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Introduction “Undeniable and Irresistible”: The Mythic Feminine and Women’s Creativity Pamela Collins In 1989 I attended a conference on “The Goddess as Muse”, co-hosted by SUNY Cortland and Tompkins Cortland Community College. Merlin Stone was the keynote speaker, author of the ground-breaking work When God Was A Woman. Stone’s work, along with Robert Graves’ The White Goddess, had been a pivotal resource for my Master’s thesis on women in Arthurian legend which had consumed my imagination during the early eighties. To see Merlin Stone in person was a thrill, as was an entire conference devoted not just to the images and/or historical disposition of the Goddess, but to Her active role in our creative lives. During those early years, my “involvement” with the Goddess had two notable characteristics. One, it was primarily intellectual. As I investigated the early versions of Arthurian myth, seeking traces of gynocentric mythological images in the predominantly patriarchal/Christianized texts, the thrill was all cognitive. Burying myself in relatively obscure texts, I waded into strange seas of various mythologies, symbols more than a little laden with complex and convergent meanings, and images that came and went like holograms or faces seen in smoke. As disparate pieces fell together and fit, seams disappeared and images became more concrete, I came to know the heady pleasures of scholarly sleuthing. But She hadn’t entered my life as more than the object of my study -- or so it seemed. The second aspect was the “fringe” nature of my work. Stone’s work and similar texts were not taken seriously by many in the academic community (as G. S. Swan discusses in her work on the vindication of leading Goddess-culture theorist Marija Gimbutas). Many feminists were (and still are) unconvinced of the value to feminist theory of Goddess imagery, so easily co-opted by the patriarchy. Certainly my friends and neighbors weren’t amenable to discussions of female divinity; nor was I inclined to foresee this area of study as the logo on my academic calling card. It was merely something I was compelled to do -- that I could do it and earn a Master’s degree in the process was a bonus. In 1982, as I was proofing the final version of my thesis, my advisor brought me a copy of the New York Times book review. “You’re not alone in your interests,” she said as she pointed to the review of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists Of Avalon. I was both thrilled and dismayed – Bradley’s work almost identically mirrored my own research (which I had hoped to develop into a more commercial form). I often see Bradley’s timely work (my version may never have gotten out of the caverns of my mind) as a turning point, the moment when the Goddess, in all three aspects, entered the mainstream imagination. In 1989, the idea of the Eternal Feminine as creative inspiration to women was a relatively new concept, even for someone like myself who had been Volume 13, Number 1

SPRING 2001

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