Starhawk
(1951– ), writer, religious leader.

Starhawk (born Miriam Simos), is a founder, philosopher, and leader of the contemporary Wiccan movement. Raised as a Jew, she became interested in Witchcraft while in her late teens. At first self-taught, she soon found teachers among a variety of Pagan, Wiccan, and other earth-based traditions. In 1979 she published her pioneering book The Spiral Dance, which introduced native, pre-Christian European traditions to an American audience generally unaware of the survival and authenticity of Witchcraft. This work was continued in Dreaming the Dark and Truth or Dare. Each of these books combines thealogy (Goddess philosophy), history, and a practical guide to ritual and community process, and each draws on a combination of traditional teachings and contemporary innovations. Wicca is presented as one of numerous religions, native to all regions of the earth, based on the cycles and teachings of the natural world.

Starhawk's writings outline a worldview rooted in the underlying value of relationship: the immanent relationship between divinity and creation; the interdependent relationship among all living beings; and the powerful relationship of community. She describes the Goddess as an inclusive, universal naming of the divine, experienced by human beings in both female and male, feminine and masculine aspects. In contrast to male-dominated traditions, Goddess religion emphasizes the presence of the sacred among and within material beings rather than its apartness or separateness. Starhawk argues that such an honoring of the connection between physical and spiritual is of particular significance to women in cultures in which they are taught to devalue and distance themselves from their bodies and power. Extending this care and respect to the earth itself as another living embodiment of the Goddess, Starhawk links Wicca to ecofeminist theory and activism. Political activism in a wide variety of areas is presented as essential to the expression of Wiccan ethics, based in understanding and expressing connection to all life. Starhawk's more recent works on death and raising children reflect the growth of the Wiccan movement in the United States. They also express the efforts on the part of Starhawk and Wiccan communities to create and re-create Goddess traditions inclusive of a fuller range of human life experience, especially that of people of color and their distinct Goddess traditions, as well as that of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people.

In addition to her nonfiction writing, Starhawk has authored two novels, The Fifth Sacred Thing (1993) and Walking to Mercury (1997). Set in both the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, these fictional works combine historical and utopian settings and give narrative expression to the themes of spirituality, personal relationships, community, ecofeminism, transformation, and earth-based traditions that inform her other writings.

While best known as an author, Starhawk is also active in the ecofeminist movement. She teaches in a wide variety of settings, ranging from formal academic institutions to public lectures and trainings for Wiccan practitioners.

See alsoEcofeminism; Feminist Theology; Nature Religion; Neopaganism; Wicca.

Bibliography

Starhawk. Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex and Politics. 1982, 1997.

——. The Fifth Sacred Thing. 1993.

——. The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religionof the Great Goddess. 1989.

——. Truth or Dare: Encounters with Power, Authority,and Mystery. 1987.

——. Walking to Mercury. 1997.

Starhawk, Diane Baker, and Anne Hill, eds. CircleRound: Raising Children in Goddess Traditions. 1998.

Starhawk, M. Macha NightMare, and the Reclaiming Collective, eds. The Pagan Book of Living and Dying:Practical Rituals, Prayers, Blessings, and Meditations onCrossing Over. 1997.

Drorah O'Donnell Setel