Holy Book of Women's Mysteries [Paperback]

The book describes Feminist Witchcraft and Feminist Goddess Sprituality. It is separatist feminism which is described and there is little or no attempt to find a place for men within it. Apparently she is opposed to teaching the craft to men until the equality of the sexes is realised (so, she hopes to achieve equality by establishing first another inequality) although she does now do "'Pan' workshops with men who have changed themselves into brothers," whatever that means.

One of my major problems with it is its appallingly bad history. It would seem that if one calls it 'herstory' it's alright to write a load of rubbish and pass it off as history. I'm not just talking about the old 'myth of matriarchy' stuff which doesn't bother me that much as it can be accepted as having an element of truth in light of recent archaeological work in southern Russia which has uncovered some compelling evidence of the real Amazons who appeared to be, at least for a couple of hundred years or so, matriarchal. Failing that, it can be seen as an inspiring mythic history. Z describes this society at length with no boring old historical facts to hold her back. Did you know that rape was 'invented' by men who had been exiled from matriarchal societies and formed 'patriarchal hordes'? I didn't. Also, according to Z, Alexander (the Great, to you and me, "the Pig" to Z) burned down the great matriarchal library in Alexandria. If that were true he really did deserve to be called 'the Great' as he founded Alexandria (cunningly disguising that fact by naming the city after himself, clever, eh?) and there, strangely enough, was no library on the site. Well done Alex!

There is also the problem of 'damn, I'd better say something about that God bloke.' In a book of some three hundred pages, the God gets a whopping two pages, followed by some guff about 'sacred sons.' I think that I would have had more respect for her if she had just ignored Him altogether than stick in a cursory nod in His direction.

The book, in creating a particular type of witchcraft, also seems to have created the 'cult of Z'. The book is dedicated to herself, amongst others; she's just that great. The followers of this cult have also decided that to criticise the book or its author is to commit blasphemy. I know, I've done it. She doesn't like it and makes the excuse that the book is nearly thirty years old. I feel safe in saying that thirty years ago, historians knew that Alexander the Great founded Alexandria, witches worshipped a god or gods as well as a goddess and that bad scholarship was not excused by shouting 'I'm a feminist'. One expects extremism in a movement such as Feminist Spirituality's origins which then levels out to a more practical, rational view. I thought that perhaps an edition published when the movement was better established would attempt to redress some of its more extreme ideas (just as Starhawk has done with the 10th and 20th anniversary editions of "The Spiral Dance" although it was never as extreme as this). Not so, Ms. Budapest. Despite all this, I am still hesitant to say "never, never read this book" because it was (and still is) so influential. I would suggest that you do your best, if you do want to read it out of curiosity, attempt to borrow it because you may regret paying for it (and thus funding it) as I know I do.

However, it is a little old to constantly read how the "Patriarchy" is responsible for all our problems. The section on food was wonderfull, but blaming red meat consumption on the "Patriarchy"? Give me a break. We need to move beyond that and start looking at the real problems today, and how to solve them.

Other than that, a highly informative book.