STARHAWK 1951-

(Miriam Simos)

PERSONAL: Born Miriam Simos (pronounced "Sigh-mose"), June 17, 1951, in St. Paul, MN; daughter of Jack (a social worker) and Bertha (a clinical social worker and writer; maiden name, Goldfarb) Simos; married Edwin W. Rahsman, January 22, 1975 (deceased [one source says divorced, October 31, 1982]); married David John Miller, June 13, 1992. Education: University of California—Los Angeles, B.A. (cum laude), 1972, graduate study, 1973; Antioch West University, M.A. (women's studies and psychology), 1982. Politics: "Feminist." Religion: Wicca. Hobbies and other interests: "I was an art major in college, but am not doing much along those lines any more except appreciating. I enjoy wilderness, backpacking, hiking, and watching things like tidepools, and am glad we live close to the ocean. I have traveled extensively in this country and Europe, including bicycling trips in Oregon, Ireland, and Wales."

ADDRESSES: Home—P.O. Box 410187, San Francisco, CA 94141. Office—Reclaiming: A Center for Feminist Spirituality and Counseling, c/o Covenant of the Goddess, P.O. Box 14404, San Francisco, CA 94114. Agent—Ken Sherman & Associates, 9507 Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA 90210.

CAREER: Feminist, social change activist, lecturer, Wiccan priestess, spiritual leader, consultant. Environmental Communications, producer of educational videotapes and slide series, 1971–72; Westside Women's Center, coordinator, 1972, workshop leader, 1973–74; Bay Area Center for Alternative Education, adult education teacher, 1975–77; freelance film writer, 1978–80; Reclaiming: A Center for Feminist Spiritual-ity and Counseling, Berkeley, CA, director, teacher, and counselor, 1980–; psychotherapist in San Francisco, CA, 1983–86; Institute for Culture and Creation Spirituality, Holy Names College, Oakland, CA, lecturer, 1983–; teacher at Antioch and other San Francisco Bay area colleges. Covenant of the Goddess, minister and elder, West Coast publicity chairperson, and national president, 1976–77. Organizer of "community rituals"; speaker at colleges and universities, including Union Theological Seminary, University of California, San Francisco, American River College, and California State University in San Francisco, San Jose, and Chico.

MEMBER: Media Alliance, Information Film Producers Association, American Academy of Religion.

AWARDS, HONORS: Lambda Literary Award, Science Fiction/Fantasy, for The Fifth Sacred Thing, 1994.

WRITINGS:

The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess, Harper and Row (San Francisco, CA), 1979, revised 20th-anniversary edition, HarperSanFrancisco (San Francisco, CA), 1999.

Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex, and Politics, Beacon Press (Boston, MA), 1982, 1997.

Truth or Dare: Encounters with Power, Authority, and Mystery, Harper and Row (San Francisco, CA), 1987.

The Fifth Sacred Thing (novel), Bantam Books (New York, NY), 1993.

(With M. Macha NightMare and the Reclaiming Collective) The Pagan Book of Living and Dying: Practical Rituals, Prayers, Blessings, and Meditations on Crossing Over, HarperSanFrancisco (San Francisco, CA), 1997.

Walking to Mercury (novel), Bantam Books (New York, NY), 1997.

(With Diane Baker and Ann Hill) Circle Round: Raising Children in Goddess Traditions, Bantam Books (New York, NY), 1998.

(With Hilary Valentine) The Twelve Wild Swans: A Journey to the Realm of Magic, Healing, and Action: Rituals, Exercises, and Magical Training in the Reclaiming Tradition, HarperSanFrancisco (San Francisco, CA), 2000.

Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising, New Society Publishers (Gabriola, British Columbia, Canada), 2002.

The Earth Path: Grounding Our Spirits in the Rhythm of Nature, HarperSanFrancisco (San Francisco, CA), 2004.

Audio recordings include Wicca for Beginners, Sounds True, 2003; contributor to anthologies and books by others, including Womanspirit Rising, edited by Carol Christ and Judith Plaskow, Harper and Row (San Francisco, CA), 1979; The Changing of the Gods, edited by Naomi Goldenberg, Beacon Press (Boston, MA), 1979; The Book of the Goddess, edited by Ann Forfreedom, Feminist Spirituality Center Press, 1980; The Politics of Women's Spirituality: Essays on the Rise of Spiritual Power within the Women's Movement, edited by Charlene Spretnak, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1981; and Modern Pagans: An Investigation of Contemporary Pagan Practices, interviews by V. Vale and John Sulak, RE/Search Publications (San Francisco, CA), 2001; author of foreword, In the Footsteps of the Goddess: Personal Stories, edited by Cristina Biaggi, (Manchester, CT), 2000; contributor to periodicals, including Anima, Lady-Unique, and Inclination-of-the-Night.

PLAYS

The Loss Ritual (five acts), produced in San Francisco, CA, 1976.

Winter Solstice (one act), first broadcast by KPFA-Radio, 1977.

The Spiral Dance Ritual: In Celebration of the True Halloween (one act), produced in San Francisco, 1979.

Author of scripts, including Learning, Managing for Competence, Ground in Motion: Earthquake Engineer, Thinking about the Future: Technology Assessment, The Information Era, Hemophilia, Mary, and The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (based on book by Julian Jaynes).

SIDELIGHTS: Starhawk is a prominent Wiccan who lectures and writes on feminist spirituality and achieving political change through feminist activism. Her first book, The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess was a successful introduction to witchcraft and established her as a spiritual leader among earth-centered spiritualists.

Born Miriam Simos in St. Paul, MN, Starhawk first became involved with witchcraft in the late 1960s, when she studied the subject as part of a project for an anthropology course at the University of California—Los Angeles. She studied with witches like Sarah Cunningham, and then began to teach. Starhawk graduated to become active in the feminist movement, studied filmmaking, and began her writing career. After a brief period in New York, she returned to San Francisco in 1975 to found Compost Coven, an experience she writes about in Spiral Dance. Starhawk described the book as "an overview of the growth, suppression, and modern-day reemergence of the Old Religion of the Goddess, the pre-Christian tradition know as paganism, Wicca, or witchcraft. The book presents the history, philosophy, theology, and practice of this serious and much misunderstood religion, and explores its growing influence on the feminist and ecology movements." The book has been used as a text in religious studies and women's studies courses, and has been reprinted several times, including as a twentieth-anniversary edition. In a new introduction, Starhawk writes of the ways in which the Goddess tradition and the practice of ritual have changed and adapted in the twenty years since the book's first publication.

Starhawk said that her second book, Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex, and Politics, "is a further exploration of the Goddess as a catalyzing symbol of the immanent consciousness that challenges the present social order." This book examines power and links magic, psychology, and political activism and includes a description of rituals and actions used in connection with the 1981 Diablo Canyon antinuclear blockade. It has also been updated and reprinted with new introductions.

Starhawk's novel, The Fifth Sacred Thing, is the story of ninety-eight-year-old feminist witch Maya Greenwood, who, with her grandchildren Madrone and Bird, are trying to save their ecologically devastated 2048 northern California. Drought-stricken Southern California is controlled by a militaristic regime that is influenced by Christian fanaticism, and they are intent on forging north to invade the lush haven that has been built and preserved with sound ecological stewardship and confiscate their water. Truth or Dare: Encounters with Power, Authority, and Mystery is an examination of the nature of power, and Walking to Mercury, Starhawk's next novel, is a prequel to The Fifth Sacred Thing and documents Maya's life and lesbian love affair as she makes a pilgrimage to Nepal at age thirty-eight.

The Pagan Book of Living and Dying: Practical Rituals, Prayers, Blessings, and Meditations on Crossing Over came about because when Starhawk's husband died, she could find little about Wiccan and pagan funeral rituals. The book contains essays on paganism, rituals and chants, commentary on symbolism, and contributions by pagans and Wiccans who write about their own experiences with death. Subjects include death from AIDS, physician-assisted suicide, and care of the terminally ill. Booklist contributor Jeff Ahrens called it "a beautiful and unique book on a very important topic."

Starhawk wrote Circle Round: Raising Children in Goddess Traditions with Diane Baker and Anne Hill. The authors include anecdotes about their own families as they offer stories, rituals, recipes, advice, projects, and explanations of the holidays. This large book is divided into four parts. "Welcome to the Circle" is an introduction. "Cycles of the Sun and Moon" discusses the solar and lunar cycles and their associated rituals. A section on teen sexuality, written by a teen, is included in "The Life Cycle," and "Circle of Elements" is dedicated to Earth, air, fire, water, and spirit. Although they identify with the Goddess tradition, the authors write that their goal "is for you to enjoy inventing your own family traditions." Mamawitch reviewed the book for Pagan Parenting online, calling it "the most comprehensive family pagan resource I've seen to date…. This is sure to be a standard along the lines of The Spiral Dance."

Booklist contributor Patricia Monaghan reviewed The Twelve Wild Swans: A Journey to the Realm of Magic, Healing, and Action: Rituals, Exercises, and Magical Training in the Reclaiming Tradition, which she felt "just may replicate the success of The Spiral Dance." Starhawk and coauthor Hilary Valentine reclaim the Goddess traditions they believe existed in paradise, when matriarchal societies worshipped a female earth goddess, and before patriarchal religion that held to a male god disrupted their female-based spiritualism. This book instructs through the use of a fable in which Rose saves her twelve brothers, all of whom have been turned into swans, one at a time, by weaving each a magic shirt and breaking a spell. They have been transformed into beautiful birds because their mother, after having twelve sons, made a pact with an old woman, promising that she would give them up if she could have a daughter. The storytelling is interwoven with instructions on using ritual as therapy.

A Publishers Weekly critic noted that this volume is an advanced sequel to The Spiral Dance and felt that "readers who embrace Goddess theology may well find this work instructive, though its advanced magical training will be a bit daunting for beginners." Stephanie Hiller, who reviewed it for Awakened Woman online, called it "an invaluable guide…. Eminently readable, often humorous, and always wise, the authors' voices urge us to invest in the possible. Theirs is the voice of long experience, dedication, and purpose. I recommend this book to everyone who would set foot on that healing path."

Starhawk has been a long-time social activist and proponent of nonviolence for change, and a collection of her political writings and commentary is published as Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising. Her term for the anti-globalization movement is "global justice movement," and she begins by setting down her vision in five paragraphs. The first half of the book, titled "Actions," recalls her writings while demonstrating, beginning in 1990 in Seattle, then in Prague, Quebec City, Brazil, Genoa, and Washington. The second half, "Visions," reflects her analysis and perspective. She describes activist training sessions in Brazil's rain forests and the songs, banners, costumes, and flags created by protestors in Quebec City. Herizons contributor Penney Kome noted that "to Starhawk, the World Trade Center towers were the Titanic of our day, and their downfall proved that our technologies and economics are unsustainable."

In demonstrating the failures of globalization under the policies of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and International Monetary Fund (IMF), Starhawk describes the life of one woman in Central America. Her children work for a few dollars a day, making products for export. Their well is polluted by the factory, which will eventually render her daughters sterile. Starhawk writes about American field workers who develop cancers from handling chemical-laden produce, and those that result in the general population from eating the same food. She states that the condition of our world, with its poverty and illness and environmental destruction can be reversed only through revolution, and she says, "this time, let's get it right."

Jennie Ruby wrote in off our backs that Starhawk "does not end up endorsing violence at all, but rather focuses on the end goals of the protests. She calls for creative and yet 'real' protests, with 'real' meaning actually interfering with the processes of the global forces being protested, while gaining the support of a broad spectrum of individuals, even some of the police. I like this, and to me, it sounds like nonviolent actions would be the only ones to meet these criteria." Ruby noted that after writing about her experiences with fascism in Genoa, Starhawk "more forcefully returns to advocating for nonviolent protest, saying that it can even be more dangerous and require more bravery than 'anonymous street fighting.' Yet she maintains her position that all the protestors have to respect each other's tactics."

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg wrote in the Women's Review of Books that Webs of Power "passionately and unabashedly preaches to the choir, which both limits and strengthens its impact. Those not already convinced of the importance of the global justice movement and the dangers of neoliberalism would probably be hesitant to read an insider perspective complete with references to black-clad anarchists and witchcraft. Then again, preaching to the choir on a regular basis keeps the choir in tune and ready to perform." Mirriam-Goldberg noted that "hearing what it was like to be pressed against a chain-link fence while getting tear-gassed in Quebec communicates volumes not just about the details of this movement, but about how movements in general gather steam and start rolling, and how individuals in movements overcome fear and inertia. But what makes this book so engaging is not just the subject matter; it's the memoiresque perspective Starhawk offers, sharing anecdotes and inner musings with as much ease as she describes how she implored thousands of fellow activists to sit down while confronted by a herd of police on horses so that the horses wouldn't trample them."

Ruby said that "if you want to read something inspiring, read this book. If you are part of the global justice movement, or a sympathizer, read this book. If you just want to understand what the global justice movement is about, this book isn't a bad place to start for that either. Starhawk writes both as a kind of voice of experience and wisdom to the global justice movement and as a woman struggling to come to grips with global issues and action."

Starhawk told CA: "My motivation in most of my work has been the integration of a strong feminist vision and commitment to social justice with a strong spiritual search. I was born and raised Jewish, with a strong Hebrew education. Presently, I am a leader of the religion of the Great Goddess, the life force manifest in nature, human beings, and the world. To me the Goddess is a symbol that evokes women's strength and men's nurturing capabilities, and restores deep value to nature, sexuality, and the ecological balance."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2001.

Encyclopedia of World Biography, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1998.

Feminist Writers, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1996.

Religious Leaders in America, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1999.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, December 15, 1996, Patricia Monaghan, review of Walking to Mercury, p. 693; November 1, 1997, Jeff Ahrens, review of The Pagan Book of Living and Dying: Practical Rituals, Prayers, Blessings, and Meditations on Crossing Over, p. 439; October 1, 2000, Patrician Monaghan, review of The Twelve Wild Swans: A Journey to the Realm of Magic, Healing, and Action: Rituals, Exercises, and Magical Training in the Reclaiming Tradition, p. 306.

Herizons, spring, 2003, Penney Kome, review of Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising, p. 36.

New Republic, August 3, 1992, Mary Lefkowitz, review of Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex, and Politics, p. 29.

off our backs, September-October, 2002, Jennie Ruby, review of Webs of Power, p. 49.

Publishers Weekly, April 5, 1993, review of The Fifth Sacred Thing, p. 69; January 6, 1997, review of Walking to Mercury, p. 65; October 16, 2000, review of The Twelve Wild Swans, p. 70; August 30, 2004, review of The Earth Path, p. 50.

Women's Review of Books, December, 2002, Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, review of Webs of Power, p. 11.

ONLINE

Awakened Woman, http://www.awakenedwoman.com/ (February 2, 2001), Stephanie Hiller, review of The Twelve Wild Swans.

Pagan Parenting/Music for the Goddess, http://www.musicforthegoddess.com/ (June 1, 2004), Mamawitch, review of Circle Round: Raising Children in Goddess Traditions.

Starhawk Home Page, http://www.starhawk.org (June 1, 2004).