From the “Goddess Religion” to the “Divine Feminine”

the blooming of feminine spirituality from the North American counterculture

Abstract

This article seeks to investigate the historical transformation of the "Goddess Religion" towards the "Divine Feminine" by following the metamorphosis of feminine spirituality from the 1960s onwards. The research, of a bibliographic nature, is based on academic productions and digital texts. To construct this historical trajectory, it was essential to understand the genesis of the Goddess Religion in the context of the North American counterculture of the 1960s and to identify its foundations and criticisms over the following decades. In this endeavor, influences of social, philosophical and spiritual movements were presented, such as Romanticism (Marques, 2023; Capellari, 2007), the phenomenon of the "orientalization of the West" (Campbell, 1997), neopaganism (Valle, 2020), and the New Age (Sousa, 2022), in addition to elements linked to the feminisms of the 1960s (Barros, 2017). The study also engages with different theoretical perspectives on Goddess Religion from Stone (2022) and Ruether (2005), expanding the debates on this topic, in addition to identifying how this religious strand paved the way for the Divine Feminine, whose characterization was explored through digital sources that allowed a greater understanding of its context and meanings. This journey aims to expand academic knowledge on the topic, in addition to offering subsidies for debates on contemporary movements linked to gender and spirituality.