Book Review by Dr. Claire French, feminist goddess scholar, 2007.
August 2 – Imbolc – Feast of Brigid in the Southern Hemisphere!
While Pagans in the North praise Lugh and the riches of Summer, Pagans of the Southern Hemisphere celebrate Brigid, the Return of the Virgin and all Her promises. Glenys Livingstone is one of her devotees.
She had her spiritual breakthrough with Brian Swimme’s Canticle to the Cosmos and Earth based Goddess religion. Hence the title of her book. With C.G.Jung, Gebser, Ken Wilber and other seekers of our epoch, she felt the necessity for a new spiritual paradigm that would encompass not only the Earth, but our Solar System, our Galaxy and finally the whole Universe. Livingstone has gathered the research results of men like Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme, Devereux, Bohm and others into a usuable framework, a new spiritual path.
That this new framework has feminine connotations need not deter the other half of humanity. As a woman she has every right to a feminine approach – a female metaphor.Considering the absolute Unknowable as the Ultimate Mystery, the author names it Gaia in a much wider sense than Lovelock does. She feels the necessity for a renewed approach to the aspect of the Divine Power and devotes several chapters of apologetics to this metaphor. Without criticising more formalised religions she makes it clear that their canvas has become too small, too inadequate for the immensity of the Cosmos. Since Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God – the eclipse our old God image – a new metaphor was urgently needed and sought for.
In postmodern decades a return to the “female metaphor” has often been suggested: Gaia, the triune Matrix of Creation, Virgin, Mother and wise old Crone returns.We find Her in the waxing and waning of the Moon, in the seasonal changes in the Northern and Southern Hemisphere, in the perennial movements of the Cosmic Wheel, and – last not least – in the ebb and flow of human Life: endlessly rising and falling, endlesslessly giving birth to new Life and endlessly taking it back into Herself in ever widening circles.This is the Divinity which (post)modern Woman and Man can perceive and worship.
In the second part of the book we find practical suggestions as to the forms such worship can take and how it should be tied to the procession of the yearly seasons to become meaningful. This is the praxis necessary to follow theory, the rites and symbols giving life to the doctrine. The Judeo-Christian Year of the Lord, once superimposed onto ancient chthonic knowledge, is transformed into the Year of the Goddess, here synchronised to the seasonal requirements of the Southern Hemisphere. These rituals, modelled on what we know of the ancient mysteries and the true aspect of Earth and Sun can be deeply satisfying to our parched souls. Even just reading about these seasonal practices and meditating the Seasonal
Wheel of the Year can give us an enriching experience.
A well-chosen scientific apparatus and Thomas Berry’s Twelve Principles of Functional Cosmology are appended and provide scope for further studies and contemplation. The book should be prescribed reading for all New Agers in Southern Latitudes.
Claire French Ph.D., 2007.
PaGaian Cosmology 
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