And so I turn 33...

Yes, today is my birthday and I'm 33.

Rod woke earlier than I did and surreptitiously left two wrapped books beside my pillow so that when I turned in my sleep (as I do repeatedly, all night) I woke to two presents. He got me a copy of Best Buddhist Writings of 2005 and Merlin Stone's famous (or infamous, depending on who you're talking to) When God Was A Woman.

I'm particularly interested in Stone's book for two reasons: 1) I've been hearing about her for years but have yet to read any of her stuff. She's been accused of doing the sort of shoddy scholarship that runs rampant in certain parts of the neo-goddess movement. (The myth that a group of kind generous mother-goddess worshiping peoples were invaded and subjucated by angry male invaders turns out to not really be entirely true. But I'm sure I'll go into that more later.) In some ways her antithesis is Jeanne Davis-Kimball, who I have to admit I have a sort of scholarly crush on. For those interested her Warrior Women Is Phenomenal.)

But the second reason I'm interested is I think the book will help me (along with my growing library of goddess books) in my blog-project for the next year: A Year of Goddesses. Each month I'm going to talk about a specific goddess--the history of her worship; her principle myths; how people now think of her, etc. I'm also going to try to couple yoga asanas (or poses) with each goddess but I don't know how well that's going to work. I'll probably just end up having an ansana of the month.

So this month's goddess is Inanna: Sumerian Queen of Heaven.

Tomorrow I'll talk about her principle myth: Inanna passes through seven gates to descend to the underworld where she visits her sister-self, Ereshkigel. Good stuff.