Restoring the Goddess

This is both an incisive critique of patriarchal religion and a bold proposal to establish a liberating alternative to the Judeo-Christian tradition. Barbara Walker envisions a religion and a spirituality compatible with women's essential role in society and free of all the superstition and demeaning imagery characteristic of traditional, male-dominated religion. Hearkening back to the widespread worship of a mother goddess at the dawn of civilization, Walker argues for a restoration of this primal religious sensibility, which celebrated the Earth's fertility and woman's innate power to bear new life. Women are already rediscovering these ancient forms, Walker shows, and redefining the modern outlook in response to women's new appreciation of their rights and the long history of male dominance.