TWPT Talks with Barbara Ardinger

Barbara Ardinger

Visit Barbara's website

Barbara Ardinger On the home page of her web site, Barbara writes, “For as long as I can remember, I’ve been prolixily in love with the English language. My parents read to me practically from the time I was born, and when I learned to read for myself there was no stopping me.

Although I’m a feminist , I recognize that the famous "dead white men" have given us a lot of good writing. Not only are their works the basis of much of our civilization today (such as it is) and the foundation of what we think we know, but some of them have taught us how words can go together with both sense and beauty. This is one reason why you’ll find literary allusions in my work. I write for smart readers. Like you.

In college and graduate school I also did something pretty smart: in addition to all the liberal arts and literature classes, I took every class in English grammar and composition I could get. I loved diagramming sentences, studying their architecture, their ebb and flow knowing such esoterica—and being able to explain aspects of grammar like the passive voice, transitions, and the more exotic verb tenses—has made me a better writer, teacher, and editor.

Finding New Goddesses:

TWPT Talks to Barbara Ardinger©2002TWPT

Finding New Goddesses

Practicing the Presence of the Goddess

Goddess Meditations

A Woman's Book of Rituals and Celebrations

TWPT: Tell me about your earliest recollections of spirituality in your life and how was it that Witchcraft became part of this spirituality?

BA: I don’t think there was any spirituality in my childhood. I was born and raised in St. Louis and was a teenager during the 1950s. My family voted Republican and belonged to, but did not attend, a Calvinistic church. I can remember my father driving my brother and me to Sunday School, but my parents attended church only on Christmas and Easter. I suspect I was fairly troublesome in Sunday School because I kept asking questions the poor teachers couldn’t answer. During my confirmation classes (two wretched years), I also asked questions, like how could we love a “jealous God.” Instead of giving a useful answer, the minister asserted his authority, and because this was the 1950s, I caved and went along with the program. During high school and college I had no spiritual life at all, and in graduate school I discovered the Unitarian church (and was secretary to the UU Fellowship while I was earning my Ph.D.). In the 1980s, I studied for eight years with Rocco Errico, the protégé of George Lamsa, translator of the Aramaic Bible. Rocco was the most charismatic teacher I’ve ever met, and one of the wisest, and I still know enough about the Bible to out-argue Witnesses and others, but I left Rocco when he started teaching the Old Testament prophets, who are extremely misogynistic and who demonized the goddesses.

I’m not precisely sure when Witchcraft came into my life. I didn’t know I was psychic until I was in my late twenties, and a friend started automatic writing in my apartment and I saw the ghost of my first cat, Fred, and had additional psychic experiences. After I moved to California (in my mid-thirties), I spent several years as a mainstream metaphysician. I read everything I could find, including some very obscure books, spent a couple of years obsessed with channeling (that is a whole story in itself), studied the Tarot, studied numerology, studied with Rocco Errico, and kept reading. Eventually, a friend "happened” to invite me to a group forming in Laguna Beach, and this was my first official introduction to a Goddess group.

TWPT: Was it immediately evident as to how important Witchcraft was to become in your life?

BA: I’d been a fairly ferocious feminist during the 1970s—I earned my Ph.D. in an English department afflicted with terminal macho, was one of two women who earned their degrees with straight A’s (none of the boys did), and wrote my dissertation on the persona of Cleopatra in the plays in English (1592-1898) (she was very much a Machiavellian Prince). Witchcraft seemed to fit right in with my feminism. At first, like lots of women at the time, I saw the Goddess as “Jehovah in a skirt.” This was a fairly militant Goddess religion, and it became central to my life—restoring the Goddess to Her rightful place in the world. I have since recognized that our religion has as many foundational myths as any other religion and I quit trying to convert anyone to anything 25 years ago.

TWPT: Do you view the Goddess movement and Witchcraft as to be almost identical disciplines or are they two separate movements that share similar ideas as to deity and spiritual practice but remain quite distinct from one another?

BA: You must know that nearly every Wiccan/Witch/Pagan has pretty much their own definitions and distinctions. Here’s my take on it. “Pagan” is the generic term, though “pagan” as it is used today does not mean the same thing that it did 20 or 200 or 2000 years ago. Today “pagan” is pretty much any version of the nature religion invented primarily by Gerald Gardner after WWII but based on Romantic writing (Michelet and others) and the 19th century European Occult Revival (Golden Dawn, etc.). Pagan does not include the Eastern faiths, does not include Native American faiths, does not include African faiths (none of these people like to be called pagans), and is only vaguely related to ancient and/or classical Greek, Roman, Norse, Etruscan, etc., etc., etc., faiths.

As I see it, Wicca is any of the Gardnerian (English) off-shoots, whereas Witchcraft tends to be more U.S.-based. I know any number of Wiccans who do not agree with me. I tend not to argue with them about their religion because they know more about Wicca than I do.

The Goddess religion includes Witchcraft but does not necessarily include Wicca. I say this because Gardner wrote that Wiccans worship “the old gods,” but he does not mention the goddess. Most Witches I know worship the Goddess and decline to have male images on their altars (or even, sometimes, present at their rituals). Some Dianics, for example, are ferociously separatist. I prefer woman-only rituals, but am always happy to attend rituals led by my friend, Tim Roderick, for example, or a few other men I know.

In my heart, the Goddess religion is everything and subsumes all the other varieties. I suspect I may be a panentheist.

TWPT: People know you now as an author/freelance writer but when did this love affair with language begin for you?

BA: My love affair with language? Well, I was being read to before I could talk (and did the same for my son), though I didn't learn to read till first grade. (That’s how it was done back then.) I’m told that I wrote a story and gave it to my father when I was about 7 years old. I clearly remember that in high school I not only got A’s in my English classes but also was the only member of the Creative Writing Club who had a new piece for every meeting. In college and graduate school, I took not only the required literature courses but also every composition and grammar class I could get. I love English grammar! I think it’s sexy and fun and fascinating, and I teach it that way. (The difference between an active verb and a passive verb, for example, is who’s on top.) I enjoyed diagramming sentences. I took Latin and French in high school and still make bilingual puns. (I also now have a good friend, Miriam Robbins Dexter, who is my “classical consultant” and makes sure I spell Latin words right.) In high school, I also started sending stories to magazines (and collected a million rejections), and I remember my sophomore English teacher driving me downtown to meet with a vanity press publisher. The deal did not materialize, thank Goddess! I have in fact read the dictionary (and when I was a kid I read the entire 20-volume Book of Knowledge) and one of my fondest wishes is to own my very own OED, but not the little one with the magnifying glass, the real, big one. (Meanwhile, I have made a friend at the Oxford University Press, and she gives me occasional access to the OED on-line.) I also love puns, figurative language, and wordplay of all kinds. When I was earning my M.A., I worked as a secretary for five psychologists. Every morning, they’d come into the office and find that I’d written a new pun on the blackboard. My forthcoming book, Finding New Goddess, is full of puns and dreadful verse.

TWPT: Who are some of your major influences when it comes to your writing style?

BA: Influences on my style--probably everything I’ve ever read. Here’s one no one will guess: I have read all of the Durants’ History of Civilization, not only because I love history (it puts the literature into a proper context) but also because they write so clearly. E.B. White is another influence: again, plain, simple, clear communication. I can write very fancy stuff, but I don’t. Having also written user-hostile computer manuals in my time, I value clarity and a user-friendly style. I cannot, alas, think of any women who influenced my writing style. My thinking, yes, but not my writing style.

TWPT: What were some of the first books to be added to your personal library concerning Goddess spirituality and Witchcraft? Anything that would still be considered classic and must reading even now?

BA: First books: Drawing Down the Moon, Spiral Dance, Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries, Lady of the Beasts, Great Cosmic Mother, Once and Future Goddess, The White Goddess, all of Dion Fortune’s books (I once declined to return to Z. Budapest’s shop in Venice, CA, when they told me they wouldn’t carry Fortune’s books because she associated with men). These are the first generation. Next came books by Pat Monaghan, Elizabeth Cunningham, Scott Cunningham (no relation), Charlene Spretnak, Dorene Valiente, Marija Gimbutas, Riane Eisler. All of these books are still on my shelves. I read fast and I read continually. I like it that I write book reviews and get to read a lot of the new books.

TWPT: Tell me about your book A Woman's Book of Rituals and Celebrations. (What motivated you to write it, was there a specific need that you were addressing when you wrote it, was there a lack of other books that addressed this subject, how was it that you found a publisher for it and how was it received when it came out)

BA: R&C came out of that first Goddess group in Laguna Beach. The priestess and I became good friends and decided to write a book together after my first book (Seeing Solutions) came out. We started and were writing in our separate voices. Barbara, this....;. The other woman, that;. When my literary agent took the first few chapters to a publisher in New York, the editor liked my part, but not the other woman’s part. When the editor moved to New World Library, she brought my manuscript with her, and I was the only writer of the book. That was over 10 years ago. I think that my intention at the time was simply to write a book about the Goddess and what I was doing in rituals. Seeing Solutions had created a small readership for me, and R&C was received fairly well.

TWPT: I was interested to read on the back of your book that you have a Ph.D. in English Renaissance literature, how does this kind of a background help you to create books that will not only be informative but "gripping" as well?

BA: What does my Ph.D. do for me? It lets me have fun with my writing. I get to toss in allusions to Shakespeare and Milton and Spenser and Donne. Because I did so much work with grammar and composition as well as literature, it also makes me a better writer. I work as hard on my writing as I did earning the degree, which means I spend a lot of time prewriting, writing, and rewriting, many, many drafts (the first half-dozen in my head). I have never thought of my books as “gripping,” though I hope my vampire novel, Quicksilver Moon, will be when it’s published (forthcoming in 2003 from DrakNetDigital). My intent is clear communication. If I’m writing nonfiction, I try to avoid ambiguity and figurative language because they often obscure
meaning; if I’m writing fiction or poetry, I try to include ambiguity and figurative language because those are what make the writing pretty.

I believe that my readers take what I say seriously, so if I’m discussing thealogy (as in Goddess Meditations or Practicing the Presence of the Goddess), I pay close attention what I’m telling them. I don’t want to be responsible for someone’s trying a spell that I suggested and it blows up in their face. I don’t want to perpetuate myths (like the so-called Nine Million) that we now know are not true.

TWPT: Do you think that we will gradually see more books that begin to delve into the the history and theology of the various Paganistic religions instead of simply more books for beginners and how to manuals?

BA: Yes, I'm sure we'll be seeing more "grown-up" pagan books. I belong to three or four e-groups and also meet quite a few people face-to-face, and what I'm reading and hearing is that readers are tired of Wicca 101 and Goddess 101 books. Readers want something more sophisticated than spell cookbooks. Many readers want to know what's behind our foundational myths, where they came from, who made them up (and why). People are questioning, for example, the mythology of the Witchcraze and the Nine Million Burned Witches. The work of some of our favorite scholars is also being examined, not to discount it, necessarily, but to find out what's behind or beneath the work. It's time for neo-paganism to get over being a rebellious teenage religion and grow up.

TWPT:   You mention in your answer that neo-paganism needs to get over being a rebellious teenage religion and grow up. In your opinion, exactly what does this entail and is there a danger of neo-paganism "growing up" into an organized, structured religion?

BA: I think it's pretty self-evident that nearly everyone in the Pagan/Goddess/Witch/Wicca/Druid/Eco-Feminist movement is rebelling against something, usually their parents' religion. Some teenagers grow up. Others never quite make it. This is as true for pagans as it is for people in our American culture.

Movements show the same general dynamics in growth as people do. A number of serious, creative thinkers are getting weary of being merely rebellious, of trashing other religions, and being anti-everyone else, especially being anti-standard-brand religions. My friend, Carl McColman, for example, has written a thoughtful book called Embracing Jesus and the Goddess, which says that if Jesus came back today he’d probably be a witch. It’s a good book.

If we're to grow up, we need to realize that not everyone will want to find the Goddess or the old gods. Many people will remain where they are, spiritually or religiously, and be happy. (Of course, I believe that these same people may be leading unexamined lives, but that's their choice.) Growing up often means learning to compromise, to tolerate differences, to let people be who they are. Becoming mature means, among other things, being responsible for one's actions and living with the consequences. I believe that religions can mature, but it's the energy and creativity of the Goddess religion, of Wicca and paganism in general, that makes us more interesting than the standard-brand religions.

Would neo-paganism turn into "an organized, structured religion"? I think a bit more organization might be useful! Maybe public rituals would be less chaotic and people might arrive on time. (Everyone knows about "pagan time," right? You leave home at the time the event is scheduled to begin.) And we already have quite a lot of structure, though we're often purposefully blind to it. We have elders, teachers, high priests and high priestesses, leaders of various kinds. Many groups try valiantly to run themselves by consensus, but it seldom works that way in reality. In reality, leaders arise. My opinion is that we need to recognize our leaders and cherish them. But we also need to be sure we remain rebellious enough to keep things perking.

TWPT: What kind of relationship between a writer and a publisher is best for achieving the goals of both of them? Have you had the freedom that you need as a writer to publish (without major changes) the material that you felt drawn to write?

BA: Relationships between writers and publishers are chancy at best. Remember, what a publisher wants is to sell books. A publisher is not interested in getting a message out there, a publisher isn't interested in fine writing, a publisher isn't interested in philosophy or thealogy. A publisher wants to make money.

I've generally had good luck with publishers because I'm willing to compromise on small things (like minor edits), but I also raise mighty hell about things I care about. I try to remain courteous, but sometimes it is sooooo necessary for me to stand up for myself to a publisher. One time I sent a publisher such a strong series of e-mails that one of my friends said the energy had done unfortunate things to her computer via the cc's. An issue I have had to deal with a couple of time is that some of my books don't have regular, recognizable chapters. For PPG, we worked that out and New World Library did a splendid job with the book. A proposal I have at another publisher is going to have the same issue. I'm confident we'll work through it.

TWPT: Tell me about your next 2 books Goddess Meditations and Practicing the Presence of the Goddess.

BA: Goddess Meditations (GM) was published by Llewellyn in 1998. I wrote it between 1996 and 1997, right after I moved to Long Beach, CA. (That was probably two computers ago.) I had seen quite a few books on meditation techniques and a zillion books about goddesses, but none of the meditation books focused on specific goddesses. I've been leading guided meditations in various kinds of groups and at rituals for several years, so I just wrote down what I'd been doing all along. Well, no, it wasn't quite that simple. Because I know that readers take seriously what they read, I had to make sure I didn't write anything that would hurt anyone, and I also had to write accurately about the goddesses., Some of the meditations were difficult to write. I rewrote the three upper chakra meditations (Sarasvati, the Sibyl, and Sophia) a dozen times, for example, before I was satisfied that I was saying what I intended to say, and that I was saying it as beautifully as it needed to be said. Then I "test drove" many of the meditations on my patient friends in rituals and other settings. Occasionally, now, I'll attend a ritual and hear my words read back to me. What a thrill that is! GM is now out of print, though it may be available through Amazon.com. A publisher I'm currently talking to has shown some interest in reissuing it.

Practicing the Presence of the Goddess (PPG) grew out of Rituals & Celebrations. When New World Library hired a new acquisitions editor, Georgia Hughes, they handed R&C to her and said, "We haven't done enough with this book." Georgia phoned me and asked me to rewrite it. PPG is actually only the first half of R&C, a kind of Goddess 101 book. The women of Greenspring Circle are friends of mine. One of them, in fact, jokes that she'll never talk in my hearing again. I don't use real names or quote people exactly, of course, but nothing is safe from a writer, and I caught the rhythm of this woman's speech. One thing I'm glad I did in PPG is correct errors from R&C. I'd learned quite a lot between those books, especially about what I call revisionist history--the mythology I refer to earlier. Also, if anyone wants a good basic library, the list of books at the end of PPG is thorough, at least up to 2000, when PPG was published. That list is a good class in Witchery.
Something else readers have enjoyed in PPG is my "brief history of Witchcraft" and distinction between "High Church" and "Low Church" Witchcraft. "High Church" is formal, ceremonial, fancy--basically, it's Gardnerian Wicca and its children. "Low Church" is eclectic, spontaneous, creative, and "unencumbered." That's what I do.

TWPT: What kind of satisfaction do you get as a writer when you see your books being read, discussed and enjoyed by those who find that your words reverberate the truths that they themselves are feeling inside? Does this in any way motivate you onward towards your next book?

BA: I totally love it when I learn that people are reading and using my books. I am always happy to hear from readers, too. Readers sometimes go to my web site (www.barbaraardinger.com), which is currently being restructured, and send me an e-mail. I always reply, and sometimes our “conversations” lead to friendship. There's a scene in one of Erica Jong's books, where she and her daughter are walking down the street in New York and Jong is deep in thought. Her daughter says, "Stop writing! Talk to me." That's me: always writing in my head. I am very grateful to my readers for their feedback, whether it's an early part of a projected book or something that I've been working on for awhile. While I was writing Finding New Goddesses, for example, I kept zapping goddesses around to my friends to try them out, that is, to. find out if they were funny. I have very, very patient friends. They put up with a lot from me.

TWPT: Beyond the books that we have already mentioned you have something new and unique coming out very soon and I wanted you to ask you to give our readers a sneak peek at what they might expect from Finding New Goddesses. Perhaps you could share one or two these "new Goddesses" with us as a way to illustrate what readers can expect when they pick up the book.

BA: Finding New Goddesses will be coming out from ECW Press in spring, 2003. This is a book of parody and puns. To start with, it's a parody of those A-Z encyclopedias that take themselves so seriously. My Found goddesses go from Acme and Aphasia to Zinfandella and Zombonie.

A Found goddess, by the way, is a new one that someone makes us. I got the idea from a terrific book called Found Goddesses by Morgan Grey and Julia Penelope (written in 1988, it is, alas, out of print). I started Finding goddesses while I was working on a Y2K project and learned way too much about computers. So I Found several computer goddesses: Nerdix (Mother of All Motherboards), Compuquia, Pimpernella (scarlet warrior against viruses), Whizziwig and the Silicon Man, Pornie (goddess of way too many web sites), Cyberia (goddess of the download), etc., etc. Then I branched out to goddesses like Fandango (air conditioning), Fixorrhea (duct tape), Rentessa (renting apartments), Scissorella (the good hair cut). There are about a hundred of them, including the goddesses of ecstasy, Chocolata and Vibrata, and the consorts, Mr. Goodbar and Mr. Buzz-All-Night.

The book is full of puns, wordplay, allusions to and parodies of the Charge of the Goddess, the Hail Mary, a couple Psalms, Gardnerian ritual. It's kind of an equal-opportunity parody. As I said before, nothing is safe from a writer. I wrote wretched verse for invocations, songs ("Sing hey, sing, ho, for Zinfandella,/ She's better than a horny fella"), stories (Mouse and the Hapless Writer). I parody feng shui (Chi-Chi and her evil twin, Sha-Na-Na), interior decoration (Zinfandella), taxes, Wall Street, well....; you get the idea. Nothing is safe from a writer. Nothing is too sacred for parody.

One of my favorites is Enthusiamma, the Goddess of Gods. You need to know, of course, that the word "enthusiasm" means "filled with god" and "amma" means "mother."

Enthusiamma Goddess of Gods

Scene: The Void. Thunder and lightning. Tossing and heaving and crunching where the seas and mountains would be if there were any seas or mountains, which there aren't any. Yet.

Voice: Let there be light!

Flickers of light. Sparks. Fade to that grungy dim you get in late November when the sun is skulking behind the clouds and seriously thinking about going on vacation back to, say, mid-July.

Let There Be Light!

Flickers and sparks. The light is trying. It really is.

I said, Let There Be . . . uh, Mother, may I?

Yes, dear. But be sure to clean up after yourself, there's Nana's good boy.

And there is Light.

As far as history cares to tell us, the first man to walk and talk with a god was Abraham, who lived about 1,900 B.C.E. We have goddess figures that date to 25,000 years before Abraham and his god. Enthusiamma is the gods' grandmother. She is also their mum, auntie, nurse, and governess.

It is a little known fact, but true, that there are only thirteen gods-the son/lover, the time-measuring god, the sun god, the wisdom god, the vegetation god, the war god, the craftsman god, the horned god, the sacrificed god, the underworld god, the monopolist god, the anti-god, and Om the Great, god of everything else.[1] What seems to be a vast multitude of worldwide gods is done with nifty disguises like beards and armor and spears and axes and robes and togas, all of which the gods insist on when they have statues of themselves run up. All gods are nineteen years old. That's why they love to pillage and rape and hold really great banquets where they quaff mead and soma and chianti. And few things make them happier than a new temple full of vertiginous virgins or a really long parade with really big floats depicting the really good stories about them.

            Scene: The summer camp on top of the famous mountain.

            . . . and then, and then, well I just put on the swan suit and she-

That stupid old swan disguise again? Man, you gotta be kidding. Go for the showeragold. Works for me every
damn time.

And then you know what I did? I climbed up that old tree and hung around, spyin' on 'em, y'know, till I found-no, till I, y'know, invented the alphabet. I think I'll call it roons. Yeah, that sounds good, don't it.

Sisters are such a royal pain! So I just kept throwing stuff in her, like, bewdwar, and she, like, finally took her stupid mirror and hid in a cave. Why'd we ever invent sisters, anyway? Like, what've they got that we don't got?

An' I, an' I-dudes, check this out! I found this board, y'know, and I stood on the pointy end, and held my arms out, and, like, hung ten, and, dudes! I WAS EFFIN' FLYIN'!

Yeah. Right. 'N' maybe next time you'll actually get in the water. Dude.

Don't bother me, man. I'm eating. You got any more ketchup in there?

. . . an' I went down to my temple the other day and, man, was I stoked! They got tweeters 'n' woofers to kill for in there. Tunes that'll knock you out!

I told 'em and told 'em. Don' worship any body before me, and you know what she said? You know what she said?

She don't know how to love you?

Subliminable, man.

Shazam! Hey, fellas, look! It finally wfflhnh-

Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah? Well. . . well. . . well, Mom always liked you best!

Now I told you boys to settle down. You boys settle down before I have to come in there. You don't want to make
me come in there.

Some days, Enthusiamma is full up to here with gods.

TWPT: Many times religion is portrayed as overly serious and without a sense of humor when it comes to poking fun at itself. Your new book does not mind taking a wry look at the Goddess and I was wondering if you would share with us your thoughts on why it is important for us to have a sense of humor about our spirituality.

BA: If we look at the history of the U.S., at least, we see that it was founded by Puritans, a group not known for having a sense of humor. The standard-brand religions are Highly Serious--is there anything funny in the Old or New Testaments, in the Koran? The New Age faiths are also Highly Serious. Just try to find a joke in Mary Baker Eddy, in the Book of Mormon, in the Course in Miracles, in any of the famous channeled books. The Eastern religions are likewise highly serious. There’s not
much fun to be found in the Vedas or the works of Confucius or the Buddha. Even our old, traditional mythology can be pretty grim. There's very little humor in the Iliad or the Odyssey or the Aeneid.

Read any book about religion, meditation, gods, goddesses, devas, angels, theology or thealogy, philosophy---how funny is it? Not funny at all. Because I write book reviews, I read a LOT of books in these areas. I'm also a big fan of Terry Pratchett, author of the