Female Leaders in New Religious Movement

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN NEW RELIGIONS AND ALTERNATIVE SPIRITUALITIES
FEMALE LEADERS
IN NEW RELIGIOUS
MOVEMENTS
EDITED BY INGA BÅRDSEN TØLLEFSEN
AND CHRISTIAN GIUDICE
Palgrave Studies in New Religions
and Alternative Spiritualities
Series editors
James R. Lewis
University of Tromso - The Arctic University
Tromso, Norway
Henrik Bogdan
University of Gothenburg
Gothenburg, Sweden
christian.giudice@lir.gu.se
Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities is an
interdisciplinary monograph and edited collection series sponsored by
the International Society for the Study of New Religions. The series is
devoted to research on New Religious Movements. In addition to the
usual groups studied under the New Religions label, the series pub-
lishes books on such phenomena as the New Age, communal & utopian
groups, Spiritualism, New Thought, Holistic Medicine, Western esoteri-
cism, Contemporary Paganism, astrology, UFO groups, and new move-
ments within traditional religions. The Society considers submissions
from researchers in any discipline.
More information about this series at

http://www.springer.com/series/14608
Inga Bårdsen Tøllefsen · Christian Giudice
Editors
Female Leaders
in New Religious
Movements
Editors
Inga Bårdsen Tøllefsen Christian Giudice
University of Tromsø Department of Literature, History of
Tromsø, Norway Ideas, and Religion
University of Gothenburg
Göteborg, Sweden
Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities

ISBN 978-3-319-61526-4 ISBN 978-3-319-61527-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-61527-1
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Contents
1 Introduction: Female Leaders in New Religious

Movements 1
Inga Bårdsen Tøllefsen and Christian Giudice
2 Women and NRMs: Location and Identity 11

Marzia A. Coltri
3 God’s Messenger: Ellen G. White 29

Laura L. Vance
4 Elizabeth Clare Prophet: Gender, Sexuality, and the

Divine Feminine 51
Erin Prophet
5 ‘Where There is True Love, Anything is Effortless’:

Mata Amritanandamayi: Divine Mother and Religious
Entrepreneur 79
Inga Bårdsen Tøllefsen
6 Mother and Father of Oneness: An Intersectional

Reading of the Shared Leadership of Amma
and Bhagavan 99
Elin Thorsén
vi Contents
7 ‘I, Jehovah’: Mary Ann de Grimston and The Process

Church of the Final Judgment 121
Christian Giudice
8 Olivia Robertson: Priestess of Isis 141

Vivianne Crowley
9 The Power of Writing in Deguchi Nao’s Ofudesaki 165

Avery Morrow
10 Females’ Subversive Interventions in the Religious Field

in Ethiopia 189
Serawit Bekele Debele
11 Female Leadership in Mudzimu Unoera Sect of Guruve,

Zimbabwe 209
Fortune Sibanda
12 The Politics of the Goddess: Radical/Cultural Feminist

Influences of Starhawk’s Feminist Witchcraft 229
Shai Feraro
13 The Chalice and the Rainbow: Conflicts Between

Women’s Spirituality and Transgender Rights in US
Wicca in the 2010s 249
Michelle Mueller
Index 279
Editors and Contributors
About the Editors
Inga Bårdsen Tøllefsen is a Ph.D. candidate in Religious Studies at

UiT, the Arctic University of Norway. She has published several articles/
book chapters on gender, NRMs and the New Age movement. She has
co-edited anthologies such as Nordic New Religions (Brill 2015) and The
Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements, 2.ed (Oxford University
Press 2016) with James R. Lewis.
Christian Giudice has obtained his Ph.D. from the University of

Gothenburg with a thesis titled Occultism and Traditionalism: Arturo
Reghini and the Antimodern Reaction in Early Twentieth Century Italy.
He has published on journals dealing with Western esotericism such as
Aries and The Pomegranate. He is the editor of the newsletter of the
European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism and is on the edi-
torial board of Correspondences: Online Journal for the Academic Study of
Western Esotericism and chief editor of La Rosa di Paracelso: Rivista di
Studi sull’Esoterismo Occidentale. He is also chair of ESSWE subnetwork
WEAVE, which deals with the interactions between Western esotericism
and the Visual Arts.
vii
viii Editors and Contributors
Contributors
Marzia A. Coltri was born in Verona, Italy, and completed her

Laurea Magistrale in Philosophy with a thesis on the liberal and sci-
entific thought of Karl Popper. She has received her Ph.D. in African
and Caribbean religions (the Rastafari movement and the Ethiopian
Orthodox Tewahedo Church) in the School of Philosophy, Theology
and Religion at the University of Birmingham (UK). She is currently
Lecturer in Christianity at Woolwich College London in partnership with
the University of Canterbury. She is also teaching Philosophy, Ethics and
NRMs at Sandwell College in the UK.
Dr. Vivianne Crowley is a member of the Faculty of Pastoral
Counseling and Chaplaincy at Cherry Hill Seminary, Columbia, SC.
She was formerly Lecturer in Psychology of Religion at King’s College
London. She taught on the first M.A. programme in Psychology of
Religion in Europe, based at Heythrop College, London, where her spe-
cialist courses included Jung and the post-Jungians. Her current research
interests include contemporary Paganism and schizotypy in religious
groups.
Serawit Bekele Debele is a junior fellow at Bayreuth International
Graduate School of African Studies (BIGSAS) Germany. She is writing
her dissertation under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Ulrich Berner in the
department of religious studies. Her current research focuses on religion
and the state in post-1991 Ethiopia.
Shai Feraro has a Ph.D. from Tel Aviv University’s School of Historical
Studies. His dissertation dealt with women and gender issues in British
magical and Pagan groups, c. 1888–c. 1988. Dr. Feraro serves as the
Secretary of the Israel Association for the Study of Religions and is the
co-editor of Contemporary Alternative Spiritualities in Israel (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2016).
Avery Morrow is currently investigating postwar Omoto-kyo-linked
religious communities as a researcher at the University of Tokyo’s
Department of Religious Studies. His research into various aspects of
Japanese traditionalism has been published in the Wittenberg University
Editors and Contributors ix
East Asian Studies Journal and Innovative Research in Japanese Studies.

His book-length literary analysis The Sacred Science of Ancient Japan was
published in 2014.
Michelle Mueller is pursuing her doctorate at the Graduate Theological
Union. Michelle teaches part-time for several universities: Berkeley City
College, Santa Clara University and seminaries of the multi-religious
consortium Graduate Theological Union (GTU). A Ph.D. candidate, she
is writing her dissertation, “Performed Polygamy and Polyamory in the
Media Age” in Cultural and Historic Studies of Religions Department of
GTU.
Erin Prophet is a Ph.D. student in Religion at Rice University, with
a focus on American metaphysical religion. She is the daughter of
Elizabeth Clare Prophet and served on the board of directors of Church
Universal and Triumphant from 1985 to 1993. She is the author of
“Charisma and Authority in New Religious Movements” in the Oxford
Handbook of New Religious Movements 2nd ed. (2015), as well as
Prophet’s Daughter: My Life with Elizabeth Clare Prophet inside Church
Universal and Triumphant (2009). She is a co-author of Comparing
Religions (2014) by Jeffrey Kripal.
Fortune Sibanda lectures in the Department of Philosophy and
Religious Studies, Great Zimbabwe University, Masvingo. He is a reg-
istered D. Phil candidate at the University of Zimbabwe. He has widely
published articles in refereed journals and book chapters on various
themes from a religious perspective such as New Religious Movements,
Indigenous Ways of Knowing, Human rights issues and the environment
in the African context.
Elin Thorsén obtained an MA in Indian Philosophy and Religion from
Banaras Hindu University and is at present a Ph.D. student in Religious
Studies at the Department of Literature, History of Ideas and Religion
at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her Ph.D. project is an eth-
nographic study of the cosmopolitan scene of gurus and teachers giving
satsangs in the north Indian pilgrimage town Rishikesh. Her academic
interests include modern guru movements, religion and globalization,
and New Age spirituality.
x Editors and Contributors
Laura L. Vance is the author of Seventh-day Adventism in Crisis: Gender

and Sectarian Change in an Emerging Religion (University of Illinois
Press, 1999) and Women in New Religions (New York University Press,
2015). She authored a chapter on “Gender” in the first comprehensive
biography of Seventh-day Adventism’s prophet, Ellen Harmon White
(Oxford University Press, 2014), and has published papers on gen-
der and sexuality in Seventh-day Adventism and Mormonism. She is a
Professor of Sociology at Warren Wilson College where she also directs
Gender and Women’s Studies.
List of Figures
Fig. 3.1 Ambrotype earliest known photograph of Ellen

and James White, 1857 (approximation) 36
Fig. 3.2 Ellen White speaking at Loma Linda, 1906 40
Fig. 3.3 Ellen White addressing 1901 General Conference
session, Battle Creek, Michigan 42
Fig. 4.1 Elizabeth Clare Prophet delivering a lecture at
the annual summer conference of Church Universal
and Triumphant, held July 1992 at the Royal Teton Ranch,
Corwin Springs, Montana. © Chad Slattery 1992 54
Fig. 4.2 July 1988. Conference tents in the heart of the inner
retreat, a secluded valley on the Royal Teton Ranch,
owned by Church Universal and Triumphant, also
the site of the main fallout shelter complex built
for church staff. © Chad Slattery 1988 62
Fig. 4.3 Album cover for A Child’s Rosary to Mother Mary,
audio recording with Elizabeth Clare Prophet, showing
Prophet and a statue of the Virgin Mary, usually called
Mother Mary in CUT theology. ©1979, Church Universal
and Triumphant 66
Fig. 9.1 Oomoto founder Deguchi Nao, in 1916 170
Fig. 9.2 Sigils copied from the Ofudesaki. From second-generation
transcriptions by Tokushige (1954) and Hino (n.d.) 174
xi
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Female Leaders

in New Religious Movements
Inga Bårdsen Tøllefsen and Christian Giudice
It took me quite a long time to develop a voice,

and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent.
Madeleine Albright
As the title of this volume—Female Leaders in New Religious

Movements—indicates, the featured leaders are (generally) identified as
female—even though gender is, as will be shown throughout the volume,
a contested term. Female, here, can be understood as a broad category, as
it can be connoted with ‘traditional’ feminine values, with transgender and
LGBTQI issues, or even with the concept of the metamorphosed male,
which is a key analytical term in Avery Morrow’s chapter “The Power of
I. Bårdsen Tøllefsen (*) 
Department of Archaeology, History, Religious Studies and Theology, UiT
The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway
C. Giudice 
Department of Literature, History of Ideas, and Religion, University of
Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden
© The Author(s) 2017 1

I. Bårdsen Tøllefsen and C. Giudice (eds.), Female Leaders in New
Religious Movements, Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative
Spiritualities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-61527-1_1
2 I. Bårdsen Tøllefsen and C. Giudice
Writing in Deguchi Nao’s Ofudesaki”. However, the editors have left the
focus of each chapter up to each contributor, and therefore, some chap-
ters deal with shared leadership in NRMs, such as Christian Giudice’s “I,
Jehovah: Mary Ann de Grimston and The Process Church of the Final
Judgement” or Elin Thorsén’s “Mother and Father of Oneness: An
Intersectional Reading of the Shared Leadership of Amma and Bhagavan”.
Additionally, due to the diversity of movements treated in the follow-
ing chapters, the editors have intentionally refrained from prioritizing
any particular theoretical approach. Rather, we have attempted to bring
together a diversity of scholars who have focused on different new reli-
gions, different times, and different localities. The contributors analyse
issues of gender and female leadership from diverse theoretical and meth-
odological standpoints, which together illustrate the point that complex
phenomena deserve complex answers. Each leader has a unique and fas-
cinating biography, and the movement to which she has ‘given birth’ has
its own particular ways of dealing with leadership issues, gender, sexual-
ity, and identity. Thus, each chapter provides readers with perspectives on
organizations and leaders that have, for the most part, thus far failed to
elicit extended scholarly treatment. This is particularly true for smaller,
more localized groups in the global south that easily fall under the radar
in the predominately Anglophone-oriented study of NRMs.
In Chap. 2, “Women and NRMs – Location and Identity”, Marzia A.
Coltri uses a feminist philosophical standpoint to present readers with an
overview of diverse NRMs and the theologies/thealogies that accom-
pany these, ranging from African matriarchal movements, feminist and
eco-esoteric spiritualities, to Wicca. Coltri also analyses the Pro-Ana/Mia
online community, seeing traces, divinization, and ritualization of ano-
rexia and particular identities and body images. Concerned with the psy-
chological states of women under patriarchy and the roles of women in
NRMs, this chapter provides a backdrop to the rest of the volume, as
Coltri states that “women should take their place as prominent religious
and political leaders in NRMs and should give a creative, provocative,
and liberative voice to all the women in changing societies and reli-
gions”. This chapter, and the collection as a whole, shows that it is diffi-
cult to discuss gender without also discussing power and also the notion
of patriarchy. The women featured in this collection have founded and/
or led new religions in cultures, places, or times where male dominance
is supported by concrete economic and social factors. As the contribu-
tors demonstrate, there are also indications that female leadership has
1 INTRODUCTION: FEMALE LEADERS IN NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS 3
directly or indirectly threatened the status quo of patriarchal structures

(Wessinger 2007). One might imagine that the essentialist notion of
patriarchy is completely passé, leaving the discourse of “[…] ‘patriarchy’
suspect, since the idea that men systematically dominate, oppress and
exploit women is challenged by the view that society is structured by a
complex set of differences (ethnic, racial, gendered, class-based), and
that both men and women occupy and negotiate a range of different
positions within this complex matrix” (Woodhead 2013, pp. 58–59).
However, although they have not necessarily understood themselves as
feminists, the featured female leaders have, relative to their social con-
texts, taken up the more or less controversial roles of prophetic pioneers,
charismatic mother figures, business-savvy gurus, and prolific authors.
Even though the repertoire of possibilities for gendered expressions and
the space for female leadership have dramatically increased with moder-
nity, the contributions to this volume amply demonstrate the hard work
and the skills of the featured leaders in legitimizing their status in milieus
that are not at first sight conducive to female religious leadership. The
necessity of hard work and perseverance comes across in Chap. 3, where
Laura L. Vance traces the fascinating history of Ellen G. White, the
founder of Seventh-day Adventism. White was a visionary and prophetic
leader, whose leadership skills developed in tandem with the growth of
her movement. In a social and historical context that constrained female
right of entry to leadership, White’s charisma and divine ‘translation’
secured her a long religious career and a legacy as the founder of a suc-
cessful, now global new religion. Charisma is a key factor in a number—
if not all—of the chapters in this collection. Authority can come from a
number of sources—as Max Weber’s (1968) heuristic categories indi-
cate—be it legal-rational ownership or authority based on historical tra-
dition. However, for the female leaders presented in this anthology,
charismatic authority is by far the most used legitimization strategy.
Charisma, in the form of authority based on access to unseen and sacred
sources has “[…] been the primary means of empowering women to
positions of leadership in patriarchal contexts. Charisma has the effect of
cutting through the restriction of patriarchy for the exceptional women
believed to possess it” (Wessinger 2007, p. 1). However, charismatic
power exists mainly in the nature of the social contract. As Catherine
Wessinger (2012) notes, charismatic leadership is predicated on the
belief in this extraordinary foundation of authority, but without gaining
and keeping inspired adherents, a charismatic leader is simply not a
leader at all. The leader’s ‘force of personality’, embodied in the devotee

as a feeling that here is a person of hidden knowledge, access, and power
and that here is a person worthy and prudent to follow, can be under-
stood as the basis of charisma. Chapter 4 tells the story of a female NRM
leader with the evident force of personality. In “Elizabeth Clare Prophet:
Gender, Sexuality and the Divine Feminine”, Erin Prophet focuses on
her mother’s powers of leadership, describing her inheritance of power
from her husband Mark Prophet, and her ascendance to her status as a
leader that was both forceful and gentle—and who “played the role of
both cheerleader and cop”. Erin Prophet analyses Elizabeth’s teachings
on the Divine Feminine and her theological innovations‚ and showcases
her complexity—as the prophetic, charismatic leader of Church
Universal and Triumphant actively subverted patriarchy, while defining
herself as anti-feminist. Teachings and practices of sexuality is a theme
that surfaces throughout the chapters in this volume. As the social insti-
tution‚ where meaning-making is linked to images of the divine, religion
plays a fundamental role in informing and preserving cultural ideas of
gender and sexuality. Due to religion’s role in the creation of ultimate
meaning, it interconnects with gender in a number of ways, “[…]
including images and characteristics of the divine, access to the divine,
accounts of creation, sacred texts and stories, moral norms, access to reli-
gious authority, roles in ritual, and religious history” (Vance 2015, p. 6).
Another volume in this series, Sexuality and New Religious Movements,
sheds light on the deep interconnections of gender roles with ideas
about sex and sexual practices in a number of NRMs. In that collection,
as well as in the present volume, it is demonstrated that in order to dif-
ferentiate themselves from mainstream social contexts, new religions
tend to create new ways (or, alternately, rekindle ‘traditional’ ways) of
doing family, marriage, and sexuality (Bogdan and Lewis (eds.) 2014;
see also Vance 2015; Palmer 1994; Wessinger 1993), and that ideas
about gender permeate these paths. All of the female leaders in this vol-
ume deal with sexuality in one way or another: from being “divinely”
married (with a more or less traditional family life), such as the guru
couple Amma and Bhagavan, or being celibate and biologically childless,
but with the mantle of the divine, universal mother, such as the female
guru Amma. In Chap. 5, Inga Bårdsen Tøllefsen analyses one such
ascetic metaphorical mother. Mata Amritanandamayi Devi (Amma) is an
Indian-born female guru and religious entrepreneur, who leads a global
movement on the crossroads of a NRM and a non-governmental,
humanitarian organization. Amma’s charisma is integral to the founding

and upkeep of her movement, and bhakti (devotion) can be seen as the
primary avenue of religious expression and community building in her
group (both online and offline). In Chap. 6, “Mother and Father of
Oneness: An Intersectional Reading of the Shared Leadership of Amma
and Bhagavan”, Elin Thorsén presents another Indian-origin movement
with a different take on gender issues and leadership. While the chapter
focuses on how Amma’s multiple roles have affected her leadership,
Thorsén also highlights that Amma and Bhagavan are quite unusual
among Indian gurus, in that they work together spiritually. Their deal-
ings as a married couple are a crucial factor of their shared leadership,
and the gurus are often referred to Mother and Father. These avatars are
thus “representing the feminine and masculine side of one and the same
consciousness”.
The feminine and masculine sides of the same consciousness are also
represented in Chap. 7, where Christian Giudice analyses the figures of
Robert and Mary Ann de Grimston and their position of leadership in
the Process Church of the Final Judgment: founded in the mid-1960s by
this charismatic couple, the Process reflects the influence that British and
American countercultural movements had had on society, in general, and
on New Religious Movements, in particular. The previous academic liter-
ature on the subject had indicated Robert as the main ideologue behind
the Process’ doctrines, positing him in a position of power above that of
his partner Mary Ann (Bainbridge 1978). The publication of new pri-
mary sources has evidenced the existence of subcultures in which women
could, and in this case did, take the reins of power, exerting their leader-
ship from behind the scenes, as in the case of Mary Ann de Grimston.
Being more specific, Robert was the official face of the Process because
society at large still expected a Christ-like figure to lead a New Religious
Movement, but the central figure within the Process’ power structure
was, right from the beginning, Mary Ann, advised by her tight-knit
group of female Processeans. Although the NRMs featured in this col-
lection vary widely in terms of time, localization, and tradition, the ana-
lytic key here is that the organizations are predominately culturally new
and alternative, as they emerge within—and exist in some degree of ten-
sion with—their social context. It is difficult to calculate to what extent
NRMs have influenced conventional (religious) culture, but NRMs have
often been laboratories for social experimentation regarding gender ide-
ologies, sexualities, and lifestyles. As a breeding ground of the alternative,
countercultural, or esoteric, NRMs (of the last two centuries) have been
able to provide “[…] women access to possibilities not available in more
established religious traditions and in the wider social context. New reli-
gions provide a break from tradition, defining themselves in opposition to
established patterns, and so they may allow women positions of author-
ity and other opportunities generally denied them” (Vance 2015, p. 8).
In Chap. 8, Vivianne Crowley presents the fascinating history of Olivia
Robertson, Priestess of Isis. With her brother and his wife, Robertson
founded the Fellowship of Isis in 1976, and the group played an impor-
tant role in the NRM milieu that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s—the
heyday of alternative spiritualities. An artist and visionary, Robertson’s
aim for the Fellowship was to provide people with means to worship the
Goddess and to sacralize and re-enchant this world, and‚ importantly,
the natural world. Crowley notes that although Robertson was an art-
ist and a charismatic personality, she was not a charismatic leader in the
Weberian sense—rather, her leadership style was of the laissez-faire vari-
ety. Robertson’s legacy nevertheless continues to this day within Pagan
and Goddess spirituality. In Chap. 9, Avery Morrow’s “The Power of
Writing in Deguchi Nao’s Ofudesaki”, readers encounter another vision-
ary, an impoverished Japanese widow. In 1892, Deguchi Nao, who for
decades has suffered in an arranged marriage marred by her husband’s
alcoholism, began hearing voices and channelling spirits. Although illiter-
ate, Nao wrote down millennial visions and messages from a kami, and
with the help of patrons, she eventually co-founded the NRM Oomoto.
Morrow highlights Nao’s relationship with her companion Onisaburō,
the transformed female to Nao’s transformed male, and makes the case
for the metaphysical importance of their reversed gender roles. “Unlike
an ordinary church, which would have a single chain of authority to make
the universe appear under control to members—or indeed, unlike impe-
rial Japan, where the Emperor was meant to keep the peace between
conflicting political interests—Oomoto shows us the reality of spiritual
warfare between good and evil, and between men and women”.
Religious ideas and systems are often used to legitimate and mirror
social patterns—whether economic, political, or ideological—including
customary notions of gender. However, religions can also be important in
challenging these notions. New Religious Movements are often in the van-
guard of religious change, and emergent ideas of gender and leadership
can be found at their core. Chapters 10 and 11 describe and analyse such
gendered changes in the religious contexts of Ethiopia and Zimbabwe.
In Chap. 10 “Females’ Subversive Interventions in the Religious Field

in Ethiopia”, Serawit Bekele Debele, after a short overview of religious
history in Ethiopia, bases her analysis of Oromo religion and female lead-
ership on Bourdieu’s theory of religious capital. The religious leader in
question, Abebech Wuletu, is both charismatic and controversial. She
bases her authority on her practice of spiritual mediumship and perfor-
mance of miracles, and her gender is no hurdle for her religious work.
However, Wuletu’s orthodox Christian background and her mediumship
pose a threat to church monopoly, and Debele analyses Wuletu’s agency
as subversive, as “she deconstructs boundaries and checks the church’s
claim to unreserved authority”.
In Chap. 11, Fortuna Sibanda critically examines female leadership
in the Mudzimu Unoera sect of Guruve, Zimbabwe. This movement is
a syncretic Christian schism from the male-founded Mudzimu Unoera
Church and is led by Tepsy Nyanhete (Girl Jesus), and her mother, Mai
Maria. Sibanda highlights the controversial nature of the sect, who has
received critical attention from both local government and media for
detaining children at their shrine. Parts of the controversy stem from what
Sibanda analyses as anti-structure and internal cohesion in the group,
bolstered by anti-language in the form of Tritnoi, the mystical language
originating from Tepsy Nyanhete and widely used in the sect. Tepsy is
analysed as a typical charismatic leader, but weight is also given to the
work of her mother—who describes herself as Girl Jesus’ spokesperson,
but who functions as the de facto leader of the Mudzimo Unoera sect.
Female agency and a need for a non-victim narrative in regard to female
religious participation and leadership are key conclusions not only in
Sibanda’s chapter, but also in the two final contributions to this volume.
The Pagan milieu, with its countercultural background and in its com-
plexity, has been highly conducive to female leadership, both historically
and contemporarily. In his chapter “The Politics of the Goddess: Radical/
Cultural Feminist Influences of Starhawk’s Feminist Witchcraft” Shai
Feraro analyses the feminist philosophy backdrop to the work of Miriam
Simos, also known as Starhawk, a seminal Pagan activist and theorist whose
thoughts have been influential for the development of feminist witchcraft,
and particularly the Reclaiming tradition. In this highly detailed chapter,
Feraro traces the genealogies and ideologies that have influenced Starhawk’s
writings, and have made contemporary Paganism what it is today.
In Chap. 13, Michelle Mueller examines female leadership in US
Wicca in the recent years, noting the current conflicts between women’s
spirituality and transgender rights. After taking readers through some

Pagan perspectives on gender and some influential female leaders in early
US Wicca, Mueller analyses a few case studies where Pagan transgen-
der women have been marginalized. She concludes that these conflicts
are due to inherent characteristics of the Pagan and Wicca movements
being politically progressive, but often with polar and naturalized gender
roles, noting that contemporary Pagans tend to not address the prob-
lem that “the definition of gender as a personal and authentic aspect of
one’s innate identity distinguishable from sex is a new definition, sepa-
rate from how feminist theorists and gender studies scholars have under-
stood gender”.
Although obviously not exhaustive, Female Leaders in New Religious
Movements indicates some of the diversity and extensiveness of the field,
both temporally and spatially. Female leadership has been (and still is)
a contested issue, no matter where on the globe we are located. One
of the most visible stages where this contest plays out is in religion,
where over the last centuries women have increasingly carved out posi-
tions of power—particularly as leaders and founders of New Religious
Movements. The female leaders featured in this volume are extraordi-
nary, in that they are spirit mediums, charismatics, gurus, prophets, ava-
tars, writers, and vessels of divine ideologies, who challenge tradition by
creating their own personas and traditions. These women have undoubt-
edly been aware of the availability and complexity of gender ideologies in
play in their given historical context. They have entered and/or created
milieus which (depending on the nature of their creeds and belief sys-
tems) have sanctioned and sacralized female leadership, and called into
play various modes of legitimization for their management and authority.
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Palmer, Susan. 1994. Moon Sisters, Krishna Mothers, Rajneesh Lovers: Women’s
Roles in New Religions. New York: Syracuse.
Vance, Laura. 2015. Women in New Religions. New York: NYU Press.
Weber, Max. 1968. On Charisma and Institution Building. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press.
Wessinger, Catherine (ed.). 1993. Women’s Leadership in Marginal Religions.

Explorations Outside the Mainstream. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Wessinger, Catherine. 2007. Charisma and Credentials: Women’s Religious
Leadership in America. Yamauchi Lectures in Religion: Loyola University
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Wessinger, Catherine. 2012. Charismatic Leaders in New Religious Movements.
In Cambridge Companion to New Religious Movements, ed. Olav Hammer and
Mikael Rothstein, pp. 80–96. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Significance. In International Advances in Engineering and Technology
(IAET), vol. 13, January 2013, pp. 58–85. Originally published in Beckford,
James and Demerath III, N.J. eds. 2007. The Sage Handbook of the Sociology of
Religion. Los Angeles: Sage. 2007. pp. 550–570.
CHAPTER 2
Women and NRMs: Location and Identity
Marzia A. Coltri
Introduction
Many NRMs have often excluded women from leadership socially and
spiritually. In Women in New Religions, Elizabeth Puttick says that most
women are subordinated in both old and new religions. Femininity was
suppressed for a long time, and the matriarchal Goddess culture was
obscured by the patriarchal societies. With the repression of feminine
ideals, women became mothers, wives, divorced and workers under a
patriarchal culture. For a long time, women have been separated from
each other, mothers from daughters, white from black, rich from poor,
old from young; women have suffered in isolation.
However, since the 1960s, women have begun to listen to women,
to see women, and care for women. Sisterhood has been recalled, and
women have been able to connect with the feminine self in the eyes
of other women. At present, also with the wave of global migration,
women have been empowered, having an impact on the transformation
M.A. Coltri (*) 
Philosophy and Ethics and NRMs, Independent Researcher,
Birmingham, UK

12 M.A. Coltri
of secular society; women may be more receptive to discussions related

to ethical issues such as abandonment of careers, abortion, childlessness,
violence, forced marriage, sexual abuse and poverty.
This study therefore takes a feminist philosophical standpoint
which aims to understand how feminism works in order to liberate
both sexes from traditional gender roles. A feminist approach to the
theology/thealogy of women in NRMs is essential to understand the
meaning of God or Goddess across diverse religious and cultural com-
munities. It is important to know that female leaders in NRMs are inte-
grative in several respects. Women in NRM movements do not separate
theology/thealogy from real, concrete and existential social and cultural
contexts. This chapter provides a sample of the rich diversity of female
leaders’ perspectives in NRMs that have developed in the last several dec-
ades in Asia, Latin America, Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
This section focuses on the significance of changes in gender roles in
the West and examines the non-Western influence of NRMs. The aim of
this study is to investigate the psychology of women and their impact on
men, investigating how it is possible for a woman to live out her mas-
culine side (the animus) and at the same time be her own feminine self
(the anima). Firstly, this work examines the symbolic relations between
women and men, which are often culturally and sexually divisive and
whose barriers to communication are frequently unsolved, particularly
in various religious groups. Secondly, it demonstrates the difficulty and
even the inability to express thoughts and feelings between woman and
man. Thirdly, it supports the thesis that women tend to follow the men
whom they like, even changing their own political and religious ideas
because it seems that women find it difficult to invent metaphysical and
political discourses. Finally, we may explicitly wonder what has contrib-
uted to changing our secular society as well as our moral and religious
civilisation.
Background
There are several contradictions in gender ideology which are reflected in
our beliefs and practices. Women should abandon the culture of silence
which they have long embraced. An Ethiopian woman, quoted by Carl
Jung and Carl (Karl) Kerényi in their Essays on a Science of Mythology,
helps to understand how feminist ideology works, supporting female
ideas and strong matrifocality:
2 WOMEN AND NRMS: LOCATION AND IDENTITY 13
How can a man know what a woman’s life is? A woman’s life is quite dif-
ferent from a man’s. God has ordered it…A man is the same before he has
sought out a woman for the first time, and afterwards. But when a woman
enjoys her first love, it cuts her in two. She becomes another woman on
that day. The man is the same after his first love as he was before…The
man spends a night with a woman and goes away… (Jung and Kerenyi
1969, p. 101)
The social and religious role of women has changed considerably in dif-
ferent cultures and times. Men have held primary positions of authority
in politics, religion, in the military and education. Women have clearly
had differentiated status and roles from men. Even the religious venera-
tion of the female has not implied an equal status for women in social
and religious contexts. Historically, women were described by histori-
ans and sociologists as expressing ecstasy and mental illness. Unmarried
women, the poor and artists have often paid the price for their social sta-
tus, creativity and independence in a hegemonic and patriarchal society.
Women have been often considered as subject to mental problems and
described as susceptible, irrational, sexually unstable and economically
marginal. Women have also been part of social and religious structures
where sexual relationships are necessary for their intimate care in relation
to a patriarchal and hegemonic God. Every woman from Africa, Asia,
Europe, Latin America and other places in the world has in common
centuries of patriarchal oppression. A living metaphor for God, power,
sex and struggle for women’s liberation comes from the marginalised
social movements of which the ideology and theology/thealogy imply
self-awareness and social and economic inclusion.
Poverty, sex and exploitation, for instance, always originate in patriar-
chy. A patriarchal structure is based on hierarchy and submission. When
woman is under-represented in society, the future of society will never
follow female role models. Indeed, I am what I cannot become, thinking
and acting as a man. I am what I am not or I cannot be what I cannot
see. Thus, I am only a woman. Therefore, I am not entitled to have my
independent way of thinking. Women’s voices are always silenced, and
the past has put us in silence.
Cultural stereotypes have provided a variety of images and labels for
women and their polarity/dichotomy of rationality and irrationality,
goodness and evil. The figure of woman, in many Abrahamic religions,
as the Egyptian psychiatrist and writer Nawal El Saadawi says, has been
14 M.A. Coltri
classified as a second being and as a voiceless creature, diminishing the

myth of Goddesses, the divine nature and the creative diffidence (“the
spirit of freedom”), and emphasising the aspect of darkness, lunatic
nature and the incapacity of diplomacy. El Saadawi’s humanism/crea-
tive political activism, for instance, thanks to her leadership of the Arab
Women’s Solidarity Association (AWSA), is based on an understanding
of women’s oppression in the sphere of hegemonic and patriarchal poli-
tics, economics and religions. El Saadawi believes women have suffered
the most serious marginalisation in any patriarchal structure and they
need to create their own dissident/revolutionary philosophy towards
the class system which is still prevalent today. She (El Saadawi 1995, p.
2) asks: “Can we be creative if we submit to the rules forced upon us
under different names: father, god, husband, family, nation, family plan-
ning, human rights, modernism or post-modernism?” According to El
Saadawi, women are discriminated against by roles and traditions domi-
nated by male elites and psychologies.
In this way, the psychological status of women has been split into
two archetypes: the seductive witch, the demon (the bride of Satan) and
the instinctual free spirited woman “Lilith” who moved from patriar-
chal marriage, and “Eve”, the weak and sinful woman, the wife of Adam
and the mother of humankind, and the counterpart of man (made from
Adam’s rib), the woman who was bound in a relationship.
The approach of many academics is common: to have tried to describe
alternative rituals and beliefs of women in a mainstream patriarchal cul-
ture, which has often marginalised the intellectual perspective of women
who are involved in alternative spiritualities. For example, in Northern
Europe (Germany, Scotland, England and Sweden) in the early sixteenth
century, the age of the Reformation, many women (mainly old) were
involved in witchcraft and therefore were accused, persecuted, punished
and even executed by the secular and the religious worlds. The phenom-
enon of witchcraft, in fact, was very common between the sixteenth and
nineteenth centuries and was widely considered a deviant and abnormal
spirituality. However, nowadays feminist scholars in a multiethnic cul-
ture have sensibly placed gender at the heart of their agenda/scholar-
ship. Feminist works have gained independent recognition in the field
of religion. Many reformist feminists see women in the Judeo-Christian
tradition as Goddess: Lilith, a revolutionary and libertine woman who
seduced men; the Virgin Mary, the spiritual mother of Christianity;
Mary Magdalene, the bride of Christ. Even in the study of NRMs,
some modern researchers take a new look at alternative practices, study-

ing issues of gender based on the subjectivity/psychology of women.
Feminist discourse in NRMs can perhaps be appropriate to the social and
religious reality of women, whose lives and experiences have been shaped
and largely dominated by a world of men. According to Elizabeth Puttick:
Female leadership in secular life is still relatively rare and contentious,

despite the advances of feminism. Women have barely been acknowledged
as possessing souls and capacity for spiritual growth, let alone allowed to
achieve rank and status in religion. (Puttick 1997, p. 175)
Puttick offers a critical study of NRMs, considering the status of women

still unrecognised by many misogynist religions. In fact, many NRMs
are shaped by ideas and practices of the main religions, and women have
been occasionally charismatic and even leaders. However, many ambi-
tious women rarely become leaders even if they are attracted to NRMs.
But both Elizabeth Puttick and Susan Greenwood observe in their works
that women through an alternative Goddess spirituality can develop fem-
inist concepts, beliefs and rituals, removing sexism and making a theo-
logical and esoteric revolution within the patriarchal religious traditions.
Gender Differences and Alternative

Spiritualities
For women, the process of becoming part of NRMs is a prerequisite to
providing a feminine identity and equality within a divisive society which
classifies people sexually, ethnically, and economically. Equality has devel-
oped through standardised values in Western cultures: the same oppor-
tunities, the same qualifications, the same rewards and the same rights.
However, this ideology of equality and gender is based paradoxically on
the principle that men and women are fundamentally different in nature
(in traits, ethnicity, personality, values and skills).
Consequently, considering this paradox, many women historically,
to obtain equality, have had to be the same as men. Objectively women
have been subjected to male discrimination and have been excluded sys-
tematically from political, cultural and religious institutions. But in my
opinion, women have lost their matriarchal identity, developing rapidly
their masculine side. Men on the other hand have adopted the feminine
side, but are less interested in the values of life and relationships. Men
16 M.A. Coltri
are becoming more self-centred than altruistic. Accordingly, the British

Jungian analyst and writer Irene Claremont De Castillejo (1885–1967) in
her book Knowing Woman explores the psychology of men and women,
saying that both men and women are less in touch with their own nature;
women are more focused on their careers and thus neglect their role as
mediator to man, a channel whereby his own creative inspirations can
flow more easily (De Castillejo Claremont De Castillejo 1997, p. 55).
Another Jungian psychotherapist, Barbara Black Koltuv, in her collection
of essays Weaving Woman points to the feminine talents, values and psy-
chology of all women, weaving together common aspects of their lives.
Women, together, need to claim back their femininity and power.
Women who belong to NRMs seem to live a paradox between find-
ing the self and losing the self. In recent discussions with some women
in Birmingham, UK, who have decided to become members of the
Women’s Federation for World Peace movement (WFWP), I was told
that they found the movement an advantage for their interpersonal and
social relations. Women who take part in the movement have more
connections and also a better capacity for empathy with each other.
However, this organisation has a close connection to the Unification
Church and some conservative Christian congregations. Therefore,
women from poor backgrounds and with some linguistic barriers are not
fully involved in the internal changes in their organisation.
In a climate of general social and economic crisis, women and poor
people experience higher levels of stress as a result of unemployment.
They may be more likely to be affected or disrupted. Women constitute
a numerical majority in the world but are the objects of marginalisa-
tion (subalternity) in a society with its dominant systems. Proportionally
more women than men are discriminated against. Women, in particular
members of black and ethnic minority groups, older women and lesbi-
ans, face multiple disadvantages and negative social and economic con-
sequences. However, in most societies, women receive less education,
fewer employment opportunities and rights such as relationship bonds,
inheritance, personal rights, marriage and divorce. Women live also
with sexual discrimination or violence due to religious practices such as
female genital mutilation, bride price and early marriage of young girls.
Discrimination and negative attitudes towards women, for example ine-
qualities in employment, violence and abuse towards women, can cause
long-term frustration, tension and psychological problems. As a con-
sequence, women who are particularly vulnerable spend more time in
different social groups seeking their own spiritualities. Alongside such
self-searching (their autocoscienza), women consider NRMs a vehicle

to establish independently new archetypes of liberty and self-identity/
self-esteem overcoming any gender differences and discrimination. The
term autocoscienza is not new and has developed in the specific context
of Italian politics. It was introduced by the Italian feminist writer and
activist Carla Lonzi (1931–1982) with the publication of her political
manifesto at the birth of the group Rivolta Femminile (Female Revolt)
in July 1970. In the Manifesto, Lonzi identified the group as part of the
women’s liberation movement. Lonzi, the founder of Rivolta Femminile,
was an exceptionally influential personality for women’s identity. Like
autocoscienza, women in NRMs have been influenced by their social con-
text; the form of women’s leadership in NRMs is expressed by women’s
struggle for liberation/freedom in a situation of constant oppression.
Indeed, women’s charismatic role in NRMs is a persuasive critique of the
patriarchal notion of God. Women in NRMs offer a new definition of
female emancipation and re-evaluation of the self. They have challenged
the oppression of Western patriarchy which has been the cause of wom-
en’s humiliation, marginalisation and subordination.
Women, therefore, find in NRMs a search for their own community
and sexual and spiritual power. NRMs are a new model of spiritual val-
ues which can break the chain of oppression and abuse of any authorita-
tive system. It is incorrect to think of minority groups only in terms of
numerical size, but of their overall impact.
Searching for Universal Spiritual Liberation

The term liberation has been applied to postcolonial literature,
black/womanist theology and also to NRM theories. This comes from
the liberation theology which originated in the 1960s as a response to
poverty and political exclusion in Latin America, but it quickly extended
globally and had an enormous impact on marginalised cultures and reli-
gions. The basic belief of liberation is that religion/spirituality should
not be separated from politics. They all have the same aim: they search
for emancipatory awareness and independence from the dominant,
the imperialist and the colonialist. “Third world” people and women,
in particular, in every part of the world, have written theology for the
oppressed. Women have also been classified into two categories: the
middle-class women (the feminist/the white) and the subaltern/urban
women (the womanist/the black). Since all women are by nature
from the same genre, we should not label women with a conventional
18 M.A. Coltri
division between feminist and womanist. However, women need to

make a change to this patriarchal standardisation which separates indi-
viduals and contributes to conflict and competition. Differences in class,
religion, economic status, race and political affiliation are the cause of
social discrepancies and sexual disharmony. Women can overcome differ-
ences and can join together for a common cause: a political dissidence/a
female solidarity. Before the patriarchy developed by means of patrilineal
relations, of oppression of slaves and women, and of monotheistic reli-
gions, both women and men worshipped a pantheistic world of divini-
ties. Therefore, women were included in their society and female deities
ruled in many spheres. In ancient times, the role of women was so vital,
while in the contemporary world women occupy a secondary/marginal
position and they still fight/seek for their spiritual and cultural libera-
tion. However, women in alternative spiritualities/NRMs are in search of
their life; they look for their wholeness, self-transcendence and their con-
nectedness with other. Thus, women consider NRMs as a necessary path
which leads them to a complete awareness of the feminine Self.
Feminine Responses to God: The Wicca Movement

In Wicca (from the Anglo-Saxon wicce, it means a wise woman/witch),
women are influential in their personal spiritual transformation. In this
form of Paganism, women decide their pantheon of deities by perform-
ing acts through “natural magic” (through herbs and crystals) and “high
magic” (magick) along with metaphysical rituals in order to have an
impact on the physical world (the other) as a feminist expression of lib-
eration. Indeed, women who become Wiccans are environmentalist and
feminist; they are less influenced by patriarchal and monotheistic dogmas.
Christopher Partridge and J. Gordon Melton in the Encyclopaedia of New
Religious Movements offer analysis of diverse movements in our modern
culture of the West. In particular, in the section of Wicca, Partridge gives
an overview of female spiritualities. He said that women in Wicca prac-
tise their pagan rituals because they seek a radical feminist spirituality and
many of them are attracted by the desire to perform magic (Partridge
2005, p. 295). For Wiccans, magic is not just a sign of spiritual power
but also an arcane/esoteric symbol of cultural and social emancipa-
tion (autocoscienza). The pantheistic feature of Wicca is that nature and
divine are inseparable. However, being feminine in the divine means that
the Goddess is independent of nature and it is, in a way, the Logos of
the world. The Goddess generates the natural world. It is omnipresent,
omnipotent, omniscient, which is unlimited and transcendent. This divine

is what each woman is looking for: universal knowledge, infinite power
and ubiquity/everywhere. At a basic biological level, we must say that this
differentiation between the divine and nature is like that between women
and men. We have a lunar cycle which affects our energy, emotions and
relations with others. When women enter that esoteric sphere, their “Lady
Moon” can guide them (Rossetti 1892). The English Pre-Raphaelite poet
(1830–1893) Christina Rossetti wrote in her poem:
O Lady Moon, your horns point toward the east:

Shine, be increased;
O Lady Moon, your horns point toward the west:
Wane, be at rest. (Rossetti 1972, p. 123)
Women need to create their identity through symbolic and spiritual rep-
resentations; indeed, the figurative “Lady Moon” does not only indicate
the innermost level of the self (Kultuv 1990, p. 5), but is also a woman’s
attempt to connect herself to the divine (unconditional freedom). Kultuv
states:
In Old Testament times, when people were closer to their earlier matri-
archal Goddesses-worshipping cultures, women still made cakes to the
Queen of Heaven, the moon (Jeremiah 7:18). Women got in touch with
their feminine creative power by veiling themselves. (Kultuv 1990, p. 9)
The above example can be seen as a particular form of traditional wom-

en’s spirituality which has many links with what the modern Wicca
emphasises strongly: the worship of Goddesses and veneration for a
Queen/Gaia. Moreover, Wicca revolutionises the Christian Trinity and
the Hindu Trimurti with the Triple Moon/Goddess: “the Virgin”, “the
Mother” and “the Crone”. This Triple Goddess is associated with all the
phases of womanhood and its feminine autonomy/energy.
The Pro-Ana/Mia Online Community

In the Wicca movement, as in many other pagan groups in the West
including one recent pro-ana movement and pro-mia, women achieve a
free status by invoking and offering to the ancestors and divinities food,
chants and prayers. The pro-anorexia movement, a media/online com-
munity whose culture is based on the myth of unhealthy meagreness,
20 M.A. Coltri
stresses a pantheon of skinny Goddesses. The name Ana originates

from the mythological name of Ana or Anamadim (a Goddess) created
by Underground Grotto [blog pro-ana accessed 23 November 2015].
Anamadin is invoked through spells and becomes part of pro-ana divini-
sation. The adherents of this cyber-group (with no organisational struc-
ture) discuss their ascetic life (“thinspiration”/thin ideal) finding their
thin models and beauty images in the fashion world such as “Armani,
Dolce & Gabbana, Valentino, Chanel, Vivienne Westwood and oth-
ers” with their skeleton collections promoting and depicting ideal thin
women. An example is given from Dolce & Gabbana Fall 2013, inspired
by the Venetian-Byzantine mosaics from the Cathedral of Santa Maria in
Sicily. Their models seem heavenly principesse (the Queens/the Mighty
Ones) wearing gold crowns, huge crosses, papal purple and red cardinal
shoes. This unrealistic vision of female perfection in fashion is a form of
cultural manipulation of women who want to look like women on TV
or in magazines, encouraging eating behaviour problems. Women in the
media promote an unrealistic expectation of thinness (Thompson and
Heinberg 1999). It is also demonstrated that this rapid growth of the
anorexic body form (the thin ideal) is not only a phenomenon of the
last two decades but that there is some sign of it in the past. Rudolph
M. Bell, in Holy Anorexia, investigates how some Italian Christian mysti-
cal women in the late Middle Ages, such as St. Catherine of Siena who
martyred herself, St. Veronica Giuliani, St. Mary Magdalen de’ Pazzi
and others from urban areas like Umbria and Tuscany, were affected by
eating disorders. Anorexia (from Greek an is loss/lack of and orexis is
appetite), starvation and suppression of basic physical needs (including
sex, hunger and fatigue) were a form of spiritual exercise towards the
divine. Indeed, this abstention from food gives a feeling of happiness
and ecstasy. The “holy anorexia” is also a total liberation from the body.
However, the anorexic behaviour is a reaction to patriarchal structures
(Bell 1985, p. 13).
Similarly and controversially, the pro-ana and pro-mia movements
encourage a religio-philosophical doctrine where food is sinful and
impure, whereas fasting through the invocation of female divinities/
Saints is a normative ethical approach to be observed during worship
and as a sign of purity and liberation from any form of mental/spiritual
and corporal suffering (SIRC 2015a). The online community in their
blogs/websites Ana’s Temple and the Angels of Ana perform their cer-
emonies, worship and prayers with incense, candles, sacred numbers and
the sacrificing of inappropriate food. This online community of young

women has discussions/forums with other members addressing eating
issues and identifying themselves as “flying” and/or “having wings”.
Generally speaking, there is a sense of belonging and common belief
which evokes the personification of new femininity with its tall, slender
figure, minute waist and delicate features. The fact of being light and
thin looking like a Barbie doll body type is the status quo basis for these
women, and it is also the spiritual response towards their transmigra-
tion of soul/the self which moves from a heavy body, cause of suffering,
towards another being (immortal).
An example of a prayer is:
I believe in a wholly black and white world, the losing of weight, recrim-
ination for sins, the abnegation of the body and a life ever fasting.
[‘Anorexic Nation blog’ accessed 22nd November 2015]
Dramatically, the anorexia and bulimia movements are indications of

women’s vulnerability and weakness, advocating eating disorders where
young women invent their own new forms of liberative thealogies and of
compulsive normative ethics (Thin Commandments). Such movements
are serious pathologies for the young female generation in which the
beauty myth is promoted by the media and portrays the “perfect/divine”
images of top models. These become a status symbol for many young
women, and as a result, these victims react as if representing a counter-
culture to conventional families, friends and society. For the adherents
of the pro-ana movement, there is only one escape; the sense of belong-
ing is found in community through pro-ana/mia websites. The rise of
these sites is gravely destructive and allow the anorexic to act as a dis-
sident/rebel who walks alone wildly and harmfully rather than following
what society believes is the best for her, holding that she is affected by a
compulsive disorder which requires medical and psychological assistance.
Each anorexic preaches that she receives help from pro-ana spirituality in
order to break down what society wants for her health. We can read on
the pro-ana sites: “Help me! My parents are forcing me to go to hospi-
tal and I’m scared I’ll get fat”. “Perfection is achieved not when there
is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away”
[“pro-ana blog” accessed 22 November 2015]. It is clear that the pro-
ana/mia movement is a controversial spirituality for young women, and
the media/Internet are significantly making stereotypical norms that
22 M.A. Coltri
depict the idea of women as a subspecies and docile/passive beings with

nothing to offer other than their invisible body or sex. Women who
become pro-ana/mia adherents have a considerably negative representa-
tion of the self and are doubly oppressed compared with other women
in alternative spiritualities/NRMs. Assuming that the pro-ana is a form
of manifestation for female oppression, however, it does not empower
women in NRMs. The images of these suffering/unhealthy women are a
demonstration of patriarchal attitude which uses media and affects young
women with a sordid exploitation. Therefore, this bond between pro-ana
and NRMs is a deconstructive reading of the consumerist “eroticism/
leisure” based in the decadent West.
Feminist and Eco-Esoteric Spiritualities

Conversely, there are other new feminist religious movements such
as the art movement which developed in the 1960s/1970s and found
their feminine ancestors and divinities in astonishing paintings done by
Western feminists such as the Swede Monica Sjoo (1931–2005). She
searched for materials and produced works on woman’s spirituality
through topics such as beauty, love, sexuality, violence and death, trac-
ing back the matriarchal lineage to ancient times. Her paintings sacralise
women’s stories depicting them as mothers, teachers, Goddesses, priest-
esses and spiritual healers. Sjoo’s works express the esoteric power of the
“Great Mother”, the Matrix of the cosmos, whose aim is to break the
chain of any form of oppression. She expresses indignation against and
defiance of the injustices women suffer, demanding an end at last to vio-
lence against women. Similarly, there is another contemporary artist from
Latin America, Marsha Goméz (1951–1998), originally from Mexico,
who explores in her art the more profound ways of understanding female
divinities that the traditions of any indigenous population can offer us.
In its broadest sense, such feminist spiritualities can be identified with
the spiritual need and creativity of contemporary women from differ-
ent cultural and religious traditions. These movements have also grown
up from within feminist social movements and have emerged outside
traditional religions and institutions. Feminist spiritualities have always
stressed the idea of female power in the divine and their right to be
active in women’s spirituality (woman spirit/metaphysical movement).
Moreover, women’s spiritual movements have created alternative sym-
bols, prayers, ceremonies and songs as recognition of the power of the
feminine/Goddess. Obviously, American female religious leaders such as

Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science, Ellen G. White with her
Seven-Day of the Adventist Church or the Fox sisters were so influential
in the religious world in the nineteenth century. All of these are typically
cited in discussions of female NRM leaders. Also some female teachers
in the Indian tradition, such as Nirmala Devi (Sahaja Yoga) and Mata
Amrtanandamaya Devi (Amma) with her charitable organisation the
Mata Amritanandamayi Math (MAM), are examples of humanitarian and
spiritual female movements.
Alongside feminist spiritualities, we have peace, new environmen-
tal and esoteric movements run by women across the world demanding
indigenous, green and women’s rights. There is also a neo-eco move-
ment which has found, in our era of ecological and sexual exploitation,
a new window. These movements have a thealogical discourse on female
sacredness from an ethical, ecological and social stance. Women in the
eco-spiritual movements want environmental changes for all beings in
order to live in peace and in human flourishing. Eco-theology move-
ments developed with climate change in the twentieth century with the
despoliation of the environment where our Western culture (industrial
societies) has exploited and degraded the planet. Some women began to
be responsive to this global degradation and advocated a global ascen-
sion and soul advancement. Inelia Benz is one of these eco-spiritual
women, the founder of “ascension.100”, and claims to be chosen/
elected by Alien “Source” in order to give messages to people, consid-
ering herself as a messenger (a female prophet) of personal and global
ascension. Benz sells courses, products, books online and also give talks
on the Internet.
Stepping into our power, becoming strong in mind, body, spirit, and envi-
ronment, requires self-work, determination and a willingness to achieve
our personal sovereign independence. This is much easier done with others
who are intent on the same result. (Benz, ascension.100 and Welcome to
Walk with Me now, accessed on 2nd December 2015)
There are also other mystical and spiritual women such as Lucia René
in her project “Academia Women” and Sera Beak, inspired by Jung’s
Red Book, who writes in her “rouge awakening” blog “Redvolution”
through heretic red guidebooks “her divine spells or winks” and her
divine modern spirituality and sexuality. She talks about how a modern
24 M.A. Coltri
woman could use her chakras. This new spiritual leader employs an
unorthodox and eccentric approach to nature, humanity, sex and divin-
ity (“Goddess within”/“Solar Feminine”) whose attempt is, in some
way, to break down the paradigm of patriarchy/authority (the Divine
Masculine) in order to find a provocative way towards the healing pow-
ers of female imagination and consciousness. In addition, there is an
American esoteric movement, the Solar Light Retreat, founded in 1965
by the Briton Francesca Aleuti is also known as a Doctor of Spiritual
Science. This group is inspired by both the ideas of Theosophy and
ufology. Dr. Aleuti believes, as a leader of this movement, to have con-
tacts with Supreme/Space Beings receiving messages through Tele-
Thought Contact (a conscious alpha wave state). In The Historical
Dictionary of New Religious Movements, George D. Chryssides says
that “Francesca claims to have access to advanced Space Beings who
have put an end to war, disease, poverty, famine, and even taxation”
(Chryssides 2012, pp. 324–325). These spiritual brothers who have
been in contact with Dr. Aleuti make possible a cosmic and spiritual
transformation on earth and for all human beings. The adherents of
this awakening movement are bound by social Internet networks (spir-
itual single dating, blogs and metaphysical books) with the aim of ena-
bling conscious connections through prayers or spiritual messages. They
believe in reincarnation and offer regression therapy in order to under-
stand their karma and past.
African Matriarchal Movements

In the West, there is an increase of African matriarchal movements or
spirit possession cults in the West like Mama Lola’s Voodoo which
focuses on traditional African societies where the pantheon of Goddesses
expresses the importance of women in kinship and domestic arrange-
ments and their central role in the economy as leaders and catalysts.
The matriarchy-focus on Goddesses affirms some form of authority over
other deities and spirits, including the ancestors. The leaders/devo-
tees are often possessed by a particular divinity or supernatural entity/
spirit. Therefore, the African matriarchal heritage is still evident among
African Caribbean families and African Americans in the USA and in
Europe. But also in Africa, the Bori and the Masai cults are dominated
by women. Their spirits (jinis) are present everywhere. The cult of the
Mami Wata is the spirit of the water who inhabits the rivers and lakes
in West Africa. This female spirit is depicted as white (with European

features), and she has Western luxury adornments (Fanta bottles) or per-
fumed talcum powder. In a specific sense, this is the representation of
the decadent West, a critique of Western consumerism. It is also consid-
ered by Africans as a focal point of a cult of sufferings and hindrances.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Mami Wata is a decorative
art which symbolises female seduction. Although the RastafarI is a male-
dominated movement, there are women in Rasta communities who are
strongly involved in Jamaican women’s organisations in response to
women’s cultural and social subordination and violence. This practical
difference in women’s life has given Rasta women legal and economic
support (in education and employment). In language and culture, we
see the love of daughters, and in the RastafarI movement the love of
sisters, “sis or sistren”. For African culture, the woman is the symbol of
motherhood, with matriarchal rules combining power with autonomous
organisations.
Womanist Spirituality in the West

The womanist movement and spirituality comes from social and eco-
nomic changes in the 1980s in the African American Christian context
and from feelings aroused by abuse, denigration, discrimination, exclu-
sion, marginality and violence. Consequently, womanist theology is a
Christian movement which began to be institutionalised in specific black
Churches and black charismatic theologians in America and Britain with
their black liberation theology which is influenced by Malcolm X, Martin
Luther King and others, as a result of black people’s frustration and their
rejection of the dominance of the white Churches worldwide. Womanists
can also be African women in NRMs in the West. The term Womanism
was created by the African American novelist Alice Walker (1944–)
in The Color Purple (1982) where she seeks to rehabilitate women of
“color”/black women. Her ideology/parody is “womanist is to feminist
as purple is to lavender”. Therefore, womanists are critical of the patri-
archal structure of the black Church and the larger society, which rel-
egate women of “color” to the margins. The womanist movement is the
story of oppressed black women’s struggle for their ethnicity and against
racial/social discrimination. They believe in the spiritual and social creed
“God made us all equal” that encourages a human and racial dignity as
in the well-known biblical passage:
26 M.A. Coltri
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no
male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)
Womanist spirituality helps to find the self in a black community where

women of colour are still invisible and seek holiness through social and
cultural integration by transforming conservative, chauvinistic and
supremacist attitudes to gender/sex, class and race. Womanists are in
a struggle to end both white and male superiority and advocate total
emancipation and self-consciousness. Indeed, Womanism has been in
contrast to feminist movements because “Western feminists write rarely
about black women and place themselves in the position of ‘authority’”
(Hooks 1984, p. 13). The author and social activist Bell Hooks (1952–)
in Feminist Theory argues that contemporary feminists must acknowledge
the full complexity and diversity of women’s experience to create a mass
movement to end women’s oppression. Ethnocentric/racial discrimina-
tion and oppression have created language, cultural and racial/social divi-
sions. Women in poverty and “non-white-Westernised” are often silent,
marginalised and oppressed, being treated as inferiors and unequal.
Conclusion
NRMs often mention the presence of male leadership rather than the
charismatic women who made a strong contribution to the history of
sacred and esoteric spiritualities such as Theosophy, Wicca and other
pagan movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the past,
Western women such as Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910), Ellen G. White
Helena (1827–1915), Blavatsky (1831–1891), Annie Besant (1847–
1933), Katherine Tingley (1847–1929), Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949)
and Dion Fortune (1890–1946) were women’s rights’ activists, politi-
cal speakers, writers, orators, occultists and philosophers/psychologists.
These women had an impact on patriarchy and were, in a way, initiators
of the esoteric movements (the Theosophical Society with Blavatsky, the
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn with Fortune, the Society of Inner
Light thanks to Fortune and the Arcane School thanks to Bailey) in the
West. All of them encouraged women to be part of women’s suffrage, of
alternative medicine/therapy, progressive education/freedom of expres-
sion (less scientific studies) and humanist movements. Nowadays, non-
Western women such as the Egyptian Nawal El Saadawi and the Indian
philosopher Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak of the so-called Third World/
The Third Space have pointed out numerous difficulties: sexual prob-
lems, recent immigration and the political and economic oppression of
women who are marginalised by dominant patriarchies. Moreover, the
various new feminist religious movements are an expression of a subver-
sive revolution towards the patriarchal narrative and a pro-active reac-
tion and liberative/antinomian ethic (autocoscienza) to God/Man/Ego
(the legalistic ethic/deontology). Womanhood is generally portrayed as
of unequal status, and women are thus subjugated (as subservient, pas-
sive, timid and with low confidence) to the patriarchal system. Therefore,
women should take their place as prominent religious and political lead-
ers in NRMs and should give a creative, provocative and liberative voice
to all the women in changing societies and religions.
References
Bednarowski, M. F. New Religions and the Theological Imagination in America.
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____. The Religious Imagination of American Women. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1999.
____. ‘Gender in New and Alternative Religions’, in Gallagher and Ashcraft
(2006), vol. 1: 206–23, 2006.
Bell, M. Rodolph. Holy Anorexia. London: The University of Chicago Press,
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Claremont De Castillejo, Irene. Knowing Woman: A Feminine Psychology. Boston
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____. ‘Creative Women in Changing Societies: A Personal Reflection.’ Race and
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____. Two Women in One. Ed. by Osman Elnusairi and Jana Gough. London:
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____. Walking Through Fire: A Life of Nawal El Saadawi. Trans. by Sherif
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Puttick, Elizabeth. Women in New Religions: In Search of Community, Sexuality
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Routledge and Sons, 1972.
Rossetti, Christina G. Sing-song: A Nursery Rhyme Book. London: George
Routledge and Sons, 1892.
____. Complete Poetical Works of Christina Rossetti (illustrated). Delphi Classics,
2012.
Ruether Radford, Rosemary. Ed. Gender, Ethnicity, Religion: Views from the
Other Side. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012.
Spivak Chakravorty, Gayatri. ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ A Critique of Postcolonial
Reason: Toward a Reason of Vanishing Present. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
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http://awakenacademy.org/mystical-garden.html.
https://ascension101.com/.
http://monicasjoo.org/index.htm.
http://www.sofiachristine.com/jewelry/index.htm.
http://serabeak.com/.
https://walkwithmenow.com/.
http://www.sirc.org/index.html; (http://www.sirc.org/articles/totally_in_con-
trol2.shtml).
CHAPTER 3
God’s Messenger: Ellen G. White
Laura L. Vance
Introduction
Waves of revival inspired religious enthusiasm and innovations in late
eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century America that streamed out-
side of Protestant denominations to encourage the birth of new religious
movements. Although many of these movements captured the public
imagination and have garnered significant attention from scholars, the
largest was founded by a woman who remains almost unknown outside
of the religion she created. Seventh-day Adventism, with about 20 mil-
lion members, surpassed. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
(Mormonism) in worldwide membership in the early twenty-first century
and has more adherents than other religions to emerge from nineteenth-
century America, such as Christian Science or Jehovah’s Witnesses. In
addition, with robust evangelical and humanitarian efforts around the
world, and a membership now located primarily in the developing world,
Seventh-day Adventism has achieved a growth rate that currently out-
paces that of Mormonism, and the movement is poised for significant
continued growth. Moreover, Adventism’s cultural impact is far-reaching,
L.L. Vance (*) 
Warren Wilson University, Asheville, NC, USA

30 L.L. Vance
especially as embodied in its health message and dietary guidelines, and

its health care, media, educational, and other institutions.1
That impact is largely unappreciated outside of Seventh-day
Adventism, but any serious examination of American religious found-
ers demands attention to White. She began her prophetic career as a
frail woman of barely eighteen years and grew into a leader who influ-
enced every important aspect of what would become a worldwide mes-
sage and mission. Ellen was charismatic in the Weberian sense: She and
her followers believed that she had unique access to the divine, and she
communicated ideas and instructions from visions and dreams so as to
motivate action in followers. She matured with Seventh-day Adventism:
She employed highly emotional displays early in her prophetic career,
and with institutional development of the movement, became increas-
ingly staid in her manner. Ellen demonstrated incredible ability to
develop and adapt her leadership in concert with Adventism’s progress,
allowing her prophetic voice, and the messages it delivered, to moti-
vate followers to build what would become global systems of educa-
tional, media, evangelical, and humanitarian institutions. Moreover, she
achieved this in a sociohistorical context that restricted women’s access
to public leadership.
Ellen White’s Leadership in Historical Context

Ellen White was not without precedent as an American female charis-
matic. In the 1770s, Jemima Wilkinson and English emigrant Ann Lee
both claimed unique connection to a God that incorporated male and
female components and led followers in innovative communal living.
Female charismatics such as Wilkinson and Lee (and later, Mary Baker
Eddy) challenged the notion of an exclusively masculine deity and some-
times aligned themselves with explicit challenges to male social domi-
nance and female subordination. Nonetheless, in nineteenth-century
America, an ideology gained traction that discouraged women’s public
participation in leadership.
The cult of domesticity, the ideology of separate gendered spheres of
work and influence, shaped the social context in which Ellen emerged as
a charismatic. The ideology gained popularity between 1820 and 1860 in
the USA, most prominently in the upper and middle classes, and defined
women as protectors of the morality of the domestic realm (Welter 1966,
p. 151). Women—at least more affluent white women—were, with
3 GOD’S MESSENGER: ELLEN G. WHITE 31
domestic servants, to care for home and children, to create a haven in

which men could find harmony on their return from the harsh and com-
petitive public realm. The ideology consequently discouraged women’s
participation in the public realm, which was defined as the purview of
men. Less affluent women worked for pay in and outside of their homes,
and in other women’s homes, but that work was limited by the ideol-
ogy to less-well-remunerated labor. The gendered ideals of the mid-nine-
teenth century belied the reality of most women’s lives, but framed and
limited those lives nonetheless, and educational and work opportunities
were tightly arranged by race, ethnicity, class, and gender.2 This did not
prevent women’s significant social and economic contributions, but pro-
priety focused those—for more affluent women—around moral reform
and benevolent work in keeping with domestic ideals. When women
attempted public leadership, including public religious leadership, they
faced resistance.
According to the cult of domesticity, women’s care and protection
of the domestic sphere was premised on their morality, their piety, and
women were encouraged to participate in religion, so long as it “did not
take a woman away from her proper sphere, her home” (Welter 1966, p.
152). American religious revivalism, which was widespread by the time
that Ellen White was born, afforded women more public opportunities
for religious expression. Charles Grandison Finney (1792–1875), the
most influential and famous revivalist of nineteenth-century America,
incorporated novel emotional religious practices into his preaching, such
as allowing women to pray in public. Still, to the degree that women
assumed a public posture of leadership, they were likely to encounter
opposition. In Boston in 1832 and 1833, Maria Stewart, a black woman,
delivered public lectures on religion and social justice that so attracted
the ire of community leaders that she decided to leave the city (Sigerman
2000, p. 241). The Grimke sisters’ public abolitionist speeches of the
late 1830s were widely criticized, including by Christian ministers
who penned a letter chastising their abandonment of women’s proper
sphere—a sphere defined in part by silence (Goldman 2000, p. 231). So
restrictive were these limitations that the Grimke sisters and some other
women turned their attention to expanding women’s rights and oppor-
tunities. In response to the ministers’ letter, Sarah Grimke wrote Letters
on Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman (1838), defend-
ing the rights of women. A decade later, in 1848, only four years after
Ellen’s first vision, women’s rights advocates gathered at Seneca Falls
32 L.L. Vance
signed the Declaration of Sentiments and were criticized in the American

press for “unwomanly behaviour” and abandoning their “more appro-
priate duties” (Sigerman 2000, p. 237). Public speaking by women in
nineteenth-century America was so antithetical to social norms that it
attracted bitter hostility or, sometimes, attention as a kind of public spec-
tacle (as when thousands attended Boston lectures by the Grimke sisters
to witness the novelty of women speaking).
There is no doubt that her historical context informed Ellen White’s
success as a religious leader. She was indelibly shaped by groundswells of
American religious revival and the religious ideas and expressions they
popularized. But Ellen White was much more than a woman whose his-
torical moment thrust her into leadership. In her early years, she experi-
enced profound spiritual anxiety and desire for assurance of salvation and
God’s love. She held her Christian convictions firmly, unwaveringly, even
before she became convinced of her salvation. Throughout her life, she
knew what was right, though she often found herself and others falling
short of God’s ideal. Her religious quest was sincere and personally pro-
found, so that when she finally experienced connection with the divine,
she was passionate in sharing what that connection afforded her, and
eventually was able to inspire others to devote their lives to implement-
ing her divine message. From a childhood informed by spiritual insecu-
rity, Ellen White emerged as a visionary, a compelling orator, a prolific
author, and an institution-builder; she provided leadership that allowed a
floundering movement to coalesce, and eventually grow into the largest
religion birthed in nineteenth-century America.
Ellen White’s Early Years

Ellen was a shy and intense child whose spiritual quest was fueled by
uncertainty. She was born Ellen Gould Harmon, with her identical
twin Elizabeth, on November 26, 1827 in Gorham, Maine. They were
the last of eight children born to Robert Harmon (b. 1786), a hat-
maker, and Eunice Gould Harmon (b. 1787). The Harmons moved to
Portland when Ellen was a few years old, where they began attending
the Chestnut Street Methodist Church. Her parents were deeply reli-
gious, and Ellen was indelibly shaped by the worship of her childhood.
Methodism was not so well established in the years of Ellen’s child-
hood, and, although a more sedate worship style was becoming more
widespread, emotionally charged worship was not uncommon. Ellen
and other family members, particularly her mother, participated in the

Methodist shout tradition, singing and crying out as moved by the spirit.
The Harmons also attended camp meetings, where shouting, singing,
swooning, and weeping were common (Taves 2014, p. 30).
Ellen’s spiritual quest was keenly focused by two childhood events.
First, walking to school at around age nine she discovered a discarded
scrap of paper “containing an account of a man in England who was
preaching that the earth would be consumed in about … thirty years.”
She later described herself as so “seized with terror” after reading the
paper that she “could scarcely sleep for several nights, and prayed con-
tinually to be ready when Jesus came” (White 1915a, p. 10). Around
the same time, in December of 1836, Ellen was hit in the face with a
stone thrown by an angry schoolmate (Olson and Coon 2013, p. 112).
It is impossible to know exactly how seriously she was injured, but White
would later describe herself “lay[ing] in a stupor for three weeks” follow-
ing the incident. After regaining consciousness, she overheard “Christian
friends” talking with her mother about whether she was prepared for
death, whereupon she “prayed earnestly for the forgiveness of [her]
sins.” A “peace of mind” followed, but Ellen continued to worry for her
salvation (White 1915a, p. 8). Though formerly a strong student, shak-
ing hands, headaches, and other effects of her injuries forced Ellen to
withdraw from school. She spent her days in bed shaping crowns for her
father’s business and her nights praying for long periods.
She later described herself as a “sensitive” young girl who found it
difficult to suppress a “cry of anguish” when ministers dwelt on “terrible
descriptions” of hell (White 1915a, p. 17). Ellen’s spiritual anxiety inten-
sified in the summer of 1840‚ after attending a sermon by William Miller
at the Casco Street Christian Church. Miller, a former deist whose lit-
eral reading of the Bible had convinced him that Christ would return in
1843, inspired tens of thousands of followers. When 1843 passed with-
out incident, Millerites revised their expectations and determined that
Christ would return on October 22, 1844. Ellen’s spiritual apprehension
was enkindled by hearing Miller: though she moved forward when sin-
ners were called to the anxious seat, her “mind was often in great dis-
tress, because [she] did not experience the spiritual ecstasy that [she]
considered would be the evidence of … acceptance with God, and dared
not believe [herself] converted without it” (White and White 1880, p.
142). In September of 1841, as she bowed at an alter with others seek-
ing salvation at a Methodist camp meeting in Buxton, Maine, Ellen
34 L.L. Vance
finally felt her “burden” leave her (White 1915a, p. 12). Elation fol-
lowed, and in June of 1842, Ellen was baptized into the Chestnut Street
Methodist Church in Casco Bay.
Ellen’s vacillation between anxiety and spiritual relief continued in
the summer of 1842 as she attended Millerite meetings at the Casco
Street Christian Church. She, and at least some of her family members,
expected Christ to return on October 22, 1844, and Ellen shared her
conviction unreservedly in her Methodist congregation. Her minister
and other congregants were less impressed by Miller’s predictions. In
February of 1843, after dreams persuaded her that she must pray and
testify publically—which Ellen did “all over Portland”—a committee
was formed by the congregation to deal with the Harmon family. In all,
five committees were convened between February and June of that year
for the same purpose, and the last was charged to “keep order” in wor-
ship, and “prosecute all offenders if necessary” (Olsen and Coon 2013,
p. 113). Ellen demonstrated her tenacity of conviction, something that
would characterize her leadership throughout her life, and refused to
sway from her conviction of the soon-coming end, and the Harmons
were expelled from their congregation in August 1843.
Expulsion did nothing to dampen Ellen’s eagerness. She and thou-
sands of other shouting Methodists carried their religious enthusiasm
with them as they “came out” of their congregations, especially in 1842
and 1843. As their numbers swelled the Millerite movement, Methodist
come-outers brought aspects of the Methodist shout tradition and
emotional components of Methodist camp meetings with them (Taves
2014, p. 33–34). The timing of the Harmons’ dismissal coincided with
this wider transition in the Millerite movement, and the more rational,
logical, and sedate approach of William Miller and many of his earlier
Christian Connection adherents met more Christians who swooned,
fell prostrate, wept, and testified when the spirit moved them. Ellen had
longed to feel God’s love and forgiveness since early childhood, and her
emotions intensified as October 22, 1844 approached (Knight 1995,
p. 308–310).
The press and observers at the time mocked the fervour of Millerites and
sometimes exaggerated their efforts to prepare for the soon-coming advent
in the spring and summer of 1844. In the fall of 1844, journalists described
Millerites donning white “ascension” robes and climbing on housetops to
glimpse the coming Christ (Craig and Housley 1989, p. 318).3 When the
sun rose on Wednesday 23 October, hope and anticipation were replaced

by bitter disappointment, inaugurating what would come to be called the
Great Disappointment. Prominent Millerites, including William Miller and
his publicist Joshua Himes, attempted to reorganize around less specific
expectations of the advent, abandoned date setting, and distanced them-
selves from visions, seers, speaking in tongues, miracles, and other fervent
religious displays. Many others, who continued to believe but found noth-
ing appealing in this cold formality, began to gather in small bands to wor-
ship and attempt to make sense of the failed advent. These small groups
fostered emotionally intense religious worship; participants expected pas-
sionate expressions of the spirit, including visions, and were deeply invested
in explaining the failed advent.
In winter of 1844–1845, attending a small gathering of women disap-
pointed in the failed advent, Ellen experienced the vision most instru-
mental to the birth of Adventism. She saw that something profound had
happened on October 22, 1844: Christ had entered the heavenly sanctu-
ary and there commenced the work of judging souls; when that work
was complete he would return to earth. Ellen observed that believers in
the advent who persevered in their belief in the soon-coming Christ were
the 144,000 of Revelation who would be raised up to meet Jesus at the
second coming. Ellen’s vision held the potential advantage of not only
explaining why Christ had failed to return, but of reframing that failure
as a necessary step toward the still-soon-coming advent, and of providing
hope, the promise of salvation, and vindication to former Millerites.
Traveling in the winter and spring of 1845 to share her vision, Ellen
met James White, a Christian Connection minister and itinerant Millerite
preacher.4 His experiences emphasized a more rational approach to
Biblical exegesis, and James’s temperament and skills would prove an
effective counterbalance for Ellen. James accepted the divine nature of
Ellen’s vision and began to accompany her on her journeys, and when
rumors followed their unchaperoned travel, they married on August 30,
1846 (Fig. 3.1).
Visions were the foundation of Ellen’s leadership, but Ellen was one
of at least five visionaries in Portland, Maine around the time of the
Great Disappointment.5 Her visions did not set her apart so much as
did followers’ acceptance of the divine nature of the visions. In part, her
visions found an audience because Ellen experienced and conveyed them
in a manner that corresponded to the emotional state of those around
36 L.L. Vance
Fig. 3.1 Ambrotype earliest known photograph of Ellen and James White,

1857 (approximation). Courtesy of the Ellen G. White Estate, Inc.
her. Her early visions were described by witnesses at the 1845 trial of
Israel Dammon, who was charged with disturbing the peace while wor-
shiping at a farmhouse in Atkinson, Maine in February of that year.
Court testimony depicts worshipers gathered together, sitting and lying
on the floor, crawling, testifying, and singing, as well as participating
in same-gender foot washing, hugging, and kissing “each other with a
holy kiss” (Numbers 2008, p. 336). Among the worshipers was “Sister
Harmon[,] 18 or 19 years of age… from Portland,” “the one that they
called imitation of Christ,” who “lay on the floor in a trance” and relayed
visions (Numbers 2008, pp. 330, 334, 336). These highly emotional
expressions of the spirit would be replaced by sedate religious dreams as
Ellen aged; each form suited the temperament of her audience and the
developmental needs of the movement.
Visionary, Public Speaker, Author,

and Institution-Builder
Those around her in the 1850s described Ellen’s waking visions as gener-
ally adhering to a pattern: Falling into vision she would cry “GLORY—
Glory—glory,” seem to lose strength, and then rise, sometimes moving
about with her gaze upraised, a pleasant expression on her face, with her
eyes focused on something distant that others could not see. She some-
times experienced visions in worship gatherings, and James encouraged
onlookers to manipulate her physically—to touch her or feel whether
she was breathing—in order to demonstrate her veracity. Some observ-
ers described her as appearing not to breath for long periods of time, or
as displaying “superhuman strength” (White Estate 2015). Since White
emphasized her poor health throughout her life, her physical abilities in
vision seemed even more remarkable.
Ellen’s visions also found wide acceptance in part because they pro-
vided former believers divine guidance on questions that concerned
them. Scattered bands of former Millerites required some mechanism
both for explaining the failed advent and for achieving consensus in
order to unite as believers. Disputes over theology and practice were
widespread at the time, and most of Ellen White’s early visions resolved
disagreements among male movement leaders, settling questions of
belief.6 In resolving these questions, Ellen White laid the foundation of
Seventh-day Adventist theology and practice. Her visions determined,
for example, that the seventh day of the week—Saturday—was the
Sabbath, that Christ had entered the heavenly sanctuary on October 22,
1844, to commence the work of judging souls, and that Christ would
soon return.
Still, her visions would be lost to history had they not found a larger
audience. Historians give James White much of the credit on this front.
Indeed, Ellen White is typically described, with James and some other
early (male) movement leaders,7 as a “co-founder”8 of Seventh-day
Adventism. James was Ellen White’s most effective promoter, and his
willingness to dedicate enormous and sustained effort to the movement
was critical to her success.9 Though their relationship was sometimes
strained, each contributed in indispensable ways to building Adventism.
James was a tireless worker who, despite his wife’s repeated admonitions
that he take better care of his health, worked himself into an early grave
38 L.L. Vance
as he helped to organize and build Seventh-day Adventism, especially its

publishing interests.
In 1848, Ellen saw that James should commence printing a “little
paper,” which he did in 1849, with The Present Truth. The following
year the paper was renamed The Advent Review (hereafter Review), and
it grew, under variants of that title, to become the primary journal of the
movement. The Review necessitated the development of printing facili-
ties and eventually led to the creation of an extensive publishing enter-
prise. Publishing institutions would provide a model for institutional
growth in Adventism, as Ellen White’s elaboration of the Adventist mis-
sion and message took tangible form in efforts to both provide practical
assistance and do the work necessary to hasten the advent.
Throughout her life, Ellen White’s leadership was premised on her
sense of immediate connection to the divine and her ability to share
and convince others of the divinity of her message to the degree that
they were motivated to action. Ellen had experienced religious dreams
by at least 1843, and her waking visions through the 1840s and 1850s
matched the emotions of bands of worshipers and provided an oppor-
tunity for early believers to observe and test their prophet’s link to the
supernatural. By the time the movement was officially organized in
1863, at James’s strong urging, Ellen’s visions had proved instrumen-
tal in establishing the foundation of Adventism’s unique eschatology
(Lechleitner 2016). With formal organization, Ellen White’s leadership
continued to flourish, but gradually evolved from its originally more
frenetic expression to a more staid, formal, and enduring style, and she
matured as a public speaker and writer.
Ellen’s unqualified belief in the divinity and rightness of her message
encouraged, even demanded, her development as a leader. She was an
introverted girl, but in her later writing, she described feeling compelled
to public prayer even as a child:
I had never prayed in public and had only spoken a few timid words in
prayer meeting. It was now impressed upon me that I should seek God
in prayer at our small social meetings. This I dared not do, fearful of
becoming confused and failing to express my thoughts. But the duty was
impressed upon my mind so forcibly that when I attempted to pray in
secret I seemed to be mocking God because I had failed to obey his will.
(White 1915b, p. 32)
After having visions, particularly as James and some other male leaders
around her accepted them, Ellen’s conviction that she must share God’s
message grew. In the late 1840s and 1850s, she faced the task of demon-
strating the authentic nature of her connection to the divine as a recently
married young mother. She and James had four sons between 1847 and
1860, only two of whom survived to adulthood (Henry Nichols 1847–
1863; James Edson 1849–1928; William [Willie] Clarence 1854–1937;
John Herbert 1860). Ellen and James continued to travel and speak
extensively during these years, placing their sons in others’ care (White
1922, p. 133). Prior to formal organization in 1863, little connected
scattered believers except the publication of the Review and these speak-
ing engagements by the Whites. Their travels to speak to believers con-
tinued after formal organization, and historian Terrie Aamodt notes that
James and Ellen developed a “duel sermon approach,” in which “James
would preach a closely reasoned, text-based message during the morning
sermon hour, and Ellen would conduct a more emotive service in the
afternoon” (2014, p. 113).
As her visions were more widely distributed and accepted among an
expanding body of believers, and as she became increasingly practiced in
public speaking, Ellen’s confidence grew. By the 1870s, she had honed
a strong public speaking voice and an assured presence. She still com-
plained of poor health and would sometimes commence speaking softly.
She appeared to gain strength as she spoke, and as her voice rose it
seemed it conveyed evidence of the divinity of her calling. As James’s
health declined in the 1870s, Ellen travelled more with her favorite
son, Willie, a practice she continued after James’s death in 1881. Her
speaking events were well advertised by her staff, and it was still a nov-
elty to see a woman speak publically in the 1870s, and so her speeches
drew large crowds. In August of 1876, she delivered her largest public
address, a speech on temperance to a crowd of 20,000 at a camp meeting
in Massachusetts (Aamodt 2014, p. 116). Until only a few years before
her death in 1915, White preached to large congregations of Adventists,
spoke at camp meetings, addressed leadership meetings of the church,
and spoke to general audiences about health and temperance (Fig. 3.2).10
White was an even more prolific author. The 1848 vision that initi-
ated the Review showed her that Adventist publishing “would become
like streams of light that went clear around the world” (White Estate
1999). She published her first book, A Sketch of the Christian Experience
40 L.L. Vance
Fig. 3.2 Ellen White speaking at Loma Linda, 1906. Courtesy of the Ellen G.
White Estate, Inc.
and Views of Ellen G. White, in 1851, and the following year the Whites
purchased a hand press (White 1999). Early Adventist publications fea-
tured accounts of her visions, and articles, pamphlets, and books were
indispensable to broad distribution and acceptance of White’s waking
visions and prophetic role. Waking visions declined as White increasingly
conveyed visionary dreams through her writings, until they disappeared
entirely in the 1880s.11 She also kept notes and read on religious top-
ics that interested her and used these to develop her ideas in writing.
White’s grandson, Arthur, explained that she spent hours, often early in
the morning or late at night, writing out what she had seen in visionary
dreams in longhand (Moon n.d.).
In White’s lifetime, she produced twenty-six books and thousands of
articles, pamphlets, and tracts (see Patrick 2014, pp. 91–109). Having
had only limited formal education, she relied heavily on others to assist
in editing, revising, and preparing work for publication, including her
husband, James and, especially after James’s death in 1881, her son
Willie. By 1881, she also employed full-time “literary assistants,” includ-
ing “copyists,” or typists, who made mostly grammatical revisions, elimi-
nated redundancies, and organized work; longer-term, more trusted
employees who were authorized to edit materials for clarity, but not to
“introduc[e] thoughts of their own” (Moon n.d.). At her death, she
left tens of thousands of pages written in longhand that would provide
materials for numerous additional books and a voluminous body of other
publications.
White was criticized in her lifetime‚ and has been criticized in modern
Adventism, for borrowing words and ideas from others, particularly in
her health message. Historian Ronald L. Numbers, for example, docu-
ments that portions of her writings on health are strikingly similar to
sections in L.B. Cole’s Philosophy of Health. Numbers also notes com-
mon themes of the nineteenth-century health reform movement—“the
importance of a proper (often meatless) diet, plenty of sunshine and
fresh air, regular exercise, adequate rest, temperance, cleanliness, and
sensible dress”—that are in White’s health message (Numbers 2008, p.
96). In another example, she accepted the nineteenth-century notion
that each person had a limited supply of vital force, which diminished
with orgasm, and consequently, although she did not advocate celibacy,
she discouraged “solitary vice”—masturbation (White n.d.).12 She pro-
moted her own pattern of dress reform in her sixth pamphlet on health
in 1865, after she was exposed to the American costume during a stay
at Home on the Hillside, a Dansville, New York sanatorium. There is
no question that many of the ideas and practices that White advo-
cated are similar to those promoted by others in her historical context.
Nonetheless, Ellen White combined those with theological innovations
and a system of Adventist institutions to inspire a distinctive Adventist
worldview, identity, and lifestyle.
Ordained by God: Navigating Gendered Leadership

Ellen White never held an office in Seventh-day Adventism, though
the General Conference voted to give her ordination credentials begin-
ning in 1887. Thereafter, her ministerial credentials included the
word “ordained,” but she insisted that for her, ordination by men was
unnecessary; God had ordained her. She described herself as the Lord’s
messenger, and her role as God’s mouthpiece was instrumental in
42 L.L. Vance
Fig. 3.3 Ellen White addressing 1901 General Conference session, Battle

Creek, Michigan. Courtesy of the Ellen G. White Estate, Inc.
implementing every key aspect of Seventh-day Adventism. White worked

with several presidents of the church, one of whom was her husband,
James (1865–1867, 1869–1871, 1974–1980). She also rarely missed
meetings of the church’s governing body, the General Conference. As
a delegate, she could vote and speak from the floor, and she was often
asked to preach in worship or lead devotionals at meetings of the General
Conference (Valentine 2011, p.19) (Fig. 3.3).
There is abundant evidence that Ellen White had strong ideas about
matters significant and mundane—the best organizational structures,
where Adventism should be headquartered, how to allocate resources,
who should fill which administrative posts, what elected officials should
do, where institutions would be built, what land to buy for a new build-
ing, and so on—and communicated those clearly. In addition to address-
ing the General Conference, speaking to congregations and employees at
Adventist institutions, and her writings to the church as a whole, Ellen
wrote long letters instructing individual Adventists, including church
leaders. These named specific weaknesses and errors, and directed recipi-
ents to a better course of action. These letters could be convincing: not
only were they written by God’s messenger, but White sometimes ensured
that letters to church leaders found an audience beyond the recipient by
circulating them among other leaders. In other cases, she would address
the letter to several individuals, expecting the person being taken to task
to read the letter aloud to all of those to whom it was addressed. Even
church presidents were directed, on occasion, to read aloud to colleagues
a letter criticizing their shortcomings (Valentine 2011, p. 51).13
After formal organization in 1863, White increasingly focused on
Adventist institution-building. Publishing, educational, health, and other
institutional efforts became her emphasis, not as an end in themselves,
but as necessary to hasten the advent. A December 1865 vision showed
Ellen that Adventists should build an Adventist health institution, and
the Western Health Reform Institute, later called the Battle Creek
Sanatorium, opened in 1866. Visions showed her that believers should
be educated in Adventist schools, and in 1874, Battle Creek College was
founded. By the late 1880s and 1890s, Ellen White increasingly artic-
ulated a form of benevolent ministry. Adventists were to be trained in
Adventist schools and colleges to serve not only Adventists, but help
reach those outside of the movement.
Ellen White’s later entreaties to Adventists to do the work necessary to
hasten the advent commonly called women to religious work, and there
is ample evidence that women in addition to Ellen White participated in
public religious work in Adventism’s early decades. As a young prophet
in a social context that discouraged women’s public leadership, White left
defence of women’s public religious work to others. After 1860, as she
became more confident in her own role, Ellen asserted that women were
not only as qualified for religious work as men, but could do some things
that men could not do. She called for women to be formally educated,
particularly as physicians, work as colporteurs (literature evangelists)
and Bible instructors, and serve in ministerial teams with their husbands
(Vance 2014, p. 282).14 In 1895, she called for women to be set apart
to ministerial work by “prayer and laying on of hands,” and insisted that
women employed in ministerial work should be remunerated equally with
men. In the same year, she instructed that “not a hand should be bound,
not a soul discouraged, not a voice should be hushed; let every individual
labour, privately or publically, to help forward this this grand work. Place
the burdens upon men and women of the church” (White 1895).
44 L.L. Vance
Early Adventist publications included expositions supporting women’s

religious work. These generally note that women may prophecy—and
are framed to at least in part defend Ellen White’s role, especially in the
late 1840s and 1850s—but also advocate women’s participation in public
religious work more generally. In 1887, for example, Adventist Pioneer
E.J. Waggoner observed that although “many good people think that
the Bible forbids women to take part in public religious service,” in fact,
“to forbid women any of the privileges of the gospel would be utterly at
variance with the gospel” (Waggoner 1887, p. 278). Addressing Biblical
texts commonly employed to discourage women’s public religious con-
tributions, Waggoner declared that:
In the gospel plan there is no difference made for race, condition, or

sex…. No Christian would think of prohibiting a person from taking part
in a meeting, on the ground that he is a servant, or because he is a dif-
ferent nationality from the majority of members of the church; then no
Christian should prevent a person from speaking to the praise of God,
because that person is a woman. (Waggoner 1887, p. 278)
After the church was formally organized, Adventism inaugurated a for-

mal course of training for pastors, and women participated and received
ministerial licenses between 1865 and 1871. A Mrs. E.S. Lane was issued
a “license to preach” in Michigan in 1878, and women with similar
licenses preached and evangelized in teams with their husbands until at
least the turn of the twentieth century (Haloviak 1985, p. 5, 11–15). A
resolution in support of women’s ordination was introduced at the 1881
meeting of the General Conference. Ellen, mourning James’s recent
death, did not attend, and the resolution was discussed but never voted
on. Still, by 1884, the SDA Yearbook listed licensed ministers who were
women, and in 1898 Adventism’s first women’s ministry department was
created. After White’s death at age 87 in July of 1915, the number of
women in leadership roles began to decline.
Conclusion
Ellen White’s legacy emerged from her ability to transform a belief in
the soon-coming advent into urgent work on earth for herself and her
followers. She was not unique in her experience of the divine, but she
had a rare ability to translate her supernal encounters into a compelling
religious narrative that motivated action. As important to the even-

tual success of the movement was Ellen White’s ability to mature as a
leader in tandem with Seventh-day Adventism. Though she initially
established her connection to the divine employing an unreserved,
emotional religious style, as the movement grew and required develop-
ment of structures and processes, White progressively employed a more
sedate leadership approach. James was also important to movement suc-
cess, but Ellen directed him to undertake publishing, and his organiza-
tional skills generally followed the direction provided by Ellen’s visionary
insights. Ellen borrowed ideas and words from those around her: As an
early prophet, she regularly confirmed a divine answer from competing
possibilities, and as a more mature prophet, she drew from social reform
movements and others’ publications to craft her message. It would be
a mistake to see in this dependence on others an absence of leadership.
Instead, Ellen White navigated a cultural context that was generally hos-
tile to women’s public leadership to create a solid foundation for a suc-
cessful religion.
Notes
1. With hospitals, schools, colleges, and media institutions around the globe,
Seventh-day Adventism has the second-largest parochial school system in
the world and is one of the world’s largest nonprofit Protestant providers
of health care.
2. In 1872, for example, in Bradwell v. The State of Illinois, the Supreme
Court of the USA held that states could refuse to grant law licenses to
women.
3. In his book, the Christian Life and Public Labors of William Miller
(1875), James White pointed to public mocking of Millerites: “The pub-
lic prints, of the most fashionable and popular kind, in the great Sodoms
of our country, are caricaturing in the most shameful manner the ‘white
robes of the saints,’ Rev. 6:11, the ‘going up,’ and the great day of ‘burn-
ing.’ Even the pulpits are desecrated by the repetition of scandalous and
false reports concerning the ‘ascension robes,’ and priests are using their
powers and pens to fill the catalogue of scoffing in the most scandalous
periodicals of the day” (White 1875, p. 310).
4. In January or February of 1845, Ellen White “described her visions”
to believers in the soon-coming advent at the home of her sister, Mary
Harmon Foss, in Poland Maine (Olson and Coon 2013, p. 114).
46 L.L. Vance
5. Other visionaries around Portland included Dorinda Baker, Emily Clemons,

William Foy, Mary Hamlin, and Phoebe Knapp (Taves 2014, p. 40).
6. For example, the sanctuary doctrine—which suggests that after Christ
entered the heavenly sanctuary on October 22, 1844, he commenced the
work of judging souls, and when that work is complete, he will return
to the earth—existed before Ellen saw it in vision. Hiram Edson, walk-
ing through a cornfield the morning after the Great Disappointment, saw
“distinctly and clearly” that Christ had entered the heavenly sanctuary on
October 22, 1844, and would return to Earth when his work there was
complete. Edson travelled among bands of disappointed believers in the
fall of 1844 sharing the message of the sanctuary, which was also later
published (Crosier 2015, p. 1).
7. Of particular note are contributions to Adventist belief and practice made
by retired sea captain Joseph Bates, who promoted Adventist understand-
ing of the Sabbath and the heavenly sanctuary.
8. Roy Graham’s 1985 book on the prophet, for example, is entitled Ellen G.
White: Co-Founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
9. One notable exception occurred between 1851 and 1855. After the
Great Disappointment, Ellen suggested that those who had not accepted
Miller’s message by 1844 could not access salvation; that the door to sal-
vation was “shut.” When the “shut door” doctrine proved untenable—
in the face of new converts and children born to the movement, both
of whom needed access to salvation but had no chance to have accepted
William Miller’s prediction—White declared the door to salvation open.
Responding to critics of this apparent revision, James refused to pub-
lish Ellen’s visions between 1851 and 1855. He resumed publishing her
visions after being chastised by other movement leaders, and never again
publically failed to promote Ellen’s role as prophet after 1855.
10. In the spring of 1909, at the last meeting of the General Conference she
would attend before her death, Ellen White delivered eleven addresses
(Olson and Coon 2013, p. 120).
11. Ellen White’s last public vision is thought to have occurred in the summer
of 1884 at a camp meeting in Portland, Oregon (Olson and Coon 2013,
p. 118).
12. White’s advice on masturbation was first published in an 1864 pamphlet
entitled “A Solemn Appeal” and was published again in an edited volume
in 1860. Though her “Appeal” is now available online, it was officially
distributed only in a very limited way after 1900 (White 1961, pp. 1–2).
13. White did not hesitate to criticize the shortcomings of ordinary
Adventists. She was an especially dedicated letter writer, and in thousands
of pages to individuals, families, and churches she named specific faults
and weaknesses, and called on Adventists to improve (Sharrock 2014, p.
53). Hundreds of her letters to Adventists are included in nine volumes

titled Testimonies of the Church, and in these White typically addresses the
recipient by name, unsparingly points out specific faults, and then directs
the individual to improve. An 1870 letter to “Sister Mary” is characteris-
tic: “I have some things I feel it my duty to write you,” she begins, and
then details the recipient’s shortcomings—a “lack of prudence” in “talk-
ing out of turn,” a “great deal” of “unprofitable” and “injurious” talk,
being “overbearing” to her husband, being “gloomy,” “dwelling on [her]
trials as though [she] was a martyr,” and more. She details how Mary
should rectify her behavior, and ends with a paragraph of encouragement
(White 1870).
14. White determined that women should be served by female physicians, so
“that their secret parts should not be exposed to the notice of men.” “It
is a most horrible practice,” she wrote, “this revealing the secret parts of
women to men, or men being treated by women” (White 1911).
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CHAPTER 4
Elizabeth Clare Prophet: Gender, Sexuality,

and the Divine Feminine
Erin Prophet
Introduction
As one of the most visible new age leaders of the late twentieth century,
Elizabeth Clare Prophet (1939–2009) has attracted sustained schol-
arly attention but little of that work has addressed her life as a woman.
Scholarship on Prophet to date has discussed the events surrounding
her apocalyptic prophecies (Whitsel 2003), the group’s thought-world
and history (Melton and Lewis 1994), and the schisms surrounding her
retirement in 2000 (Palmer and Abravanel 2009). Hammer (2016) has
reviewed the incorporation of Jewish mystical traditions into her theol-
ogy, including her teachings on the divine feminine, and the author has
briefly explored her charisma (Erin Prophet 2016).
Building on that work, this article focuses on her exercise of power as
a female leader, her innovative and evolving teachings on gender, sexual-
ity, and the divine feminine, and ways to evaluate the allegations of sex-
ual impropriety which dogged her career. As her daughter and a former
leader in her church, I am in a unique position to illuminate these areas.
E. Prophet (*) 
Rice University, Houston, TX, USA

52 E. PROPHET
The evaluation follows a brief summary of her life, major accomplish-

ments, and controversies.
Biographical Sketch
In 1973, Prophet inherited power from her husband Mark Prophet,
who had founded The Summit Lighthouse (TSL) in 1958. In 1975,
she incorporated Church Universal and Triumphant (CUT) which,
while meant to be a companion organization to the Summit, eventually
assumed most of its functions. Prophet served as leader of CUT-TSL and
its sole official mouthpiece for ‘ascended masters’ between 1973 and her
retirement due to Alzheimer’s-related dementia in 2000.
Her message attracted followers of both sexes (no figures exist, but
the author estimates about 60 percent female and 40 percent male) but
she developed her own brand of conservative feminism, proclaiming the
liberation of both sexes from the guilt of original sin. Her God was both
Father and Mother, and her new age Hail Mary meant as ‘universal ado-
ration of the Mother Flame by people of all faiths’ (Prophet and Prophet
1974, p. 122). Acting as mouthpiece for a wide range of female beings
from the Virgin Mary (called ‘Mother Mary’ in CUT-TSL) to the Hindu
goddess Durga, and taking on archetypal feminine roles in the group’s
theology, she also challenged male religious leaders as an equal and used
bold rhetoric against secular power structures.
Although she preached against a ‘consciousness’ of sin, particularly
surrounding conception and birth, both she and her strongest influences,
the I AM Religious Activity and the Theosophical tradition viewed sex
as an impediment to spiritual growth (see Hammer and Rothstein 2013
for background on these traditions). Declining to align herself with the
feminist movement, she opposed both the 1973 legalization of abor-
tion and the campaign to pass an Equal Rights Amendment in the USA
during the late 1970s. Her message was just liberal enough to appeal to
members of the counterculture but conservative enough to also attract
metaphysical seekers influenced by the anti-physicalist teachings of the
Theosophical Society and its offshoots.
As pointed out by Elizabeth Puttick, ‘there is no clear correspond-
ence between successful female leadership and feminist ideology,’ and
‘some of the strongest [female] leaders’ of new religions ‘are explicitly
anti-feminist’ (1997, p. 192). Some anti-feminist stances may arise from
religious ideas about women as inferior beings. Prophet’s anti-feminism
4 ELIZABETH CLARE PROPHET: GENDER, SEXUALITY … 53
likely stemmed from a variety of sources, including an attempt to negoti-

ate a middle ground between the changing mores of her times and the
traditions established by her husband (and teacher) and earlier leaders in
his lineage. These are explained in greater detail below.
CUT-TSL’s rise to prominence in the new age movement can largely
be attributed to Elizabeth Prophet’s leadership. Upon Mark Prophet’s
death (1918–1973), attendance at the group’s quarterly conferences
numbered in the hundreds. Within just a few years, crowds had grown
into the thousands, with a greater proportion of young followers.
Although Mark provided much of the group’s basic teaching and ritu-
als, Elizabeth developed theological innovations of her own and brought
CUT-TSL to global recognition during the late 1970s and 1980s, even-
tually publishing more than fifty books which sold more than a million
copies, establishing congregations in most major world cities, and host-
ing several talk shows on public-access cable networks reaching audiences
of millions (Fig. 4.1).
By the late 1970s, she had begun to use the title ‘Guru Ma’ and took
on some of the accoutrements of an Eastern teacher, for a time wear-
ing saffron or purple robes as well as gold-embroidered Indian saris,
although her work always had a strong Christian flavor. The church was
headquartered in a series of mansions or retreat settings from Colorado
to California, culminating in the 1981 purchase of a 12,500-acre ranch
in Montana. The church’s land holdings in Montana were eventually
expanded to more than 30,000 acres. Its growing wealth and visibility
led to increased scrutiny in the media, including allegations that Prophet
practiced mind control or brainwashing, was self-serving and hypocriti-
cal, lived a lavish lifestyle while the headquarters staff worked for little or
no pay, and engaged in extramarital sexual relations. Tensions increased
when thousands of church members converged on Montana between
1987 and 1990 in order to construct bomb shelters in anticipation of
impending nuclear war, particularly when weapons to defend the shel-
ters were illegally purchased by members of the church staff, including
Prophet’s fourth husband.
Early Spiritual Life and Influence of Mark Prophet

Prophet was born Elizabeth Clare Wulf, the only child of immigrant
European parents who settled in New Jersey just before World War II.
54 E. PROPHET
Fig. 4.1 Elizabeth Clare Prophet delivering a lecture at the annual summer

conference of Church Universal and Triumphant, held July 1992 at the Royal
Teton Ranch, Corwin Springs, Montana. © Chad Slattery 1992
She absorbed metaphysical ideas from her Swiss mother, Frieda Enkerli
(b. 1896), who had studied Theosophy as well as the I AM teachings.
At age nine, Prophet developed a seizure disorder and though she took
medication briefly, she also sought help from the Christian Science
church, which she began attending independently of her parents.
The seizures either receded with adolescence or were, as she believed,
brought under control by her practice of Christian Science. Nevertheless,
she continued to experience petit mal, or absence, seizures throughout
her life, which were undetectable to most observers, but prevented her
from driving a car.
During college, she began taking advanced training in order to
become a Christian Science practitioner. Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910),
founder of Christian Science, was an important role model, and Prophet
claimed to have learned much about the organization of a church
through her work at the church’s Boston headquarters and as a secretary
at the church newspaper, the Christian Science Monitor.
Another strong influence on Prophet’s early spiritual development was

the books written by Guy and Edna Ballard under the pennames Godfré
Ray King and Lotus Ray King, which she discovered in college. These
books are the primary texts of the I AM Religious Activity, founded in
the 1930s. Although unsuccessful at contacting their organization, she
did begin attending a group in Boston interested in their ideas, shortly
after her marriage to a fellow Christian Scientist in 1960. In 1961, she
met a visiting speaker, Mark Prophet, who became her most important
influence.
Mark had founded The Summit Lighthouse in 1958 in Washington,
D.C., after studying with various metaphysical and Hindu-influenced
groups. Prophet was Mark’s given surname, of Scots origin, but he also
believed it reflected his life’s calling. He began experimenting with
receiving messages from spiritual beings in the early 1950s. The Prophets
did not use the terms ‘channeling’ or ‘automatic writing’ to describe
their work and actively distanced themselves from spiritualism and medi-
ums with claims that their work was divinely inspired.
In 1961, Mark Prophet was the sole ‘messenger’ of the Summit,
which patterned itself after the Ballards’ I AM Activity, which was
the first to use the term messenger in a formal sense to describe those
believed to be empowered to receive communication from divine
beings known as ascended masters. Messengers were said to be needed
because the human race had lost the ability to hear the masters for
themselves, but each individual was also encouraged to communicate
directly with the ‘higher self,’ along with masters and angels. Groups in
the I AM lineage struggle with the inherent tension between the goal
of direct individual contact with God and the authority of an official
‘messenger.’
After watching Mark give a ‘dictation,’ as messages from ascended
masters were called, Elizabeth decided she had found her life’s calling.
‘Dictation’ was conducted both in public, with the messenger stand-
ing before a group and speaking as a master in the first person, and in
private, with the messenger writing by hand, typing, or speaking into
a tape recorder. Ascended masters were believed to include Christian
saints and archangels, as well as Eastern deities, along with Rosicrucian
figures and other beings such as the Mahatmas identified by Helena
Blavatsky (1831–1891), founder of the Theosophical Society, which
was broadly influential in the new age movement. The Theosophical
masters had inspired a variety of new age groups, including the I AM,
56 E. PROPHET
which transformed them from living adepts into ‘ascended masters’ (see
Rudbøg 2013).
By 1964, Elizabeth Prophet had completed her training and took
her first public dictation as a messenger in TSL. She had married Mark
Prophet the year before, in 1963, after they had each divorced their
spouses, becoming both spiritual and practical partners. (For more detail
on Prophet’s early spiritual life, see E.C. Prophet 2009.) Mark relied on
Elizabeth to edit and publish his work, as well as to run his organization,
and for the next ten years, he was both spiritual teacher and provider,
with control of financial and logistical decisions.
Between 1964 and 1972, Elizabeth gave birth to four children with
Mark: Sean, Erin, Moira, and Tatiana. Although Prophet went to great
lengths to keep her children close during the travels and frequent moves
required by her ministry, she could not have raised them without a per-
sonal household staff which included several full-time and numerous
part-time housekeepers, cooks, nannies, and drivers as low-paid or volun-
teer workers on the church’s staff.
Titles, Offices, and Past-Life Beliefs

The Prophets’ spiritual partnership included regular engagement in
‘inner work,’ a form of private prayer and visualization during which
they received revelations from the ascended masters about their per-
sonal lives, including their past incarnations. Through this work, Mark
and Elizabeth concluded that they had been husband and wife in numer-
ous lifetimes, many of them as famous individuals such as the Egyptian
pharaoh Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti, or the French monarchs Louis
XVI and Marie Antoinette. They also believed they had lived as Catholic
saints, he as Bonaventure and she as Clare.
In early 1961, Mark Prophet had founded the Keepers of the Flame
Fraternity, whose stated goal was to assemble individuals who would
‘keep the flame of life,’ which was seen as a source of divine power in
the world, which required tending through prayer, meditation, and
‘decrees,’ a form of prayer. Several offices in the fraternity were estab-
lished, including ‘Mother of the Flame.’
In April 1966, the ‘office’ was transferred from an elderly female stu-
dent to Elizabeth Prophet in a ceremony at TSL headquarters, which
by then had moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado. From then on,
Elizabeth was often called ‘Mother’ by students, though she maintained
that this was an office, not a title. In July 1977, she took a dictation from
Padma Sambhava, a well-known figure in Tibetan Buddhism, bestowing
on her the title of ‘Guru Ma.’ Mother and Guru Ma were used inter-
changeably by followers, though Mother was more common, or the occa-
sional Ma. Unpublished interviews conducted by the author with current
and former members of CUT-TSL reveal a wide range of perceptions of
their relationship with the woman they called ‘Mother.’ In January 1974,
after Mark’s death, Elizabeth Prophet also took a dictation in which she
was given the ‘office of the World Mother.’ This third title, rarely used,
became inflated by the media into ‘Mother of the Universe,’ an appella-
tion which she never adopted.
Taking and Exercising Power as a Female Leader

After her first dictation in 1964, Elizabeth began giving public dicta-
tions, approximately one per conference. However, the majority were
still given by Mark and most TSL members saw him as their leader.
When he died suddenly from a stroke in February 1973, it was taken
for granted that Elizabeth would assume leadership. Within a week, she
had taken a dictation from Mark, in his new role as the ascended master
‘Lanello,’ addressing his former flock.
Previous academic studies have generally not dwelt on this transi-
tion of power, and focused instead on Elizabeth’s subsequent expansion
(Whitsel 2003, pp. 37–38), but in fact it took time for her to develop
a leadership style. Mark had appointed a board of directors (including
two ministers ordained by him) and an informal advisory group, pre-
dominantly male. These leaders handled most practical issues, and
Elizabeth tried to work with them in a consensual style. However,
according to one former member of the advisory group, their deci-
sions—while consensual—would nearly always align with her prefer-
ence. Often this group would present her with several alternatives and
ask her to consult with the masters as to which direction should be pur-
sued. All members were unanimous in supporting a plan to pursue a
multifaceted expansion campaign, a change of direction from Mark’s
more personal leadership style.
As time went by, tensions arose, and Elizabeth soon found a stronger
voice and presence. There were power struggles and raised voices heard
through the boardroom door. According to long-time staff member
Dorothy Angleton, Elizabeth at one time complained that the men were
58 E. PROPHET
‘not giving me any say, and asked her to pray about it’ (1998, p. 45).
This may have been an exaggeration, given Elizabeth’s strong position as
messenger, but the disagreements were also complicated by her appoint-
ment to the TSL presidency of staff member Randall King, who became
her third husband in October 1973. The shift in her leadership style is
described by one former insider: ‘desire to find consensus among her
key staff evolved into stern and self-assured authority on her part.’ She
became ‘strong but less tolerant and flexible’ (Anon 2011, p. 8).
Within two years of Mark’s death, one board member had been dis-
missed over his doubts about survivalist projects and his desire for a
more formal corporate decision-making process. In 1980, Monroe
Shearer, a minister ordained by Mark who had questioned some of
Elizabeth’s decisions, was also dismissed. By 1981, Elizabeth had
divorced King and removed all of Mark’s appointees with the excep-
tion of Edward Francis who, also in 1981, became her fourth husband.
She did, however, continue to rely on a series of often unacknowledged
advisers, upon whom she seemed dependent, delegating responsibility,
only to reassert her authority in times of crisis, leading to frequent turno-
ver in upper management.
Although often described as an unchallenged leader, she did face
constant challenges from inside and outside her group, especially from
those who had known Mark, such as Monroe. Several former high-rank-
ing members became prominent critics, working with both the anti-cult
movement and the media. Others joined rival new age groups or started
their own. These challenges can be correlated with shifts in her theol-
ogy and the rhetorical strategies of her message, particularly those she
adopted in order to legitimate her authority and resist the routinization
of charisma (see Erin Prophet forthcoming).
Although her leadership style with church management was often
autocratic, she was less so with followers and played the role of both
cheerleader and cop. A detailed evaluation of her voluminous corre-
spondence and writings would reveal a delicate interweaving of encour-
agement, logic, appeal to the authority of past teachers, and negotiation,
along with occasional threats of divine retribution and new revelations of
‘cosmic law’ by the ascended masters. (I refer to her revelations as ‘inno-
vations,’ although the members of the church view them as coming from
the ascended master through whom the dictation was said to have been
received—for example, Jesus is believed to have founded CUT and his
Mother Mary to have released the new age rosary.)
One of Elizabeth Prophet’s first innovations after Mark’s death was

to found CUT in 1974 (incorporated in 1975), which thenceforward
became the primary identity of the group. The church offered sacra-
ments but also required tithing, confession, and attendance at prescribed
services, forbade alcohol, drugs and tobacco, rejected homosexuality,
and restricted sexual activity. Some of these rules could be seen as natu-
ral outcroppings of preexisting tendencies in Mark’s work, while others
ran counter to his less restrictive approach (see Erin Prophet forthcom-
ing). Elizabeth ordained both male and female ministers in CUT and
established rituals for conveying all seven of the Catholic sacraments,
which these ministers went on to perform within her worldwide and
growing movement.
However, CUT was not the only option for affiliation with the
Prophets’ work. Most conferences were open to the public, and anyone
could join the mailing list, which was the lowest level of participation.
Although the church never released its membership figures, according
to my experience as a board member of the church (1986–1993), there
were during that period roughly fifty- to seventy-five thousand individu-
als on the CUT-TSL mailing list. Membership in CUT itself numbered
in the five- to ten thousand range during this period, while a staff of sev-
eral hundred managed the headquarters and publications.
Major Theological Innovations

The late 1970s and early 1980s were a fruitful period for Elizabeth in
which innovations in practice and new spiritual revelations followed closely
upon one another. Many of her innovations involved ‘decrees,’ which she
called the ‘science of the spoken Word,’ a system of chanting with visuali-
zation techniques. Decrees were used dramatically in a ritual for the spir-
itual elevation or ‘demagnetization’ of cities in which she and followers
drove through every quarter of the city by bus, singing and chanting, and
occasionally also marching through the streets to ‘raise the consciousness’
of its inhabitants. She developed new rituals for sacraments, such as com-
munion, and a wedding ceremony that emphasized the spiritual aspects
of the partnership. Healings were frequently attributed to her spiritual
work—prayer as well as physical touch. She blessed thousands of individu-
als by touching them with sacred objects such as gemstones.
She maintained a nominally ecumenical attitude toward organized
religion. In 1973, she managed to convince Father Dunstan Stout,
60 E. PROPHET
presiding Catholic priest at the Basilica of our Lady of Guadalupe

in Mexico City, to allow her to give prayers on the altar. She not only
led portions of her new age rosary inside the basilica, but she also later
developed a long-term friendship with Stout. During the 1970s (pre-
Jonestown), and before media scrutiny, her outlook and ministry were
optimistic and expansive.
Throughout her ministry, her work schedule was demanding. She
conducted four conferences per year at which she was the primary and
sometimes the only speaker. She not only gave multiple dictations at each
conference but often preceded and punctuated them with readings and
commentary on sacred writings East and West and lectures on topical
subjects such Jonathan Livingston Seagull (Bach 1970) or the Star Wars
films. She delivered sermons and dictations nearly every Sunday to her
local congregation when she was at home, but was often away on lecture
tours, which took her across the USA, Europe, Africa, and Australia.
Between 1979 and 1980, Prophet’s teachings became more pessimis-
tic, about both the future and prospects for salvation. Whereas Mark had
believed that everyone alive on earth had a soul, Elizabeth concluded,
based on the ancient alien theories of Zechariah Sitchin (1920–2010),
that godless beings had been conceived by fallen angels called Nephilim,
who continued incarnating to the present in positions of power (see E.C.
Prophet 1983b, pp. 5, 63–67; M.L. and E.C. Prophet 1986a, p. 536
n. 44). These ‘soulless’ individuals were believed to be destined for a
‘second death’ due to their complete identification with their egos and
therefore to be ineligible for the ascension (see Enoch [through E.C.
Prophet] 1981; M.L. and E.C. Prophet 1986a, pp. 116–118).
The shift in theology coincided with a period of increased media
scrutiny of CUT-TSL, the kidnapping and deprogramming of numer-
ous members, and the emergence of high-ranking apostates. In fact,
the concept of ‘soulless’ beings can be seen as an attempt to explain the
defection of the apostates, and it was never universally accepted among
her members. However, it would later provide justification for a shift
in Prophet’s teaching on abortion, discussed below. The teachings on
Nephilim as fallen angels took on an ever-larger role in the prophecies
and dictations throughout the 1980s. In practice, these teachings were
also pivotal in the process of separating out from society, which hap-
pened during the ‘shelter episode’ of 1989–1990, by heightening the
insider-outsider mentality. The pessimistic attitude toward salvation was
dominant from about 1985 through 1993.
The Shelter Episode

Prophet is best known for the predictions which led to the ‘shelter epi-
sode,’ which brought her and the church to worldwide attention. Her
predictions of nuclear war and subsequent natural disaster based on a
vision of the Ride of the Four Horsemen led several thousand people to
Montana where they built and stocked bomb shelters. But these prophe-
cies cannot be seen as an entirely new development. While the extreme
response of building the shelters was new, prophecies of war and disaster
were not.
War and cataclysm had been part of the complex equation of ‘plan-
etary karma,’ a frequent subject of dictations by the Prophets as far back
as 1965. Much of the prayer work of CUT-TSL was focused on attempt-
ing to dissolve this karma and thereby prevent or turn back predicted
events. There were several periods, including just after Mark’s death,
when actual physical preparations were made, but it was not until 1987
that Prophet identified specific dates for ‘preparedness’ and directed an
extensive program of shelter construction.
During the 1980s, her prophecies linked the potential for destruc-
tion to ongoing evil acts committed in the world, including sexual
perversions, abortion, and the failure to ‘heed’ the word of the mas-
ters through their messengers. In Prophet’s Daughter (2009), I suggest
a connection between the prophecies and the challenges to Elizabeth
Prophet’s authority which surrounded the church’s loss of a lawsuit in
1986 (Church Universal and Triumphant v. Mull) and publicity over
allegations of an extramarital affair. This is not to reduce the dictations
to a purely psychological phenomenon but to suggest that complex
interactions were at play in this millennialist event. However, during and
after the shelter episode, Prophet also continued to produce optimistic
religious innovations, including new decrees and a rosary incorporating
Buddhist mantras.
Challenges to her authority intensified as her abilities weakened dur-
ing the 1990s. Although she continued to give dictations, they were
shorter and simpler. Her lectures, which had previously included long
extemporaneous components, now had to be read word by word from
notes. Even before her retirement in 2000, a group called the Temple
of the Presence had arisen to challenge her messengership, led by for-
mer CUT minister Monroe Shearer. Due to her illness, she did not write
62 E. PROPHET
Fig. 4.2 July 1988. Conference tents in the heart of the inner retreat, a
secluded valley on the Royal Teton Ranch, owned by Church Universal and
Triumphant, also the site of the main fallout shelter complex built for church
staff. © Chad Slattery 1988
anything after 1999 but her followers have continued to produce books
based on her earlier lectures and dictations (Fig. 4.2).
Teachings on the Divine Feminine

Proclaiming God as both Father and Mother, and projecting a destiny
for each soul to become a creator on other planets following successful
ascension and union with the ‘twin flame,’ or opposite-gendered spirit-
ual other half, Elizabeth Prophet’s theology offered equal roles for men
and women, yet was unable to completely escape the inherent tension in
identification of the feminine with both soul and body, and the imper-
fections of the material world. Prophet sought to reconcile conflicting
strands of Theosophical, I AM, New Thought, and Christian Science
ideas in a contradictory but theologically innovative approach. The
Prophets’ theology avoids Christianity’s often denigrating stance toward

the female body and form but retains some of its ambivalence about the
material world, the body, and the senses.
In Climb the Highest Mountain, Prophet and her husband Mark
systematically present the notion of the creator God as Father and
Mother: ‘we must include in our awareness the concept of the Father-
Mother God—of a Being that is both masculine and feminine in nature,
whose oneness is found in the perfect balance of the energies of Spirit
and Matter’ (1986a, p. 388). Although matter is identified as the fem-
inine aspect of God, it is not identified with evil. The Prophets stated
that ‘Spirit and Matter are not opposites: they are the twofold nature
of God’s Being which remain forever as the Divine Polarity’ (1986a, p.
391). However, the belief system retains a Theosophically influenced
rejection of matter, which, although real and of God, is also something
to be transcended, or at least to be experienced on higher ‘planes’ of
existence. The ‘physical’ is seen as the lowest level of matter, and other
heavenly realms are described as material, though invisible.
While the soul is considered feminine, and the spirit, masculine, each
person is viewed as the incomplete half of a soul, with a predisposition
to incarnation in a male or female form. However, even those in male
form have a feminine aspect to their nature, as those in female bodies
have a male aspect, which can be developed and drawn forth. Both sexes
are said to be destined to give birth to the Christ within (M.L. and E.C.
Prophet 1974, p. 120).
Although untainted by original sin, the soul is not perfect. It is ‘a
fallen potential that must be imbued with the Reality of Spirit, purified
through prayer and supplication, and returned to the glory from which
it descended and to the unity of the whole’ (1986a, p. 8). According
to the Prophets, the divine feminine is a crucial part of salvation. The
Christ within can only be born through ‘transformation through the uni-
versal Mother Principle,’ and the ‘Presence of the Mother in the matter
body.’ But the goal is not coexistence of the earthly and heavenly forms,
but rather the liberation of the soul from ‘bondage of he senses’ and the
‘illusion of time and space’ (1986b, pp. 185–186).
In the Prophets’ complex notion of spiritual gender, the soul descends
from God as a ‘feminine polarity,’ which ‘must be transformed in order
to be redeemed.’ Transformation occurs through balancing karma.
Once the soul has united with the personalized ‘Christ Self’ and the
64 E. PROPHET
individualized God Presence, the soul is considered androgynous,

‘no longer feminine but truly infilled with the masculine being’ (E.C.
Prophet and Booth 2005, pp. 145–148).
The Prophets’ cultivation of devotion to the Mother of Christ as
Mother Mary is an important aspect of this teaching on the divine femi-
nine. They did not use the term virgin to describe her, suggesting that
Biblical descriptions of the virgin birth were actually spiritual metaphors
for divine creation. Elizabeth Prophet described ‘Mother Mary’ as ‘the
archetype of the New Age woman,’ an example of the redemption of the
‘Feminine Principle,’ which must be redeemed in both men and women
in order for the return of Christ in the heart, seen as the true second
coming (M.L. and E.C. Prophet 1974, 16–17).
Gender was considered meaningless after ascension, and individuals
were seen as being able to inhabit male or female bodies on earth, as
karma dictated, yet the gendered identity of masters projected through
messengers was retained. Blavatsky has been judged incorrectly to have
promoted patriarchy based on the notion of a Great White Brotherhood,
a term coined by Blavatsky’s successor Annie Besant (1847–1933) to
describe the Mahatmas and other advanced beings with whom Blavatsky
was said to have been in contact. Blavatsky herself had proclaimed
the existence of female adepts, but none were identified by her (Kraft
2013, 368). However, later groups went on to include women in the
‘Brotherhood,’ and the I AM revered ‘lady masters.’ These ‘lady masters’
gave frequent dictations in both the I AM and CUT-TSL. Most of the
ascended masters were believed to have an ascended ‘twin flame,’ and
pairs of ascended twin flames would occasionally speak together, address-
ing the congregation as ‘we.’
Twin flame is an extension of the I AM teaching on the twin ray,
seemingly an extrapolation of Theosophical and other metaphysical con-
cepts. The twin flame is said to be the other half of each soul, a ‘twin’ of
the opposite gender, with whom the soul is destined to unite. Union can
take place only after both halves, male and female, have achieved per-
fection through ascension. The twin flame represents an expanded pos-
sibility for personal and spiritual fulfillment. Once both halves of the
whole have become ascended masters, a cosmic union can take place, an
apotheosis which permits them to work together in a state of eternal per-
fection (see King 1935, pp. 87, 196–197). Mark and Elizabeth Prophet
were declared to be twin flames, destined to unite after they had each
ascended, in order to provide greater spiritual benefit to the earth.
During the 1970s, Prophet refined and developed her notion of

woman’s role in spiritual life. As she developed her message on the ‘lost
teachings of Jesus’ restored through revelations to her, she challenged
the Catholic church’s stance on the role of women in worship, stating:
‘Gender has no bearing on individual spiritual attainment. That Jesus
was male does not determine his spirituality. Men and women have equal
access to the light of God, and that light can be transmitted through
all.’ She also spoke out against the requirement for priestly celibacy and
advocated for women to serve as clergy on an equal level with men (E.C.
Prophet and Booth 2005, pp. 53, 179–180).
In 1974, Elizabeth Prophet published her Scriptural Rosary for
the New Age, which she claimed was destined to be ‘used as a univer-
sal adoration of the Mother Flame by people of all faiths…an affirma-
tion of praise to the Mother Flame in every part of Life’ (M.L. and E.C.
Prophet 1974, p. 122). The rosary included the practice of a saluta-
tion to God as Mother when making the sign of the cross. Whereas in
Catholic practice, the Father is saluted at the forehead and the Son at the
center of the chest, with the Holy Spirit at each shoulder, Prophet’s new
age version involves touching the forehead for the Father, the chest for
the Mother, the left shoulder for the Son and the right shoulder for the
Holy Spirit (Fig. 4.3).
The Hail Mary was also revised to reflect a departure from a ‘sin-
based’ theology, replacing the phrase ‘pray for us sinners, now and at the
hour of our death’ with ‘pray for us sons and daughters of God, now and
at the hour of our victory over sin, disease, and death’ (1974, p. 123,
emphasis added). Prophet’s message on woman and the spiritual equal-
ity of men and women resonated with a certain swath of spiritual seekers,
but seems to have struck an especially meaningful chord with Catholics
and former Catholics. According to a survey conducted by Constance
Jones at a 1993 CUT conference, Catholics were overrepresented among
participants, with 35 percent identifying as having been raised Catholic
(1994, p. 49).
During the 1990s, Prophet also developed an exegesis of the gender-
related passages in the Gospel of Thomas and other non-canonical gos-
pels, some gnostic, which attempted to harmonize these gospels with
her previous work on gender. Gospel of Thomas saying 114 states that
‘every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.’
Prophet claimed that male and female in the text are code words for
spirit and matter, and that the Gospel of Thomas therefore describes the
66 E. PROPHET
Fig. 4.3 Album cover for A Child’s Rosary to Mother Mary, audio recording
with Elizabeth Clare Prophet, showing Prophet and a statue of the Virgin Mary,
usually called Mother Mary in CUT theology. ©1979, Church Universal and
Triumphant
union of spirit and matter in saying 22: ‘When you make the two one
and make the inside like the outside…that you might make the male and
the female be one and the same, so that the male might not be male
nor the female be female’ (Layton 1987, 384; Thomas 22:24–28). She
also declared that the Gospels of Thomas and Philip prophesy ‘the reu-
niting of you and your twin flame’ (E.C. Prophet and Booth 2005, 149).
Prophet claimed some familiarity with scholarly work on gnosticism, but
her attempts to harmonize the diverse body of work discovered at Nag
Hammadi with her theology were patchy at best.
Evaluation of Theological Innovations

By doing away with the guilt surrounding original sin and proclaiming
that both men and women are meant to give birth to the Christ, not
to mention adding the divine Mother to the Holy Trinity, Prophet cre-
ated a bold and original theology updating the Theosophical tradition.
Her emphasis on the divine feminine seems an answer to Luce Irigaray’s
complaint that, ‘We have no female trinity. But as long as woman lacks a
divine made in her image she cannot establish her subjectivity or achieve
a goal of her own’ (cited in Jantzen 1998, p. 15).
Irigaray expressed the hope that a theology of God as Mother might
transform repressive patriarchal theology (see Jantzen, 1998, 16). And
Prophet’s work spoke to the concerns of many who felt unfulfilled by
Christianity. Her theology of the divine feminine provides a liberat-
ing framework for those seeking new paths across the familiar territory.
Yet, her refusal to champion feminist values, particularly with regard to
sexual liberation, led to her being perceived as a reactionary and con-
servative figure. As will become apparent below, the association of the
feminine with the imperfect body and soul in the teachings of CUT-TSL
seems to retain some of the guilt and shame associated with patriarchy
and monotheism. However, such antibody beliefs are not solely reflective
of Western patriarchal ideas, but also of her interpretation of Hindu and
Buddhist religion. As pointed out by Puttick, ‘Asian religions have also
tended to view women as spiritually inferior and deny them power and
status’ (1999, p. 143). Prophet’s efforts to forge new attitudes toward
the feminine were circumscribed by both Eastern and Western patriarchy.
68 E. PROPHET
Sexuality and Gender in CUT-TSL

While breaking sharply with the Catholic position on gender and authority,
Prophet’s teachings retained an ascetic quality inherited from Theosophy,
New Thought, and the I AM but tempered by the realities of the sexual
revolution. Both Theosophy and New Thought promoted the millennialist
idea that as humans became more spiritually ‘evolved,’ sexual relations will
disappear along with the need for procreation, which they saw foreshad-
owed in Mark 12:25 (see Kraft 2013; Satter 1999, pp. 39–49).
Annie Rix Militz, a New Thought teacher who was a key influence
on the Ballards, ‘taught that desire, and especially sexual desire, must
be ‘stilled’ if spiritual growth was to occur. She argued that once people
conquered their sexual desires, they would be ‘regenerated’ and never
die’ (Satter 1999, p. 105). The Ballards promoted celibacy as a spirit-
ual ideal, and though they did not require celibacy, an elite club gave up
meat and sex, leading to the breakup of a number of marriages, and open
rebellion on the part of husbands, some of whom joined CUT-TSL, in
search of a more moderate stance.
Mark Prophet, retreating from the millennialist view, stated in 1965
that procreation was a good thing, needed for the continuance of the
group. He referred to the divorces caused by the I AM Activity’s stance
on sex, and while not exactly stating that sex for pleasure was acceptable,
he emphasized that people ‘young enough to be married’ or who ‘do
not particularly like to live alone’ should feel free to marry. Nevertheless,
he opposed ‘perversions’ like masturbation and homosexuality (M.L.
Prophet 1965, p. 17), which had been forbidden in the tradition since
Blavatsky.
After Mark’s death, as an increasing number of couples began to
marry within CUT-TSL, Elizabeth Prophet clarified her positions. Her
teaching substantially liberalized the Theosophical and I AM position on
sex, stating that intercourse between heterosexually married couples was
permissible not only for procreation but also to ‘balance the masculine
and feminine energies’ (E.C. Prophet 1993, p. 9), and she called contra-
ception a ‘private matter’ (1983a, p. 61).
She used a language of ‘energy,’ incorporating Hindu terms such as
kundalini and chakras to describe the flow of both sexual and spiritual
‘energies’ in the body. The raising of spiritual energy as kundalini was
seen as vital to ascension, and she justified her opposition to homosexu-
ality with the argument that it created an imbalance in kundalini forces.
She was able to use the metaphor of energy to justify sex within mar-
riage, but to argue against non-monogamous and extramarital sex—not
because they were immoral, but because they wasted energy:
Concerning the matter of sex and plural marriages and affairs outside of
marriage, you should understand that it is not because the masters say that
sex is evil, which they have never said. Sex is the sacred fire. What they are
saying is this, this is your sacred energy from your sacral center, it is your
mother light. To fulfil the initiations, the vows and the communion of the
church, you need this energy in all of your chakras rising, consecrated in
the crown, to life, to ministry, to service. (E.C. Prophet 1976)
She developed marriage guidelines for members of the church’s staff and
lesser restrictions for members of the church. During the mid-1970s, she
stated that married couples in pursuit of the ascension should not have
intercourse more than twice per week, and that church members should
avoid oral sex (E.C. Prophet 1993, p. 7).
Abortion was a controversial issue in Prophet’s teachings on sexu-
ality. Her liberalizing of the I AM and Theosophical positions did not
extend to abortion, which had not been a visible issue for earlier groups
but became important in Prophet’s dictations following the US Supreme
Court decision legalizing abortion in 1973. Prophet took a dramatic
public stance against abortion with dictations directly linking sexual per-
version and abortion with prophecy and judgment as well as the Fall:
Let mankind know, then, that their expulsion from Eden came about as
the result of their misuse of the sacred fire in oral sex, in cohabitation with
animal life, in homosexuality and all manner of experimentation with the
seed and the egg, including their creation of human and animal life in the
test tubes of the laboratories of the laggard generation….Therefore judg-
ment is come, and those that take the sword to kill the holy innocents
while they are yet in their mothers’ wombs must also be killed with the
sword. (Archangel Chamuel 1975)
Abortion was also later linked to the prophecy of destruction: ‘That

nation and that people who will tolerate the murder of the Almighty
in his own—that nation shall suffer cataclysm’ (cited in E.C. Prophet
1990).
In spite of the language of judgment, Prophet never advocated or
condoned violence against abortion providers and treated women who
70 E. PROPHET
confessed abortion rather leniently, assigning them prayer and penance.

However, she did encourage members of her church to work actively
with the ‘pro-life’ movement, which accepted their support grudgingly,
suspicious of the church’s new age theology.
Since Prophet’s 2000 retirement, church leaders have sought to pre-
sent a united and consistent teaching by Prophet on sexuality. However,
shifts did occur. For example, in 1983, Prophet refined and revised her
position on abortion, suggesting it might be permissible in the case of
rape or incest, and also seeming to provide another exception permit-
ting abortion—to prevent the birth of hybrid Nephilim-humans. She
stated that women who became pregnant through ‘devils in the flesh’
should not be ‘forced to bear their seed or submit to their genetic
engineering,’ especially when the children ‘may turn out to be godless
monsters’ (1983a, pp. 65, 111). She never elaborated on this innova-
tion, or defined how such ‘devils in the flesh’ could be identified, but
did approve at least one abortion on that justification. By 1990, she had
given subsequent dictations reaffirming that abortion was unaccepta-
ble in all cases except to save the life of the mother (Saint Germain and
Portia 1990; Mother Mary 1990).
Allegations of Sexual Impropriety

One of the first biographical facts mentioned in newspaper articles
about Prophet is her four marriages, with the implication that four
marriages are irregular in a woman who claimed divine revelation. In
1990, Prophet appeared on the talk show Donahue and took a question
from an audience member regarding her marriages in connection with
Christian doctrine. Referring to the four marriages, the woman said,
‘that’s not Biblical right there.’ Prophet answered, ‘It’s not Biblical? My
first husband demanded that I give up my faith if I wanted to be married
to him. My second husband died, my third husband left me for another
woman, and these are the circumstances of my life and my karma, I’m
very happily married today’ (1990). Her fourth marriage ended in 1997,
a year before she was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.
But the Donahue remark omitted what was by then a well-known alle-
gation, which had appeared in the press (Plummer 1985). Her third hus-
band, Randall King, who was seven years her junior, alleged that they
had a sexual relationship while he was her subordinate and a member of
the church’s staff prior to Mark Prophet’s death in February 1973. While
Elizabeth Prophet avoided any public comment on the affair, according
to King’s description, they did have sexual contact, which included

mutual masturbation but not intercourse, prior to Mark Prophet’s death.
Following his death, they initiated intercourse after a spiritual marriage
ceremony conducted by Prophet in her office and before their formal
marriage in October 1973 (R. King 1984).
In 1980, King was expelled from the church for having an affair
with a female staff member. In October 1992, Prophet confessed to the
author that King’s allegations were indeed true (Erin Prophet 2009).
The corroborating statements of both parties suggest that the extra-
marital affair should be taken seriously. It can be evaluated together with
claims by former members of Prophet’s staff that she had sexual relation-
ships with at least two additional men who were her subordinates (Anon
1998, 2016). Personal behavior is relevant to the discussion of Prophet’s
teachings on gender and sexuality as it provides insight into their applica-
tion in her own life as well as context for the evaluation of her legacy.
Ways to View Sexual Impropriety by a

Spiritual Leader
Most cases of sexual impropriety committed by religious leaders con-
cern male leaders and female followers. Assuming for the moment
that Prophet knowingly violated restrictions on sex that she and Mark
Prophet had been instrumental in creating, as well as initiated sexual
relationships with subordinate followers, the question arises as to how to
evaluate these acts.
While beyond the scope of this article, the possibility should at least
be raised that she was judged more harshly than would have been a man
in a similar situation. Nevertheless, she also exhibited a double standard
in that she expelled numerous group leaders from CUT-TSL for extra-
marital sexual involvement. And for devoted followers, her behavior does
bring into question her teachings on twin flames, which she had used to
legitimize her role—how could she pursue her destiny of reunion with
God as the ‘twin flame’ of Mark Prophet while involved with other men
outside marriage? Evaluating a spiritual leader’s teachings alongside per-
sonal behavior is difficult when the evaluation is being performed by the
leader’s daughter and one-time intellectual collaborator. Building upon
previous work on sexual ethics in religious leaders, I have identified four
primary ways to evaluate sexual involvement by a leader with followers,
though more may exist: (1) pathological, (2) hypernomian, (3) spiritual
necessity or purpose, and (4) mistake.
72 E. PROPHET
Pathological explanations usually attribute a personality disorder or

defect to the leader, such as pathological narcissism (see Sperry 2003).
A pathological orientation may have helped Prophet to justify what
appears as blatant hypocrisy and the exploitation of followers. One
possible justification in Prophet’s mind for these violations may have
been that she was sexually unfulfilled in her marriage to Mark Prophet
(which she confessed to the author obliquely). However, this does not
account for the incidents after his death, which involved subordinates,
and can be seen as opportunistic and exploitative. However, the argu-
ment has been made that a sexual relationship with a teacher can be
empowering for female followers, who thereby gain access to the levers
of power (Moore 2009). In two out of the three relationships discussed
here, Prophet elevated her sexual partner within the church hierarchy.
Prophet’s case provides an opportunity for consideration of the question
of whether male followers may be empowered through sexual access to
a female leader, but also provides data for further evaluation from the
perspective of pathology.
A second way to evaluate sexual rule-breaking in a spiritual leader
is as hypernomian, a term used by Elliott Wolfson to describe the law-
breaking or law-transcending teachings and behavior of Kabbalists and
orthodox Jewish rabbis (2006, pp. 186–285). The leader simply believes
that a different set of rules applies to him or her than to the rest of the
group, and that behavior which would be harmful or dangerous in rank-
and-file members is in fact spiritually necessary for the leader. The nar-
rative that Zen gurus are unpredictable and ‘crazy-wise’ was promoted
in the American counterculture, and while Elizabeth Prophet rejected it
in principle, she had absorbed some of the popular notions which influ-
enced the self-perceptions of numerous American gurus (see Feuerstein
1991). Prophet did at times view her own behavior from a third-person
standpoint (a kind of hypernomianism), stating on at least one occa-
sion, ‘I have to see how I respond in a given situation. God speaks to me
through my own actions.’
In an interview with her daughter Tatiana Prophet in 1994, she gave
insight into her third-person attitude toward her messengership:
Tatiana: Y ou’re a person who works out of deep motivations some-

where inside of you.
Elizabeth: Yeah, from deep within my being, I speak. I mean, I don’t
always know why I say what I say, but I give direction, I
give insight, I assess people. They’re amazed that it’s accu-

rate, that I know something about them that I couldn’t
possibly know.
Prophet often justified her actions by asserting that God was speaking
to her through them, a not uncommon self-concept among mystics.
A third way of evaluating her sexual rule-breaking would be to give
it an air of spiritual necessity or purpose, as Prophet occasionally did,
claiming that the marriage with King was a result of her own karma and
a way of working out spiritual discipline. She eventually decided that
she and Mark Prophet had karma to ‘balance’ with Randall King, dat-
ing from a past life, and that her marriage to him had been a way of
repaying the karmic debt. Also, given her attitude toward sexual energy
as spiritual, something to be conserved rather than wasted, but also ‘bal-
anced,’ she may have excused her sexual conduct as a need to ‘balance’
the overflow of spiritual energy in her body. Members and former mem-
bers of the church have expressed to the author an openness to explana-
tions incorporating spiritual necessity or purpose.
A fourth form of analysis would be for her to have seen her behavior
as a mistake, a human failing, and an error in judgment which could be
repented but not realistically confessed, given the climate of media scru-
tiny and ex-member criticism surrounding her at times fragile organiza-
tion. There is evidence that she also took this view at times. After the
shelter episode, she gave a lecture detailing mistakes and lessons from her
own past lives, which came out of prayers she had given asking to know
why things had gone wrong (E.C. Prophet 1992). She also developed
the notion, shared with the author, that though she had at one time
declared herself karma-free, she had made additional karma through her
errors, something she tried to ‘balance’ (Erin Prophet 2009).
It is difficult to know which of the four choices is the best fit for evalu-
ating her behavior. However, arguments can be made for any of the four,
based on existing evidence, or that all played some role. Her 1992 soul-
searching suggests that she tried to come to terms with her own human
nature in light of her spiritual teachings. How much this was prevented by
her dementia (diagnosed in 1997), and how much by her own embracing
of her status as guru and spiritual teacher, a prisoner of her own mythology,
will probably never be known, but a wealth of material is available to the
historian and researcher interested in shedding more light on these issues.
74 E. PROPHET
Conclusion
Although assuming power from a deceased husband, Prophet dem-
onstrated an energy and skill that broke new ground in the history of
female leadership of new religious movements. Fearless and controver-
sial, she did not hesitate to challenge injustice and patriarchy where she
saw them. In providing a sacramental religious experience parallel to that
of traditional religions but omitting elements problematic to many spir-
itual ‘seekers,’ such as original sin and suppression of women, she filled a
niche in the spiritual marketplace. Her innovations, particularly her new
age rosary and exegesis of gnostic texts, have been influential beyond her
organization. Prophet’s teaching on gender and sexuality is complex, and
the scope of this article prevents a fuller treatment. For example, the cita-
tions in this article represent only a small fraction of her teachings on the
divine feminine, as presented in hundreds of dictations from ‘lady mas-
ters,’ for a start. Her restrictive teachings on sexuality and evident hypoc-
risy suggest that the struggle to fulfill a demanding role while navigating
the perilous waters of theological innovation in an age of shifting sexual
mores proved beyond her capacity at times. Her sexual behavior can be
evaluated from the perspectives of pathology, hypernomianism, spiritual
necessity, and error, among others.
The multiple themes that emerge in this cursory evaluation demon-
strate the need for a more in-depth treatment of Prophet’s life and work,
for the benefit not only of her current and former followers, but also his-
torians of religion. Her prodigious output and powerful creativity as well
as her mystical and spiritual innovations deserve attention no less than
her personal failings.
References
Anon. 1998. Interview by Erin Prophet with former male staff member of
Church Universal and Triumphant. July 3.
Anon. 2011. ‘Mark and Elizabeth Prophet: A Remembrance.’ Unpublished.
Anon. 2016. Former male staff member of Church Universal and Triumphant,
e-mail to Erin Prophet. 8 September.
Angleton, D. 1998. Interview by Erin Prophet Regarding The Summit
Lighthouse. Transcript of audio recording by phone, 18 and 31 July.
Archangel Chamuel [through Prophet, E.C.]. 1975. Published in Pearls of

Wisdom, 18:39, 28 September. Accessed via CD-ROM. Livingston, MT:
Summit University Press. 1997.
Bach, R. 1970. Jonathan Livingston Seagull, 1st ed. New York: Macmillan.
Donahue. 1990. 21 June.
Enoch [through Prophet, E.C.]. 1981. Pearls of Wisdom 24:5, 1 February. 1997
CD-ROM. Livingston, MT: Summit University Press.
Feuerstein, G. 1991. Holy Madness: The Shock Tactics and Radical Teachings of
Crazy-Wise Adepts, Holy Fools, and Rascal Gurus. New York: Universal Sales
& Marketing.
Hammer, Olav. 2016. ‘Jewish Mysticism Meets the Age of Aquarius: Elizabeth
Clare Prophet on Kabbalah.’ In Theosophical Appropriations: Esotericism,
Kabbalah, and the Transformation of Traditions, eds. Julie Chajes and Boaz
Huss. Beer Sheva, Israel: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press.
Hammer, O., and M. Rothstein, ed. 2013. Handbook of the Theosophical Current.
Leiden: Brill.
Jantzen, G. 1998. Becoming Divine: Towards a Feminist Philosophy of Religion.
Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Jones, C.A. 1994. ‘Church Universal and Triumphant: A Demographic Profile.’
In Church Universal and Triumphant in Scholarly Perspective, eds. J.G. Melton
and J. Lewis, 39–53. Stanford, CA: Center for Academic Publication.
King, G.R. 1935. The Magic Presence. Chicago, IL: Saint Germain Press.
King, R. 1984. Interview by Robert Goldstein. Transcript of audio recording,
January.
Kraft, S.E. 2013. ‘Theosophy, Gender, and the “New Woman.”’ In Handbook
of the Theosophical Current, eds. O. Hammer and M. Rothstein, 357–374.
Leiden: Brill.
Layton, B. 1987. The Gnostic Scriptures. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
Melton, J.G., and J.R. Lewis, eds. 1994. Church Universal and Triumphant in
Scholarly Perspective. Stanford, CA: Center for Academic Publication.
Mother Mary [through Prophet, E.C.]. 1990. Pearls of Wisdom 33:41. 1997
CD–ROM. Livingston, MT: Summit University Press.
Moore, Rebecca. 2009. Understanding Jonestown and Peoples Temple. Westport,
CT: Praeger.
Palmer, S., and M. Abravanel. 2009. ‘Church Universal and Triumphant: Shelter,
Succession and Schism.’ In Sacred Schisms: How Religions Divide, eds. J. Lewis
and S. Lewis, 171–195. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Plummer, W. 1985. ‘Turmoil in a California Camelot.’ People, 1 July.
Prophet, E.C. 1976. Audio recording of ‘Opening Lecture of Leadership
Seminar,’ September 16. Published in 1988 as Church Initiation Instructions.
Livingston, MT: The Summit Lighthouse.
76 E. PROPHET
———. 1983a. ‘From My Heart.’ Heart: For the Coming Revolution in Higher
Consciousness. Spring.
———. 1983b. Forbidden Mysteries of Enoch. Livingston, MT: Summit
University Press.
———. 1990. ‘Why We Are Vulnerable to Returning Karma.’ In Pearls of
Wisdom 33:12, 1997 CD–ROM. Livingston, MT: Summit University Press.
———. 1992. ‘Karma, Reincarnation and You—Nine Cats and Nine Lives:
Lessons from Past Life Readings of Nine Public Figures.’ Atlanta, Georgia, 10
October.
———. 1993. Transcript of interview by Prophet, T. July 12. Red Bank, NJ.
Unpublished.
———. 2009. Preparation for My Mission, eds. by E. Prophet and T. Prophet.
Bloomington, IN: iUniverse.
Prophet, E.C., and A. Booth. 2005. Mary Magdalene and the Divine Feminine:
Jesus’ Lost Teachings on Woman. Gardiner, MT: Summit University Press.
Prophet, E. 2009. Prophet’s Daughter: My Life with Elizabeth Clare Prophet inside
the Church Universal and Triumphant. Guilford, CT: Lyons Press.
———. 2016. ‘Charisma and Authority in New Religious Movements.’ In The
Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements, vol. 2, 36–49. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
———. Forthcoming. “The Messenger” as Source of Both Stabilization and
Revisionism in Church Universal and Triumphant and Related Groups. In
Revisionism and Diversification in New Religious Movements, eds. E. Barker
and B. Singler. London: Taylor & Francis.
Prophet, M.L. 1965. Transcript of unpublished lecture, October 24.
Prophet, M.L., and E.C. Prophet. 1974. My Soul Doth Magnify the Lord!.
Colorado Springs, CO: The Summit Lighthouse.
———. 1986a. Climb the Highest Mountain, vol. 1, 2nd ed. Livingston, MT:
Summit University Press.
———. 1986b. The Lost Teachings of Jesus, vol. 2. Livingston, MT: Summit
University Press.
Puttick, E. 1997. Women in New Religions: In Search of Community, Sexuality
and Spiritual Power. London: Macmillan.
Puttick, E. 1999. ‘Women in New Religious Movements.’ In New Religious
Movements: Challenge and Response, eds. B. Wilson and J. Cresswell, 143–162.
London: Routledge.
Rudbøg, T. 2013. ‘The I AM Activity.’ In Handbook of the Theosophical Current,
eds. O. Hammer and M. Rothstein, 151–172. Leiden: Brill.
Saint Germain and Portia [through Prophet, E.C.]. 1990. Pearls of Wisdom
33:28. CD–ROM. Livingston, MT: Summit University Press 1997.
Satter, B. 1999. Each Mind a Kingdom: American Women, Sexual Purity, and
the New Thought Movement, 1875-1920. Los Angeles, CA: University of
California Press.
Sperry, L. 2003. Sex, Priestly Ministry, and the Church. Collegeville, MN:
Liturgical Press.
Whitsel, B.C. 2003. The Church Universal and Triumphant: Elizabeth Clare
Prophet’s Apocalyptic Movement. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
Wolfson, E. 2006. Venturing Beyond: Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism.
CHAPTER 5
‘Where There is True Love, Anything

is Effortless’: Mata Amritanandamayi:
Divine Mother and Religious Entrepreneur
Inga Bårdsen Tøllefsen
Introduction
This chapter traces the story of Mata Amritanandamayi Devi (also known
as Amma), one of the few female gurus to have fully emerged on the
global spiritual scene. Amma (b. 1953) founded her movement in 1981,
and still leads Embrace the World (ETW), a spiritual movement and
humanitarian NGO that advocates selfless love and compassion toward
all beings. Although the organization operates within a Hindu frame-
work and is oriented toward bhakti (devotionalism), the guru positions
her movement (and her own persona) as universally relevant. Her devo-
tees are asked to keep their ‘own’ religion, while simultaneously adopting
the practices and philosophy of the movement. Amma’s guru darshan
(both when she performs Devi bhava, goddess embodiment, and not) is
an immense show, where enormous fields or meeting halls (in both India
and abroad) are filled with rituals, colors, and devotional music. The
I. Bårdsen Tøllefsen (*) 
Department of Archaeology, History, Religious Studies and Theology,
UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway

80 I. Bårdsen Tøllefsen
public programs culminate in Amma personally embracing each of the

(often several thousand) attending devotees. In Amma’s organization,
guru darshan is a core aspect of bhakti yoga: “[t]o stand in the presence
of the guru and behold her, to see her and be seen by her, is of utmost
importance to devotees of Mata Amritanandamayi. Real-life darśan of
this guru, however, is not merely a visual experience but also a physical
one—to “have” darśan with the guru is to be enfolded in her embrace”
(Warrier 2014, p. 311). Through her darshan embraces, the guru tran-
scends boundaries of purity and pollution, and traditional inter-gendered
relations. This freedom, nonetheless, is tempered by her embodiment
of a femininity that is strongly desexualized, and oriented toward meta-
phorical motherhood. The ‘divine feminine’ is important in Embrace
the World. This shows in the focus on metaphorical motherhood, in the
large number of female devotees, and in Amma’s own Devi bhava. As
Amma is a self-initiated guru, and therefore (partially) outside a patriar-
chal gurukula structure, the ‘divine feminine’ in the forms of her bhavas
and her charisma are important legitimization strategies. This chapter
focuses on charisma and bhakti qualities as practical (and interconnected)
analytical lenses through which this female guru-leader-founder can be
understood. After a brief look at her history and hagiography, the chap-
ter presents Amma’s charisma as integral to the founding and upkeep of
her movement, and bhakti as the primary avenue of religious expression
and community building in her group (both on- and offline). Gender is
a useful analytical tool to understand how charisma and bhakti are legiti-
mized. As the powerful leader-founder of a global organization, Amma
has become sort of a ‘feminist icon.’ She has cultivated a leadership style
(and a value complex within her movement) that seems deliberately soft,
caring, and traditionally feminine. At the same time, her persona and
movement are sometimes controversial, and her success as a religious
entrepreneur seems to rely on a shrewd understanding of human psy-
chology, and a keen business sense. Embrace the World functions much
like any multinational company, with accomplished branding—and PR
efforts, and a strong online presence.
History and Hagiography
Mata Amritanandamayi—the Mother of Immortal Bliss—was born
in the small fishing village of Parayakadavu in Kerala, South India, in
1953. Named Sudhamani Idamannel, she was one of seven children of
5 ‘WHERE THERE IS TRUE LOVE, ANYTHING IS EFFORTLESS’: MATA … 81
a fisherman and a homemaker. Amma’s hagiography (a biography of a

saint, or an idealizing biography) makes for a story of humble beginnings
and later success. According to her movement’s mythology, Amma’s
spiritual career began early—already in her mother’s womb. Dayamani
(Amma’s mother), while carrying her daughter, began to experience
dreams and visions of gods and goddesses in the Indian pantheon. The
figure of Krishna seems to have been especially important. Amma’s
hagiographies recount that after having a dream where she gave birth
to Krishna, Dayamani the next day gave birth to a child who in com-
plexion and bodily symbols clearly was touched by, or similar to, the
deities. Amma is constantly portrayed as an incredibly gifted child, to
whom compassion for the poor and destitute, languages, and religious
devotion came effortlessly. Hagiographies also report superhuman traits,
such as healing powers (Raj 2005, p. 125). As a poor, low-caste woman
with little formal education, the young Sudhamani was expected to fulfill
the tropes of a ‘proper’ female: marry well, and take care of her fam-
ily. However, like many female leader-founders of new religious move-
ments,1 the nascent guru flaunted social expectations by hugging and
touching people, and by refusing to marry. On one of Amma’s web
sites it is noted, “In Amma’s community […] it was not permissible
for a 14-year-old girl to touch others, especially men. Amma explains,
“In India, women are expected to remain in the background. It is said
that ‘Even the walls should not hear them.” My family could not under-
stand my way of reaching out to people; they had no idea of the spiritual
principles.”2 The emerging guru’s ideas of universal love and her con-
troversial method of reaching devotees through tactile embraces became
possible because she presented herself as a divine, desexualized mother
figure. By taking the ‘Amma’ name,3 Sudhamani must have understood
that “[…] the identity–marking titles of female religious exemplars
explicitly gender their referent. These titles not only designate female
gender, but they also delineate a matrifocal identity that signifies mother-
hood as both a desexualized feminine identity and a culturally sanctioned
avenue of authority and respect for women” (Lucia 2014, p. 12). So by
the time she came of age, Sudhamani had already chosen a life of spir-
itual renunciation and celibacy. A common issue in Hindu hagiography is
that of overcoming difficulties and misfortune, and of battles for spiritual
and physical freedom. Sudhamani faced similar hardships, and transgress-
ing social norms and Hindu stridharma did come at a cost for the young
woman. Because of her devotionalism and spiritual ecstasies, her family
and neighbors thought the young Sudhamani was crazy and her spiritual
flights were construed as symptoms of mental illness or depression.4 Her
family made several efforts to have Sudhamani married, something the
young woman vehemently resisted—stating that she would kill the man
she was forced to marry.
Fortunately, as is also common in Hindu hagiographies of spiritual

women who wish to remain unmarried, divine intervention occurred; in
Ammachi’s case, an astrologer admonished her parents to abandon further
attempts to arrange for her marriage. Even the lives of Hindu saints are
sometimes at stake: It is a truism in Ammachi circles that one of her own
brothers tried to kill her in an effort to avoid the social embarrassment
occasioned by her decidedly abnormal behavior. (Raj 2005, p. 125)
Even though Amma took on the role of the celibate renunciate,5 she
must have been aware that she could simultaneously appeal to traditional
female roles by presenting herself as what Amanda Lucia (2014) calls an
ideotypical mother. “These ascetic women are not biological mothers;
rather, they present themselves as metaphorical mothers to their devotee
children. Amma, who has neither a husband nor biological children and
claims lifelong celibacy, is precisely such an ascetic mother” (ibid., p. 15).
The movement’s material also highlights this role. A story found on one
of the movement’s many web sites tells (in hagiographical and bhakti-
oriented language) of how Amma began her spiritual career, where both
her non-normative gendered behavior and her asexual motherhood sta-
tus are called into play:
Where Mata Amritanandamayi encountered people in need, she brought

them food and clothing from her own home. She was undeterred by the
scolding and punishment she received from her family for doing so. She
also began to spontaneously embrace people to comfort them in their sor-
row. Responding to her affectionate care, they began to call her Amma
(Mother). […] With this simple yet profound conviction — that each of us
has a responsibility to lend a helping hand to those less fortunate — Amma
moved forward with confidence in her life of service and compassionate
care for all beings, uniquely expressed by the motherly embrace she offers
to all who seek solace in her arms.6
Having established her metaphorical motherhood, Amma also needed a

direct connection to the divine. As is quite common within traditional
female expressions of bhakti devotionalism, the teenage Sudhamani was

reported to have developed a strong and intense longing for Krishna.
Not unlike other teenage girls, she would compose devotional songs,
or express her piety through weeping or spiritual ecstasy. However, this
‘immature’ devotionalism soon gave way to the divine manifestations
that now have been part of Amma’s charismatic leadership for about
40 years. Selva J. Raj (2005) reports that in the guru’s hagiographies,
her first bhavas (embodiments or moods) can be traced to September
1975. Upon hearing recitations from a Hindu devotional text (Shrimad
Bhagavatam), Sudhamani entered a state of spiritual ecstasy. In front of
a crowd, her mood and physical appearance are said to have changed,
transforming her into Krishna himself. In early 1976, however, a more
monumental shift occurred in Sudhamani’s spiritual career. Again reach-
ing a state of spiritual ecstasy and vision, she experienced a profound
oneness with the Divine Mother, in the form of Devi. In the hagi-
ographic literature, Amma is quoted as describing Devi very much like
the Hindu goddess Kali/ Durga, complete with dark coloring, jutting
canines and protruding tongue (Raj 2005). Despite being scared by the
vision, Amma soon realized this experience was similar to her Krishna
moods: that she and Devi were inseparably the same. For many years
Amma manifested both Krishna- and Devi bhava. Today, however, she
manifests only the mood of the Divine Mother in her public programs,
a mood that the guru currently identifies with the beautiful, benevolent,
motherly Lalita. From the mid-seventies onwards, Amma started attract-
ing more followers and her growing philanthropic service programs kept
expanding. At the turn of the decade, Amma’s personality and ‘spirit-
ual strength’ grew, parallel to the growth of her movement. She became
more confrontational toward her family, and as her spiritual fame began
to spread, devotees increasingly started reporting “…moving stories
about her miraculous powers that include clairvoyance, bilocation, levi-
tation, dramatic healing of various physical illnesses and psychological
disorders, answering devotees’ special needs, stimulating conception for
the barren, and absorbing devotees’ negative karma” (Raj 2005, p. 127).
After almost 40 years, stories like these are still rife in Amma’s move-
ment, and nowhere stronger than when the guru manifests Devi bhava.
In the divine manifestations, Amma found her ‘spiritual trademark,’
which also heralded the beginning of serious growth in her movement as
she began to attract more followers from the West. What previously was
a small stream soon became a river of followers from across the globe,
and the small village of Payarakadavu was transformed into Amritapuri

as it is today, an ashram the size of a small city. Female gurus and ascet-
ics, Amma among them, tend to advocate religious practices and theolo-
gies that are distinctively gendered. Their ascetic identities, constructed
around a maternal ideology, can be seen as an endeavor to create a sepa-
rate religious space for god-women, rather than operating fully within
a traditionally male-dominated guru system. In one sense, Amma and
her leadership style can be understood as feminist, in that she is charis-
matic, solely in charge of her organization, and as such is an “independ-
ent female religious authority without a connection to any established
sect (sampradāya) or tradition (parampara)” (Lucia 2014, p. 107). This
complex interplay between tradition and (feminist) individual author-
ity and charisma, traditional and modern gender roles, and idiosyncratic
plays on the divine feminine makes female gurus and their leadership
methodologies ever interesting to follow.
Charisma and Bhakti
Applying a Weberian-style definition of charisma, i.e., leadership quali-
ties based on access to an unseen source of authority (Wessinger 2014,
see also Prophet 2016 and Prophet in this volume), Amma’s leadership
is charismatic in origin. As shown above, with her early Krishna identi-
fication and later Devi Bhava, the guru has cemented her leadership by
direct identification with, and channeling of the divine, and with heal-
ing, miraculous powers the divine (through her) bestows on her devo-
tees. Charisma is, in Amma’s case, deeply connected to bhakti. Briefly
summarized, the concept can be understood as “intense personal devo-
tion and love to a chosen deity or guru, understood as a path to spir-
itual enlightenment” (Warrier 2014, p. 308). Or, in the words of Aditya
Behl, “as a devotional idiom, [bhakti] is strongly weighed towards pres-
ence: the presence of the Lord, the bearing witness to this presence on
the part of the devotee, the actualization of this presence in the com-
pany of good people, the saṅgat of believers” (2007, p. 319). Not only
is bhakti a core aspect of Indian religious culture. The concept also per-
meates the globalized ETW organization, which, functions as a person
cult with Amma as its heart. From the organization’s highly bhakti-
oriented Internet presence, in Amma’s hagiographies (from the young
woman in love with Krishna to the later mother goddess ‘avatar’) and
in the organization’s public darshan programs, there is (in the embraces
especially) clearly a personal relationship (and exchange) between deity

and follower. Here, bhakti functions in tandem with the guru’s personal
(and institutionalized) charisma. Like charisma, bhakti seems to function
as a form of ‘social contract.’ Through her darshan embrace, the guru is
understood to provide miraculous acts and healing, mediated through
her inspired relationship to the divine. She also offers unconditional love
and acceptance. Devotees reciprocate, with their love, time, and volun-
teer work.
“What I feel is indescribable. Amma is pure love”, a single, unemployed

secretary says, her cheeks aglow. “Amma has given me more love than my
parents ever gave me”, says a computer engineer. “In this world full of
crazy people, it feels good to run off, to be here with Amma and focus on
yourself”, is the comment from a nursing assistant who has brought her
daughter [to the public program]. Both of them have waited three and a
half hours to receive a hug.7
Judith Coney (1999) notes, regarding Sahaja Yoga’s guru Nirmala

Devi,8 the likeness of guru devotion to the more common idea of fall-
ing in love. Entering a guru movement, the devotee immerses herself in
a context where love toward the guru is strongly encouraged (on sev-
eral levels), and by loving the guru and showing devotion to the guru,
the relationship becomes reciprocal when the guru-leader-founder
intervenes on their behalf. Maya Warrier (2009, referring to Madsen
and Snow 1991) uses the concept of proxy control to explain this pro-
cedure, a “psychologically self-preserving process that goes to the very
heart of the charismatic bond” (2009, p. 107), wherein a person in dis-
tress binds themselves to an authority figure. This authority figure must
be powerful enough to act on their behalf, but at the same time close
to them, enough to be reachable, petitioned with, or (in Amma’s case)
touched. Devotees ‘yield control’ to the authority figure, in this case the
guru, by asking her to solve their everyday problems or heal their ali-
ments. In times of crisis, they seek her guidance and depend on the guru
to tell them the right thing to do. In addition to Amma exhibiting the
‘scholarly’ definition of charisma, devotees describe her charisma in a
more conventional, this-worldly sense. Devotees and media alike gener-
ally see Amma as a woman with a great personality, charm, and wisdom.
At a London program I attended in 2015, people in the audience with
whom I spoke frequently described the guru as cute or beautiful (which
may have to do with the Lalita aspects of her current bhavas), or they
mentioned her motherly, humanitarian appeal. In addition, the guru’s
hagiography seems to be an additional part of her charismatic charm,
and a part of the ease with which devotees bestow bhakti upon her. The
guru’s self-initiation and personal struggles add credence and legitima-
tion to her rather unconventional position. As Catherine Wessinger
states: “Charisma may be the means by which talented but marginalized
people—such as women […] gain authority, respect and often a fulfill-
ing religious career” (2014, p. 81). Inherent in the bhakti concept are
also important aspects of publics and performances (Novetzke 2007).
The most important official act in Amma’s organization is her public
programs, where devotees receive their darshan embrace, and Amma
performs her Devi bhavas. However, Lucia (2014) notes that in Amma’s
case, her charisma has been routinized through Devi bhava. The pro-
grams that earlier in the guru’s career were spur-of-the-moment and
ecstatic have become highly controlled, structured, aesthetic perfor-
mances. Drawing on Weber’s idea of routinization, bhavas ‘no longer
draw attention to Amma’s personal charisma in her revelation of herself
as a living goddess, but their routinized performances within prescribed
social structures garner credibility for the institutional authority of the
movement’ (Lucia 2014, p. 89). While Amma has not (yet) fully tran-
sitioned toward bureaucratic authority (which in most NRMs only hap-
pen after a guru-leader-founders passes away), it is interesting to take
note of this process happening within the organization. However, several
charismatic processes can happen simultaneously, and although her Devi
bhavas have become routinized, it does not mean that Amma’s personal
charisma is diminished—perhaps only changed. Devotees still allude to
her ‘x-factor’—attributing her with qualities bordering on the mystical,
or at least that which is hard to explain.
Leadership, Power, and Controversy

Amma may under-communicate the entrepreneurial- and career aspects
of her guru status, claiming for herself the opposite position, as in this
quote from her web site: “Nowadays everybody wants to become a
leader. No one wants to become a servant. In reality, the world is badly
in need of servants, not leaders. A real servant is a real leader.”9 This
seems to be an example of the soft power of her leadership style, and
setting an example for her devotees, many of whom spend considerable
time and money in service of their guru. The moral imperative of per-
forming karma yoga and seva (divine work) offers devotees a way to
distinguish themselves, and doing important tasks near the guru herself
(such as functioning as a darshan attendant or performing pujas) is a sure
sign that a devotee has risen in the internal hierarchy (Lucia 2014). Even
the lower-ranking jobs are performed as if the guru was watching. At
the 2015 London program I attended, I volunteered to help fold laun-
dry that had just come from the cleaners. The supervisor was an Eastern
European woman in her fifties, and she gave the volunteers strict instruc-
tions on folding procedures. “Do it just like this and this,” she said.
“That is how Amma wants it.” Indeed, the guru seems to reign supreme,
and even ‘mundane’ activities such as laundry and the serving of food
should be done just so, as if the guru is watching at all times.
In addition to regularly giving darshan and leading other spiritual
activities, Amma personally makes most important decisions for her
constantly growing movement, while she has trusted longtime devotees
running most of the guru’s charitable, medical, educational, and reli-
gious institutions10 on a day-to-day basis. “Both temporal and spiritual
powers are thus de jure consolidated in and around Amma […] within
the movement, religious leadership, power and authority are hierarchi-
cally structured such that the spiritual power resides solely in Ammachi,
whereas the temporal power flowing from her efforts is de facto distrib-
uted at Ammachi’s personal choice to her band of trusted disciples” (Raj
2005, p. 128). Thus, in addition to being a universal ‘goddess,’ guru,
and metaphorical mother, Amma functions as the CEO and de facto
administrative leader of the conglomerate of organizations that makes up
her movement. With another nod to Weber’s schema, it seems that in
building up a large and complex movement, Amma has supplemented
her charismatic leadership status not only with a form of rational-legal
authority, but also with a keen business sense coupled with an under-
standing of how to build a successful religious-humanitarian movement.
So far, the ETW organization has avoided much of the negative PR that
many other NRMs have faced (Tøllefsen 2017). The guru’s discourse
of universalized compassion, and the recognition of her organization’s
humanitarian work, has perhaps made the organization difficult to criti-
cize. Like in the Art of Living Foundation (led by Sri Ravi Shankar), web
sites and promotional material are saturated with success stories from
the organization’s many sub-institutions, and like Shankar, Amma has
managed to attain advisory NGO status in the UN for her organization.
‘Unlimited’ power and influence, however, can lead to decisions that

may be viewed as controversial.
I do not suggest a one-sided analysis of Amma’s organization as either
a good-hearted spiritual NGO, or a religious business predicated on
power, and personal and material gain. It can very well be both, which
in the ‘spiritual market economy’ makes perfect sense. Nobody outside
of the organization seems to know how much money goes in and out
of ETW at any given time, but with financial donations, a vast num-
ber of devotional objects and services for sale at public programs and at
the organization’s web sites,11 and the volunteer hours spent, it must
be a substantial sum. Thus, as in many global NRMs, a degree of non-
transparency regarding cash flow may be indicative that money actu-
ally matters. In November 2016, the Norwegian version of Le Monde
Diplomatique (LMD) printed a story about Amma, reporting discrep-
ancies in documentation of the organization’s income in India and the
USA, and an interest income reaching over 200 million rupees in India
alone. The article questions how money is (or is not) spent within
the organization; “A “humanitarian organization” filling up its bank
accounts? ETW’s public relations manager refuses to comment on these
statements”.12 There seems to be an expectation that NRMs like Amma’s
would have a certain anti-capitalist and countercultural ethos. However,
this notion may just be a remnant of how many spiritual movements,
and especially Indian guru movements, initially positioned themselves
against the mainstream culture in the 1960s and 1970s. Some new reli-
gions, such as Osho/ Rajneesh’s movement, and partially Maharishi
Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation, eventually became veritable
moneymaking machines. Despite being embroiled in controversy (and,
in Rajneeshpuram, fraud, embezzlement, and attempted murders, see
Carter 1990), the organizations themselves have survived, adapted, and
thrived (Tøllefsen 2014).
A tried and tested business model such as the modern, globalized
guru organization will often be successful—even when it is spirituality-
based. Moreover, power comes not only via personal charisma or money,
but also through associating with the right people. Like Shankar of Art
of Living, Amma has developed close ties to ambassadors, elected offi-
cials, EU commissars, and other religious leaders (such as Pope Francis),
who appear onstage with her at various functions.13 This proximity adds
legitimacy to Amma’s leadership, cementing her as a force to be reck-
oned with in humanitarian- and political circles. However, Amma has
been criticized for nurturing (too) close ties with the authorities in the
Indian political system. In 2016, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi
(BJP) gave a speech at her birthday celebration,14 and LMD reports that
in 2015 (along with the French ambassador) BJP15 leader Amit Shah
appeared onstage. This closeness to right-wing politicians is also noted
by Maya Warrier (2009), recounting a story from a public appearance in
1996, where the majority of politicians praising Amma’s personality and
compassion were BJP officials. Warrier notes that this pattern repeats on
many occasions, although she has also seen Amma appears with mem-
bers of parties on the opposite end of the political spectrum, such as
Congress. However, “[w]hat is significant for the Mata and her devotees,
it would appear, is not the political ideology of the politicians concerned,
but the authority they represent by virtue of their location in India’s
highest echelons of power” (Warrier 2009, p. 151, footnote 2).
Power seems to be a key factor in the work of all gurus, for better
and for worse. A number of accusations of violence and controversy16
have been leveled against (male) gurus, ranging from financial infidel-
ity to sexual exploitation17 and breaking of vows of celibacy.18 While
many male countercultural gurus have been controversial and scandal-
prone, and their movements’ attractiveness have ebbed and flowed in
mass-mediated culture, female gurus have hardly experienced similar
‘bad PR.’ Following female gurus seems to have become a safe spiritual
option, as she tends to portray her gendered role as the ascetic, renunci-
ate, divine mother opposed to the popular stereotype of the male guru
(as potentially dangerously charismatic and sexually loaded). In the
case of the female guru, power appears to be channeled through agape
(or non-sexual bhakti) rather than eros. In comparison with organiza-
tions led by male gurus, ETW has so far been relatively uncontrover-
sial, despite (semi) critical attention from LMD and other mainstream
media outlets.19 However, there is still potential for critique and contro-
versy, and Amma and ETW have their share of ex-devotees speaking out
against the guru and the movement—not only online, but also in book
form. A number of critical blogs and both public and restricted Yahoo!
groups (such as Ex-Amma,20 Ammachi: The Real Free Speech Zone,21
and Ammachi Free Speech Zone,22) are run by ex-devotees. The lat-
ter group is dedicated to “free and intelligent discussion […] without
taboos or restrictions on the points of view expressed.” One of the blogs,
‘Embezzling the world,’ citing misconducts such as violence, sexual liai-
sons, nonvegetarianism, and financial inconsistencies, states that those
who “established the site are former devotees of Amritanandamayi and

concerned members of the public, committed to bringing the Truth
about this woman to the world and exposing her!”23
In 2013 Gail Tredwell, a.k.a. Gayatri, published a book called ‘Holy
Hell; A Memoir of Faith, Devotion, and Pure Madness,’ chronicling her
20 years as Amma’s right-hand woman. The volume is interesting in that
it offers a retrospective understanding of how a young western woman
can ‘fall in love’ with a guru, yield control (or surrender, as the emic
term seems to be) to the guru, struggle with gender roles, power play,
and abuse, and eventually become disenchanted and leave the move-
ment. Tredwell and her book is frequently mentioned in blogs such as
‘Embezzling the World’,24 and she seems to have gained much respect
in ex-devotee circles for telling her story in public. In a story that in the
memoir appears to be dated to the early eighties, Tredwell writes that
Amma repeatedly leveraged her power, finding ways to punish her such
as silent treatments or verbal abuse, or physical disciplining such as slap-
ping, hitting, and kicking.25 Tredwell left Amma in 1999, and in a 2012
interview with the Rolling Stone magazine, she explains how difficult it
was for her to leave the movement that had been her life for so long.
However, despite her hardships, Tredwell still seems to harbor warm
feelings for her former guru. In the magazine article, she is reported to
ensure the journalist understands that
[…] she does not believe Amma is a fraud or a charlatan. She believes
Amma is “not a normal human being” and that her reserves of love and
compassion are genuine. “It’s just that I don’t believe she’s 100 percent
divine.” She pauses. “It’s hard. People really, really, really want to believe
that in Amma there’s this savior, this embodiment, and that belief is very
euphoric. But the problem is the common devotee gives all that credit to
Amma – that it’s Amma’s energy he’s feeling – when in truth it’s only indi-
rectly because of Amma. The energy and euphoria they’re feeling is -actu-
ally their own, all this love that people are pouring on Amma. They think
they’re feeling Amma’s love, but it’s actually just their own love, projected
back onto them.”26
This quote tells us something about power, bhakti, and charisma. It

highlights that although charisma appears an ascribed quality, it is as
much a social contract and a form of proxy control. Amma, like a mir-
ror, reflects devotees’ love and energy back to themselves, and through
‘signs’ from her, their own life decisions are legitimized and divinely
sanctioned. The guru holds power that is perceived as otherworldly,
divine and charismatic, but that at the same time, her power is distinctly
this-worldly, material, and embodied. I believe that the charismatic social
contract and the participatory aspects of bhakti are keys to understanding
how Amma has become such a powerful guru and how she manages to
keep her devotees engaged in the movement and in the cult around her
person. The end of this chapter will therefore briefly consider the func-
tions of embodied and disembodied bhakti in Amma’s case, and how the
framing of bhakti both off- and online is a business strategy that seems to
pay off in both financial and devotional terms.
Bhakti Practices Embodied and Disembodied—The

Darshan Embrace, the Amma Doll, and Online Worship
In contemporary guru movements like Amma’s, bhakti practices by
default are both social and performative. In addition to karma yoga and
sevā, common bhakti practices “such as pūjā, darśan, pilgrimage, or
keeping vows, these things all take place in the context of some audi-
ence; if no one else, one can be sure that at least God is always watching”
(Novetzke 2007, p. 256). In Amma’s case, the divine is both watching
and participating and so is a wide audience, both physically and through
(social) media. In the context of the darshan embrace, bhakti in Amma’s
case can be understood as a principle of embodiment. Karen Pechilis
(1999) highlights the embodied aspect, noting that bhakti compels
people to actively engage in worship. She proposes that the term ‘devo-
tion’ could be replaced by ‘participation,’ emphasizing bhakti’s call for
engagement in worship and the necessity of embodiment to fulfill that
obligation. Receiving the darshan embrace, Amma’s devotees participate
in bhakti and thus gain direct access to the embodied divine, mirror-
ing themselves in the guru. Even in her bhava the guru is approachable,
and despite the bustling activity during programs, attention is constantly
directed toward the guru. Performance and participation, in Pechilis’
sense, seem to be key to embodied bhakti experiences at Amma’s pro-
grams. However, the guru’s presence is actualized even in her absence:
Amma is always watching, even when she is not physically embracing her
devotees. This form of disembodied bhakti seems particular for this guru,
where Amma’s presence finds proxies through Amma dolls and online
participation.
The Amma dolls, little Amma-shaped rag dolls clothed in fab-
ric from saris the guru has worn, are an innovation particular to ETW.
Sold online and at public programs (a small 5 inch doll is priced to
45 dollars at the online Amma shop), these dolls are extremely popu-
lar among adults and children alike. They are hard to come by, but the
product description states “…we have seen over and over again that
the doll will always come to the devotee when the time is right…just
like Amma.”27 The dolls seem to function as a vicarious receptacle for
bhakti in the movement. Devotees will hug and care for the doll as if
was Amma herself, and the doll thus functions as a focal point for love
and devotion to the guru in lieu of her actual physical presence (Lucia
2014). Even less embodied, the Internet plays a significant role in ena-
bling and encouraging devotion (and in the recruitment and socializa-
tion of newcomers), and helps frame the Amma movement as modern
and global. As befits a truly global spiritual movement, Embrace the
World has a large online presence, and, according to Warrier (2014), this
allows devotees to practice bhakti in an interactive and participatory fash-
ion. Importantly, “it engenders a sense of virtual proximity to the guru
(even in the guru’s physical absence) in ways that help nourish the one-
to-one guru-devotee bond that is the cornerstone of the organization”
(ibid., 309). Building on Appadurai (1996, in Warrier 2014), web rela-
tions between guru, organization, devotees and newcomers can best be
described as a community of sentiment. Centered on the guru, the web
sites provide an online space where devotees can read, watch, shop, and
meet—much like in a physical space—under the benevolent auspices of
their beloved guru. Not only do the visitors learn about the guru, her
history and her philosophy, but they also learn how to experience her in a
‘correct’ way, through emotional and sentimental bhakti discourse. The
TV channels, YouTube channels, and the many dedicated web sites are
not the only avenues of virtual communication and online darshan and
satsang. Those interested can also keep up-to-date with daily Facebook
and Twitter updates (Amma Chimes).28 Recently, Amma’s organization
launched their own mobile application, called AMMA (Amrita Mobile
Media App), which “brings to you stories, articles, photos and vid-
eos around Amma and updates from Amrita social network. Get latest
news, updates, ringtones, seva opportunities and much more. This is a
mobile hub to know about all Activities of Amma—Sat Guru Sri Mata
Amritanandamayi Devi and Her worldwide mission - Embracing The

World.”29
The Internet is a global virtual arena, and thus a devotee can sit in
Norway, India, the USA, or Kenya, and do their darshan and bhakti
online. As words, images and videos of the guru are available at a
moment’s notice, online communication may intensify or positively rein-
force the guru–devotee relationship, which, in lieu of instant connection
and gratification, perhaps would suffer by physical and geographical dis-
tance. Behl’s “company of good people, the saṅgat of believers” (2007,
p. 319), are active participants in their online communities. What makes
the Internet unique is its enormous potential for interactivity and hyper-
textuality though a number of multimedia systems, and a reach that is
global and, at the same time, oddly intimate or individual. According to
Warrier (2014), in consonance with Dawson and Cowan (2004), bhakti
online and offline are not that different. Rather, she says, “bhakti in its
Internet-mediated form would seem to reinforce the dispositions and
cultural habitus of the offline devotional milieu in this organization. […]
The online darśan enabled by these web sites is not intended to devalue
the real-life, tangible, flesh-and-blood experience of being enfolded
in the guru’s arms; indeed, it is not even represented as an approxima-
tion of the real thing” (Warrier 2014, p. 319). The web sites clearly do
not paint online darshan or bhakti as less authentic; the online activi-
ties rather work as ‘sweet reminders.’ Until the devotees’ bhakti is re-
embodied in another physical embrace, online activities and objects like
the Amma Doll celebrate, sustain and support the experiences of real-
life darshan, and devotees’ feelings of love and intimacy in the guru’s
embrace.
Conclusion
In this chapter, I have attempted to highlight some aspects of this
guru and her organization. Amma’s history and hagiography portray
a woman standing up to familial and societal expectations for ‘proper’
female behavior, and marriage and housewifery were not an option for
the bhakti-minded young Sudhamani. The choice to become a renun-
ciate and religious expert/entrepreneur paid off, and Amma’s follow-
ing has grown to global proportions since her humble beginnings in
the early 1980s. She is now the spiritual and administrative leader of
a NRM and a humanitarian NGO. Amma has managed to cement her
authority through both (routinized) charisma and a shrewd business

sense, and increasingly through nascent bureaucratization of her organ-
ization. The guru can be understood as controversial, as the financial
matters of her organization are non-transparent, that she seems to have
close ties to Hindu nationalists‚ and that she has been accused of physi-
cal and verbal abuse by ex-devotees. Still, in comparison with the con-
troversies surrounding a number of male gurus, Amma’s official persona
is palatable.
Amma plays on gendered religious practices and theologies, and
on tropes of the female guru, the avatar, and the divine, desexualized
mother. Highlighting a femininity that is renunciate, mother-like, and
agape-oriented creates an interesting paradox that enables her to tran-
scend boundaries of gender and purity/pollution‚ and create hyper-
embodied personal relationships to her devotees. Amma’s darshan
embrace functions as her principal (nonverbal) spiritual discourse, and is
what devotees engage in, speak about, long for, and even recreate in a
virtual environment—through mobile apps, social media, and imagery.
Bhakti, both embodied and disembodied, is foundational in Amma’s
movement and is present on several levels. Disembodied online devotion
is important for socialization into the movement and its discourse, and
for communication between the guru and the organization, and between
devotees. However, online bhakti cannot approximate the ‘real thing’—
especially when the guru dons her Devi bhava (mood of the goddess)
and facilitates a physical and spiritual darshan, which for her devotees is
an embodied, non-mediated experience of the divine. Amma’s spiritual
organization is structured like most any multinational corporation, and
its business aspects are, as shown above, highly visible. Like any corpora-
tion or product, Amma must be believable to her devotees, as they are
discerning spiritual consumers (Warrier 2009). Thus, there is a need for a
strong brand when competing with the many other contemporary gurus.
Charisma, business savvy, successful public relations efforts, and a for-
ward thinking Internet presence seem to be key aspects to Amma’s brand
of spirituality. ‘Love and Serve,’ as an Amma web site headline states,
or ‘Love & Light,’ as the stage deco said during a 2015 UK meeting
I attended, is in a sense what this guru and her movement is all about.
Agape is here embodied in bhakti spirituality, and in the working ethos of
the guru movement as a humanitarian as well as a spiritual organization.
A combination of community and philanthropy offered by the guru’s
organization, canopied by the embrace of the desexualized, renunciate,
‘mildly’ feminist divine mother, seems to provide devotees with a way to

give and receive love in a context that is both modern and traditional,
embodied and disembodied.
Notes
1. See, for example, Wessinger 1993, or Vance 2015. On gender and the
more generalized role of women in NRMs, see for example Fedele and
Knibbe (eds.) 2013; Ashcraft-Eason, Martin, and Odalemo (eds.) 2010;
Anderson and Dickey Young (eds.) 2004; Trzebiatowska and Bruce
2012; Palmer 1994.
2. http://amma.org/about/how-she-began. Accessed 29 April 2016.
3. In opposition to honorific titles that are ‘indiscriminately’ masculinity-
connoted, such as swami, sri, or bhagvan (or, to some extent, guru), in
the Indian context almost any female of religious authority refers to her-
self (and is referred to) in maternal terms.
4. Understanding mental illness as being ‘touched by the divine,’ or as signs
of the afflicted being an avatar, was (and is) quite common in parts of
pan-Indian culture, see Obeyesekere 1981 or Kakar 1982. However, in
Sudhamani’s case, according to Raj (2005), the situation seems to have
been opposite.
5. Sexually active female gurus, according to Lucia (2014), do exist.
However, these cases are extremely rare; most female gurus are ascetics.
However, a few use marriage as a form of gurukula, as shown in the his-
torical examples in Pechilis’ introduction to The Graceful Guru (2004),
retaining (asexual) relationships with male partners and spouses, or hav-
ing traded a socially stigmatized role as a widow for that of the religious
adept.
6. http://amma.org/about/how-she-began. Accessed 20 March 2016.
7. Quote from the article ‘Amma og klemmeriket’ by Jean-Baptiste Malet, in
the Norwegian version of Le Monde Diplomatique, November 2016, p.
22. My translation.
8. Sri Mataji Nirmala Devi (1923–2011) was seen by her devotees to be the
incarnation of the Primordial Mother (Adi Shakti) (Wessinger 2014), not
unlike how Amma is regarded by her followers.
9. http://amma.org/teachings/ammas-own-words-service. Accessed 14
March 2017.
10. An overview of the organizations, and downloadable press kits and annual
reports can be found at http://www.embracingtheworld.org/. Accessed
16 March 2017.
11. http://www.theammashop.org/. Accessed 14 March 2017.
12. Quote from the article ‘Amma og klemmeriket’ by Jean-Baptiste Malet, in

the Norwegian version of Le Monde Diplomatique, November 2016, p.
25. My translation.
13. See ‘Amma og klemmeriket’ by Jean-Baptiste Malet, in the Norwegian
version of Le Monde Diplomatique, November 2016, p. 25, or http://
indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/hugging-mother-mata-
amritanandamayi-meets-pope-francis-in-vatican/. Accessed 16 March
2017.
14. Although, according to one of Amma’s own webpages, the Prime
Minister appeared only via satellite connection; https://www.amritapuri.
org/65540/av63.aum. Accessed 16 March 2017. A video and transcript
of the speech can be found on Modi’s own website, see http://www.
narendramodi.in/text-of-pm-s-speech-on-the-occasion-of-63rd-birth-
day-of-mata-amritanandamayi-532204. Accessed 16 March 2017, and
on an Amma website: https://www.amritapuri.org/on/narendramodi.
Accessed 16 March 2017.
15. BJP, Bharatiya Janata Party, is one of the two main political parties in
India, along with the Indian National Congress. The BJP is a right-wing
party, with ties to Hindu nationalist movements.
16. See, for example, Palmer 1994; Carter 1990; Healy 2010; Goldman
1999; Humes 2009; Rochford 1989; Tøllefsen 2014.
17. See, for example, Gallagher 2004 p. 119, where he mentions ISCKON,
Osho/Rajneesh, and Adidam.
18. See, for example, Healy 2010, p. 13 on Siddha Yoga.
19. See, for example, this 2012 Rolling Stone article, http://www.rolling-
stone.com/culture/news/the-hugging-saint-20120816. Accessed 16
March 2017.
20. https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/ex-amma/info. Accessed 30
March 2017.
21. https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Ammachi-Real-Free-Speech/
info. Accessed 30 March 2017.
22. https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/ammachi_free_speech_zone/
info. Accessed 30 March 2017.
23. http://embezzlingtheworld.blogspot.no/p/introduction.html. Accessed
30 March 2017.
24. Several of the most popular blogposts are about Tredwell and her book,
see http://embezzlingtheworld.blogspot.no/. Accessed 10 April 2017.
25. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7wIAkQ5FcdhQzRwSWhWZC1tO
XM/preview. Accessed 17 March 2017, page 115.
26. h t t p : / / w w w. r o l l i n g s t o n e . c o m / c u l t u r e / n e w s / t h e - h u g g i n g -
saint-20120816. Accessed 21 March 2017.
27. http://www.theammashop.org/home-gifts/dolls/dlb.html. Accessed 22
March 2017.
28. At the time of writing, Amma’s official Facebook page has nearly seven
million ‘likes,’ and her Twitter following is about 14.4 K
29. h ttps://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.amritapuri.
amma&hl=en. Accessed 30 September 2016.
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Mikael Rothstein, 80–96. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
CHAPTER 6
Mother and Father of Oneness: An

Intersectional Reading of the Shared
Leadership of Amma and Bhagavan
Elin Thorsén
Introduction
When they were introduced to each other, they immediately recognized
each other and knew that they were meant to be together and work
together. She had first seen him in a statue in a temple, and knew that soon
she would be meeting him. Her childhood dream was fulfilled. Their mar-
riage took place on June 9, 1976. (Windrider 2006: 141)
The passage above describes the first meeting between the woman and
man today known as Amma and Bhagavan,1 founders of the Oneness
movement. This chapter explores the relation between the two, with a
special focus on Amma, using intersectionality as an analytical point of
departure.
E. Thorsén (*) 
Department of Literature, History of Ideas and Religion, University of

100 E. Thorsén
Oneness originated in India in the 1990s and is today a transnational

new religious movement with adherents around the world. The move-
ment has become known as the proponent of a technique called deek-
sha, a sort of energy transmission said to bring the receiver into higher
states of consciousness, which is referred to as “awakening”. The teach-
ings of Oneness can be described as a hybridisation of Hindu and New
Age ideas together with a scientific vocabulary, with the aim of bringing
people, and in the end humanity, into a state of awakening and oneness.
Thus, the movement could be seen as fitting within the larger category
of Neo-Hinduism.
The one thing that makes Amma and Bhagavan unusual among
Indian gurus is that they work together spiritually as a married guru
couple. As is indicated in the quotation above, Amma and Bhagavan’s
relation as a married couple constitutes an essential component of their
shared leadership. Often they are referred to as a Mother and Father,
and as representing the feminine and masculine side of one and the same
consciousness. Although the two are said to have slightly different func-
tions as spiritual leaders—while Bhagavan is bestowing divine grace,
Amma fulfils the wishes of devotees—they are both considered to be
avatars, divine incarnations and thus as possessing full spiritual authority.
Devotees sometimes put their names together as “AmmaBhagavan” to
emphasise the unity between the two.
The shared spiritual authority of Amma and Bhagavan presents an
interesting aspect of female religious leadership since, as we shall see, in
Amma the two roles of being a traditional, ideal wife and mother as well
as a globally recognised religious specialist merge together. According to
Ursula King, women who are religious specialists are often found among
those who eschew established social roles, and it is rare to find women
who at the same time are religious officiants as well as wives and moth-
ers. King also points out that cross-cultural studies of religion and gen-
der have shown that women’s position in religion is often a reflection of
women’s status in society in the way that religious systems both reflect
and reinforce cultural values and patterns of social organisations (1995,
pp. 15–16). In Amma’s case, the two roles of being a wife and mother as
well as a leader for a transnational religious movement are intertwined.
Looking into the leadership of Amma and Bhagavan, an interesting
question is whether a shared leadership is equivalent to shared power,
and if a leadership such as theirs could have the potential to diminish the
impact of what is seen as typically masculine and feminine attributes—or
6 MOTHER AND FATHER OF ONENESS: AN INTERSECTIONAL … 101
if it rather strengthens traditional gender divisions. However, this

question turned out to be far more complex than I had initially thought
it to be. As Lina Gupta has pointed out, given the complexity of the
Hindu tradition, as well as the cross-cultural variations in women’s posi-
tions, it is “problematic to analyse the multidimensional nature of Hindu
women’s status from the usual standpoint of public/private, superior/
inferior dichotomy” (1997, p. 85).
Following this, I realised that in order to be able to study the shared
leadership of Amma and Bhagavan, I would have to start with explor-
ing the very complex constitution—the intersectionality—of Amma as an
Indian, wife, mother and transnational guru. The term intersectionality
is used here mainly as an analytical strategy, taking off from a general
definition that states: “[t]he term intersectionality references the criti-
cal insight that race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, ability, and
age operate not as unitary, mutually exclusive entities, but as reciprocally
constructing phenomena that in turn shape complex social inequali-
ties” (Collins 2015, p. 2). The focus here is mainly on the intersection
between the categories of gender, religion and ethnicity, although these
in the analysis to a large extent blur together, and are complemented
with other bi-categories.
Kwok Pui-Lan (2002) and Chandra Talpade Mohanty (2009) have
argued that Western feminist discourses, when discussing the status of
women in “third-world” countries, at times unintentionally have tended
to replicate colonial standpoints by reducing “third-world” women to a
voiceless homogenous group, in need of Western women to enlighten
them and save them from their male oppressors. What they are critical
towards is not cross-cultural feminist studies as such, but the usage of
normative assumptions rooted in a Western world view when analys-
ing, in this case, women, in non-Western cultures. Keeping this in mind,
rather than giving priority to pointing out injustices originating from
patriarchal structures, this chapter aims at presenting a portrait of Amma
that includes aspects where she is in a position of power.
The rest of this chapter will, after a brief introduction to Amma and
Bhagavan and the Oneness movement, put to the fore different aspects
of Amma as an Indian woman, a wife, mother and guru. This, in turn,
crystallises into four intersections: between power and suppression;
immanence and transcendence; ideals for householders (grihastha) and
renouncers (sanyas); and local religious traditions versus the need for
change in order to suit a global audience.
102 E. Thorsén
A Hagiographical Sketch of Amma and Bhagavan:

Marrying God Incarnate
The Oneness movement is a relatively unstudied movement,2 and so
most information available about the founding couple comes from hag-
iographies. I have come across two such narratives telling the story of
Amma and Bhagavan and the birth of the Oneness movement written by
American sympathisers (Ardagh 2009; Windrider 2006). The following
account is an extract of these two hagiographies:
The man today known by the name Bhagavan was born as Vijay
Kumar in 1949, in the village of Natham, Tamil Nadu. Already at an
early age, Bhagavan is said to have understood that he saw the world dif-
ferently than most others, and when asked what he wanted to do in his
life, he used to answer that he was God and that he would change the
world. When Bhagavan was in his twenties, his father proposed for his
son to marry, hoping that married life would take his mind off his spirit-
ual ideas. The bride chosen was Padmavati, today known as Amma, born
in 1954 in the village of Sangam. Amma too had been recognised as a
particularly spiritually inclined individual already as a child, and had since
an early age claimed that she was to marry God. They married in 1976
and later had a son, named Krishna. It is interesting to note that the
hagiographical story of the two stresses Bhagavan’s wish to change the
world as being his main concern, while for Amma the dream to marry
God seems to be the dominating topic. This can be read as conform-
ing to traditional Hindu notions of what should be the aim of respective
gender roles.
In 1984, the two of them started a school together in Andhra Pradesh
called Jeevashram, with the intention of providing an alternative, holistic
form of education for children. Soon after the opening, it is said, many
of the children started to have mystical experiences, and reached higher
states of consciousness. They are also said to have had inner visions of
the school director, and started to call him “Sri Bhagavan” (“God” or
“Lord”). Krishna, Amma and Bhagavan’s son became the originator of
the deeksha phenomenon during this time, when he started to place his
hands on the student’s heads and by that transferred divine energy.
The school became the starting point for what would later evolve into
the Oneness movement. Eventually, it was decided that the school would
close and a spiritual centre, Satyaloka, would be opened instead. Some
of the former students at the school stayed on and took up the lifestyles
of monks and nuns. They were called dasas (servants) or “guides” and
functioned as teachers at the new centre.
Initially, the participants at the courses held in Satyaloka were mostly
Indians, but eventually, a small number of Westerners started to hear
about the movement. In the following years, the teachings of Amma and
Bhagavan were spread to a number of countries and eventually Oneness
grew to be a transnational movement. In 2000, Amma, Bhagavan and
the dasas moved into a new area nearby the village of Varadaiahpalem
in Andhra Pradesh, which is today named Oneness University. Today,
Oneness University functions as the centre for the movement, and
courses are offered there for Indians as well as people from abroad
(Windrider 2006, pp. 139–148; Ardagh 2009, pp. 9–31). Exactly how
many adherents there are today and where they are located is difficult to
say. According to Ardagh, people from more than fifty different coun-
tries have been initiated to give deeksha (2009, p. 31).
As with many other gurus, Amma and Bhagavan are not just seen as
teachers by their devotees, but are worshipped as divine. They are per-
ceived as avatars or divine incarnations, with a mission to help the world.
Bhagavan used to be perceived by some devotees as Kalki, the tenth
incarnation of Vishnu, who according to tradition will appear at the end
of the present era, which is thought to be that of Kaliyuga. He was thus
for some years known as “Kalki Bhagavan”. These days this epithet is
rarely used since Bhagavan has explained that “although this is indeed
the time for his [Kalki’s] emergence, Kalki is not, in fact, one person but
a collective awakening” (Ardagh 2009, p. 213). Amma, on her part, has
been known to be an emanation of the Divine Mother (Ardagh 2009,
pp. 27–28). As gurus they are self-initiated—that is, they do not claim
their authority on the basis of being successors in a guru lineage (param-
para). Rather, their spiritual authority is based on their avatar-hood.
I visited a public darshan of Amma in the village of Nemam, south
India, in 2004, and later on in 2013 a darshan of Bhagavan at the
Oneness University in connection with doing fieldwork for the writ-
ing of an M.A. thesis on the movement. On both occasions, the intense
devotion among the (mostly Indian) participants during the darshan was
highly palpable. Amma and, at the latter occasion, Bhagavan were sitting
on throne-like chairs with their hands raised in a gesture of blessing, and
although no words were uttered by them, their mere presence made peo-
ple in the audience ecstatic. There seemed to be no question about the
perceived divinity of the two among the devotees.
104 E. Thorsén
Amma as a Woman and Guru: Power, Submission,

Tradition and Progression
One way of starting to explore the different roles of Amma from the per-
spective of being a woman as well as a guru is to consider her as some-
one having been born and raised within the Hindu tradition.3 Although
the Oneness movement defines itself as an explicitly non-religious move-
ment (not in the sense of being anti-religious but in claiming not to be
a religion, and welcoming people from all faiths), the movement and its
founders still bear considerable imprints from their culture of origin, that
is, the Hindu.
Shakti: Feminine Power in the Hindu Tradition

The Hindu tradition presents an intricate view of the feminine. Women
are dangerous and sinful, while they simultaneously are being looked
upon as goddesses. There are certain concepts within the Hindu tradition,
such as shakti, that can help us understand the specific relation between
the divine and the female. We will return to this point further on.
The devaluation of women in the Hindu tradition goes a long way
back. Wendy Doniger describes the attitude towards women found
in the ancient script The Laws of Manu, composed in the early centu-
ries of the present era (2013, p. 80), and long considered to be the
most authoritative textbook on Hindu religious law, as holding women
responsible for the downfall of men. Women should be watched care-
fully and not be given independence (2013, pp. 259–268). According to
Doniger, it is doubtful whether The Laws of Manu was actually ever used
in legal courts, but she concludes:
And yet, despite the absence of anything like an authoritative legal status,
The Laws of Manu deeply infiltrated Hindu culture, building into it many
negative assumptions about the lower castes and about women that sharply
restricted their freedom, regulated their behaviour and blocked their access
to social or political power. (2013, p. 268)
The work of Kathleen M. Erndl (1997) and Lina Gupta (1997) sug-
gest that one should not equalise the traditional restrictions put on
Hindu women with powerlessness only—rather, women have found
their own way of empowerment within their social restrictions.
Gupta writes: “contrary to the Western notion of ‘power’ as merely

physical or socio-political power, the Hindu concept of power is to
be primarily understood as an inner power essential to human evolu-
tion on a spiritual level” (1997, pp. 85–86). Gupta’s definition of
power should be read in the light of what is considered the goal of
human life in the Hindu tradition, that is moksha or liberation from
the chains of rebirth. Rather than accumulating wealth or fame, the
ultimate goal of life is to free oneself from all worldly attachments.
Thus, personal power is not necessarily synonymous with worldly power.
By fulfilling their social and spiritual duties and by that acting accord-
ing to their dharma—a practice referred to as stridharma or pativrata—
women are said to be able to attain great powers (Charpentier 2010,
p. 33; Gupta 1997, pp. 88–91; Morse 2012, p. 230). Nurturing their
obligations and conforming to their roles as wives and mothers can be
seen as a form of tapasya or spiritual austerity that generates an inner
heat (tapas), Gupta argues. This, in turn, creates shakti or power (1997,
pp. 88–92). Shakti is a crucial concept to understand here. Being a femi-
nine noun, it is used both to depict power in a general sense as well as
the feminine, creative aspect of the divine. Thus, power understood as
shakti is intimately connected with the female. Gupta continues by saying
that, “[a]s much as a Hindu woman may be considered to contribute to
her own oppression by conforming to the religious guidelines, however,
she actually regains and reaffirms her essential power by observing her
rites and rituals” (1997, p. 108).
Besides the personal aspect of pativrata and the powers associated
with it, this ideal has political dimensions as well. The ideal of the self-
sacrificing woman has been used as an important symbol in Hindutva
(Hindu nationalist) politics. The service of women should not be lim-
ited to their family, but should be extended to include the whole nation,
affectionately referred to as Bharat Mata or Mother India (McKean
1996, pp. 146–147; Sarkar 2012).
Motherhood, in a biological as well as spiritual sense, is perceived as
a highly valued, essential female quality. Indian psychoanalyst Sudhir
Kakar has argued that “the myths of Devi, the great goddess, constitute
a ‘hegemonic narrative’ of Hindu culture”, and that especially the mani-
fold expressions of Devi as mother are a dominant narrative in the inner
world of the Hindu son. He suggests that certain forms of the maternal-
feminine may be more central in Indian myths and psyche than in their
western counterparts (2010, pp. 74–78). We can see an example of the
106 E. Thorsén
emphasis put on motherhood in the fact that most female gurus usually
have the word “Ma” or “Amma” (Mother) attached to their titles.
In an interview where the American spiritual teacher Arjuna Ardagh
talks to Amma, we find a good example of the emphasis Amma puts on
motherhood rather than economic or political power as the primary mis-
sion for women:
Arjuna: Amma, all over the world, women today are emerging as leaders
and they are getting a level of respect and are being listened to in a way
that has not happened before. Women are emerging as political leaders,
religious leaders, in all kinds of ways. What is your message to women?
There are more than three billion women in the world. What is your mes-
sage to these three billion women?
Amma: Women in the world must become educated in their childhood.

Even as students women must become knowledgeable about conception,
about how important the child’s time in the womb is and what happens
when the baby is born and also about raising children. It is important that
they receive knowledge about all this. They must learn a lot through per-
sonal experience. If they learn this, the world would be full of happy people.
It is possible to create a new society. Women have to prepare for their role.4
While Ardagh brings up the fact that women are emerging as politi-
cal and religious leaders, Amma, rather than continuing on his line of
thought, mentions education about motherhood as the most urgent task
for women, reflecting the view on mothers as being key-figures in society.
Female Gurus
In recent times, women have got a stronger public visibility within the
religious sphere in India through the rise of a number of prominent
female gurus and ascetics. Hiltrud Rüstau notes that “[t]hough the
number of female ascetics is still much smaller than that of males, there is
no scarcity of samnyasinis [female renouncers] in today’s India”, leading
her to the conclusion that some changes have taken place within Hindu
society in the last century (2003, p. 144).
According to Karen Pechilis, female gurus of today participate in a
very established category of Hindu religious leaders, while simultane-
ously their leadership stands in contrast to the very same category. As
gurus, they are a continuation of a religious tradition, often characterised
by asceticism, and as female gurus, they challenge the norm of woman-

hood promoted by Hindu orthodoxy, which is marriage and bearing
children (2004, pp. 3–7).
Given that female gurus often self-consciously associate themselves
with received tradition they also partake in the tradition of being seen
as an embodiment of the divine. A guru should ideally have transcended
the boundaries of a separate individuality, and is often viewed by dev-
otees as a representation of Ultimate Reality. This, Pechilis argues, has
implications for (Western) feminist interpretations of female gurus.
When a guru is viewed more as a manifestation of the Ultimate Reality
than a woman, and the goal of spiritual practice is to abandon dualistic
thought, feminist analyses rooted in a Western world view are difficult to
apply, since non-dualistic Hindu teachings reject gender considerations.
Pechilis remarks “the focus of the teachings of Hindu female gurus is not
specifically expressed as ‘empowering women’, although many women
devotees participating in their spiritual paths do experience them as
empowerment” (2004, pp. 9–10).
It is in the light of this discussion that we must start to understand
the role and status of Amma. From an intersectional perspective, female
gurus are interesting in the sense that their power and authority as
gurus stands in contrast with their status as women. Women are sup-
posed to be submissive to men, an ideal we find encapsulated in the term
pativrata. On the other hand, a woman who follows the prescribed rules
of pativrata is thought to, through the hardships of her practice, be able
to gather a considerable amount of power. We also find the concept of
shakti or power imagined to be a feminine force. These lines of thought
stand in stark contrast with modern (Western) ideas of the equality of
men and women, and thus present a challenge to Western ways of per-
ceiving female empowerment.
The Shared Leadership of Amma and Bhagavan: Immanent,

Transcendent and Integral Aspects of the Founders
Purusa and Prakriti: Male and Female
as Ontological Principles
An important aspect of Amma and Bhagavan’s guru-hood is the
fact that they are perceived as twin emanations of the same avataric
108 E. Thorsén
consciousness. This is one of the points that makes them stand out
among contemporary gurus. As an ontological principle, however, the
notion of Ultimate Reality as consisting of a male–female complementa-
rity is far from new—on the contrary, it is a fundamental principle in the
Hindu tradition.
In the ancient Indian philosophical system of Samkhya, reality is
explained as consisting of purusa and prakriti, male and female prin-
ciples that together constitute the world. Purusa (male) is the eternal,
uncaused spirit, while prakriti (female) is the symbol of the cosmic, pri-
mordial substance that evolves into matter.5
The pantheon of Hindu deities is full of divine couples. One of the
more clear examples of the interdependence of a male and female deity
we find within the Shakta and Shaiva religious traditions. Ultimate
Reality according to these traditions is said to consist of Shiva and Shakti,
where the male god Shiva represents consciousness and the female Shakti
is the movement that creates the world, respectively. The two are insepa-
rable and coalesce in one being—the potentiality of the whole object-
world exists as the Shakti (force or agency) of Shiva (consciousness)6. A
common image of Shiva is that of Ardhanarishvara, where one-half of
the deity is depicted as female, while the other half is male, thus empha-
sising the integral unity of the two.
With the possible exception of the androgynous figure of
Ardhanarishvara, most Hindu depictions of masculine and feminine
divinity follow, to a greater or lesser extent, the pattern of presenting the
male side as consciousness and the female side as primordial matter and
force. But, one should also note that the two are often looked upon as
inseparable from one another.
Claims to avatar-hood among gurus are also not a wholly unusual
thing. Sathya Sai Baba is probably one of the most famous Indian con-
temporary gurus who has been widely recognised as an avatar by his
devotees. Among other things, he proclaimed himself to be a reincarna-
tion of the Saint Shirdi Sai Baba, and later to be an incarnation of both
Shiva and Shakti (Srinivas 2010, pp. 58–66). Another contemporary
example of an avatar-guru is that of Mata Amritanandamayi, who is seen
as an incarnation of Devi by her followers (Warrier 2005).
In many ways, Amma and Bhagavan share similarities with both
Sai Baba and Mata Amritanandamayi in their claims to avatar-hood.
What distinguishes them is that, while both Sathya Sai Baba and Mata
Amritanandamayi are believed to be celibate and lead austere, ascetic
lives (Warrier 2005, pp. 36–37), Amma and Bhagavan are a married cou-
ple with a biological son. Their avataric marriage might be seen as giv-
ing an air of sacredness and legitimacy to the householder’s way of life,
and in that way, they become mediators between the mundane, worldly
life and the transcendental realm of avatars.
In an interview, Amma describes how the divine expresses itself
through her and Bhagavan in the following way:
Amma and Bhagavan are one. They are the Mother and Father aspects of
the divine. Bhagavan bestows grace to the people as the Father, Amma as
a Mother fulfils their desires, needs, health problems, in fact everything.
Bhagavan constantly helps people with their spiritual growth and leads
people to Mukthi (Unity). Bhagavan is focused on that while Amma fulfils
the wishes of people.7
If we here return to thinking in terms of intersectionality, this view of

Amma and Bhagavan presents us with yet another aspect of intersect-
ing roles. In their immanent forms, Amma and Bhagavan are the mother
and father with different personalities and functions for their devotees.
Simultaneously, in their transcendental form they are, as the above quote
states, “one”.
The symbolism of Amma and Bhagavan as the female/motherly and
male/fatherly is important on several different levels. It is manifested
not only as a theological principle, but also as a practical component of
the Oneness teachings. Bhagavan has stated that the relation with one’s
mother and father is the foundation for every other relationship we have
later in life, and thus something given great importance. The relation
with one’s parents is therefore given particular importance in Oneness
courses (Ardagh 2009, p. 104).
In Kiara Windrider’s account of his experiences with Oneness, we are
given an example of this. He begins his narrative of a darshan of Amma
in the following way: “Amma and Bhagavan are a single avataric con-
sciousness in two bodies. I had asked our guide [teacher at the Oneness
courses] once why I didn’t feel the same connection with Amma as I did
with Bhagavan. He said that I probably needed to resolve something in
relationship with my own mother” (Windrider 2006, p. 63). Windrider
continues to describe how, after having darshan, he was put in a state of
bliss, experiencing Amma as Jagat Mata or the Universal Mother and
Bhagavan as Jagat Pita or the Universal Father, and how he felt himself
110 E. Thorsén
as being merged with and identical with both of them. He states: “I had
been feeling somewhat split about my loyalties between them. Now, I
could see that Amma was inside Bhagavan, who was inside Amma, like
the yin-yang symbol. They were not separate” (2006, pp. 67–69).
Anette Carlström, a well-known Swedish Oneness profile describes
her experience as that Amma and Bhagavan, together with herself, are
two aspects of the same being (Carlström 2006, p. 69). Intersectionality
is not necessarily only applicable to social roles, but can also be viewed in
terms of one’s own consciousness. In this sense, the descriptions given
by Windrider and Carlström about their identification with Amma and
Bhagavan could be interpreted as acknowledging an inherent masculine
and feminine side within the individual. If this is really the intention with
their statements remains unclear. Another possible interpretation would
be that they rather reflect a more general Advaita Vedantic (monistic)
view of the divine as inherent in all beings, and by that making the dis-
tinctiveness of Amma and Bhagavan as being a male–female couple of
secondary importance.
One of the characteristics of Oneness that I have discussed elsewhere
(Thorsén 2016) is that the movement has an open attitude towards
adapting its teachings to different cultural contexts. This can probably be
extended to include the relation with the founders as well. While some
adherents choose to view Amma and Bhagavan as their personal image of
the divine, the benefits of partaking in Oneness courses is not presented
as being dependent on whether or not one holds the couple to be divine
incarnations. The relation with the divine, it is said, is a matter of per-
sonal choice.
A telling example of the open attitude towards the perception of the
divine or higher reality came up during one of my first interviews with
a young woman who at the time we met was an active member of the
Oneness movement. When we talked about her perception of Amma and
Bhagavan, she explained:
I was sitting one evening and just felt that I got a very strong connec-
tion with my mother. It wasn’t about my Earth mother, a person, but
like a force that was everywhere, and that’s my mother. Sometimes I call
it mother, this energy. Sometimes I call it God, and sometimes Amma
Bhagavan. Other times I just call it my home (interview with a Swedish
deeksha giver, my translation).
Adopting Amma and Bhagavan as one’s personal image of God

or ultimate reality (antaryamin) exists as an option for Oneness
adherents, but it is not required in order to partake in the move-
ment’s teachings. And sometimes, as in the quote above, Amma and
Bhagavan might be invoked as the preferred image of the divine at
certain times only.
Married Guru Couples

In her monograph Indian Female Gurus in Contemporary Hinduism,
Marie-Thérèse Charpentier mentions Amma and Bhagavan as an exam-
ple of one of the few married couples dedicating their lives together to
the service of people as gurus that she came across during her study.
Charpentier mentions three other contemporary, married guru couples
along with Amma and Bhagavan.8 She writes about them in a part of her
work where she discusses the notions of Devi and Mahadevi—the for-
mer being the goddess represented together with her husband, and the
latter being the Goddess represented in her own right without a con-
sort. When the goddess is represented alone, the feminine force of shakti
is believed to be particularly strong, and Charpentier asks the question
whether there is a parallel pattern to be found among female gurus who
either stand beside their husband guru or who are working on their own
(2010, p. 226). She writes that, while focusing on married guru couples
are beyond the scope of her study, a rapid survey of married guru cou-
ples reveals that
far more information is usually provided about the male partner in a “holy
couple”, than the female one. This is reflected in a presentation of male
gurus as central figures in asram activities while female gurus tend to
occupy side roles in the common mission. The presentation of these holy
couples is also highly stereotyped, following traditional notions of “femi-
ninity” and “masculinity”’ (2010, pp. 227–228).
She adds that while the male’s achievements as authors, orators and pub-
lic spiritual guides are emphasised, the women tend to be praised for
their motherly qualities. This according to Charpentier suggests that
female gurus working alone as spiritual leaders appear to represent more
power than those accompanied by their husband guru.
112 E. Thorsén
In the case of Amma and Bhagavan, my own observations are partly

consistent with those of Charpentier. Bhagavan is more often referred
to than Amma in texts explaining the visions and work of Oneness,
and he has altogether been more of a front figure for the movement.
Especially in the relation with non-Indian adherents, Amma has kept
herself more in the background, partly due to the fact that she does not
speak English. On the other hand, I believe it would be misleading to
assume that Amma has a side role only—she does take active part in the
tasks of guru-hood. Although her work seems to be mostly focused on
Indian devotees, it is not limited to that. Recently, a translation of a book
with Amma’s conversations with devotees (Samtal med Sri Padmavathi
Amma, Oneness 2015, originally published in English in 2007) was
published in Swedish, to take one example. There is further one par-
ticular statement made by Bhagavan that downplays the idea that Amma
would be less important than him in their common work. In a skype dar-
shan with Swedish devotees in December 2014, Bhagavan replies to a
question about the future vision and work within Oneness:
As far as Amma and Bhagavan are concerned, in India we have two terms:
antharmukham or bhagirmukham. Bhagirmukham means to work exter-
nally, antharmukham means to work internally. In Oneness, Bhagavan
works externally, bhagirmukham. Amma works internally, antharmukham.
Now, after 2014, the both of us will work antharmukham. We will work
within ourselves (transcribed skype darshan of Bhagavan 6 December
2014, my translation from the Swedish transcription).
Rather than elevating his own position, Bhagavan is saying that he will
start to work in the same way as his spouse, that is, internally.
In order to understand Amma’s position as a leader in relation to
Bhagavan, I find it crucial to take into consideration the previously dis-
cussed concept of shakti and its meaning as an inner power essential to
human evolution on a spiritual level. Shakti can be increased by tapas,
an inner heat created by spiritual austerities. Thus, the one who is most
austere and self-sacrificing can in this interpretation be the most spiritu-
ally powerful. There is also the central position of motherhood in the
Hindu tradition, which can function as a source of authority and respect
for Amma as well as other female gurus.
According to Karen Pechilis (2012), emphasising personal experience
and the possibility of gaining spiritual insight through these experiences
is a prominent theme among female gurus. Reflecting on this, since per-

sonal experience plays a vital role within the Oneness movement, one
could argue that Oneness represents a more “feminine” type of spiritu-
ality, providing Amma as a symbol for the female and motherly, and by
that as connected to the personal, bodily aspects of spirituality, with a
high status.
Lastly, when discussing the role of Amma, one needs to consider
that, for her devotees, she has an immanent as well as a transcendent
identity. In her immanent form, she might be seen as working in the
shadow of her husband, but in her transcendent form, she is divinity
incarnated, and thus in a way beyond traditional gender restrictions.
As Pechilis (2004) states, this double nature of being subject to social
norms and simultaneously seen to be above and beyond them makes
it difficult to apply feminist analyses rooted in a Western world view
on female gurus. The fact that Amma and Bhagavan are perceived
to be two sides of the same consciousness, “one” with one another,
further downplays hierarchical evaluations of their relation, at least
theologically.
Gender and the Self in Oneness: Family Life

and Renunciation, the Local and the Global
Given the traditional gender roles rooted in an Indian/Hindu cultural

setting that Amma and Bhagavan represent, it is interesting to note
that in a country such as Sweden—usually considered as fairly egalitar-
ian and progressive—a vast majority of Oneness adherents are women.
According to a representative from the Swedish Oneness office, in
Sweden, and probably in many other parts of the world as well, a large
majority of the movement’s adherents are women (interview with repre-
sentative from the Swedish Oneness office), and women hold important
positions as Oneness trainers, leading and coordinating Oneness courses
around the world.9
The organisation of dasas or guides (the men and women who are
functioning as head teachers and organisers) reflects an egalitarian view,
with both women and men being in leading positions. The dasas live as
monks and nuns, and there is no ranking between them based on gen-
der, except that men and women have separate living quarters. The vari-
ous fields of responsibilities distributed among them are based upon their
114 E. Thorsén
individual suitability and level of consciousness rather than upon their

gender. The guides have different parts of the world as their field of
responsibility, and Sweden, for instance, has always had a female guide
in charge. There are both male and female head teachers. In one area,
the dasas have even trespassed traditional Indian gender conventions—
female dasas are performing homas, fire sacrifices based on Vedic rituals,
something which has traditionally only been allowed for men. This has
apparently aroused some controversies in India (interview with repre-
sentative of the Swedish Oneness office).
Susan Jean Palmer in her study of women’s roles in new religions
(1994) develops a typology that highlights three contrasting concepts
of woman/man and body/soul relationships in order to classify the
different ways of looking at female–male relations and their spiritual
implications within new religious movements. She uses the terms “Sex
Complementarity”, “Sex Polarity” and “Sex Unity”, adding that these
types are not always found in their pure form—mixtures of two types can
be found, or one type can transform into another. Palmer describes sex
polarity groups as viewing the sexes as spiritually distinct and inessential
to the other’s salvation, and sex unity groups as seeing the body and its
gender as a superficial layer obscuring the sexless, immortal spirit. Sex
complementarity groups “regards each sex as endowed with different
spiritual qualities and emphasizes the importance of marriage for unit-
ing two halves of the same to form one, complete androgynous being”
(Palmer 1994, pp. 9–11).
Applying this to the Oneness movement, it is interesting to note
that while the relation between the leaders Amma and Bhagavan seem
to fit well into the sex complementarity typology, stressing the relation
between the two as a complete spiritual unit, a male and female part
complementing one another, among the adherents this kind of ideal
does not seem to be very prominent. Although living a domestic family
life is in no way discouraged, ideas about particular “male” or “female”
features are not something that seems to be emphasised. Rather, spir-
itual progress is seen as an individual matter regardless of gender. As
Bhagavan says: “Oneness principally works on individuals. As we see it,
you are the world. And what happens inside of you is what creates the
world. So, if we can change you, then we change the world. It is simply
about individual transformation” (transcribed skype darshan of Bhagavan
6 December 2014). A harmonious relation with one’s family is seen as
essential for making spiritual progress. Healing old wounds connected
with parents or a partner is an important step to awakening, but in

the end, it is an individual matter. Thus, for the movement in general,
Palmer’s sex unity typology seems to fit more accurately.
Taken together, one finds both sex unity and sex complementarity
ideas within Oneness. And, as Susan Palmer writes, it is not unusual
to find mixes of two or more of the types. In a way, these two lines of
thought can be said to represent the intersection between the renouncer
(sanyasa) and householder (grihastha) ideals found within Hindu society.
The idea of gender through the eye of the renouncer is to realise that,
ultimately, the soul is sexless and beyond social conventions, making spir-
itual progress the most important aspect of life. Simultaneously, emphasis
on cultural values expressed through the gendered roles of Amma and
Bhagavan as a married couple prevails, thus making room for the ideals
found in the householder lifestyle, where submitting to social rules is of
importance.
Catherine Wessinger provides an explanation of what could be a factor
that bridges the apparent gap between on the one hand tradition-con-
forming gender roles, and on the other hand opportunities for women to
actively participate and hold authoritative positions within religious con-
texts. Wessinger writes:
When an imported Asian conception of God, which de-emphasizes the

masculine in some manner, meets with the growing Western expecta-
tion of the equality of women, opportunities to become religious spe-
cialists begin to open for women, and the Hindu and Buddhist attitudes
that blame women for the human condition begin to fall away. (Wessinger
1993, p. 125)
An androgynous, neuter or female conception of the divine as found

within Hinduism and Buddhism is in itself not enough to promote
equality for women, but if there is simultaneously an expectation for
equality, Hindu and Buddhist teachings can prove attractive to women
and strengthen them in their claims for religious authority (Wessinger
1993, pp. 139–140).
A more egalitarian view on gender roles can probably also be seen as
part of a more general tendency among Neo-Hindu guru m ovements
with global aspirations to universalise their message as far as possible
in order to suit a transnational audience and create a sort of spiritual
cosmopolitanism (Aravamudan 2006; Lucia 2014; Srinivas 2010).
116 E. Thorsén
Amma and Bhagavan cater for an Indian as well as an international,

non-Indian audience, and thus, they need to both preserve as well

as transcend traditional, culture-bound notions of gender and the
appropriate behaviour connected with them.
Conclusion
In this chapter, I have, through using intersectionality as a point of
departure, tried to highlight how Amma’s different roles as an Indian
woman, wife, mother and transnational guru interact, and how these
roles together constitute a complex identity that forms her leadership.
Amma, sharing the spiritual leadership of the Oneness movement with
her husband Bhagavan, is seen as a guru beyond a personal, human iden-
tity, while simultaneously she is a married woman subject to the customs
of religious and social tradition. This sort of arrangement of a shared
leadership is quite rare and urges us to ask new questions about gender,
power and leadership.
There are certain concepts within the Hindu tradition such as shakti,
and the importance put on marriage and motherhood, that provide an
alternative definition of female power to the definitions common in
Western cultures advocating the autonomy and freedom of the individual
as the highest good. Keeping this in mind, one can interpret Amma’s
position as a wife and caring mother not only as a sign of submissiveness,
but as taking on a role that provides her with power and authority by
acting according to the ideals of pativrata.
Amma in her relation to Bhagavan very much conforms to the image
of the ideal married woman. Their relation is described in terms of being
a mother and father to their devotees, and they play out their differ-
ent roles accordingly. Intersecting with the more human sides of lead-
ership, the fact that Amma and Bhagavan are perceived as avatars and
as two sides of the same consciousness brings yet another dimension.
Being looked upon as divine incarnations, they are thought to have tran-
scended the boundaries that come with experiencing oneself as a separate
individual, and thus as being beyond all forms of social hierarchy.
The idea that Amma and Bhagavan complement each other as a mar-
ried couple is not something which is reflected in the view of the self
found among their adherents. There it seems as if individual spiritual
progress is emphasised much more than family life, although that is in no
way discouraged. This can be seen as reflecting an old division within the
Hindu tradition where the social expectations on householders are put in

contrast with the more lofty, ascetic ideals of the renouncer, where spirit-
ual progress is perceived as more important than to follow the normative
codes postulated by society.
The fact that the Oneness movement embraces both gender-specific as
well as gender-neutral interpretations of the self probably in turn reflects
the fact that, being a transnational movement, they cater for Indian as
well as non-Indian adherents, and thus need to adapt their more culture-
specific features in order to suit a global audience.
In the end, the way one perceives Amma as a leader is dependent on
which perspective one adopts. On the one hand, being confined to tra-
ditional gender roles can be seen as limiting one’s personal freedom of
expression, and thus as suppressing. On the other hand, fulfilling these
traditional roles might also be seen as a way of gaining personal power.
Those who rather choose to view Amma as an avatar would probably
conclude that she transcends the categories of power, gender, culture
and religion altogether.
Notes
1. Amma is a south Indian expression for “Mother” and Bhagavan a Hindu
term meaning “God” or “Lord”.
2. Liselotte Frisk (2014) presents an introduction to deeksha in an anthology
on healing practises in contemporary Sweden. Kathinka Frøystad (2006;
2011) mentions Oneness (at that time called Golden Foundation) in her
study of the invoking of science as a means of legitimation in Indian New
Age spirituality. Marie-Thérèse Charpentier in her monograph Indian
Female Gurus in Contemporary Hinduism (2010) brings up Amma and
Bhagavan as an example of married guru couples. See also Thorsén (2016)
for discussions on the universalistic aspects of the Oneness movement.
There, a more detailed version of the hagiographical sketch of Amma and
Bhagavan is also found.
3. Obviously, it is not possible to treat all Hindu women as a homogenous
group—there are considerable differences among Hindu women based
on family background, rural/urban location, age, access to education, etc.
The following presentation should be understood as a generalization of
certain features within the Hindu tradition.
4. http://onenessnordic.ning.com/page/intervju-med-sri-amma. Accessed
on 9 May 2015, my translation from the Swedish text.
118 E. Thorsén
5. Samkhya philosophy is thought to be the philosophical base for practises

such as yoga, and is believed to be among the oldest Indian philosophical
systems. For a full presentation of Samkhya and the concepts of purusa and
prakriti, see Radhakrishnan (1997) and Walker (1995), p. 263.
6. For an overview of these systems, see Radhakrishnan (1997), pp. 722–737.
7. http://onenessnordic.ning.com/page/intervju-med-sri-amma. Accessed
on 9 May 2015, my translation from the Swedish text.
8. These are Annapuramba and Amritananda Natha Saraswati; Rama Mata
Keshavadas and Sant Keshavadas; and Rajeshwari Devi and Parma Sant
Sadgurudev Shri Hans Ji Maharaj (2010, pp. 226–227).
9. I have not found any official records regarding the amount of male and
female adherents in the movement, but my observations during fieldwork
support the view that the majority of those engaged in the Oneness move-
ment in Sweden are women.
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Oneness. 2015. Samtal med Sri Padmavathi Amma (originally published as
Amma—The Divine Mother in 2007). Chennai: Golden Products Center.
Palmer, Susan Jean. 1994. Moon Sisters, Krishna Mothers, Rajneesh Lovers:
Women’s Roles in New Religions. New York: Syracuse University Press.
Pechilis, Karen. 2004. “Introduction: Hindu Female Gurus in Historical and
Philosophical Context”. In The Graceful Guru: Hindu Female Gurus in India
and the United States, ed. Karen Pechilis, 3–49. Oxford, New York: Oxford
University Press.
Pechilis, Karen. 2012. “The Female Guru: Guru, Gender, And The Path Of
Personal Experience”. In The Guru in South Asia, eds. Jacob Copeman and
Aya Ikegame, 113–132. London, New York: Routledge.
Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli. 1997. Indian Philosophy, vol. 2. Oxford, Delhi:
Rüstau, Hiltrud. 2003. “‘The Hindu Woman’s Right to Samnyasa’: Religious
Movements and the Gender Question: The Sri Sarada Math and the
Ramakrishna Sarada Mission”. In Hinduism in Public and Private: Reform,
Hindutva, Gender and Sampraday, ed. Antony Copley, 143–172. Oxford,
New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Sarkar, Tanika. 2012. “Heroic Women, Mother Goddesses: Family and
Organization in Hindutva politics”. In Handbook of Gender, ed. Raka Ray,
337–367. Oxford: University Press.
120 E. Thorsén
Srinivas, Tulasi. 2010. Winged Faith: Rethinking Globalization and Religious

Pluralism Through the Sathya Sai Movement. New York: Columbia University
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Thorsén, Elin. 2016. “Unity Behind Diversity or the Reverse?: The Language
of Universality in Amma and Bhagavan’s Oneness Movement”. International
Journal for the Study of New Religions 7 (1): 69–90.
Walker, Benjamin. 1995. Hindu World: An Encyclopedic Survey of Hinduism, vol.
2. New Delhi: Indus.
Warrier, Maya. 2005. Hindu Selves in a Modern World: Guru Faith in the Mata
Amritanandamayi Mission. London: RoutledgeCurzon.
Wessinger, Catherine. 1993. “Woman Guru, Woman Roshi: The Legitimation
of Female Religious Leadership in Hindu and Buddhist Groups in America”.
In Women’s Leadership in Marginal Religions: Explorations outside the
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Other resources
Interview with representative from the Swedish Oneness office, conducted 7 May
2015.
Interview with a Swedish deeksha giver, conducted 7 May 2009.
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Electronic resources
http://onenessnordic.ning.com/page/intervju-med-sri-amma. Accessed on 9
May 2015.
CHAPTER 7
‘I, Jehovah’: Mary Ann de Grimston and The

Process Church of the Final Judgment
Christian Giudice
Introduction
CHRIST said: Love your enemies.

CHRIST’s Enemy was SATAN
and SATAN’s Enemy was CHRIST.
Through Love enmity is destroyed.1
This chapter will try to shed light on this unique figure in the history of
new religious movement: alleged former fiancé to world-renowned boxer
Sugar Ray Robinson (1923–1989), and head of a ring of prostitution
involved with the Profumo scandal in London in 1963, founder of a new
religious movement, which even to this day titillates the minds of musi-
cians, artist and members of the counterculture: Mary Ann MacLean’s
character and leadership methods within The Process Church will be
assessed thanks to interviews with surviving member of the Church and
C. Giudice (*) 
Department of Literature, History of Ideas, and Religion, University of

122 C. Giudice
previously unreleased documentation linked to the social dynamics of the

movement.
The scope of this chapter is twofold: its main aim will be, of course,
that of highlighting Mary Ann de Grimston (born Mary Ann MacLean
1931–2005) position of leadership within The Process Church of
the Final Judgement (est. 1966): through the use of material hitherto
unpublished in an academic endeavour and interviews with ex-members
of the NRM, I am confident that this theory will prove to satisfy even
the most sceptical of readers. The second aim of this chapter is strictly
linked to the first, and it is that of reassessing the conclusions drawn by
previous academic work on The Process Church: the only work devoted
entirely to The Process is William Sims Bainbridge’s Satan’s Power: a
Deviant Psychotherapy Cult, published in 1978, and never really scruti-
nized up to now: the very first sentence of the opening chapter of the
book reads ‘[t]his book is an analytic ethnography, a psycho-history
of a Satanic Cult [Bainbridge 1978, p.1]’. The claim of The Process
being a ‘Satanic Cult’ is most problematic when analysing the writ-
ings of Robert de Grimston (born Robert Moor 1934) putative leader
of the movement together with Mary Ann, and in particular his work
The Gods and their People [de Grimston 1970, p. 2], where the author
clearly states the fundamental role played by the four divine beings as
mere aspects of one omnipotent God: ‘Jehovah is the God of battle[…],
Lucifer is the God of love […], Satan is the God of Ultimate Destruction
[…] while Christ is the Unifier: he brings together all the pattern of the
Gods, and resolves them into one’. It is clear then that while contain-
ing a distinct satanic element, Process teaching counterbalanced it with
the presence of Jehovah and Christ. Moreover, Bainbridge’s trustwor-
thiness when it comes to providing an unbiased view of The Process
Church and its leadership is called up for scrutiny by one of the very first
members of the movement, Timothy Wyllie (Father Micah in his days
as a Processean): in an interview conducted with Wyllie, he was ada-
mant in telling me that ‘Bainbridge joined the Process in 1974, when
de Grimston position was already irreparably compromised: I cannot see
how he could avoid having a very partial and biased idea of what was
happening around him (Wyllie 2017, 10 April)’.
For the sake of providing the reader with sheer facts and clear hypoth-
eses, then, I will trace the history of The Process from its earliest days,
including statements and opinions by members or people close to the
7 ‘I, JEHOVAH’: MARY ANN DE GRIMSTON AND THE PROCESS … 123
NRM [see Wyllie 2009, 2017, Verney 2009, Papa 2013, Taylor 1987
and 2017] and pamphlets and magazines distributed in the late 1960s
and 1970s, to which Bainbridge probably did not have full access. It is
my firm conviction that, far from being the uncontested leader of The
Process, Robert de Grimston was but the mouthpiece of Mary Ann, the
(not-so) charismatic facade, behind whom the real leader of The Process
could act, detached and isolated from the majority of members: Mary
Ann de Grimston.
The Early Years: Scientology

and Compulsions Analysis
Robert Moor and Mary Ann MacLean first met at the London Church
of Scientology (est. 1954) headquarters in 1962. The two could not
have hailed from more disparate backgrounds: born in Shanghai, Robert
had relocated to Britain in his infancy. In a private school, Robert had
received a very strong Christian upbringing. Upon ending his period
in public school, Robert was drawn to military life, and first joined the
Lifeguards display cavalry unit, but quickly transferred to the 15th King’s
Royal Hussars. According to Moor [Bainbridge 1978: 22)], it was there
that he developed an ‘aristocratic poise and a dignified bearing, great
assets for the charismatic leader of a cult’. Mary Ann, on the other hand,
had grown up in a very poor area of Glasgow and had learned to fend
for herself since a very early age, her father abandoning the household
soon after her birth, while her mother repeatedly entrusted her to the
care of relatives. According to some sources [Terry 1987: 210], Mary
Ann had travelled to the USA and had become engaged to boxing leg-
end Sugar Ray Robinson (1921–1989), before moving back to London,
and had become embroiled in the Profumo affair, a prostitution-ring
scandal initiated by a sexual liaison between 19-year-old Christine Keeler
(b. 1942) and British Secretary of State for War John Profumo (1915–
2006). These wild allegations have been put to rest by Wyllie, who when
interviewed by myself replied: ‘Mary Ann told us everything that she had
done: had she been involved in the Profumo scandal we would have been
the first to know’.
Mary Ann had joined Scientology a year prior to Robert, quickly
becoming an auditor for L. Ron Hubbard’s (1911–1986) NRM: audit-
ing essentially represented a series of psychotherapy sessions aided by the
124 C. Giudice
use of the electro-psychometer, or e-meter for short. According to Hugh

Urban [2013, 82],
the meter is believed to measure physical responses that identify [prob-

lems] in need of clearing from the reactive mind. While [patients] hold
two metal cylinders (originally, ordinary tomato cans) attached by wires to
the meter, the auditor asks him or her a variety of questions and observes
the fluctuations of the meter’s needle.
Bonding over their experiences within Scientology and their interest in

the works of psychotherapist Alfred Adler (1870–1937), the two quickly
grew tired of the strict rules of Hubbard’s creation, and [Parfrey 2009:
7] ‘grumbled that its teachings were turning people into little L. Ron
Hubbards’. Soon after, Moor and MacLean left Scientology, not without
first subtracting an e-meter, intended for private use, from the auditing
offices.
The first step towards the creation of The Process Church was the
foundation of a psychotherapeutic group they called Compulsion
Analysis [Papa 2013, 10]: the aim of the group was to explore Adler’s
theories on the dynamics of self-actualization in order to connect people
with their inner selves. Robert’s best friend, Timothy Wyllie, who had
shared 3 years of Engineering at university with Moor, was asked to join
the core group as the first ‘guinea pig for e-meter’ [Parfrey 2009, 8]:
compelled by Mary Ann’s magnetic persona, Wyllie complied. Leaving
Scientology was not the only big change for Moor and MacLean in the
early days of Compulsion Analysis: under Mary’s strong influence, Moor
was first forced to end his first marriage and then to change his name
into de Grimston, under MacLean’s conviction that the new, more exotic
name would attract more clients for their new endeavour. The audit-
ings at Compulsions Analysis proved to be successful and attracted more
and more people from Wyllie’s and de Grimston circle of friends: soon
Robert and Mary Ann were able to rent a space for auditing sessions in
the central Wigmore Street, as more and more clients seemed to flock
to their fold. As the couple were the only ones who conducted the ses-
sions, ‘they were starting to attain a degree of specialness […]. Given the
circumstances it was inevitable that [the group] would put the pair up
on pedestals. They seemed so much wiser […]’ [Wyllie 2009, 28]. The
two also began to be seen less and less during the informal meetings that
would be organized between psychotherapeutic sessions, thus creating an

even more awe-inspiring aura of mystery [Bligh and Riggio 2012, 1–12].
The couple’s next move was to organize more structured by-weekly
meetings, which they called ‘Communication Courses’, in order to tie
the group of clients closer together. Robert and Mary Ann were striving
to dissolve all of the taboos that the average middle-class man or woman
could have in early- 1960s England, and the results were quick to follow.
Soon the whole group was able to move to more spacious premises at
Balfour Place, in the fashionable Mayfair district, and a major, inevitable
progression was decided upon by the two leaders: the core group of cli-
ents from Compulsions Analysis would permanently move into Balfour
Place to live communally, with Robert and Mary Ann living in secluded
quarters on the very top floor: what Bainbridge calls a ‘social implosion’
took place, once the group moved to Balfour Place:
in a social implosion, part of an extended social network collapses as ties

within it strengthen and, reciprocally, those to persons outside it weaken.
It is a step by step process […]. [T]he introduction of a new element of
culture, a therapy technique that increased the intimacy of relations around
a point in the network, triggered the implosion [Bainbridge 1978, 52].
This ‘implosion’ was strengthened even more by the de Grimston crea-

tion of new techniques, which only they could teach: by doing so, the
couple achieved two distinct goals: on the one hand, they could dele-
gate other members of the group with the menial task of auditing; on
the other, by proposing new techniques, they still kept the knowledge
capital, cementing their role as leaders. The street distribution of pam-
phlets and flyers, illustrating the activities at Balfour Place, made the
group known to the outside, and soon their extreme psychotherapeutic
techniques caught the attention of the yellow press, who labelled the
group as ‘the Mindbenders of Mayfair’. It was in the heart of the swing-
ing London that the name Process was adopted for the first time by the
group, the word referring to the process towards inner freedom under-
gone through auditing and other forms of group psychotherapy.
The question of minors joining the group and living at Balfour Place
was also a cause for concern: the case of Alistair Cooke (1908–2004), at
the time a very prominent BBC personality, is emblematic. In his biog-
raphy, Cooke recalls his young daughters’ involvement with the Balfour
Place group:
126 C. Giudice
Susie was 16 years old and had just finished her first year at boarding
school; she found herself staying with a much-admired elder sister at the
heart of “swinging London” and was full of teenage curiosity about the
Process. With real reservations, Holly took her to meet the Grimstons,
who welcomed her with open arms. The first the Cookes knew about the
crisis was a telephone call announcing that Susie would not, after all, be
going to France. She intended to remain in London, where - Holly had
established - there would be no problem finding her a good school. Cooke
was devastated [Clarke 1999, 88] .
Whether the attention of tabloid press had finally become too irksome
to the leadership, or whether dealing with the law for cases such as Susie
Cooke’s had taken its toll, it was decided that The Process should move
to a remote location, in order to create an ideal society and continue
practicing their breaking down of taboos without hinderance. The idea
seemed to be on the mind of many, but Wyllie seems to have understood
who, in primis, had decided to leave England: ‘I’m perfectly certain that
the main instigation for leaving London came from Mary Ann and I
can only admire the way she manipulated the group into thinking the
idea sprang from us collectively [Wyllie 2009, 34]’. With the injunction
to sell all worldly possessions in order to gather money for the trip to
their utopia, most members of The Process happily complied, convinced
that they were leaving England behind for the rest of their lives. Later
on, turning in all worldly possessions to The Process would become a
requirement for anyone interested in joining the group. Not long after,
in mid-1966, twenty-six Processeans and six German shepherd dogs left
England in order to fly to Nassau, in the Bahamas. What would happen
in the following year would change the group and the life of its members
forever.
Robert and Mary Ann de Grimston:

An (Un)Easy Leadership
Since the early days in Wigmore Street, Mary Ann had been happy to
remain out of the limelight, preferring to support Robert as the visible
head of the group: under Mary Ann’s supervision, Robert’s hair had
been coiffed to resemble a Christ-like mane and he had started taking
care of his appearance much more than before, his suits ‘expensively
tailored and buttoned to the neck in the style favoured by the Beatles’
[Wyllie 2009, 29]. Between the period spent in Balfour Place and
Nassau, a marked phenomenon started occurring: no matter how hard
Mary Ann pushed for Robert to be the recognizable face of the Process,
those involved could not help but notice that she, and not Robert, was
really the driving force behind The Process. To Wyllie, there was never
a doubt that Mary Ann was the true leader of the Process, and in my
interview with him clearly expressed that, having known Robert since
the days before The Process, he ‘couldn’t look at Richard as a charis-
matic leader, he was the least charismatic figure I can think of. And I
know it because we used to be best friends!’ [Wyllie 2017]. In Satan’s
Power, Bainbridge quotes Robert saying how ‘the [Process] started off
purely as psychotherapy. But the more we worked with our clients, the
more we realised we were closer to a religious approach. Nearly everyone
kept coming up with their religious goals’ [Bainbridge 1978, 55]. Mary
Ann had tried to sponsor Robert as the messianic reference figure in the
group that was becoming more and more rooted in spirituality, but it
was she who actually came to be seen as a quasi-divine being: a member
named Claudia had first come up with the idea that Mary Ann was in
all effects the Goddess, Mother of the World. And she was not alone in
thinking this: ‘[w]e all knew who She was and I suspect we felt it was
too sacred to be bandy about’, recalls Timothy Wyllie, ‘And to be more
down to earth, maybe if we had talked about it more openly, the concept
would not have had quite the same hold’.
A young English girl, Sabrina Verney, who joined the Process in the
Nassau days had had time to observe the group’s dynamics and had
noticed a similar pattern even from outside the group. In her memoirs
of her short time with The Process, Xtul: an experience of the Process, she
offers a vivid recollection of Mary Ann’s role in the group:
Taking care not to draw attention, I study the pattern of the group.
Circular, like a mandala, with Mary Ann at the center, surrounded by the
power elite. Then radiating outwards those who hang around the edges.
Literally, the edges. They keep to the wall, and never move too close to the
core members. It isn’t difficult to figure out which is Mary Ann’s room. It
has a separate sliding door onto the patio, the curtains are kept closed, and
there’s always someone on guard outside, at ease but watchful. [Verney
2011, 44].
128 C. Giudice
When describing Robert de Grimston, Verney calls him Bob and writes
that she was captivated by his Scandinavian looks and piercing eyes: there
is no mention of private rooms or people emanating from him in a man-
dala-like fashion. The rest of the memoirs, while keeping Robert in very
high esteem, seem to display almost a veneration towards Mary Ann that
almost verged on the devotional:
Those green eyes certainly are extraordinary, but it’s her manner- unruf-
fled, lucid, authoritative, confident, razor-sharp- that draws me. Once set-
tled in her chair, her gaze moves slowly around, making eye contact with
each person, instantly assessing their state of mind. Some people can’t
meet her eyes at all- I can’t either- and some she deliberately skims over.
She notices everything, is afraid of nothing. Plainly, she is the undisputed
leader of the group. It isn’t long before I realise I am in the presence of a nat-
ural teacher [Verney 2011, 62].2
One of the most intriguing stories Timothy Wyllie told me during

my interview took place in Nassau, at the same time as Sabrina Verney
joined the group, and really show how strong Mary Ann’s grip had
become on the psyche of everyone involved: during a group medita-
tion session, Timothy had visualized being in a river and being dragged
by its strong currents: his body had been sucked down to the riverbed
and dashed against the rocks, a mere puppet under the power of the
elements. The end of the vision sees Timothy’s body surrendered to
death in the river’s tranquil stream. That particular meditation session
had had a great influence on the young Processean, who, upon open-
ing his eyes, had noticed that only Mary Ann had remained on the
patio. Timothy then asked Mary Ann, ‘were you the river?’, to which
she had replied in the affirmative [Wyllie 2017]. Recalling this very
vision, he has written: ‘[i]f I’d known then what I know now, that the
whole drowning scenario was typical of a shamanic initiation, would
I have given my power away to Mary Ann in such a cavalier fashion?
[Wyllie 2009, 37]’.
Bainbridge’s account focuses much more on Robert’s figure, as the
author himself met de Grimston when he had just been cast away from
The Process, so his narration is bound to paint a different picture, which
most of the people acquainted with The Process still hold as true: that
the ‘Christ of Carnaby Street’, as the tabloid press had labelled him, was
indeed the leading figure of The Process, and that ‘his physical presence
and manners radiate dignity. A slim man, over six feet tall, his leonine
features and sandy mane project strength. His regal bearing was the out-
come of his elite cavalry training, and his intelligence was refined in his
private school education’ [Bainbridge 1978, 71].
Nassau and Xtul: From Psychoanalysis to Religion

In Nassau, the group was taught astral travelling and different forms of
meditation by Mary Ann: while lower members of the group took up day
jobs to help finance the villa with swimming pool they had rented, Mary
Ann would remain in her air-conditioned room all day, emerging only
late at night, when the temperature had become bearable. She would
then supervise group sessions of travelling and meditation, much like the
river experience Wyllie had. During one of these group meditations, the
focus had been on receiving a communication on where to go next, since
Nassau did not seem to satisfy the needs of the group. New Mexico was
the chosen place, because, to most, ‘it seemed to have the more positive
projections’ [Bainbridge 1978, 60]. From Mexico, guided by the group
meditations, they had had a vision of a small abandoned town, which
turned out to be Xtul, an agglomerate of houses on the southern coast
of the Yucatan peninsula: the trip to Xtul, laden with difficulties, short-
age of water and food, assumed mystical overtones when, in the neigh-
bouring town of Chuburna Petro, the group were told by Mayan Indians
that their presence there had not been a surprise to them:
We had found Xtul by taking a jump of faith. We had found Xtul by a

miracle. And the place was miraculous: we knew we had been guided to it.
Some of the Mayan Indians at the nearby village, Chuburna Petro, told us
that they had been waiting for us [Bainbridge 1978, 62].
The days at Xtul were spent in rebuilding the decrepit houses that
constituted the tiny village, fishing and collecting coconuts. While work
occupied most of the day and afternoon, the evenings were almost exclu-
sively dedicated to workings with Mary Ann and Robert, and it was
during this time that Process theology began developing, and that the
beings, the nondescript entities which had guided the Processeans to
Xtul, became the four gods of the universe in the nascent Process the-
ology. Robert had begun writing the first of what would become bet-
ter known as his prophetic writings. Others began composing hymns
130 C. Giudice
to the newly recognized gods of the Processean pantheon. The audit-

ing sessions had quickly given way to a more religious approach to life
and to its interpretations: vigils, meditations, religious discussions, fast-
ing and dreaming had become the norm, and along with a change in
the activities a change of the name of the members soon followed: the
group, during the Xtul period and beyond, had focused on the proph-
ets of the Old Testament, so the ordinary identities of the members
were dropped in favour of more apocalyptic namesakes, such as Micah,
Malachi, Jethra and Aaron. Still, even though Robert de Grimston
had produced his mystical writings, the Xtul Dialogues [de Grimston
1966], an early reflection on The Process’ new apocalyptic theology,
the mastermind behind it all was still Mary Ann: ‘the inspiration almost
entirely came from Mary Ann. Robert, although he was writing away in
the background, was going through a period of being out of his wife’s
favour [Wyllie 2009, 41]’. The group began acting out psychodramas,
with the setting changing from day to day, and each member enacting a
different character from Old Testament stories: ‘the aim of these reen-
actments is to bring back the psyche of the group members to a more
pristine state. For some, the technique seemed to have worked just fine’.
Sabrina Verney describes her life as ‘being filled with joyfulness. Truly
this is Paradise right here on earth. And we’ve found it. We’re living
it. I’m strong. Whole. Complete’. This earthly paradise was not to last
though. As if the atmosphere of isolation and deep mystical practices
were not enough, two events were to bring the Process members even
closer together in the conviction that it was the group against an apoca-
lyptic world: firstly, and most devastating in its entity, Major Hurricane
Ines was directed towards the Yucatan peninsula and happened to hit
the tiny conglomerate of buildings in Xtul at its full force [Hurricane
Archive, 1851–2017]:3 none of the members were killed, but the build-
ings, after all the toil and effort put into their restoration, were not safe
to be inhabited anymore; secondly, Verney’s father had grouped with
some other parents whose sons and daughters were under the age of
twenty-one and had sent a lawyer to the British Ambassador in Mexico
to bring back the youngest members. The return to England was a shock
for the three youths: Verney’s own words,
And there they are. Our parents. A group of cardboard cutouts come to
life. With phony smiles and fake- odiously, odiously fake- heartiness […].
We find a table in the airport café, each one of us placed next to their par-
ents. We have been claimed, like baggage [Verney 2011, 140].
The Processeans who were not forcibly expatriated to England soon

decided that rebuilding all the edifices, which had crumbled down,
would have been too great an effort: the time had come to go back to
civilization and communicate what they had seen in their visions. What
had left England as a group of individuals interested in psychotherapy
and looking for a paradise on earth had come back home as a cohe-
sive religious group, ready to spread its message through the streets of
London. The return to England, though, coincided with Mary Ann’s
and Robert’s even more decreased visibility: they now called themselves
The Omega, with Robert being labelled ‘the Teacher’ and Mary Ann
‘the Oracle’.
The Process Church Is Born:

Charismatic Leadership and Institutionalization
The group settled back into its old haunt in Balfour Place, where the
Processeans began the transition from psychotherapeutic group to fully
fledged religious organization. In his later writing The Gods and their
People (1970), de Grimston would explain the budding cosmology of
the new religion by creating a pantheon of four gods: Jehovah, Lucifer,
Satan and Christ. Each member of the Process would identify himself
as representing a living expression of one of these four gods, reminding
the reader of Carl G. Jung’s (1875–1961) theories on archetypes and
on quaternity as the expression of wholeness and of the perfect nature
of God, or the gods: ‘as the symbol of completeness and perfect being,
it is a widespread expression for heaven, sun, and God; it also expresses
the primordial image of man and the soul’ [Jung 1954: 44]. The gods,
as envisioned by de Grimston, would be in opposition, and Jehovah,
Lucifer and Satan would only find their true nature when harmonized
with the figure of Christ the Unifier:
Jehovah is the God of battle; the God of vengeance […]; Lucifer is

the God of Love; the God of harmony […]; Satan is the Great God of
Ultimate Destruction; the ruler of extremes […]. Christ is the Unifier.
He brings together all the patterns of the Gods and resolves them into
One. He is the emissary of the Gods upon earth; their link with men,
132 C. Giudice
by which men have the opportunity to know them and understand them
[de Grimston 1970: 21].
Quite expectedly, Mary Ann was to identify with Jehovah, the God of
the Old Testament, wrathful and vengeful. Liturgies were also prepared
in order to celebrate the gods in a proper religious manner, music play-
ing a large part in the Processean canon. Very few copies of the hymnal
survive nowadays, but the interest that The Process exerts on people in
the twentieth century has prompted the band Sabbath Assembly, named
after the main ceremony in Process theology, to interpret them anew,
record them and make them available to the public: through The
Process’ music the listener may glean much of what the general mood
of the impending Armageddon was, and how the gods, or archetypes,
were revered and cherished. With the first three albums titled ‘Restored
to One’ (2012), ‘Ye Are Gods’ (2012) and ‘Quaternity’ (2014), offer-
ing songs with titles like ‘The Time Of Abaddon’, ‘Glory To The Gods
In The Highest’, ‘Christ, You Bring The End’ and ‘Jehovah On Death’,
the reader may formulate an idea of what subjects the central themes
of the religious ceremonies circled around. Balfour Place seemed to
have become too small for the ever-increasing numbers of people join-
ing the religious movement, as may be gleaned by a Daily Mail arti-
cle titled ‘“God” must take his Gong Bangers out of Mayfair’ [Daily
Mail 1966: np.]. The article, deeply satirical in nature, began by read-
ing ‘God has been given 3 months to leave Mayfair, and he has to take
his Gong Bangers with him’. Balfour Place now also had a coffee house
in the basement, its name, ‘Satan’s Cavern’, attracting the hippest rep-
resentatives of Swinging London: as Wyllie recalls, ‘I remember sitting
one afternoon with a very morose and tearful Brian Epstein, who felt
safe enough to blurt out his troubles: the management mistakes he’d
made with the Beatles […]; the constant struggle of having to hide
his homosexuality. If Brian Epstein was moved to open to a complete
stranger then I like to think we were of some value to others’ [Wyllie
2009: 49]. Indeed, frequenters of Satan’s Cavern featured many of the
days greatest celebrities, ranging from spiritual thinkers such as Chögyam
Trungpa Rimpoche (1939-1987) to stars of the music system such as
Paul McCartney (b. 1942) and Marianne Faithfull (b. 1946).
In 1967, the bulk of Processeans moved to the USA, with the idea
of opening new chapters and initiating more people into the reli-
gious movement. The first chapter to be established was based in New
Orleans. The year 1967 saw another fundamental step in the institu-
tionalization of The Process: in order to legitimize the street begging
that members would usually resort to while selling Process magazines
in the streets, and to justify the public activities in the chapters them-
selves, The Process became incorporated under the Louisiana law with
the official name of The Process: Church of the Final Judgment. The
attainment of conventional and legal church status was fundamental, in
that it gave the Process a new aura of credibility and respectability. Still,
as Mother Morgana, who had joined The Process in those years, stated:
‘The Process was much more concerned with the basics: with the End of
the World, detaching from the establishment, being a group unto our-
selves’ [Bainbridge 1978: 75]. The emphasis was never on the number
of people to recruit, but on finding fellow Processeans who still did not
know of the New Dispensation given by Robert de Grimston, and the
Processeans were incredibly active, selling their magazines and offering
classes in their chapters, in wanting to save the few who would hear their
message.
A special mention must be made about The Process Magazine, wildly
coloured, where dark prophecies and light-hearted humour went hand
in hand. If there is something that separates The Process from the
other movements of the day, it was the quality of its publications and
the high profile of those who chose to write or be interviewed in them.
Each issue, in the beginning, had a theme devoted to it, be it sex, death
or love. The tone of the articles was often tongue-in-cheek, and within
the very first pages of each issue, the reader could find references to
The Process next to slogans such as ‘invest in the end of the world’ or
‘how to dissipate your fortune’ [The Process Sex Issue 1967: 3]. The
Sex Issue had very sober articles written by advocates of Jehovah, Satan
and Lucifer, but immediately counterbalanced it with a board game sup-
posed to reveal what God-archetype the reader represented. The Fear
Issue included a comic based on a Hulk-like character, but then pro-
ceeded to offer very serious letters by readers on the subject of fear and
spiritual matters. The most famous issue of The Process Magazine was
without a doubt the Death Issue, mainly for the infamous interview with
Charles Manson on page 36 of the magazine. This interview would, in
the future, create problems for The Process, with wild connections to
Manson’s Family and Satanic practices being thrown at them by authors
such as Ed Sanders in his The Family: The Story of Charles Manson’s Dune
Buggy Attack Battalion dated 1971. The Death Issue also proves how
134 C. Giudice
strong the link between celebrities and The Process had become: in ask-
ing the question ‘how do you feel about death?’, the range of celebrities
who took the time to answer to a comparatively small magazine was stag-
gering: among the most striking we find Salvador Dali, Charlie Watts of
the Rolling Stones, boxer Muhammed Ali, folk singer Donovan, actor
Robert Mitchum, TV personality Ed Sullivan, actress Ingrid Bergman
and comedy duo Morecombe and Wise. Quizzes, interviews and adver-
tisements for Robert de Grimston publications rounded up the topics
covered by the magazines, which, even by today’s standards, appear to
be light-years ahead of their time.
The Process seemed to adapt well on American soil: chapters seemed
to spring up in every major city, and their cafés seemed to attract the
‘right’ kind of people for the Processeans. In the memoirs of his encoun-
ter with The Process Church of Final Judgment, folk singer Robert N.
Taylor of the band Changes offers a vivid and engaging account to the
reader:
Much of my attraction to The Process lay in my Grail quest out of the

morose atmosphere that soulless technology and bureaucracy had imposed
upon our lives […]. Unlike the alien and decadent garb of the Guru cults
from the East, The Process had a distinct Western, neo-Gothic exterior:
Neatly trimmed shoulder-length hair and equally neat beards, all set off
by tailored magician’s capes with matching black uniforms [Taylor 1987:
160].
The sight of Processeans selling their magazines or distributing pam-

phlets in their black garb, at the height of the hippy era, must have been
quite a spectacle to behold: Taylor also performed in the Chicago chap-
ter’s café with his band Changes: with song titles such as ‘The Twilight of
the West’, ‘Satanic Hymn’ and ‘Fire of Life’, the band must have found
The Process café to be quite an agreeable location. Taylor also par-
ticipated in one of the chapter’s main religious functions, the Sabbath
Assembly, which was held at the top floor of the chapter: the ceremony
set forth the main tenets of The Process, such as the coniunctio opposito-
rum between Christ and Satan, the coming of an end, which would give
way to a new beginning and the birth of an Age of Love. In his account
of his time spent with The Process, Taylor recollects: ‘[a] large portrait
of Robert de Grimston hung prominently in the main room. With long
blond tresses and neatly outlined beard he looked down from the wall
with piercing eyes’ [Taylor 1987: 164]. Portraits of Mary Ann had ini-
tially hung on the walls of the chapters, until, in line with her reclusive
inclinations, she had decided to remove all pictures of herself from every
Process house. Another important clue is given to us about Process activ-
ities from Taylor’s account: Father Matthew of the Chicago chapter had
invited Taylor and his partner to participate to what he referred to as an
Aesop: ‘we have a little private party after closing we call an “Aesop”, we
sort of get loose and have a good time’. Although Taylor did not partici-
pate, the sexual nature of the gathering was evident, and even this seems
to have stemmed from Mary Ann’s mind.
In his account of his years spent with The Process, Wyllie refers to
sexual orgies held among the inner circle and a small group of care-
fully selected inner members of the organization. Both Wyllie and other
participants did not seem to enjoy what, in plain words, were sexual
encounters organized by Mary Ann for her personal amusement:
Mary Ann maintained complete control while she and Robert sat back
from the melee, with her instructing who should be with whom, without
any explanation […]. Although Mary Ann stated the aim was to get us
through any residual sexual repression and inhibitions, there was clearly
another edge to these orgies. While none of us would have been able to
acknowledge it at the time, it seems obvious now that her other agenda
was to control us to sexual guilt and humiliation [Wyllie 2009: 64].
While keeping Robert as the official face of the Church, Mary Ann had
slowly introduced subtle changes that turned the higher echelons of The
Process into what can only be defined as a matriarchy: when the Omega
was not present to personally care for the Church’s business, Mary Ann
would keep informed on the goings-on through a group of four or five
women. ‘This point’, Wyllie ads wryly, ‘can also be seen as the start of
the matriarchy- these were the women who now wielded the power
directly devolved from Mary Ann [Wyllie 2009: 48]’. Up until the early
1970s, Mary Ann’s iron grip on The Process seemed to be accepted by
all and, as far as the Church’s expansion was concerned, that too seemed
to benefit from her Jehovian strict overseeing. Trouble, though, seemed
to be brewing within the higher ranks of The Process. Robert seemed
to be spending more and more time with Mother Morgana, a more
recent convert to the Church, who often travelled with the Omega, as
Alessandro Papa has noticed, while the two were at first encouraged by
136 C. Giudice
Mary Ann to explore their feelings and mutual attraction, it was clear
that such an occurrence constituted a stain on her otherwise pris-
tine position of leadership within The Process, and that, as the news of
Robert’s affair trickled down to the lower rungs of the organizational
ladder, some solution should be found. The frequent confrontations of
Robert and Mary Ann on the topic culminated in the first momentous
event in The Process’ history: what Processeans and researchers on the
Church’s history have defined as ‘the Great Schism’ or ‘the Beginning
of the End’. In a full-force display of power in 1974, in the words of
Alessandro Papa, one of the most competent historians on The Process
Church and its various incarnations, ‘she [Mary Ann] was accustomed
to feel like a Goddess, the only Goddess in The Process. A Jehovian […]
Goddess that could not endure any rival’ [Papa 2013: 177].
The End of The Process Church

and Its New Incarnations
In a letter with Process heading dated 6 April 1974, Robert de Grimston

was informed of his expulsion from the Church, with retroactive effect
dating 23 March 1974. When the decision was reached by Mary Ann
and the higher echelons of The Process, the overwhelming majority of
the members, including Robert’s own brother Andrew Moor, aban-
doned the ‘Christ of Carnaby Street’ to his fate, standing up for Mary
Ann’s vision and reasons. Wyllie recalls,
With hindsight, it is crystal-clear that Mary had made everything in her

power to assume sole leadership of The Process, but it is not something
you can see with clarity when the two people most important to you are
trying to destroy one another [Wyllie 2017].
The Process Church of the Final Judgment was no more, and Mary
was quick to move on and organize a new religion with a new board
of directors called ‘The Four’, comprising the most trustworthy and
oldest members of The Process. The Process’ name was first changed
to Foundation Church of the Millennium, and very soon after to
Foundation Faith of the Millennium, and tried to avoid any allusion
to Robert de Grimston influence on their earlier religious endeavour:
‘Mary Ann’s Church obliterated de Grimston past contributions, works
and theology’ [Papa 2013: 178]. ‘As extreme as Mary Ann was when
she partnered with Robert, alone she soon became a monster’ [Wyllie
2009: 65]: gone were the black robes and long haircuts, substituted by
more ‘acceptable’ grey suits. The complex theology crafted by Robert
was expurgated, so that in the end only Jehovah, Mary Ann’s archetype
of God, remained relevant to the movement. The Process communities,
in the meanwhile, seem to crumble in every city. The story of the New
York chapter is interesting in this regard: having left the city for Arizona,
and then for Utah, they became the animal sanctuary ‘Best Friends’, one
of the USA’s biggest animal charities to this day. The Process had always
been close to animal rights and had promoted anti-vivisectionist propa-
ganda from the start, and, besides, raising money for animals had always
proven to be a remunerative endeavour even back in the 1960s. After
her short and disappointing experience with The Foundation, Mary Ann
had joined the other founders of Best Friend’s Animal Sanctuary. Frater
Aaron is quoted having said:
The animals were beginning to take over! For many of us, they’d always
really been our passion. And when a few of us got together one evening at
the ranch to talk about what next and where next, we were all feeling that
it was time to devote ourselves to that true passion4
In 2005, Mary Ann passed away at the animal sanctuary: the rumour for
the cause of her death is that, while taking a walk near her home, she was
attacked by a pack of dogs from the shelter, her body ripped to shreds
[Wyllie 2009: 124]. The veracity of such a story is entirely debatable.
Robert de Grimston, who took back his last name Moor, dropped out
of the limelight, and according to Papa, ‘some countercultural research-
ers found out that Robert de Grimston was back in the East Coast of the
USA. Robert was living a normal life with an office job in a telephone
company’. The menacing Omega, who had dazzled 1960s Swinging
London and the hippy-fuelled culture of America’s late 1960s and early
1970s, had spent the last years of their lives in anonymity and away from
any religious institution.
Conclusion: The Leader of the Pack

This chapter has charted the rise into leadership positions of Mary Ann
de Grimston, arguing that she was clearly the person in charge through-
out all the phases that The Process went through, from Compulsions
Analysis to the Best Friends days. Statements provided by various mem-
bers of the NRM attest to the validity of my claim. Wyllie, quoted
138 C. Giudice
throughout this chapter, has always been adamant in this sense and has
denounced members of The Process, who did not grasp this fundamen-
tal truth, writing that ‘[t]hey were all convinced that Robert was the
group’s leader’ [Wyllie 2009: 26]: while, to the lower ranks, it could
appear to be this way because of Robert’s picture adorning the rooms of
every chapter and because of all The Process literature being published
with his name as the author. ‘I was never able to take Robert seriously.
We had been friends before he became the head of The Process you see’,
Wyllie told me, ‘and I never really could take him or his writing seri-
ously. Mary Ann was a different matter altogether: she would push him
in the forefront and preferred to remain outside of the limelight [Wyllie
2017]’. Another Processean, Father Malachi, added his point of view to
his theory, writing that
Mary Ann was definitely the powerhouse. If she needed an intellectual

rationalization for something, Robert would step forward and back her up.
[…] Mary Ann had much more of an effect on out lives than Robert […].
I think she always had had contempt for anybody she could control, which
was pretty much everybody [McCormick 2009: 150].
Even Sims Bainbridge, who had joined the ranks of The Process and
become himself an auditor in the tumultuous days of Robert’s expulsion
from the Church, who had quickly risen up the ranks with Robert’s help,
and who had offered his house to Robert and Morgana, when the two
had left The Process, has admitted to Mary Ann’s charisma: ‘[a]lthough
[Mary Ann] has been described as the strongest personality in the group,
she did not become its charismatic figure. Rather, she gave that role to
[Robert] and withdrew from public sight to exert her influence through
more hidden means’ [Bainbridge 1978: 44].
We must conclude with a quote by Adam Parfrey, who was the first
to elicit this hidden leadership dimension from Father Micah, in a 2009
interview: ‘for the first time I discovered that The Process Church was in
fact a matriarchal cult ruled by co-founder Mary Ann, who was treated
like a Goddess by all of its members’ [Parfrey 2009: 8]. Like the divine
persona that she was said to embody, the Jehovah of the Old Testament,
Mary Ann ruled her flock from afar, liaising with her people through the
intermission of a prophet, and only appeared in all her fierce magnifi-
cence when exuding her most powerful manifestations of love, wrath and
vengeance.
Notes
1. Robert de Grimston (25 December 1970), Why The Unity Between Christ
and Satan?, n.p.
2. Italics mine.
3. h ttps://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/atlantic/1966/Major-
Hurricane-Inez [Last Access 29 April 2017].
4. Skeptigaltheurgist.blogspot.com. Post of 22 May 2005 [Last access 29
April 2017].
References
Anonymous. 1966. ‘“God” must take his Gong Bangers out of Mayfair’.
London: The Daily Mail.
Bainbridge, William Sims. 1978. Satan’s Power: A Deviant Psychotherapy Cult.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Bligh, Michelle, and Ronald Riggio (eds.). 2012. Exploring Distance in Leader-
Follower Relationships: When Near is Far and Far is Near. New York:
Routledge Academic.
Clarke, Nick. 1999. Alistair Cooke: A Biography. New York: Arcade Publishing.
de Grimston, Robert. 1966. The Xtul Dialogues. The Process Church.
de Grimston, Robert. 1970. The Gods and Their People. Boston: The Process
Church.
De Peyer, Chris and Willie, Timothy (eds.). 2011. The Sex Issue. In Process: Sex
Issue- Fear Issue- Death Issue. Propaganda and Holy Writ of The Process Church
of the Final Judgment. (9–44). Port Townsend: Feral House.
Jung, Carl G. 1954. Development of Personality. Collecte Works of Carl Gustave
Jung 17. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
McCormick, Malachi. 2009. Processean Reflections. In Love Fear Sex Death:
The Inside Story of The Process Church of Final Judgment. (145–154). Port
Townsend: Feral House.
Papa, Alessandro. 2013. The Process: Archives, Documents, Reflections and
Revelations. Bologna: End Of Kali Yuga Productions.
Parfrey, Adam. 2009. Rarely What it Seems. In Love Fear Sex Death: The Inside
Story of The Process Church of Final Judgment. (7–11). Port Townsend: Feral
House.
Sanders, (ed.). 1971. The Family: The Story of Charles Manson’s Dune Buggy
Attack Battalion. Boston: Dutton.
Taylor, Robert N. 1987. The Process: A Personal Reminiscence. In Apocalypse
Culture: Expanded and Revised, ed. Adam Parfrey, 159–171. Port Townsend:
Feral House.
140 C. Giudice
Terry, Maury. 1987. The Ultimate Evil: An Investigation into a Dangerous

Satanic Cult. New York: Doubleday Edition.
Urban, Hugh B. 2013. The Church of Scientology: History of a New Religion.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Verney, Sabrina. 2011. Xtul: An Experience of the Process. Baltimore: Publish
America.
Wyllie, Timothy. 2009. My Life Inside the Process Church. In Love Fear Sex
Death: The Inside Story of The Process Church of Final Judgment. (13-125).
Port Townsend: Feral House.
Interview
Wyllie, Timothy. (2017, 10 April). Ex Member of The Process Church.
Discography
Sabbath Assembly (2012). Ye Are Gods. Svart Records—The Ajna Offensive.
Sabbath Assembly (2014). Quaternity. Svart Records.
CHAPTER 8
Olivia Robertson: Priestess of Isis
Vivianne Crowley
Introduction
Olivia Robertson’s death in 2013 was marked not only in the press of
her Irish homeland, but also in the obituary column of the London
Times, which commemorated her as “the last surviving link with the
school of Irish mysticism which emerged during the Celtic Twilight1 and
found its expression in the poetry of W.B. Yeats” (The Times 2013). Few
leaders of new religious movement find their way into prestigious obitu-
ary columns, and a disproportionate focus on male lives means that few
women appear at all. That Olivia Robertson (1917–2013) was so fea-
tured owed more to the British public’s fascination with the remnants
of its colonial past than the importance of the Fellowship of Isis (est.
1976), the religious movement she founded with her brother Lawrence
Durdin-Robertson (1920–1994) and his wife Pamela (1923–1987).
Nevertheless, the Fellowship of Isis has played an important role in the
tapestry of new religious movements that emerged in the 1960s and
1970s.
V. Crowley (*) 
Department of Psychology, Nottingham Trent University,
Nottingham, UK

142 V. Crowley
Daughter of the “Big House”

Religions emerge from and develop in a sociocultural context. The
Durdin-Robertson family belonged to a now almost extinct caste—the
Protestant Irish “Ascendancy”—upper-class owners of large estates, who
filled the judicial, administrative and military posts of Irish society under
British colonial rule. The Ascendancy not only existed to maintain British
rule, but also provided Ireland with some of its leading poets, writers
and artists, such as William Butler Yeats (1865–1939), who were a major
driving force for social, political and cultural change.
Olivia Robertson was known variously as Olivia Manning Robertson
in her first published articles and as “The Honourable Olivia Durdin-
Robertson”, following her brother’s reclaiming the family’s Scottish
baronial title and the addition of the family name of their paternal
grandmother from whom they had inherited the family Castle. Latterly,
in emulation of titles given to senior women in some American Pagan
groups, she was known as “Lady Olivia”. She was born Olivia Melian
Robertson at St. Mary’s Hospital, London, on 13th April 1917, the
second of four children. Her father Manning Durdin-Robertson
(1887–1945) was an architect, educated at Eton College and Magdalen
College, University of Oxford. Her mother Nora (1895–1965) was
from another Ascendancy family, the Parsons. When Olivia Robertson
was five years old, her family moved from London to Hatherlow House
in Reigate, a four-story double-front house large enough to accom-
modate a growing family and a few servants. Life in Reigate was calm
and conventional. The family attended Sunday church services, but the
older generation was more rationalist than religious. The children were
taught an Anglican morality of being “good to the poor, not stealing and
usually speaking the truth”, with the Church of England as “a nice safe
pair of carpet slippers, a ‘just in case’ scenario in case there was a hell”
(Robertson 2011a).
Manning Robertson’s father had died unexpectedly in July 1916,
but World War I and the political instability following the Irish inde-
pendence insurgency of Easter 2016 meant that the family had yet to
return to Huntington Castle, the family home in Co. Carlow, south–east
Ireland. While not all of Olivia Robertson’s family were sympathetic to
Irish nationalism, they were not alienated from the nationalist cause. Her
maternal grandmother, Florence Belinda Graves, Lady Parsons, a second
cousin of the poet, novelist and mythographer Robert Graves, was an
8 OLIVIA ROBERTSON: PRIESTESS OF ISIS 143
Irish nationalist. At the start of World War I, Olivia Robertson’s grand-

father Lieutenant-General Sir Lawrence Worthington Parsons KCB, CB
(1850–1923) had responded to nationalist politician John Redmond’s
(1856–1918) call to raise the 16th (Irish) Division for the British army,
which John Redmond hoped would form the nucleus of a post-inde-
pendence Irish Army (Dooley 1995, pp. 191–195).
During the independence struggle, nationalist forces burned down
over 200 of the 2000 great houses of the Ascendancy (Phillips 2007).
Huntington Castle survived, despite being occupied for a time by
Republican forces, who “treated it very well, although they locked the
cook in the dungeon, and court-martialled the butler”. (Daily Telegraph
2013). With his mother’s death in 1925 and the political situation stabi-
lising, Manning Robertson decided to return with his family to Ireland.
The Castle was a romantic place to grow up, “[a] real life Hogwarts,
complete with battlements and medieval suits of armour, and the heads
of an astonishing array of wild beasts, including a crocodile (Clarke
2012)”. Ancestral portraits, tapestries, wood panelling, antique furni-
ture, ghostly monks, the ruins of an ancient priory and a bullaun stone,
a granite boulder with a hollow that collects rainwater reputed to cure
warts, all stimulated the imagination of Olivia and her siblings (Strain
and Carthy 2011, p. 18). Olivia Robertson recalled that living in Ireland
meant embracing a new identity.
Our world was turned completely upside down, suddenly you didn’t wear
a red poppy and you didn’t do Guy Fawkes! Everything was painted green.
We had a footman who used to yell “Up with the green white and yella
and to Hell with the red white and blue!” But we children didn’t mind a
bit. We decided to be Irish! (Clarke 2012)
For Olivia Robertson and her siblings, Ireland began to open door-
ways to more mysterious realms.
Some places have a strange atmosphere that seems to belong to both

spheres at once. The veil between this world and the sphere of the soul
seems to be thinner there. When I was eight, I was brought to such a place
[…] built with six-foot thick walls over a fifteen-foot well. To us it was as if
we had the Celtic ‘Well at the World’s End’ in our very house. (Robertson
1975, pp. 6–8)
144 V. Crowley
The children began to meet people with a different frame of refer-

ence from the rationalist one of their parents. Olivia Robertson often
described the children’s visits to “our Merlin”, a local traditional healer.
Sitting at his cottage fire, he awakened for her visions of the area’s Pagan
past. He described how, thousands of years earlier, people had assembled
each morning to greet the sun: first drinking from a well, then bathing in
the river and finally assembling at an altar stone on the steep slope of the
river bank. He showed Olivia Robertson the still-existing altar and well.
This made a strong impression on her, and when she was sixteen, she
painted pictures of the ceremony as he had described it (Comiskey 2012).
Life in Dublin
A sense of being in a liminal space between two worlds was accentuated
by the family also having a home at the prestigious address of 10 Raglan
Road, Dublin 4, an enclave of houses of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy (Irish
Architectural Archive 2015). In Dublin, Manning Robertson started
an architectural practice and became a major figure in civic architec-
ture. Dublin society brought Olivia Robertson into contact with a much
broader social spectrum than would have been possible in England. At
social events, “one met one’s dentist, a peer, a few Ministers, one’s col-
lege friends, some Anglo-Irish, Republicans, Free Staters, one’s doctor,
and artists and the wife of the shop-keeper round the corner (Robertson
1957, p. 31)”. Esoteric currents also rippled through the social milieu.
Dubliners gathered to listen to the mystical poet and theosophist George
William Russell (1867–1935) known as A.E. (Robertson 1953, p. 61),
and spiritualism was a popular source of solace following the enormous
death toll in World War I. Olivia Robertson recalled visiting William
Butlers Yeats’s house for afternoon tea. More interesting than Yeats’s
conversation was the presence of “that most mysterious of all beings
to me—a medium”, but to her regret, her family left before the séance
began (Robertson 1957, p. 27).
There were also frequent stays in England. She received an educa-
tion typical of her class at Heathfield, a famous girls’ boarding school,
after which she enrolled at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in
London, run by Scottish artist and wood engraver Iain Macnab of
Barachastlain (1890–1967). Her studies were disrupted by the dec-
laration of World War II. Iain Macnab volunteered as a pilot. Olivia
Robertson was a pacifist, but volunteered as a Voluntary Aid Detachment
(VAD) nurse (World Heritage Encyclopedia 2016), a body of primarily

middle-and upper-class women that included many artists and writers.
She remained in England long enough to experience the first German
bombing (Clarke 2012), but decided to abandon nursing training. She
returned to Dublin, where she was achieving success as a painter and
had already held her first exhibition. She continued her studies, enroll-
ing not at Trinity College, the usual university for the Anglo-Irish,
but at the Catholic and nationalist-oriented National University, later
University College Dublin, where her father was an external examiner
(Irish Architectural Archive 2015). She studied Art History, gaining first
place in the History of European Painting, and was awarded the Purser-
Griffith Scholarship (Fellowship of Isis 2015b).
After finishing university in 1942, her left-wing-oriented politics
and interest in social issues led Olivia Robertson to a job with Dublin
Corporation. For four and a half years, she worked as a playground
supervisor, a marked contrast to the genteel world of art history. The
playgrounds were the initiative of Commander Bernard Trotter Coote
RN, OBE (1880–1955), an Anglo-Irish former naval officer and spe-
cialist in physical education. They provided play space for children from
some of Dublin’s most desperate slum tenements, “so dangerous, dirty
and poor that even the police steered clear of the neighbourhood”
(Quinlan 2012). Olivia Robertson recalled, “the shaved heads and sharp
red bite-marks of lice on the backs of thin necks: the ubiquitous T.B.,
and rickets, and ringworm, and impetigo. [… O]ne little boy whose
face was crusted so badly with it that I could hardly bear to look at him
(Robertson 1957, p. 89)”.
The ethos of this, her first and only sustained experience of employ-
ment, may have influenced her later leadership style. Commander
Coote’s approach was not what might be expected from someone with
a military background. In designing playgrounds, rather than pre-deter-
mining the layout of paths and play spaces, he believed in observing
where children naturally created paths through the grass and then for-
malising these by asphalting them over. His war experiences had led him
to pacifism, and he believed that play leaders should not be uniformed
authoritarian park keepers, but young women who could work coopera-
tively with the children (Robertson 1957, pp. 82–83).
Both Olivia Robertson’s parents were writers, and she began engag-
ing in the literary world by illustrating their books. In the mid-1940s,
she drew on her experiences in the slum playgrounds to write essays
146 V. Crowley
on social conditions for the influential left-leaning Dublin-based lit-

erary magazine The Bell (1940–1954). Contributors included lead-
ing writers George Bernard Shaw, Elizabeth Bowen, Patrick Kavanagh,
Thomas Kinsella, Brendan Behan and Conor Cruise O’Brien (vide supra,
Matthews 2012). She also worked as a freelance writer and broadcaster
for the Irish state broadcasting service Radio Éireann (est. 1926). From
reporting and essay writing, she moved on to produce six quasi-autobi-
ographical novels and books, drawing on life in rural south-east Ireland
and urban Dublin. St Malachy’s Court (Robertson 1946) was reviewed
favourably by major journals, such as the British political weekly The
Spectator.
She deals in badness of all kinds— dirt, mental deficiency, madness,

deformity, tuberculosis, hunger— but it is all salted with such humour that
you laugh as you read, even though a social condemnation is implied. […
B]y this time you like Miss Robertson so much you are glad of anything
from her. (The Spectator 1946)
Field of the Stranger (Robertson 1948) won the London Book Society
Choice award and the first print-run of Dublin Phoenix (Robertson
1957) sold out on the first day.
Finding the Feminine Face of God

At the age of 40, with successful books behind her, Olivia Robertson
appeared set on the path of many an Anglo-Irish “daughter of the big
house” who, with wars and emigration having removed suitable hus-
bands, was goaded by poverty into becoming a leading name in litera-
ture (Boylan 1996). In the midst of the Dublin slums, however, Olivia
Robertson was going through an inner change.
Down at the playground one day … suddenly it came to me: why was I,
like everyone else … clock-watching, waiting till l I could get off? This was
eternal, now, these children. (Cott 1994, p. 48)
She was impressed by the children’s joy in life, triumphing over poverty,
disease and hunger, and realised that she did not need to aspire to any-
thing different. She could find perfect happiness in the here and now, the
eternal present.
With these realisations, her focus began to turn from social conditions
to inner conditions. The process was gradual and had begun when, at
the age of 29, not long after her father’s unexpected death, she expe-
rienced a vision that affected her profoundly of a woman formed of
crystallised white light whom she felt was somehow connected with the
Moon (Wilson 1992). Other similar experiences followed, including a
vision of a female figure who identified herself as the pre-Christian Irish
goddess Dana (Langstone 1993).
Olivia Robertson’s attitude towards these experiences was ambiva-
lent. She felt at this stage of her life that she was “a perfectly respectable
Anglo-Irish writer”, and “I really didn’t think I would be doing all of
this (Langstone 1993)”. She commented later that the integration of her
rational intellectual side and her growing spiritual life took “a very long
time”, from 1946 to the late 1950s (Cott 1994, p. 49). As with many
mystical visionaries, she found it difficult to explain her visions to her-
self or to others. The publication of her distant cousin Robert Graves’s
seminal work of poesy The White Goddess (Graves 1948) was a key that
gave her the confidence to identify the women of her visions as god-
desses (Wise 2014).2 She did not abandon Christianity, however, “I still
went to Church and accepted Christianity as part of the package of world
religions”, but now she realised that what was missing was “the total
ignorance of, and deliberate attack on the religion of God the Mother
(Wilson 1992)”.
Her brother Lawrence Durdin-Robertson was going through a par-
allel spiritual Odyssey and coming to a similar conclusion. After serv-
ing in the Irish army, he spent World War II working in England at the
Admiralty Research Laboratory. Afterwards he abandoned science for
religion. In 1948, he was ordained an Anglican minister and served as
a parish priest, first in Ireland and then in England (Fellowship of Isis
n.d.). Like his sister, he became increasingly dissatisfied with the narrow-
ness of Christianity. Through reading the Old Testament in Hebrew, he
discovered the many different Hebrew names for God, which led him to
conclude that “God” was not solely masculine singular but could also be
worshipped as the Great Mother Goddess in her various guises (Drury,
p. 81). This precipitated a spiritual crisis. He felt he could no longer
act authentically as an Anglican minister and in 1957 returned home to
Huntington Castle with his young family (Fellowship of Isis n.d.).
In 1960, Olivia Robertson also returned to live at the Castle (World
Heritage Encyclopedia 2016). At first she, her brother and his wife
148 V. Crowley
Pamela put their energies into welfare work for local families, but after
a few years improved state social provision meant they could focus
their energies elsewhere (Wise 2014). The Castle was now her perma-
nent home, but to avoid Ireland’s cold, damp winters, Olivia Robertson
rented a room in London (Carr-Gomm 2014). Here, she pursued an
eclectic programme of esoteric studies at the College of Psychic Studies
and the Spiritualist Association of Great Britain, and attended druid,
Alice Bailey (1880–1949) and Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) events,
enthusiastically enjoying them all (Wilson 1992).
Photographs and portraits of a young Olivia Robertson show her con-
ventionally made-up, coiffured and hatted. The images disguise a defect
that may well have been an additional influence, however, in her turning
towards a spiritual life rather than that of marriage and children. She was
born with a pronounced squint that family members view as significant
in that “[o]ne eye looked to this world, the other to otherworldly realms
(Pryor, Personal Communication 2016)”.
In her forties, she began to emulate one of her visions, a goddess
with, “the beauty of an athlete, the elegance of a dancer, but she was
also a Queen” (Wilson 1992). In vibrant, Bohemian 1960s London, she
adopted the Hippie style of a younger generation, “traveling the tube in
her crimson kaftans to attend seminars and assemblies across the city in
matters such as ESP events and UFO sightings” (Hendy-Harris 2014).
She felt she was experiencing a metamorphosis. She began practising
Yoga and her eyesight improved to the degree that she could abandon
wearing glasses (Wise 2014).
In 1963, the Olivia, Lawrence and Pamela Durdin-Robertson
(referred to hereafter collectively as “the Durdin-Robertsons”), estab-
lished a Centre for Meditation and Study at Huntington Castle
(Maignant 2006). They invited a few senior esoteric teachers to stay at
the Castle to share ideas, including druid teacher Ross Nichols, Chosen
Chief of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (1902–1975), whose
rites Olivia Robertson attended in London (Carr-Gomm 2014). With
Ross Nichols, the Durdin-Robertsons performed druidic rites and rit-
ual dramas in the priory ruins in the castle grounds. They also felt the
need for indoor sacred space and began transforming the lower storey
of the Castle, with its well, cellars, pantry, storerooms and former dun-
geon, into a series of interconnecting shrines and temples dedicated to a
multiplicity of goddesses from different cultures. Exotic even by Catholic
standards, the complex has all the glitz of a Hindu pilgrimage site. As
one reporter described it, “Ireland’s very own Temple of Isis looks like
the set of a particularly lavish production of Aida” (Comiskey 2012). At
the centre of the temple complex is the High Altar, the Holy of Holies,
dedicated to Isis of Ten Thousand Names. Around it is “an astonish-
ing, teeming, dizzying world […] a gallimaufry of literally thousands of
objects some kitsch, some works of art of ancient and modern sources
including shells, feathers, amphorae, crystals, necklaces, chalices, trays,
icons, clay pottery, wall hangings, gold cloth, visionary paintings, china
birds, and masks (Cott 1994, pp. 62–63)”.
Creating the Fellowship of Isis

The Durdin-Robertsons launched the Fellowship of Isis formally in
March 1976 with the publication of a Manifesto. For Olivia Robertson,
the motivation was not the intense feminist theological and political dis-
courses of the period but, “[d]ivine Inspiration”, part of an “awakening”
that was happening everywhere, “accelerated through millions of young
people (Robertson 2011a)”.
Isis might seem a surprising choice of goddess for a movement
founded in twentieth-century Ireland, but this was less a matter of cul-
tural appropriation than a manifestation of Egyptosophy (Hornung
2001, pp. 1–2 and 191), in which Egypt is eternal and a-historical, inspir-
ing, “esoteric thinking aiming at universal harmony and unity based on
assumed links between all elements of nature (Maignant 2011, p. 277)”.
The esoteric Isis owes much to the popularity of Lucius Apuleius’s sec-
ond-century C.E. text, Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass, in which Isis
is worshipped as the syncretic Graeco-Roman “Isis Myrionymous”, Isis
of Ten Thousand Names, a manifestation of all gods and goddesses. The
Golden Ass went through countless editions, including that of Olivia
Robertson’s distant cousin Robert Graves (Apuleius 1950).
In their Manifesto, the Durdin-Robertsons set out the rationale for
founding of the Fellowship of Isis.
Growing numbers of people are rediscovering their love for the Goddess.
At first, this love may seem to be no more than an inner feeling. But soon
it develops; it becomes a longing to help the Goddess actively in the mani-
festation of Her divine plan. (Robertson, Durdin-Robertson and Durdin-
Robertson 1976)
150 V. Crowley
The aim of the Fellowship was to provide ways for people to worship
the Goddess. Important principles included reverence for all manifes-
tations of Life; Love, Beauty and Abundance; and a rejection of asceti-
cism. (Robertson, Durdin-Robertson and Durdin-Robertson 1976).
The emphasis was on the sacralisation of this world rather than world-
rejection, and influences can be discerned of Olivia Robertson’s insight
twenty years earlier in a Dublin playground of the importance of living in
the “now”.
Membership was obtained simply by signing a declaration of sup-
port for the Manifesto, and it was free. Members were not required
to renounce any existing faith. Veneration of the Divine Feminine was
viewed by the Durdin-Robertsons as being compatible with other faith
traditions.
… we don’t interfere with anybody’s religion, they have all got something
to offer. The only thing we don’t like is people being boiled alive or burned
or having their heads chopped off, that type of thing. (Clarke 2012)
With no vows or commitments to secrecy, members could resign or

rejoin as they wished and all activities were optional (Robertson, Durdin-
Robertson and Durdin-Robertson 1976). Although one Irish reporter
described the Fellowship as “one of the world’s most exclusive cults”
(Comiskey 2012), inclusiveness has been its hallmark, stemming from
the Durdin-Robertsons’ belief that the Divine was within everyone.
… you can have Isis in every woman, Osiris in every man. We acknowledge
the individual divinity in each being. (Cooney 2001)
They embraced diversity and, at a time when some esoteric groups were
still ambivalent or hostile to sexual diversity, the Durdin-Robertsons
resisted suggestions from some members to screen applicants by asking
questions such as, have you been in prison, are you an alcoholic, do you
use drugs, are you homosexual or Lesbian? (Robertson 2013).
The Well of Inspiration

Whereas her earlier writings drew on her outer life and the world around
her, Olivia Robertson’s time and literary skills were now devoted to the ser-
vice of the Goddess. She began an enormous liturgical output that provided
the bedrock of Fellowship of Isis practice. She considered her writing to be

Goddess-inspired. At the Castle, she lived a simple life and was proud of
being a lifelong virgin who had never desired children or sex (Clarke 2012).
She developed a regular routine of spiritual practice that echoed the vision
of the area’s Pagan past that as a child she had heard from the local tradi-
tional healer. “I get up at 5.30 am, have a bath like the Hindus do, then
meditate in the temple” (Wilson 1992). She drank daily from the Castle
well, now renamed the Well of Brigid, and after her morning meditation
wrote her rituals and goddess oracles at her desk in her drawing room
directly above the temple (Robertson 2007). In the evenings, she medi-
tated again and at these times Fellowship members could simultaneously
mediate and so attune to the Fellowship’s source (Langstone 1993).
Although she saw her liturgy as inspired, the inspiration was rooted
in Olivia Robertson’s broad education and the Castle library. She
drew not only on Egyptian sources, such as the Pyramid Texts and the
Egyptian Book of the Dead (2nd–3rd millennia BCE), but also on the
Bhavagad Gita (2nd–5th millennia BCE), Mesopotamian, Greek and
African sources, and the Celtic Twilight mysticism of AE (Wilson 1992).
She acknowledged that her rites were syncretic but saw this as a virtue
because they drew together, “[t]he wisdom of East and West, North and
South, uniting us all through the wisdom of the heart (Robertson 1986,
pp. 2–3)”. The Fellowship aimed to make Goddess spirituality available
to all. Ritual booklets were sold to recoup publication costs rather than
to make a profit and, with the arrival of the Internet, all the material was
placed on Fellowship websites where it could be downloaded by anyone
free of charge.
Re-Enchantment Through the Goddess

Olivia Robertson considered that the purpose of Fellowship of Isis rites
was not to change the outer world but to transform the participants, to
“teach the laws of expanding consciousness” and “to affect the minds
and feelings of those taking part (Strain and Carthy 2011, p. 18)”.
Through its rites, the Fellowship answered the needs of contemporary
spiritual seekers, described by scholar Christopher Partridge as a desire
for sacralisation and re-enchantment in the private sphere, while rejecting
the role of organised religion and supporting secularisation in the pri-
vate sphere (Partridge 2004, p. 47). This was a view shared by Olivia
Robertson.
152 V. Crowley
I had always hoped we in the island could stop being religious. We could
give up patriotism as well and turn into socialists. Instead, from the “six-
ties” onwards we had a thirty-year cruel, civil war. (The Times 2013)
In terms of Roy Wallis’ categorisation of religions, the Fellowship

was neither world-rejecting nor fully world-affirming, but world-accom-
modating—accepting of the status quo but attempting to revive lost
traditions and beliefs (Wallis 1984). It was life-affirming rather than
world-affirming. Released from “restrictive thoughts and feelings”,
adherents could realise that “[t]he glory of life is that we can create our
own future!”, and inspired by “the Deities” life would become easy and
joyful (Robertson 1998, p. 1). The centre of religious practice was the
home, which could become a shrine of the Goddess. This made the prac-
tice easily accessible to those with family responsibilities, the words of the
Goddess being:
Wherever a Devotee places my picture, my statue, two candles, incense and

a cup of water, there shall I dwell. There shall Joy, Health and Abundance
be the gifts of my eternal Love. (Robertson 1988, p. 7)
Some of the first Fellowship of Isis rites were ordinations. Candidates

were chosen on the basis of having a vocation to serve the Goddess.
The candidate need not forswear any family ties or her usual work. She
keeps her own way of life. What she does do is to dedicate her life to the
Divine Purpose. (Robertson, Ordination of Priestesses and Priests 1977)
According to Olivia Robertson, ordination in the Fellowship of Isis

(FOI) was demand-led, created to respond to the request of “a lady who
wanted to be a priestess”:
Nearly everything we do is because someone asks us to do it. The FOI is

non-hierarchical because we are modern. (Langstone 1993)
Although the Durdin-Robertsons claimed to be modern, they

were not postmodern. To conduct ordinations, they drew on ancient
sources of authority. Mixing myth, family ancestry and romanticism,
they claimed succession from a hereditary priesthood traced through
the Robertson family’s Scottish antecedents to the legendary Princess

Scota, daughter of the Egyptian Pharaoh Cincris, whom Scottish medi-
aeval sources claimed had settled in Scotland with her husband and child
(Robertson 1980). In the Fellowship ordination rite, the priesthood was
passed through the ancient practice of anointing the candidate with oil,
but to accommodate the far-flung international nature of the Fellowship,
ordination could also be carried out in absentia by “attunement at a dis-
tance through mutual arrangement” (Robertson 1980). Although the
Fellowship offered ordinations and in later years initiations, with a cer-
tain Protestant-flavour Olivia Robertson emphasised that these were no
short and easy route to spiritual transformation.
No solemn ceremony, no vows, no secrets told in a whisper or strange

tongue, no outward insignia, may necessarily confer an extension of con-
sciousness upon another. […T]here can be no short cut to hard work.
Only that which is gained by study, endurance, courage, and the practice
of the virtues stays. (Robertsonc1977, p. 1)
The Fellowship also emphasised what has been an important aspect of

twentieth-century Goddess spirituality—the enchantment, or re-enchant-
ment, of the natural world.
The first revelation of great religions came with Glory, Salvation, Heaven.
I notice there is a second flow of revelation that brings a return to nature.
Physical being is honoured not despised. (Robertson 2011a)
Dedication to the protection of nature was emphasised further with the

creation of a chivalric order—the Noble Order of Tara, the aim of which
was to support those involved in environmental activism.
Nothing stifles the ardent soul more than bureaucracy. Opposing a County
Council is harder than fighting a dragon. […] When we are inspired by the
Deities of the land that which appears impossible may come to pass. We
may yet save rain forests, oceans, the atmosphere, from destruction and-
pollution […]. (Robertson, Noble Order of Tara n.d.)
Like other Fellowship of Isis initiatives, its creation was described as

being demand-led, instigated when in May 1989, “a young American,
154 V. Crowley
Douglas Reagan, knocked at the castle door and asked Lawrence

Durdin-Robertson to knight him so that he could found an Order of
Chivalry to conserve and protect nature” (Kenny 2002). In 1979,
Lawrence Durdin-Robertson had his claim to be the 21st Baron of
Strathloch, a Scottish aristocratic titled revived by his grandfather, con-
firmed by the Chief Herald of Ireland (Fellowship of Isis 2015a). He
considered this gave him the authority to bestow knighthood and this
became the basis for the founding of the Noble Order (Robertson,
Noble Order of Tara n.d.). In time, members who were social activists
were also included; including campaigner Maureen Sullivan (1952–), a
survivor of the Catholic Church’s infamous Magdalene Laundries, and
Deirdre Wadding (1962–), a Wexford councillor for the anti-austerity
People before Profit party.
In 1992, the Durdin-Robertsons reawakened their earlier interest in
druidry to fill another gap in the spiritual landscape when they launched
a new society within the Fellowship of Isis, the Druid Clan of Dana.
This has a structure typical of contemporary druid movements of being
organised in small groups called groves. Again, they sought an authorita-
tive spiritual source for the founding of the Druid Clan. Harking back
to her childhood visits to “our Merlin” Daniel Fox, the “holy man who
lived by the river Slaney at an ancient site”, Olivia Robertson interpreted
these encounters as a mystical initiation into druidry (Langstone 1993).
A Charismatic Leader
The Durdin-Robertsons were well aware of the glamour of their social
position and were willing to use it to draw people to their vision of
Goddess spirituality. Asked by a Daily Mail journalist whether they
found it helped to attract people to the organisation, “you being posh,
and living in a castle?” Olivia Robertson replied, “[n]ot arf! They love
a bit of class!” (Clarke 2012). Aided by their unassailable social position
and openness to being photographed and filmed, the Durdin-Robertsons
engaged in a media charm offensive to promote their vision. The Castle,
exotic temples and public interest in aristocratic eccentricity made the
Fellowship a firm favourite for any programme about new religious
movements, the occult, or mysterious Ireland. Jenny Butler of the Study
of Religions Department, University College Cork, attributes some of
the changing attitudes towards Paganism in Ireland to the positive pub-
licity generated by the Durdin-Robertsons (Butler 2005).
When the Parliament of the World’s Religions was revived in 1993,

the Durdin-Robertsons seized the opportunity to take the Fellowship
of Isis onto a wider stage. By becoming a sponsoring organisation,
Olivia Robertson and the Fellowship had a leading role in the open-
ing ceremony and other prestigious events, such as a working breakfast
for religious leaders including the Dalai Lama (1936–) (Wise 2014).
Establishing Goddess spirituality on an equal footing with the other
faith traditions at the Parliament was a breakthrough for contempo-
rary Paganism. In subsequent Parliaments, Pagans became Trustees on
the Parliament’s Board and in 2015 the Reverend Dr. Phyllis Curott
(1954–) of the Temple of Ara was a Vice Chair and Chair of the
Women’s Task Force (Parliament of the Word’s Religions 2015).
The transition to the mainstream was not easy and was aided by the
ability of the Fellowship of Isis to act across religious boundaries. Olivia
Robertson commented that it was Christian members of the Fellowship
who had helped them, “two Roman Catholic monks, one who works in
the Vatican, he’s a Jesuit, and a Benedictine monk” (Langstone 1993).
Despite Olivia Robertson’s professed Christianity, the Fellowship of Isis
was classified at the Parliament as a Pagan organisation and The Chicago
Sun-Times noted that not everyone was open to the arrival of Goddess
spirituality. “Lady Olivia Robertson of the pagan Fellowship of Isis
shook a rattle and urged everyone to join in worshiping the Goddess—
prompting withdrawal by five Eastern Orthodox groups” (Davis 1993).
However, the media coverage was predominantly positive. The reli-
gious correspondent of the Washington Post attended a Fellowship
of Isis workshop and wrote a favourable article on “Rebuilding the
Old Religion” (Niebuhr 1993), and the BBC World Service broadcast
Olivia Robertson’s Goddess invocation. The invocation struck a par-
ticular chord with some of the women delegates, who were “surprised
and delighted to discover that there were still priestesses in the modern
world” (Wise 2014).
This successful trip to the USA was a breakthrough in another
sense. It was the first time Olivia Robertson had flown by aeroplane.
Subsequently, she became an enthusiastic traveller. Her annual visits to
Fellowship of Isis conferences and events in the USA became a high-
light of the Fellowship calendar and promoted its popularity (Iles n.d.).
Growth was aided by the Fellowship’s ability to span the racial divide and
to attract African members and African Americans, who saw in Egypt a
high African culture that could affirm Black identity. Olivia Robertson
156 V. Crowley
also attended Fellowship of Isis conferences in England and Germany,

became a main speaker at the annual Glastonbury Goddess festivals, and
made pilgrimages to Goddess temples and shrines in Egypt, Japan, and
Hawai’i.
Olivia Robertson’s energies seemed unstoppable. Following the
issue of the Fellowship of Isis Manifesto in 1976, she expanded upon
the beliefs and teachings of the Fellowship in the introductions to her
prolific liturgical output, in a regular magazine Isian News, and through
open letters to the membership. She also handwrote personal letters to
thousands of members and would-be members, often enclosing one
of her sketches of the Goddess. This personal correspondence contin-
ued until the last weeks of her life and created a strong sense of rela-
tionship between her and individual members. With the advent of the
Internet, although she never became a user herself, she wrote regu-
lar bulletins and letters for publication on Fellowship of Isis websites
(Robertson 1999/2013). These communications developed the philoso-
phy and teachings of the Fellowship of Isis and gave new oracles from
the Goddess channelled by Olivia Robertson about the state of the world
and what members could do to address its problems.
Finding a Successor
With the deaths of Lawrence and Pamela Durdin-Robertson, from 1994
when she was in her late seventies Olivia Robertson was the sole remain-
ing founder of the Fellowship. Succession planning was now a major
issue. The Manifesto had declared that the Fellowship was “organised on
a democratic basis” and that all members had “equal privileges within
it” (Robertson, Durdin-Robertson and Durdin-Robertson 1976). There
was no democracy in the usual sense, however. Members had no vot-
ing rights or elected representatives, and there was no obvious route to
choosing a successor.
Over the decades as the Fellowship evolved, the Durdin-Robertsons
had created a structure of groups that members could participate in, if
they wished. This consisted of Iseums (temples) and Lyceums (educa-
tional centres), most of which were located in members’ homes. These
received a Charter from the Fellowship of Isis in the form of a docu-
ment signed and illustrated by Olivia Robertson, but they were in effect
autonomous worship and teaching groups that operated independently
under a Fellowship of Isis umbrella. For the leaders of these groups,
titles had been created, such as “Priestess Hierophant” and “Archdruid”,

that implied that some members were more equal than others. Olivia
Robertson explained this as members having different roles, rather than a
title or lack of it implying a difference in hierarchy.
My brother and I have never claimed to be “heads” … we’re just the

founders. Titles must say what you do – a secretary, or a priestess is just
a definition of work undertaken. The title does not suggest that you are
superior to anyone else. (Wilson 1992)
Olivia Robertson’s charismatic personality provided a unifying focal

point for the different groups and individuals in the Fellowship, which
still had no legal structure, constitution, or formal decision-making pro-
cesses. Although she exercised charisma, Olivia Robertson was not a
charismatic leader in the usual Weberian sense. In classic management
theory terms, her approach could be best described as laissez-faire,
defined as a leadership style in which the rights and power to make deci-
sions about how they carry out their tasks are given to individual work-
ers (Lewin, Lippitt and White 1939). Fellowship of Isis members were
required to register themselves with central Fellowship of Isis member-
ship lists and to agree to the principles in the Manifesto, but there were
no other requirements. Those who established Iseums, Lyceums and
Druid Groves were free to run them in accordance with their own ideas.
Group leaders who trained members for ordination as priests or priest-
esses of Isis or as Druid leaders were free to use whatever curriculum
or training processes they saw fit. This type of laissez-faire leadership is
empowering. It can also make an organisation difficult to control.
In January 1999, in a move to provide an infrastructure for the
future, Olivia Robertson created an Archpriesthood Union of 32 senior
members. Their role was to be custodians of the principles established in
the Fellowship of Isis Manifesto and to uphold the Fellowship’s policies
and values (Rabinovitch 2002). In 2009, on a visit to a Fellowship of
Isis Convocation at Isis-Oasis, California, she created two further struc-
tures, an Archdruid Union for the senior members of the Druid Clan
of Dana and a Grand Commander Union for the Noble Order of Tara.
These groupings were known as the “Fellowship of Isis Union Triad”.
The Triad had no formal decision-making powers, but it included the
most active Fellowship of Isis group leaders (Robertson 1999/2009).
In 2004, she also created the Circle of Brigid, a small group of Irish
158 V. Crowley
members to which she delegated the task of organising the seasonal fes-
tivals that took place in the temples of Huntington Castle (Fellowship of
Isis Central 2004).
In 1981, Lawrence Durdin-Robertson had secured the future of the
temple complex in the lower storey of Huntington Castle by entrusting
it to the Fellowship through Trustees by Deed of Gift (Fellowship of Isis
n.d.). The main part of the Castle remained the home of Lawrence Durdin-
Robertson’s heirs, so whoever Olivia Robertson appointed as a successor
needed to be able to work collaboratively with the Durdin-Roberson family.
A solution appeared when Cressida Pryor, a daughter of Olivia Robertson’s
older sister Barbara, became interested in the Fellowship and was ordained
in 2009. In 2011, after prayer and meditation, Olivia Robertson invited
Cressida Pryor to become her successor with the title of “Steward”, which
she accepted (Pryor 2011; Robertson 2011b).
The Future of the Fellowship

Membership of the Fellowship of Isis grew slowly in the first decade of
its founding, but had spread more rapidly once it penetrated Africa and
the USA and with the advent of the Internet. Membership numbers pro-
vided by the Durdin-Robertsons grew from 5000 in 53 countries in the
1980s, with over half the membership in Africa (Drury 1985, p. 85), to
over 21,000 members, in 72 countries, including forty-six Muslim coun-
tries and China (Clarke 2012). Members are, however, by default mem-
bers for life, so active membership is difficult to ascertain. Like other
movements that began in the 1970s, membership may well be static or
declining.
Regardless of its size, in its homeland of Ireland and beyond, the
Fellowship of Isis has played an important part in encouraging wider
acceptance of Goddess and Pagan spirituality. The charismatic per-
sonality of Olivia Robertson was a driving force in the success of the
Fellowship. If anything, her charisma increased over the decades as she
appeared to defy the usual processes of ageing. This is evident from
Fellowship of Isis members’ reverence for “Lady Olivia”, but also from
the reactions of journalists. Geraldine Comiskey commented for exam-
ple that at the age of 93 and dressed in “colourful robes and carrying
an ornate gold staff” the High Priestess of the Fellowship of Isis would
not look out of place in a Cecil B. de Mille movie, but as she “chanted
ancient prayers” and “resurrected a long-dead language and married

it to modern English, in a rather robust plummy voice, she seemed to
transcend her tiny frame (Comiskey 2012)”. It was not the spiritual
teachings that impressed journalists so much as Olivia Robertson herself.
For Daily Mail journalist Victoria Mary Clarke, the Fellowship of Isis
ritual that she attended was uninspiring, even off-putting, but afterwards
she felt more enthusiastic about life. She attributed this to the power of
Olivia Robertson’s personality.
Olivia proves that a woman can be single, childless, and over ninety and
she does not have to be frail or lonely or invisible. Quite the opposite.
She can be vibrant and passionate and charismatic and be respected and
admired by the rest of the world. And not only that, she can wear whatever
the hell she likes, including purple velvet robes and fancy head-dresses.
Perhaps that is the true message of the Goddesses (Clarke 2012).
Looking to the future, a few months after Olivia Robertson’s death in

2013, tensions began to emerge around the common problem follow-
ing the demise of charismatic leaders of routinisation of charisma (Weber
1947). Moves were made to formalise and rationalise the Fellowship
by creating a common core to the priesthood training, abolishing the
Triad Union with its evocative nomenclature, and establishing the small
Circle of Brigid in Ireland as an advisory “Parliament” (Pryor 2014). It
is too early to judge the long-term impact of these changes and whether
they will increase or decrease membership, but much of the organisa-
tion’s appeal hitherto has its roots in re-enchantment, with the more
exotic aspects of the Fellowship contributing to this. Another issue is, as
Catherine Maignant notes, that the Irish membership is relatively small
and most Iseums are in the USA (Maignant 2011, 280). A number of
prominent and long-standing group leaders in the USA and elsewhere
have rejected recent changes and continue to operate their parts of the
Fellowship with the structures that they see as more true to the original
vision of the founders. It remains to be seen in what form the Fellowship
will survive the passing of the last of its founders and adapt to the chal-
lenges of the ever-changing spiritual landscape that is the reality of global
religion today.
160 V. Crowley
Notes
1. The Celtic Twilight refers to a nineteenth- and twentieth-century intellec-
tual and artistic movement in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany and other
regions of Europe that identified as “Celtic”. It aimed to restore and create
Celtic culture and inspired the collection and translation of folklore and
traditional music, as well as new literature, poetry, music and art. Aspects
of the revival, including romanticisation of the past, a focus on reviving
dying cultures and a rejection of industrialisation, were sources of inspira-
tion for the nineteenth- and twentieth-century occult and Pagan revivals.
2. Robert Graves (1895–1985) was a major twentieth-century poet and liter-
ary figure. A descendant of an Anglo-Irish Ascendancy family, his sources
of inspiration were the Celtic Revival and the Greek and Roman classi-
cal studies of his schooling. His major works include numerous poems, a
memoir—Good-bye to All That (1929), The White Goddess (1948), a trans-
lation of Lucius Apuleius’s The Golden Ass (1950), and historical novels,
including I, Claudius (1934).
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———. 2015a. “Priesthood.” Fellowship of Isis. Accessed January 10, 2016.
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CHAPTER 9
The Power of Writing

in Deguchi Nao’s Ofudesaki
Avery Morrow
Introduction
In 1892 Deguchi Nao (1837–1918), an impoverished Japanese widow
who had suffered for decades in an arranged marriage with an alcoholic
husband began hearing voices and channeling spirits. She was told that
the world was about to be destroyed for its disobedience to the gods
called kami in Japanese, that she had been chosen to be the medium of a
kami named Ushitora no Konjin, that Konjin would try to save as many
people as he could from the cataclysm and usher in a golden age, and
that her little village of Ayabe would become the center of the world.
For several years, Nao attracted the scorn of her neighbors, was
imprisoned and continued a life of poverty with no visible blessings from
the kami. But in 1899, an itinerant spiritualist named Ueda Kisaburō
(later Deguchi Onisaburō, 1871–1948) somehow became attracted
to her cause. Even as he attempted to change the direction of her mis-
sion, through new revelations, he was woven into a divine message much
larger than his own, and despite Nao’s lack of education or social stand-
ing, she ended up becoming the co-founder of a major religious move-
ment named Oomoto. She accomplished all this principally through a
A. Morrow (*) 
University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

166 A. Morrow
single tool: words from the kami, which her unlettered but firm hand
recorded on scraps of paper.
This chapter aims to build on preexisting studies by focusing on how
the writing Nao produces becomes powerful, including the power that
inverts her gendered relationship with Onisaburō and gives her spirit
authority over his. Although the text is sometimes repetitive, the state-
ments most often repeated are actually the most interesting and insight-
ful—the work of a creative imagination (cf. Corbin 1969) that deserves
scholarly attention.
A Note on Sources Used

I hope to show how Deguchi Nao’s automatic writing became an
ordered religious experience that made her a powerful figure. However,
the widely available edition of that writing, Ōmoto shin’yu (Murakami
1979), is not an entirely faithful record but a scripture edited by the
religious group Oomoto. Notably, the messages offered for the period
1892 to early 1896 are reconstructions by Deguchi Onisaburō, and oth-
ers are falsely dated (Nakamura 1920: pp. 385–391; ONH 1964: p. 93;
Yasumaru 1977: pp. 85, 239ff).1 I have attempted to exclude these,
and include unedited manuscript material that is more haphazard, more
personal and more revealing. In Oomoto circles, these manuscripts are
called the “Ofudesaki”.
The original autographs, said to cover over 10,000 pages, were confis-
cated and partially destroyed after the Oomoto movement was violently
suppressed in 1936. A portion rediscovered in 1955 was never made
public. However, a private collection holds rare excerpts and invaluable
manuscript copies dating back to the nineteenth century by Nao’s early
followers, most of which are completely unknown to researchers (see
Deguchi 1986).
I have mainly relied on three redactions of the manuscripts which
focus on parts of the text which I wish to emphasize. The first, and
least reliable, is Onisaburō’s official version, originally published in the
Oomoto newsletter Shinreikai and now helpfully digitized (SSK 1986;
Iizuka 2012). The second redaction, a manuscript called Ōmoto nenpyō,
was compiled in 1918–1919 by a team of researchers led by Deguchi
Uchimaru (Deguchi 1980: pp. 278, 290), and later typeset and pub-
lished by the independent archivist Ikeda Akira (1982). Uchimaru’s
team selected Ofudesaki texts that provided insight into the history of
9 THE POWER OF WRITING IN DEGUCHI NAO’S OFUDESAKI 167
Oomoto and carefully reconstructed the edits that Onisaburō had made
to clean up the group’s theology and avoid dangerous political state-
ments. The third redaction, Keireki no shin’yu, was compiled in 1961–
1963 by another research group led by Uchimaru with an eye to finding
concrete descriptions of Nao’s life. It survives only in mimeograph form
(ONH 1972), although much of it has been quoted in a classic study by
the highly respected scholar Yasumaru Yoshio (1977) and in a massive
biography of Nao by Uchimaru’s son Deguchi Yasuaki (1995), both of
which cover much more of Nao’s life and writing than this phenomeno-
logical study.
Outsider scholarship of Deguchi Nao began with prewar attempts to
dismiss her divine experience, aided by the anti-religious rhetoric sur-
rounding Japan’s psychiatric movement (Nakamura 1920; Kuisako
1971). In the postwar period, Yasumaru Yoshio (1977) recasts Nao as
a religious critic of modernization and state mythology. His analysis of
Nao’s world-critique has been continued by others (Miyata 1988; Ooms
1993). There have also been evaluations of Nao in feminist historiogra-
phy (Yamashita 1990; Hardacre 1992, etc.) and sociological and philo-
sophical analyses (Wöhr 1989; Kawamura 1990; Takezawa 2016). The
uses to which Nao has been put by scholars will be discussed in the con-
clusion.
The Epistemology of Surprise

The operating premise of the Ofudesaki is the ability of divine reality
to surprise the mundane. One constantly encounters phrases like “this
mission will surprise everyone” (May 6, 1903) or that Nao’s village of
“Ayabe will surprise even distant countries” (November 19, 1896). Only
the gods, in Japanese kami, are all-knowing; without divine assistance,
people know nothing and will be taken unaware (September 22, 1898).
From a human perspective, the power of the kami is strange (mezura-
shiki). Normal logic does not apply. The weak can defeat the strong;
things can become totally different than they were before. “Cow shit will
take over the world. We can do strange [mezurashiki] things. That thing
becomes this thing (6 Aug. 1899).” We wake up one morning and dis-
cover the world to be totally new and fresh to us—this is proof of divine
power.
The foolishness of modernized, profit-seeking humans is that they
think the world will always follow scientific rules and that they can
168 A. Morrow
control it using “intelligence and knowledge,” another phrase that

appears frequently in the text. “The kami worry so deeply, but it does
not enter the ears of the people of today’s world, made of intelligence
and knowledge … They imitate foreign beasts, eating beef and horse-
flesh, wearing Western clothes. They do not humble themselves to the
kami (23 June 1898, after Miyata 1988: p. 124).” To the very end,
Konjin insists to Nao that the world is not mechanical but is full of
strange occurrences and divine surprises, always ready to upset the best-
laid plans of mice and men. This greatest secret is really no secret at all,
and it is hard to disagree with the text’s conclusion that “no matter what
intelligence and knowledge you think with, you won’t be able to rule the
world forever (SSK 1986: I: p. 222).”
True knowledge comes through the grace of the kami, who are the
only ones with true omniscience and choose their prophets as they
please. The text does not state that Nao has the intelligence and knowl-
edge to figure everything out for herself. If we claim the text to be her
work, we employ the same line of attack used by Oomoto’s critics and
belittle Nao’s belief that she was a passive receptor of divine truths. If we
want to really know the worldview of the Ofudesaki, we must treat it like
the Quran, as a sacred message experienced by its prophet and as a great
illumination of the darkness of human ignorance.
Our ignorance, manipulated by the intrusion of foreign teachings
and selfishness, is leading our species toward certain destruction, and
the central kami of the Ofudesaki, Ushitora no Konjin, has struggled
for thousands of years to save us. Ayabe will become the center of his
revitalizing mission. The word “hardship” (kurō) appears constantly in
the Ofudesaki, most frequently as a description of Konjin’s efforts, or
an acknowledgment of what Nao has endured. “Kami so desires to save
the world, he has come here bearing hardships, difficulties, mortifying
regrets (2 April 1903).” Through the magic of writing, he can express
these regrets to Nao and provide consolation:
Deguchi, do not worry. When Deguchi worries, Kami’s heart sinks and he
can’t do as he pleases… In just a bit we will bring you to an honest place,
so prepare yourself. Making money won’t do. With this spiritual training,
you can do any task. Although you are a woman, Deguchi, you have been
hardened with hardships for a long time, so you can do anything, but this
task is one that would be asked of no one, you are sent out aimless and
penniless, so it would be cruel if this very great task could not be done.
You will not be alone. (19 Sept. 1900)
While Konjin is convinced of Nao’s abilities, it would be a grave insult

to the text to render this passage as “I am a woman, but … I can do
anything.” This is one of many messages addressed to Nao by what she
perceived as a spiritual being, and only by recognizing the existence of
Konjin in Nao’s experience we can see why her religious experience was
not principally about “liberation” for herself, but was about heavenly
beings offering love to her. Figure. 9.1
(Wöhr 1989)
This is not to deny Nao’s desire for escape from her decades of mis-
fortune. Her own description of her life was unambiguous: “I [was] a
karma-person being boiled off in hell’s cauldron (Deguchi 1995: 227).”
However, as Yasumaru notes (1977: 133), there is no hope for salvation
in this saying of Nao’s, which recalls the tortures endured in Buddhist
hells and assimilates the karmic worldview that hardships, including the
hardships particular to women, are the result of past misdeeds. When a
higher power acknowledges your hardships and puts them in light of a
greater undertaking, it sounds totally different from these laments.
Nao endured hardships for decades. Konjin tells her that he has
endured them for over 3,000 years, demeaned as an “evil god” and
dropped into the latrine (January 25, 1897; May 5, 1900). But all their
suffering has been toward a noble end, and now the time has come for
their work to bear fruit, like a “flower sprouting from a cooked bean (8
July 1897).” In one of the few surviving manuscripts from Oomoto’s
earliest days, Konjin even riffs on a popular song to describe his rela-
tionship with Nao: “Ise counts on Tsu, Tsu counts on Ise. Ushitora no
Konjin counts on Nao (Ikeda 1982: 28).”
Many works of theology and poetry in world religions describe this
emotional aspect of the relationship between an individual and her God.
A glaring difference between the Ofudesaki and most texts, though, is
in the nature of Konjin as a being. He is not merely a name for God;
he is himself an individual kami in a polytheistic universe. On one hand,
the multiplicity of kami spring from a single root, the Great Origin or
Oomoto: “at the start of the world, it all started out as one. The kami are
of a single womb (17 Aug. 1898)”. But distinct to the Ofudesaki is this
belief that the other kami are not merely names for one and the same
170 A. Morrow
Fig. 9.1 Oomoto founder Deguchi Nao, in 1916
thing. Rather, they have been fully individuated and are not even neces-
sarily conscious of each other.
Konjin has been hidden away for thousands of years and is unknown
to most of the deities, but he has a few friends, all female: Empress Jingū,
whom Nao would have known of from her appearance on Japan’s first
banknotes (January 13, 1897), Dragon Princess Otohime from the folk
tale of Urashima Taro, who lives under the ocean and keeps treasure
there (November 22, 1896; September 3, 1898) and an original figure,
Kinkatsukane no Ōkami—Great Goddess of the Palace Gold—who is
said to be an imperial princess wearing crimson hakama trousers under-
neath a twelve-layered kimono (ONH 1972: III: p. 35). Elsewhere
Kinkatsukane is described as an androgynous figure clutching a golden
gohei wand, a type of ornament that would have been seen at traditional
Konpira shrines in the area. Kinkatsukane, like Konpira, is described as
a kami that can both start relationships and break them off (Yasumaru
1977: 152; June 19, 1900). All of these powerful and wealthy female
assistants, derived from a variety of sources in Japanese folklore, lend
their protection to Nao and occasionally possess her (August 1899, in
SSK 1986: V: p. 75).
The language of the Ofudesaki paints a beautiful and enticing picture.
Together with the female assistants, other friends like tengu and daruma2
(April 5 and July 1, 1897), and the “guardian spirits” of Oomoto’s
believers, Nao and Konjin will renew the world, destroying the unstable
“foreign spirits” and ushering in divine perfection, the “world of crys-
tal,” “world of [the savior] Miroku,” or “world of pine.” This is not, as
Yamashita Akiko claims, a “new human world” (1990: 23), but a world
ushered in by the kami and ruled quite hierarchically by the kami. Nao is
called to this task. Nao is Konjin’s unique messenger. Hardened by dec-
ades of unspeakable suffering, she alone is able to bear the responsibility
of bringing Konjin into the world.
Seeing Meaning in the World

It took roughly a decade for this worldview to become fully articulated
to Deguchi Nao. A pious woman from a young age, and the victim of
many cruelties which increased that piety, Nao had occasionally demon-
strated clairvoyance by the mid-1880s and was seized by a fit of auto-
matic writing at least once. Already, this writing was a surprise to her,
as she believed herself illiterate and indeed could not read what she had
written (OSH 1924: p. 109). At that time, such incidents did not inter-
fere with her everyday life, but starting in January 1892, shortly after her
daughter Yone went mad and was enclosed by her husband in a cage,
Nao became subject to intense “attacks” that induced frequent posses-
sions and dramatically changed her behavior. The Ofudesaki describes an
172 A. Morrow
incident in which a kami descended into Nao in the middle of the night
and began screaming “here I am on Earth, what a wonderful place!”
hurting Nao’s throat and awakening and angering the neighbors. Such
incidents were undesirable to Nao, and she could control them only
with great difficulty. After the third such “attack,” Nao was completely
shunned by her village, and she would pick rags during the day and listen
to divine messages all night (ONH 1972: I: p. 27, III: p. 35).
Although Nao lived in poverty and had no income beyond rag pick-
ing, she refused money from her daughter. On the contrary, she began
offering handfuls of dirt to her visitors, explaining that money will ruin
the world, but dirt is a gift from the earth, the source of food and life.
Her neighbors deserted her over such antics, but a vagrant female sha-
man, also shunned in the region due to a long record of playing cheap
confidence tricks, befriended Nao and mooched off her for several
months while offering prayers for Yone’s exorcism. She helped Nao build
a shrine in her yard, venerating a stone that Yone had hurled from her
cage. In front of the shrine, Nao created a diorama of Konjin’s prophecy:
an explosive-looking bush to symbolize the coming chaos, a pine tree
for the kingdom of Kami, and an omoto plant, a treasured symbol of cel-
ebration. This omoto could be the source of the name Oomoto that Nao
gave to her religious movement (ONH 1972: I: p. 19; Deguchi 1995:
pp. 311–315, 364–368).
The village became suspicious of Nao’s warnings of fiery apocalypse in
light of several arsons around the area, and in 1893, she was imprisoned
in a small cage for 40 days. Nao did not interpret her harsh imprison-
ment as a final rejection by society. She spent her time writing oracles on
the walls, which turned into a habit of automatic writing that became the
Ofudesaki, and singing songs to passersby. Konjin told her that it was a
mere test on the path to creating a world-changing movement, and once
she was released she moved along with the task of Oomoto (Kawamura
1990, 2007).
But she must have realized, as well, the need for the company on the
divine mission. Although there are no Ofudesaki surviving from this
time, the quest for social legitimacy that followed her imprisonment
makes this clear. Oomoto could never merely be a closed relationship
between Nao and God: For the divine task to succeed, it had to be open
in its interrelation with the larger world. This meant that both Konjin
and Nao had to appeal to the believers, they did have in order to dis-
cover and harness some sort of authority. Beginning in October 1894,
she became a local agent of the new religious movement Konkokyō

(Deguchi 1995: p. 434).
Appealing to Men and Losing Adachi

Nao came to rely on local patrons of Konkokyō, notably two adult men
named Adachi and Aoki. She acted as their servant, sitting beneath
them, addressing them as “sensei” (teacher), and preparing their food, all
apparently from the hope that they would be responsible interpreters of
Ushitora no Konjin’s messages. The Ofudesaki seems to respond to the
disrespect with which she is held: “Master Adachi, Master Aoki, this Nao
is a woman, so please figure for yourselves that she suffers in her heart
(Yasumaru 1977: p. 119, p. 122).”
Language cannot pierce the hearts of these men. They have serious
doubts about the value of the Ofudesaki, as one admonishment reflects:
“This Ofudesaki is not written by Nao! Ushitora no Konjin is borrowing
Nao’s hand to write it. Even if I say this, some have severe doubts, and
this slows things down and causes big problems for Kami. See this and sit
down (29 Sept. 1897)!” Konkokyō followers, we learn, are giving Konjin
“arbitrary names” from the imperial Kojiki pantheon or elsewhere, and
advertising spiritual healing as if the all-powerful kami were mercantile
“billboards.” Konjin will not go along with this: “This Konjin is not for
sick-healing! He will turn the world well upside down (1 Sept. 1898).”
As the text later summarizes, “Ayabe’s Oomoto is different from other
churches (4 Sept. 1900).”
At several points between 1895 and 1899, the Ofudesaki liter-
ally becomes magic writing. Konjin repeatedly draws an upside-down
Chinese character for “great” and a cross inscribed in a fat wheel. These
are later described as “symbols that will change the world” (April 1899;
October 6, 1903). Konjin seems to be attempting to use this paper
magic to call into existence a worship hall for himself, a “house under
heaven” that will “enlighten the world.” (Hino n.d.) Two decades later,
Konjin would be worshiped in an enormous hall which has been rebuilt
and still stands today, but as Nao’s hand scrawled these strange sigils in
the depths of poverty, such a thing must have seemed utterly ridiculous
to Adachi and Aoki. Oomoto’s leadership never explained these symbols
very convincingly (SSK 1986: VI: pp. 20–21; Deguchi 1994: p. 78), and
they were excised from all printed editions of the Ofudesaki. Today they
are preserved only in rare handwritten transcriptions (see Fig. 9.2).
174 A. Morrow
Fig. 9.2 Sigils copied from the Ofudesaki. From second-generation transcrip-

tions by Tokushige (1954) and Hino (n.d.)
Eventually, Konjin attempts to break from Konkokyō and assures Nao

that her daughter Sumi will inherit the leadership of Oomoto. Men in
general, says Konjin, are too egoistical to be relied on (September 23,
1897; November 8, 1897). But Nao cannot go alone, and by 1898,
the situation has completely deteriorated. Konjin admits to Nao on 1
September that “this Oomoto is not going well.” To Adachi, the text
adopts the weirdly deferential language. “We have many tasks for you,
Lord Adachi,” admits Konjin, but “we hope it is not too much for
you to convert Lord Okumura and put him underneath you (12 Dec.
1898).” As most studies of the Ofudesaki note, it is a fierce and shock-
ingly irreverent document, but here it is measured, even polite in its
treatment of Adachi. Konjin is becoming subservient to his servants. The
power of writing seems to be failing.
In October 1898, Nao interviewed a charismatic spiritualist named

Ueda Kisaburō, who had learned of her reputation while passing through
the area. At the time, though, she was distrustful of him. He informed
her that he was possessed by the God Inari, but back in 1892, the sha-
maness had diagnosed Nao’s insane daughter Yone with possession by
Inari. Probably, Nao associated Inari with a malicious fox spirit (Deguchi
1995: pp. 365, 475).
One can only imagine Nao’s feelings after all these failures, but Konjin
maintains an optimism about the eventual success of his plan. In early
1899, we read the following:
An honest person has been prepared for you, so until this honest per-
son arrives you won’t understand. When that person should arrive, you
will know immediately. The messengers of Konko[kyō] may act high and
mighty, but when the honest one presents himself, they can shuffle back
and scratch their heads [in deference]. (6 Feb. 1899)
This is a rather bold claim for the spirit of a powerless, impoverished

woman to make, but a few months later, Konjin comes through as he
had promised: He issues a letter to Ueda, requesting that he return to
Ayabe.
Becoming a Man and Gaining Onisaburō

Ueda responded to the summons—probably he was convinced that Nao
had a real connection to the spirit world. On July 3, 1899, he met her
again in Ayabe. At this time Nao’s young daughter Sumi was an abused,
mistreated servant girl, and Konjin first uses the magic of language to
dub her “Lady O-Sumi,” Nao’s divinely appointed successor, before
moving on to an evaluation of Ueda:
Nao, your successor is your lastborn, Lady O-Sumi! Ueda Kisaburō, with
whom we have a bond, will be given a great task. In its place, we will make
him a great general. This great person will be so made by Nao’s power. If
this great person is here, Nao is going to be all right. … Lord Ueda will do
a mighty hardship for us. Eight are the number of [Nao’s] children, but he
is more fine than all of them. (17 July 1899)
Ueda founded a college of theosophy in Ayabe, and his teachings

won the approval of Adachi and other locals. But with his opportunities
176 A. Morrow
came a host of problems. Ueda was a thoroughly unreformed soul with

a fickle, opportunistic, entrepreneurial spirit. Like L. Ron Hubbard, he
had once told a friend that he could make a lot of money starting a reli-
gion (Miyata 1988: p. 104). The spirit of cooperation was hampered
by the complexity of Ueda’s theosophical theories. The text endorses
Ueda’s theosophy on September 3 and September 17, 1899, paralleling
it to Konjin’s Ofudesaki, but on October 23, it tells him to desist from
his “foreign learning,” meaning Chinese characters, and write using only
native Japanese kana—in modern terms, the writing level of a seven-year-
old (Ikeda 1982: p. 87n).
As they attempt to work out their differences, the Ofudesaki
refers to Konjin, and by extension Nao, as “the transformed male” or
henjōnanshi. After several months, Ueda becomes known in the text as
“the transformed female” or henjōnyoshi, sometimes even shortened to
“the female.” This turns out to be the spark for a great web of parallels
which would develop in the years to come.
In Buddhism, henjōnanshi is a term from the Lotus Sutra describ-
ing women who become men through faith. It has its roots in the late
classic and the medieval perception that women needed to become men
in order to reach enlightenment. But the Ofudesaki’s use of the term
has no relationship to its Buddhological use. If the text had an aware-
ness that henjōnanshi was a Buddhist term, this would surely be raised
at some point, since from time to time, it warns that Buddhas are for-
eign spirits that took power away from the kami and that the kami are
now going to regain control (e.g., December 15, 1896; May 5, 1897;
May 23, 1898). While Ushitora no Konjin is not as antagonistic toward
Buddhas as he is toward Western modernizers, the soteriology of the text
orbits entirely around his own divine mission, which ties the transformed
male to a transformed female.
Ushitora no Konjin is identified as the henjōnanshi as early as
November 30, 1898,3 but the details of this is are not made clear. On
October 20, the Ofudesaki confidently pronounces that Sumi ought to
marry Ueda to ensure both of their positions in the succession. Although
Sumi found Ueda a bit effeminate, both sides agreed to an arranged
marriage, and the wedding was held on January 31, 1900, the Lunar
New Year (Deguchi 1995: p. 524). By February 1900, however, it is
clear that the text is searching for an accurate way to describe in divine
language why Nao remains “patriarch” of this new divine household. In
earlier years, the Ofudesaki spoke of the marriage of the sun and moon
and various other kami couples (Tokushige 1954, Hino n.d.)4, but this
situation is clearly more complex and requires deeper consideration of
the nature of men and women. On the fourth, we read:
The henjōnanshi is a man by nature—for a man does not tell a lie—a

woman does not come out in the open so even if something is a bit wrong,
that does not mean coming out into the open—but this Task is like a
loom. Just the warp won’t do, just the weft won’t do, you haven’t under-
stood up until now, it’s all been a mess, but from now on we’ll align warp
and weft, some work for the workers. Spinning the thread, threading the
reel, spooling the reel, making the binding-reel, these jobs are a hardship.
This metaphor must be grounded in Nao’s own experiences at the

handloom. The act of weaving is still sacred in Oomoto today,5 and
indeed, the Ofudesaki itself was called “Ayanishiki” or “weave of colors”
in its early versions (Tokushige 1954). Presumably, the alignment of
“warp and weft” implies that part of her hard labors will be given to
someone else. But it is not yet clear from the extant text of the Ofudesaki
whether the submissive “woman” here is Ueda. Two days later, we hear
some musings about him, as his “bond” (innen) with Nao needs to be
“made clear.” The text also discusses saniwa, the traditional male inter-
preters of female oracles. Konjin desires a saniwa-like male partner and
yet wants his own message to be known without being diluted into
another sect like Konkokyō.
Everyone will be coming to this Oomoto from many countries, so all

the world’s guardian spirits will descend upon here, so many saniwa will
appear. Distinguish between the saniwa and save all the people! … If there
are bad saniwa, then bad guardian spirits will appear, so the saniwa are the
most important thing. … Right now, Deguchi, when I speak to you, Ueda
is also thinking that it is your body speaking, and if he is not listening to
what you’re saying, if he becomes like Adachi, it will be pitiful to me …
Up until now, we have let Ueda do whatever he wanted. From now on he
will become a bit constrained.
Konjin does not want Ueda to leave him as Adachi has done, but
he worries about his own identification: He wants to be known as the
spirit inhabiting Nao and not as Nao play-acting. Getting Ueda to accept
Oomoto’s spiritual world is key, and the unusual discussion about good
and bad saniwa becomes comprehensible in this context. About a week
178 A. Morrow
later, on February 14, 1900, the first explicit link between the Nao–
Ueda relationship and the male–female duality finally appears.
Deguchi [Nao] and Master Ueda’s spirits have a bond, so they will do
a strange thing! This transformed male, and Master Ueda’s transformed
female, if you can understand that the two of them have a bond, the world
will ring! … I will transmit these things to Lord Ueda and make him write
them! There is a theosophy that I will make him understand about this
ancient bond, so I will make Ueda understand these things! And I will
show you how to understand Ueda’s spirit!
Indeed, after this revelation, “Master Ueda” assumes a greater posi-

tion in the text. Just a few months later, Konjin dubs him Deguchi
Onisaburō, assigning him the surname of his mother-in-law. He keeps
this name for the rest of his life and will be called Onisaburō below
(Deguchi 1995: p. 529). Onisaburō is very nearly named Nao’s succes-
sor, on account of his marriage to Sumi (August 1 and 12, 1900). He
is often called a woman, in a simultaneously playful and serious way:
“Ueda’s work is a hardship, although it’s not like a man … Deguchi
and Ueda are warp and woof” (September 9, 1900). Now Onisaburō,
too, endures hardships for the sake of the true task; he is one-half of the
weaving. By “constraining” him with the title of transformed women, he
is irreversibly harnessed.
The context in which henjōnanshi is used does not imply that one side
should be kept and the other thrown out. There is no evidence in the
text that it relates to the Buddhist term, and it would be grossly unfair to
claim that Nao had a “negative assessment of male traits.” On the con-
trary, the use of henjōnanshi alongside the entirely novel term henjōnyoshi
is correctly identified by Ooms (1993: p. 114) as an ideal of alignment.
Previously Onisaburō had no strictly defined role in Konjin’s plan, but
this language reveals a metaphysical order to Nao and Onisaburō’s
human alliance.
Nao led Onisaburō on pilgrimages and ceremonies called shusshu,
as expertly described and analyzed by Ooms (1993: pp. 58–65), and
the text generally offers divine reassurances that his free spirit can be
controlled and put to use. He is enjoined to print the Ofudesaki in a
newspaper (August 19, 1900) and to “put up a newspaper company”
(October 16, 1900)—both tasks were accomplished as soon as he had
money, roughly a decade later. The “female” can join the “male” in
bringing about the future Age of Miroku by abandoning the pursuit of

worldly things and reading the Ofudesaki (December 6, 1903), some-
thing which Onisaburō did end up doing with remarkable diligence.
A Strange, Shamanistic, and Spiritual Metamorphosis

How did “manliness” relate to Nao’s own personality? On September
25, 1900, Konjin reminds her of an inexplicable incident that once hap-
pened in her life: On her way to see her daughter Hisa, who had been
stricken with madness, a stranger approached her on the road and
called her a “strange [mezurashiki] woman.” The man said that she had
a “man’s eyes” (cf. September 29, 1903) and called her a “man” and
“seven women.” Konjin tells Nao that this stranger was “not human,”
but was some kind of being predicting to her all that would follow: “You
now understand that this was fate. Since December 1891 your heir Yone
has again gone mad—Hisa in Yagi has gone mad—from January 1892,
you too, Deguchi Nao, have seemed mad to the world—the origin of
the madness of all three is madness caused by the kami … for eight years
we have warned, by bringing together the fated ones, we can do strange
[mezurashiki] things in Ayabe. To transform the world, weird people will
appear, and weird things will happen [emphasis added].” This is what was
to be proven: Not that Nao’s true nature is to be a man, but that Nao’s
true nature is to be weird.
I hesitate to venture that in Nao’s eyes, Onisaburō was probably a
“weird person” constantly offering annoying symbolic interpretations
of the divine mission. But the text does not say this; Onisaburō is not
mentioned on this day. Rather, in the immediate context of the stran-
ger’s prophecy and the Deguchi family’s madness, Nao herself is one of
the “weird people.” Weirdness is something not of this world. The English
“weird”, in its modern sense, is derived from Macbeth’s “weird sisters,”
witches who control the fates of men; the Japanese word in the text, hen,
literally means “changed,” a weird departure from an initial state, and
the same hen used in henjōnanshi. Nao has changed into the henjōnanshi,
and become hen and mezurashiki, not as a psychological self-discovery,
but because of the same surprising, strange, dangerous power that has
driven her daughters insane and taken over her as a medium; a power
that tells her, through automatic writing, of its origin in the spirit world.
Furthermore, this divine madness and spiritual transformation has made
180 A. Morrow
her unusual and apart from the ordinary world, as it has done to her
counterpart Onisaburō.
To reiterate, Nao did not see the teaching of transformed male and
female as something she herself was imposing on Onisaburō to put
him in his place, nor as an ego-conscious “identity,” but as a mysteri-
ous fate imposed on both him and her by the will of the kami. Indeed,
metamorphosis is typical for the kami: as Konjin tells her, “Kami changes
into this and that. Everyone takes him for someone else. This Oomoto
is a shapeshifter (bakemono)! [But the] heart doesn’t move one bit
(3 March 1900).”
“A Great Battle of Male and Female”

The honeymoon did not last long, for Onisaburō was skeptical of
Konjin’s total rejection of worldly authorities and “intelligence and
knowledge.” When Nao and her followers protested in front of a police
station against a fine she had incurred for rejecting vaccinations, pro-
claiming that the kami were more powerful than doctors and police,
Onisaburō paid the fine behind her back (Ooms 1993: p. 64). Onisaburō
attempted to change Oomoto’s outlook and teachings to fit in better
with mainstream society and Shinto mythology, and Nao fought back.
Now that they were bound together, they had to decide matters of lead-
ership together, but this was clearly no easy task.
The surprising thing about the Ofudesaki is that it continues to
serve as an instruction to Nao even in these years of strife. It does not
reject Onisaburō, but paints a broader picture of his “antagonist” role
in a larger divine drama, borrowing terms from Nao’s beloved Noh
theater and making mythological analogies that continue to tie him into
Konjin’s mission by elaborating on earlier terminology. We learn there is
another Konjin, called Hitsujisaru no Konjin. This kami has a strong will
and is not listening to Ushitora no Konjin yet, but soon he will descend
into Onisaburō and fix these problems. Until that happens, Onisaburō,
infected by “intelligence and knowledge,” can only reflect the troubled
state of the modern world.
Have we not said, in every Ofudesaki, that you cannot understand this
mission with intelligence and knowledge?! … When Hitsujisaru no Konjin
breaks his ego and reforms Ueda’s heart, afterwards things will go accord-
ing to the mission … (4 May 1902)
Ueda Kisaburō is the antagonist portraying a disordered world. (20 March

1903)
The [transformed] female’s hardship role became in June 1902 the role of
the disordered world, [but] from then on she will gain the protection of
Hitsujisaru no Konjin (27 March 1903, in ONH 1972: II: p. 31).
Why is it that Onisaburō is trying to change the nature of the divine mis-
sion? It is not merely that he is “disorderly”: He has a large number of
kami possessing him, like Inari and Hitsujisaru no Konjin, but also trick-
ster spirits and the rebellious Shinto kami Susano’o. To explain why this
is, the text returns to the metaphor of warp and weft, giving it a surpris-
ing new depth again grounded in Nao’s own experience with the hand-
loom.
The [transformed] male’s role is the warp, the female’s role is the weft.
The warp doesn’t change one bit, it restores things to the ancient original,
[and] no one knows its accomplishments from the start. It’s the role of
piercing through in a single thread. The woman’s role is the weft, so the
spirits protecting her change as well! (27 July 1902)
It is known that this [divine] world will come, so the spirit of the trans-
formed male and the spirit of the female, split from the [same] ancient
spirit, align good and evil, the male being the role of the warp, the female
the role of the weft, the weft being the many-colored role (13 June 1903).
The warp of a loom stands straight as the weft ends pass through it, unit-
ing them into a cloth. But the weft is not usually a single thread: It is
desirable to thread ends of multiple colors, by which even rags might
make a beautiful pattern. Thus, it is Nao’s “male” duty to stand firm and
represent the ancient and unchanging way of Ushitora no Konjin, while
it is Onisaburō’s “female” duty to reflect all the “many-colored” spirits
and changes of the world.
As they continue to argue, their reconciliation takes on metaphysi-
cal importance. Within the Ofudesaki, Oomoto’s leadership dispute is
not about the legitimacy of Onisaburō’s claim to authority, and it does
not throw the movement into question. Rather, there is strife precisely
because Oomoto is different from “other churches” and properly corre-
sponds to the reality of the world!
182 A. Morrow
What happens in the world is all carried out within Oomoto, so it is shown
to us as the transformed male and female, so with this war within you will
better understand the success and failure of Japan and foreign countries
(27 February 1903).
Good and evil are comparing their powers, so they show us a great battle
of male and female, so for people who draw close to us, Oomoto’s ways
are completely different from the ways of the other churches, so male and
female have been carried out within this Oomoto (27 April 1903, in ONH
1972: II: p. 31)!
Unlike an ordinary church, which would have a single chain of

authority to make the universe appear under control to members—or
indeed, unlike imperial Japan, where the Emperor was meant to keep
the peace between conflicting political interests—Oomoto shows us the
reality of spiritual warfare between good and evil and between men and
women. If Nao and Onisaburō’s problems can be resolved, then there
is hope to resolve the imbalances between good and evil and men and
women in the world as well.
What the text ends up accomplishing is fascinating. Limited to the
medium of text, Konjin cannot stop Onisaburō from going behind Nao’s
back or over her head. If the shusshu pilgrimages were a means of con-
trolling Onisaburō, as Ooms proposes, they did not accomplish this
either. But what the Ofudesaki does succeed at is explaining Onisaburō’s
behavior within its divine mission. No matter how much he wrestles, he
cannot escape from being the transformed female.
Indeed, Oomoto became Onisaburō’s destiny and fate. Following
the failure of several apocalypse prophecies, Nao’s followers deserted
her, and Onisaburō left Ayabe to seek more orthodox priestly training in
Kyoto, leaving her family in wretched starvation. But Onisaburō eventu-
ally returned and resumed Oomoto’s activities, this time making himself
the primary spokesperson and authority for their group.
Onisaburō as Miroku
As Onisaburō negotiated the new form of Oomoto in 1909–1910,
Konjin delivered a “sealed” Ofudesaki to be opened after Nao’s death
(ONH 1964: p. 389). It reads in part: “Succession of Oomoto in
Ayabe will forever be to those with a woman’s body. A woman’s body
will forever carry out the divine mission, and a man’s body will forever
choose the spirit of a transformed female to rule the world. This task
cannot be changed … Your lastborn Sumi, when she becomes the second
to inherit the divine task, will become the great god Kinkatsukane” (26
May 1910).
This message’s emphasis on a “woman’s body” and the immutability
of Konjin’s commands, as well as the decision to hide it from Onisaburō
until after Nao’s death, reflects the real challenge to the Ofudesaki’s
authority being made at the time. Yet even at this dire point, the “trans-
formed female” was included in Oomoto’s leadership. This message
emphasizes the continuity of the 1909–1910 reorganization with the
battles of 1902–1904, reminding Onisaburō of his complement, and
Nao of hers.
It turned out, too, that this was not the final word. On June 18,
1916, another Ofudesaki reiterated female succession. But at the cere-
mony of the Opening of Kamishima a few months later, where Nao and
Onisaburō played equal roles, an Ofudesaki was produced from Nao’s
hand that proclaimed Onisaburō to be Miroku, the savior god who
transforms the world (ONH 1964: p. 347; October 4, 1916). At that
time, Nao said to Sumi: “Kami is telling me that sensei [Onisaburō] is the
great god Miroku. No matter how many times I listen, he says it again
and again. Up until this moment I’ve had such a great misunderstand-
ing (Deguchi 1995: p. 697).” The last Ofudesaki from her brush, which
came on July 25, 1918, has a sense of closure: “The hands of the trans-
formed male, by Ofudesaki, showed the origin of the root of the world,
and the time has come for the transformed female to persuade people to
listen. […] We have nothing more to say.”
Nao’s own feelings about Onisaburō and the success of Oomoto
are not really separable from her experience of the Ofudesaki as a rev-
elation to her. Although there are many hundreds of pages of Ofudesaki
accompanying years of struggle in the divine task, the unity of oppo-
sites designed in 1900 becomes a fixture. Onisaburō’s spirit is a “great
general” and Konjin’s complement in the divine task. He may not be
Konjin’s own successor, but he is a “ruler of the world” and is indeed
eventually affirmed as the world-transforming “Miroku.” Nao herself
admitted to misunderstanding what Konjin had been telling her; this
strange process of automatic writing had the ability to drive confusion
from her mind so that she could know the true thoughts of the kami.
184 A. Morrow
Onisaburō’s respect for Nao by this time was unambiguous. In his

newsletter Shinreikai, where he printed a sizable majority of the Ofudesaki,
he also explained Nao’s character and the basis of his faith in her:
Other religious founders are half spirit and half ego, or maybe even 70 or
80 percent ego, being religious founders mostly as mere humans. But the
founder of Oomoto has a body which is entirely a vessel for the Kami, one
hundred percent moving in the spirit, and not a tenth of her actions come
from her own ego. This point is of the highest value for explaining the
peerless pure-mindedness of her revelations. (SSK 1986: I: p. 57; emphasis
in original)
This was no empty talk for Onisaburō. This is the conviction which
drove him to publish Nao’s Ofudesaki, which was eventually suppressed
by the censors for its subversive content, leading to his own prosecu-
tion and imprisonment. Until the group’s final suppression in 1936,
Onisaburō placed terms such as “divine mission,” Ushitora no Konjin,
and the transformed male and female at the center of his teachings,
encouraging people to read Nao’s Ofudesaki to understand their mean-
ing (Kuisako 1971: pp. 280–282).
Following Nao’s death in November 1918, Onisaburō, the trans-
formed female, buried her in such an enormous and elaborate mauso-
leum that the Japanese government eventually ordered it destroyed for
too closely resembling an imperial grave (Yasumaru 1977: p. 245). The
“sealed” Ofudesaki was retrieved, read openly, and published. Revived
in the postwar period, Oomoto outlived Onisaburō and continues to be
run by Nao’s female descendants today.
Conclusion: Reading the Ofudesaki as a Religious Text

When we try to incorporate the other into our own understanding, we
are often quite tempted to leap to the conclusion that the other shares
our desires and visions. Despite being an unpredictable and elusive text
of unclear agency, Deguchi Nao’s Ofudesaki contains much material that
looks familiar to modern-day scholars: anger about widespread injustice,
desire to destroy large social systems, and an irreverent attitude toward
the sacred cows of the modernizing state. To wit, it looks like Nao her-
self, writing from a tiny shack in an impoverished nineteenth-century
town, is engaging in cultural critique. As Isomae Jun’ichi writes (2010:
pp. 317–318) in his “positive deconstruction” of Yasumaru Yoshio:
Yasumaru values religion highly, but that is because, in his words, religion
“may be thought of as the most primeval shape of people’s spiritual inde-
pendence from state control, and the essential form of internal authority.”
For Yasumaru, religion is the domain strongest in independence, and in it
one can establish a vision of totality where for the first time reality can be
handled from completely critical standpoint. In order to absolutize social
criticism, a theory of criticism of the world became necessary, based in an
apocalyptic vision where “this world is the ‘world of evil’ and ‘world of
beasts’”, and “Nao’s kami defines the totality of this world as entirely evil,
and announces an apocalyptic reconstruction.”
Yasumaru’s constructionist view of religion as a tool of “inter-

nal authority” employed by that human agents, rather than a natural
force that acts on us, puts his readers in an awkward position. Take, for
instance, Nishikawa Yūko’s intelligent reflection on Yasumaru’s study of
Nao (2016). In order to integrate the Ofudesaki’s otherworldly voice
into her research on premodern women finding their own voices, she
joins Yasumaru in “reading [its] religious thought as a period type of
political thought first and foremost.” In other words, in order to appreci-
ate the message of the Ofudesaki, it is necessary to strip it of its cosmic
breadth and divine influences, like disassembling a handwoven cloth in
order to more fully enjoy its colors.
This is not to impugn the intent of these writers. On the contrary, it
is exciting to discover that Nao is not merely a “hallucinating” fanatic
and that she can be appreciated rather than incarcerated. So eager are
we to embrace such apparent similarities, though, that we may end up
doing an injustice to the text, failing to acknowledge the things that it
does which we would never do. As we have seen in this brief overview of
the Ofudesaki’s language, attributing its authorship to Nao herself pulls
the rug out from under her writing desk. It is not what Nao believed the
text to be, and it is not what the text claims itself to be. This is a highly
creative text, full of sparks of imagination, but Nao does not attribute
the act of creation to herself. This is a message from the kami, about cor-
respondences between humanity and the divine.
The Ofudesaki faults the world, not for statism or patriarchy, but for
abandoning the kami and straying from their guidance. It warns us all,
not that inequalities should be remedied through structural change, but
that the world is about to be plunged into darkness, “like a fire that has
gone out (13 Oct. 1912),” and rebuilt under divine direction. This is the
work of a Micah, not a Marcuse. Nao experienced the act of writing as
186 A. Morrow
something coming in on her from without and directing her thoughts

and behavior, and she would not have lent her support to any move-
ment that failed to acknowledge the divine agent behind this behavior,
Ushitora no Konjin. If we remove religion from the Ofudesaki, there is
nothing left.
The analysis of Nao’s relationship with Onisaburō has been forced
into the overly restrictive reading of the Ofudesaki as cultural critique.
The Ofudesaki, which attempts to establish a nationwide religious move-
ment with Nao as its central authority, is seen as an “anti-authoritarian”
and “anti-establishment” text. Since Onisaburō argued for including
identification of Oomoto kami with nationally established kami from
the very beginning, and Oomoto developed a quasi-fascist youth arm in
the 1930s, the conclusion is reached that Onisaburō was an imperialist
who “hijacked” Nao’s group and changed its direction. It takes consider-
able confidence to reduce a character as versatile as Onisaburō to a sin-
gle political ideology and to make Nao his antithesis despite her eventual
endorsement of him, but this dualism has been key to academic studies
of Nao’s life.
If we relinquish such commitments, though, it is easy to see that
Onisaburō did not simply bend Oomoto to his will. He did not just do
the changing, but was changed himself. He brought with him many
outside ideas, such as classical mythology and esotericism, and a playful
attitude toward religion. But he himself was bound into a system of cor-
respondences and a divinely ordained mission, both novel experiences to
him at such a visceral level. He recognized the darkness invading Japan
from without and resolved to renew the Japanese spirit. He read the
Ofudesaki closely, made sense of its handwriting, and published it for
the world to see. Like Nao, he became an incessant writer, publishing an
81-volume epic as well as constantly producing new works of poetry and
calligraphy, which he distributed throughout the country. One might say
that he came to believe in the power of writing just as much as Nao did.
Notes
1. The messages ascribed to the period 1892 to 1898 in Shinreikai include
a patchwork transcribed at later dates by Onisaburō, as the period critics
Nakamura (1920: p. 174) and Kuisako (1971: p. 172) warn. But there
is little evidence that he was inventing from whole cloth at this time, as
Ooms (1993: p. 73) and Miyata (1988: p. 115) imply. Rather, there is
plenty of evidence in Ikeda’s (1982) comparison of Shinreikai and Ōmoto
nenpyō, and in the analysis of early manuscripts by Deguchi Sanpei (1986),

that Onisaburō was compiling, abridging, and editing a text which he did
not initially write.
2. Tengu are legendary bird-like creatures, and daruma are limbless, round
representations of the legendary Buddhist monk Bodhidharma. In the
Ofudesaki they seem to represent a low level of nonhuman assistance.
3. Two Ofudesaki on this theme (April 16, 1897, June 23, 1898) supposedly
predate Ueda’s arrival, but a comparison with contemporary Ōmoto nenpyō
texts puts some doubt on their dating (see endnote 1). They do not devi-
ate from the scheme of complementarity discussed here.
4. Like the sigils, these heavenly marriages have been excised from all printed
redactions of the Ofudesaki, likely for theological reasons.
5. The art of using a traditional handloom to make multicolored cloths is
passed down from mother to daughter by Oomoto’s female leaders. Some
of these looms and fabrics can be seen in an appendix to their in-house
edition of the Ōmoto shin’yu (Ōmoto Honbu 2014: pp.166–169).
Bibliography
Corbin, Henry. 1969. Creative Imagination in the Ṣūfism of Ibn ʿArabī.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Deguchi Sanpei. 1986. “Meiji 20-nendai no Ofudesaki (1).” Aya no hata 48
(August 1986). Ayabe, Kyoto: Reikai Monogatari Rindokukai.
Deguchi Yasuaki. 1980. “Kōshō: Deguchi Nao-den (ue).” Ōmoto kyōgaku 19.
Private publication (hibaihin). Collection of Deguchi Sanpei.
———. 1994. Daichi no haha, vol. 10 (revised edition). Kameoka, Kyoto: Aizen
Shuppan.
———. 1995. Irimame no hana. Tokyo: Hachiman Shoten.
Hardacre, Helen. 1992. “Gender and the millennium in Ōmotokyō.” In
Innovation in Religious Traditions. ed. Williams, Cox, and Jaffee, New York:
Mouton de Gruyter.
Hino Tsuyoshi, comp. n.d. [ca. 1910–1920]. Shin’yu. Photocopied unpaginated
manuscript, copying a selection of Ofudesaki dated 1892–1896 from earlier
unknown transcripts. Collection of Deguchi Sanpei.
Iizuka Hiroaki, ed. 2012. Ōmoto shin’yu. [online] Available at http://
dl.reikaimonogatari.net/ [accessed 7 July 2016].
Ikeda Akira, ed. 1982. Ōmoto shiryō shūsei, vol. 1. Tokyo: San’ichi shobō.
Isomae Jun’ichi. 2010. “Shisō o tsumugidasu koe: Hazama ni tatsu rekishika,
Yasumaru Yoshio.” In Isomae and Yasumaru eds., Yasumaru shisōshi e no tai-
ron: bunmeika, minshū, ryōgisei. 295–352. Tokyo: Perikansha.
Kawamura Kunimitsu. 1990. Genshi suru kindai kūkan. Tokyo: Seikyusha.
188 A. Morrow
———. 2007. “Kindai Nihon ni okeru hyōi no keifu to politics.” In Kawamura,

ed., Hyōi no kindai to politics. Tokyo: Seikyusha.
Kuisako Gunji. 1971. Hakujitsu no moto ni: Ōmoto jiken no shinsō. Tokyo:
Nikkan Rōdō Tsūshinsha.
Miyata Mami. 1988. Deguchi Nao: modernization and new religions. M.A. thesis,
University of British Columbia.
Murakami Shigeyoshi, ed. 1979. Ōmoto shin’yu: Ten no maki. Tokyo: Heibonsha.
Nakamura Kokyō. 1920. Ōmotokyō no kaibō: Gakuriteki genzei to hihan. Tokyo:
Nihon Seishin’i Gakkai.
Nishikawa Yūko. 2016. “Yasumaru Yoshio ‘Deguchi Nao’ no saidoku.” Gendai
shisō 44, no. 16.
Ōmoto Honbu, ed. 2014. Sanzensekai ichido ni hiraku ume no hana. Kameoka,
Kyoto: Tenmeisha.
ONH = Ōmoto Nanajūnen-shi Hensankai. 1964. Ōmoto nanajūnen-shi, vol. 1.
Kameoka, Kyoto: Ōmotokyō.
———. 1972. Keireki no shin’yū: gappon. Mimeograph, in three independently
paginated sections. Collection of Deguchi Sanpei.
Ooms, Emily Groszos. 1993. Women and millenarian protest in Meiji Japan:
Deguchi Nao and Ōmotokyō. Ithaca, N.Y.: East Asian Program, Cornell
University.
OSH = Ōmoto Shijitsu Hensankai [Toyama Tomiji, Deguchi Uchimaru, et al.].
1924. “(Zuigetsu kōetsu) Ōmoto kyōso-den.” Kami no kuni, 25 Feb. 1924.
(Also reprinted as a mimeograph by ONH, and as an appendix to Deguchi
1980).
SSK = Shūkyō Shiryō Kenkyūkai, eds. 1986. Shinreikai. In 7 volumes. Tokyo:
Hachiman Shoten.
Takezawa Shōichirō. 2016. “On Possession Religion: From Shamanism to
Founders of New Religions.” Translated by Peter Knecht. Japanese Religions
41: 67–87.
Tokushige Kōryō, comp. 1954. Ayanishiki [Adachi-bon]. Handwritten tran-
script of Adachi Masanobu’s 1898 redaction of Ofudesaki dated 1892–1895.
Collection of Deguchi Sanpei.
Wöhr, Ulrike. 1989. Frauen und neue Religionen: die Religionsgründerinnen
Nakayama Miki und Deguchi Nao. Wein: Institut für Japanologie, Universität
Wien.
Yamashita Akiko. 1990. “Tenrin-Ō and Henjō-Nansi. Two Women—Founders of
New Religions.” Japanese Religions 16, no. 2: 1–23.
Yasumaru Yoshio. 1977. Deguchi Nao. Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha.
CHAPTER 10
Females’ Subversive Interventions in the

Religious Field in Ethiopia
Serawit Bekele Debele
Introduction
The field as developed by Pierre Bourdieu1 is an arena of interactions
and relationships between different actors that position themselves at dif-
ferent sites within it. What happens within the field is described by him
as a game that it is guided by implicit or explicit rules by which play-
ers abide. The ability of the players to fine tune themselves in response
to what goes on therein, their positions, their capital and their disposi-
tion matter in the process of interactions. Capital here signifies, although
borrowed from the Marxist tradition, both tangible and intangible assets
other than and in addition to money. The volume and quality of capitals
a given actor or institution possesses and how they are mobilised deter-
mine success in the field. In order to be able to win in this competitive
field, an actor, actors or institutions need to be equipped with capitals
(social, political, symbolic and religious) and also position themselves in
a better place within the field. Accordingly, the increasing visibility and
S.B. Debele (*) 
Max Plank Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity,
Göttingen, Germany

190 S.B. Debele
popularity of a certain actor or institution is ascribed to their position

and the capital they pull out to stay relevant in the field. In a way, capital
itself is power or source of power which is what makes it central to rela-
tionships and interactions in the field.2
In the religious field, “various religious claimants, individual or insti-
tutional, can mobilise religious capital in the competition for monopoly
over the administration of the goods of salvation and over legitimate
exercise of religious power as power durably to modify the representa-
tions and practices of laypersons by inculcating in them a religious hab-
itus”.3 Religious capital is usually specific to the religious field both in
its generation and deployment. It is also context and time specific. In
one way or another, religious capital determines the strategy competitors
employ to position themselves in the field. The religious capital at the
actor’s disposal determines the position within the field and also enables
the actor to decide which strategy to employ in relation to other actors
within the field. The religious field is characterised by relations of opposi-
tion between groups enthusiastic to monopolise it and remain dominant
and others who challenge this and compete to become the dominant
within the field. Taking the religious history of the West into account,
Bourdieu stipulates that the Church is actively involved in prohibiting
other sources of salvation in its pursuit of monopolising the administra-
tion of the religious field. On the other hand, other sources of salvation,
or sects as he calls them, challenge the Church’s attempt to do so. In so
doing, they posit the Church as incapable of attending to their mem-
bers’ religious needs. Through such actions, they put to question the
very power the Church asserts to have over laypersons and other sects.
These alternative sources of salvation also reject the Church’s claim to
be the sole provider of salvation. Thus, one could posit the religious field
as a site of competition and struggle for legitimation, domination and
monopoly. Describing this complex interaction within it, Magnus Echtler
and Asonzeh Ukah4 write that the religious field is a reflection of “the
dynamics of all social games, namely the conflicts between established
players, whose position is legitimized by both objectified and subjectified
structures of the field, and the new players, whose only chance to capture
a dominant position in the field is dependent on their ability to under-
mine the legitimacy of their opponents”.
It is in a similar religious field in some parts of Ethiopia, one that is
dominated by the Church, that females emerge as leaders that appropriate
religious capitals from the hegemonic Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity
10 FEMALES’ SUBVERSIVE INTERVENTIONS IN THE RELIGIOUS … 191
and become fierce challengers of its age-old monopoly. But before going
into the discussion of females’ emergence as leaders, it is vital to provide a
brief account of what the religious field in Ethiopia looks like.
Overview of the Religious Field in Ethiopia

Until the fourth century AD, the Axumite Kingdom of present-day
Ethiopia and the people under it adhered to many gods who were
responsible for different affairs. Their polytheism was similar to religious
practices in South Arabia assigning gods for different activities like agri-
culture. This practice was endorsed also by the rulers of the kingdom
until the fourth century AD when Christianity was brought to the pal-
ace by Syrian brothers who were shipwrecked.5 The new religion was
immediately endorsed by the kingdom as the official religion. Following
its sanction as the official religion, Christianity began to spread to the
common people with the coming of additional monks from Syria in the
fifth century AD. This was followed by further expansions to the south-
ern regions of present-day Ethiopia spearheaded by the Christian kings
alongside their territorial expansion from the ninth century onwards.6
This led to the establishment of Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity in
other provinces with a strong support extended to it by the kings and
emperors. As established by Mekuria,7 “the Christian religion benefited
from the faithful support of kings, queens, princes, governors and dig-
nitaries of the Church who had many converts and Churches built in
places where the traditional cults had flourished”. This reached its climax
during the time of emperor Menelik the second (r. 1889–1913) when he
completed the state formation process that culminated in the early twen-
tieth century.8
This process of religious expansion was complemented by the con-
struction of Churches in areas which were incorporated into the
Christian kingdom. Religious consolidation was successful in most places
by uprooting previous religious practices which were depicted as pagan
and/or animistic.9 Consequently, preceding religious traditions were
demonised and relegated to the periphery following mass conversion to
Orthodox Christianity. People were forced to accept the new religion
and break away from their past convictions. Nonetheless, the society
hardly abandoned the previous religious practices. Rather, they became
secret practices which in turn created a situation of multiple allegiances
whereby people not only identified as Orthodox Christians in public but
192 S.B. Debele
also subscribed to their old traditions secretly. This clearly altered the
religious field. While establishing the Orthodox Church as a stronghold,
it led to the marginalisation of other religious traditions. The discourse
also changed to portraying other religions as evil practices and their lead-
ers as agents of the Devil. This was most visible in practices related to
spirit mediumship and possession cults. Their leaders were forced to
abandon their constituency, the sacred sites at which they gathered were
taken over by the Church and largely, and they became leaders of private
practices. It also led to the dispossession of religious capitals on which
the mediums relied. As such, the field excluded others while remaining
the monopoly of the Church. However, while the official narrative and
public practices dismiss mediumship, the practices remain to be one of
the publicly silent and yet salient features of religiosity in most parts of
the country. For instance, the Oromo10 religion is one among the many
local religious practices that were displaced by the arrival of Christianity
into the newly incorporated areas to the Christian empire. In the Oromia
regional state, in which this research is situated, the practice of medium-
ship went hand in hand with Orthodox Christianity and in some places
also with Islam regardless of the continued vilification.11 These sustained
practices of mediumship are described by some scholars who studied the
phenomenon as “syncretic” or “hybrid” religious tradition.12
The Oromo believe in a supreme being known as Waaqa. Waaqa is the
central figure who then assigns benevolent spirits known as Ayyana to
his followers to mediate between him and his creatures. These spirits are
guardians which protect all creatures from mishaps. They possess humans
in order to easily perform their task of mediating. The persons they pos-
sess are called Qallu (masculine) and Qallitti (feminine). Once possessed,
these people form their own institution known as the Qallu. This institu-
tion and its centrality as medium between Waaqa and the people are the
core of the Oromo religion.13 Ayyana possesses the mediums at regular
intervals. By the time Qallus/Qallitti are possessed, the Ayyana speaks
through the Qallu and listens to prayers from the adherents. During this
time of active possession, it is believed that the Ayyana takes and brings
messages to and from Waaqa and the medium plays the role of interces-
sion. Once a person is possessed by the Ayyana, that person is entitled to
forming a worship centre locally known as Galma, a sacred hall in which
the religious service is rendered.14 In this chapter, I take the Oromo reli-
gion to show the emergence and role of females in the making and con-
testation of the religious field.
Emergence of Female Religious Leaders

In the Oromo religious conception, females are honoured as priestesses
as much as males the moment they are possessed by the Ayyana spirit.
They assume the role of leadership and they are regarded by their follow-
ers as the agents that connect the Oromo with the creator. Their verdict
is taken seriously mainly because of the belief that they are the embodi-
ment of the divine that the community revers. However, not all female
mediums are successful in pulling together a large following and forming
a religious foundation that serves as a centre of worship. This is partly
because they operate in a context which is not permissive enough to form
an institution for at least two main reasons. First, the practice of medium-
ship is competitive as many males and females get possessed and all claim
to have the power to intercede and heal. As a result, there is competi-
tion within the field of mediumship itself. The competition gets tougher
for females given that the sociocultural set-up of which they are a part
does not support and appreciate the emergence of strong females who
attempt to compete and maintain a significant role and position in the
area. It usually takes an extraordinary miraculous happening that is asso-
ciated with a female medium to elevate her position above others to the
extent that she is able to form her own worship centre. Second, in areas
dominated by institutional religions like Islam and Christianity, medium-
ship is an object of criticism. It is a victim of continued effort made by
the institutions to remove mediumship from the religious field through
discourses and practices that slur the mediums. This in turn results in the
confinement of mediumship into the realm of secrecy. Given this chal-
lenge, vibrant competition for more following is difficult as the mediums
have to fight for their survival in the face of the assault. Nevertheless,
regardless of such impediments, quite a number of females have climbed
the ladder of leadership. In this line, one of the earliest personalities for
instance is Ayo Momina15 of the Arsi area in the Oromia regional state of
Ethiopia. Her story, as sketched below, provides a perspective that chal-
lenges the taken-for-granted masculinity of religious leadership.
Momina, affectionately called Ayo (meaning mother in Oromiffa lan-
guage), was a high priestess who was bestowed with the gift of inter-
cession. Although sources to reconstruct the exact date of her birth are
scanty, it is evident from local accounts that she was born in mid-nine-
teenth century and lived until 1920s.16 Gemechu J. Geda,17 a scholar
of religion who has done an extensive fieldwork on the life of Momina
194 S.B. Debele
describes her emergence as “an interesting development in Ethiopian his-

tory, [as] her leadership broke into a sphere that had been traditionally
dominated by men, and her following led to the establishment of a ritual
cult which has flourished over several decades and keeps expanding in
contemporary times”.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Momina stationed at
a place known as Gado Galama, a few kilometres away from the sacred
space where she later set up her pilgrimage centre called Ferekesa.18
What made Momina’s quick ascendance to popularity and acceptance
that eventually led to the establishment of her centre is the miracle that
she was believed to have performed in the life of a certain man. She was
less known among the community until one day she saw a group of men
carrying a lame person who had difficulty walking. She was seated under
the shade of a tree as they were passing by. She then requested the men
to bring the lame person close to her. They did as requested and all that
she did was command him to stand up and walk. So did the person do
and the news of this miraculous happening reached the people in the
village. Since then, she was accepted as a woman who had a supernatu-
ral power. At this point, the religious field is altered by her intervention
with an additional source of salvation (salvation here is used to describe
healing from a certain kind of ailment instead of its association with the
riddance of sin and the other-worldly expectations it entails). Finally,
she set up the religious centre at Ferekesa, a centre which is currently
as active and vibrant as it was upon foundation. Her spirit passed on to
her descendants and Ayo Momina is still one of the most revered female
religious leaders among both Muslim and Christian Ethiopians across
diverse ethnic groups. However, her celebration as a person of awe is not
readily accepted by both the Church and the Islamic institutions. Her
followers are very much discouraged by both institutions on the basis
that mixing two or more religious traditions is regarded as transgression.
An interesting point to focus on while looking at her emergence in
the religious field is her appropriation of some aspects of Christian teach-
ings by Jesus Christ. In Mark 2:11 Jesus performs a miracle that changes
the life of a bed-ridden man. All that Jesus did was telling the patient to
arise and walk. Momina’s command is similar in the sense that she did
not have to do anything but command the person to walk upright. This
discursive practice is what she mimicked from the Church’s teachings,
which she grew up tapping on. And this particular incident was decisive
in earning her the legitimation and following she required to establish
herself as another supplier of salvation that countered monopoly. Thus,

her emergence relied very much on a miracle, which is performed
through a word of mouth. Momina drew on a religious capital from an
institution that basically debunks all other religions as illegitimate.
Likewise, the following two examples I use to show Wuletu’s appro-
priation of religious capital from the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is
another example of the attempt to reinvent what is supposed to be for-
eign and by so doing, create a niche that strengthens one’s position in
the competitive field. As stated above, Momina pioneered the emergence
of females as religious experts who are able to establish religious foun-
dations that serve a great number of following and thereby challenge
the hegemonic position of so-called universal religions in Ethiopia. Her
magnificent achievement in the religious field is that she brought an oth-
erwise peripheral religious tradition to the forefront that countered the
taken for granted domination of the religious field. She set precedence
for female leaders who, upon being possessed by spirits, founded their
own religious establishments that secured a significant number of follow-
ing from people of diverse religious backgrounds. The female religious
leader named Abebech Wuletu, that I am discussing here, has stated to
me during my interviews that she has benefited from Momina’s bless-
ings in addition to being inspired by her extraordinary deeds. Moreover,
before she established her own respective religious foundations in north
Shewa zone of Oromia region, she asserts that Momina’s spirit has
played and is still playing the role of coaching and regulating her spirit-
ual life. Currently, Wuletu travels to Ferekesa annually to seek Momina’s
support. Thus, Momina not only pioneered in destabilising the religious
field, but also paved the way for later developments that inspired more
female leaders to follow her footsteps.
Abebech Wuletu’s as a Leader

Wuletu was born into an Orthodox Christian family in the northern
Shewa zone of the Oromia regional state in 1939. Her christening took
place on the eightieth day after her birth according to the Ethiopian
Orthodox tradition. She grew up following her parents’ footsteps in
terms of practising both Christianity and spirit mediumship. As a teen-
ager, her parents began to witness some change in her which manifested
itself through possession trance and soon they realised that she was host-
ing some spirit which needed taming. After a frequent visitation to senior
196 S.B. Debele
spirit mediums, of which Momina is one, the spirit that possessed her
was regulated and she was officially anointed as a spirit medium that has
the authority to give religious services. Eventually she set up the Chabsa
religious establishment, an establishment which is named after the benev-
olent spirit that possessed her in the 1960s. Due to the healing services
she was giving to the local community, she grew in fame and began to
attract adherents from places as far as Addis Ababa, the capital city of
Ethiopia which is about 100 kilometres from where she lives.19
How did Wuletu make it to a successful leadership position unlike
many female mediums in many parts of the country? In the study area,
it is widely believed that females have a central role to play in the myth
of origin of the fist spirit that possessed humans.20 The story goes like
this. There once was a rich couple married for many years but never had
children. They became sad as a result and particularly the wife was very
much distressed by the fact that she was not able to deliver. She contin-
ued to pray for a child. One day when it was raining heavily, she decided
to go out and plead to the creator who gives humans rain to enable the
land grow crops to give her at least one child. As a symbol of fertility
she ate the hailstones and returned to her home. She conceived the same
night and nine months later gave birth to a boy whom they named Jijo.
Jijo became a source of happiness and joy for his family. Growing up,
he showed extraordinary characters that made him stand out as peculiar
from his mates. One day, he was possessed by a female spirit after which
he began to perform miracles. The spirit that possessed him is called
Maram. Soon after Maram possessed Jijo, six more spirits by the name
Golam, Aba Jifar, Dace, Gumesa, Abbuko and Adal Moti. Gradually, he
became famous in different parts of the then Mecha area of present-day
Oromia regional state. He established his Galma (an Oromiffa word
referring to a sacred hall where religious functions take place) not only
where he was originally possessed but also in other parts of the Oromia
region. These spirits were said to have possessed some of his devout fol-
lowers who came from faraway places. Abbuko, one of the seven spirits,
that possessed Jijo took up a person called Jidha Tufa. Tufa came from
north Shewa zone of Oromia regional state where this research was con-
ducted. It was Abbuko spirit that eventually gave rise to many other spir-
its including Chabsa which finally possessed Wuletu.
Chabsa first possessed a woman known as Gifti Jifare who served as
its medium until her death in 1953. Soon after her death, it shifted to
Wuletu. Jifare’s high acceptance and large following has made it much
easier for Wuletu to establish herself soon on the ladder of successful

mediums because the spirit was well known and well revered when Jifare
was alive. Wuletu’s ascension to the position of mediation was not a
beginning from scratch because she was caught by an already established
spirit that was known in the community. Thus, Wuletu’s possession by
the Chabsa spirit was a continuation of what has been in place and she
became an agent to sustain it. Her possession by such a spirit has earned
her acceptance and reverence by the community. Since the establishment
of her foundation, she has gone through ups and downs while dealing
with challenges from both the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and succes-
sive regimes that had various ideologies towards religion. She has devised
diverse ways of manoeuvring in the face of the challenges.21 Since I am
limited by space, I will draw on two examples22 to show her relation-
ship with the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which is the main source of
her challenge, and how she appropriated the same institution to estab-
lish herself in the religious field out of which the Church continuously
attempts to remove her.
In order to have a clearer picture of the religious landscape in which
Wuletu operates, I will first start by briefly describing the setting of her
foundation. The north Shewa zone is one of the twelve zones within the
regional state of Oromia. The zone is subdivided into twelve districts one
of which is Debrelibanos district. It is inhabited by people who mainly
rely on subsistence agriculture in addition to some commercial activi-
ties. Ethnically, it is composed of both the Amhara and the Oromo eth-
nic groups although the Oromo are the majority inhabitants of the area.
A significant majority in the area is a follower of Orthodox Christianity.
Unlike other religions, Orthodox Christianity has a long-established his-
tory that dates back to thirteenth century. This was the time when the
monastery of Debrelibanos was established by one of the patron saints
called Teklehaimanot. Among other things, presently, the monastery is
popular for the holy water which is believed to heal various kinds of ail-
ments. Although Christianity reached the area as early as the thirteenth
century, it became the mainstream religion of the majority only when the
Christian empire took hold of the area in the nineteenth century. As a
result, a combined practice of Orthodox Christianity and spirit medium-
ship has been in place for centuries.23
Story 1: This is a story of a devoted adherent of Chabsa named Birhane

Eshetu. Birhane sat for the national examination which would determine
198 S.B. Debele
whether she gets admission to the university or not. Given the limited
number of universities in Ethiopia back in the 1980s and 1990s, this exam-
ination is characterised by fierce competition and students had to study
hard. When the result came out after few months, it was only a handful
of candidates who got the opportunity to join university. Unfortunately
for Birhane, she was not one of them and the news of her failure led to a
serious headache and depression. As she continued to suffer, her parents
tried to solve the problem through different means like medical treatment
which did not improve her condition. Finally, Birhane’s mother went to
Chabsa and asked Wuletu what the family should do for their daughter to
recover from her ailment. Then, Wuletu ordered Birhane’s mother to take
her to the Dabralibanos monastery to immerse her in the holy water for
two weeks. After the recommended two weeks were over, Birhane and her
parents returned to Chabsa to give testimony of the healing after attending
the holy water session which was conducted by monks from the Ethiopian
Orthodox Church.
This is an obvious indication of innovativeness from Wuletu’s side

to solve problems by appropriating what is in the jurisdiction of the
Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Wuletu goes ahead to24 use what is origi-
nally in the sphere the Church. She plays an agentive role in the making
of hybridised religious practices by prescribing Teklahaimanot’s Tsebel
(holy water dedicated to saint Teklehaimanot) for Birhane’s treatment.
She is not considering the Church as a threat but an alternative means
of legitimising herself by recommending instruments from its domain to
heal her patients. The fact that both Wuletu and her clients are follow-
ers of Orthodox Christianity provides a green light in their movement
between the two religious sites. The effectiveness of the prescribed rem-
edy lies on the trust Wuletu and her adherents place on both institutions.
Birhane and her parents believe that the two have the power to solve her
problem and as a result of this belief, they are loyal to both. By identify-
ing as an Orthodox Christian and also by applying the holy water from
the Church, Birhane is manifesting her faithfulness to the Ethiopian
Orthodox Church. At the same time, she is also granting her allegiance
to Wuletu’s spiritual efficacy as a result of which she went to seek her
service and did what she was told to do. This makes her an agent of the
creation of hybrid practices and bidirectional loyalty. Thus, as much as
Wuletu’s legitimacy is self-made, it is also a result of what she receives
from her followers who are less concerned about maintaining the bound-
ary the Church insists on keeping. If her followers were conservative and
responsive to the Church’s attempt to expand the rift between Wuletu

and her followers, her success as a religious authority might have been
staggering. The adoration invested on her seems to be unconditional in
that it establishes her indispensability among the community. Therefore,
in addition to her cunning approach towards the Church, the condition
of her flourishing also depends on the reception she enjoys from her
adherents who are able to combine two religious practices. In the next
story, I am discussing how Wuletu handles hierarchies within the reli-
gious field.
Story 2: One day, a certain devotee of Wuletu’s spirit was on her way to
the Galma for the thanksgiving session that was to go on all night long.
The lady carried a lot of supplies like food, drinks, incense and clothes for
the night in addition to offerings for the spirit. While she was on her way,
she met a young man who according to her happened to be a strong critic
of the mixing of Christianity with such “evil” practices. He had the audac-
ity to stop her for few questions. She also had the humility to answer the
set of questions he asked including where she was going to and what she
was carrying. It did not go down so well, though, when he asked her to
put everything she was carrying to the Galma so that he could carry it
to the nearby angel Gabriel Church. He commanded her in the name of
the angel Gabriel to which she did not pay attention. She refused to leave
behind what she carried. The cunning young man did not let her go. He
rather commanded her again but did it in the name of the spirit Chabsa.
The lady was caught between ignoring his request and leaving her belong-
ings to him. She was confused because of the invocation of the spirit that
she revers so much. At that moment, she could not decide what to do.
She felt some misfortune would befall her along the way if she refused to
give him what he asked in the name of Chabsa. She was also gutted by
the thought of trespassing the command. Obviously, she was more both-
ered by the mention of the spirit while remaining oblivious to the angel.
She came up with a solution which involved him. She accused him of put-
ting her in such a dilemma and insisted that he should go with her to the
Galma and confess the inappropriate invocation of the spirit. He laughed
at her and left the place without also forcing her to leave the things she
carried. The fact that he declined to go with her struck a balance as far as
she was concerned. At this point, she felt less pressure to carry her belong-
ings and head to the Galma. She arrived a little late. Up on arrival she was
asked by Wuletu how her journey was. The lady narrated her encounter
with the young man. To her surprise, Wulteu reprimanded her for having
not done what she was asked to do in the name of angel Gabriel. Wuletu
200 S.B. Debele
believes that the lady should have given what she carried to the Church as
requested by the young man. Wuletu asked, “who said I am greater than
Gabriel”? The lady was perplexed by Wuletu’s order to carry back every-
thing and present it to the Church.
Regardless of the recognition by the adherent, who also is an Orthodox

Christian, bestowed on Wuletu of being higher than the angel, Wuletu
challenges this view and opts for the humble position. She, whether
intentionally or not, acknowledges that she and the spirit are ordinary
compared to a Christian angel. She clearly understands the cost of fight-
ing a war that she cannot win with the Church. If she went ahead and
agreed with the lady’s action, then she is implying that she is superior
compared to the angel. This goes against the teachings of the Church,
of which she is a member and whose religious capitals she appropriates
for healing her patients. By maintaining a lower profile within the reli-
gious field, she influences her reception in a way that favours her. Wuletu
willingly accepts a subordinate position and avoids an overt competition.
Unlike the Church which refuses to recognise her, she takes seriously
the angels and the patron saints that are also revered by the community
that follows her. Although the aforementioned devotee gave Wuletu pri-
ority when she encountered the young man, Wuletu corrected her in a
way she considered is right. It is vital, though, to note that Wuletu did
not say she is less than Gabriel. By posing the question “who said I am
greater than Gabriel?” she is leaving the answer open. This allows oth-
ers to take a position of either equating her with Gabriel or subordinat-
ing her to him. However, she never explicitly states that she is below or
above. Taking such an ambivalent position in relation to her competitors
gives her the room to link with a wide range of dispositions which she
can appropriate contextually. She just performs acquiescence in her deal-
ings with the dominant Ethiopian Orthodox Church in a way that does
not necessarily reduce her to inferiority. Based on her perception of the
field, the feel of the game and what it entails, she is calculative in the way
she positions herself.
Conclusion: Subversive Interventions

Just like her predecessor Momina, Wuletu is a charismatic leader in the
Weberian sense of the term. Her authority emanates from the extraordi-
nary source, which is the supernatural, the moment the spirit manifests
itself in her person and she has proven her gift through various miracles
she performed for her followers.25 It is an authority bestowed on her by
the divine that she embodies. Her adherents find reasons to follow her
due to the fact that she is believed to possess power which is beyond
the reach of ordinary humans. She comes even handier when people are
faced with crisis situations for which they need an immediate interven-
tion from the spirit. In this sense, her charisma also corresponds to the
disposition of her followers through her miracles and narratives thereof.
At the same time, her wide reception by Orthodox Christians makes
her position as a leader in a terrain contested by the Church which
strongly opposes to the reverence ascribed to her. She is regarded as a
threat by the Church to its monopoly over solutions people seek to deal
with both their mundane and eternal lives. Her Orthodox Christian
upbringing and her continuted commitment to the Church add to
the controversy her strong following raises among different groups of
people.26 Regardless of the sustained denigration directed against her,
she seems to rise in significance through her cunning approach to the
Church itself. She does not stand as a contester of the Church but
rather makes it part of her strategic approach to success. This is very
important since her adherents are mainly Orthodox Christians who are
devoted to the Church and her at the same time. Thus, it is not only
about challenging the status quo but also maintaining her relevance by
endorsing what her clients would believe in and appreciate. It is a two-
fold strategy.
In his book “The Location of Cultures”, Homi Bhabha27 demon-
strates that the blurring of boundaries and the creation of in-between
spaces are transformative. They are sites of empowerment. They destabi-
lise dichotomies between the dominant and the dominated. This desta-
bilisation of polarities in turn leads to the emergence of alternatives that
build on the capitals of the hegemons. Subverting domination is made
possible within the logic of domination itself. Thus, crossing boundaries
to infringe the spaces of supremacy in turn introduces possibilities for
empowerment. Within the competing religious field, the female leaders
create such spaces by drawing on the aspects that appear to be exclusive
to the Church.
Independent existence of religious groups within the field is made
difficult through the subversive intervention of Wuletu as a successful
leader who has the innovative capacity to negotiate her position by mix-
ing different practices. Her agentive role does not stop only at making
202 S.B. Debele
her successful as a leader but also transforms the religious field in many
ways into an innovative site of collaboration and contestation. First, it
is no more the monopoly of the Church; second, the Church can no
more maintain the point of purity and authenticity and third in addition
to competition, and from Wuletu’s side, at least relationships within the
field include aspects of cooperation. Moreover, Wuletu’s subversive inter-
vention is a moment of problematising essentialisations because it chal-
lenges categories which appear to have been innate and pre-given. On
the one hand, the Church’s hegemony and on the other and above all
female mediumships’ subordination are no more taken for granted.
Wuletu recognises the might of the institution she is confronted with.
She does, through mimicry, repeat what Ethiopian Orthodox Church
does to sustain its significance. In so doing, she distorts its authority and
exposes its susceptibility. Difference that is emphasised by the Church is
transgressed through her intervention via mimicry and reproduction of
an act that is exclusive to the Church. Prescribing holy water and rever-
ing angel Gabriel are what the Church consistently performs as signi-
fiers of its indispensability. Repeating it, Wuletu reproduces the act of
Church and reinvents herself as another indispensable source of salvation
and remedy for her clients who are already ambivalent in their relation
with both religious groups. Through “the repetitious slippage of differ-
ence and desire”,28 she deconstructs boundaries and checks the Church’s
claim to unreserved authority. Her very existence within that domain of
domination is already subversive as she refuses to be subsumed under the
logic of the Church’s operation but found her way to build on it and
attach her own meaning and significance to the realm that is not neces-
sarily under her control, but rather is at war with her.
Conclusion
In conclusion, female religious leaders are a rarity in the religious landscape.
As has been rightly pointed out by I.M Lewis,29 they are mostly recipi-
ents of religious services provided by males. So far in Ethiopia, Islam and
Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity have close to no room for incorporating
females in the ladder of leadership. On the other hand, Ursula King30 states
that, as opposed to their marginalisation in such institutions, females have a
more visible leadership position in religious traditions and movements like
shamanism, spirit possession cults and the like. The life of Wuletu is one
such story showcasing the trajectories of becoming a competent female
religious authority in one of the oldest and yet reviving religious traditions
in present day Ethiopia.31 This chapter does not claim to have exhausted the
understudied field of females and religious leadership in Ethiopia. It is rather
an attempt to shed light on the practices hoping that further studies will be
inspired by what has been discussed and analysed based on Wuletu’s life.
Notes
1. Pierre Bourdieu, “The genesis of the concepts of habitus and of field”
Sociocriticism 2 (1985): 11–24.
2. Bourdieu, “The genesis of the concepts of habitus and of field” 11–24
and Echtler, Magnus and Ukah, Asonzeh. “Introduction.” In Bourdieu
in Africa: Exploring the Dynamics of Religious Fields in Africa, edited by
Magnus Echtler and Asonzeh Ukah (Brill, 2016).
3. Pierre Bourdieu, “Genesis and Structure of the Religious Field”
Comparative Social Research 13 (1991): 22.
4. Magnus and Ukah, “Introduction”, 9.
5. Harold G Marcus, A History of Ethiopia (Berkley: University of California,
1994).
6. Tadesse Tamirat, Church and State in Ethiopia, 1270–1527 (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1972).
7. Tekletsaddik Mekouria, “Christian Aksum.” In UNESCO, General History
of Africa, Vol.II Ancient civilizations of Africa, edited by G. Mokhtar.
(Berkley: University of California Press, 1981).
8. Geda Melba, Oromia: An Introduction to the History of Oromo people
(Sudan: Khartoum, 1988).
9. Tamrat, Church and State.
10. The Oromo are the largest Ethnic group in Ethiopia. They are follow-
ers of three main religions, namely Christianity of different factions, Islam
and the Oromo religion, also known as Waqqeffana. For more on the
Oromo history. For more see, Tessema Ta’a, “Religious beliefs among
the Oromo: Waqqeffaana Christianity and Islam in the context of ethnic
identity, citizenship and integrity” Ethiopian Journal of the Social Sciences
and Humanities, 8 (2012): 87–111.
11. See also Serawit B Debele, “Hybridization and Coexistence of Qallu
Chabsa Institution with Orthodox Christianity in Debre Libanos Area”
(MA Thesis, Addis Abeba University, 2009). John Trimingham, Islam in
Ethiopia (London: Routledge, 1952).
12. I.M Lewis, Ecstatic religion: A study of Shamanism and Spirit possession
third edition. (London: Routledge, 2003). I.M Lewis is one of the pio-
neering scholars who labelled this mixture as syncretic. In my MA thesis,
204 S.B. Debele
I have argued that the hybridity is a more useful concept to capture the
practice as, unlike syncretism which focuses on a simple blending of prac-
tices, hybridity brings out the complexities and power dynamics of the
mixture and crossing of religious boundaries by individuals (Debele,
“Hybridization and Coexistence”).
13. Mohammad Hassen, The Oromo of Ethiopia: A History, 1570–1860
(Trenton, New Jersey: Red Sea Press, 1994). See also Tessema Ta’a,
“Religious beliefs among the Oromo: Waqqeffaana Christianity and Islam
in the context of ethnic identity, citizenship and integrity”, 87–111.
14. For more on the Oromo religion see Tessema Ta’a, “Religious beliefs
among the Oromo: Waqqeffaana Christianity and Islam in the context
of ethnic identity, citizenship and integrity”, 87–111. Ta’a discusses in
details the historical and current practices of the Oromo religion also in
relation to the political context of its revival.
15. Momina’s ethnic identity is controversial just like her religious identity,
but her centre was established and is still active in the Oromia region and
majority of her clients come from the Oromo region. Regarding her eth-
nic background, while some members of the Oromo assert that she was
an Oromo others from the Amhara ethnic group emphasise her Amhara
background. By the same token, Orthodox Christian clients assert that
she was Christian while her Muslim adherents assert that she was born
Muslim and died as one. This in a way shows the difficult of clearly
stating one’s ethnic as well as religious background in a context where
boundaries are rather elusive than clear.
16. Reconstructing her history, as pointed out by Geda is complicated firstly
because she was mobile and she hardly settled in one place for a long
period of time. Secondly, since her religious activities did not draw any
attention from the Christian state, it was not regarded one of the impor-
tant aspects of the country’s religious history that was worth docu-
menting. As I have stated in the text, such practices were not endorsed
officially Geda, Gemechu J. “The Faraqasa Indigenous pilgrimage center:
History and ritual practices” (MA Thesis, University of Thromso, 2007).
17. Gemechu Geda, “Pilgrimages and syncretism: Religious transformation
among the Arsi Oromo of Ethiopia” (Ph.D. diss., University of Bayreuth,
2014), 139–40.
18. Ferekesa is a religious centre established by Momina in a village known
as Ferekesa in the Arsei zone of the Oromia regional state. The centre
brings together thousands of devotees every year in November. In addi-
tion, the centre is always busy providing service to clients who come from
diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds. People travel from different
parts of the country to receive blessings from Momina’s spirit.
19. Elsewhere, I have described in some manner of detail the biography

of Abebech Wuletu. See Serawit B Debele, “Women and Religious
Authority in Ethiopia: Ethiopian High Priestess Abebech Wuletu at the
Crossroads” JENdA A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies 27
(2015).
20. These are stories that circulate in areas where female religious leaders are
widely accepted. There are hardly any written accounts except oral tradi-
tions which pass to generations through a word of mouth.
21. In an article published in 2015, I showed her life trajectories mainly in
relation to the three regimes (the era of Hailesilassie I 1931–1974, the
military regime, 1974–1991 and the current regime from 1991 onwards)
within which she operated since the foundation of the Chabsa wor-
ship centre. In the article, I state that she devised various strategies to
deal with the challenging political context (see Debele, “Women and
Religious”).
22. I adopted the two examples from my Master’s thesis (Debele,
“Hybridization and Coexistence”).
23. Debele, “Hybridization and Coexistence”.
25. See Max Weber, “Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive
Sociology (2 vols.)” Edited by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich
(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978).
26. Wuletu has a strong connection with the local parishes. She is known
for financing the Church. She also invests money to pay the salary for
the priests. In the study area, she is popular for her charitable engage-
ments during annual celebrations in memory of patron saints (Debele,
“Hybridization and Coexistence”; 2015).
27. Homi Bhabha, Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994).
28. Bhabha, Location of Culture, 90.
29. Lewis, Ecstatic religion.
30. Ursula King, Women and Spirituality: Voice of Protest and Promise second
Edition. (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993).
31. Ulrich Berner, “Religious Traditions-Kinship based and/or Universal?” In
Critical reflections on indigenous religions, edited by Jams Cox. (Ashgate,
2013). Ulrich Berner challenges the classification of religions as universal
and indigenous or local and he suggests to look beyond the division. In
order to look beyond the boundaries, he states that it is useful to focus
on religious traditions and practices than religion as an abstract and
empty concept. Accordingly, I do not subscribe to the division of religion
as local and universal.
206 S.B. Debele
Bibliography
Bartels, Lambert. Oromo Religion: Myths and Rites of the Western Oromo of
Ethiopia; An Attempt to Understand. Reimer, 1983.
Berner, Ulrich. 2013. “Religious Traditions-Kinship Based and/or Universal?”.
In Critical Reflections on Indigenous Religions, edited by Jams Cox, 49–62.
Ashgate.
Bhabha, Homi. Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.
Bourdieu, Pierre. “The genesis of the concepts of habitus and of field”
Sociocriticism 2 (1985): 11–24.
——— “Genesis and Structure of the Religious Field” Comparative Social
Research 13 (1991): 1–44.
Data, Dea. 2005. “Christianity and Spirit mediums: Experiencing Post Socialist
Religious Freedom in Southern Ethiopia”. Working Paper 05, Max-Planck-
Instituts für Ethnologische Forschung.
Debele, Serawit B. 2009. “Hybridization and Coexistence of Qallu Chabsa
Institution with Orthodox Christianity in Debre Libanos Area.” MA Thesis,
Addis Abeba University.
———. 2010. Hybridization and Coexistence of Qallu Chabsa Institution with
Orthodox Christianity in Debre Libanos Area. VDM Verlag.
———. 2015. “Women and Religious Authority in Ethiopia: Ethiopian High
Priestess Abebech Wuletu at the Crossroads.” JENdA A Journal of Culture
and African Women Studies 27: 32–51.
Geda, Gemechu J. 2007. “The Faraqasa Indigenous pilgrimage center: History
and ritual practices.” MA Thesis, University of Thromso.
———. 2014. “Pilgrimages and Syncretism: Religious transformation among the
Arsi Oromo of Ethiopia.” Ph.D dissertation, University of Bayreuth.
Echtler, Magnus and Ukah, Asonzeh. 2016. “Introduction.” In Bourdieu in
Africa: Exploring the Dynamics of Religious Fields in Africa, ed. Magnus
Echtler and Asonzeh Ukah, 1–27. Brill.
Hassen, Mohammad. The Oromo of Ethiopia: A History, 1570–1860. Trenton,
New Jersey: Red Sea Press, 1994.
King, Ursula. Women and Spirituality: Voice of Protest and Promise. Second
Edition. Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993.
Knutsson, Karl. Authority and Change: A Study of the Kallu Institution among
the Macha Galla of Ethiopia. Sweden: Göteborg University Press, 1967.
Lewis, I. M. Ecstatic religion: A study of Shamanism and Spirit possession third edi-
tion. London: Routledge, 2003.
Marcus, Harold G. A History of Ethiopia. Berkley: University of California, 1994.
Melba, Geda. Oromia: An Introduction to the History of Oromo people. Sudan:
Khartoum, 1988.
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History of Africa, Vol.II Ancient civilizations of Africa, ed. G. Mokhtar,
401–420. Berkley: University of California Press.
Ta’a Tessema. 2012. “Religious Beliefs Among the Oromo: Waqqeffaana
Christianity and Islam in the Context of Ethnic Identity, Citizenship and
Integrity2. Ethiopian Journal of the Social Sciences and Humanities 8:87–111.
Tamirat, Tadesse. Church and State in Ethiopia, 1270–1527. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1972.
Trimingham, John. Islam in Ethiopia. London: Routledge, 1952.
Weber, Max. 1978. “Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology
(2 vols.)”, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich. Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press.
CHAPTER 11
Female Leadership in Mudzimu Unoera

Sect of Guruve, Zimbabwe
Fortune Sibanda
Introduction
In recent years, African Christianity experienced a phenomenal growth
in size and influence that resulted in the mushrooming of new churches.
In fact, Africa represents the fastest growth of Christian population the
world over (Ukah 2007, p. 1). Along the same lines, there has been a
relocation of the centre of gravity in Christian circles from the Global
North consisting of western nations to the Global South comprising
Latin America, Asia and Africa (Kalu 2003, p. 215; Sibanda et al. 2013,
p. 248). As the centre of Christianity shifted, there were some accompa-
nying developments. In principle, African Christianity is vibrant, multi-
faceted and dynamic to such an extent that this religion can no longer
be conceived in monolithic terms (Ukah 2007). In order to mirror
these diversities in Christianity, the label ‘African Christianities’ is often
employed. Although some forms of Christianity are difficult to describe
F. Sibanda (*) 
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Great
Zimbabwe University, Masvingo, Zimbabwe

210 F. Sibanda
and categorise in contemporary African society, three broad strands can

be identified, namely, mission Christianity under which Catholicism and
Protestantism are identified, African Initiated Christianity and African
Pentecostalism (Gifford 1994, p. 515; Ukah 2007, p. 2). Although schol-
ars such as Harvey Cox (1996) have rightly observed that Pentecostal
Christianity is reshaping the twenty-first-century religious landscape in
Africa, this study placed its focus on female leadership in New Religious
Movements (NRMs) in the form of African Initiated Churches (AICs).
These NRMs are sometimes known as African New Religious Movements
(ANRMs) particularly in the diaspora (Adogame 2008, p. 296).
In order to explore female leadership in Mudzimu Unoera Sect, it
important to explain the terms New Religious Movement and sect in
the context of the study. A NRM is a religious community or ethical,
spiritual or philosophical group of recent or modern origin. Such reli-
gious communities are ‘new’ in as much as they present themselves as
alternative to official institutional religion. Therefore, NRMs have also
been called ‘alternative religious movements’, ‘emergent religions’ or
‘marginal religious movements’ (Enroth 1983, pp. 10–11). A sect is a
social and religious phenomenon developed in opposition to the origi-
nal church over some differences in doctrine, practice and/or leadership
wrangles (Abgrall 2007, pp. 13–14). In this study, the term ‘sect’ was
used in reference to Mudzimu Unoera because it was considered equiva-
lent to a New Religious Movement or Alternative Spirituality.
Historically, the founding and leadership of most mainline churches
and NRMs were predominantly a male endeavour to such an extent
that cases of female leadership were uncommon and can be exempli-
fied by Mai Chaza (1914–1960) who founded Guta raJehova in 1954
(Bourdillon 1987). This chapter examined the nature and impact of
female leadership of Mai Maria (approximately now in her mid-60s) and
Tepsy Nyanhete (born in 1992) in Mudzimu Unoera Sect of Guruve
in Zimbabwe (established in 1999), a syncretic Christian offshoot from
Emmanuel Mudyiwa Dzangara’s (1912–1989) Mudzimu Unoyera
Church (established around 1939). This chapter posited that through
her influence and leadership, Mai Maria manipulated her daughter, Tepsy
Nyanhete (Girl Jesus), to establish a contemporary cultic order that vio-
lated children’s rights in the name of religion. Therefore, this chapter
unveiled the agency of women, which showed that women’s history in
religion was not always that of disadvantage and degradation.
11 FEMALE LEADERSHIP IN MUDZIMU UNOERA SECT OF … 211
Mudzimu Unoera Sect: A Historical Overview

Mudzimu Unoera sect is headquartered in Chatiza Village in Guruve
district of Mashonaland Central Province, 22 kilometres south of Guruve
Business Centre in Zimbabwe. The sect is an off shoot from Emmanuel
Dzangara Mudyiwa’s original Mazowe-based Mudzimu Unoyera Church
situated at Britten Farm. Emmanuel Mudyiwa Dzangare was born in
1912 as Mudyiwa Dzangare (Mawerera 1987, p. 6). ‘Emmanuel’ appears
to be a label that followers used to acknowledge that Mudyiwa was the
Son of God. Thus, believers referred to him as ‘Emmanuel the Christ’
whilst others called him ‘Black Jesus’ and others ‘Jesus of Chiweshe’.
These various titles show his place of origin and territory of operations
as well as his acclaimed status and role. He founded his movement in
1932 and established its headquarters at Britten Farm in Mazowe, where
he was buried after his death on 19 May 1989. At the time of his death,
Mudyiwa was 77-years old, married to three wives and had fifteen chil-
dren as well as more than 20,000 members.1 What was not clear was
the relationship between Emmanuel Mudyiwa Dzangare and Johane
Masowe (1914–1973) who founded the Gospel of God Church popu-
larly known as Apostolic Sabbath Church of Johanne Masowe or Johane
Masowe Apostolic Church (established in the early 1930s). Johane
Masowe, a contemporary to Mudyiwa Dzangare, was born in 1914 as
Shonhiwa Masedza Tandi Moyo and also used titles like ‘Black Messiah
for the Africans’ (Amanze 2004, p. 82). According to a pro-Mudyiwa
tradition, Johane Masowe was like a forerunner and a disciple who
pronounced the coming of Emmanuel Mudyiwa as Jesus. In this vein,
Johane Masowe occupied a similar position as that of the biblical John
the Baptist who heralded the coming of Jesus Christ as the mightier one.
The missions and ministries of these two messengers of God serve to
show the phase of male leadership in AICs from which Mudzimu Unoera
sect female leadership emerged.
The Guruve-based Mudzimu Unoera sect is under the female
leadership of Tespy Nyanhete (also known as Girl Jesus or Jesus of
Guruve), daughter of Mrs Entrance Nyanhete (popularly known as Mai
Maria/Mother Mary) and Mr Okinebheti Nyanhete (approximately now
in his late sixties) and popularly known as Baba Josefa/Father Joseph.
According to Mai Maria, as reported by a local weekly newspaper, The
Sunday Mail, ‘Jesus [Christ] died 2000 years ago and was reincarnated
212 F. Sibanda
as Emmanuel Dzanagare [sic] Mudyiwa in 1939. Mudyiwa died in

1989 and the spirit found abode in her then six-year-old daughter,
Tepsy Nyanhete in 1998’ (Matabvu 2016). This suggested that the sect
believed that Tepsy was Jesus, and they accordingly referred to her as
‘Jepsy Nyanhete’, ‘Jekia Mambo’ (King/Queen Jekia), ‘Tenzi’ (Lord)
or ‘Ishe Jesu’ (Lord Jesus). These titles were meant to show the self-
acclaimed divine character and superhuman powers of Tepsy Nyanhete.
The people of Zimbabwe know her as ‘Girl Jesus’ or ‘Jesus of Guruve’,
who at the time of writing was no longer a girl as she was 25 years of
age. In an interview with Mai Maria, it was revealed that Feresi Mukaira
(Mukaera) of Matsvitsi in Guruve, a svikiro (prophetess) and woman
disciple of Emmanuel Mudyiwa prophesied the birth of ‘Girl Jesus’. In
addition, it is believed that when Emmanuel Mudyiwa died in 1989, he
had told his apostles that he would come again after three years, a proph-
ecy that some of the Mazowe-based members took in a literal sense. In
this way, they looked forward to the return of Emmanuel Mudyiwa with
the same physical properties, just as Jesus of Nazareth reappeared in bod-
ily form to his followers after resurrection, given that they believed that
Emmanuel Mudyiwa was an incarnate of Jesus Christ.
Apparently, when Girl Jesus was born in 1992, it was three years
after Mudyiwa’s death and this was interpreted by some as a fulfilment
of Mudyiwa’s prophecy of his reincarnation. Nevertheless, the Mazowe-
based church elders did not acknowledge the birth of Tepsy Nyanhete
in the same way. They took the birth of Tepsy Nyanhete as a non-event
contrary to the claim lodged by her parents that she was a reincarna-
tion of Emmanuel Mudyiwa. This created clashes within the Mazowe-
based Mudzimu Unoyera church because the Nyanhete family were
mere church members with no blood relations to the Mudyiwa lineage.
According to Mai Maria, the controversy was made worse by the fact
that their new born child was a girl to such an extent that the self-pro-
claimed identity that she was the newly chosen leader was unpalatable to
church members who were steeped in a long tradition of patriarchy in
church leadership. Eventually, there emerged a breakaway group initiated
by the Nyanhete family from the Mazowe-based church with a number
of followers that constituted Mudzimu Unoera sect of Guruve under
the baby girl female leadership of Tepsy Nyanhete. In this way, a mythi-
cal connection was proclaimed to justify that the birth and childhood of
Tepsy Nyanhete suggested that she was born a leader.
Research Methodology
Data for the research was gathered through conservational and interact-
ing interviewing. The in-depth interviews were held with information-
rich participants that included the founders and leaders of Mudzimu
Unoera Sect, some of the sect elders and the local community members
such as the headman of Chatiza Village. Through interviews, the partici-
pants were allowed to identify, describe, question and analyse the agency
of women leadership in Mudzimu Unoera sect. The participant obser-
vation technique was also useful for the study as it complemented the
interviews. The researcher first made fieldwork study of this sect a decade
ago, when the majority of the interviews and participant observations
were done. In addition, documentary analysis of the print and electronic
media was also significant in this study given that cases on the abuse of
children in the Mudzimu Unoera Sect once caused a public outcry that
attracted the attention of the government and human rights activists in
Zimbabwe.2
The study also benefited from the African feminist theology of reli-
gion, the sociology of religion and the phenomenology of religion,
which were important in describing and analysing the data. By employ-
ing the African feminist theology of religion, it was hoped that women’s
religious experiences and the agency of women could be captured. Given
that the study of religion through all the other methods was ‘gender
blind’ and a ‘male deal’ (Mapuranga et al. 2013, p. 315), the use of the
African feminist theology of religion would effectively tap and give pri-
ority to women experiences. The method uses ‘cultural hermeneutics’,
which is an interpretive tool that combines the ‘affirmation of culture
and a critique of it’ (Kanyoro 2002, p. 9, p. 26). The status and con-
tribution of women in the sect can be established through this method
more than other approaches that present ‘men in the pulpit and women
in the pew’ (Hendriks et al. cited in Mapuranga et al. 2013, p. 317).
Alongside the African feminist theology of religion, the study also uti-
lised the sociology of religion, which Bourdillon (1990) defines as the
interplay between religion and society, where the focus is on how reli-
gion affects society and vice versa. The sociological approach comple-
mented other methods through its focus on human relationships that
entailed religion and class, gender, economics and change in society.
The phenomenology of religion was engaged because of its merit of
214 F. Sibanda
promoting the ‘insider’ perspective through some of its elements such

as epoche (bracketing), empathy and eidetic intuition that establishes the
essence of religion (Cox 1996). All these methods have been employed
in a complementary way in order to ensure that the weaknesses of one
method are covered by the strengths of another method.
Tritnoi: Anti-language and Anti-society

New Religious Movements and Alternative Spiritualities are sometimes
associated with incredible things such as introducing a new language
and even convincing members to commit suicide under the pretext that
they would get a better resurrection,3 which have made some of them
a subject of conflict and suspicion. This situation of incredible things
manifested in Mudzimu Unoera Sect through its use of language as a
technique of manipulation, persuasion and control of members. As such,
this chapter utilised Halliday’s conceptual apparatus of ‘anti-language’
and ‘anti-society’ to formulate a theoretical framework for understanding
the social and religious dynamics that transformed human attitudes and
behaviour in Mudzimu Unoera Sect under female leadership. Michael
Alexander Kirkwood Halliday, a British-born linguist of great repute,
developed an approach that considers language as a social semiotic sys-
tem. Halliday (1976, 1978) introduced the concept of ‘anti-language’ to
describe argots or slang used in communication to create an alternative
reality. In terms of function, Halliday (1976, p. 570) says an ‘anti-lan-
guage serve to create and maintain social structure through conversation,
just as an everyday language does; but the social structure is of a particu-
lar kind, in which certain elements are strongly foregrounded. This gives
to the anti-language a special character in which metaphorical modes of
expression are the norm; patterns of this kind are at all levels, phono-
logical, lexicological, and semantic’. This shows that anti-languages are a
vehicle of resocialisation whereby new words or special forms of language
is generated by some kind of anti-society.
An anti-society ‘is a society that is set up with another society as a
conscious alternative to it. It is a mode of resistance, […] which may
take the form either of passive symbiosis or of active hostility and even
destruction’ (Halliday 1976, p. 570). The anthropologist, Victor Turner
refers to anti-society as an ‘anti-structure’ and ‘communitas’ (Deflem
1991; Nyota and Sibanda 2012) with an intense feeling of community,
social equality, solidarity and togetherness where normal social statuses

and positions have broken down.4 Some of these elements manifested in
Mudzimu Unoera Sect to the extent that the operations of the sect made
headlines in the local media for having running battles with state police
and social welfare agents for detaining children at the shrine.5
In line with the above, the female spiritual leader in Mudzimu
Unoera Sect introduced Tritnoi, an anti-language in an anti-society to
be utilised by members as a ‘proper’ language, which is a reality-gener-
ating system. The local media reported the use of ‘a strange language
[Tritnoi, which] holds them together’ (Kachere 2006b, p. 12). As
Halliday (1976, p. 574) puts it: ‘The reality-generating force of the anti-
language, and especially its power to create and maintain social hierar-
chy, is strongly foregrounded’. This language made the Guruve-based
spiritual leader known as ‘Girl Jesus’ to attract a lot of followers across
the country and beyond its borders, including Botswana, South Africa,
Zambia and the USA. Halliday refers to Peter Berger and Thomas
Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality (1966) to illustrate how
an anti-language is used in the generation of reality through conversa-
tion. In the words of Berger and Luckmann cited in Halliday (1976, p.
574), it is asseverated, thus:
The most important vehicle of reality-maintenance is conversation. One

may view the individual’s everyday life in terms of the working away of
a conversational apparatus that ongoingly maintains, modifies and recon-
structs his subjective reality. This does not deny the rich aura of non-ver-
bal communication that surrounds speech. Nevertheless speech retains a
privileged position in the total conversational apparatus. It is important to
stress, however, that the greater part of reality-maintenance in conversa-
tion is implicit, not explicit. Most conversation does not in so many words
define the nature of the world. Rather, it takes place against the back-
ground of a world that is silently taken for granted.
In the anti-society context of Mudzimu Unoera, the oral basis of the

sect’s operations is apparent. A media reporter in a local news house,
Henry Makiwa, had this to say in this regard: ‘Her [“Girl Jesus”] church,
the Church of Jesus, has spread its wings across the country and many
people—young and old—follow her teachings and her strange language,
which does not come from the Bible, but from her mouth’ (Makiwa
216 F. Sibanda
2003, p. 5). Therefore, ‘Girl Jesus’ amassed followers to her sect under
circumstances that many in society took for granted, until the allegations
of child abuse surfaced and the government took stern measures.
In Mudzimu Unoera sect, through the use of Tritnoi, condition-
ing invaded all segments and activities of the group. Typically, fol-
lowers of the sect were conditioned through language education in
complementary ways that encompassed cultural conditioning that
replaced the followers’ usual system of references with a new matrix of
behaviour; emotional conditioning in which the followers were cut off
from their past; and physical conditioning where the personality of the
adherents was remodelled to suit the objectives of the group’s leader
and for them to have total dependence on the group (Abgrall 2007).
This resulted in the alienation of the followers. In an anti-society, a
behavioural technique that may be employed includes a geographical
break with one’s past where the followers exchange their residence for
a place specified by the sect. This is what happened when Mudzimu
Unoera sect initially kept hundreds of children at its Guruve shrine as
a permanent residence so that they could be taught Tritnoi, the spir-
itual language of the sect. Apparently, besides using anti-languages,
sects may employ, miracles, mystery and authority to conquer and
subject the spirit of members (Abgrall 2007, p. 123). Because of these
forces as well as the anti-language, the followers end up empathising
with the group’s ideals as well as believing without criticising. The
mysterious nature of the sect and the leader attracts the new follow-
ers who are fascinated by the supernatural elements of the group. The
miracle acts as bait and testimony to the power of the sect. This rein-
forces the authority and enhances mysterious essence of the leader. As
Abgrall (2007, p. 123) writes: ‘The authority conferred on the guru
[leader] enables him to work miracles and create mysteries at will; and
the mystery that surrounds him [or her] masks his [or her] inadequa-
cies’. The use of Tritnoi, miracles and authority in Mudzimu Unoera
sect had a cognitive effect to the majority of followers who were in
need of success, wealth and cure. Therefore, using the theoretical
framework of anti-languages and anti-society, the study illustrated
how the female leadership in Mudzimu Unoera Sect operated an anti-
society with Tritnoi as an anti-language that held them together as a
‘communitas’ with a creative energy and camaraderie that created an
alternative reality.
Understanding the Leadership Patterns

in New Religious Movements
This section begins with an explication of the concept of leadership

before illustrating leadership patterns in NRMs. Despite its long and
multifaceted history, leadership remains an elusive phenomenon (Klenke
2004, p. 7). This is because there are as many definitions as there are
persons defining the concept. Leadership is a value-laden term found
in every language and meaning different things to different people. In
Greek and Latin, the word leadership is derived from the verb ‘to act’,
whilst the English word ‘leader’ has an Anglo-Saxon root laedere, mean-
ing ‘people on a journey’. This shows that leadership is a process and a
role that can be assumed by men and women, adults and children, lead-
ers and followers. As Bogardus cited in Klenke (2004, p. 7) observes,
leadership is ‘both a personality phenomenon and a group phenomenon;
it is also a social process involving a number of persons in mental contact
in which one person assumes dominance over the others. It is the process
in which the activities of the many are organized to move in a specific
direction by the one. It is the process in which the attitudes and values
of the many may be changed by the one…’ Hence, leadership may be an
aspiration, opportunity and inspiration. Leadership in Mudzimu Unoera
can be examined through critical features such as integrity, morality,
veracity, trust, shared experiences and dynamic networks. On the whole,
although leadership remains a slippery concept, it can be understood
within power dynamics shaped by variables such as gender, context, tra-
dition, time and innovation.
In general, women tend to dominate NRMs numerically, and yet a
few rise to prominent leadership roles. What the scholar of religions spe-
cialising on AICs, Isabel Mukonyora says about the position of women
amongst Masowe Apostles could be applied to other male-led AICs
when she writes: ‘Women form the overwhelming majority of Masowe
Apostles despite the norm of choosing only men as official leaders’
(Mukonyora 2006, p. 65). Therefore, a historical reflection on patterns
of leadership in spiritual movements, let alone NRMs showed that une-
qual opportunities were availed for women in favour of men. Therefore,
the status of women continued to evoke emotions. This explained why
women activists argued that gender justice was an urgent matter in order
to ensure that there was greater visibility of women in all areas of life
218 F. Sibanda
(Chitando and Mateveke 2012, p. 41). The status of women in NRMs

was shaped by the patriarchal ideology that idolised men and privi-
leged male experiences over those of women and children which were
often minimised. A pattern of male leadership manifested amongst the
Apostolic and Zionist movements such as Samuel Mutendi’s Zion
Christian Church (ZCC), Johane Marange Apostolic Church (JMAC),
The Apostolic Sabbath Church of Johanne Masowe and Emmanuel
Mudyiwa Dzangara’s Mudzimu Unoyera Church.
In some African churches, women have priestly functions and are
ritual leaders to the extent that some are even deified in different ways
(Klenke 2004, p. 29). In this context, women exercised their agency
despite being victims of oppression and being drawn in large numbers
to AICs. As some African women scholars have argued, the fear of blood
resulted in the marginalisation of women in ritual performance. Women
of child-bearing age were excluded from taking active roles in major ritu-
als as they were regarded as having a polluting effect (Phiri 1997, p. 51).
This affected the opportunities of women to hold public offices as public
space was constructed in masculine terms. Some NRMs also adopted the
Pauline teachings about the need for women to keep silent in church,
literally (I Cor. 14, 34–35). However, a few women in NRMs have had
to break the glass ceiling of male leadership due to their possession of
charisma. For instance, in the 1950s, Mai Chaza broke away from the
British Methodist Church to form and lead an African church, Guta
Ra Jehovah (City of God). As Kupe (2015) rightly puts it, ‘[n]ot many
women in Africa are known to have founded churches but there is one
name worth knowing and it is that of a woman known as Mai Chaza
who is believed by her followers to have been a host of God’s Holy Spirit
or God Incarnate (Musiki)’. Because of her healing abilities, particularly
of barrenness, she transcended the sociocultural hierarchy and defied
the status of being a ‘perpetual minor’ to become an elder command-
ing respect in a position of power and prestige. Along these lines, what
also comes to mind pertaining to female leadership is the case of Alice
Auma Lakwena, a prophetess and leader of the Holy Spirit Movement
in Uganda who, between 1986 and 1988, defied the long established
tradition of the male leadership of warfare (Amone 2014). Like Mai
Chaza, Alice Lakwena was a charismatic leader who operated as a spir-
itual healer and commanded much respect amongst the Acholi people
of Northern Uganda and beyond. The few women who have attained
power in NRMs did not ascend to leadership positions through tradition
or rational legal means, but relied on their charismatic authority that

manifested in the form of spiritual vision or prophecy that renders the
receiver a messenger of God. According to Hutch (1984, p. 165), char-
ismatic leadership has three dimensions, namely, the intrinsic charismatic
dimension, extrinsic charismatic dimension and the non-charismatic
dimension. Apparently, Tepsy Nyanhete is a typical female charismatic
leader in the Weberian sense. Therefore, women’s history is not always
that of a ‘victim analysis’ that disadvantages and degrades the position of
women. This is important in understanding the pattern of female leader-
ship in Mudzimu Unoera sect of Guruve.
Anti-structure?: Female Leadership

in Mudzimu Unoera Sect of Guruve in Zimbabwe
The female leadership by ‘Girl Jesus’ is both a historical and theologi-

cal phenomenon that can be regarded as an anti-structure in Zimbabwe.
This is because generally, female leadership is uncommon in a society
engrossed in a long history of patriarchy as has been intimated in earlier
sections of this chapter. Apparently, women have to contend with patri-
archy and its construction of space. Resistance staged by the elders in
the Mazowe-based Mudzimu Unoyera church is a good case in point.
Therefore, Mudzimu Unoera sect represents a case where patriarchy has
been challenged and women’s agency exercised in the area of spiritual
leadership. Through Mai Maria and Baba Josefa, ‘Girl Jesus’ managed to
express her agency and stand the challenge of male demands of church
leadership. The research established that Girl Jesus’ parents were instru-
mental as technocrats to the formation of the sect and the existing power
structure.
Mudzimu Unoera sect’s power structure is vital in providing an
understanding of the nature of female leadership by Tepsy. There is a
hierarchical structure that can be conceived in the form of a pyramid. At
the top of the pyramid, there are Girl Jesus, Mai Maria and Baba Josefa
and the siblings to Tepsy. These can be described as the ‘insider-insiders’
of the sect. Although Girl Jesus commands high respect amongst her fol-
lowers as they sit down and bow down to her in respect when she speaks
or gives orders (Guvamombe 1998), through observation, the researcher
established that Mai Maria, the mother of Tepsy, has been and is still
the de facto leader of the sect ahead of Baba Josefa, the father of Tepsy.
220 F. Sibanda
Indeed, Mother Mary does most of the talking. In an interview, Mai

Maria described her role in the sect in relation to Tepsy as mouth piece
and interpreter, who calls herself ‘Themba’ (one who can be trusted) by
Girl Jesus. An interpreter was necessary because Girl Jesus only speaks
in Tritnoi. A former member of the sect claimed that Mai Maria pos-
sessed mysterious powers. Kachere (2006a, p. 7) noted this as follows:
‘She [Mai Maria] has magical powers to cause mysterious happenings at
the shrine. She is a revered and feared leader’. This shows that Mai Maria
complements the leadership of Girl Jesus.
The middle level of the pyramid is composed of sect elders with dif-
ferent roles and titles like Peredisi (elders), Sondosi (ushers) and Vatsanyi
(those who fast). The Peredisi, who could be male or female, are experi-
enced members well versed in Tritnoi language, the medium of commu-
nication in the sect. They are the elders who run the show. These office
bearers operate like deacons by attending to social matters and ensur-
ing the smooth functioning of the sect. They get assistance from the
Sondosi, the ushers/police officers of the sect. Their duty is to ensure
that there is security, peace, harmony and order during religious and
social gatherings. The Sondosi as ushers, are responsible for presenting
visitors to Girl Jesus, Mai Maria and Baba Josefa. Vatsanyi specialise in
fasting and prayer for the problems and blessings of the sect. The name
of their office comes from the Shona word tsanya which means fast.
They can fast for rain and fertility together with the mhondoros (spirit
mediums) of Guruve. They are described as ‘Madzisahwira aMwari’,
spiritual partners to Girl Jesus, who is referred to as Jekia Mambo/Ishe
Jesu/God in the sect. At the bottom of the pyramid, there are the ordi-
nary members of the sect who form the majority referred to as Dare
reSentos/Sekentos (Sentos Assembly). Tepsy is in full control of control
everything through the assistance especially offered by Mai Maria.
Girl Jesus has developed a position of influence, authority and holi-
ness in Mudzimu Unoera sect at Guruve centre. As noted by Mai
Maria, from an early age of three when she revealed her identity, Girl
Jesus refused to be identified as female. This explains why her followers
call her ‘father’ and the Son of God. In one incident reported in The
Standard by Henry Makiwa (2003, p. 5), Girl Jesus said: ‘Pandakauya
ndakati ndiri murume, ndiri mukadzi’ (When I came, I indicated that
I am both a man and a woman). In other words, Girl Jesus is believed
to be the incarnation of Jesus Christ who was crucified over 2000 years
ago and Emmanuel Mudyiwa who died in 1989. As Guvamombe (1998)
notes, ‘Tepsy claims to be the third and last “Jesus” to grace this world
and to have risen from the dead to salvage the world from imminent col-
lapse’. The biblical passion narratives of Jesus Christ have influenced the
sect to the extent that Mai Maria personalised the event and regarded
every Friday as Easter to them. As revealed by a local media reporter,
Debra Matabvu (2016) Mai Maria had this to say: ‘For us, every Friday
is Easter and we remember how they killed my child [Jesus Christ of
Nazareth] many years back. We celebrate it [Easter] in our own way,
with our own rituals, which include crying, singing and dancing. We are,
however, grateful that Jesus came back, and this time, she will not die.
She is not going away anymore. She is set to live forever and rule the
earth’. This shows how Mai Maria claims her daughter to be a holy per-
son who is immortal, supernatural and mysterious. As a female leader,
it appears Tepsy adopted styles of men as noted from her preference to
be identified as murume (male) like Jesus of Nazareth. The male inclina-
tion was also apparent in how Girl Jesus banned the wearing of dresses
by female sect members and ordered them to put on trousers (Mapupu
2013).
According to Mai Maria, Girl Jesus is on a mission to spread the
Gospel of Mudzimu Unoera sect and to perform miracles. There are
claims that Girl Jesus performed numerous miracles. One woman adher-
ent had this to say: ‘She [Girl Jesus] is just like any other child. The dif-
ference is that she performs so many miracles’ (Makiwa 2003, p. 5). For
instance, some of the miracles performed include the raising of some of
her followers from the dead. In the sect, one beneficiary of the ‘mira-
cle’ of being raised from the dead was ‘Razaro’ (Lazarus) (Matabvu
2016). Apparently, the incident of Razaro being raised from the dead
by Girl Jesus mirrors that of the biblical Lazarus performed by Jesus
Christ (John 11, 38–53). There was also the case of Grace Bangira from
Ruvinga whom Mother Mary said was brought to the shrine when she
could not move around and lay motionless. This was occurred when
Girl Jesus was 11 years old and was used as evidence that she could per-
form healing miracles (Mazara n.d.). Mai Maria also said Tepsy also gave
prophecies to things that would eventually happen with shocking preci-
sion (Guvamombe 1998).
In her sect leadership, Tepsy made use of Tritnoi. To outsiders, the
language was an unintelligible spiritual language that was very strange.
However, for the insiders, this ‘strange’ language was their lingua franca
within the sect. The Mudzimu Unoera temple walls have statements
222 F. Sibanda
inscribed in this language. For instance, one of the statements read as

follows: ‘Kechitino lenia kisdond penaty solopia sobhiko sapinaty beki-
wat dhegame gichinai wanisa jethia’. This means ‘I am Jesus Emmanuel
Christ Son of God’ (Kachere 2006b, p. 12). Using Tritnoi, Girl Jesu has
renamed most parts of the country and the world at large. There is a
home-made dictionary compiled by her disciples for a record keeping
(Guvamombe 1998). Tritnoi is taught to the followers of the sect whilst
Mother Mary does the translations. Girl Jesus assigns new names to new
followers and newly born babies. Some of the names given to members
include, Bhurukaiti Jitita Lenkitai (Prayer Warrior), Natika Gopusati
(Go with Love), Fedhiroyi (Remember me), Sitrogachi (Judgment Day),
Leganesi (the other side) and Datala (Live in peace). In general, some
followers live at the shrine where they are taught Tritnoi by Girl Jesus. It
has been noted that the desire to be taught this language once resulted
in some sect members choosing not to send their children to formal
schools and thereby preferring the shrine (Kachere 2006b). Girl Jesus
had wanted to catch the children young, and their parents surrendered
them for ‘religious education’ at the shrine.
The above scenario of keeping children at the shrine forms an impor-
tant part in the history of the sect leadership. Back then (in 2006), the
Government through the Department of Social Welfare seriously clashed
with the sect leadership in order to rescue over 160 children at the
Guruve shrine who were aged between four and 16 years. A Government
report compiled by the Guruve District Social Welfare revealed that reli-
gion was being used to isolate juveniles from mainstream society as par-
ents took their children for sacrifice at the shrine.6 The government
believed that the basic rights of the children were ‘violated by being
denied education and health facilities while they were staying at the
shrine’ (Kachere 2006b, p. 12). Emotional abuse of children cannot be
ruled out in this regard. Some of the children rescued initially insisted
on speaking in Tritnoi and had to be stopped as part of the rehabilitation
process. Counselling and group therapy sessions were done to ‘‘detoxi-
cate’ the children from brainwashing they underwent at the shrine’.7
However, amongst the adult members of the sect, Tritnoi persisted
unabated and is certainly difficult to rub off. This shows how, through
Tritnoi, the followers were held together, and the leadership of Girl Jesus
was further mystified. Mai Maria was once arrested for beating policemen
from Guruve Police Station who had accompanied Mr Godfrey Magunje
who wanted to rescue his wife and children from the shrine (Kachere
2006b). Apparently, the 160 children were reported as missing from the
shrine, whilst Girl Jesus went into hiding as the police investigations were
underway (Kachere 2006a). The clandestine removal of the children from
the shrine shows connivance and influence between the spiritual leaders
and sect elders of Mudzimu Unoera.
Trampling Human Rights or Liberating Souls

Through Female Leadership?: Critical Reflections
The case of Mudzimu Unoera sect provides a paradox in the context reli-
gious freedom and human rights. On the one hand, insiders and sym-
pathisers of the sect are not perturbed by the operations and spiritual
leadership of Girl Jesus. Under the pretext of religious freedom, they
believe that Girl Jesus is a Saviour as evidenced by a chain of mythical
and mysterious revelations, visions, dreams as well as prophecies that
circulated within the sect. In this regard, Girl Jesus was believed to be
one who would liberate the poor and sick as the reincarnated Jesus who
could perform of miracles. Both the young and old were targeted for lib-
eration. The use of a new language for communication, Tritnoi, deemed
as divine in the sect, enhanced the spirit of unity. This is camaraderie
borne by a communitas of the sect. Therefore, under such a scenario, the
female leadership of Girl Jesus reigned supreme through the support of
Mai Maria and Baba Josefa.
On the other hand, the female leadership of Girl Jesus is a strong case
of spiritual manipulation in spite of the members’ rights to freely take
part in the practices of their religion. Abuse and manipulation can be
open and subtle. In Mudzimu Unoera sect, the manipulation can be per-
ceived at two levels. Firstly, Girl Jesus in cahoots with her parents made
children of ages between four and 16 to live in isolation and insulation at
the shrine until the Government intervened. The children were denied
their right to education under appalling conditions under which they
operated to get ‘religious education’. Parental roles were attributed to
the sect leaders, hence the use of titles like ‘Mother Mary’ and ‘Father
Joseph’. This was tantamount to replacing the biological family and
family system by the authoritative sect system (Pretorius 2013, p. 208).
Secondly, it can be argued that Mai Maria also manipulated Tepsy from
childhood to her own advantage, which saw the creation of Mudzimu
Unoera sect as a split from the Mazowe-based group in September 1999.
224 F. Sibanda
This is somewhat part of her ambition to be a spiritual leader under the

guise of her daughter Tepsy. Exclusive religious claims in having exclu-
sive truth were advanced in the sect and defended by Mai Maria at all
costs. This resulted in Mai Maria assaulting Godfrey Magunje and police-
men who accompanied him to recover his wife and children from the
shrine. The refusal to release Magunje’s family shows an aspect of coer-
cion in the sect. Such a move can be regarded as a form of religious
abuse as it entails a misuse of her position of authority as a sect leader.
Conclusion
This chapter has demonstrated that Mudzimu Unoera sect presented a
paradox of female leadership in Zimbabwe. The use of Tritnoi, a special
language with inherent power to unite followers, rendered the sect to
be an anti-society thriving on an anti-language. Tepsy’s leadership ‘style’
was typically charismatic, hierarchical and essentially anchored on the
support of Mai Maria and Baba Josefa. Girl Jesus could be described as
a self-encountering leader on the basis of her experiences of surrender to
the feminine paradox and her being the key to the ultimate reality that
is accorded overriding value in the sect. Through the language, mystery
and authority of Girl Jesus, the sect attracted a lot of followers across
the country and beyond its borders to as far afield as Botswana, South
Africa, Zambia and the USA. This is a modern case of women agency to
which insiders regarded ‘Jesus of Guruve’ as a Saviour and redeemer, a
second incarnation of Jesus of Nazareth. As such, through female leader-
ship in Mudzimu Unoera sect of Guruve, women’s history can no longer
be solely perceived under the guise of ‘victim analysis’ that disadvan-
tages and degrades the position of women. Nevertheless, the study tried
to show that Mai Maria manipulated her daughter, Tepsy Nyanhete, to
establish a contemporary sect that ended up violating children’s rights
in the name of religion. One is left in wonder whether the miracles per-
formed were a result of innocent spiritual power or magic. When sect
members were subjected to special diet, dress code, a new language and
isolation, these conditions have implications on religious freedom and
human rights. Therefore, this chapter concludes that Mudzimu Unoera
sect epitomises how female leadership in NRMs does not readily translate
to the establishment of a liberative religious leadership in twenty-first-
century Zimbabwe.
Notes
1. The Herald, ‘Thousands mourn ‘Jesus’ of Chiweshe’, 23 May 1989.
2. The Sunday Mail, ‘Police Rescue 14 Children from ‘Girl Jesus’’. 5–11
November, 2006.
3. A case in point is the Guyana massacre in the USA when Jim Jones con-
vinced his disciples to drink poison.
4. https://connectedincairo.com/2011/02/10/antistructure-in-tahrir/,
Accessed: 20 February 2016.
5. The Sunday Mail, Op. Cit.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
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Algora Publishing.
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Local Identities, ed. Ogbu U. Kalu, 296–316. Grand Rapids, MI: William B.
Eerdmans Publishing Company.
Amanze, James N. 2004. African Christianity in Botswana. Gweru: Mambo
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www.ifeas.uni-mainz.de. Accessed 20 Feb 2016.
CHAPTER 12
The Politics of the Goddess:

Radical/Cultural Feminist Influences
of Starhawk’s Feminist Witchcraft
Shai Feraro
The rise of Wicca—the religion of Pagan Witchcraft—in Britain since

the 1940s and 1950s has led to the development of various forms of
Contemporary Paganism(s)1, which are modern attempts in the Western
world for reviving various ethnic and magical traditions, mainly those of
the pre-Christian European world (Hutton 1999). The common char-
acteristics of the various Pagan denominations include resistance to any
formal structures of organization, dogma, or orthodoxy; preference
for a direct relationship with the divine, instead of revelations or holy
texts; nature religions which include recognition of an immanent divin-
ity, instead of a transcendental one; and the honoring of nature and the
Earth. Modern-day Pagans are usually polytheistic and can “work” with
one or more divinities, or sometimes whole pantheons (Salomonsen
2002; Davy 2007) .In this chapter, I will analyze the various ways in
S. Feraro (*) 
Tel Aviv University, Haifa, Israel

230 S. Feraro
which several important radical and cultural feminist thinkers influenced

the writing produced during the 1970s and 1980s by Miriam Simos (b.
1951), better known as “Starhawk,” a highly influential Pagan theorist
and activist whose books inspired the development of the Reclaiming tra-
dition of feminist Witchcraft.
Radical and Cultural Feminisms

The second-wave of feminism, as it came to be known, emerged in the
USA during the late 1960s and the early 1970s. An important strand
of the emerging Women’s Liberation Movement was radical feminism,
which evolved in large part out of the disappointment of many women
who were active in two main political strands during the mid-1960s: The
New Left and Liberal Feminism. Early radical feminists believed that
women’s oppression derived from the way gender is constructed in mod-
ern society and so set out to eliminate gender as a meaningful social cate-
gory (Echols 1984, p. 50). They rejected the dichotomy between female
and male values as a sexist notion (Willis 1984, p. 91). One of radical
feminism’s basic positions, as defined by Anne Koedt, was that “Biology
is not destiny, and that male and female roles are learned – indeed that
they are male political constructs that ensure power and superior sta-
tus for men” (1973, p. 248). One of radical feminism’s most important
concepts was “Sisterhood”, which centered upon the belief that in order
to undermine male power women had to form a unified revolutionary
group (Rowland and Klein 1996, p. 18). Radical feminism flourished
during the early 1970s, but according to researcher Alice Achols by
1973, its hegemony was beginning to be challenged (and by 1975, over-
shadowed) by cultural feminism—a tendency which developed out of its
radical predecessor.2 Indeed, by 1984, the veteran radical feminist Ellen
Willis lamented that “[r]adical feminism in its original sense barely exists
today” (Willis 1984, p. 91).
Although cultural feminism evolved out of radical feminism, it devi-
ated from it in several critical aspects. In its fundamentals, radical femi-
nism was a political movement dedicated to the elimination of the
gender-based class system. Cultural feminism, on the other hand, formed
a counterculture aimed at turning the cultural preference of male over
female on its tip. And while radical feminists were anti-capitalists (if
only subtly), cultural feminists dismissed the economic class struggle as
a “male construct,” and ergo—irrelevant to women. They insisted that
12 THE POLITICS OF THE GODDESS: RADICAL/CULTURAL FEMINIST … 231
feminism and the New Left were essentially opposing forces and that the
Left was a polluting and intrusive force which prevented women from
leaving male domination behind them. Unlike their radical feminist sis-
ters, who saw the social construction of gender as the central cause for
women’s oppression and tried to abolish it as a significant social cate-
gory, cultural feminists claimed that gender differences actually reflected
deep truths regarding the differences between men and women (Echols
1989, pp. 6–7; 1984, pp. 50, 53–54).
Despite the fact that radical feminists often emphasized the psycho-
logical dimensions of women’s oppression, they assigned a supreme
importance to analyzing and challenging the material basis for male
domination. Cultural feminists, on the other hand, focused on nurturing
an alternative women’s culture and claimed that the fight against male
supremacy will begin with women expelling the “male” within them
and maximizing the feminine (Echols 1984, p. 53). Creating alternative
female institutions represented “[c]oncrete moves toward self-determi-
nation and power” for women (Morgan 1975, p. 77). They were inter-
ested in who women were. Like radical feminists, their “cultural” sisters
were shocked by the thought of women “buying into” men’s values
by assuming male traditional roles in the public sphere. However, their
fear stemmed from their perception that women were distancing them-
selves from their true female self, for femaleness was better than maleness
in their eyes. As the carriers of loftier female values, women were thus
called by cultural feminists to play a central role in the making of a better
world (Eller 2000, p. 16). According to Mary Daly, true feminism was
“not [sic] reconciliation with the father. It begins by saying ‘no’ to the
father... and saying ‘yes’ to our original birth, the original movement-
surge towards life. This is both a remembering and a rediscovering”
(Daly 1975, p. 26).
The actual enemy, according to cultural feminists, was not simply
social and economic institutions or a set of backward beliefs, but mas-
culinity and sometimes male biology itself. They claimed that women
were being defined by men—a group holding on to a worldview and a
set of interests opposed to those of women while acting out of fear and
hatred toward them. This resulted, said cultural feminists, in a distortion
and devaluation of female attributes (Alcoff 1988, pp. 406–407, 408).
Male dominance was usually attributed by them to a supposed rapacious-
ness or barrenness of the male’s biology (Echols 1984, p. 52). Some, like
Mary Daly, for example, purported that men are “mutants [who may
232 S. Feraro
like other mutations] manage to kill themselves off eventually” (1978,

p. 360). As far as sexuality is concerned, men and women were consid-
ered by cultural feminists to be complete opposites: Male sexuality was
described as “driven, irresponsible, genitally oriented, and potentially
lethal”. Female sexuality was “muted, diffused, interpersonally-oriented
and benign”, and while men were motivated by their hunger for power
and orgasms, women sought “reciprocity and intimacy” (Echols 1984,
pp. 59–60). As researcher Ursula King has indeed noted, “[t]he place of
biology in feminist theory is certainly one of the difficult philosophical
issues facing feminism” (King 1989, p. 79). Cultural feminists revered
female biology as a true source of power, the basis and foundation for
“female” qualities such as tenderness, intuition, and compassion. They
claimed that female difference was not just worth keeping, but should be
celebrated proudly. Some of them believed that women possess a unique
way of thinking which transcends the logical and includes an intui-
tion tapping into the subconscious, the mystic, and the natural world
(Kimball 1981, p. 4). Adrianne Rich, for example, called on women to
view their biology as an asset, instead of as a cursed destiny (Rich 1977
[1976], p. 39).
It is these brands of feminism that were to become a dominant trans-
forming force within the American Pagan movement, according to many
researchers (Berger 1999, pp. 13, 46; Hutton 1999, pp. 340–369). This
subject is an important one, in my view, since up until the late 1960s, it
had been primarily men who did the talking (and writing) in regard
to Modern Paganism and the occult. As the 1970s drew to a close, that
influence was already evident in the USA mainly through the writings of
Zsuzsanna “Z” Budapest (b. 1940) and Miriam “Starhawk” Simos (b.
1951), who developed Dianic and feminist Witchcraft, respectively, and
became by far the most popular spokespersons for the American Pagan
community during the following decade (Melton and Poggi 1992, p. 209).
Z. Budapest and Dianic Wicca

Dianic Wicca can be seen as part of the wider Neopagan network as well
as an inseparable part of the Feminist Spirituality Movement. Contrary
to Gardnerian/Alexanderian Witchcraft groups—who worship both the
Goddess and the God—Dianic witches acknowledge only the Goddess
as a creative and independent force, not having to be “triggered” by a
male God. Men are excluded from these groups and are barred from
their teachings. Its founder, Zsuzsanna Emese Mokcsay, better known as

Zsuzsanna Budapest or Z by her followers, was born in Hungary and
immigrated to the USA in the wake of the Hungarian Revolution of
1956. Budapest’s first Dianic Witchcraft coven—the Susan B. Anthony
Coven no. 1—was established in December 1971 with the aid of six
of her friends (Berger et al. 2003, p. 13). Budapest’s Los Angeles-
based shop—“The Feminist Wicca”—served as a magnet for a flourish-
ing religious community, regularly hosting rituals, lectures, and lessons
(Budapest 1979, p. 136). More Groups were founded in New York,
Chicago, Florida, and California (Eller 1993, p. 56), and by 1976,
Margo Adler, visiting the original coven, reported it consisted of 20–40
core members coupled with about 300 women who participated in larger
public rituals (Adler 2006 [1979], p. 190). During that year, the group
published its first pamphlet—The Feminist Book of light and Shadows.
It was vastly expanded in 1980 as The Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries
and has been republished many times since. The priestesses trained by
Budapest during the 1980s went on to form new circles and ordain other
priestesses themselves, and hundreds of Dianic groups were formed at
that time basing themselves on her books (Davy 2007, p. 134).
Starhawk’s Feminist Witchcraft

and the Reclaiming Tradition
While Budapest and her followers were developing Dianic Witchcraft,

Miriam “Starhawk” Simos formulated her own brand of non-separatist
and highly popular feminist Witchcraft. Starhawk stated in an inter-
view that her first exposure to Wicca occurred through the 1960s
Countercultural movement rather than feminist awareness (Starhawk
2006, p. 336). In the late 1960s, when she was a student at UCLA, a
group of Wiccan Witches arrived at the converted fraternity house in
which Simos and her friends were living communally and read them the
“Charge of the Goddess,” written by Doreen Valiente (1922–1999).
Starhawk recalled that the “concept of a religion that worshipped a
Goddess was amazing and empowering.” She began training with the
Witches, but drifted away. In the early 1970s, she moved to Venice,
California, where she became deeply involved with the Women’s
Liberation Movement. In the spring of 1973, she met Z Budapest and
attended a Dianic ritual (1989 [1979], pp. 2, 3).
234 S. Feraro
By 1974, Starhawk relocated to San Francisco and began to read

about women, feminism, and Goddess traditions. She started teaching
classes on ritual and related skills at the Open University and local Pagan
bookshops (1989 [1979], pp. 4–5; Salomonsen 2002, p. 37). Susan
Rennie and Kirsten Grimstad, who toured the USA during this period,
indeed observed a surging interest in spirituality in feminist communi-
ties and documented the creation and celebration of “feminist rituals
around birth, death, menstruation… studying pre-patriarchal forms of
religion; reviving and exploring esoteric goddess-centered philosophies
such as Wicce [sic]…” (Grimstad and Rennie 1975, p. 49). In 1975,
Starhawk decided to move to Berkeley. At the time, Berkeley and the San
Francisco Bay Area were home to a small networking community of non-
feminist Witches and Pagans, which formed the basis for an umbrella
organization called “Covenant of the Goddess” (COG) a year later.
Starhawk organized workshops in which she taught her own version of
Wicca (Salomonsen 2002, p. 38). Carol Christ and Naomi Goldenberg
participated in one of these events during the winter of 1975. Christ
described a workshop which centered on the female body and its associ-
ated energy of birth, death, and renewal (Christ 2004, p. 102). By 1976,
Starhawk managed three covens—two of them were “women-only” and
one was mixed. During that same year, she sought and gained initia-
tion to Victor Anderson’s (1917–2001) Faery Witchcraft tradition and
was elected to the position of first officer and public spokesperson for
COG. In 1977, Starhawk relocated back to San Francisco and contin-
ued to teach her own version of feminist, non-separatist, Witchcraft. Her
courses were highly successful and sprouted new so-called Reclaiming-
style covens (Salomonsen 2002, pp. 37–39). Now the ground was set
for the publication of Starhawk’s feminist Witchcraft manual—The Spiral
Dance. She finished its first draft in the fall of 1977 (1989 [1979], p. 5),
and in January 1978, she sent New Moon Rising—as the book was orig-
inally titled—to Harper & Row, a San Francisco publishing company.3
She then revised the manuscript, which was eventually published during
late October 1979.
In this volume, Starhawk presented a new version of Pagan Witchcraft
to the world and successfully resolved the “…natural tension between
the concept of Witchcraft as something inhered in women and released
in them by consciousness-raising, and one of it as a closed, hierarchal and
initiatory mystery religion, which balanced the genders in creative polar-
ity” (Hutton 1998, p. 62). Her teachings combined British-based Wicca
with Dianic Witchcraft and to this day serve as an important bridge

between the two (Berger et al., p. 14). The Spiral Dance is considered
to be the most significant reason for the spread of Pagan Witchcraft in
modern-day North America (Salomonsen 2002, p. 9). Throughout the
1980s, thousands of women across the USA and Europe began to con-
sider themselves as Witches and founded covens simply due to reading
it (Hutton 1998, p. 62). Indeed, as Helen Berger noted in her study of
East Coast Pagans, quoting from Starhawk’s writings was common for
Neopagans—whether by “consciously citing her work” or by taking “her
words as their own” due to unconscious absorption of the materials they
read or heard from others (Berger 2005, p. 37).
By 1985, Starhawk sold 50,000 copies of The Spiral Dance. Four
years later, the number rose to 100,000 (Adler 2006 [1979], pp. 418–
419) and had tripled to 300,000 by the year 2000 (Salomonsen 2002,
p. 9). The book’s ten-year anniversary edition featured a new introduc-
tion which placed its writing process in the context of the 1970s. It also
included notes to the original text which described the evolution of the
Goddess movement throughout the 1980s, as well as the development
of Starhawk’s own politics and theology. In 1982, Starhawk published
another important book, Dreaming the Dark, which sold 30,000 copies
by 1985 and 100,000 by the end of the century (Adler 2006 [1979] , p.
419; Salomonsen 2002, p. 28). It too furthered the spread of Starhawk’s
message of feminist Witchcraft (Pike 2004, p. 16). Her third major pub-
lication during the 1980s—Truth or Dare—sold 53,000 copies between
1987 and 2000 (Salomonsen 2002, p. 28). Although the two latter
books did not achieve The Spiral Dance’s popularity, they supplied read-
ers with a deeper understanding of Starhawk’s theology (Griffin 2002, p.
264) and therefore will be discussed here as well.
Yet, Starhawk‘s writings should be analyzed within a wider con-
text. Joan Salomonsen has already noted that most scholars relate to
Starhawk’s “texts as if they are produced in majestic isolation… [with]
no social grounds within which she lives and works…” (Salomonsen
2002, p. 10). Salomonsen, who carried ethnographic research into
the San Francisco Reclaiming community between the years 1984 and
1994, claims that although Starhawk’s books are featured in any debate
on American Neopaganism, few researchers relate to the existence of
the Reclaiming tradition—and community—Starhawk helped to form
(p. 10). The term “Reclaiming” relates to a spirituality which Starhawk-
inspired feminists feel they need to reclaim from ancient Pagan and
236 S. Feraro
Goddess-worshiping religions, “in order to heal from experiences of

estrangement occasioned by patriarchal biblical religions” and thus “rep-
resent divine reality and the human self, female and male, more truly
and more vividly” (pp. 1–3). The Reclaiming Tradition is a unique femi-
nist branch of contemporary American Paganism. It was developed by a
working collective founded in 1980 through Starhawk’s inspiration and
leadership, which is known as the Reclaiming Collective. This collective
is part of the Reclaiming Community—a social network of like-minded
people who share social, ideological, and emotional views through com-
mon activities and goals. It operates mainly out of San Francisco and has
spread across North America and Western Europe over the past 30 years
through the fame and distribution of Starhawk’s books, particularly The
Spiral Dance (pp. 1, 34). Therefore, throughout the 1980s, the term
Reclaiming represented both a small community of about twenty people
(the Collective), a wider San Francisco-based Community of at least 130
Witches and Pagans, which in turn served an even wider 2,000-strong
community through courses, workshops, public rituals, and politi-
cal projects, and finally, a distinct spiritual tradition practiced by thou-
sands of people far beyond San Francisco (pp. 34, 54). It is also worth
noting that although many Pagans do not see themselves as part of
the Reclaiming tradition Starhawk helped to create, they nevertheless
absorbed aspects of her distinct brand of Witchcraft and learned from her
suggestions for organizing and maintaining their covens (Berger 2005,
pp. 37–38).
Radical and Cultural Feminist Influences

on Starhawk’s Writings
I will now analyze the effect of radical and cultural feminisms on

Starhawk’s writing. The Spiral Dance’s bibliography included a special
issue on “Women and Spirituality” from the feminist Quest magazine,
dated spring of 1975 (1979a, p. 218). This fact is very important for our
discussion, because the articles featured in this issue were among the first
to describe the Feminist Spirituality Movement—then in its infancy—and
could have served as an inspiration to Starhawk. Cultural feminists Susan
Rennie and Kirsten Grimstad wrote there of “women, feminists [who]
are becoming sensitized and receptive to the psychic potential inherent
in human nature – and they are realizing that women in particular are
the repository of powers…suppressed… [by] western man’s [sic] drive

to technological control over nature” (Grimstad and Rennie 1975, pp.
50–51). This issue could have served also as an initial source of informa-
tion for a variety of feminist concepts we encountered in previous chap-
ters, such as patriarchal duality (Riddle 1975, pp. 10–11). Judy Davis
and Juanita Weaver suggested there that cultural feminists are those who
emphasize women’s ability to give birth as evidence of feminine creativ-
ity prior to the biblical—and male—creation myth; adhere to the idea
of a buried female subconscious; and claim that women are intimately
tied to the earth and the moon through their menstrual cycles (Davis
and Weaver 1975, pp. 5–6). This issue also featured Mary Daly’s article
on “The Qualitative Leap Beyond Patriarchal Religion” which she would
later describe as “a leap toward the Otherworld of Gyn/Ecology”, when
compared to her 1973 book, Beyond God the Father. (Daly 1992, p.
205). In “The Qualitative Leap,” Daly discussed the difference between
power in its patriarchal understanding as “Power-Over” people and the
concept of power defined by her as “Power of Being” (Daly 1975, p.
21). This could have served as the basis for Starhawk’s description of in-
coven relationships using the term “Power from Within” as opposed to
the patriarchal “Power Over Others” (1979b, p. 51; 1982, p. 4). It is
likely that Starhawk felt drawn to Daly’s model of power, as presented
in “The Qualitative Leap”, because in this article, Daly did not yet rule
out the possibility that men could experience power as “Power of Being”
instead of “Power Over Others.” At this stage in her thinking, Daly still
blamed the social institution of patriarchy in the matter, instead of male
innate biological qualities (Daly 1975, p. 21). This approach fitted well
with Starhawk’s non-separatist brand of feminist Witchcraft.
Michael York wrote that in The Spiral Dance, Starhawk presented a
model of the universe which placed the Goddess as immanent in nature.
He claimed that Starhawk drew inspiration for her concept of imma-
nence from Mary Daly’s claims in Beyond God the Father, in which she
criticized the model of the transcendental divine so common in Western
society as a legitimating factor for male domination in social institutions
and the subjugation of women (York 1995, p. 107). I would now like to
expand the analysis of the development of Starhawk’s thought during the
second—and critical—half of the 1970s, which came to fruition in The
Spiral Dance. I intend to claim that Starhawk’s concept of immanence—
as presented in The Spiral Dance—was affected primarily by Daly’s sec-
ond important volume, Gyn/Ecology, and not by Beyond God the Father.
238 S. Feraro
Marjory Suchocki has already purported that it was only in

Gyn/Ecology that Daly’s use of the relatively transcendental “God the
Verb” of Beyond God the Father was exchanged with a deeper immanence,
“a verb spun as a Gynocentric manifestation of the intransitive verb”
(Suchocki 1994, p. 58; Daly 1978, p. 23). In other words, “Daly has
moved from transcendence and immanence in Beyond God the Father to
immanence in Gyn/Ecology” (Suchocki 1994, p. 59). Starhawk herself did
not develop her own concept of immanence until after the publication
of Gyn/Ecology in 1978. I will now present the evidence for my claim:
Womanspirit Rising, the popular 1979 anthology of Feminist Spirituality,
included a paper by Starhawk which was originally presented at the
1977 meeting of the American Academy of Religion (Starhawk 1979b,
pp. 259–268). Although Starhawk described the Goddess in this paper
as manifested in the earth, the trees, and the human body, she did not
yet use the term “immanence” to describe this attribute (1979b, p. 263).
By March 1979, however, Starhawk had included the term in a speech
delivered in the Conference on Feminist Visions of the Future, which
was held at California State University, Chico (Starhawk 1980, p. 173).
It has of course appeared more extensively (and sometimes referred to as
“Manifest deity”) in The Spiral Dance, which was published toward the
end of that year, as well as in later publications (1979a, pp. 91–92, 102,
189, 209; 1989 [1979], pp. 10–11; 1987, pp. 16–20). We can therefore
deduce that only following the publication of Mary Daly’s Gyn/Ecology in
1978 was Starhawk exposed to her discourse on immanence, which was
by then more evolved than in Beyond God the Father.
As will now be shown, Daly’s writings had an immense influence on
Starhawk’s thought.4 The last paragraph of Starhawk’s speech at the
1977 AAR meeting included a reference to “Patriarchal death cults”
(1979b, pp. 8, 30, p. 268). This expression suggests that Starhawk
adopted Daly’s discourse on Patriarchal society’s Necrophilic attitudes.
Although the term was extended in Gyn/Ecology during 1978, Daly dis-
cussed it already in Beyond God the Father in the context of the concept
of Sisterhood. It would therefore be possible to claim that Starhawk
already adopted the term from Daly by 1977. Daly’s emphasis on the
importance of Naming did not escape Starhawk, who utilized it in order
to give a deeper, feminist meaning through deconstruction to words
such as “Dis-ease,” the “Re-formation” of feminist religion (Starhawk
1979a, pp. 48, 188), “Re-member,” and “Re-own” (Starhawk 1982, p.
79; 1987, p. 312). She also wrote that “to reclaim the word “Witch”
is to reclaim our right, as women, to be powerful” (1979b, p. 7).
In Dreaming the Dark, Starhawk recommended her reader to name

oppressing social institutions in order to understand how they are being
shaped by the latter and how readers themselves can shape, perhaps
control them in turn (Starhawk 1982, pp. 23–24). The resemblance
to Daly’s analysis of the importance of Naming is quite clear. Starhawk
even used Daly’s concept of “Reversal” when she discussed the impor-
tance of Naming and credited Daly in a footnote dedicated to the matter
(Starhawk 1982, pp. 26, 231; 1987, pp. 8, 345). Further examples for
usage of Dalyan concepts occurred when Starhawk criticized the patri-
archal Mind vs. Body dichotomy and when she referred to the creation
of new covens as “spin[ning] new circles” (Starhawk 1979a, pp. 8, 30;
1982, pp. xii, 134; 1987: 7).
Starhawk specifically mentioned Daly in The Spiral Dance and quoted
the latter’s criticism of the “God the Father” model from Beyond God
the Father. In contrast to God the Father, wrote Starhawk, the Goddess
does not control the world—She is the world (1979a, pp. 8, 14, 102).
Another quote from Beyond God the Father presented Daly’s call for the
creation of a new space by and for women, where they could “liberate
themselves toward wholeness”5.
Susan Griffin’s influence on Starhawk’s ideology in The Spiral Dance
is evident as well in her assertion that interconnectedness with all
forms of life is the basis of Goddess religion (Starhawk 1979a, p. 195).
In the new introduction to the book’s ten-year anniversary edition,
Starhawk placed the concept of Interconnectedness as part of a trio of
“core principles of Goddess religion” (the others being Immanence
and Community) and defined it as “the understanding that all being
is interrelated… [and] are linked with the cosmos as parts of one liv-
ing organism.” This connected with her concept of the Goddess reli-
gion as community, which includes animals, plants, soil, air, and water
as well as human beings.6 This linking of humanity and nature, cou-
pled with the equation the female body with various part of the natural
world, is interwoven throughout Starhawk’s writings, who—like other
cultural feminists—claimed that patriarchy has taught women to think
of their bodies as “unclean,” degraded by their own sexuality (1979a,
p. 131). The earth, she wrote, was the body of the Goddess (p. 64).
The invocations from the Summer Solstice Ritual provided by Starhawk
linked the female body with nature—breasts with mountains, hair with
green grass, etc. (p. 73). All these serve to show how Griffin’s equa-
tion of woman with nature affected Starhawk‘s thought and are backed
by the appearance of Griffin’s book, Woman and Nature, in The Spiral
240 S. Feraro
Dance’s bibliography.7 As already mentioned above, the cultural feminist

magazine, Chrysalis, was also found in Starhawk’s original 1979 bibli-
ography (p. 215), from which she undoubtedly extracted ideas and con-
cepts. Mary Daly referred readers of her Gyn/Ecology to the magazine
(p. 428). Chrysalis also published extracts from Susan Griffin’s Woman
and Nature, as well as Adrianne Rich’s On lies, Secrets and Silence (Yorke
1997, p. 144). Thus the magazine might have offered Starhawk her first
exposure to Griffin’s writings.
In accordance with cultural feminism, Starhawk’s feminist Witchcraft
called for a “new relationship” with the female body. She equated the
Goddess with “the feminine, tidal, pulsating power that waxes and wanes
in harmony with women’s menstrual flow” (Starhawk 1979a, pp. 83,
101). She also adopted the cultural feminist emphasis on women’s abil-
ity to give birth, in accordance with Adrianne Rich. She highlighted the
fact that women are the ones capable of birthing and lactating using their
own bodies and so must see that body as sacred (pp. 10, 131). Woman’s
ability to give birth to both male and female affected Starhawk’s theol-
ogy as well, when she wrote that a female image of the divine includes
the male in a way that male divinities cannot do for women.8 She used
womb metaphors many times throughout her book and even presented
her readers with a group “womb chant” exercise, as well as a personal
“Spell to be Friends with Your Womb” (Starhawk 1979a, p. 121).
Indeed Joan Salomonsen, who studied Starhawk’s Reclaiming commu-
nity during the 1980s, noted that the womb was a common symbol in
feminist Witchcraft rituals (Salomonsen 2002, p. 212).
Yet Starhawk never fully embraced the entire range of principles
offered by cultural feminist ideology. Already in first chapter of The
Spiral Dance, she wrote that “Male and Female forces represent differ-
ence, yet they are not different, in essence: They are the same force flow-
ing in opposite, but not opposed, directions” (Starhawk 1979a, p. 27).
This did not fit neatly into Mary Daly’s discourse on the parasitic male
draining woman of her biophilic energy. Indeed, Starhawk described
this discourse as “too simple, another Good Guys/Bad Guys story,
trapped in a dualistic though-form” (Starhawk 1982, p. 85). Although
the cultural assumptions regarding the dichotomic and essential nature
of “male” and “female” did affect Starhawk’s symbol-system, the lat-
ter was different from Z Budapest’s Dianic discourse, which adopted
cultural feminism wholly. Starhawk, on the other hand, claimed that a
female-only model of the universe would prove to be as constricting
and oppressive as the patriarchal system, and in accordance with Jung

emphasized that each person, male or female, contains both principles
(Starhawk 1979a, pp. 26, 27).
By the late 1980s, Starhawk’s had ceased to identify femaleness
and maleness with a specific set of reified qualities and predispositions
(1989 [1979], p. 8). Her notes for The Spiral Dance’s ten-year anni-
versary edition stated that thinking of the whole range of human pos-
sibilities as available to all persons—instead of divided by gender—would
be more a constructive way to understand the human experience (1989
[1979], pp. 215, 229–230). In many ways, then, Starhawk’s distinct
brand of feminist Witchcraft lays on an imaginary line between radical
and cultural feminist tendencies. She read early radical feminist theory
and drew on Kate Millet’s analysis of patriarchy9 and referred to women
as an oppressed social class (Starhawk 1979a, p. 194) in the same way
Millet and Daly (in her early writing10) did. This might be the reason
why Starhawk was among very few Spiritual Feminist who quoted from
Robin Morgan’s Going Too Far (Starhawk 1979a, p. 98), which—cer-
tainly when coupled with her 1982 The Anatomy of Freedom—served as a
middle ground between cultural and radical feminisms.
Jone Salomonsen and Ronald Hutton have already noted that the bib-
liography for Dreaming the Dark clearly reflects the influence of Carolyn
Merchant’s The Death of Nature on Starhawk as she wrote the book’s
first appendix (Salomonsen 2002, p. 127; Hutton 1999, pp. 351, 464).
Indeed, Merchant herself was a student of Dr. David Kubrin. The lat-
ter became a Reclaiming activist in 1981 (Salomonsen 2002, p. 127)
and referred Starhawk to Merchant’s book (Starhawk 1982, p. ix). An
analysis of Dreaming the Dark reveals that Starhawk relied on Merchant
throughout the volume. She used Merchant’s argument in order to
connect between the European Witch Hunts of the sixteenth and sev-
enteenth centuries and the rise of a mechanistic view of the world as a
“dead machine”.11 Magic, she claimed, “reverses the processes of mecha-
nist thinking, wherein we think in abstracts to control and manipulate
objects” (Starhawk 1982, p. 29). The appendix itself is indeed filled with
quotes from The Death of Nature, which were used by Starhawk in order
to illustrate the historical background to the rise what she termed as the
culture of “estrangement.”12 Yet Salomonsen and Hutton did not men-
tion other sources of inspiration on which Starhawk drew upon when
writing the appendix. As mentioned above, she combined Merchant’s
thesis with the European Witch Hunts that took place during the same
242 S. Feraro
period which gave birth to the rise of a “mechanistic” worldview. In fact,

most of her quotes pertaining the Witch Trials came from Mary Daly
(pp. 187–188). The appendix also quoted from Adrianne Rich’s dis-
cussion on the persecution of midwives by the male medical establish-
ment during the seventeenth century, as well as from Nancy Chodorow’s
work, The Reproduction of Mothering (pp. 202, 213).
Starhawk’s fifth chapter clearly shows how she adopted Chodorow’s
thesis on the connection between mothers and their small children. She
described this bond as an energy-field shared by the mother and child
and claimed that humans separate themselves from this field, this mother,
as they grow up. Here, said Starhawk, patriarchy shapes a girl’s experi-
ence of her mother in a totally different way than that of the boy’s: It
reminds the daughter of her “essential sameness” to the mother, while
the boy learns that he is different, “Distinct from the mother-ground.”
Thus, in her adult life, the daughter is capable of remaining engulfing,
perceiving others’ feelings and adapting to their needs and desires, while
the son is groomed into “a world of mastery, of control…distinctness”
and dualism (Starhawk 1982, pp. 74–76). Starhawk specifically heralded
Chodorow as a thinker who called upon men to take an active and equal
part in child-rearing, and she even supplied her own alternative vision for
such a society (pp. 78, 86).
In Dreaming the Dark, Starhawk expanded her discussion on the dif-
ferences between “Power Over Others” and “Power from Within”—
upon which the ethics of feminist Witchcraft are based. She defined
“Power from Within” as stemming from a sense of connection with oth-
ers, unlike the consciousness of estrangement on which “Power Over
Others” is built (pp. xi, 3, 5, 9, 94, 127). In Truth or Dare, Starhawk
added a third definition of power to the mix—“Power with,” which is
“social power, the influence we wield among equals” (Starhawk 1987,
p. 9). She quoted from Carol Gilligan’s In a Difference Voice in order to
illustrate how patriarchy makes it hard for women to experience “Power
with” and be valued equally with men in mixed groups (pp. 12–13). Her
adaptation of Gilligan’s “Ethic of Care” is also evident in her discussion
of an “Ethic of Interconnectedness” (pp. 136–137). By 1989, Gilligan’s
book was added in The Spiral Dance’s ten-year anniversary bibliography
as well (Starhawk 1989 [1979], p. 273).
Susan Griffin’s analysis of the pornographic way of thinking affected
Starhawk’s assertion that the culture of estrangement distorts sexual rela-
tions into “a field on which questions of power and status are played
out” (Starhawk 1982, p. 137). Like Griffin, Starhawk claimed that male
identity in patriarchal culture depends upon its difference from women,
and women are therefore “taught to be passive mirrors that reflect the
selves of men” (Starhawk 1982, pp. 139, 142). Those were not the only
incidents in Dreaming the Dark where Starhawk relied on Griffin. The
book’s first chapter was opened with a quote from Griffin’s Woman and
Nature which dealt with patriarchal man’s attempt to “separate himself
from the world,” and throughout the book, Starhawk continued to criti-
cize his wish to rule over nature and take revenge against it and against
women due to his sense of dependence on them (Starhawk 1982, pp. 1,
77). She also used another quote from Griffin in order to support a view
of the world’s forests as sacred: “When nature is empty of spirit, forest
and trees become merely timber” (p. 6).
Starhawk continued to rely on Griffin’s work in her Truth or Dare.
She quoted Griffin’s Pornography and Silence several times throughout
the text in the context of women’s objectification in patriarchy as well
as her analysis of rape (Starhawk 1987, pp. 141, 163, 208). To that aim,
she also relied on Susan Brownmiller’s Against Our Will, and especially
within a chapter titled “The Dismemberment of the World,” in which
she tried to describe the transition from matriarchy into patriarchy. Here,
she adopted Against Our Will’s analysis of rape and concentrated on
Brownmiller’s arguments regarding the army’s use of the objectification
and debasement of women in order to create “good” and disciplined sol-
diers, as well as her claim that mass acts of rape during wars represented
the norm, instead of a deviation from it (pp. 32–67, 203, 206). Truth
or Dare’s bibliography (p. 359) actually included a reference to Take
Back the Night, a 1980 feminist anthology on women and pornography
which has been described as “probably the single most influential collec-
tion of feminist writings produced by the anti-pornography movement”
(Bronstein 2011, p. 61) and included chapters and extracts on pornog-
raphy and rape by Brownmiller, Griffin, Morgan, and Rich (Lederer
1980). It would not serve as a surprise to learn that in December 1976
Starhawk participated in a “Conference on Violence Against Women” in
San Francisco, and particularly in a workshop on “Religion and Violence
Against Women” and in a ritual led jointly with Hallie Iglehart. The
bibliography pages of the conference program included Brownmiller’s
seminal tome on rape, as well as a poetry book on the same subject by
Griffin, and books by Daly, Rich, Morgan, and Millett.13 In November
of 1978, Starhawk participated in San Francisco’s first “Take Back the
244 S. Feraro
Night” March and the “Feminist Perspective on Pornography” confer-

ence (Starhawk 1979a, p. 130), which was sponsored by the “Women
Against Violence in Pornography & Media” group. The conference itself
included a panel discussion on pornography with Susan Brownmiller and
Susan Griffin, as well as a reading of Griffin’s (as well as Adrienne Rich’s)
poetry.14 Griffin herself lived in the San Francisco Bay Area and was a
founding member of the “Women Against Violence in Pornography &
Media” group (Bronstein 2011, p. 137).
Conclusion
Radical feminism and its cultural feminist outgrowth—both of which
developed during the late 1960s and 1970s—supplied the budding
Feminist Spirituality Movement in North America with much of its ide-
ological background. In the case of the most prolific of these Spiritual
Feminists, those influences can be discerned through an analysis of the
books, pamphlets, and articles they produced. Starhawk’s writings thus
reveal the extent of feminist Witches’ reliance on the works of radical
and cultural feminist thinkers such as Mary Daly, Susan Griffin, Robin
Morgan, Adrianne Rich, and Susan Brownmiller and flesh out the politics
of Goddess Spirituality in its formative years during the 1970s and 1980s.
Notes
1. As noted by the editors of Researching Paganisms‚ “Multiplicity is a key
idea in Pagan Studies: Multiple concepts of the divine, multiple local
forms of religion, and a sacred relationship with the multiple forms of the
material world as they are experienced by Pagans” (Griffin and Clifton
2004, p. vii).
2. (Echols 1989, pp. 4–5, 243). The term “cultural feminism” was first
coined by a radical feminist by the name of Brooke Williams. She defined
it as “The belief that women will be freed via an alternate women’s cul-
ture” (Brooke 1975, p. 79). Alice Echols based her analysis on Williams
and greatly expanded the term’s scope (Echols 1983, pp. 439–459;
1984, pp. 50–72; 1989). It should be noted that many women whose
work was defined by researchers as “cultural” feminist object to the term
and see themselves as radical feminists (Rowland and Klein 1996, p. 32;
Lienert 1996, p. 156; Willis 1984, p. 91). See Lienert (1996) for a criti-
cism of Echols’s cultural feminism thesis.
3. See a letter sent by Starhawk to Ms. Marie Cantlon, January 6, 1978.

Starhawk Collection/GTU 2002-4-01/Box 5/5.
4. The Spiral Dance’s original bibliography included both Beyond God the
Father and Gyn/Ecology, and the ten-year anniversary edition added
Daly’s 1984 book, Pure Lust (Starhawk 1979a, p. 215; 1989 [1979],
p. 272).
5. Starhawk (1979a: 57). Here I wish to emphasize that unlike Z. Budapest,
Starhawk did not advocate complete separatism. In 1979, she distin-
guished between separation—the creation of women’s space where
“Women’s Mysteries” could be explored—and separatism, stating that
the Goddess is immanent in men as well as women (Starhawk 1979a,
p. 189). Her notes for The Spiral Dance’s ten-year anniversary edition
criticized separatists who saw men as inherently violent and prone to
domination, and she claimed that the blame lied in the patriarchal system
itself (1989 [1979], p. 249)—a classical early radical feminist position.
6. (Starhawk 1989 [1979], pp. 10–11). This also echoes Lovelock’s Gaya
Hypothesis and especially with Carolyn Merchant’s The Death of Nature.
7. (Starhawk 1979a, p. 216). The ten-year anniversary bibliography included
Griffin’s Pornography and Silence and Made from this Earth as well (1989
[1979], p. 273).
8. Starhawk (1982, p. 11). A more direct quote from Rich by Starhawk
occurred in Truth or Dare in the context of the importance of prehistoric
goddess figurines for modern women (Starhawk 1987, p. 346).
9. (Starhawk 1979a, p. 96). She also quoted from Millet’s autobiography
when she discussed power relations within covens (Starhawk 1979a,
p. 37).
10. See for instance her claim in Beyond God the Father (which represents the
early radical feminist stage in her thought) that women under patriarchy
form a sort of low ‘cast’ (Daly 1973, pp. 2, 4).
11. (Starhawk 1982, pp. xii, xv, 7, 77). She continued this in Truth or Dare as
well (Starhawk 1987, p. 7).
12. (Starhawk 1982, pp. 185, 189–190, 192, 194, 217). A term she bor-
rowed from her studies of Psychology in order to replace her use the radi-
cal feminist concept of ‘patriarchal dualism’ in The Spiral Dance.
13. See the conference program, as well as the separate workshop and ritual
outlines which were found in the Starhawk Collection/GTU 2002-4-01/
Box 2/33.
14. (Bronstein 2011, p. 158). See also a brochure for the event, as well as the
outline of the march’s closing ritual (delivered by Starhawk and Hallie
Iglehart) found in the Starhawk Collection/GTU 2002-4-01/Box 2/32.
246 S. Feraro
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CHAPTER 13
The Chalice and the Rainbow:

Conflicts Between Women’s Spirituality
and Transgender Rights in US Wicca in the
2010s
Michelle Mueller
Introduction
US Wicca and the broader American contemporary Pagan movement
developed in tandem with the 1970s political women’s movement.1 In
feminist Witchcraft traditions, female priestesses developed innovative ritu-
als that celebrated women’s experiences in the world. They focused on roles
played in familial and social relationships; bodily functions of the female sex
(e.g., menarche, menstruation, menopause, fertility and infertility, preg-
nancy, childbirth, and lactation); sexism encountered in the workplace; and
the need for healing from sexual abuse. Women seeking these rituals did
not necessarily experience every one of these, but women’s spirituality ritu-
als focused on experiences commonly shared by females. Wiccan feminist
M. Mueller (*) 
Department of Religious Studies, Santa Clara University,
Santa Clara, CA, USA

250 M. Mueller
priestesses created women’s liturgies that sought to ritualize women’s expe-

riences and revalue women, ‘the second sex,’ in a sexist, patriarchal world.2
The particular constructs deemed so necessary in the 1970s women’s
spirituality movement have become less and less relevant for Millennial-
generation Pagans, many of whom are defining new gender identities or
eradicating them completely with nonbinary approaches to gender.
Changing definitions of gender are at the heart of the conflict
between cisgender-only women’s spirituality groups and trans-affirming
Pagans. In the 1970s and 1980s, feminist theorists taught that gender
is a social construct developed around sex differences. Anthropologist
Sherry B. Ortner argued that patriarchal societies have described women
as being closer to nature because of the female body and its functions
whereas, according to this same logic, ‘man’s physiology […] frees him
more completely to take up the projects of culture.’3 The contempo-
rary transgender rights movement instead defines gender as an identity.
An individual who is transgender does not identify with the gender that
the person was assigned at birth. According to this model, gender is
no longer an abstract, pliant category. It can be a real aspect of one’s
identity despite that some have been ‘mis-gendered’ (i.e., mistaken for
an incorrect gender) from birth.4 Whereas earlier theorists determined
that gender is a category that is socially constructed around sex differ-
ences, transgender rights advocates have determined that gender is a
true aspect of one’s identity and that the discounting of one’s gender is
an act of violence.5
Transgender rights supporters (Pagan and non-Pagan) now use the terms
transgender and cisgender to refer to different types of women and men.
The prefixes are Latin and have been taken from the language of chemistry
(trans for across from and cis for on the side of). Cisgender women are those
who were assigned female at birth and continue to live as women; transgen-
der women were misgendered at birth and/or in childhood but now live
as women. On the spectrum of transgender identity, some identify as ‘gen-
derqueer,’ i.e., nonbinary (neither male nor female). Genderqueers often
prefer gender-neutral pronouns and titles (e.g., ‘zhe‚’ ‘they‚’ and ‘Mx.’).6
These terms have become commonplace in contemporary Pagan discourse,
including online blogs.
Over the last two decades, LGBTQI Pagans have raised concerns
about the gender binary in Wiccan theology‚ symbolic dyadic leadership
(the priest–priestess model)‚ and the exclusivity of biologically deter-
mined men’s mysteries and women’s mysteries (liturgical traditions that
ritualize sex differences). New waves of feminist and queer thought have
13 THE CHALICE AND THE RAINBOW: CONFLICTS … 251
brought criticism for what has been termed, ‘trans-exclusive radical femi-
nism,’ feminist practice that recognizes cisgender women only. Those
accused of trans-exclusive radical feminism have been labeled ‘TERFs,’ a
new derogatory slang acronym.7
Because Paganism celebrates embodied spirituality, transitioning
definitions of gender and sex pose unique challenges for the move-
ment’s theology. Constructs around the sacredness of female experi-
ences (menarche, menstruation, lactation, childbirth, and menopause)
are more problematic than liberating for transgender women who do
not share these experiences. In addition, emerging theories from gen-
der studies and queer theory, which emphasize fluidity and reject gen-
der dichotomies, pose challenges for the second-wave feminist influence
in Wicca and other forms of contemporary Paganism.8 These changing
definitions and the lack of discussion around changing definitions have
resulted in major conflicts between traditional women’s spiritualists and
trans-affirming Pagans.
In the 1970s and 1980s, women’s spirituality rituals were relatively
free from this critique. For the development of contemporary Paganism,
the 2010s have meant new conflicts between LGBTQI Pagans and
second-wave feminist women’s spirituality. The political missions of
women’s equality and the re-femininization of Western culture have
been replaced in Paganism with freedom of gender identity and gen-
der expression. Feminist priestesses dedicated to carving out space for
women in global patriarchal societies have been criticized, and even
vilified, when they have questioned the nature of shared experiences
between women who are transgender and those cisgender.9 In this chap-
ter, I explore conflicts between women’s spirituality and transgender
rights movements as they have come to a head in the US Wiccan and
contemporary Pagan community in the 2010s.
Rigid gender norms and expectations are mutual problems for femi-
nists and for gender-nonconforming people. The high rates of violence
against and suicide rates of transgenders, especially transgender p eople
of color‚ attest to the challenges of life for gender-nonconforming peo-
ple in today’s society.10 Cultural suppression of women as a group has,
throughout history, been tied to female biology and sex differences
between women and men. Across the USA and in other parts of the
world, women receive less pay for equal work. When women are fully
employed, they frequently still do a greater share of the responsibilities
of child-rearing, housekeeping, and other aspects of family life.11 Female
biology, in particular the female role in childbearing, has been cited as
252 M. Mueller
justification for the differences between social expectations for women

and men.12 Women have been perceived as the more ‘natural’ childrearers
and ergo have been associated more extensively with the domestic sphere.
Patterns of compensation across professional industries benefit men
who are perceived as the ‘providers’ of families. Many cisgender women
do not become mothers, but their standing in professional fields is
affected by the perceived possibility that they might. The global oppres-
sion of women is related to sex differences. LGBTQI critique of binary
approaches to gender can help loosen the patriarchy.13 Yet, the current
backlash against Dianic Witchcraft represents a premature dismissal of the
relevance of second-wave feminism in analyzing current patterns of gen-
der discrimination and gender-based violence around the globe.
The methods of research for this essay include participant-observa-
tion‚ as a scholar-practitioner‚ and Daniel Martin Varisco’s ‘participant
webservation,’ as well as critical engagement with feminist theoretical
literature from the 1970s until today.14 The ideas of this chapter relate
to current issues of the much broader contemporary US society, such as
controversies over public figure Caitlyn Jenner and laws regulating use of
public bathrooms. Yet, these concepts have affected the Pagan commu-
nity more rapidly than they have other religious communities because of
the influence of second-wave feminism on the existing structures within
contemporary American Paganism (liturgical roles of priest and priestess,
women’s blood mysteries, and theology of Goddess and God). In this
community, conflicts between contemporary queer theory and 1970s
second-wave feminism cannot be avoided. Tensions between them have
defined, in part, the US Wiccan movement in the 2010s. Where progres-
sive liberals in the 1970s wanted renewed respect and rights for women,
today’s young adults often want to move beyond the need for gender
categories.15
The Dyadic Leadership Model

of British Traditional Witchcraft
Wicca and the contemporary Pagan movement can be traced to Gerald

Gardner (1884–1864), who claimed he was initiated into the New
Forest Coven in England in 1939. Gardner became a public figure as a
Witch, publishing books, High Magic’s Aid (1949), Witchcraft Today
(1954), and The Meaning of Witchcraft (1959). He initiated many new
priestesses and shared leadership of the New Forest Coven with them
(e.g., Doreen Valiente (1922–1999) and ‘Dayonis’) in the mid-twentieth
century.16 ‘British Traditional Witchcraft’ is used to refer to Gardnerian
Wicca, UK and UK-derived traditions that are closely similar in rituals
and ceremony (e.g., Alexandrian Wicca and Central Valley Wicca), and
other traditions insiders call ‘pre-Gardnerian’ (although there are differ-
ing views about the existence of pre-Gardnerian Witchcraft traditions).
Features of British Traditional Witchcraft include a theology of
Goddess and God as lovers and divine co-creators, a general associa-
tion of women with Goddess and men with God, and the roles of High
Priestess and High Priest who act as ritual representatives of Goddess
and God. British Traditional Witchcraft lineages and a few US con-
temporary Pagan lineages have been marked by dyadic, male–female
‘magical partnerships.’ For instance, Doreen Valiente added poetry to
Gardner’s Witchcraft Tradition. Of the Farrars, Stewart (1916–2000) has
been known as the writer, Janet (b. 1950) the dynamic public speaker
and tranceworker. Alex and Maxine Sanders (1926–1988 and b. 1946)
together founded Alexandrian Wicca. Ray and Rosemary Buckland (b.
1934 and b. 1936), initiates of Gardnerian Wicca, introduced British
Traditional Witchcraft to the USA. Morning Glory (1948–2014)
brought worship of the goddesses and traditional Wiccan practices to
Oberon Zell’s (b. 1942) science fiction-based Church of All Worlds
(est. 1962).
In traditional Wiccan theology, the triple aspects of Goddess (Maiden,
Mother, and Crone) are said to mirror the stages of human wom-
en’s lives. The sacralization of womanhood led to the development of
women’s mysteries and ‘Blood Mysteries’ (spiritual teachings and expe-
riences connected with the menstrual cycle) in Wicca and contempo-
rary Paganism. The lunar cycle (symbolic of the Goddess) is compared
with the female cycle of fertility, from ovulation to menstruation, which
is on average of equal length. Menopause is valued as a part of wom-
en’s mysteries. Correlated with the Crone aspect, menopause signifies,
for Wiccans, the onset of deeper internal wisdom and is ritualized with
‘Croning’ ceremonies. The physicality of the female body is therefore
correlated with the lunar Goddess of Witchcraft. Pagan festivals such as
Pagan Spirit Gathering (est. 1980) have included women’s mysteries and
men’s mysteries rituals, the latter including ‘Wild Hunts’ that empha-
size and ritualize the provider aspect as a positive masculine role. British
254 M. Mueller
Traditional Witchcraft and early US Wicca sought to elevate womanhood

and all things female in misogynistic Western societies.
As a priest–priestess pair who lived in Europe and reached US audi-
ences with their books and speaking tours, Janet and Stewart Farrar had
a hand in both European Witchcraft and US Wicca. The Farrars met in
Maxine and Alex Sanders’ coven in England, were handfasted in 1972,
and were legally married in 1975. From England, they moved to and
settled in Ireland. Together they wrote Eight Sabbats for Witches (1981),
The Witches’ Way (1984), The Witches’ Goddess (1987), and The Witches’
God (1989). In their writing, they emphasized the polarity of Goddess
and God and the need for partnerships between women and men in
functional societies. They supported a ‘yin-yang’ model of gender, see-
ing masculinity and femininity as bipolar, yet each gender containing
aspects of the other.17 The Farrars’ dualistic theology paired well with
their and other British Traditional Witches’ dyadic leadership style. The
theology of polarity between God and Goddess matched the co-ministry
model between a married couple. The Farrars’ Wicca sought to heal cul-
tural wounds between the sexes (the effects of patriarchal domination)
through a practice of gender stratification that included respectable roles
and associated characteristics for women and men, which were mirrored
in archetypes of Goddess and God.
Female Leaders in Early US Wicca

British Traditional Witches, who preceded the movement’s diasporic
migration to the USA and other European nations, worshiped both
Goddess and God and understood female leadership and female deity as
defining and socially significant aspects of their religion.18 While British
Traditional Witchcraft included women in central priestess roles and
espoused a theology that included a Great Goddess and a Horned God
as her consort, it is within the USA that Wicca came to be identified
more explicitly as a women’s religion or, at the least, a tradition of femi-
nist spirituality.19
US Wicca has frequently been characterized as ‘Goddess religion’
because of the prominence of female deity in a monistic or polythe-
istic theological framework.20 In the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, the
Wiccan religion in the US was defined by a belief in principal connec-
tions between female bodies, women’s experiences (broadly), and the
Goddess.21 Women gathered in circles at the full moons and celebrated
themselves and each other as incarnate representations of the Divine

Feminine.22 Influential US priestesses of these decades included Janet
Farrar, Starhawk (b. 1951), Carol P. Christ (b. 1945), Morning Glory
Zell-Ravenheart, Zsuzsanna ‘Z’ Budapest (b. 1940), Luisah Teish (b.
1948), Ruth Barrett (b. 1954), and Judy Harrow (1945–2014).
The women’s empowerment movement of the 1970s was the gen-
esis for several American Pagan religious traditions.23 Particularly in
California, Wicca converged with feminist politics and ecological con-
sciousness, inspiring the development of new feminist Witchcraft tradi-
tions (e.g., Reclaiming and Z Budapest Dianic) and ecologically oriented
Neo-Pagan religions (e.g., Feraferia and Church of All Worlds).24
Theologian Carol P. Christ’s essay, ‘Why Women Need the Goddess’
(1978)‚ exemplified the social mission of feminist Goddess spirituality.25
In misogynistic society, women need to see themselves in images of the
divine in order to counter dominant cultural myths that females are infe-
rior to males.
Of these leaders, one of the most influential, and currently contro-
versial, has been Z Budapest. As a young woman in 1959, Budapest
emigrated from Hungary to study at the University of Chicago.
Incorporating herself into the Los Angeles spiritual scene, Budapest
taught feminist Witchcraft, led public rituals, and co-founded the Susan
B. Anthony Coven #1 (est. 1971). Budapest later settled in the greater
San Francisco Bay Area, where she resides today.26 Like Christ, Budapest
conceived of contemporary Witchcraft as a ‘women’s religion.’ Budapest
founded a tradition of Dianic Witchcraft, a branch of Wicca that cent-
ers around Goddess worship and is named after the goddess Diana.
Budapest’s Dianic Witchcraft has been a women’s tradition although
other Dianic traditions include women and men.27 While women’s only
Wicca is a minority among contemporary Wiccan and Pagan traditions,
Budapest’s writings have influenced the public image of Wicca to be
more identified as a ‘women’s religion.’
Transgender Inclusion and Women’s Spaces:

The PantheaCon 2011 Conflict
Complicating matters further in conflicts between women’s spirituality
and transgender rights are competing definitions of gender that are not
receiving adequate attention. In the 1980s, feminist theorists identified
256 M. Mueller
that societies construct the categories of gender around sex differ-

ences.28 Sex is physical; gender is the social construct assigned to differ-
ences between male and female. In this model, sex and gender have been
understood as separate but interconnected. In other words‚ gender is the
sum of the characteristics we attribute to one sex or the other. According
to sex differences, females carry children to term, give birth, and breast-
feed infants; society constructs the gender of woman, partially in relation
to these capabilities and largely to preserve the status quo of an existing
power structure.29 However, in today’s theories, gender is a spectrum
that is separate from sex. For cisgender people, their gender is identi-
cal to the interpreted sex at their birth and therefore the gender they
were assigned. For binary transgender people, their gender, or gender
identity, is opposite their interpreted sex at birth, or in other words, the
gender they were assigned. According to this model, gender is an abso-
lute aspect of the individual; it does not matter what sex they present as,
gender is a different category. In this paradigm, gender is more than a
social construction.
While the 1991 Michigan Womyn’s Festival had brought debates
around the inclusion or exclusion of transgender women from women’s
spaces to the forefront at an international level, these debates resur-
faced and came to a head in American Paganism at PantheaCon 2011
(an annual Pagan convention in San Jose, California). What actu-
ally happened at this particular event is highly contested by members
of the Pagan community. My Dianic informants have pointed out that
the narratives that have been circulated include first-hand accounts,
second-hand accounts, and others informed by even greater degrees
of separation. I am including two versions: one version informed by a
conversation with priestess Yeshe Rabbit Matthews (b. 1974) and
another version that is a composite of blogs and hearsay from my par-
ticipant-observation in the Pagan community. A clearer picture of what
happened might be possible with more interviews. Regardless of what
actually transpired that day, the issue of transgender inclusion in Pagan
women’s spaces became a crucial and unavoidable topic in contemporary
Paganism from that point on. Pagans who perhaps had not spent much
time thinking about transgender issues and women’s spirituality became
advocates for LGBTQI Pagans, for instance.
Yeshe Rabbit Matthews and the Amazon Priestess Tribe (est. 2007)
had planned a women’s ritual dedicated to the goddess Lilith with the
objective of healing the wounds of femininity in a misogynistic world.
Used to leading women’s rituals as a Dianic priestess, Matthews had

overlooked noting in the program that this was a women’s only event at
all. The original issue, according to Matthews, was never about transgen-
der inclusion; any who identified as women were welcome to participate.
Still, Matthews had failed to indicate the women-specific nature of the
event in the program.30 Minutes before the ritual, Matthews observed
cisgender men in line for the ritual and realized her mistake. Matthews
apologetically explained this aspect of the ritual, and the cisgender
men in line left. The controversy took hold as Matthews’ limiting the
ritual to self-identifying women became conflated with others’ reports
that transgender women were not welcome. According to Matthews,
a transgender woman was admitted for the ritual; she left of her own
accord without comment during the initial orientation to the ritual.31
According to other accounts, Come As You Are (CAYA) Coven (est.
2003), a group also led by Matthews in Z Budapest’s Dianic lineage, had
planned a ritual to assist women in healing from sexual abuse. In the tra-
dition of ‘skyclad‚’ this ritual was clothing-optional. Upon arriving for
the ritual, transgender women were allegedly turned away. According to
at least one narrative I have heard, the ritual leaders defended that cis-
gender women attending may need space without male bodies (including
those of transgender women) to heal from their experiences of assault
by cisgender males. Transgender women and their allies reported that
transgender women, as they were singled out and excluded, were humili-
ated by this action and done a disservice within their religious commu-
nity.32 These two versions of the story illustrate the effects of the game
of ‘telephone’ when a controversial subject is involved. There may, of
course, be other factors, such as differences across first-hand accounts.
Immediately after the ritual, major confrontations and protests erupted
within the Pagan community.
Since 2011, changes in PantheaCon program practices have been con-
ceived and developed under the leadership of Wiccan priestess Glenn
Turner, a co-founder of the New Reformed Orthodox Order of the Golden
Dawn (NROOGD) Tradition in the Bay Area and the chief organizer of
PantheaCon.33 The changes that developed as a result of this conflict have
included a new requirement for specific clarification in the program regard-
ing women’s only events and the scheduling of inclusive women’s rituals
synchronous with any exclusive cisgender women’s rituals (allowing for
women who are transgender and/or who prefer the inclusion of transgen-
der women to attend a women’s ritual without compromising their values).
258 M. Mueller
Matthews’ organization, the CAYA Coven (also the CAYA Pagan

Congregation), has done ‘amelioration and healing work [for the
broader Pagan community] because [its members] sensed that there
was so much pain in the community and [pain] in the Dianic lineage.’34
These efforts have included a Ritual for Radical Forgiveness at the Bay
Area Pagan Alliance’s Gender and Earth Based Spiritualities Conference
(September 2012) and continued inclusive rituals for women (no one
denied) at PantheaCons since the 2011 event. Matthews, as a leader of
the CAYA Pagan Congregation, has also nurtured the emerging leader-
ship of gender-nonconforming Priestxes. Serving gender-conforming
and gender-nonconforming Pagans, CAYA offers its ordination can-
didates the titles, Priestess, Priest, and Priestx.35 In March of 2012,
Matthews announced that she and the Amazon Priestess Tribe were
‘retiring’ from the Z Budapest lineage of Dianic Witchcraft. Matthews
added that, ‘we cannot support a policy of universal exclusion based
upon gender at our Goddess-centered rites, nor can we condone disre-
gard or insensitivity in communications regarding the topic of gender
inclusion and Goddess-centered practice.’36 CAYA’s steps to ‘rectify the
situation’ were noted by prominent Pagan author T. Thorn Coyle.37
Other Dianic priestesses, Z Budapest and Ruth Barrett, have received
much public criticism for trans-exclusive women’s rituals since PantheaCon
2011. Budapest and Barrett have used the phrases, ‘genetic women’ and
‘women-born women,’ to refer to cisgender women, another action that
has received criticism from transgender rights supporters.38 The latter have
argued that ‘women-born women,’ when used in reference to cisgender
women, denies that transgender women have also been women since birth
(they simply were not recognized as such). Transgender rights activists pre-
fer ‘assigned female at birth’ or ‘assigned male at birth,’ terms that instead
refer to the social assignment of gender rather than an actual gender at birth.
Budapest is also known for making transphobic statements that have
aggravated today’s Bay Area Pagan community.39 While Budapest con-
tributed significant women’s rituals to the liturgical corpus of Wicca and
contemporary Paganism, she has lost ground as a leader because of her
resistance to the culture change around her. Budapest’s Dianic Wiccan
Tradition was established as a cult of personality. Despite the fact that there
are Dianics who welcome transgender women in their circles, Budapest’s
strong personality and public presence, coupled with her resistance to newer
socially progressive ideas‚ have adversely affected trans-affirming Dianics
since the Dianic Tradition is so associated with the name of Z Budapest.
Gender-Fluid and Nonbinary Pagan Theology

Public intellectuals and queer theorists have become critical of the
‘gender binary‚’ or the ‘binary gender system,’ referring to the institu-
tionalized dichotomy of male and female genders and the resulting bi-
gender society.40 Nonbinary approaches to gender identity contribute to
feminist progress since the binary gender system supports patriarchy.41
Dismantling binary notions of gender can unhinge assumed differences
between individuals based on sex and can liberate people of any gender
from the limitations of these societal expectations. The contemporary
Pagan community has responded by moving away from the theological
complementarity of Goddess and God toward pluralistic polytheism.42
Starhawk, known for her leadership in Witchcraft as well as in perma-
culture and social activism, is perhaps the most frequently cited Wiccan
writer. Starhawk bridges the gap between female-oriented Pagan tradi-
tions and Paganism that is inclusive of both (or all) genders. She is one
of the founding members of the Reclaiming Collective, which led to the
creation of the Reclaiming Tradition, and is the author of the bestselling
book on Witchcraft, The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion
of the Great Goddess (1979), which has been released in tenth- and twen-
tieth-anniversary editions, each with a new introduction. Starhawk in
many ways has proven herself to be a leader prepared to change with the
times. The Reclaiming Tradition has appealed to people of all ages and
has local populations across the USA.
In the very first paragraph of The Spiral Dance, Starhawk described
the religion of Witchcraft as ‘women and men from many backgrounds
com[ing] together to celebrate the mysteries of the Triple Goddess of
birth, love, and death, and of her Consort, the Hunter, who is Lord of
the Dance of life.’43 The focus of this religion, according to Starhawk,
is on the Goddess. Yet, Starhawk’s experience and/or vision includes
women and men alike and a male God who supports the Goddess. The
Spiral Dance’s 1979 description of Goddess and God is similar to the
Farrars’ in its unique roles and associations for each of the female and
male godhead. However, Starhawk’s theology, particularly with regard to
gender, has evolved over time, and she has been quick to comment on it.
The anniversary editions’ introductions document changes in Starhawk’s
own thinking and the evolution of the Reclaiming Tradition.
Starhawk’s beliefs and ideas have matured through her life of teach-
ing. In the tenth-anniversary introduction, Starhawk wrote:
260 M. Mueller
Today I don’t use the terms female energy and male energy. I don’t iden-
tify femaleness or maleness with specific sets of qualities or predispositions.
While I have found images of the Goddess empowering to me as a woman,
I no longer look to the Goddesses and Gods to define for me what woman
or man should be. For any quality that has been assigned to one divine
gender can elsewhere be found in its opposite. If we say, for example,
‘Male energy is aggressive,’ I can easily find five aggressive goddesses with-
out even thinking hard. If we say ‘Female energy is nurturing,’ we can also
find male gods who nurture.44
‘Another overall change,’ Starhawk continues, ‘has been the elimination

of the terms High Priestess and High Priest. Today, we work nonhier-
archically. Any participant might take on the roles once designated for
“leaders.”’45 Here she is speaking of the Reclaiming Tradition she helped
form, and which is now one of the most rapidly progressing communities
in the area of gender identity and expression.
Changes in the views of leaders such as Starhawk reflect ideas shared
in the broader Wiccan and Pagan community. These are ideas about
gender fluidity and the need to adapt traditional Wiccan liturgies and
practices to allow for gender nonconformity. In the 2012 Dandelion
Gathering, the Reclaiming Tradition revised its ‘Principles of Unity’
to reflect members’ nonbinary approach to gender. The Reclaiming
Council revised the wording of the ‘Principles of Unity’ from the origi-
nal, ‘Honoring both Goddess and God, we work with female and male
images of divinity, always remembering that their essence is a mystery
which goes beyond form,’ to: ‘our diverse practices and experiences of
the divine weave a tapestry of many different threads. We include those
who honor Mysterious Ones, Goddesses, and Gods of myriad expres-
sions, genders, and states of being, remembering that mystery goes
beyond form.’46 The difference between the original and the adapted
version is the former’s affirmation of the gender binary (in ‘Goddess and
God’ and ‘female and male images’), while the latter affirms a plurality
of goddesses and gods ‘of myriad expressions […and] genders’ without
a definitive binary to separate them. Participation of young adults and
Reclaiming’s long-standing position on political action are factors in
Reclaiming’s forward thinking.47
After the PantheaCon 2011 conflict, a mixed group of female, male,
binary, nonbinary, gender-conforming, and gender-nonconforming com-
munity leaders from the Circle of Cerridwen joined together and created
the anthology, Gender and Transgender in Paganism (2012), to address

key issues for the community. Jacobo Polanshek prescribed eliminat-
ing gender categories in ‘Against Duality.’ T. Thorn Coyle, an initiate
of Reclaiming and Feri Witchcraft traditions, offered devotional descrip-
tions of a gender-fluid Goddess: ‘God Herself, the great Zero, primordial
flow and flux, unfolds throughout and beyond, with, within, and outside
space and time and consciousness. Stretching, moving, and in stillness,
finally Ze catches a reflection in the curvature of space. Self.’48 In this
writing, God is both female and gender-fluid, suggesting that the symbol
of the Goddess continues to have meaning for the community in spite of
its moves toward nonbinary, gender-fluid theology. Groups that use non-
binary-inclusive language and that include transgender and nonbinary
members in leadership (CAYA Pagan Congregation, Reclaiming, and the
Solar Cross Temple) have steadily increased in membership in the 2010s.
Accusations of ‘Trans-Exclusive
Radical Feminism’ in the 2010s
Ruth Barrett, a Baby Boomer who has been a leader in Goddess-
worshiping communities in California and Wisconsin, is a Dianic priest-
ess in the lineage of Z Budapest. She served as the High Priestess of
Circle of Aradia for fifteen years (1985–2000).49 Barrett is the author
of Women’s Rites, Women’s Mysteries (2007).50 Despite that Barrett
has distanced herself from her initiating priestess, Z Budapest, and was
an included author in Gender and Transgender in Modern Paganism
(2012), Barrett has continued to receive public criticism as a trans-exclu-
sive radical feminist.51 Within the anthology, Barrett explained the beliefs
and practices surrounding female embodiment in her Dianic Tradition:
…the Dianic Tradition and its practices are based on the biological experi-
ences and processes of the genetic female body, not only on a presenta-
tion of a female form. The Dianic tradition ritualizes the life cycle passages
of genetic females, through what we call the “blood mysteries” and other
female-embodied experiences. From our first breath, it’s about the experi-
ence of being a genetic female child growing physically and psychologically
into genetic womanhood in a misogynistic society. It’s about the womb
and bleeding every month. It’s about the potential to give birth if we
chose to, and eventually the end of uterine blood as we age.52
262 M. Mueller
The rituals of this Dianic Tradition focus on physical experiences of the

typical (i.e., premenstrual, menstrual, menopausal, and postmenopausal)
female body within a misogynistic society. The Tradition provides rites
that empower females in a society that encourages their denigration.
Barrett’s focus on the ritualization of the prototypical cisgender female
body has been received critically within the broader Pagan community in
the 2010s.
In the fall of 2015, Ruth Barrett was slated to teach a new aca-
demic course, ‘Becoming Women: First Bloods Rituals for Girls,’ for
Cherry Hill Seminary (est. 2007). Barrett’s four-week course in the
Insights program focused on creating rites of passage for young females
going through puberty and transitioning to adulthood, i.e., becom-
ing women.53 Barrett’s course description outlined the need for young
females’ menarche to be ritualized in positive ways thusly: ‘A girl will
internalize attitudes or beliefs about themselves, their bodies, and sexu-
ality, based on how others respond (or don’t respond) to this life cycle
experience [of menarche]. These attitudes may influence her future,
affecting her behavior, actions, expectations, and choices.’54 Barrett
introduced the course outline, ‘we will examine menstruation experi-
ences and rituals of contemporary women cross culturally, and learn
about ways that menstruation can be acknowledged, powerfully cel-
ebrated, and made sacred.’55 Because of its focus on menarche as the
pivot point for becoming women, members of the community identi-
fied the academic course as exclusionary toward transgender youth.
All through the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s of contemporary Paganism,
the sentiment behind this course would have received high applause
and broad agreement, as evidenced by other works historically popular
among contemporary Pagans.56 The concern for females being socialized
to be the second sex and the social interest in revaluing femaleness and
womanhood had previously defined Wicca in the USA. The transgender
rights movement has brought on a new era of contemporary Paganism.
Challenges to the definitions of gender, sex, womanhood, and manhood
have challenged core principles of not only theology but also liturgy.
Female leader Ruth Barrett is being blacklisted in social circles because
of her continued identification of menstruation with the experience of
being a woman.
Prior to the start of the course, an uprising of voices of resistance
cropped up on social media and the Internet. Courtney Weber, a New
York Wiccan priestess, tweeted, ‘[a] Transphobic “Elder” is no Elder of
mine,’ which became the source for a viral hashtag NoElderOfMine.57

Pagan community member Melissa Murry of Houston, Texas, created a
change.org petition urging Cherry Hill Seminary to dismiss Ruth Barrett
from her position as faculty. Using Weber’s tweet as the title for the
online petition, Murry wrote:
…we ask that Cherry Hill reconsider how the effects of having Ruth
Barrett on staff as a faculty member will affect trans students, trans com-
munity members, and friends/family of trans people. Respectfully, we ask
that Cherry Hill Seminary ask Ruth Barrett for her resignation based on
her actions, which directly impact and cause harm to the mundane and
Pagan transgender community.58
Although amassing only eighty signatures, the petition affected the com-
munity significantly. The petition directed at Cherry Hill Seminary is
congruent with evidence that the Bay Area Pagan community will not
stand for cissexist behavior (that privileges experiences of cisgender peo-
ple over transgender people) and the exclusion of transgender women
from women’s spaces.
In response, Cherry Hill Seminary released a statement (co-written
by Board of Directors, President Jeffrey Albaugh and Executive Director
Holli Emore), ‘Cherry Hill Seminary Calls for Academic Freedom,
Respect and Civility’ (2015). Cherry Hill Seminary instead regarded its
support for Barrett’s teaching as an issue of academic freedom:
The fact that we have been pressured suggests to us that the Pagan com-
munity may be confused about the role of higher education. We all want
diversity of sex and race, for example, although we would seem to be less
comfortable with diversity of ideas. But we do not serve our students well
by suggesting that the way to respond to those with whom we disagree is
to silence them. [...] We call for our Seminary family to embrace this con-
troversy as an opportunity to support each other with respect in our search
for personal authenticity, upholding the interfaith principle that each may
only speak her or his own truth, her own belief and story. As both an insti-
tution of higher education and a seminary, Cherry Hill Seminary will con-
tinue to hold a safe space for dialog on the issues which might otherwise
divide us.59
Cherry Hill Seminary proceeded as planned with the course offering.

The Wild Hunt, a central source for Pagan online journalism‚ reported
264 M. Mueller
a mixed response of ‘some people supporting its stance, and others

withdrawing their support. The debate is on going and may continue
to punctuate online conversations into the near future.’60 Support for
Barrett, or at the least for the principle of academic freedom, was upheld
under the leadership of Cherry Hill’s Academic Dean Wendy Griffin (a
Dianic Witch herself and a Ph.D. in Women’s Studies) and Executive
Director Holli Emore.61
In early June 2016, Ruth Barrett announced a forthcoming book,
Female Erasure: What You Need to Know About Gender Politics’ War
on Women, the Female Sex and Human Rights, with the launching of an
IndieGoGo to support its ‘editing, design, legal and technical fees.’62 On
the IndieGoGo campaign Web site, Barrett identified ‘misogyny, violence
and sexism’ and the ‘gender identity political debate’ as subjects to be
addressed in the volume. Barrett included a summary of the book’s con-
tents and general information about the contributors. About the authors,
she wrote:
‘[t]hey are lesbian feminists, political and spiritual feminists, heterosex-

ual-womanist women, mothers, scholars, attorneys, poets, medical and
mental health providers, environmentalists, and women who chose to de-
transition, all providing perspectives that are ignored, silenced, vilified, or
underrepresented in the popular media and disregarded in discussions pro-
moting legal protections for transgender persons at the expense of women
and girls. Some contributors wrote under pseudonyms to keep their teach-
ing jobs or to protect their children from harassment.’
Immediately, Wiccans and Pagans began to critique Barrett and the

book for trans-exclusive feminism.63 Community member Susan Harper
wrote, ‘Not My Goddess, Not My Feminism, Not My Priestesses.’64
While Barrett had included projections for the book on the fund-rais-
ing Web site, community members were protesting a book that had not
yet been produced. Their responses were based on Barrett’s burgeon-
ing reputation as a trans-exclusive feminist and the minimal informa-
tion provided about plans for the book. Upon responses to the pending
Female Erasure, Barrett tendered her own resignation from Cherry Hill
Seminary. With sadness, the Seminary accepted it.
Despite the many vocal opinions against Ruth Barrett and the Female
Erasure project, the IndieGoGo campaign was a success; it raised
108% ($27,154) of the original goal, supported by five hundred and
eighty-three donors, by July 19, 2016. The contradiction between pro-

testing blogs and the successful IndieGoGo campaign suggest that the
critiques of Barrett as a trans-exclusive feminist may be coming from a
vocal minority. The comment about pseudonyms further suggests that
the authors of the volume feel suppressed from speaking about the con-
nections between sex and gender in this spiritual community.
Bay Area Yoruban priestess Luisah Teish has also been criticized for
trans-exclusive feminism. In the popular arena, Glamour Magazine
awarded eight Women of the Year Awards at its 25th Annual Awards
Ceremony in November 2015, one of these to transgender reality TV
star Caitlyn Jenner (b. 1949). Jenner—who first became famous as Bruce
Jenner, as the 1976 Olympic Games gold medal winner in the decath-
lon—is more recently known for television shows Keeping Up with the
Kardashians and I Am Cait.65 When the award was announced, Teish
posted publicly on Facebook her outrage at the choice for the award.
Teish named Serena Williams, black female tennis star, as a comparative
figure and, in her view, more appropriate winner of the award.66 Williams
had, in fact, received the award in a previous year.67 Teish wrote: ‘[t]he
idea that he [Jenner] (yes he still has his testicles) could be compared
to Serena Williams and declared “more woman” than her is just fucking
stupid. While I stand and have stood for decades for the right to deter-
mine one’s own body I do see a big difference between self-determi-
nation and misogyny. The recent trends bespeak that suppressed desire
to eliminate a need for women and to establish male dominance even
as patriarchy in drag.’68 With these words, Teish addressed intersection-
ality, and she also refused to accept Jenner for the gender she identifies
with. For Teish, pronouns refer to sex, not to the performance of gender.
Teish’s comment is underscored by an implicit intersectional critique.69
For the majority of her life, Jenner benefitted from white male privi-
lege; indeed, she suffered from the pain of being misgendered and likely
uncertainty around her identity and performance in the world. Teish’s
comment accounts for the white male privilege in the fame, wealth, and
recognition as an athlete that Jenner acquired. Serena Williams, as a
black woman, has had neither white nor male privilege, and Teish was
offended at Jenner receiving this award. Among contemporary Pagans,
Teish’s comment elicited a revival of ‘A Transphobic Elder is No Elder
of Mine’ posts on Facebook.70 In contemporary lay Paganism in the
2010s, the call to affirm transgender identity has become louder than
266 M. Mueller
conversations about the differences for females and males in society. The
opportunity to discuss differences in privilege across racial and gendered
lines was lost in the hypervigilance of affirming transgender identity.
Teish’s intersectional critique did not gain traction in Pagan blogs, as
compared with criticism for Teish’s ‘impolite’ words about transgender
women.71 The public shaming of Teish and the lack of discussion around
Jenner’s privilege (economic, racial, and gender-related) suggest a sup-
pression of diverse feminist thought in Wiccan and Pagan community.
As Teish was being criticized, she made no apology. The next day on
Facebook Teish confirmed her point of view and invited those ‘who feel
[they] should UnFriend [her] because of the recent Jenner v.[]Williams
issue [to] do so with [her] blessings.’72 Neither Barrett nor Teish
has backed down from their views that there are differences between
transgender women and cisgender women. In response to the critiques
of ‘trans-exclusive radical feminists,’ Pagan blogger Erick Dupree wrote,
‘I Will Not Shame My Elders.’ In this blog, Dupree suggested that,
while he will not necessarily agree with every idea expressed from other
priestesses, he refuses to go out of his way to bring shame to the found-
ers of functional, living Pagan traditions. Dupree proposed dialogue
instead of sensationalized rejection of elders of Craft traditions. Even
this, however, was met with criticism. A few days later, Dupree wrote
with further reflections and noted that he had been ‘unfriended, blocked,
and “shunned”’ on social media after the first post.73 Dupree revised ear-
lier statements and spoke up more firmly on behalf of transgender rights.
Dupree’s original post had spoken on behalf of the struggle of cisgender
women and the need for respect and dialogue. As he was perceived as
a TERF-sympathizer, Dupree experienced his own public shaming and
walked statements back to compensate.
Conclusion
While challenges to feminism to include transgender issues (and intersec-
tional approaches that consider gender-nonconforming women) occur in
other social and political spheres, they are especially prominent in Wicca
and contemporary Paganism because of the movement’s identity as a
politically progressive spiritual movement, especially with regard to gen-
der issues, and practices of embodied spirituality that have been inherent
in the traditions of contemporary Paganism and Wicca.74 Exacerbating
the tension within community between cisgender women’s spirituality
and transgender inclusion is the lack of clarity around the changing defi-
nitions of gender. Rarely are contemporary Pagans addressing the matter
that the definition of gender as a personal and authentic aspect of one’s
innate identity distinguishable from sex is a new definition, separate from
how feminist theorists and gender studies scholars have understood gen-
der.
A look at Judith Butler can help us understand the current trends.
In Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’ (1993), Butler
set out to clear up and respond to some misconceptions about her first
book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990). In
the earlier book, Gender Trouble, Butler postulated gender as a matrix;
within societies, humans constantly interpret and renegotiate gender and
assign and re-assign gender roles onto each another. In her 1993 book,
Bodies That Matter, Butler responded to some of the misinterpretations.
By pointing out that gender is a social construction, she did not intend
that sex and gender are not real features of society that affect people. She
wrote, ‘[t]his [response to Gender Trouble] misses the point that nature
has a history, and not merely a social one, but, also, that sex is positioned
ambiguously in relation to that concept of its history.’75 In other words,
gender is a social construction; nevertheless, we are embodied beings
and our bodies are real, that is, they matter. Dianic Witchcraft has been
concerned with the embodied experiences of the female sex and, per-
haps more importantly, the social attributions onto those experiences and
what this means for females in society.
Furthermore, the ‘cult of personality’ that has defined Z Budapest’s
leadership style has, in this regard, not been helpful to other Dianics.
A majority of Dianics are not interested in gatekeeping. They are more
concerned about keeping their Tradition alive than about excluding
transgender women. Dianic Witch and scholar Marie Cartier has argued
that she and many other Dianics circle comfortably with transgender
women.76 However, because of Budapest’s ‘cult of personality’ that has
defined this Dianic Tradition, the whole group of Dianic Witches have
been reduced to being transphobic Z-followers. Some of her own spir-
itual ‘descendants’ have disassociated themselves from her.77
The conflict is further exacerbated by the contemporary culture of social
media. Members of community are quick to reach conclusions after read-
ing short posts on social media, to re-post possibly under-informed and
reactive blogs, and to generate viral hashtags that propagate broad assump-
tions about Dianic Wiccans. Regarding the controversy over Ruth Barrett’s
268 M. Mueller
teaching, Jeffrey Albaugh, President of the Cherry Hill Seminary Board of

Directors, wrote‚ ‘since the issues came to light, nobody had reached out
to [him] personally’ and that ‘demands have been posted on the Internet,
strewn across Face Book [sic] and re-blogged ad infinitum.’ Albaugh con-
tinued, ‘No wonder this is off the rails. Everyone is shouting and no one
is listening.’78 Another factor in the conflict is generational difference.
Millennials who came of age after social changes effected by second-wave
feminists, living in a changed world, experience gender in different ways
than Generation Xers and Baby Boomers have in their respective lifetimes.
As a result, there are dissenting views about the need for binary women’s
and men’s mysteries because of these vastly different experiences of being
gendered. Finally, the relationships between sex, gender, and sexism are
even further complicated because there is no such thing as uniform gen-
der presentation. Some people have physically and rogynous appearances.
Despite that a butch woman might be a cis gender female, she may at times
be perceived as a man and treated as such. The relationship between sex
difference and sexism is therefore also reliant on the perception of sex.
Transgender rights activists have noted that many women, cis and trans, do
not have breasts (naturally or from mastectomies) or do not menstruate,
and therefore, these biological functions or physical characteristics should
not be used to determine gender. However, many women are infertile, and
this has not discounted reproductive freedom from being a women’s issue.
Women, cisgender and transgender, face uphill battles in a transphobic,
misogynistic, patriarchal society. Julie Serano has written about the misog-
yny inherent in much of today’s transphobia.79
Genderqueer people who challenge the gender binary—society’s
need to categorize human beings as one gender or the other—offer
a powerful social force. They critique and loosen the underpinnings
of a sexist misogynist society. There are parallels between this analy-
sis and findings in race studies. Although race is a social construc-
tion, there is peril and risk in overlooking the consequences of racial
diversity and white privilege. Second-wave feminism brought to light
the consequences of being born female in a patriarchal world. While
global and Western society has changed dramatically, consequences
continue. Transcending gender without awareness and analysis of the
connection between sex and gender fails cisgender women in a patri-
archal misogynist society. Neither a movement that denies transgender
women’s experiences nor one that denies cisgender women’s experi-
ences is complete.
Marie Cartier has pointed out that cisgender women are the only
group who have had special restrictions on their meeting exclusively at
PantheaCon. The program, Cartier has explained, includes unapolo-
getically initiates’ only meetings of various Traditions and even rituals
deemed unfit for menstruating women.80 Once perceived as vocalizing
some of the most forward-thinking concerns of contemporary Pagans,
Dianics (Goddess monotheists and ritual separatists) have been reduced
and dismissed as archaic ‘trans-exclusive radical feminists.’81 The com-
munity’s policing against trans-exclusive radical feminism may suggest a
backlash against cisgender feminism.82
Of the priestesses discussed in this chapter, styles of female Pagan lead-
ership included compromise and adaptation (Glenn Turner, Starhawk,
and Yeshe Rabbit Matthews), challenge and witness (T. Thorn Coyle
and Courtney Weber), unyielding commitment and the willingness to be
unpopular (Z Budapest, Ruth Barrett, and Luisah Teish). Throughout
each of their stories‚ there exists conviction, commitment to what the
female leaders believe in, and integrity. Notably, the Pagan female lead-
ers who remain the most popular, within the Pagan community itself, are
those who compromised and adapted, which may be meaningful for the
broader analysis of female leadership in religious societies.
Notes
1. My title is an homage to Riane Eisler and her important book, Riane
Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future, Updated edi-
tion (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2011). The chalice refers to the attribu-
tion of certain symbols to female or feminine experience (the womb) in
Wiccan ritual; the rainbow is a symbol for LGBTQI pride and free gender
expression that informs many of today’s US contemporary Pagans. This
chapter benefited from research at the Women’s Alliance for Theology,
Ethics, and Ritual (WATER) Library and OPUS Archives’ Marija
Gimbutas Collection.
2. Simone De Beauvoir, The Second Sex, Vintage Feminism Short Edition
(New York: Vintage Classics, 2015).
3. Sherry B. Ortner, “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?,” in
Woman, Culture, and Society, ed. M.Z. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974), 73.
4. Julia Serano, Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the
Scapegoating of Femininity (Emeryville, CA: Seal Press, 2007).
5. Ortner, “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?”
270 M. Mueller
6. Serano, Whipping Girl, 24; Viviane K. Namaste, Sex Change, Social

Change : Reflections on Identity, Institutions, and Imperialism (Toronto:
Women’s Press, 2005), 1.
7. See https://terfisaslur.com, Accessed April 3, 2017.
8. Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle, The Transgender Studies Reader (New
York: Routledge, 2013).
9. See, for example, Chaitra Navratri, ‘“Women Born Women”: Dianic Wicca
and Transphobia,’ https://maisappho.wordpress.com/2013/09/07/
women-born-women-dianic-wicca-and-transphobia/, Accessed January 15,
2015; Heather Greene, ‘Transgender inclusion debates re-ignite in Pagan
community,’ June 12, 2016, http://wildhunt.org/2016/06/transgender-
inclusion-debates-re-ignite-in-pagan-community.html, Accessed March 30,
2017, http://wildhunt.org/2016/06/transgender-inclusion-debates-re-
ignite-in-pagan-community.html, Accessed March 30, 2017.
10. Alexandra Bolles, ‘Violence Against Transgender People and People of
Color is Disproportionately High, LGBTQH Murder Rate Peaks,’ June 4,
2012, http://www.glaad.org/blog/violence-against-transgender-people-
and-people-color-disproportionately-high-lgbtqh-murder-rate, Accessed
January 13, 2015; Namaste, Sex Change, Social Change.
11. Arlie Hochschild and Anne Machung, The Second Shift: Working Families
and the Revolution at Home, Revised edition (New York: Penguin Books,
2012).
12. Ortner, “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?”; Friedrich Engels,
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (Resistance
Books, 2004).
13. Patricia Elliot, Debates in Transgender, Queer, and Feminist Theory:
Contested Sites (Burlington: Ashgate, 2010).
14. Daniel Martin Varisco, “Virtual Dasein: Ethnography in Cyberspace,”
CyberOrient: Online Journal of the Virtual Middle East 2.1 (2007),
http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=3698.
15. Generational difference is a factor in gender identities but is not an abso-
lute boundary. There are genderqueer Baby Boomers as well.
16. See Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern
Pagan Witchcraft, New edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001);
Aidan A. Kelly, Crafting the Art of Magic, Book I: A History of Modern
Witchcraft, 1939–1964, First edition (St. Paul: Llewellyn, 1991); Philip
Heselton, Wiccan Roots: Gerald Gardner and the Modern Witchcraft
Revival (Milverton: Capall Bann, 2001).
17. The Farrars’ approach was Jungian. They identified ‘the individual con-
scious ego, its strategy that of rationalized thinking, linear and ana-
lyzing’ as masculine, God-relating brain functions and the ‘Collective
Unconscious, its strategy that of intuitive awareness, cyclical and synthe-
sizing’ as feminine, Goddess-relating functions. Janet Farrar and Farrar,
Stewart, The Witches’ Goddess: The Feminine Principle (Blaine, WA:

Phoenix, 1987), 10.
18. Gerald B. Gardner, Witchcraft Today, New edition (London: I-H-O
Books, 1999); Farrar and Farrar, Stewart, The Witches’ Goddess; Janet and
Stewart Farrar, The Witches’ God: Lord of the Dance (Blaine, WA: Pheonix,
1989); Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon; Heselton, Wiccan Roots.
19. Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon; Margot Adler, Drawing Down the
Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America
Today, Revised and expanded edition (New York: Penguin Books, 1986);
Philip G. Davis, Goddess Unmasked: The Rise of Neopagan Feminist
Spirituality, First edition (Dallas: Spence Publishing Company, 1999);
Wendy Griffin, “Herlands: Finding Goddess on Lesbian Land” (Annual
Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Chicago, 2012).
20. Cynthia Eller, Living In The Lap of Goddess: The Feminist Spirituality
Movement in America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995); Starhawk, The
Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess,
Twentieth anniversary edition (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1999).
21. Starhawk, The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great
Goddess; Phyllis Curott, Book of Shadows: A Modern Woman’s Journey
into the Wisdom of Witchcraft and the Magic of the Goddess (New York:
Broadway Books, 1998); Eller, Living In The Lap of Goddess; Wendy
Griffin, “The Embodied Goddess: Feminist Witchcraft and Female
Divinity,” Sociology of Religion 56 (1995).
22. Eller, Living In The Lap of Goddess; Starhawk, The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth
of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess; Kristy S. Coleman, Re-Riting
Woman: Dianic Wicca and the Feminine Divine (Lanham, MD: AltaMira
Press, 2010); Griffin, “The Embodied Goddess: Feminist Witchcraft and
Female Divinity”; Rosemary Radford Ruether, Goddesses and the Divine
Feminine: A Western Religious History (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2005).
23. Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon, Chapter 18; Adler, Drawing Down the
Moon.
24. Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon; Coleman, Re-Riting Woman; Jone
Salomonsen, Enchanted Feminism: Ritual, Gender and Divinity Among
the Reclaiming Witches of San Francisco (New York: Routledge, 2002);
Adler, Drawing Down the Moon.
25. Carol P. Christ, “Why Women Need the Goddess,” Heresies: The Great
Goddess Issue, 1978, 8–13.
26.
Z Budapest, ‘Susan B. Anthony Coven Turns 41,’ December 17, 2012,
https://zbudapest.wordpress.com/2012/12/17/susan-b-anthony-coven-
turns-41/, Accessed March 30, 2017; Zsuzsanna Budapest, The Holy Book
of Women’s Mysteries: Feminist Witchcraft, Goddess Rituals, Spellcasting and
Other Womanly Arts…, New edition (Berkeley: Wingbow Press, 1989).
272 M. Mueller
27. ‘Overview of Dianic Feminist Wicca Witchcraft Tradition,’ http://dianic.

org, Accessed March 31, 2017.
28. Ortner, “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?”
29. Ibid.
30. Matthews’ statement is consistent with the archived Program Book. The
event was annotated with the ‘eyeball’ icon (indicating restrictions),
but the description did not specify women only. See PantheaCon 2011
Program Book, 28, https://issuu.com/pantheacon/docs/pconpro-
gram11-lorez, Accessed July 19, 2017.
31. Yeshe Rabbit Matthews, telephone conversation with author, July 19,
2017.
32. Elena Rose, ‘Queer Pagan Panel’ (panel at PantheaCon, San Jose,
Feburary 2012).
33. Adler, Drawing Down the Moon, 169–170.
34. Matthews, telephone conversation with author, July 19, 2017.
35. CAYA Pagan Congregation, ‘The History of CAYA,’ http://www.caya-
coven.org/history/, Accessed April 24, 2017.
36. Matthews, quoted in Jason Pitzl-Waters, ‘Amazon Priestess Tribe
“Retires” from Z. Budapest’s Dianic Lineage,’ The Wild Hunt Blog,
March 8, 2012, http://www.patheos.com/blogs/wildhunt/2012/03/
amazon-priestess-tribe-retires-from-z-budapests-dianic-lineage.html,
Accessed April 24, 2017.
37. T. Thorn Cole, ‘Holding Beloved Community,’ February 19, 2012,
http://www.thorncoyle.com/blog/2012/02/19/holding-beloved-
community/, Accessed April 24, 2017.
38. Coyle, ‘Holding Beloved Community.’
39. Rebecca Short, ‘The Self-Subversion of Women’s Mysteries: Dianic
NeoPaganism, Marxist Feminist Standpoint Epistemology, and Gender
Inclusion,’ Imagining Religion, Professor Stockdale, May 8, 2012,
Emailed to author April 15, 2014; Coyle, ‘Holding Beloved Community.’
40. Serano, Whipping Girl.
41. Ibid.
42. See, for example, Jacobo Polanshek, “Against Duality,” in Sarah
Thompson et al., eds., Gender And Transgender In Modern Paganism,
First edition (Cupertino, CA: Circle of Cerridwen Press, 2012), 29,
http://st4r.org/genderbook.pdf.
43. Starhawk, The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great
Goddess, 26.
44. Ibid., 20.
45. Ibid., 22.
46. Abel R. Gomez, ‘Reclaiming the Myriad Forms of Divinity.’ The Wild
Hunt Blog on Patheos, August 9, 2012, http://www.patheos.com/blogs/
wildhunt/2012/08/guest-post-reclaiming-the-myriad-forms-of-divinity.
html, Accessed March 31, 2017.
47. Starhawk, Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex, and Politics, Fifteenth anni-
versary edition (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997); Salomonsen, Enchanted
Feminism.
48. T. Thorn Coyle, “Snapshots: Musings on Polarity and Flow,” in
Thompson et al., Gender And Transgender In Modern Paganism, 91.
49. Coleman, Re-Riting Woman.
50. Originally Women’s Rites, Women’s Mysteries: Creating Ritual in the
Dianic Wiccan Tradition (Authorhouse, 2004). Republished as Women’s
Rites, Women’s Mysteries: Intuitive Ritual Creation (St. Paul: Llewellyn,
2007).
51. Z Budapest, ‘Elder and Originator Z Budapest’s Official Statement to
the Dianic Community,’ August 19, 2014, https://zbudapest.word-
press.com/2014/08/19/elder-and-originator-z-budapests-official-
statement-to-the-dianic-community/, Accessed April 27, 2017; Hearth
Moon Rising, ‘Reflections on Recent Events in the Dianic Community,
Hearth Moon Rising’s Blog: A Resource for Worshipers of the Goddess,
September 5, 2014, http://hearthmoonblog.com/reflections/, Accessed
April 27, 2017; Judith Laura, ‘Z Budapest, Temple of Diana, Claudiney
Prieto,’ Medusa Coils, August 27, 2014, http://medusacoils.blogspot.
com/2014/08/z-budapest-temple-of-diana-claudiney.html, Accessed
April 27, 2017.
52. Ruth Barrett, “Religious Freedom: A Dianic Perspective,” in Thompson
et al., Gender And Transgender In Modern Paganism, 98.
53. Cherry Hill Seminary is a distance-learning Pagan seminary that offers
masters in divinity degrees; certificates in community ministry, envi-
ronmental leadership, Pagan pastoral care, etc. ; and a military chap-
laincy specialization. Insights are four-week, low-cost courses that work
to introduce students and community to Cherry Hill Seminary without
requiring enrollment in a degree or certificate program.
54. Cherry Hill Seminary website, http://cherryhillseminary.org/students/
past-courses/becoming-women-first-bloods-rituals-for-girls/, Accessed
February 29, 2016.
55. Ibid.
56. See, for example, Starhawk, The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient
Religion of the Great Goddess; Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor, The Great
Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth 2nd, Second edi-
tion (San Francisco: HarperOne, 1994); Farrar and Farrar, Stewart, The
Witches’ Goddess, (especially Chapter IV: “The Menstruating Goddess”).
57. Courtney Weber, ‘Here’s why you’re not my Elder. I hope you under-
stand,’ February 19, 2016, http://thecocowitch.com/2015/11/
274 M. Mueller
heres-why-youre-not-my-elder-i-hope-you-understand/, Accessed March

5, 2017.
58. Melissa Murry, https://www.change.org/p/cherry-hill-seminary-a-
transphobic-elder-are-no-elder-of-mine/c, Accessed February 8, 2016.
The critique of Barrett from Murry is significant as the two had been
involved in public dialogue over transgender inclusion in the preceding
years. See Peter Dybing, ‘Ten Pagans Who Made A Difference in 2012,
Pagan in Paradise Blog, December 1, 2012, http://www.patheos.com/
blogs/paganinparadise/2012/12/ten-pagans-who-made-a-difference-
in-2012.html, Accessed April 27, 2017.
59. Cherry Hill Seminary Board, November 16, 2015, http://cherryhillsemi-
nary.org/blog/news-releases/cherry-hill-seminary-calls-for-academic-
freedom-respect-and-civility/, Accessed Feb. 18, 2016.
60. ‘Pagan Community Notes,’ The Wild Hunt, November 23, 2015, http://
wildhunt.org/2015/11/pagan-community-notes-kenny-klein-cherry-
hill-seminary-climate-ribbon-project-and-more.html, Accessed Feb. 28,
2016.
61. Greene, ‘Transgender inclusion debates re-ignite in Pagan community.’
62. Ibid.
63. Ibid. Lee Gilmore’s Facebook Page, June 15, 2016
64. Susan Harper, ‘Not My Goddess, Not My Feminism, Not My Priestesses.’
June 9, 2016, http://witchesandpagans.com/sagewoman-blogs/third-
wave-witch/not-my-goddess-not-my-feminism-not-my-priestesses.html,
Accessed March 30, 2017.
65. Jenner fits into the cast of Keeping Up With the Kardhashians as
the spouse of Kris Kardashian (b. 1955) and the stepfather to
Khloé, Kourtney, Kim, Kylie, Kendall, and Rob Kardashian. Other
Glamour awards went to Victoria Beckham, Misty Copeland, Elizabeth
Holmes, Cecile Richards, Reese Witherspoon, the Women of Charleston,
and the US women’s national soccer team. See http://www.glamour.
com/story/woty-2015-winners, Accessed April 17, 2017. Kathryn
Lofton addressed ‘empire’ and the Kardashian family in Kathryn Lofton,
“Kardashian Nation: Race and Empire in the American Family” (ple-
nary address at Media, Gender, and Religion, The Sixth International
Conference hosted by The Center for Media, Religion, and Culture,
Boulder, 2016).
66. In the popular domain, actress Rose McGowan (b. 1973) voiced dissent
at the award on account of Jenner’s apparent lack of comprehension of
women’s social issues as Jenner had proclaimed, the ‘hardest part about
being a woman is figuring out what to wear’ in her acceptance speech.
The Daily Beast Online reported that Caitlyn Jenner, at 65, was ‘the old-
est woman to appear on the cover of [Vanity Fair].’ Stephanie Webber,
‘Rose McGowan Slams Caitlyn Jenner’s Woman of the Year Award

Acceptance Speech,’ November 16, 2015, http://www.usmagazine.
com/celebrity-news/news/rose-mcgowan-slams-caitlyn-jenners-woman-
of-the-year-award-speech-w157719, Accessed March 31, 2017; Lizzie
Crocker, ‘Caitlyn Jenner, 65, Is the Oldest Woman to Appear on the
Cover of Vanity Fair,’ June 2, 2015, http://www.thedailybeast.com/arti-
cles/2015/06/02/caitlyn-jenner-is-vanity-fair-s-oldest-female-cover-star.
html, Accessed April 27, 2017.
67. http://www.glamour.com/story/woty-2015-winners, Accessed April 17,
2017.
68. Luisah Teish’s Facebook Page, November 8, 2015, Accessed March 30,
2017.
69. Popular Amazon show Transparent addressed varied perspectives on the
needs for women’s space and issues of privilege between cisgender and
transgender women in ‘Man on the Land’ (season 2, episode 9).
70. Peter Dybing’s Facebook Page, November 12, 2015. Devin Hunter,
‘Here we go again| A tale of two paganisms,’ WitchesAndPagans.com,
November 12, 2015, http://witchesandpagans.com/pagan-culture-
blogs/here-we-go-again-a-tale-of-two-paganisms.html, Accessed March
30, 2017.
71. Devin Hunter, ‘Here we go again| A tale of two paganisms.’
72. Luisah Teish’s Facebook Page, November 9, 2015, Accessed March 30,
2017.
73. The original blog is no longer on the host website. See Erick Dupree,
‘Accountability, Courageous Love, & Dancing With Compassion,’
November 17, 2015, http://www.patheos.com/blogs/aloneinherpres-
ence/2015/11/accountability-courageous-love-dancing-with-compas-
sion/, Accessed April 4, 2017.
74. In the global scheme, Wiccan priestess Phyllis Curott was the chief organ-
izer for the first women’s assembly at the Parliament of the World’s
Religions 2015. Transgender issues were not addressed.
75. Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New
York: Routledge, 1993), 5.
76. Marie Cartier‚ comments in response to Queer Studies in Religion 1,
‘Retrieving Sacred Voices: The Act of Reading and Reclaiming’ (panel
at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion Western
Region, Santa Clara, California, March 27-29, 2014).
77. See http://susanbanthonycoven.com, Accessed March 30, 2017.
78. Greene, ‘Transgender inclusion debates re-ignite in Pagan community.’
79. Serano, Whipping Girl.
80. Cartier, comments in response to Queer Studies in Religion 1.
276 M. Mueller
81. See Griffin, “The Embodied Goddess: Feminist Witchcraft and Female

Divinity”; Adler, Drawing Down the Moon; Peter Dybing’s Facebook
Page.
82. See Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American
Women (New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2009).
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Index
A Amma dolls, 92
Aamodt, Terrie, 39 Anamadin, 20
Achols, Alice, 230 The Anatomy of Freedom, 241
Adherents, 3, 20–22, 24, 29, 34, 100, Anderson, Victor, 234
103, 110–114, 116, 117, 152, Angleton, Dorothy, 57
192, 196, 198, 199, 201, 216 Anti-authoritarian, 186
Adler, Alfred, 124 Anti-establishment, 186
Adler, Margo, 233, 235 Anti-feminism, 52
Advent Review, the, 38 Anti-language, 7, 214–216, 224
African Christianity, 209 Anti-society, 214–216, 224
African Initiated Churches (AICs), Apocalypse, 172, 182
210, 211, 217, 218 Arab Women’s Solidarity Association
African New Religious Movements (AWSA), 14
(ANRMs), 210 Archetypes, 14, 17, 131, 132, 254
African Pentecostalism, 210 Ardagh, Arjuna, 102, 103, 106, 109
Albaugh, Jeffrey, 263, 268 Ardhanarishvara, 108
Aleuti, Francesca, 24 Art of Living Foundation, 87
Alexanderian Witchcraft, 232 Ascendancy, the, 142, 143
Alignment, 177, 178 Asexual, 82
Altar, 60, 144, 149 Authority, 3, 4, 6–8, 13, 24, 26, 55,
Alzheimer, 52, 70 58, 61, 68, 81, 84–87, 89, 94,
Amazon Priestess Tribe, 258 100, 103, 107, 112, 115, 116,
American Pagan movement, 232 152, 154, 166, 172, 181–183,
Amma, 2, 4, 5, 79–94, 99–104, 185, 186, 196, 199, 200, 202,
106–117 203, 216, 219, 220, 224
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

I. Bårdsen Tøllefsen and C. Giudice (eds.), Female Leaders in New 279
Spiritualities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-61527-1
280 Index
Automatic writing, 55, 166, 171, 172, British Traditional Witchcraft,

179, 183 253, 254
Avatars, 5, 8, 100, 103, 109, 116 Brownmiller, Susan, 243, 244
Axumite Kingdom, 191 Buckland, Ray and Rosemary, 253
Ayyana, 192, 193 Buddhism, Buddhist, 57, 115, 176
Butler, Jenny, 154
Butler, Judith, 267
B
Baba Josefa, 211, 219, 220, 223, 224
Bailey, Alice, 26, 148 C
Bainbridge, William Sims, 122 Capital, 7, 125, 189, 190, 195, 196
Ballard, Guy and Edna Carlström, Anette, 110
Ballards, the, 55 Cartier, Marie, 267, 269
Barachastlain, Iain Macnab of, 144 Catholicism, catholic, 210
Barrett, Ruth, 255, 258, 261–267, Celibacy, 41, 65, 68, 81, 82, 89
269 Chabsa, 196–199
Beak, Sera, 23 Channeling, 55, 84, 165
Behl, Aditya, 84, 93 Charisma, charismatic, 3–8, 15, 17,
Beings, 22–24, 52, 55, 60, 64, 79, 25, 26, 30, 51, 58, 80, 83–90,
110, 122, 129, 144, 169, 239, 94, 123, 127, 138, 157–159,
267, 268 175, 200, 201, 218, 219, 224
Benz, Inelia, 23 Charpentier, Marie-Thérèse, 105,
Berger, Helen, 235, 236 111, 112
Berger, Peter, 215, 232, 235 Chaza, Mai, 210, 218
Besant, Annie, 26, 64 Cherry Hill Seminary, 262–264, 268
Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, 137 Children, 7, 31, 32, 56, 70, 80, 82,
Beyond God the Father, 237–239 92, 102, 107, 142, 144–146,
Bhabha, Homi, 201 148, 151, 175, 196, 210, 211,
Bhagavad Gita, 151 213, 215–218, 222–224, 242,
Bhagavan, 2, 4, 5, 99–103, 107–116 256, 264
Bhakti (devotionalism), 79 Chodorow, Nancy, 242
Biology, 230–232, 251 Chögyam Trungpa Rimpoche, 132
Black Church, 25 Christ, 5, 14, 33–37, 63, 64, 67, 122,
Blavatsky, Helena, 26, 55, 64 128, 131, 132, 134, 136, 194,
Blood Mysteries, 252, 253 211, 220–222, 234, 255
Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Christ, Carol, 234, 255
Limits of “Sex”, 267 Christianity, Christian, 2, 5, 7, 14, 16,
Body, 2, 20–22, 39, 41, 42, 63, 67, 19, 20, 25, 31–35, 39, 44, 53, 55
68, 73, 114, 128, 137, 145, 177, Christian Science, 23, 29, 54
182–184, 234, 238–240, 250, Christian Science Monitor, 54
253, 265 Chrysalis, 240
Bourdieu, Pierre, 7, 189, 190 Chryssides, George D, 24
Index 281
Church, 4, 6, 7, 23, 32–34, 39, Cosmos, 22, 239

42–44, 51, 53, 54, 56, 58, Covenant of the Goddess (COG), 234
59, 61, 65, 69–73, 121–124, Cox, Harvey, 210
133–136, 138, 142, 147, 154, Coyle, T. Thorn, 258, 261, 269
182, 190–192, 194, 195, Critique, 17, 25, 89, 167, 184, 186,
197–202, 210–212, 215, 218, 213, 251, 252, 264–266, 268
219, 253, 255 Cultural feminism, 230, 240
Church of All Worlds Come As You
Are (CAYA) Coven, 258
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day D
Saints (Mormonism), 29 Dalai Lama, 155
Church Universal and Triumphant Daly, Mary, 231, 237–244
(CUT), 52, 53, 57–61, 64, 65, Dammon, Israel, 36
67, 68, 71 Dana, 147
Cisgender, 250–252, 256–258, 263, Dandelion Gathering, 260
266, 268, 269 Dasas, 103, 113, 114
Clairvoyance, 83, 171 Davis, Judy, 155, 237
Clarke, Victoria Mary, 126, 143, 145, The Death of Nature, 241
151, 154, 158, 159 De Castillejo, Irene Claremont, 16
Class, 3, 14, 17, 18, 26, 31, 101, Deeksha, 100, 102, 103
125, 142, 144, 145, 154, 213, de Grimston, Mary Ann, 2, 5, 122,
230, 241 123, 137
Comiskey, Geraldine, 149, 158 de Grimston, Robert, 122–125, 127,
Communitas, 214, 216, 223 128, 130, 131, 133, 134, 136,
Community, 2, 5, 17, 19–21, 26, 137
31, 80, 81, 92, 94, 193, 194, Deguchi Nao, 2, 6, 165–167, 170,
196, 197, 199, 200, 210, 213, 171, 179, 184
214, 232–236, 239, 250–252, Deguchi Onisaburō (Onisaburō), 165,
258–264, 266, 267, 269 166, 178
Compulsion Analysis, 124 Deguchi Uchimaru, 166
Coney, Judith, 85 Deguchi Yasuaki, 167
Conflicts, 7, 8, 190, 251, 252, 255 Demagnetization, 59
Consciousness, 5, 24, 26, 33, 52, 59, de Mille, Cecil B, 158
100, 102, 108–110, 113, 114, Democracy, 156
116, 151, 153, 234, 242, 255, Depression, 82, 198
261 Desexual, 80, 94
Controversy, controversial, 7, 88, 89, Devi bhava, 79, 80, 83, 84, 86, 94
201, 212, 267 Devi, Nirmala, 23, 85
Cooke, Alistair, 125 Devil, the, 70, 192
Cooke, Susie, 126 Devotee, 4, 82, 84, 85, 87, 90, 92,
Coote, Commander Bernard Trotter 93, 199, 200
RN, OBE, 145
282 Index
Dianic Witchcraft, 233, 235, 252, Energy, 19, 68, 69, 73, 74, 90, 100,
255, 258, 267 102, 216, 234, 240, 242
Diaspora, 210 Enkerli, Frieda, 54
Divine feminine, 4, 51, 63, 64, 67, 74, Entrepreneur, 4, 80, 93
80, 84, 150, 255 Erndl, Kathleen M., 104
Domesticity, 30, 31 Eshetu, Birhane, 197, 198
Doniger, Wendy, 104 Esoterism, esoteric, 2, 6, 15, 18, 19,
Dreaming the Dark, 235, 239, 22–24, 26, 148, 150, 186, 234
241–243 Estrangement, 236, 241, 242
The Druid Clan of Dana, 154, 157 Ethic of Interconnectedness, 242
Dualism, 186, 242 Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, 190,
Durdin-Robertson, Lawrence, 147, 191, 202
154, 158 Ethnic groups, 194, 197
Durdin Robertson, Manning, Eve, 14
142–144 Evil, 6, 13, 61, 63, 69, 169, 181, 182,
Durdin-Robertson, Pamela, 147, 148 185, 192, 199
Durga, 52
Duty, 38, 181, 220
Dzangara, Emmanuel Mudyiwa, F
210–212, 218, 220 Faery Witchcraft, 234
Faithfull, Marianne, 132
Farrar, Janet and Stewart, 254
E Father, 2, 5, 14, 33, 52, 59, 63, 65,
Echtler, Magnus, 190 100, 102, 109, 116, 123, 130,
Eddy, Mary Baker, 23, 26, 30, 54 134, 138, 142, 145, 147, 211,
Education, 13, 16, 25, 26, 40, 81, 219, 220, 223, 231, 239
102, 128, 144, 145, 151, 165, Fellowship of Isis, 6, 141, 149,
216, 222, 223 151–159
Ego, 27, 180, 184 Female Erasure, 264
Egypt, 149, 155, 156 Female guru, 4, 80, 89, 94
Egyptian Book of the Dead, 151 Feminine, 1, 5, 11, 12, 15, 16, 18,
Egyptosophy, 149 19, 22–24, 52, 63, 64, 67, 68,
Elders, 212, 213, 219, 220, 223, 266 80, 81, 100, 104, 105, 107, 108,
El Saadawi, Nawal, 13, 14, 26 110, 111, 113, 224, 231, 237,
Embezzling the World, 89, 90 240
Embodiment, 79, 80, 91, 107, 193, Feminism, feminist, 2, 3, 7, 8, 12, 14,
261 15, 17, 18, 22, 23, 25–27, 52,
Embrace the World (ETW), 79, 84, 107, 167, 213, 230–238, 240,
87–89, 92 241, 243, 244, 264, 266, 268
Emore, Holli, 263, 264 The Feminist Book of light and Shadows,
Empress Jingū, 170 233
Index 283
Feminist Witchcraft, 7, 232–235, 237, 63–65, 67, 71–73, 84, 91,

240–242, 249, 255 102, 108, 111, 122, 131–133,
Feraferia, 255 136, 147, 169, 172, 183,
Fertility, 196, 220, 249, 253 211, 218–220, 232, 238, 239,
Finney, Charles Grandison, 31 252–254, 259–261
Foundation Church of the Goddess, 6, 7, 11, 12, 14, 18–20, 23,
Millennium, 136 24, 52, 79, 84, 86, 87, 94, 111,
Foundation Faith of the Millennium, 127, 136, 138, 147–152, 155,
136 156, 158, 232–240, 252–255,
Fox, Daniel, 154 258–261, 264, 269
Francis, Edward, 58 Goddess spirituality, 6, 15, 151,
153–155, 244, 255
Goldenberg, Naomi, 234
G Goméz, Marsha, 22
Gabriel, angel, 199, 200, 202 Graves, Florence Belinda, 142
Galma, 192, 196, 199 Graves, Robert, 142, 147, 149
Gardner, Gerald, 252, 253 Great Goddess, 105, 254, 259
Gardnerian Wicca, 253 Greenwood, Susan, 15
Geda, Gemechu J, 193 Griffin, Susan, 235, 239, 240,
Gender, 1, 2, 4–8, 12, 14, 15, 242–244
17, 26, 31, 36, 51, 63–65, Griffin, Wendy, 264
68, 71, 74, 80, 81, 84, 90, Grimke, Sarah, 31
94, 100–102, 107, 113–117, Grimke sisters, the, 31, 32
213, 217, 230, 231, 241, Grimstad, Kirsten, 234, 236
250–252, 254–256, 258–262, Gupta, Lina, 101, 104, 105
264–268 Guru darshan, 79, 80
Gender and Earth Based Spiritualities Guru Ma, 53, 57
Conference, 258 Guta raJehova, 210
Gender and Transgender in Paganism, Gyn/Ecology, 237, 238, 240
261
Genderqueer, 250, 268
Gender stratification, 254 H
Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Hagiography, 80, 81, 86, 93
Subversion of Identity, 267 Halliday, Michael Alexander
Gilligan, Carol, 242 Kirkwood, 214, 215
Girl Jesus, 7, 210–212, 215, 216, Harmon, Ellen Gould, 32
219–224 Harrow, Judy, 255
Global North, 209 Healing, 24, 81, 83–85, 114, 173,
Global South, 2 194, 196, 198, 200, 218, 221,
Gnostic, 65, 74 249
God, 12–14, 17, 25, 27, 30, 32–34, Hegemony, 202, 230
38, 39, 41, 43, 44, 52, 55,
284 Index
Henjōnanshi (the transformed male), Internet, 21, 23, 24, 84, 92–94, 262,
176, 177 268
Henjōnyoshi (the transformed female), Intersectionality, 99, 101, 109, 110,
176 116, 265
Hierarchy, 13, 72, 87, 116, 157, 215, Interviews, 57, 110, 121, 122, 134,
218 195, 213
Hinduism, Hindu, 19, 52, 67, 68, Irigaray, Luce, 67
79, 83, 94, 100–102, 104–108, Isian News, 156
111–113, 115, 116, 151 Isis, 6, 94, 149, 157
Hindutva, 105 Islam, 192, 193, 202
Hippie, 148
Hitsujisaru no Konjin, 180, 181
The Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries, J
233 Jehovah, 2, 122, 131–133, 136, 138,
Holy Spirit Movement, 218 218
Homosexuality, 59, 68, 69, 132 Jehovah’s Witnesses, 29
Hooks, Bell, 26 Jenner, Caitlyn, 252
Horned God, 254 Jesus, 33, 35, 58, 65, 194, 211, 212,
Hubbard, L. Ron, 123, 124, 176 215, 220–224
Humanitarian, 5, 23, 29, 30, 79, Jesus of Guruve, 211, 212, 224
86–88, 93, 94 Jonathan Livingston Seagull, 60
Hutton, Ronald, 232, 234, 241 Jung, Carl, 12, 131
Hybrid, 70, 192, 198
Hymns, 129
Hypernomian, 71, 72 K
Kakar, Sudhir, 95, 105
Kali/ Durga, 83
I Kami, 6, 165–169, 171–173, 176,
I AM, 13, 51, 52, 54, 55, 64, 68, 69, 177, 179–181, 183–186
122, 169, 172, 195, 197, 199, Karma, 24, 61, 63, 64, 70, 73, 83, 169
200, 220, 222, 265 Karma yoga, 87, 91
Idamannel, Sudhamani, 80 Keeler, Christine, 123
Identity, 2, 8, 15, 17, 19, 41, 59, 64, Keepers of the Flame fraternity, 56
81, 113, 116, 143, 155, 180, Keireki no shin’yu, 167
212, 220, 243, 250, 251, 256, Kerényi, Carl (Karl), 12
259, 260, 264–267 King, Randall, 58, 70, 73
Ideology, 12, 13, 15, 25, 30, 31, 52, King, Ursula, 100, 202, 232
84, 89, 186, 218, 239, 240 Kinkatsukane no Ōkami—Great
Iglehart, Hallie, 243 Goddess of the Palace Gold, 171
Ikeda Akira, 166 Koedt, Anne, 230
Immanence, 101, 237–239 Koltuv, Barbara Black, 16
Konkokyō, 173, 174, 177
Index 285
Kumar, Vijay, 102 Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, 88

Kwok Pui-Lan, 101 Makiwa, Henry, 215, 220, 221
Malachi, Father, 130, 138
Mama Lola, 24
L Mami Wata, 24, 25
Lady Olivia, 142, 155, 158 Manliness, 179
Lady O-Sumi, 175 Manson, Charles, 133
Laedere, 217 Marginalisation, 14, 16, 17, 192, 202,
Laissez-faire, 157 218
Lakwena, Alice Auma, 218 Maria, Mai, 7, 210–212, 219–221,
Lalita, 83, 86 223, 224
The Laws of Manu, 104 Marriage, 4, 6, 12, 14, 16, 55, 69–73,
Leadership, 2–8, 11, 14, 17, 26, 93, 99, 107, 109, 114, 116, 124,
30–32, 34, 35, 38, 39, 43–45, 148, 165, 176, 178
52, 53, 57, 58, 74, 80, 83, 84, Marxism, Marxist, 189
86–88, 100, 101, 106, 116, Mary Magdalene, 14
121, 122, 126, 135, 137, 138, Masculine, 5, 12, 15, 24, 30, 63, 64,
145, 157, 173, 174, 180, 181, 68, 100, 108, 110, 147, 218, 253
183, 193, 194, 196, 202, 203, Masowe Apostles, 217
210–214, 216–224, 236, 250, Masowe, Johane, 211
253, 254, 257, 259, 264, 267, Master Ueda, 178
269 Mata Amritanadamayi Devi, 4, 23, 79,
Lee, Ann, 30 80, 82, 89, 92, 108
Legitimization, 3, 8, 80 Matabvu, Debra, 212, 221
Lewis, I.M, 4, 51, 202 Matriarchy, matriarchal, 135, 243
LGBTQI, 1, 251 Matthews, Yeshe Rabbit, 269
Liberation, 13, 17, 18, 20, 25, 52, 63, McCartney, Paul, 132
67, 105, 169, 223 Mediumship, 7, 192, 193
Lilith, 14 Melton, J. Gordon, 18, 51, 232
Logic, 58, 167, 201, 202, 250 Menelik the second, Emperor, 191
Lonzi, Carla, 17 Menopause, 249, 251, 253
Lotus Sutra, 176 Merchant, Carolyn, 241
Lucia, Amanda, 82 Metamorphosis, 148, 180
Lucifer, 122, 131, 133 Metaphor, metaphorical, 4, 13, 64,
Luckmann, Thomas, 215 69, 80, 82, 87, 177, 181, 214,
240
Metaphysics, metaphysical, 6, 12, 18,
M 52, 54, 55, 64, 178, 181
MacLean, Mary Ann, 121–124 Methodist, 32–34, 218
Madness, 90, 179 mhondoros (spirit mediums), 220
Magical partnerships, 253 Micah, Father, 122, 138, 185
Magunje, Godfrey, 222, 224 Michigan Womyn’s Festival, 256
286 Index
Militz, Annie Rix, 68 Mythology, 12, 73, 81, 167, 180, 186
Millennialism, millenialist, 61, 68
Millennials, 268
Millerite movement, 34 N
Miller, William, 33–35 Nature, 3, 7, 8, 14–19, 24, 35, 39,
Millet, Kate, 241, 243 63, 73, 101, 113, 131, 132, 135,
Mindbenders of Mayfair, the, 125 149, 153, 154, 169, 177, 179,
Miracles, 7, 35, 196, 201, 216, 221, 181, 210, 216, 219, 236, 237,
223, 224 239, 240, 243, 250, 251, 267
Miroku, 171, 179, 183 Neo-Hinduism, 100
Mis-gendered, 250 Neopaganism, 235
Modern Paganism, 232, 261 Nephilim, 60, 70
Modi, Narendra, 89 New age, 51–53, 55, 58, 60, 64, 65,
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade, 101 70, 74, 100
Mokcsay, Zsuzsanna Emese New Left, 230, 231
(Zsuzsanna ‘Z’ Budapest), 233 New Thought, 68
Momina, Ayo, 193–196, 200 NGO, 79, 87, 88, 93
Monastery, 197, 198 Non-binary, 250, 259–261
Monk, 155 NRM, 4, 6, 12, 17, 23, 122, 123,
Monopoly, 7, 190–192, 195, 201, 202 137, 210
Montana, 53, 61 Numbers, Ronald L, 41
Moor, Robert, 72, 122–124
Morality, 30, 31, 142, 217
Morgan, Robin, 231, 241, 243, 244 O
Morning Glory, 253, 255 Oberon Zell, 253
Mother, 2–5, 7, 14, 19, 22, 33, 39, Ofudesaki, 2, 6, 166–169, 171–174,
52, 54, 56, 57, 63, 65, 67, 69, 70, 176–186
80–84, 87, 89, 94, 95, 100, 101, Ōmoto nenpyō, 166
103, 105, 106, 109, 116, 123, Omoto plant, 172
127, 133, 135, 142, 143, 147, Ōmoto shin’yu, 166
178, 193, 198, 219, 242, 253 Oneness, 2, 5, 63, 83, 99–104,
Mother Mary, 52, 64, 70, 211, 109–117
220–223 Oomoto, 6, 165–174, 177, 180–184,
Mudzimu Unoera Sect, 7, 210–216, 186
219–221, 223, 224 Oromo religion, 7, 192
Mudzimu Unoyera Church, 210–212, Orthodoxy, 107
218, 219 Ortner, Sherry B., 250
Mukonyora, Isabel, 217 Osho/ Rajneesh, 88
Murry, Melissa, 263
murume (male), 221
Music, 79, 131, 132 P
Muslim, 158, 194 Padma Sambhava, 57
Index 287
Padmavati, 102 Process Church of the Final

Paganism, 7, 8, 18, 154, 155, 236, Judgement (The Process), 2, 5,
251–253, 258, 259, 262, 265, 122
266 The Process Magazine, 133
Pagan Spirit Gathering, 253 Profumo, John, 123
Pagan Witchcraft, 234, 235 Prophecy, 44, 69, 172, 179, 212, 219
Palmer, Susan Jean, 4, 51, 114, 115 Prophet, Elizabeth Clare, 4, 51
PantheaCon, 257, 258, 260, 269 Prophet, Mark, 4, 52, 53, 55–58, 60,
Parampara, 84, 103 63, 68, 70–73
Parfrey, Adam, 124, 138 Prophet, prophetic, 3, 4, 8, 23, 30,
Parliament of the World’s Religions, 38, 40, 43, 45, 52–56, 59–61,
155 63–65, 67–74, 129, 138, 168
Partridge, Christopher, 18, 151 Prophet’s Daughter, 61
Pathological, 72 Prophet, Tatiana, 56, 72
Pativrata, 105, 107, 116 Pryor, Cressida, 158
Patriarchy, patriarchal, 2–4, 13, 18, 26, Psychotherapy, 123, 125, 127, 131
64, 67, 74, 185, 212, 219, 237, Purity, 20, 80, 94, 202
239, 242, 243, 252, 259, 265 Purusa, 108
Pechilis, Karen, 91, 95, 106, 107, Puttick, Elizabeth, 11, 15, 52, 67
112, 113
Pentecostal Christianity, 210
Poetry, 141, 169, 186, 243, 244, 253 Q
Polanshek, Jacobo, 261 Qallitti (feminine), 192
Political movement, 230 Qallu (masculine), 192
Polytheism, polytheistic, 169, 191, Queer, 250–252, 259
254, 259
Possession, 24, 175, 192, 195, 197,
202, 218 R
Power, 1–6, 8, 13, 16–19, 22, 25, Radical feminism, 230, 244, 251, 269
51, 52, 56, 57, 60, 67, 72, 74, Rajneeshpuram, 88
86–91, 100, 101, 105–107, 111, Raj, Selva J., 81–83, 87
112, 116, 117, 127, 128, 135, RastafarI, 25
136, 157, 159, 166, 167, 169, Reagan, Douglas, 154
174–176, 179, 186, 190, 193, Reclaiming, 7, 142, 234–236, 241,
194, 198, 201, 215–219, 224, 255, 259–261
230–232, 237, 240, 242, 256 Reclaiming Collective, 236, 259
Power from Within, 237, 242 Reclaiming Community, 235, 236,
Prakriti, 108 240
Priest, 6, 60, 147, 152, 157, 158, Redmond, John, 143
193, 250, 252–254, 257, 260, Re-enchantment, 151, 153, 159
260–262, 265 Reformation, 14
Pro-anorexia movement, 19 Reincarnation, 24, 108, 212
288 Index
Religious habitus, 190 Sex unity, 114, 115

René, Lucia, 23 Shakti, 104, 105, 107, 108, 111, 112,
Rennie Susan, 234, 236 116
Renunciate, 82, 89, 93, 94 Shaman, 172
Resurrection, 212, 214 Shankar, Sri Ravi, 87, 88
Rich, Adrianne, 232, 240, 242, 244 Shearer, Monroe, 58, 61
Ritual for Radical Forgiveness, 258 The Shelter Episode, 61, 73
Rivolta Femminile (Female Revolt), 17 Shinreikai, 166, 184
Robertson, Olivia, 6, 141–151, Shinto, 180, 181
153–156, 158, 159 Shirdi Sai Baba, 108
Robertson, Olivia Manning, 142 Shiva, 108
Robinson, Sugar Ray, 121, 123 Simos, Miriam B., 7, 232, 233
Rossetti, Christina, 19 Sitchin, Zechariah, 60
Routinisation, 159 Sjoo, Monica, 22
Russell, George William, 144 Skyclad, 257
Rüstau, Hiltrud, 106 The Social Construction of Reality, 215
Son of God, 211, 220, 222
Soteriology, 176
S The Spiral Dance, 234–242, 259
Sabbath Assembly, the, 132, 134 Spirit mediumship, 192, 195, 197
Sacralization, 253 Spirits, 6, 24, 165, 171, 176–178,
Salomonsen, Jone, 234, 235, 240, 241 181, 192, 195, 196
Salvation, 32, 33, 35, 60, 63, 114, Spiritual, 6, 7, 14, 17–25, 32–34,
169, 190, 194, 195, 202 55, 56, 59, 63–65, 68, 71–74,
Sanders, Alex and Maxine, 253 79, 81–84, 87–89, 92–94, 100,
Satan, satanic, 14, 122, 127, 131–134 102, 103, 105–107, 111, 112,
Satan’s Power: a Deviant Psychotherapy 114–117, 132, 133, 147, 148,
Cult, 122 151, 153, 154, 159, 168, 173,
Scientology, 123, 124 177, 179, 182, 185, 195, 198,
Second wave feminism, 252 210, 215–221, 223, 224, 236,
Sect, 7, 84, 177, 210–213, 215, 216, 241, 244, 253, 255, 264–267
219–224 Spiritual being, 169
Serano, Julie, 268 Spiritual marketplace, 74
Seva, 87, 92 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravarty, 26
Seventh-day Adventism, 3, 29, 30, 37, Starhawk, 7, 232–244, 255, 259, 260,
38, 41, 42, 45 269
Sex complementarity, 114, 115 Star Wars, 60
Sexism, 15, 249, 264 Steiner, Rudolf, 148
Sex polarity, 114 Stereotypes, stereotypical, 13, 21, 89
Sexual abuse, 12, 249 Stewart, Maria, 31, 253
Sexuality, sex, 2, 4, 23, 51, 69–71, 74, Stout, Father Dunstan, 59, 60
101, 232, 262
Index 289
Strange, 153, 167, 168, 173, 178, Turner, Glenn, 257, 269
179, 183, 215, 221 Turner, Victor, 214
Strategy, strategic, 3, 58, 91, 101, Twin flame, 64, 67, 71
190, 201
Stridharma, 81, 105
Subalternity, 16 U
Subordinate, 70, 71, 200 Ueda Kisaburō, 165, 175, 181
Suchocki, Marjory, 238 UFO, 148
Sullivan, Maureen, 133, 154 Ukah, Asonzeh, 190, 209, 210
The Summit Lighthouse (TSL), 52, Unification Church, 16
53, 56–61, 64, 67, 68, 71 United Nations (UN), 87
Supernatural, 24, 38, 194, 200, 216, Urashima Taro, 171
221 Urban, Hugh, 123
Surprise, 129, 167, 171, 199, 243 Ushitora no Konjin, 165, 168, 169,
Susan B. Anthony Coven no.1, 233, 173, 176, 180, 181, 184, 186
243, 255 US Wicca, 7, 8, 249, 254
Syncretic, 7, 149, 151, 192, 210
Syria, 191
V
Valiente, Doreen, 233, 253
T Verney, Sabrina, 122, 127, 128, 130
Take Back the Night March, 243 Violence, 12, 16, 22, 25, 69, 89, 243,
Taylor, Robert N, 134 250, 252, 264
Techniques, 59, 125 Virgin Mary, 14, 52
Teish, Luisah, 255, 265, 266 Visionary, vision, 3, 6, 20, 30–32, 35,
TERF, 266 37, 39, 43, 61, 81, 83, 102, 112,
Thealogy, 12, 13 128, 131, 136, 144, 147–149,
Theology, 12, 13, 17, 23, 25, 37, 51, 151, 154, 159, 184, 185, 223,
52, 58, 60, 65, 67, 70, 129, 130, 238, 259
132, 136, 167, 169, 213, 235, Voodoo, 24
240, 250–254, 259, 261, 262
Theosophy, theosophical, 24, 26, 52,
54, 55, 62–64, 67–69, 175, 178 W
Trans-affirming, 250, 251, 258 Waaqa, 192
Transcendental Meditation (TM), 88 Wadding, Deirdre, 154
Transgender, 8, 250, 251, 255–258, Waggoner, E.J., 44
261–268 Walker, Alice, 25
Transnational, 100, 101, 103, Wallis, Roy, 152
115–117 Warrier, Maya, 80, 84, 85, 89, 92–94,
Tredwell, Gail, 90 108
Tritnoi, 7, 215, 216, 220–224 Weaver, Juanita, 237
Truth or Dare, 235, 242, 243 Weber, Courtney, 262, 263
290 Index
Weber, Max, 3, 86, 87, 159 Women’s Liberation Movement, 17,

Website, 20, 21, 151, 156 230, 233
Wessinger, Catherine, 3, 4, 84, 86, Women’s Rites, Women’s Mysteries, 261
115 Worthington Parsons, Lawrence KCB,
Western, 12, 15, 17, 23, 26, 43, 67, CB, 143
90, 101, 105, 107, 113, 116, Writing, 2, 6, 38, 40, 55, 103,
168, 176, 209, 236, 237, 251, 129–131, 137, 138, 146,
254, 268 151, 166–168, 171–174, 176,
White, Ellen, 3, 11, 23, 25, 30–33, 184–186, 212, 232, 235, 236,
37–41, 43–45 241, 254, 261
White, James, 35, 37–39, 41, 42, 44, Wuletu, Abebech, 7, 195–203
45 Wulf, Elizabeth Clare, 53
Wicca, 2, 8, 18, 19, 26, 232–234, Wyllie, Timothy, 122, 124, 127, 128
251–255, 258, 262, 266
Wild Hunts, 253
Wilkinson, Jemima, 30 X
Williams, Serena, 265 Xtul: an experience of the Process, 127
Windrider, Kiara, 99, 102, 103, 109,
110
Witch, 14, 18, 238, 241, 252, 264, 267 Y
Witchcraft, 14, 234, 236, 252–255, Yamashita Akiko, 171
259, 261 Yasumaru Yoshio, 167, 184
Witch Trials, 242 Yeats, W.B., 141, 142, 144
Wolfson, Elliott, 72 Yin-yang, 110, 254
Woman and Nature, 239, 240, 243 York, Michael, 237, 240
Womanist, 17, 18, 25, 26, 264
Womanspirit Rising, 238
Women Against Violence in Z
Pornography & Media, 244 Zen, 72
Women’s Federation for World Peace
movement (WFWP), 16

Female Leaders in New Religious Movement

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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN NEW RELIGIONS AND ALTERNATIVE SPIRITUALITIES

More information about this series at

Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017947708

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

Cover credit: © duncan1890/Getty Images

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

1 Introduction: Female Leaders in New Religious

2 Women and NRMs: Location and Identity 11

3 God’s Messenger: Ellen G. White 29

4 Elizabeth Clare Prophet: Gender, Sexuality, and the

5 ‘Where There is True Love, Anything is Effortless’:

6 Mother and Father of Oneness: An Intersectional

7 ‘I, Jehovah’: Mary Ann de Grimston and The Process

8 Olivia Robertson: Priestess of Isis 141

9 The Power of Writing in Deguchi Nao’s Ofudesaki 165

10 Females’ Subversive Interventions in the Religious Field

11 Female Leadership in Mudzimu Unoera Sect of Guruve,

12 The Politics of the Goddess: Radical/Cultural Feminist

13 The Chalice and the Rainbow: Conflicts Between

About the Editors

Inga Bårdsen Tøllefsen is a Ph.D. candidate in Religious Studies at

Christian Giudice has obtained his Ph.D. from the University of

Marzia A. Coltri was born in Verona, Italy, and completed her

East Asian Studies Journal and Innovative Research in Japanese Studies.

Laura L. Vance is the author of Seventh-day Adventism in Crisis: Gender

Fig. 3.1 Ambrotype earliest known photograph of Ellen

Introduction: Female Leaders

Inga Bårdsen Tøllefsen and Christian Giudice

It took me quite a long time to develop a voice,

As the title of this volume—Female Leaders in New Religious

© The Author(s) 2017 1

directly or indirectly threatened the status quo of patriarchal structures

leader at all. The leader’s ‘force of personality’, embodied in the devotee

humanitarian organization. Amma’s charisma is integral to the founding

In Chap. 10 “Females’ Subversive Interventions in the Religious Field

spirituality and transgender rights. After taking readers through some

Wessinger, Catherine (ed.). 1993. Women’s Leadership in Marginal Religions.

Women and NRMs: Location and Identity

© The Author(s) 2017 11

of secular society; women may be more receptive to discussions related

classified as a second being and as a voiceless creature, diminishing the

some modern researchers take a new look at alternative practices, study-

Female leadership in secular life is still relatively rare and contentious,

Puttick offers a critical study of NRMs, considering the status of women

Gender Differences and Alternative

are becoming more self-centred than altruistic. Accordingly, the British

self-searching (their autocoscienza), women consider NRMs a vehicle

Searching for Universal Spiritual Liberation

division between feminist and womanist. However, women need to

Feminine Responses to God: The Wicca Movement

omnipotent, omniscient, which is unlimited and transcendent. This divine

O Lady Moon, your horns point toward the east:

The above example can be seen as a particular form of traditional wom-

The Pro-Ana/Mia Online Community

stresses a pantheon of skinny Goddesses. The name Ana originates

the sacrificing of inappropriate food. This online community of young

Dramatically, the anorexia and bulimia movements are indications of

depict the idea of women as a subspecies and docile/passive beings with

Feminist and Eco-Esoteric Spiritualities

feminine/Goddess. Obviously, American female religious leaders such as

African Matriarchal Movements

Fig. 3.1 Ambrotype earliest known photograph of Ellen

Women and NRMs: Location and Identity

Gender Differences and Alternative

Searching for Universal Spiritual Liberation

Feminine Responses to God: The Wicca Movement

Feminist and Eco-Esoteric Spiritualities

Womanist Spirituality in the West

Ellen White’s Leadership in Historical Context

Fig. 3.1 Ambrotype earliest known photograph of Ellen and James White,

Ordained by God: Navigating Gendered Leadership

Fig. 3.3 Ellen White addressing 1901 General Conference session, Battle

5. Other visionaries around Portland included Dorinda Baker, Emily Clemons,

Early Spiritual Life and Influence of Mark Prophet

Fig. 4.1 Elizabeth Clare Prophet delivering a lecture at the annual summer

Titles, Offices, and Past-Life Beliefs

Taking and Exercising Power as a Female Leader

Teachings on the Divine Feminine

Evaluation of Theological Innovations

Sexuality and Gender in CUT-TSL

Allegations of Sexual Impropriety

Ways to View Sexual Impropriety by a

Tatiana: Y ou’re a person who works out of deep motivations some-

Leadership, Power, and Controversy