he discards his Bible, Davis insists on a careful investigation into the claims made by goddess missionaries. Under his sharp scrutiny, these claims break apart, revealing the dubious motives and dishonest scholarship of some goddess-movement founders. Neither archaeology nor anthropology can substantiate the whole-cloth history of an ancient goddess spirituality brutally swept away by patriarchy. And goddess rites that celebrate a link with universal harmonies, he argues, are actually connected with nothing but the fevered fantasies of nineteenth-century occultists. Yet Davis shows that goddess worship, despite its doubtful origins, is rapidly seeping into mainline seminaries and even state universities, fostering utopian illusions and credentialed irrationality. Timely and cogent, Davis' analysis will help set the terms for the theological and cultural debates of the coming decade. An excellent resource with which to represent one side of a controversial issue. Bryce Christensen

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 418 pages
• Publisher: Spence Publishing Company (May 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0965320898
• ISBN-13: 978-0965320894
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #874,643 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An informative book on a new religious movement, June 29, 1999

By	Bruce Miller (Oakland, CA USA) - See all my reviews

"Goddess Unmasked" is a readable and informative discussion of neopagan religious ideas, particularly those around the practice of "goddess worship." Goddess worship, nature worship, and the practice of "Wicca" (which has been in the news lately due to a controversy about Wiccans in the Army) are closely related concepts, as Philip Davis shows.

The book has an interesting similarity to Dennis Covington's "Salvation on Sand Mountain," which deals with Appalachian snake handlers, in that it's a study of an unconventional, contemporary religious movement which is basically a fringe phenomenon but which also turns out to involve a lot more than a bunch of dreary fanatics with weird beliefs.

What Davis does is this book is to trace present-day goddess-worship to its immediate roots in the Romantic movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries through the European esoteric/occult tradition down to today. Along the way, he examines seriously some of the key claims of goddess advocates about pacifist, egalitarian "matriarchies" that supposedly existed in very ancient times, and about the meaning of the witch hunts of the early modern period in Europe. He also looks seriously at some of the religious implications of neopaganism, raising some critical issues but without an obvious agenda of evangelizing supporters out of their beliefs.

Most of the book is actually taken up with a series of sketches of the lives and ideas of a variety of colorful characters - mostly men - that contributed in some way to the esoteric/occult tradition that led to goddess worship, as well as to a lot of other ideas that have become common currency in the "New Age." They include serious scientists like the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, and a conservative German historian named Johann Jakob Bachofen who was carried away with Romantic ideas almost in spite of himself. He discusses well-known occultists like the Theosophist founder Madame Blavatsky and the bizarre con-man Aleister Crowley. And lots of others are tossed in along the way.

One of the most interesting and unusual things about this book is that it is a serious study of a new religious movement by a mainstream Biblical scholar, who employs the same kind of historical-critical perspective on the development of goddess worship that he presumably brings to Biblical studies. There is an academic sub-field dealing with "new religions." But that tends to focus specifically on issues relating to cult groups and also tends to be more sociological, psychological or journalistic in its approach.

An important aspect of this book is that Davis takes goddess worship seriously as a religious movement. In relation to the current controversy over Wiccans in the Army, Davis makes a good case that Wicca is entitled to be considered a religion. His observations on how "immanence" religions (that see divinity in nature) may devalue objectivity in knowledge are particularly provocative. The prophetic or transcendence religions like Christianity, Judaism and Islam see divine revelation as coming from without, as special revelation to humanity from a separate God. Is that view of God more likely to promote a more scientific or objective outlook than the immanence religions?

One word of warning. In this case, the old saying "you can't judge a book by its cover" really applies. The book jacket features a graphic of a scowling, green-faced hag that bears a striking resemblance to feminist writer Betty Friedan, who is not mentioned in the book at all. The back cover advertises two books which sound like antifeminist tracts, which makes me wonder if Spence Publishing may play to that particular niche.

The book itself does not make an antifeminist argument and is not polemical in tone. If any such editorial bias was brought to bear, it shows up in the last 13 pages, after the book's conclusions have been nicely summarized. Those pages take up a couple of contemporary Canadian disputes in which arguments that most feminists would regard as extreme played a visible role, but which seem to have no direct connection to goddess worship. Unfortunately, pasting on a cursory treatment of those issues at the end will give easy fodder to anyone who wants to write a hit piece on the book.

But, as interesting as the treatment of the present-day goddess movement was to me, my favorite thing about the book is that it contains so many stories about eccentric geniuses, dreamers and scamsters from the last couple of centuries who have contributed in some way to the modern religious scene.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Solid, Well-researched History of Ideas, March 9, 1999

By A Customer

"Goddess Unmasked" has two main parts. The first, a description of the standard "goddess history": the claim that the first religion was worship of a single goddess, that peace-loving matriarchies were focibly overthrown by bad old warlike patriachy and all that. He then goes through a rather nice summary of all of the cultures that are supposed to fit the "matriarchal" mold and demonstrates that there really isn't much evidence there to support the assertions of the proponents. While he gives some good pointers for more in-depth reading, it would have been nice if he'd put in a little more detail. Illustrations would have been useful in the parts where artifacts were discussed, but these are minor quibbles. Overall, he's done a good job in picking the most respected authorities of the movement's "mainstream" and addressed their historical claims directly and evenhandedly.

In the second part, Davis traces the origins of the "Goddess movement", finding it's roots in the "esoteric tradition" of the West: Mesmerism, Theosophy, etc. It is, essentially, a history of ideas and good reading for anyone that likes to watch an idea slowly develop. Davis does a fair job of keeping focus and filtering extraneous detail on the movements discussed, but iwas sometimes frustrating when he'd say something like "we'll skip over the colorful story of XYZ because it's off the subject". Oh well. This section could have been organized better, but on a whole it is well-reseached and has a strong factual basis. Great stuff.

The conclusion of the book left something to be desired. One gets the feeling that there was a bunch of topics that Davis wanted to comment on and he just sort of willy-nilly packed them in 30 pages at the end of the book. It would have been best for him to just stay on topic with a brief summary.

I suspect that this book will cause some pretty strong emotional reactions in the people that have a heavy investment in the "goddess myth" as a historical fact. I'd recommend it for anyone else with curiousity on the subject matter, though!

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Read it before you get worked up about the dust jacket, November 7, 1999

By A Customer

The author sets out to analyze the history of modern goddess worship and debunk some of its more extravagant historical claims. He succeeds. His analysis is detailed and he supports his assertions with facts. Although he is obviously not a goddess worshipper, I did not detect any overt bias -- i.e. Scriptural quotes or the like. His resume indicates that he is probably Christian, but you can't tell from the text of his book where his own religious loyalties lie.

He doesn't explain much of the practices of modern Wicca, and the last sixty pages do seem a bit hurried (as another reviewer noted). If that's your focus, you need a different book. Still, I think this is a good basic explanation of the historical background of neo-paganism.