evidence of the woman viewed mythologically both as the guardian of the hearth and as the mother of the individual’s maturity, the individual’s spiritual life.

our bodies are born naturally, but at a certain time there awakens in us our spiritual nature, which is the higher human nature, not that which simply duplicates the world of the animal urges, of erotic and power drives and sleep. Instead, there awakens in us the notion of a spiritual aim, a spiritual life: an essentially human, mystical life to be

the moon represents to us the promise of rebirth, of the power of life engaged in the field of time and space to throw off death and be reborn.

Like an electric circuit with a fuse that isn’t able to carry the charge, if the power is too great for the individual’s capacity, he blows. So before approaching a goddess or god, there are manners of preparing oneself, of insulating oneself, as it were, to meet, receive, and subdue the power of the deity.

It is wonderful the way in which, both in India and in Greece, the presence and power of the goddesses came gradually back to authority following the devastating ravages in both regions of the Indo-European invasions

vital importance of the female spirit and its creative potential to birth the meaning of women’s experiences into mythic and creative form.

the popular way of interpreting the word myth is “falsehood,” whereas myths, in the sense that I’m speaking of them, are the final terms of wisdom—that is the wisdom of the deep mysteries of life.

Catholics are very sure to make clear they don’t worship the Virgin—they venerate the Virgin. There’s a difference. When you recite the litany, you ask the Virgin, “Have mercy on us,” you say, “Pray for us.” So she is an intermediary; we’re keeping women in their place.

show a mother standing with her infant in her arms; and in the mythologies she appears in many forms and roles representing her universality as both the facilitator of transformations and the enclosing, protecting, and embracing governess of the process.