Endorsements for Women's Rites,
Women's Mysteries
Women’s Rites, Women’s Mysteries is a well-written, thoughtful, and useful book that can help women with important passages in our lives, as well as with everyday life. The book is well grounded in research and analysis. Ruth Barrett provides a level of insight seldom found in books of this genre.
—Riane Eisler, best-selling author of The Chalice and the Blade and Sacred Pleasure
Ruth Barrett brings her many years of experience in teaching and priestessing in the Dianic tradition to this book. Her thoughtfulness, intelligence, and depth of understanding make it a valuable resource and will open a new perspective for many Pagans.
—Starhawk, best-selling author of The Spiral Dance and The Fifth Sacred Thing
Ruth Barrett has given us the missing link between a good and the great ritual. Millions of women are interested in goddess worship today, in personal or communal activities. There are many books to learn from, but Ruth Barrett has given us the depth and reasons why. She reframes the knowledge once again for the new generation, as we must for webbing the Goddess back into herstory. Ruth has thoughtfully deepened and filled the rest of the Dianic sacred script.
—Zsuzsanna Budapest, best-selling author of The Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries and Summoning the Fates
Ruth Barrett’s wise words open the door to a greater connection with spirit through ritual. This book will be of aid and interest to any woman who wishes to deepen her understanding of this aspect of the spiritual search.
—Patricia Monaghan, author of The Book of Goddesses and Heroines and Seasons of the Witch
Even though this book was written for women, its lessons can be applied in any ritual context. Ruth Barrett challenges the reader to think about the process of creating rituals. This is no “cookbook.” Ruth covers many angles that are missing in previous books on ritual and fills in important details that other authors leave out. Definitely the best book on creating rituals that I have read.
—Kerr Cuhulain, author of The Wiccan Warrior and Full Contact Magick
Ruth is a great priestess. It is wonderful to have some of her vast experience captured on pages at last. With this book she has brought the Dianic tradition forward, clarified its Goddess-centered premise, developed its thealogy, and provided strong material for ritual building. Women will use this book and the world will change. Most importantly, she has emphasized sisterhood and shared power; the soul of our movement.
—Shekhinah Mountainwater, author of Ariadne’s Thread
Women’s Rites, Women’s Mysteries by Ruth Rhiannon Barrett, high priestess emerita of the Los Angeles Circle of Aradia, is the best book anyone, female or male, who has anything to do with rituals is going to find. Drawing on more than twenty-five years of practical experience in constructing and facilitating private and public rituals for large and small groups, Ruth speaks from her heart when she tells us how to do the work. This book addresses numerous issues of vital importance to all Pagans . . . Women’s Rites is one of the most useful books you’ll ever find on how to construct and facilitate a ritual. Whether you’re a hidebound Gardnerian or a hidden Myjestic or an adventuresome eclectic, whether you’re male or female, whether you do rituals every time the moon changes or just find a public Samhain ritual to attend—this is the book you need to be reading before you attend or participate in any ritual. As the thousands of women who have attended Circle of Aradia’s public rituals for twenty years can attest, Ruth is a superb ritualist. She knows how to construct and lead a ritual that will be meaningful to everyone in the room. She knows how to move the energy and keep people’s attention. If you have anything to do with ritual, buy this book and read it carefully. You won’t find better, more practical information anywhere else.
—Sagewoman Magazine review, 2005
Women’s Rites, Women’s Mysteries is at out one of the most useful books ever written on ritual. The writing is very clear, the concepts are very understandable and the directions are concise and easy to follow. The rituals are adaptable for individual work or for group workings. Meditations are provided, as well as follow-up for after the ritual, for personal reflection on what you did or did not achieve. If you ever want to engage in ritual—public or private—buy this book!
—The Beltane Papers review, Issue #39, 2006
Ruth is a fabulous teacher and knows more about ritual than any priestess I’ve ever met.
— Wendy Griffin, Academic Dean Emerita of Cherry Hill Seminary.
Endorsements for Female Erasure
In different voices, this compendium of articles shows how transgenderism is erasing the reality of what it means to be a woman. There are some marvelous essays in Female Erasure that make this book the recent go-to analysis of gender identity as “an inherently misogynist idea.” Read the writings by medical and psychological professionals who tell us about the wrongs their professions have inflicted on transitioners, including children; the accounts of women caught in the vicious cycle of transitioning and the stories of young lesbians pressured to be ABF (Anything But Female); and the narratives of wives of men who would be women, wives who learned the hard way that “women are [not] actually real to these men.” These are only a few of the meaningful essays in this anthology that address the current travesty of gender identity orthodoxy.
~ Janice G. Raymond is Professor Emerita of Women’s Studies and Medical Ethics, University of Massachusetts and author of The Transsexual Empire: the Making of the She-Male.
As the liberal/postmodern dogma of transgender politics becomes the norm in more and more social and intellectual spaces, it gets harder to ask crucial questions, let alone offer a critique, of the sex/gender politics of that movement. Coming from a variety of philosophical/spiritual backgrounds, in a variety of literary styles, this is an impressive collection. All the writers in Female Erasure share a crucial commitment to rejecting patriarchy, which opens up space for the blunt, honest talk we need. Waving away these feminists’ questions and critiques with demands for “inclusion” won’t magically answer the questions or respond to the critiques. As a man who has come to understand sex/gender politics through radical feminism, I hope readers will not back away from the fight against institutionalized male dominance. Neither liberal individualism nor postmodern posturing offer much hope in the struggle against patriarchy.
~ Robert Jensen, author of The End of Patriarchy: Radical Feminism for Men (Spinifex, 2017)
If you believe that women, including those who have been sexually assaulted by males, should not be forced against their will to share their most vulnerable spaces with males, this book is for you. If you believe that reality exists and is more important than ideology, this book is for you. If you believe that if a little boy likes dolls, he is a little boy who likes dolls and should be loved as he is; and that a little girl who likes working on cars is a little girl who likes working on cars and should be loved as she is, then this book is for you. On the other hand, if you think there's something wrong with little boys who like dolls and little girls who like cars, and these children need medical intervention, then you really need this book, because it will help bring reality into the discussion. This courageous book lays out how the transgender narrative and phenomenon are an end point of patriarchy's hatred of women, the body, sexuality, and the living planet; and how it is the end point of patriarchy's valuing of what we think about reality over reality itself. But brave women (and some men) are opposing this erasure of women and of material reality. With truth and reality on our side, how can we not prevail?
~ Derrick Jensen, author of Endgame, The Myth of Human Supremacy, and A Language Older Than Words
