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Whereas Hanuman is sometimes alleged to be primarily a “men's deity”, this chapter takes a fresh look at his cult through the lens of gender relations and of discourses about sexuality and its control. It re-examines the controversial Vrishakapi (“bull-monkey”) hymn in the Rig Veda as well as the emotional portrayal of Hanuman's encounter with Sita in the Sundarakanda of the Ramayana of Valmiki. It then turns to several modern temple cults in which an independent, virginal Mother Goddess is accompanied by a simian bodyguard and familiar, whose close relationship with her is celebrated in legends and folksongs. The final section of the chapter examines lore that questions or problematizes Hanuman's famed celibacy by making him (e.g., in the Rama stories of Jainism) either a lusty adventurer or (in much modern Hindi-language lore) the unwitting “husband” of a submarine wife and father to a mighty son.

The concept of Deity is central to the way humans see themselves and their societies; a strong father god reflects one kind of culture while a nurturing mother goddess reflects another. The way we think and act as individuals and as national and cultural entities is directly affected by our myths of deity. The question of gender has always been crucial to humankind's understanding of itself as a species. The ancient Mother Goddess of agricultural cultures gradually lost power to the patriarchal god of more warlike societies but is today beginning to regain a position of importance in our mythic metaphors and, therefore, in the way we think and behave. The nature of the gender struggle in deity mythology is beautifully revealed in Ceremony, a novel by Leslie Marmon Silko, a woman of the Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico.

The most thorough recreation of the South Indian tradition of worship anywhere in the diaspora took place in Guyana when large numbers of indentured laborers were taken there in the middle of the nineteenth century. The temple compounds they established in each village are called the ”Madrasi temples” in local parlance, and they are all the same with Mariyamman in the center surrounded by five to ten subsidiary deities. The pujaris (priests) regularly go into trance and perform exorcisms, and in preparing for their trance, they carry on the ancient practice of animal sacrifice and also follow a unique local practice of being whipped with a 12‐foot rope. The festival in this case is limited to three days, with the Goddess arriving and possessing the pujaris and their assistants the first night, the whole troop visiting every house in the village the second night, and the whole village returning to the temple for exorcisms on the last night.

The festival of Kotunkalur, the ancient capital of Kerala, engages the worshipers with the Goddess of that region described in the Cilappatikaram epic as Kannaki. This Goddess is understood as temperamental, and demands erotic pleasure and blood sacrifices from her devotees. The priests close the temple during the festival because the devotees’ insistence on physical contact with the deity violates the restrictions of the priestly system. The many velicapatu or sorcerers who come to the festival have the power of their ritual swords renewed by having them placed on a sacred spot in the home of the Nair family that manages the temple. On the final day, a member of the ancient kingly lineage arrives and negotiates with the priests and the Nairs on behalf of the worshipers, and it is agreed that the temple will be reopened.

The Ati or “Original” festival of Srirankam brings an ancient festival tradition into the ritual cycle of one of the most sophisticated temple traditions in all of India. The festival image of Visnu used in these celebrations is a fun‐loving potential bridegroom, and on successive days he makes trips out from the temple on an island in the Kaveri River in the four directions. Gradually, a triangular love story emerges because the Cola princess falls (prapatti) in love with him during a visit to her town, and he then has to return to the temple to deal with the angry Goddess whose devotion (pakti or bhakti) he has dishonored and with whom he is to be married the next day. The Goddess and the worshipers eventually learn that the deity is both fully transcendent and free (paratva) and easy of access (saulabhya).

The festivals of the Tiruvnaikka temple in the fertile Kaveri River valley reflect the concerns of the landlord Velala caste and the Cola dynasty when, as their many inscriptions show, they joined together to start their famous irrigation system. The symbol system they used has an elaborate medieval quality, which sees things in a bipolar form. The “land” and “water”, which make the irrigation system work, correspond with the Goddess Akilantesvari, who gives fertility to the earth, and the God Sivan, who brought water to earth by catching the river Ganges in his hair. In the festivals, this symbol system is played by reversing the roles of female and male, by comparing the “elephant” concerned, like the priests, with daily devotional work and the ”spider” concerned, like the kings, with building permanent structures such as temples. These festivals are now elegant reminders of a medieval style of thinking and worshipping.

The most basic of the festival styles seems to be the one associated with the independent Goddesses or Ammans who are thought to have special sakti (power). Mariyamman is the bestknown of this class of independent Goddesses in Tamilnadu, and her temple in Samayapuram near Tirucirapalli in the center of that state is one of the more popular of the many hundred of her temples where festivals are held. Worship of Mariyamman starts when someone takes a vow promising to worship and ward off her anger. After a few months of arduous preparations, the vow‐keepers eventually dance their way into the temple grounds while holding a fire pot or kavati or being swung on a hook and the huge crowds on the sidelines show them reverence at every step. After worship, some of the vow‐keepers go into a trance and become possessed by the Goddess so that they can perform healings and exorcisms for others in need. In Samayapuram today the tone of worship includes considerable mocking of the Brahmanical pretensions of the nearby temple of Srirankam.

This lecture discusses The White Goddess, a novel written by Robert Graves that was first published in May 1948. It is an intellectual and difficult book that has a toehold in many academic disciplines, including anthropology, literary studies, and Celtic studies. As an author, Graves has been described as the ‘bard’ of ‘an alternative society’ and as a ‘a unique figure in British literary life’. The lecture determines that The White Goddess can be both a help and a hindrance when it comes to looking at Graves' life and work. It also presents the literary techniques Graves used in the novel.

The ultimate reality can be depicted as a feminine principle or devī, drawing attention to the Goddess tradition and its role in modern Hinduism. This has various manifestations such as Kālī the Mother, Mother India, Mother Religion, and Mother Gītā. In the context of modern Hinduism, it is important to examine the role of the Devī in the feminist movement; the role actually played by the Goddess tradition in the life of Indian men and women; and whether the Goddess tradition serves as a positive resource for women. An interesting precedent for the question of feminism and the Goddess is provided by the metaphorical metamorphosis of the sacrifice of Kālī during the threshold years of the nationalist movement in Bengal. The study of the Goddess can be argued to be a central issue in the study of Hinduism in the West and is gaining attention in India.

The chapter analyzes the second act of Shelley’s play, “Prometheus Unbound.” In this section, the actions and experiences of the act’s two female protagonists, Asia and Panthea, are recounted and examined. The second act echoes the universal theme of the Mother Goddess descending to save her beloved and this is reflected in Shelley’s creation of Asia, who is the instrument of the story’s denouement. The chapter discusses the acts’ five scenes in sequence, starting from the initial meeting of Asia and Panthea, in that crucial moment when their eyes met and they shared a vision of future renewal. The next two scenes detail the dream-like conversation between the two and their descent into the caverns of Demogorgon. In the final section, Shelley relates Asia and Panthea with the concept of the nurturing mother and also juxtaposes Prometheus’ travails with that of Apollo.

As a system, polytheism can integrate outsiders into its pantheon when necessary. However, the “logic” of polytheism excludes the possibility of the existence of another pantheon; by virtue of its divinity, all gods are necessarily part of the same divine pantheon. As the peoples of the Mediterranean came into more meaningful and more frequent contact with one another, a set of discursive and hermeneutic practices developed as a means of essentially translating the names of the divine from one group to another. The question that Herodotus asked of the Egyptian priests was not, “who is Osiris,” but rather, “which one of the gods do you call Osiris?” These sorts of “syncretic associations” that enable the cultural go-between to explain Dionysus to Egypt and Osiris to Greece, however, are rarely stable. Rather, the relationships between pantheons evolve with the changing patterns of intercourse between the peoples themselves. While Herodotus might argue that the names of the gods came to Greece from Egypt, Plutarch argued that in fact, Isis is a Greek word. This chapter looks at how two early imperial intellectuals, Plutarch and Lucian, used and played with various syncretic associations of deities as means of envisioning the unity and diversity of the oikoumenê.

Although women's roles in prehistory have been the subject of debate for well over a century, interest in gender ideology has emerged in the archaeological literature only within the last decade. Much of the recent work on these early representations has either revived the nineteenth-century notion that, in early societies, power was initially vested in women, or has sidestepped the issue of gender and women altogether. A well-constructed approach to these figurines that incorporates feminist and/or gender ideologies and sound archaeological arguments has yet to be designed. Some well-known works argue that the abundance of female figurines in prehistoric contexts of Greece and southeastern Europe reflects an early, pan-Mediterranean belief in a Great Mother Goddess, a matriarchal social structure, and a time when women ruled either supreme or at least in partnership with men. In order to better understand the interrelationships among gender studies, prehistoric figurines and the Great Goddess theory, this chapter examines the interpretive history of Greek Neolithic figurines.

This chapter provides the commentary for the play Phormio, which was written by Terence. It mentions that Phormio is the only play of Terence that does not retain the original Greek title, while in contrast, in Plautus, the majority of play titles were Romanised. It also mentions the Roman Games that were held annually in September in honour of Jupiter and the Megalensian Games that were held annually in April and were named after the Great Mother Goddess, Cybele, whose cult image was brought to Rome from Asia Minor in 205–4 BC. The chapter talks about the curule aediles, who were junior magistrates with duties to organize the games. It refers to L. Ambivius Turpio, who was a well-established actor-manager who produced all of Terence's plays and L. Atilius of Praeneste, who was named as co-producer for all Terence's plays.

In the early 1970s, sectors of the new women's movement, seeking a feminist spirituality, began to reclaim the ideas of original matriarchy and the primacy of a female deity. Two books published in the 1970s were important in popularizing the feminist reclamation of matriarchy and Goddess worship: Elizabeth Gould Davis' The First Sex (1971) and Merlin Stone's When God Was a Woman (1976). The 1970s also saw the growth of feminist “witchcraft,” in which Zsuzsanna Budapest played a key role. Perhaps the leading thealogian seeking to create a comprehensive account of the religious and ethical worldview implied by Goddess thought and practice is Carol Christ. This chapter recounts how the renewed feminist movement, from the 1970s to today, reappropriated the nineteenth-century theories of matriarchal fall and redemption. Although still seeing this movement as countercultural, leaders of Goddess spirituality have sought to normalize themselves both in the academy and within the spectrum of religious diversity in American society. This chapter also looks at the emergence of the neopagan movement in the mid-1970s.

This chapter describes the first gathering of each pilgrimage group and explores the way in which the trip forms part of the pilgrims’ quest for the feminine. The most important meta-empirical beings related to the pilgrimage are Mary Magdalene, the Goddess and Mother Earth. Drawing on the writings of Marina Warner, the pilgrims conceptualize Mary Magdalene as a model for female empowerment both complementary and opposed to the Virgin Mary. Neo-shamanism has deeply influenced these pilgrims’ theories and practices, in particular two so-called indigenous traditions from Mexico (the Concheros) and the Andes of Peru.