Return to the Goddess: Feminism and Pagan Revival in the 21st Century

Exploring the pagan roots of feminist ideology and the role of feminism in the neopagan revival

It’s been a minute since I posted to my Substack. Thank you for your support while I’ve been busy on two very important projects as well as my primary duty of homeschooling my two remaining students!

I was invited to write a paper on feminism and paganism to be presented at the Nov. 27 academic conference organized by the Theology Department of the Sretenskaya Theological Academy in partnership with the Scientific Center for Patrological Research. It was an incredible honor to present alongside distinguished academics at one of Russia’s foremost theological institutions. The paper is expected to be included in one of the academy’s theological journals as well.

I wanted to share this with paid subscribers since I put significant time and effort into this paper. It exposes little-known connections between early feminist activists and pagan belief systems, as well as the role of feminism in the current neo-pagan revival. I also explore the extent to which western Christianity has been influenced by paganism via feminism. I hope you enjoy the revelations and insights which I present here.

Abstract

There is significant renewed interest in ancient pagan religions across regions of the world which were previously dominated by Christianity for the last several centuries. This might seem at first glance surprising or even counterintuitive in an age of reason and science. The decline of Christianity began with the Age of Reason and the First Industrial Revolution, when western institutions embraced Darwinian evolution, science, and empiricism and turned away from religion and metaphysics. This transition does not explain why neopaganism and witchcraft are some of the fastest growing religions in many western countries. This paper explores the role of feminist movements in this search for a religious and cultural identity in the post-modern west. I reviewed the writing of many major figures in feminism from the late 18^th century through the Goddess Movement of the 1970s. I demonstrate that there was strong anti-Christian sentiment among some of the most popular suffragists and second wave feminists, many of whom also had pagan or neopagan sympathies and beliefs. This element of women’s liberation has been largely ignored in mainstream discourse. I demonstrate here that feminism is the single biggest influence in the rise of neopaganism because feminist activists of the last 200 years saw pagan goddess worship as the foundation of feminist spirituality. Therefore, as feminism has become the dominant social paradigm, the pagan and occult roots of its political ideology have grown along with it.