“The Goddess is Embodied in Every Human Being”
An interview with STARHAWK
Starhawk is an author, activist, permaculture designer, and one of the foremost voices in Earth-based spirituality. Her 12 books include The Spiral Dance; The Fifth Sacred Thing; The Earth Path; her first picture book for children, The Last Wild Witch; and her book on group dynamics, The Empowerment Manual: A Guide for Collaborative Groups.
Starhawk directs and teaches Earth Activist Trainings, and will offer one at Rowe on May 31-June 14 which will include the curriculum for a Permaculture Design Certificate. “Rowe is such a beautiful, welcoming, magical place,” she says. “I’ve done goddess and ritual work there, and I’m very excited to teach a whole permaculture course, which I think is one of the best things anyone can do in life. It teaches a whole range of what’s possible in sustainability and understanding how to weave different practices together to create systems that are inherently self-renewing and self-supporting. Some of it focuses on gardening, camping, and land use and has many applications for education, planning, business, or other systems. We also teach grounding in spirit, and how to weave a human connection around that and take action to bring it forward in the world.”
THE ROWE CENTER: Both of your parents were children of Jewish immigrants from Russia, and, as you write in The Spiral Dance, you were raised Jewish — you were very religious when you were young, and pursued your Jewish education to an advanced level. What were you seeking in your spiritual journey that led you away from Judaism to the Goddess tradition?
Starhawk: Growing up in the Fifties and Sixties, I was looking for a way to experience the sacred as a woman, and a chance to take on roles of responsibility and power, and at that time there wasn’t much in Judaism, although that changed in the late Sixties and Seventies. That’s why the goddess movement was so attractive. Also, the goddess who speaks to us as women is an icon of sacredness not just of woman’s body, but of the immanence of the sacred in nature — that for me was a strong appeal. I had always had my own experience of the sacred in the natural world.
R.C.: One of your core theological principles is that the Earth is sacred — how does that manifest for you personally, and how do you feel called to embody and live that principle?
S: I now spend most of my waking time in nature. I teach a lot of permaculture design, which is a whole system of ecological design that allows us to look at nature and how it works, and to meet our human needs while regenerating the landscape and environment around us. I practice on the land in my own life, and for me it’s a really important aspect — knowing how to make compost, how to till soil, taking carbon out of the atmosphere. We have to be engaged to do what we can to hold back the tide of disaster and really put the world on a regenerative course. If you believe that the goddess is embodied in every human being, then you can’t just sit on your fanny when people are suffering; you have to try make the world a better place. I’ve been involved in many issues over the years, from protesting the Vietnam War in high school and doing antinuclear and weapons work, to the feminist movement and a huge amount of work in the global justice movement, the Palestine question, and anti-racism work. Right now a lot of my focus is on climate change and building the permaculture movement. We know how to regenerate land on a large scale; what stands in the way is finding the political will to do it.
R.C.: You’ve written that the three core principles of Goddess religion are immanence, interconnection, and community — how are these most alive for you at this stage in your spiritual journey, and how do you experience them?
S: I often say to people that the goddess is not something you believe in; if I walk outside my door I can see soil where leaves and needles have fallen, and trees that are drawing from that soil in an incredible, interconnected web of organisms and nutrients, and the trees growing and taking in sunlight, and transforming air and water into wood, leaves, flowers. That’s something going on around us all the time. So its not a matter of belief; its a matter of opening your eyes and allowing yourself to experience the wonder of what’s here right in front of your face — death, growth regeneration. When we allow ourselves to approach them with wonder and reverence, we can create more emotional and spiritual health in the world, and joy and life and beauty.
I think the way we work together with other people and connect with other people is a profound expression of the sacred that is immanent in each human being. In our work in communities, not to set up some individual as being of more inherent worth than others, but at the same time having a structure to function, and allowing people to earn empowerment. Trying to build networks of community where we take care of each other and celebrate together, create a human fabric together — in life we experience loss and death and often disease, and those are moments when what really makes it bearable is love and support. They’re gifts we can always give to one another.
R.C.: In 1999, when the 20th anniversary edition of The Spiral Dance was published, you wrote that “the feminist religion of the future is currently being formed.” How does that “feminist religion of the future”look to you now, 16 years later?
S: I think its has grown enormously in the last years. It encompasses the broad pagan movement, and the broad nature-based movement starting to take place on the world stage. I’d say that the central focus has shifted, so it’s not so much around feminism but around nature, in part because of the huge crisis we’re in right now, when the life-support systems of the planet are under siege and we desperately need to wake up and make changes.
R.C.: The Craft that you practice honors both the Goddess and the God. What do each of these mean to you in your own spiritual life?
S: For me, goddess and god are like portals; each offers entryways into different ways of caring for the world. When you call on them and work with them, they’re aspects of yourself. They allow you to look at the world with a different prism; energies come to you; you experience death, growth, regeneration in different ways. When I began I focused more on myth and story. My practice was sitting at an altar, doing trance and meditation, using my own imagery. Now the focus is much more on being out in nature and working directly with the land, soil, animals — opening up and putting myself in a state of consciousness to get out of my inner imagery and connect with what’s going on around me.
Starhawk will present “Earth Activist Training” at Rowe Camp and Conference Center with Charles Williams on May 31-June 14.
