Research Catalog

Title

Absent mother god of the west : a Kali lover's journey into Christianity and Judaism / Neela Bhattacharya Saxena.

Author

Saxena, Neela Bhattacharya

Publication

Lanham, Maryland : Lexington Books, [2016]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xxxv, 171 pages; 24 cm

Summary

This book about the missing Divine Feminine in Christianity and Judaism chronicles a personal as well as an academic quest of an Indian woman who grew up with Kali and myriad other goddesses. It is born out of a women's studies course created and taught by the author called The Goddess in World Religions. The book examines how the Divine Feminine was erased from the western consciousness and how it led to an exclusive spiritually patriarchal monotheism with serious consequences for both women’s and men’s psychological and spiritual identity. While colonial, proselytizing and patriarchal ways have denied the divinity inherent in the female of the species, a recent upsurge of body-centric practices like Yoga and innumerable books about old and new goddesses reveal a deep seated mother hunger in the western consciousness. Written from a practicing Hindu/Buddhist perspective, this book looks at the curious phenomenon called the Black Madonna that appears in Europe and also examines mystical figures like Shekhinah in Jewish mysticism. People interested in symbols of the goddess, feminist theologians, and scholars interested in the absence of goddesses in monotheisms may find this book’s perspective and insights provocative. -- Provided by publisher.

Subject

• Kālī (Hindu deity)
• Femininity of God
• God > Motherhood
• Christianity
• Judaism
• Femininity of God
• Kālī (Hindu deity)

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

An Indian woman and her mother god -- Dualities in Narcissus and Goldmund and the Black Swan -- Carving Kali: a Hindu/Buddhist perspective -- Triple goddesses of Greece: traveling through ancient lands -- Matricide: slow destruction of the mother god -- Theotokos: ascendant Christianity's mother of god -- Yogini Magdalene: gnostic eve to the Black Madonna -- Shakti Shekhinah: immanence returns to the west -- Mother god on the Silk Road of consciousness.

ISBN

• 9781498508056
• 1498508057
• 9781498508063 (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

^^2015035397

OCLC

921310762

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library