Aspects of Spiritual Culture
As a spark for thought and discussion, an outline of terrain we'll be discussing (along with political and historical information about women).
Goddesses, primal immanent power: Earth, rivers, mountains, forests, animals
Temples and land sanctuaries, especially springs, stones, caves, trees
Icons, statues, figurines and sacred images; vulva stones, sheila-na-gigs
Myths, spiritual philosophies, names, symbols, and meanings
Oracles, prophecy, second-sight, dream-incubation, divination, lots
Rituals, invocations, litanies, offerings, processions, vigils, pilgrimages
Offerings, votive lamps; vows and dedications; images of body parts
Incantation, choruses, drums, music, dances, ritual theater
Hearth as altar: ritual observances, distaffs, loomsticks, vessels
Ancestor veneration: rituals, libation, dance for the dead, stones, womb tombs
Pagan significance of place-names, holidays, festivals; ethnic religion
Ritual costume, masks, regalia, ornamentation and symbol, garlands
Herbal lore, chants, ritual, medicine, birth, con/tra/ception, abortion
Sexual politics: women's mysteries and cultures of female resistance
Priestesses as civic power or as female power and revolutionary catalyst
Syncretic Goddess movements under empire: Isis of 10,000 Names, Magna Mater, Fortuna, Atargatis, Tyche, Matres, Epona
Attacks on goddess veneration as cultural suppression of female power
Paganism swallowed: shrines, rites, symbols, goddess-disguised-as-saint
Witch as oppressed person: woman, slave, captive, colonized ethnicity, queer