Rather than there being one ecofeminist expression of spirituality, as may have been true in the early 1970s, there exists today a whole family and set of schools of feminist spiritualities. I introduce the dominant trends and discuss some of the goals of feminist  theology and spirituality. As I show, the aims go beyond including increasingly the role of women among  clergy  and religious authorities, reinterpreting  patriarchal  (male-dominated) imagery and the language about  God , determining women’s place in relation to career and  motherhood , studying images of women in the religions’  sacred texts , and  matriarchal religion . The primacy of a monotheistic or near-monotheistic ‘Great Goddess’ is advocated by some modern  matriarchal or matricultural activists  as a female version of, preceding, or analogue to, the  Abrahamic God  associated with the historical rise of  monotheism  in the Mediterranean. The concept of feminist spirituality needs to be studied in the spirit of a famous question posed by Carol Christ: why do women need the goddess, or do they? How is this related to the Indigenous notions of the sacred and what do they have in common as opposed to patriarchal spirituality? The chapter also includes an introduction to Old Europe. It is necessary to point to the discovery by the archeomythology founder, Lithuanian Marija Gimbutas (1921–1994) of Old Europe or the Danube Civilization; after all, it has been argued that the feminist spirituality movement and research got its wind and wings from her epoch-making discoveries and theories. I discuss its peace-oriented and egalitarian life ways as a context for rituals that may have also involved the predecessors of primal rituals of rebirth and regeneration. I refer to Scandinavian scholars who have been influenced by Gimbutas and have been inspired by her writings regarding Nordic-Germanic traces of the old matristic culture. The chapter comments on the rise of the Goddess tradition and new theories about fertility, sexuality, eros, and a matriversal universe. As even today, people barely know the Scandinavian and Finnish-Finno-Ugric female deities due to the focus on male gods, unearthing them and the deep context of Northern/Nordic rituals and magic is important. I reveal why the feminine divine matters also for sauna research. Finally, the chapter considers briefly why visual imagery of the sauna might add its own aesthetic, sensuous dimension to the comparative study.

Feminist Spirituality

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发表日期：

2025年

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Kaarina Kailo

摘要

Rather than there being one ecofeminist expression of spirituality, as may have been true in the early 1970s, there exists today a whole family and set of schools of feminist spiritualities. I introduce the dominant trends and discuss some of the goals of feminist theology and spirituality. As I show, the aims go beyond including increasingly the role of women among clergy and religious authorities, reinterpreting patriarchal (male-dominated) imagery and the language about God , determining women’s place in relation to career and motherhood , studying images of women in the religions’ sacred texts , and matriarchal religion . The primacy of a monotheistic or near-monotheistic ‘Great Goddess’ is advocated by some modern matriarchal or matricultural activists as a female version of, preceding, or analogue to, the Abrahamic God associated with the historical rise of monotheism in the Mediterranean. The concept of feminist spirituality needs to be studied in the spirit of a famous question posed by Carol Christ: why do women need the goddess, or do they? How is this related to the Indigenous notions of the sacred and what do they have in common as opposed to patriarchal spirituality? The chapter also includes an introduction to Old Europe. It is necessary to point to the discovery by the archeomythology founder, Lithuanian Marija Gimbutas (1921–1994) of Old Europe or the Danube Civilization; after all, it has been argued that the feminist spirituality movement and research got its wind and wings from her epoch-making discoveries and theories. I discuss its peace-oriented and egalitarian life ways as a context for rituals that may have also involved the predecessors of primal rituals of rebirth and regeneration. I refer to Scandinavian scholars who have been influenced by Gimbutas and have been inspired by her writings regarding Nordic-Germanic traces of the old matristic culture. The chapter comments on the rise of the Goddess tradition and new theories about fertility, sexuality, eros, and a matriversal universe. As even today, people barely know the Scandinavian and Finnish-Finno-Ugric female deities due to the focus on male gods, unearthing them and the deep context of Northern/Nordic rituals and magic is important. I reveal why the feminine divine matters also for sauna research. Finally, the chapter considers briefly why visual imagery of the sauna might add its own aesthetic, sensuous dimension to the comparative study.