ABSTRACT
Once we have a sense of who the Goddess was in the past, we can begin to think about what she means today. It is becoming clear that the Goddess calls us to transform powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting images and ideas about God. We have been taught that God is male, that he transcends the earth and the body, and that he is the light shining in the chaotic darkness of the natural world. Yet the Goddess is female; the earth, the body, and nature are her image; and the darkness as well as the light are metaphors of her power. We cannot understand the Goddesses unless we question dualistic and hierarchical assumptions about God's relation to the changing world that arose in the wake of the slaying of the Goddesses of earth. Reflecting on the limitations of the God we have known, we can begin to envision more holistic ways of thinking about the Goddess, the earth, and our place in it.
