Excerpts from review of
PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion, Glenys Livingstone, Ph.D. iUniverse, Inc., New York: 2005.

by Lynne Hume, Associate Professor in the School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics at the University of Queensland.

Published in Women-Church: An Australian Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, issue 38, Autumn 2006, p. 42-43.

“… the book combines an academic approach along with a self-reflexive methodology, while still providing information and practical guidance to those wishing to learn about ritual and ceremonial performance. It is a useful book for courses on new religious movements, Paganism, feminist spirituality, and should be of interest to the general reader who wishes to learn more about Paganism. Its acknowledgment of subtle shifts in everyday life through observation of the environment and the seasons will help people understand the growing interest in Paganism in today’s world from the perspective of the academic and experienced pagan practitioner whose focus is on the feminine and nature.”

“Although some might accuse Livingstone of essentialising the feminine, she goes to great pains to point out that her book is neither an exploration nor statement of a difference between some concepts of feminine and masculine, or female and male, but rather a development of a metaphor based in female bodily experience that is ubiquitous in natural phenomena in a cyclical rather than a linear fashion, … . She admits, nevertheless, that it conforms to Val Plumwood’s features of ‘appropriate relationship of non-hierarchical difference’.”