Womb Envy: An Interview with Barbara G. Walker
My friend Joan D’Arc, editor of Paranoia magazine, has posted an interview with Barbara G. Walker, whose book I published. Man Made God is a fantastic series of essays about religion and mythology, with a focus on the lost tradition of the divine female, as well as hidden Church history and a discussion of Jesus as myth. Nobody tells the truth quite like the octogenarian Barbara Walker, so don’t miss her! Man Made God is also available for immediate download on Kindle, iPod, iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, PC, Mac, Android.
Womb Envy: How God Replaced the Womb with the ‘Word’
Barbara G. Walker has published numerous articles and books on comparative religion and mythology, rituals, symbols, feminist history, the Tarot, and the I Ching. Her 1100-page Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets encompassed 25 years of research and received a Book of the Year award from the London Times. She is listed in Who’s Who in Hell, a compendium of freethinkers around the world. She has presented numerous lectures to Humanist and Unitarian groups, which are contained in her latest book, Man Made God, published in April 2010 by Stellar House Publishing (www.stellarhousepublishing.com). A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Barbara has worked as a journalist, dance teacher, artist, professional knitwear designer, wife, and mother, in addition to her many years of research, writing and knitting.
Joan: Your new book, Man Made God, is composed of a series of lectures, is that correct? Where were the lectures given, and over what period of time? What is your background in religious studies? How long have you been researching ancient religions?
Barbara: The essays in Man Made God were written as sermons and lectures. As the author of many myth-and-history books, I was invited to speak at numerous meetings of Unitarian, Humanist and Freethinker groups over the course of several decades, and this book is a collection of those talks.
My research actually began more than fifty years ago, when I graduated from college still wondering why the Inquisition had never been mentioned in my medieval and renaissance history courses, even in an Ivy League liberal arts university. I later found out about the perfidy of the Catholic Church in its extensive rewriting of its own history. I read Henry Charles Lea’s monumental study of the Inquisition (A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, 1888), taken a century ago from original documents preserved in the Vatican library. Even in his time, Lea said, Vatican authorities were already beginning secretly to destroy most of these damning records.
The Inquisition was the worst holocaust in European history; it lasted nearly five centuries; and yet the church was succeeding in misrepresenting its extent and its impact in their official histories. This was my earliest realization of patriarchy’s propensity to lie itself into respectability. Afterward, I studied more than four hundred reference books before putting together my Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, the first in a series of a dozen related works….
For the rest, see Womb Envy.
7 thoughts on “Womb Envy: An Interview with Barbara G. Walker”
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Looks interesting
I read many of the entries in “A Woman’s Encyclopedia Of Myths and Secrets” back in the 80’s. It is an excellent source of information. I hope this book is equally as informative.
I learned a lot from her book on women’s myths and secrets but my memory is that she was the most biased author on religious histories I’ve ever read. She tried to push the idea of a Great Goddess ruling societies before the male patriarchy took over but she got it wrong, over-emphasizing the role of feminine religious power in ancient societies. And really, for people who take the ancient astrotheology so seriously, as above, so below, would dictate the sun as source of light, dominating the moon as reflected light in every culture.
Barbara Walker is one of the most UNBIASED writers I’ve ever encountered. She puts forth FACTS, with proper citations, and doesn’t engage in fantasy, like many people. What she has done is to restore the hidden and destroyed history of the divine feminine – and quite rightly, as the destruction of this vast history of goddess worship has cause an enormous amount of suffering on this planet, as sexism and misogyny run rampant. Her effort is commensurate with the injustice done to women worldwide.
I wouldn’t call it biased
The way I remember the book, the Goddess formed the perspective rather than a bias. Every book has a perspective. I remember nothing offensive. What I do remember was learning an incredible amount of information. Seemed quite magical to me.
:20 – 25 years ago I read her book on myths & secrets. The entire book had been ‘highlighted’ by the friend who gave it to me. It was FANTASTIC, & an indictment of the Roman Catholic church.
I have read the book, I especially love Lilith’s rant. Well done Barbara.
How do *you* know what the facts are? In the same way you view what doesn’t fit within your worldview to be fantasy, the same holds for others. “Unbiased” is truly a myth. No matter how well-meaning what we *know* to be factual is an inherent bias. Those who come closest to a genuine bias-free perspective are a/ those few who are willing to allow that they do not know and b/ those who are willing to allow that there is no singular versions that is “the way it is.”