Reviews of Pagan Meditations

An appreciation of three Greek Goddesses as values of importance to our twentieth-century collective life: Aphrodite as civilized sexuality and beauty; Artemis as solitude, ecological significance, and a perspective on abortion; and Hestia as warm hearth, security, and stability. As the author's contribution to imaginative feminism, this book addresses both the meditative interior of each person and the community of culture.

Ginette Paris began her archetypal studies with this book. It has since become a foundation for the study of goddesses and how they imaginitively fit into our lives today.

Jonathan Kirsch
Los Angeles Times Review of Books
August 24, 1986

... she treats her subject with the utmost respect and seriousness; her prose - like the very concept of "Pagan Meditations" - is lush and extravagant, sometimes frankly erotic, but always thoughtful and thought-provoking, always fresh and surprising.

In her hands, the myth of Aphrodite becomes "an alternative to both the Judeo-Christian attitude of sexual repression and its corollary, contemporary sexual promiscuity and the insignificance which accompanies it.

Imaginatively conceived and written, thought-provoking to read, Pagan Meditations offers something new - a vision of multiple feminisms, each as vibrant and varied as the real life situations which engender them. At the same time, Ginette Paris has recovered something old, something ancient - the realm of the pagan goddesses and their celebration of life. The book’s genius lies in its bringing the two together and allowing us to see three of the Greek goddesses as values of extreme importance to our twentieth-century collective life.

Like Spignesi’s Starving Women, Paris's book is an essential contribution to feminist psychology. Both authors share a passionate, daring approach to their subjects yet are able to present their discoveries: in very readable, accessible, form.

Her truly remarkable work on the mythemes of three Greek religious figures is frankly feminist in perspective, but imaginably feminist and polytheistically so. "We are all Greek," she writes (3), and she means by this to include the aphroditic, artemisian, and hestian aspects of men as well as women (192). Read more ...

Ginette Paris's Pagan Meditations is a gem of feminine wisdom sparkling with the inner light of the author's own deep convictions as a woman. Her rich personal experience and her wealth of knowledge as a social psychologist give this work an impressive scope. It radiates with a feminine power that reaches into the psychic life and spiritual inner workings of each person as well as the community of culture. She calls her spellbinding approach an "imaginative feminism." With this she is able to weave together the objective wisdom and spiritual power of the archetypal perspective, as well as the mystery and artistry of the Eternal Feminine into a feminism worn weary by dessicating polemics and poisonous invectives on its political altars.

This is an important book for both men and women at this pivotal time in cultural history when the Goddess is being reclaimed and invoked by collective effort to help prepare us to meet the New Age and its challenges. At this crucial point Ginette Paris "has sought in our cultural past whatever could be useful in nourishing the new gender identity and a renewed set of values for us to live by" (p. 197). Through tapping ancient sources she has succeeded in resurrecting a world view of the feminine that confronts the very spiritual and philosophical roots of the old partiarchial age and some of our most pressing social issues and problems.