Beliefs and values that have held sway for thousands of years will be questioned as never before.

The simplest and most basic meaning of the symbol of the Goddess is the acknowledgment of the legitimacy of female power as a beneficent and independent power.

Our great symbol for the Goddess is the moon, whose three aspects reflect the three stages in women's lives and whose cycles of waxing and waning coincide with women's menstrual cycles.

The mother must socialize her daughter to become subordinate to men, and if her daughter challenges patriarchal norms, the mother is likely to defend the patriarchal structures against her own daughters.

Theologians frequently assert that God has no body, no gender, no race and no age. Most people state that God is neither male nor female. Yet most people become flustered, upset or even angry when it is suggested that the God they know as Lord and Father might also be God the Mother, or Goddess.

I first became interested in women and religion when I was one of the few women doing graduate work in Religious Studies at Yale University in the late 1960's.

Subversive language, however, must be constantly reinvented, because it is continually being co-opted by the powerful.