Book Review: Naming the Goddess

A defining work for today's goddess spirituality

I'm delighted to share this next book with you. Naming the Goddess, an anthology of over eighty Pagan writers edited by Trevor Greenfield, is a wonderful reflection of Pagan community and writing craft. I expect it will become a mainstay on the bookshelves of Pagans for at least a generation. 

Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture: image by the Borghese Collection

The book has two parts. The first section is a series of essays tackling crucial and often divisive issues within goddess-oriented communities. There is no attempt to gloss over or hide from the issues that trouble us. They are brought out and discussed both thoughtfully and eloquently from a variety of perspectives, some of which conflict with each other. The reader is allowed to see differences in perspective and to form independent ideas. 

The second section is among the best references on specific goddesses that I have seen. It is heavy on Egyptian, Middle Eastern, Greek, Roman and Celtic goddesses with a smattering of others. There is a problematic lack of non-Egyptian African goddesses. Still the geographical imbalance is less marked than in most similar references and Naming the Goddess represents a step in the right direction. I hope that future editions of the book will expand the cultural diversity of the anthology.

The reason I say this is one of the best references on goddesses is because each entry is written by a different writer--a writer with specific personal experience of the goddess in question. Each entry has a different flavor and a distinct passion that could never be achieved with a reference written by one person. This allows the reader to gain an intuitive sense of the goddesses, rather than just the intellectual understanding of correspondences and stories.