>Does anybody know of any Goddesses / Feminists / Books that we could use? If anybody has any ideas PLEASE let me know. Thank you for your time. Laura, my favorite goddess is Inanna, the middle eastern Queen of Heaven 5000-10,000 years ago. I don't know how iher name was originally pronounced, but in my mind, I hear it as "in-NAH-nuh." Your band might find it interesting that one of the ways Inanna was worshipped was through an act of public sex between the head priestess who represented Inanna to the people, and a man of her choosing, each spring. This ritual has been called the "sacred marriage" by some scholars (inappropriately, in my opinion, but that's another treatise), and is believed to have been practiced for millenia before the advent of patriarchal religions. (Easter is actually an Anglo-Saxon relic of this ritual.) Some also believe that people who worshipped Inanna worshipped orgasm as a divine gift and a way of communicating with the goddess. (In some ancient sacred stories about a king named Gilgamesh, the priestess has to teach one man how to give her sexual pleasure before he can become HUMAN. He's like this "wild man" who runs with the animals before the six-day, seven-night ritual of humanizing sex with this priestess.) There are some pretty sexy sacred marriage poems that have survived for over 5000 years, translated quite artistically in a book called *Inanna*. I believe it's translated by Noah Kramer and Diane Wolkstein, but I could be mistaken about the authors. You might want to check it out. Good luck with your band, --E. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Elizabeth L. MacNabb, PhD [EMAIL PROTECTED] Service Learning, Career Development Center Richmond Hall, UR, Richmond, VA 23173 phone 804-289-8686, fax 804-287-6465
