Goddess

A goddess is a female deity, in contrast with a male deity known as a "god". A great many cultures have goddesses, sometimes alone, but more often as part of a larger that includes both of the conventional genders and in some cases even hermaphroditic (or gender neutral) deities.

Judaism & Christianity

Monotheist cultures, which recognise only one central deity, generally do implicitly or explicitly characterize that deity as male; e.g. in English by using the masculine pronoun, and words like "Father", "Son", and "Lord". This trend has almost entirely excluded the feminine pronoun "she" as sacred, and images such as "Mother", "Daughter", and "Lady" as divine. In some language, this may be nothing more than an artefact of language, which uses the masculine gender also as "default" gender, or for mixed groups. Although mainstream Judaism uses masculine words to describe God, Judaism maintains that God has no gender.

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While some mystics within the monotheist religions have used markedly feminine terms, e.g. the Collyridians in the time of early Christianity, who viewed Mary as a Goddess, the medieval visionary Julian of Norwich, the Judaic Shekinah and the Gnostic Sophia traditions, and some Sufi texts in Islam, belief in a feminine deity under Christianity was usually deemed heretical, and characteristic of heresy. Since the 1980s Christian feminists have challenged this view; some such as Mary Daly no longer consider themselves Christian but others continue to seek room within their traditions for the Divine Feminine and for female spiritual leadership. (See thealogy.)

Related Topics:
Collyridian - Mary - Julian of Norwich - Judaic - Shekinah - Gnostic - Sophia - Sufi - Islam - Mary Daly - Thealogy

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