Beyond Goddess: Female Devotees of Male Deities - Call for Submissions

Beyond Goddess: A Woman’s Guide to Forging a Personal Relationship with Male Deity is the first book for and about pagan women who have close relationships with male gods or would like to develop one.

 About the Book:

 

After centuries of having primarily male models of divinity to choose from, The Goddess movement has helped modern women see the divine in ourselves, in our own bodies and social roles and in the very essence of femininity.  And yet for many of us, there is still something lacking, in both our spiritual and mundane lives: the presence of positive male role models and masculine energy.  The feminist movement has increased society’s awareness of the very real ways in which masculine energy has had a negative impact on women’s lives, especially when it is wielded forcefully in cases such as rape and domestic violence.  However, there are also many positive ways in which we can experience male energy: the passionate lover, devoted husband, wise teacher, doting father, revered grandfather, and protective older brother—to name but a few.  These roles are often overlooked or undervalued in women’s spirituality, largely because many of us lack them in our own lives, in a time when many marriages end in divorce, children often grow up fatherless, and so many people have difficulty forming lasting relationships. 

 

Increasing numbers of pagan women have found a remedy for this situation by turning to male deities and developing their own personal relationships with Them.  Not only can male deities fulfill our crucial needs for positive male energy and male relationships, They can also help us heal our relationships with the men in our lives by teaching us about the essence of masculinity and how to relate to it in a healthy and spiritually productive way.  Most importantly, They can teach us to relate to the male aspects of our own natures, our male divinity within, and combine this with our awareness of our inherent feminine divinity to achieve spiritual wholeness.

This announcement serves two purposes: to let everyone I haven’t already spoken to know that this project has moved from the back burner to the front burner again, and to invite people who’d like to be interviewed for the book to email me.  I’m in the process of putting together a questionnaire and will be ready to send it out soon.  I can’t promise that each and every interview will make it into the completed book, because I will be trying to include examples from a variety of pantheons and relationship-types, but I am hoping to collect a decent amount of material to choose from, so if you are a female pagan of any description and are close to any male Deity, regardless of the type of relationship, I hope you’ll consider participating. This is a project that has been a long time coming, and one which I truly believe is needed. 

If you missed the original article and would like to check it out, I have it available on my website here.

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