Goddess Companion: Daily Meditations on the Feminine Spirit by Patricia Monaghan

With The Goddess Companion, Patricia Monaghan has delivered a daybook

of ancient celebration, a touchstone of daily inspiration, and a bountiful

reference book.

Monaghan, one of the premier authors of goddess-focussed resources, has

compiled hundreds of prayers, chants, and folk songs from such diverse

sources as Lithuania to Japan to the Christian bible to native Alaska. Each

is a potent invocation to the goddess in her mother, lover, warrior, and

other aspects and lends itself well to public or private ritual recitation.

Monaghan’s own text instructs the reader on the history of a particular

piece, a celebration commemorated, or a new way of embracing goddess energy

and blessings into our lives.

Other books by Patricia Monaghan

  • Goddesses & Heroines
  • The Goddess Path
  • Magical Gardens
  • Meditation
  • The Office Oracle
  • Serious students of cultural history may find fault with some of the

    liberties Monaghan takes with the prayers. But this is clearly a work of

    inspiration, intended to engage the mind, please the ear, and uplift the

    heart. The reader can excuse Monaghan’s choices to reword a passage to

    emphasize the feminine or impose a rhyme to improve the rhythm of the piece.

    And Monaghan makes no attempt to hide her decision to make changes in the

    translations.

    Readers can take their time savoring a morsel of goddess lore every day or

    can jump to an appropriate passage with the help of three indexes, by

    culture, subject and goddess. While Monaghan refrains from giving

    suggestions on a particular regimine for using the prayers as devotionals,

    she does provide hints on easing ritual into daily life in small ways. Not

    only can the reader learn about hundreds of goddess aspects and the ways in

    which various cultures celebrated them, but she can gain insight on the

    turning wheel of the year. Move from a blossoming Homeric hymn to Demeter

    March 4,

     

    Imagine this: the maiden goddess playing in a flowery

    meadow, together with the full-bodied daughters of the

    ocean. They were gathering flowers: just-open roses,

    crocuses, and dark violets from the soft grass, and lilies

    and hyacinths.

    to a Pima rain-making song June 8,

     

    The light dawns and finds us singing,

    singing as the corn waves tassels at us.

    The dark falls and finds us singing,

    singing while the squash waves leaves at us.

    to a medieval Irish death chant October 31,

     

    Go home now, to the mother of winter.

    Go home now, to your sprintime home.

    Go home now, to the mother of summer.

    Go home now, to your autumn home.

    to a Pueblo dawn call to winter feast December 11,

     

    Draw clouds forth from the sky’s quarters.

    Draw clouds full of snow to us here!

    Snow falling now means water in summer.

    Come ice, cover my fields!

    The Goddess Companion offers a well-paced journey into self-discovery

    and personal transformation through feminine appreciation. It is a

    cornucopian addition to any magickal or mundane bookshelf.

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