Reclamation of Goddess Auset as the original african dark mother[1]
A Personal Reflection on Creating Ritual Performance in Collaboration, for
Reckoning and Release: The Blessing of the Fleets by Auset, A Ritual Performance Meditation in the Kemetic Month of Parmut[2]
Lucia Pavone (Sciarpa Paxton)
Introduction, Positionality, and Care-full Connection
Across cultures and millennia, sacred mysteries have served as thresholds between the divine and the mundane. Whether engaging with the Eleusinian Mysteries of ancient Greece, the esoteric teachings of Qabalah and tarot, or the divine alchemy practices of ancient Kemet, I have felt the call to journey deeper, beyond surface understanding. This paper reflects my evolving reclamation of Goddess Auset as the original African dark mother, an integration of both academia and spiritual practice. Here, I will discuss how my reclamation comes through a subjective way of knowing and womb wisdom, a concept I will introduce further in this reflection. Most importantly, it is centered around creating a ritual performance, in collaboration with fellow student and colleague, Desiree Mwalimu-Banks. This sacred mystery ritual, Reckoning and Release: The Blessing of the Fleets by Auset, A Ritual Performance Meditation in the Kemetic Month of Parmut, was presented within academic walls.
Positionality plays a central role in my journey through the sacred mysteries of my ancestors, shaping both my personal and academic growth. As I approach the final months of completing my Master’s degree in Women, Gender, Spirituality, and Social Justice, I weave my story as a first-generation Sicilian-American queer woman, proudly embracing my rich ancestral heritage that spans North African, Greek, Turkish, and Persian roots. Initiated into the esoteric arts of tarot and Qabalah, I am guided by Divine Golden Light, acting as a vessel for cosmic love. Goddess Auset has guided and nurtured my soul for lifetimes and always guided me back to the temple where I may RAmember[3] her prophecies and rituals. My spiritual and physical practices, including herbs, meditation, Kemetic yoga, and orgasmic practices, have been foundational to my wisdom, health, and well-being. Sacred mushroom technology[4] has also informed my spiritual journey for over three decades. As a trained somatic sexologist, sexological bodyworker, and Dao pelvic practitioner, my understanding of sensual and sexual wholeness is integral to my experience. Most importantly, I carry the legacy of my grandmothers, Lucia Galante Pavone and Maria Vitale Sciarpa, as well as the guidance of my mother, Giuseppa Pavone, and I am the mother of Zephyra Talula, a.k.a. the West Wind of Peacetown.
In ancient Egypt, the hieroglyph KA represented the repetition of life, the vital essence that lived within the body of a person and survived physical death. Some say that when two people meet and feel an instant bond, it can be seen as their KAs recognizing one another. Desiree Mwalimu-Banks is this to me; it is a divine honor to know her in this lifetime. A Priestess of Auset, her presence is an essential element of our collaboration. I instantly recognized her as my SiStar.[5] By the ocean in Santa Cruz, a place I lived for half of my lifetime, we first sat together RAmembering, feeling, and embracing this experience. Many tears were gifted to the Divine Mother that day. I see, understand, and honor Desiree. I feel seen, understood, and honored by Desiree. To me, she is wisdom embodied, a friend, and a cherished Isean SiStar. This collaboration is far beyond a graduate school project; it is a sacred Kemetic ritual bringing us home. Ours is a care-full collaboration. My gratitude for Desiree is timeless; give thanks.
Reclamation of the Goddess Auset as the original african dark mother
The Goddess Auset is known by many names, the most popular being Isis, the Hellenized name given to this Egyptian deity. Before modern adaptation, Isis was recognized as a “Sibyl, a female prophet.”[6] The esteemed Mama Zogbé, an initiated Hounon-Amenganie (High-Priestess) of West African Vodoun, Mami Wata, and Ifa healing traditions writes that “The African gods/desses heading these divine pantheons…were the major water deities who were known by many names in the theology of Mami Wata tradition: they are descended from the original logos, which is known in Kemet (Egypt) as “Isis.” Isis is a divine concept which embodies the logos as “divine wisdom.”[7]
This collaboration has also served as part of my real-life initiation into The Iseum Temple of Neith the Auset-HtHru Sistrum Arts. Since the new moon of February 2025, I committed to a sacred mystery training with Priestess Ast Neferet Dua Hathor Meret Nebty Sekhmet Sy-Nit.[8] What an honor it was to collaborate with her.
The Eleusinian Mysteries were Greek secret spiritual rites, that took place annually at the Panhellenic Sanctuary of Eleusis, in honor of Demeter and Persephone. In her essay, The Ritual Path of Initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries, Mara Lynn Keller describes the second day of the Eleusinian mystery as “Alade! Mystai! “To the Sea, Initiates!”[9] She writes, “Likely the initiates saw their immersion in the sea as returning to the womb-waters of Mother Earth. This process of physical cleansing and spiritual purification was further preparation for the initiates’ pending experience of death and rebirth.”[10] As part of reclaiming Goddess Auset as the original african dark mother, understanding how she was transformed over time and then stolen and her origins erased by Christianity, was an essential part of what fueled my desire for reclamation.
The late Sicilian-American feminist cultural historian, and professor emerita, Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, writes that the “Great mother of the Mediterranean, Isis inherited a long matristic tradition of Africa whose signs were the color red ochre and the pubic V, as well as spirals and circles, and human identification with animals.”[11] Since first encountering her academic writings, I have felt a kinship with Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum. My intuitive knowing has often whispered, “continue Lucia’s legacy.” I took care to integrate Chiavola Birnbaum’s extensive research on the african dark mother when co-creating our ritual performance meditation.
Women’s Ways of Knowing – Subjective Epistemology in Academia
Within academic walls, emphasis is placed on gathering facts and proving a theory or thesis through scientific reasoning and a Eurocentric-based model of critical thinking. Often what is left out of this equation, and frowned upon in higher learning settings, is an individual’s cultural knowing. Professor Claybrook argues that while “Critical thinking should be a central component of a quality education[,]” to do this “without appreciation of the role of culture in influencing thought and behavior can result in the universalizing of European and European American notions.”[12] I believe that both the co-creator and I were cognizant of the fact that developing this ritual performance, which heavily engaged a subjective epistemology, might confound some of the more logically oriented students who may have anticipated a lecture on how theater and the performing arts serve as tools for exploring women’s sacred mysteries, instead of a radical, ritual performance film.
This collaborative ritual performance was initially intended as an academic assignment, yet it was far more than this. It was a care-full collaboration that took into consideration the tenderness of current life happenings. The reclamation of the Goddess Auset as the original african dark mother is a RAmembering of something greater than logic and reason alone can grasp. In the classic feminist reader, Women’s Way of Knowing, the authors share that “In a world that emphasizes rationalism and scientific thought, there are bound to be personal and societal costs of a subjectivist epistemology.”[13] Knowingly, academic excellence standards tend to be based on antiquated Eurocentric models of education. When presenting our ritual performance to the class, I had to bear in mind that not everyone was going to be able to understand something so sacred and intuitive. In retrospect, I realize it was meant to be understood by those who resonated and were open to receiving the initiation.
Speaking only for myself, my desire to create in collaboration was born from the primordial inner knowing within my womb. I call this knowing “womb wisdom.” I was especially careful to listen to my womb during the entire process. I have written about “womb wisdom” as another possible way of understanding how women know what they know.[14] According to a 2019 scientific article, The New Science of Practical Wisdom, the authors first define wisdom and make a “distinction between “theoretical wisdom,” which pertains to understanding the deep nature of reality and humans’ place in it, and a more everyday, grounded “practical wisdom,” which is more akin to making good decisions…”[15] This wisdom can be passed down, epigenetically, potentially embedding knowledge within a person’s genetic code. This scientific research serves as the basis for my theory of “womb wisdom.”
Creating Ritual in Collaboration
A voyage of discovery involves ritual. Longing to reclaim Goddess Auset as the original african dark mother, I experienced initiation into Goddess Auset’s sacred mysteries while performing The Blessing of the Fleets by Isis. The ethereal mystery of birth and death was carefully seeded in my mind, heart, body, and spirit. The late scholar and theologian, Mara Lynn Keller, Ph.D said, “The power of a ritual is transmitted through a person’s experiencing it.”[16] The collaborative nature of creating and experiencing this ritual performance with Desiree was a force so divine, that articulating my internal energetic and cosmic reckoning and release feels intimate and sacred.
A brief background of The Blessing of the Fleets by Isis will support understanding of the process and ritual. In Greco-Roman times Isis was “intimately connected with the sacred boat and travel by water,”[17] and the feast called the Isis Pelagia. Originally Greek in origin, this ritual would have been performed on March 5 as fleets prepared to sail the Mediterranean.[18] Whether she is called the Great Mother Goddess, She of Innumerable Names, or Isis; she was the original african dark mother and an essential part of Mediterranean lineages, like that of my Sicilian lineage.
According to Normandi Ellis, “The sailing of god and goddesses in ancient Egypt was a prominent theme…”[19] Whether in the Mediterranean, or ancient Kemet (Egypt), Auset (Isis) was vital to ritual. Creating these elements of ritual for The Blessing of the Fleets by Isis involved spending time with Desiree in Harlem, while I was visiting New York City. We deliberately created space and time. Preparing for the ritual was a ritual in itself. After a delicious breakfast at the Harlem Cafe, we broke out paper and markers and began to draw out the boats that would float on a raft of sticks woven with care and intention. With each weaving of the yarn, I felt closer to the Earth, closer to my collaborator, and closer to reclaiming the Goddess Auset as the Original african dark mother of my Sicilian lineage.
Evolving Beyond Eurocentric Models of the Goddess Auset
This reflection traced a personal reclamation of Goddess Auset as the original african dark mother. Throughout the process of co-creating Reckoning and Release: The Blessing of the Fleets by Auset, I came to understand the profound need to evolve beyond a Eurocentric model of the goddess. V, formally Eve Ensler, acknowledges that “Reckoning demands remembering, acknowledging, and accounting. It requires a certain humility, a willingness to take stock and look deeply and unflinchingly at what is often right in front of us, but we refuse to see. It means determining one’s personal and collective responsibility and how and when they intersect.”[20] This project was a reckoning of my lineage and of my womb wisdom.
The academic and spiritual journey I embarked upon in collaboration with Desiree Mwalimu-Banks allowed me to reclaim and honor the divine wisdom of the African sacred traditions that have been overshadowed, misrepresented, and erased by colonial and Christian narratives. The process of integrating womb wisdom, intuitive knowing, and sacred ritual within the academic space challenged the boundaries of traditional epistemology, offering a more holistic, embodied, and spiritual approach to knowledge.
Through the practice of creating this sacred ritual performance, I was able to reclaim a direct, lived connection with the divine that transcends the rationalist, Eurocentric models often revered in academia. This journey was not just an intellectual pursuit but a deeply personal, embodied awakening to the power and wisdom of the african dark mother. Goddess Auset, in her many names and forms, has long been the bridge between the sacred and the mundane, a teacher who leads us to a deeper understanding of life, death, and rebirth.
As I move forward, I carry with me the profound realization that reclaiming and integrating divine mysteries into our lives is an ongoing process, one that requires honoring both intellectual and spiritual paths. This journey has been a reminder that true wisdom often lies beyond what is immediately logical or explainable. The reclamation of Goddess Auset, and the honoring of this divine feminine energy, continues to guide and inform my life and academic work. I am grateful for the ways in which this exploration has deepened my connection to my own sacred knowing and to the collective wisdom of the women and ancestors who have come before me.
Reflection
Desiree Mwalimu-Banks
In the beginning are our differences. The new love dares for the other, wants the other, makes dizzying, precipitous flights between knowledge and invention. The woman arriving over and over again does not stand still; she’s everywhere, she exchanges, she is the desire-that-gives. (Not enclosed in the paradox of the gift that takes nor under the illusion of unitary fusion. We’re past that.) She comes in, comes-in-between herself me and you, between the other me where one is always infinitely more than one and more than me, without the fear of ever reaching a limit; she thrills in our becoming.
And we’ll keep on becoming!
–Helene Cixous, Laugh of the Medusa[21]
I met Lucia on the sandy beaches of Santa Cruz, California in the summer of 2024. I’d joined several other students within the Women’s Spirituality Department at The California Institute for Integral Study (CIIS) for the annual Fall Retreat. When I reflect on the events that led me outside and into the warm salty air of the ocean’s embrace, I recall that I was attempting to ground myself following an episode where I nearly fell into trance within the main gathering room. The awareness of a presence at the nape of my neck and a light, tingling, opening sensation at the top of my crown, that often precedes my entry into a trance-like state, was palpable and, at that particular moment, deeply concerning, as I didn’t know anyone well enough to safely allow myself to be a vessel for the Goddess. After a few moments of respectfully negotiating my boundaries with deity, I left that room for the large Monterey Cypress tree, also known as the genus Hesperocyparis macrocarp, the oldest of which are more than 200 years old, that regally stood watch over the Villa Maria Del Mar. I noticed the burnt-umbers and dark, gentle taupes of its beautiful trunks, and placed my hands on the bark. Immediately cooling and grounding, I took several long deep, rhythmic breaths and found my way back into the body of my body. Shortly thereafter, Lucia offered me a generous oracle reading, in front of that very majestic cypress tree, which helped me to better understand the flow of the energy that was moving through me in that moment. The following day, we met on the beach and walked together amidst the billowing winds and high noon sun, in search of a place to rest and connect. Once we found our own sandy shrine, facing each other, eye to eye, heart to heat, and womb to womb, I offered Lucia an oracle reading from a divination deck whose thematic structure celebrated the ancient wisdom traditions of the African Sybils. In the intimacy of that space, we went beyond the often transactional nature of a reading, and instead, shared simply, transparently, and with abandon about ourselves and our lives. Immediately, we noticed the Venn-diagram-like attributes our individual narratives. We cried, and laughed, listened, and gave breath to the unutterable truths of our various rites of passage as wild women, loyal mothers, loving partners, dutiful daughters, and unapologetic devotees of the feminine divine. I knew then that this connection was both rare and sacred. However, I had no idea how this would take shape between both myself and Lucia. I could not have foreseen then how our personal connection would also find expression in both our academic and spiritual pursuits; how these relationships would nourish the seeds of becoming essential to our individual and collective journeys.
Among the many stories we shared that day, what I remember most distinctly is our connection to the ancient Kemetic Neter Auset. As an ordained priestess of Auset and daughter of the African Diaspora via indigenous Bemba and East Indian blood, I felt a deep sense of kinship with Lucia’s passionate relationship to Auset, who’s devotion to the Goddess, while not enshrined within a formal study of Her Mysteries, was deeply embedded in the narratives of her rich Sicilian ancestral heritage. This is the big arc of our spiritual collaboration which currently lives in a mutual student/teacher relationship where we exchange formal Priestess training in my Iseum Temple of Auset, with Lucia’s incredible somatic womb consciousness and sensual wholeness teachings.
It is under these auspices, that Lucia invited me to collaborate with her on our class presentation for Week 7 of our Women’s Sacred Mysteries, Arts, and Healing Course: Performing Arts, Theater, and Music, at CIIS, during this year’s Spring 2025 semester. Our presentation entitled: Reckoning and Release: The Blessings of the Fleets by Auset, A Ritual Performance and Meditation in the Kemetic Month of Parmuti, represents one contour of our emerging collaborative relationship as artists, scholars, and priestesses. In her keen explanation of the misconceptions regarding priestesses, Nan Brooks writes: “The common image of a woman in flowing robes lifting her arms to the moon in ritual is a lovely picture, but not particularly accurate. For one thing, not every priestess is a ritualist. A woman’s primary calling as a priestess may be as healer, scholar, activist, musician, artist, administrator, naturalist – the list is long. But every priestess must also be a skilled ritualist, no matter what her aptitude or even her interest in creating community rituals. A woman who wishes to lead ritual may not be necessarily ordained or identify herself as a priestess. For that reason, I use the word ‘priestess’ as both noun and verb”[22] [in devotion to Auset].
These shared identities offered a container for care throughout our collaboration. Caring for one another in our unique set of circumstances meant negotiating significant physical distances, time constraints, emotional bandwidths, racial and ethnic differences, and the psychosomatic lexicons that inform the perceptions of ourselves as individuals. Lucia traveled all the way to Harlem, New York City, from her home in Michigan, and met with me over the course of two days for breakfast, fellowship, and then finally, our ritual, which took place in Central Park’s North Woods, at the sacred site of one its waterfalls.
Lucia’s initial invitation came in true witchy fashion, just days before the actual Feast of the Blessings of the Fleets by Auset, an ancient Kemetic calendar date that celebrates the evening (maktet) and morning (mat) boats of Ra. Normandi Ellis writes:
“Each is meticulously drawn to differ from the other boat…Traditionally as it sails always from dawn to noon, the implication being that the power of its light never wanes, the sun never sets, and the soul never dies. The evening boat carries an undetermined hieroglyph that early Egyptologist Alin Gardiner sees as a winder for thread (ndj). It also contains the hieroglyph heh. In the hands of the gods, heh becomes equivalent with eternity but also means ‘to go around’ or ‘to make a circuit,’ perhaps linked with the idea of the winder for thread.” [23]
Using these Kemetic principles, both Lucia and I were excited by the possibility of co-weaving this cosmology into a shared ritual that marked our time and intention for co-learning as students in one another’s temple arts. Using string, fresh flowers, and foraged twigs and branches, we created a raft for scrolls that contained richly drawn images of each boat. While I rendered the evening boat, and Lucia that of the morning, we combined our drawings so that they were bound together on the raft that would become our beloved fleet. We used natural, undyed twine, decorating our fleet with fresh flowers. Knowing that we used ink to write our prayers and draw our boats, we attempted to skillfully and minimally expose the papers to the water’s edge on the raft and offered prayers of forgiveness for our lack of foresight in placing the inked paper into the water. The season of Parmuti observes “the modes of transportation needed to connect cities on the eastern and western banks of the Nile, as well as cities in the north and south.”[24] Lucia and I were making an intentional commitment to become steadfast in our connecting to self and one another and our community through the blessings of Auset, who was traditionally associated with the sacred boat as a vessel for return and remembrance of that which is sacred in the cosmic order. The fleet is a symbol that functions like a votive within a votive; or a living double prayer, that itself invited a caring and care-full co-weaving of power and presence both during our ritual and beyond, in both seen and unseen ways across time.
In my personal practice, I’m curious about the function of symbol and sound in engaging practices of “hieroglyphic thinking.” Author Jean Houston explores the Kemetic use of symbol and symbolic language as an attempt to move us beyond the ordinary consciousness of daily speech. Houston writes:
“Symbolic and hieroglyphic thinking gives us a sense of the ancient Egyptian mind, one that is drastically different from our own. At worst, we use symbols to obscure our elitist knowings from the masses. At best, we offer them as subconscious representations of archetypal content. In ancient Egypt however, the function of symbol was very different. For the Egyptian scribes, symbols bridged the sacred and secular realms, the inner and outer realities. Symbols merged the myths of the gods and the realities of the lives of men. In Pharaonic Egypt, the symbol was a deliberately chosen pictorial device used to offer inner understanding as well as to convey information. The visible image has the tremendous power of being able to bypass the left brain and go straight to the viscera. Like poetry, it speaks to an intelligence of the heart.” [25]
I had the joy and honor of editing our video collage using the many photos, videos, and sound recordings we had gathered both individually and collectively. To do this, I aimed to lean into the ears of my heart, which is generally my practice when creating a film collage; I tend to hear first and see later. However, in this submission, it is the visual that led the audial in my editing practice. I was attempting to articulate something of the nature of Auset who unveils Her Mysteries in the realms of that which is seen in the Light as well as that which is hidden within the Dark. Stepping into mythic time, into a place where we begin to apprehend and shape reality from between the worlds; beyond the temporal and into the durative realms of experience,[26] was also important as a ritual performance takes place both “on and off stage.”
A moment of conflict arose when three white visitors, who could clearly see that we were in the middle of performing a ritual, hopped the fence to capture a video. They made no attempts to bridge a respectful request or conversation, and no apology when we stepped back into the temporal realm to explain our circumstances and ask for their cooperation. There was no apprehension of the sacred in what we were doing, nor in the land, to compel a different reaction in our rather oblivious neighbors. Lucia and I simply continued to proceed with the next part of ritual, returning their obliviousness with our attention to our intention.
As two seasoned practitioners of psychosomatic and energetic healing modalities that include Reiki, massage, intuitive movement, and the sensual arts, we approached our work as a conscious collaboration with the numinous realms that surrounded us. We aimed to resist what visionary pioneers and scholars of women’s spirituality Luisah Teish and Kahuna Leilani Birely term “conquistador consciousness”[27] by pouring libations to the Ancestors of the Munsee Lenape and Wappinger First Nations Tribes and the Black Indigenous Ancestors, and requesting permission to touch, hold, and gather materials from the land, prior to beginning anything. We spoke the name of our Ancestors and invited the First Grandmothers of our lineages to be present in holding this ritual container with us. Our work integrated both spiritually and creatively the living whispers of woodland creatures, trees, leaves, soil, sky, and waters, in which we were situated.
Epistemologies that continue to prize the separation of subjective and objective consciousness produces a knowing that is both analytical and reductive, and one in which the “rich multiplicity of meaning is largely absent from the language systems of the modern world.”[28]
I am eager to explore an African episteme as a restorative alternative to these dualisms, in which African conceptions of reality are prioritized. Traversing a reality in which constant communication takes places between the perceptible and imperceptible realms of existence is something I actively engage in through my spiritual and creative practices as mother, wife, priestess, and interdisciplinary artist. I feel that much of my knowing about my ancestral lineage, for instance, has come from transmissions I’ve received in the meso-cosmic and macro-cosmic realms.[29] To my initial shock and then later somewhat ordinary acknowledgement, I have found these psychic downloads are often supported by at least two of these realms, at any given time.
The truth is we don’t always know what gifts or challenges may emerge from our collaboration with others. The clarity of an intentional container is mutually defined and most provocative when each individual remains open to the capacity for change and the transformation that it engenders in both self, other, and within the container itself.
Ritual collaboration necessarily invites the presence of a force that is larger than the self in the rendering of space, place and power. We engage with Spirit as the reality that pervades every single aspect of our experience, stepping away from a Western framework that makes meaning by creating division in our ways of seeing and knowing.
The act of sharing an intention to grow with one another is at the heart of my collaboration with Lucia. It is my deep hope and desire that this will continue to evolve and nourish not only ourselves but many others, as we navigate our responsibility to carefully tend both the physical and spiritual worlds.
–Desiree Mwalimu-Banks
April 2025
[1] I will grammatically use “african dark mother” as a way of honoring how Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum presented it in her academic writing.
[2] This title was created by Desiree Mwalimu-Banks. Our ritual project and video collaboration are the professional and academic property of Desiree Mwalimu-Banks and Lucia Sciarpa Paxton (Pavone). It was created through a collaborative artistic and ritual process. The final video was presented online in the Women’s Sacred Mysteries, Arts, & Healing course, in the Women’s Spirituality graduate program at the California Institute of Integral Studies on March 6, 2025. This ritual collaboration is based on The Blessing of the Fleets by Auset, celebrated traditionally on March 5th, which will be expanded on in this paper.
[3] Yusuf Baqai, “The Power of Amun-Ra” (2018). Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters. 298. https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/cusrd_abstracts/298. I use the word RAmember in place of remember, as a reference to who Yusuf Baqai refers to as “Amun-Ra, ancient Egyptian god of the sun and air who rose to prominence in ancient Egypt during the beginning of the New Kingdom in Thebes.”
[4] “Sacred mushroom technology” is how I refer to psychedelic, psilocybin mushrooms.
[5] I use the word SiStar as a way to denote a shared “cosmic” connection, one that comes from an ancient stardust embedded in our DNA. This subjective way of knowing is intuitive and as real as any genetic testing.
[6] Mama Zogbe (Vivian Hunter-Hindrew, M.Ed) Chief Hounon-Amengansie. The Sibyls: The First Prophetess’ of Mami (Wata): The theft of African Prophecy by the Catholic Church, Mmi Wata Healers Society of North America Inc. Martinez, GA, Second edition, 2021
[7] Mama Zogbe, 32.
[8] This is the official title given to Desiree Mwalimu-Banks, an Isean initiate, and my co-creator.
[9] Keller, 32
[10] Keller, 32
[11] Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, Ph.D, “African Dark Mother – Oldest Divinity We Know,” Rosicrucian Digest, No. 1, 2010, 34.
[12] M. Keith Claybrook Jr., Putting Some Soul into Critical Thinking: Toward an African-Centered Approach to Critical Thinking in Africana Studies, International Journal of Africana Studies, 2021, 128.
[13] Mary F. Belenky, Blythe M. Clinchy, Nancy R. Goldberger, and Jill M. Tarule, Women’s Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice, and Mind, New York: Basic Books, 1986, 1997, 55.
[14] Lucia Pavone, “Rational Science, Culture, Nature, Spirit, and Womb Wisdom: A Unified Way of Knowing”, for the course Critical Thinking and Liberatory Methods, California Institute of Integral Studies, Spring 2024, 5-6.
[15] Dilip V. Jeste, Ellen E. Lee, Charles Cassidy, Rachel Caspari, Pascal Gagneux, Danielle Glorioso, Bruce L. Miller, et al. “The New Science of Practical Wisdom.” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 62, no. 2 (Spring, 2019): 216-236. https://ciis.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.ciis.idm.oclc.org/scholarly-journals/new-science-practical-wisdom/docview/2249723817/se-2.
[16] Mara Lynn Keller, Ph.D “The Ritual Path of Initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries” Rosicrucian Digest No. 2, 2009, 28-42
[17] Ellis, 88.
[18] Normandi Ellis, “The Blessing of the Fleets by Isis,” Feast of Light: Celebrations for the Season of Life, based on the Egyptian Goddess Mysteries, Quest Book, Illinois and India, 1999, 88.
[19] Ellis, 86.
[20] V (Eve Ensler). Reckoning, Bloomsbury Publishing, January 31, 2023, xxi.
[21] Cixous, Hélène. “The Laugh of the Medusa.” Feminisms, December 31, 1991, 334–49. https://doi.org/10.36019/9780813568409-027.
[22] Key, Anne, and Dr Candace Kant. Stepping into ourselves: An anthology of writings on Priestesses. Lanham: Goddess Ink, 2015, 328-330
[23] Ellis, Normandi. Feasts of light: Celebrations for the seasons of life based on the Egyptian goddess mysteries. Wheaton, Ill: Quest Books, 1999.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Houston, Jean. The passion of Isis and Osiris: A Union of Two Souls. New York: Ballantine Books, 1998, 114.
[26] Ibid., 88-93.
[27] Teish, Luisah, and Kahuna Leilani Birely. On holy ground. United States: Daughters of the Goddess, 2022.
[28] Ibid.
[29] Nobles et al. calls for an African Episteme in which African ways of knowing are centered in the conception of reality. African reality is described by an interrelated vs oppositional hierarchical structure, in which co-exist “the immediate perceptible world (the microcosmos); the intermediate world of spirits, genies, and beneficial/malevolent forces (the mesocosmos); and the world beyond the senses, the realm of the Divine, ancestors and spirit beings (themacrocosmos)7”. An African experience of Spirit or Spiritness necessarily integrates these realms in a continuous circuit of communication.
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