The Furious Spinner

Vicki Noble is a healer, author, scholar and wisdom teacher. She is co-creator with Karen Vogel of the bestselling Motherpeace Tarot. Her other books include The Double Goddess: Women Sharing Power; Shakti Woman; Motherpeace: A Way to the Goddess Through Myth, Art, and Tarot; and Rituals and Practices with the Motherpeace Tarot. She lives in the mountains near Santa Cruz, California.

K.A.: Vicki, you are a preeminent feminist scholar, writer, healer and have been working in these fields for a long while. Did a particular event in your life put you on this path? Or were you born on this path?

V.N.: As I have written in Shakti Woman, I was awakened by a "shamanic healing crisis" in 1976 which ended up being just what the (shaman) doctor ordered. I stopped with Western Medicine (cold turkey) and began to have visions, psychic energy experiences, and much physical healing. I found books to explain what was happening to me, and pretty soon I was deeply involved in yoga, shamanism, psychic healing, tantra, and esoteric science. Of course, as things opened up and experiences happened, I recognized that I had "always" had some version of these experiences, but without a cultural tradition, there was no way to name or understand them.

For instance, while doing yoga I began to have "breath suspension" experiences—a very advanced yogic practice—but I recognized the states from my years of doing underwater breathing when I was a synchronized swimmer during high school. I never talked with anyone about the experiences in high school. I just found that I could stop needing to breathe while doing upside-down stunts, by turning on a kind of internal breathing that was very relaxing and allowed me as much time as I needed for executing the stunt. I was a soloist so I didn't have to coordinate with anyone else, and thus I never mentioned it to anyone, even my teacher.

K.A.: Your work weaves women's spirituality with feminist scholarship. In the past, some feminists were not comfortable having spirituality part of the issue. Do you think this is still true? And how do you answer critics who say they are two separate issues?

V.N.: Unfortunately it is still very much true. The Women's Studies conferences held each year are loathe to include Goddess scholarship—they're having a big controversy about it now—and even my Goddess/Scholars list have discussions about whether the Goddess has any "reality" or is just a kind of mental image. The idea of devotion or actual active spirituality seems to threaten academics, even when they are women. It's the basis of Cynthia Eller's diatribe against "feminist matriarchalists" as she calls us—the fact that we actually seem devotional just makes her want to scream.

K.A.: Marija Gimbutas and other feminist archaeologists believed peaceful egalitarian societies existed thousands of years ago. Since Gimbutas's death, there appears to be a backlash against these ideas. Some of the criticism of Gimbutas's work has been quite vicious, almost personal, and some of the criticism is from women. What do you think is going on?

V.N.: I think part of the problem is that most people who criticize Marija Gimbutas don't actually read her. They just have heard that she "tolerated" or was supported by those of us in the Goddess movement, and therefore, by association they blame her and dismiss her work. Her work is difficult to read, because she was very brilliant and had a spacious capacity for synthesis. She was capable of reading in many languages so she used primary texts from Eastern Europe, Russia, and so on, which very few archaeologists are able to do. She had studied and collected folk songs from her adolescence—she knew at least a thousand songs by the time she was doing her dissertation—and she observed the continuity of patterns from the neolithic to the present in her native land of Lithuania.

An archaeologist in American or England can't possibly duplicate that hands-on experiential knowledge. Then she studied archaeology and got a Ph.D., and by the time she came to America, she was so far ahead of the other archaeologists they couldn't even comprehend her approach. At UCLA she invented a department—an interdisciplinary Eastern European archaeology. She invented "ArchaeoMythology," which people criticize but they don't even begin to understand her interdisciplinary methods. She is accused of being "flaky" when in fact, she was brilliant.

K.A.: When asked whether they still believe a matriarchy ever existed, some women leaders say, "Yes, but even if it didn't, I believe in the idea of it." Others says, "We never said a matriarchy—the opposite of patriarchy—we said egalitarian societies existed." How do you feel about all these arguments?

V.N.: I've always felt that matriarchy was a perfectly adequate word for describing ancient cultures where women were literally at the center—at the center of human evolution, at the center of civilization, and at the center of communal life. Mothers who give birth to both males and females and love them equally—feeding their offspring and sharing language—this is matriarchy. Matriarchy means "beginning with the mother." Mother-centered. Mother-focused.

We now know that there are living matriarchal cultures, peoples who identify themselves as matriarchal (such as the Mosuo in China). Their clan structures totally support my theory. They are organized around the mother. When girls come of age, they are given their own private rooms where they may entertain their lovers. Men come from other clans to visit in the night, and in the morning they go home to their mother's houses. Their productive labor is in service to their mothers. The only thing that binds the men and women lovers together is affection and passion. There are no economic reasons to pair bond. There are no illegitimate children, and no single mothers.

K.A.: Some archaeologists cite goddess iconography as evidence that women were respected and the goddess worshipped, yet one only has to look at modern India to know goddess iconography does not necessarily mean women are treated well or have status in a society. What other evidence convinced you that egalitarian societies existed and that women were once powerful leaders?

V.N.: As I stated above, the presence of living matriarchal cultures where men and women get along well, where all people are loved and respected, the mother is central and the lineage is "matrilineal descent." Algerian Berbers are similar. There was a conference on Matriarchy last September in Luxembourg which I attended and where I was able to hear members of these different matriarchal societies describe their living cultures. These cultures are remnants of a time when the whole world was matriarchal.

K.A.: We have seen more and more women come to power in our country. Yet the idea that women would "rule" differently than men has not necessarily come true. Condeleeza Rice appears to be gung-ho for war. Margaret Thatcher was not a compassionate peaceful leader by any means. There are other examples. Are these women anomalies? Or does our culture breed warmongers, male and female? Do you believe women are inherently more peaceful or better leaders than men?

V.N.: Yes of course, but it can't happen in a vacuum. As long as the structure within which we function is patriarchal and male dominant, based on the values of that mindset, of course any women who rise to power will either be tokens (already male-identified) or will have to compromise their natural ways in order to remain in power by adopting the prevailing ways. We know now from scientific studies that men and women respond to stress (and no doubt most other things) in different ways, and that different hormones govern the responses. Women don't experience "fight or flight" (from testosterone production). Instead our bodies generate oxytocin which promotes a "tend or befriend" response in women. We rush to gather in the children and collaborate with other women on how to solve the problems. The scientists who published this material believe that this proves women need female friendship in their lives. I say it proves that women need to govern society.

K.A.: Your book The Double Goddess just came out. What would you like to say about ideas in The Double Goddess and how you came to some of your conclusions?

V.N.: I started out thinking I was writing "a Goddess book for lesbians" since these images are so provocative in their representation of female bonding and affection. But once I got into the investigation and research, I found that the material went back so far it actually had to do with human evolution and the menstrual cycle. The Double Goddess is first of all a glyph of the female lunar cycle:our completely natural "bipolarity" around which early societies were organized. Then it represents other cyclic dualities like winter and summer, Earth and Moon. Finally it represents queens ruling in dual queenship, as reported about the Amazons. "Women Sharing Power." (the subtitle of my book)

K.A.: Did you have any problems getting The Double Goddess published? The midlist seems to be dying in publishing. Tax laws put into place a decade ago have hit publishers and writers particularly hard. Do you think feminist writers are having a more difficult time than other midlist writers?

V.N.: I think the backlash against feminism functions as an all-out war on feminist writers. If we want to write a book with "Goddess" in the title, forget it—the editors and publishers will refuse to find it worthwhile. But if a man uses "Goddess" in a title, it's considered sexy and fresh, so they are getting the new hardback books with all the advertising and money thrown at them. It's a crime.

K.A.: What research are you most excited about now in your field?

V.N.: I am continuing to work on the links I have discovered across the Silk Road, especially in early times (Bronze Age, around 2000 BCE) between the Aegean "Maenads" (shaman women) and the later "Amazons" and eventually the Tibetan "Dakinis" and Indian "Yoginis." I maintain that they are all basically the same. This includes Gorgons, Valkyries, and European Witches as well. Shaman women are completely invisible to the scholars, who name them differently in every culture, during every time period, which is extremely disjointed and confusing. A shaman is a shaman is a shaman. Period. Ecstatic female shamans, dancing, brewing sacred beverages, practicing divination, healing, and funerary rituals. Meditating in cemeteries. Meeting in covens. Flying through the sky.

K.A.: You are also a healer. Do you want to talk about this part of your work? How does this aspect of your life influence your research? Do you believe "alternative" healing still has a place in this modern world where virulent bugs are on the rise.

V.N.: My natural healing is the basis for my understanding of these connections I'm finding. I am a shaman woman myself and have had many varied supernatural experiences that I study in other cultures where there is more of a tradition (either oral or written) for understanding them. My experience informs my research and authorizes my understanding.

K.A.: The world seems to be going to "hell in a handbasket" as of late. Sometimes it appears as if all the work done by civil rights workers, feminists, environmentalists, peace workers has gone nowhere. Our current administration seems bent on starting war after war, turning back all environmental progress, and taking away women's rights. Do you have any advice on what people can do to get through this period of time?

V.N.: It is so discouraging, isn't it? I sometimes feel overwhelmed by despair at the current situation. We had so much warning, so many opportunities to turn it around. There must be some profound teaching that people are experiencing right now through the denial and avoidance of the truth that has characterized the last two decades. Rather than face the "Fate of the World" as Jonathan Schell put it in the late 1970's, we have chosen to ignore it and simply believe what our "leaders" tell us. The State media is doing a great job of completely brainwashing the public, and the populace of this country is stupider at the moment than any population I can think of ever in history. Comatose—the result of watching WAY too much t.v.

Thank goodness nothing stays the same and everything changes. We must never give up hope—as a natural healer my faith is in the supernatural ("miracle") events that completely transform reality. The experts declared Lake Erie "dead" and they made the polluters stop dumping toxic substances into the lake. How could they have known that a tiny algae would be the agent of transformational healing, and that the lake would return to its original state of vitality? This is also true of our bodies, and it's true of our planet. Nature is "regenerative." She can always restore herself.

K.A.: You also facilitate and participate in ceremony and ritual. What does this work mean to you? How does it inform your life? Most Americans do not have meaningful ceremony in their lives? Do you think this accounts for our crazy-making behavior? How do we differ from other societies in this way?

V.N.: Absolutely. In tribal cultures the troubles are flushed out through regular rituals and ceremonies. They drum and chant and do hands-on healing for days at a time. Negativity cannot withstand such vibrational energy. Everyone in the tribe is healed, people enter altered states and become ecstatic. It only takes a short dose of ecstatic healing to completely restore our sanity and well-being, and then you need to do it regularly. My transformational healing rituals are phenomenal—a hundred people singing and putting hands on sick people for an hour in the context of a good solid drumbeat, driving cancer out of the bodies and out of the community. We've seen malignant brain tumors just disappear, poof. We've put MS and Lupus in remission. Healed all kinds of menstrual disorders. There's nothing quite like it. Western medicine can't even imagine it. Yet it's as old as humanity.

K.A.: What are you working on now? Anything else you'd like to share with us?

V.N.: I'm working on a new book right now with a young Tibetan lama, a reincarnated "tulku" who is very fresh and progressive. Tulku Thubten Rinpoche and I are both devotees of Throma, the Black Dakini (depicted on the front of my book, Shakti Woman) and we have made a wonderful connection. In the book I am comparing Dzogchen (a form of Tibetan Buddhism) with Radical Feminism, quoting from Tulku Thubten and other Lamas and Mary Daly and other feminists—it's very exciting! I am basically saying that the instant awakening—the "conversion" experience—I experienced in regard to radical feminism was (and is) much the same as the instantaneous awakening to enlightenment described in Dzogchen, where we realize our true nature and are liberated in that moment. I'm looking for a publisher right now for this book, so wish me luck!

All photographs and written material copyright © 2003-2008 by Kim Antieau unless otherwise indicated. May not be used without permission.