It just rolled around to 5am here in CBO City and, oh my, no post here for a whole couple days now. I'm gonna get in trouble, I know it. But look, here's what happened. I was driving home from dinner with my daughter Selene (who is 14 going on 26) and suddenly I noticed that my highbeams (no relation) were on. I tried to turn them off, but no dice. I blinded half of nighttime Boulder getting back here. Then I parked, turned off the ignition -- and the lights stayed on! It was like a Firesign Theater routine, except for real.

So then the battery ran down and now my car won't go at all. Bummer. All of which is what delayed this long-awaited post. Thanks for being patient. But a little setup is required here, so I hope you'll bear with me a few moments longer.

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Alright, then. Setup. Robin and I went to a thrift store a few days ago, where she picked out about $1,000 worth of designer fashions for about ten bucks, and I got a copy of Jean Shinoda Bolen's Goddesses in Everywoman (with handy Goddess Chart) for 50 cents, which is about 100 times more than it's worth.

Now, I know that I risk offending some of you goddesses out there, but hey...

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...this is pig swill. And the fact that Jean Shinoda Bolen "is an internationally known Jungian analyst" and a "clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco" doesn't make it any less pig-swilly.

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When I was a kid, I wondered for a long time how they got all those little people inside the TV. It was a mystery to me, but I never fundamentally questioned the reality of there being all those little people inside, because you know, there they were. I could see them running around and doing stuff, saying things. I figured somebody must come at night and put new ones in, take the old ones out. Because the next day there were always different people in the TV set -- and logic told me you could only fit so many inside, no matter how little they were.

Then I grew up and I was like: "Oh, I see." Fortunately, I hadn't told anyone my theory. Or worse, written a freaking book about it.

Granted, I can't prove this scientifically, but I really strongly doubt that people have gods and goddesses inside them. Instead, these are ideas within the mind. Carl Jung called them archetypes. Others call them delusions. Usually, of grandeur. After a day of being unmercifully harassed about the long-past-deadline copy for the new vaporware brochure, how comforting to imagine yourself as the wing'ed Venutian Nike of Samothrace, fully capable of psychokinetically reducing the fast-rising CEO of E-Slime RippusSoft to a wriggling glowing heap of leftover DNA.

The jacket copy says...

Goddesses in Everywoman shows readers how to identify their ruling goddesses (from the autonomous Artemis and the cool Athena to the nurturing Demeter and the creative Aphrodite), how to decide which to cultivate and which to overcome, and how to tap the power of these enduring archetypes to become better "heroines" in their own life stories.

Sure sounds to me like someone's getting better heroin. Or hitting the crack pipe a bit too hard. But don't take my word for it. Let's hear it from a woman's point of view...

Books, including [Luisah] Teish's 1985 "Jambalaya: The Natural Woman's Book of Personal Charms and Practical Rituals" and her new "Carnival of the Spirit: Seasonal Celebrations and Rites of Passage," fly off the presses -- and bookstore shelves -- at an unearthly pace. It's gotten to the point of parody -- witness the new book called "Oh My Goddess!" by Australian artist Sally Swain, author of "Great Housewives of Art." It's an irreverent, affectionate update of goddess worship, introducing deities of the '90s such as Leotardia (a many-armed "Goddess of Aerobics" clutching weights in every hand) and Grouty ("Goddess of Home Improvement" -- a tool-wielding renovator). The range of topics is vast: from the scholarly "When God Was a Woman" by Merlyn Stone and "The Great Cosmic Mother" by Monica Sjoos and Barbara Mor to the more popularly written "Goddesses in Everywoman" by Jean Shinoda Bolen and "The Goddess in the Office: A Personal Energy Guide for the Spiritual Warrior" by "feminist witch" Zsuzsanna E. Budapest. [empahsis mine]

from: The Omnipresent Goddess - female deities are increasingly being studied, worshipped and mass-marketed by Suzanne Curley
source: Newsday, 10 January 1995
via: HighBeam Research

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