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George Eliot

Mary Ann Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880; alternatively Mary Anne or Marian ), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrote seven novels: Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1862–1863), Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), Middlemarch (1871–1872) and Daniel Deronda (1876). As with Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, she emerged from provincial England; most of her works are set there. Her works are known for their realism, psychological insight, sense of place and detailed depiction of the countryside. Middlemarch was described by the novelist Virginia Woolf as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people" and by Martin Amis and Julian Barnes as the greatest novel in the English language.

Scandalously and unconventionally for the era, she lived with the married George Henry Lewes as his conjugal partner, from 1854–1878, and called him her husband. He remained married to his wife and supported their children, even after she left him to live with another man and have children with him. In May 1880, eighteen months after Lewes's death, George Eliot married her long-time friend, John Cross, a man much younger than she, and she changed her name to Mary Ann Cross.

Early life and education
Mary Ann Evans was born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England, at South Farm on the Arbury Hall estate. She was the third child of Welshman Robert Evans (1773–1849), manager of the Arbury Hall estate, and Christiana Evans (née Pearson, 1788–1836), daughter of a local mill-owner. Her full siblings were: Christiana, known as Chrissey (1814–1859), Isaac (1816–1890), and twin brothers who died a few days after birth in March 1821. She also had a half-brother, Robert Evans (1802–1864), and half-sister, Frances "Fanny" Evans Houghton (1805–1882), from her father's previous marriage to Harriet Poynton (1780–1809). In early 1820, the family moved to a house named Griff House, between Nuneaton and Bedworth.

The young Evans was a voracious reader and obviously intelligent. Because she was not considered physically beautiful, Evans was not thought to have much chance of marriage, and this, coupled with her intelligence, led her father to invest in an education not often afforded to women. From ages five to nine, she boarded with her sister Chrissey at Miss Latham's school in Attleborough, from ages nine to thirteen at Mrs. Wallington's school in Nuneaton, and from ages thirteen to sixteen at Miss Franklin's school in Coventry. At Mrs. Wallington's school, she was taught by the evangelical Maria Lewis—to whom her earliest surviving letters are addressed. In the religious atmosphere of the Misses Franklin's school, Evans was exposed to a quiet, disciplined belief opposed to evangelicalism.

After age sixteen, Evans had little formal education. Thanks to her father's important role on the estate, she was allowed access to the library of Arbury Hall, which greatly aided her self-education and breadth of learning. Her classical education left its mark; Christopher Stray has observed that "George Eliot's novels draw heavily on Greek literature (only one of her books can be printed correctly without the use of a Greek typeface), and her themes are often influenced by Greek tragedy". Her frequent visits to the estate also allowed her to contrast the wealth in which the local landowner lived with the lives of the often much poorer people on the estate, and different lives lived in parallel would reappear in many of her works. The other important early influence in her life was religion. She was brought up within a low church Anglican family, but at that time the Midlands was an area with a growing number of religious dissenters.

Move to Coventry
In 1836, her mother died and Evans (then 16) returned home to act as housekeeper, though she continued to correspond with her tutor Maria Lewis. When she was 21, her brother Isaac married and took over the family home, so Evans and her father moved to Foleshill near Coventry. The closeness to Coventry society brought new influences, most notably those of Charles and Cara Bray. Charles Bray had become rich as a ribbon manufacturer and had used his wealth in the building of schools and in other philanthropic causes. Evans, who had been struggling with religious doubts for some time, became intimate friends with the radical, free-thinking Brays, who had a casual view of marital obligations and the Brays' "Rosehill" home was a haven for people who held and debated radical views. The people whom the young woman met at the Brays' house included Robert Owen, Herbert Spencer, Harriet Martineau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Through this society Evans was introduced to more liberal and agnostic theologies and to writers such as David Strauss and Ludwig Feuerbach, who cast doubt on the literal truth of Biblical texts. In fact, her first major literary work was an English translation of Strauss's Das Leben Jesu kritisch bearbeitet as The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined (1846), which she completed after it had been left incomplete by Elizabeth "Rufa" Brabant, another member of the "Rosehill Circle".

The Strauss book had caused a sensation in Germany by arguing that the miracles in the New Testament were mythical additions with little basis in fact. Evans's translation had a similar effect in England, with the Earl of Shaftesbury calling her translation "the most pestilential book ever vomited out of the jaws of hell." Later she translated Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity (1854). The ideas in these books would have an effect on her own fiction.

As a product of their friendship, Bray published some of Evans's own earliest writing, such as reviews, in his newspaper the Coventry Herald and Observer. As Evans began to question her own religious faith, her father threatened to throw her out of the house, but his threat was not carried out. Instead, she respectfully attended church and continued to keep house for him until his death in 1849, when she was 30. Five days after her father's funeral, she travelled to Switzerland with the Brays. She decided to stay on in Geneva alone, living first on the lake at Plongeon (near the present-day United Nations buildings) and then on the second floor of a house owned by her friends François and Juliet d'Albert Durade on the rue de Chanoines (now the rue de la Pelisserie). She commented happily that "one feels in a downy nest high up in a good old tree". Her stay is commemorated by a plaque on the building. While residing there, she read avidly and took long walks in the beautiful Swiss countryside, which was a great inspiration to her. François Durade painted her portrait there as well.

Move to London and editorship of the Westminster Review
On her return to England the following year (1850), she moved to London with the intent of becoming a writer, and she began referring to herself as Marian Evans. She stayed at the house of John Chapman, the radical publisher whom she had met earlier at Rosehill and who had published her Strauss translation. She then joined Chapman's ménage-à-trois along with his wife and mistress. Chapman had recently purchased the campaigning, left-wing journal The Westminster Review. Evans became its assistant editor in 1851 after joining just a year earlier. Evans's writings for the paper were comments on her views of society and the Victorian way of thinking. She was sympathetic to the lower classes and criticised organised religion throughout her articles and reviews and commented on contemporary ideas of the time. Much of this was drawn from her own experiences and knowledge and she used this to critique other ideas and organisations. This led to her writing being viewed as authentic and wise but not too obviously opinionated. Evans also focused on the business side of the Review with attempts to change its layout and design. Although Chapman was officially the editor, it was Evans who did most of the work of producing the journal, contributing many essays and reviews beginning with the January 1852 issue and continuing until the end of her employment at the Review in the first half of 1854. Eliot sympathized with the 1848 Revolutions throughout continental Europe, and even hoped that the Italians would chase the "odious Austrians" out of Lombardy and that "decayed monarchs" would be pensioned off, although she believed a gradual reformist approach to social problems was best for England.

In 1850–51, Evans attended classes in mathematics at the Ladies College in Bedford Square, later known as Bedford College, London.

Relationship with George Henry Lewes

The philosopher and critic George Henry Lewes (1817–1878) met Evans in 1851, and by 1854 they had decided to live together. Lewes was already married to Agnes Jervis, although in an open marriage. In addition to the three children they had together, Agnes also had four children by Thornton Leigh Hunt. In July 1854, Lewes and Evans travelled to Weimar and Berlin together for the purpose of research. Before going to Germany, Evans continued her theological work with a translation of Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity, and while abroad she wrote essays and worked on her translation of Baruch Spinoza's Ethics, which she completed in 1856, but which was not published in her lifetime because the prospective publisher refused to pay the requested £75. In 1981, Eliot's translation of Spinoza's Ethics was finally published by Thomas Deegan, and was determined to be in the public domain in 2018 and published by the George Eliot Archive. It has been re-published in 2020 by Princeton University Press.

The trip to Germany also served as a honeymoon for Evans and Lewes, who subsequently considered themselves married. Evans began to refer to Lewes as her husband and to sign her name as Mary Ann Evans Lewes, legally changing her name to Mary Ann Evans Lewes after his death. The refusal to conceal the relationship was contrary to the social conventions of the time, and attracted considerable disapproval.

Career in fiction

While continuing to contribute pieces to the Westminster Review, Evans resolved to become a novelist, and set out a pertinent manifesto in one of her last essays for the Review, "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists" (1856). The essay criticised the trivial and ridiculous plots of contemporary fiction written by women. In other essays, she praised the realism of novels that were being written in Europe at the time, an emphasis on realistic storytelling confirmed in her own subsequent fiction. She also adopted a nom-de-plume, George Eliot; as she explained to her biographer J. W. Cross, George was Lewes's forename, and Eliot was "a good mouth-filling, easily pronounced word". Although female authors were published under their own names during her lifetime, she wanted to escape the stereotype of women's writing being limited to lighthearted romances or other lighter fare not to be taken very seriously. She also wanted to have her fiction judged separately from her already extensive and widely known work as a translator, editor, and critic. Another factor in her use of a pen name may have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny, thus avoiding the scandal that would have arisen because of her relationship with Lewes, who was married.

In 1857, when she was 37 years of age, "The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton", the first of the three stories included in Scenes of Clerical Life, and the first work of "George Eliot", was published in Blackwood's Magazine. The Scenes (published as a 2-volume book in 1858), was well received, and was widely believed to have been written by a country parson, or perhaps the wife of a parson.

Eliot was profoundly influenced by the works of Thomas Carlyle. As early as 1841, she referred to him as "a grand favourite of mine", and references to him abound in her letters from the 1840s and 1850s. According to University of Victoria professor Lisa Surridge, Carlyle "stimulated Eliot's interest in German thought, encouraged her turn from Christian orthodoxy, and shaped her ideas on work, duty, sympathy, and the evolution of the self." These themes made their way into Evans's first complete novel, Adam Bede (1859). It was an instant success, and prompted yet more intense curiosity as to the author's identity: there was even a pretender to the authorship, one Joseph Liggins. This public interest subsequently led to Marian Evans Lewes's acknowledgment that it was she who stood behind the pseudonym George Eliot. Adam Bede is known for embracing a realist aesthetic inspired by Dutch visual art.

The revelations about Eliot's private life surprised and shocked many of her admiring readers, but this did not affect her popularity as a novelist. Her relationship with Lewes afforded her the encouragement and stability she needed to write fiction, but it would be some time before the couple were accepted into polite society. Acceptance was finally confirmed in 1877 when they were introduced to Princess Louise, the daughter of Queen Victoria. The queen herself was an avid reader of all of Eliot's novels and was so impressed with Adam Bede that she commissioned the artist Edward Henry Corbould to paint scenes from the book.

When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, Eliot expressed sympathy for the Union cause, something which historians have attributed to her abolitionist sympathies. In 1868, she supported philosopher Richard Congreve's protests against governmental policies in Ireland and had a positive view of the growing movement in support of Irish home rule.

She was influenced by the writings of John Stuart Mill and read all of his major works as they were published. In Mill's The Subjection of Women (1869) she judged the second chapter excoriating the laws which oppress married women "excellent." She was supportive of Mill's parliamentary run, but believed that the electorate was unlikely to vote for a philosopher and was surprised when he won. While Mill served in parliament, she expressed her agreement with his efforts on behalf of female suffrage, being "inclined to hope for much good from the serious presentation of women's claims before Parliament." In a letter to John Morley, she declared her support for plans "which held out reasonable promise of tending to establish as far as possible an equivalence of advantage for the two sexes, as to education and the possibilities of free development", and dismissed appeals to nature in explaining women's lower status. In 1870, she responded enthusiastically to Lady Amberley's feminist lecture on the claims of women for education, occupations, equality in marriage, and child custody.

However, it would not be correct to assume that the female protagonists of her works can be considered "feminist", with the sole exception perhaps of Romola de' Bardi, who resolutely rejects the State and Church obligations of her time.

After the success of Adam Bede, Eliot continued to write popular novels for the next fifteen years. Within a year of completing Adam Bede, she finished The Mill on the Floss, dedicating the manuscript: "To my beloved husband, George Henry Lewes, I give this MS. of my third book, written in the sixth year of our life together, at Holly Lodge, South Field, Wandsworth, and finished 21 March 1860." Silas Marner (1861) and Romola (1863) soon followed, and later Felix Holt, the Radical (1866) and her most acclaimed novel, Middlemarch (1871–1872).

Her last novel was Daniel Deronda, published in 1876, after which she and Lewes moved to Witley, Surrey. By this time Lewes's health was failing, and he died two years later, on 30 November 1878. Eliot spent the next six months editing Lewes's final work, Life and Mind, for publication, and found solace and companionship with longtime friend and financial adviser John Walter Cross, a Scottish commission agent 20 years her junior, whose mother had recently died.

Marriage to John Cross and death

On 16 May 1880, eighteen months after Lewes' death, Eliot married John Walter Cross (1840–1924) and again changed her name, this time to Mary Ann Cross. While the marriage courted some controversy due to the 21 year age differences, it pleased her brother Isaac that she was married in this relationship. He had broken off relations with her when she had begun to live with Lewes, and now sent congratulations. While the couple were honeymooning in Venice, Cross, in a suicide attempt, jumped from the hotel balcony into the Grand Canal. He survived, and the newlyweds returned to England. They moved to a new house in Chelsea, but Eliot fell ill with a throat infection. This, coupled with the kidney disease with which she had been afflicted for several years, led to her death on 22 December 1880 at the age of 61.

Due to her denial of the Christian faith and her relationship with Lewes, Eliot was not buried in Westminster Abbey. She was instead interred in Highgate Cemetery (East), Highgate, London, in the area reserved for political and religious dissenters and agnostics, beside the love of her life, George Henry Lewes. The graves of Karl Marx and her friend Herbert Spencer are nearby. In 1980, on the centenary of her death, a memorial stone was established for her in the Poets' Corner between W. H. Auden and Dylan Thomas, with a quote from Scenes of Clerical Life: "The first condition of human goodness is something to love; the second something to reverence".

Personal appearance
George Eliot was considered by contemporaries to be a physically unattractive woman; she herself knew this and made jokes about her appearance in letters to friends. Yet somehow the force of her personality overcame her ugliness. This was noted by numerous acquaintances. Of his first meeting with her on 9 May 1869, Henry James wrote: ... To begin with she is magnificently ugly — deliciously hideous. She has a low forehead, a dull grey eye, a vast pendulous nose, a huge mouth, full of uneven teeth & a chin & jawbone qui n'en finissent pas ["which never end"] ... Now in this vast ugliness resides a most powerful beauty which, in a very few minutes steals forth & charms the mind, so that you end as I ended, in falling in love with her.

Spelling of her name
She spelled her name differently at different times. Mary Anne was the spelling used by her father for the baptismal record and she uses this spelling in her earliest letters. Within her family, however, it was spelled Mary Ann. By 1852, she had changed to Marian, but she reverted to Mary Ann in 1880 after she married John Cross. Her memorial stone reads "Here lies the body of 'George Eliot' Mary Ann Cross"

Memorials and tributes
Several landmarks in her birthplace of Nuneaton are named in her honour. These include the George Eliot Academy, Middlemarch Junior School, George Eliot Hospital (formerly Nuneaton Emergency Hospital), and George Eliot Road, in Foleshill, Coventry. Also, The Mary Anne Evans Hospice in Nuneaton.

A statue of Eliot is in Newdegate Street, Nuneaton, and Nuneaton Museum & Art Gallery has a display of artifacts related to her.

A tunnel boring machine constructing the Bromford Tunnel on High Speed 2 was named in honour of her.

Literary assessment

Throughout her career, Eliot wrote with a politically astute pen. From Adam Bede to The Mill on the Floss and Silas Marner, Eliot presented the cases of social outsiders and small-town persecution. Felix Holt, the Radical and The Legend of Jubal were overtly political, and political crisis is at the heart of Middlemarch, in which she presents the stories of a number of inhabitants of a small English town on the eve of the Reform Bill of 1832; the novel is notable for its deep psychological insight and sophisticated character portraits. The roots of her realist philosophy can be found in her review of John Ruskin's Modern Painters in Westminster Review in 1856. Eliot also express proto-Zionist ideas in Daniel Deronda.

Readers in the Victorian era praised her novels for their depictions of rural society. Much of the material for her prose was drawn from her own experience. She shared with Wordsworth the belief that there was much value and beauty to be found in the mundane details of ordinary country life. Eliot did not, however, confine herself to stories of the English countryside. Romola, an historical novel set in late fifteenth century Florence, was based on the life of the Italian priest Girolamo Savonarola. In The Spanish Gypsy, Eliot made a foray into verse, but her poetry's initial popularity has not endured.

Working as a translator, Eliot was exposed to German texts of religious, social, and moral philosophy such as David Friedrich Strauss's Life of Jesus and Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity; also important was her translation from Latin of Jewish-Dutch philosopher Spinoza's Ethics. Elements from these works show up in her fiction, much of which is written with her trademark sense of agnostic humanism. According to Clare Carlisle, who published a new biography on George Eliot in 2023, the overdue publication of Spinoza's Ethics was a real shame, because it could have provided some illuminating cues for understanding the more mature works of the writer. She had taken particular notice of Feuerbach's conception of Christianity, positing that our understanding of the nature of the divine was to be found ultimately in the nature of humanity projected onto a divine figure. An example of this philosophy appeared in her novel Romola, in which Eliot’s protagonist displayed a "surprisingly modern readiness to interpret religious language in humanist or secular ethical terms." Though Eliot herself was not religious, she had respect for religious tradition and its ability to maintain a sense of social order and morality. The religious elements in her fiction also owe much to her upbringing, with the experiences of Maggie Tulliver from The Mill on the Floss sharing many similarities with the young Mary Ann Evans. Eliot also faced a quandary similar to that of Silas Marner, whose alienation from the church simultaneously meant his alienation from society. Because Eliot retained a vestigial respect for religion, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche excoriated her system of morality for figuring sin as a debt that can be expiated through suffering, which he demeaned as characteristic of "little moralistic females à la Eliot."

She was at her most autobiographical in Looking Backwards, part of her final published work Impressions of Theophrastus Such. By the time of Daniel Deronda, Eliot's sales were falling off, and she had faded from public view to some degree. This was not helped by the posthumous biography written by her husband, which portrayed a wonderful, almost saintly, woman totally at odds with the scandalous life people knew she had led. In the 20th century she was championed by a new breed of critics, most notably by Virginia Woolf, who called Middlemarch "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people". In 1994, literary critic Harold Bloom placed Eliot among the most important Western writers of all time. In a 2007 authors' poll by Time, Middlemarch was voted the tenth greatest literary work ever written. In 2015, writers from outside the UK voted it first among all British novels "by a landslide". The various film and television adaptations of Eliot's books have re-introduced her to the wider reading public.

Novels

 * Adam Bede (1859)
 * The Mill on the Floss (1860)
 * Silas Marner (1861)
 * Romola (1863)
 * Felix Holt, the Radical (1866)
 * Middlemarch (1871–1872)
 * "Quarry for Middlemarch", MS Lowell 13, Houghton Library, Harvard University (A digital facsimile of the manuscript of research notes)
 * Daniel Deronda (1876)

Short story collection and novellas

 * Scenes of Clerical Life (1857)
 * The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton
 * Mr Gilfil's Love Story
 * Janet's Repentance
 * The Lifted Veil (1859)
 * Brother Jacob (1864)
 * Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879)

Translations

 * Das Leben Jesu, kritisch bearbeitet (The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined) Volume 2 by David Strauss (1846)
 * Das Wesen des Christentums (The Essence of Christianity) by Ludwig Feuerbach (1854)
 * The Ethics of Benedict de Spinoza by Benedict de Spinoza (1856)

Poetry

 * Knowing That I Must Shortly Put Off This Tabernacle (1840)
 * In a London Drawingroom (1865)
 * A Minor Prophet (1865)
 * Two Lovers (1866)
 * The Choir Invisible (1867)
 * The Spanish Gypsy (1868)
 * Agatha (1868)
 * Brother and Sister (1869)
 * How Lisa Loved the King (1869)
 * Armgart (1870)
 * Stradivarius (1873)
 * Arion (1873)
 * The Legend of Jubal (1874)
 * I Grant You Ample Leave (1874)
 * Evenings Come and Go, Love (1878)
 * Self and Life (1879)
 * A College Breakfast Party (1879)
 * The Death of Moses (1879)

Non-fiction

 * "Three Months in Weimar" (1855)
 * "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists" (1856)
 * "The Natural History of German Life" (1856)
 * Review of John Ruskin's Modern Painters in Westminster Review, April 1856
 * "The Influence of Rationalism" (1865)

Context and background

 * Beer, Gillian, Darwin's Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983, ISBN 0-521-78392-5.
 * Gilbert, Sandra M., and Gubar, Susan, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Press, 1979, ISBN 0-300-08458-7.
 * Hughes, Kathryn, George Eliot: The Last Victorian, New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1998, ISBN 0-374-16138-0.
 * Maddox, Brenda, George Eliot in Love, New York, St. Martin's Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0230105188.
 * Mintz, Steven. A Prison of Expectations: The Family in Victorian Culture, New York University Press, 1983.
 * Pinney, Thomas, ed., Essays of George Eliot, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963, ISBN 0-231-02619-6.
 * Rignall, John, ed., Oxford Reader's Companion to George Eliot, Oxford University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-19-860099-2
 * Shuttleworth, Sally, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Science: The Make-Believe of a Beginning, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984, ISBN 0-521-25786-7.
 * Speaight, Robert, George Eliot, London, Arthur Barker, 1954. (The English Novelists series)
 * Uglow, Jenny, George Eliot, London, Virago Press, 1987, ISBN 0-86068-400-8.

Critical studies

 * Alley, Henry, The Quest for Anonymity: The Novels of George Eliot, University of Delaware Press, 1997.
 * Beaty, Jerome, Middlemarch from Notebook to Novel: A Study of George Eliot's Creative Method, Champaign, Illinois, University of Illinois, 1960.
 * Calder, Simon. "George Eliot, Spinoza, and the Ethics of Literature" in Spinoza Beyond Philosophy, Beth Lord, ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2012, 268-187.
 * Carlisle, Clare, The Marriage Question: George Eliot's Double Life. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023.
 * Carroll, Alicia, Dark Smiles: Race and Desire in George Eliot, Ohio University Press, 2003.
 * Carroll, David, ed., George Eliot: The Critical Heritage, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971.
 * Daiches, David, George Eliot: Middlemarch, London, Edward Arnold, 1963.
 * Arnold, Jean, ed., Marz Harper, Lila, ed., George Eliot: Interdisciplinary Essays, Springer International Publishing, 2019.
 * Gatens, Moira. "The Art and Philosophy of George Eliot". Philosophy and Literature 33(1) 2009, pp. 74-90.
 * Graver, Suzanne, George Eliot and Community: A Study in Social Theory and Fictional Form, Berkeley, California, University of California Press, 1984.
 * Hardy, Barbara Nathan, The Novels of George Eliot: A Study in Form. Oxford UP, 1967.
 * Harvey, W J, The Art of George Eliot, London, Chatto & Windus, 1961.
 * Leavis, F R, The Great Tradition, London, Chatto & Windus, 1948.

Online editions

 * Works by George Eliot at the George Eliot Archive,
 * Works about George Eliot at the George Eliot Archive, George Eliot Review Online, and George Eliot Scholars

title: George Eliot


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Guru Meditation

Guru Meditation started as an error notice displayed by the Amiga computer when it crashes. It is now also used by Varnish, a software component used by many content-heavy websites. This has led to many internet users seeing a "Guru Meditation" message (or the variant "Guru Mediation") when these websites suffer crashes or other issues. It is analogous to the "Blue Screen of Death" in Microsoft Windows operating systems, or a kernel panic in Unix.

It has also been used as a message for unrecoverable errors in software packages such as VirtualBox and other operating systems (see Legacy section below).

Origins
The term "Guru Meditation Error" originated as an in-house joke in Amiga's early days. The company had a product called the Joyboard for the Atari 2600 home video game console, a game controller much like a joystick but operated by the feet, similar to the Wii Balance Board. Early in the development of the Amiga computer operating system, the company's developers became so frustrated with the system's frequent crashes that, as a relaxation technique, a game was developed where a person would sit cross-legged on the Joyboard, resembling an Indian guru. The player tried to remain extremely still; the winner of the game stayed still the longest. If the player moved too much, a "guru meditation" error occurred.

Description of "Guru Meditation" errors on the Amiga
The alert occurred when there was a fatal problem with the system. If the system had no means of recovery, it could display the alert, even in systems with numerous critical flaws. In extreme cases, the alert could even be displayed if the system's memory was completely exhausted.

The text of the alert messages was completely baffling to most users. Only highly technically adept Amiga users would know, for example, that exception 3 was an address error, and meant the program was accessing a word on an unaligned boundary. Users without this specialized knowledge would have no recourse but to look for a "Guru" or to simply reboot the machine and hope for the best.

Technical description (Amiga)
When a Guru Meditation is displayed, the options are to reboot by pressing the left mouse button, or to invoke ROMWack by pressing the right mouse button or to manually reboot. ROMWack is a minimalist debugger built into the operating system which is accessible by connecting a 9600 bit/s terminal to the serial port.

The alert itself appears as a black rectangular box located in the upper portion of the screen. Its border and text are red for a normal Guru Meditation, or green/yellow for a Recoverable Alert, another kind of Guru Meditation. The screen may go black, but the power LEDs always alternates between full and half-brightness for a few seconds before the alert appears. In AmigaOS 1.x, programmed in ROMs known as Kickstart 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3, the errors are always red. In AmigaOS 2.x and 3.x, recoverable alerts are yellow, except for some very early versions of 2.x where they were green.

Dead-end alerts are always red and terminal in all OS versions except in a rare series of events, as in when a deprecated Kickstart (example: 1.1) program conditionally boots from disk on a more advanced Kickstart 3.x ROM Amiga running in compatibility mode (therefore eschewing the on-disk OS) and crashes with a red Guru Meditation but subsequently restores itself by pressing the left mouse button, the newer Kickstart recognizing an inadvised low level chipset call for the older ROM directly poking the hardware, and addressing it.

The error is displayed as two fields, separated by a period. The format is  in case of a CPU error, or   in case of a system software error. The first field is either the Motorola 68000 exception number that occurred (if a CPU error occurs) or an internal error identifier (such as an "Out of Memory" code), in case of a system software error. The second can be the address of a Task structure, or the address of a memory block whose allocation or deallocation failed. It is never the address of the code that caused the error. If the cause of the crash is uncertain, this number is rendered as, which stands for "HELP" in hexadecimal ASCII characters (48=H, 45=E, 4C=L, 50=P).

Guru Meditation handler
There was a commercially available error handler for AmigaOS, before version 2.04, called GOMF (Get Outta My Face) made by Hypertek/Silicon Springs Development corp. It was able to deal with many kinds of errors and gave the user a choice to either remove the offending process and associated screen, or allow the machine to show the Guru Meditation. In many cases, removal of the offending process gave one the choice to save one's data and exit running programs before rebooting the system. When the damage was not extensive, one was able to continue using the machine. However, it did not save the user from all errors, as one may have still seen this error occasionally.

Recoverable Alerts
Recoverable Alerts are non-critical crashes in the computer system. In most cases, it is possible to resume work and save files after a Recoverable Alert, while a normal, red Guru Meditation always results in an immediate reboot.

It is, however, still recommended to reboot as soon as possible after encountering a Recoverable Alert, because the system may be in an unpredictable state that can cause data corruption.

System software error codes
The first byte specifies the area of the system affected. The top bit will be set if the error is a dead end alert.

Legacy

 * AmigaOS versions 4.0 and onwards replaced "Guru Meditation" with "Grim Reaper", but briefly mentions the Guru Meditation number in the prompt box.
 * MorphOS displays an "Application Is Meditating" error message. Attempting to close the application may revive the operating system, but restarting is still recommended.
 * Varnish references Guru Meditation for severe errors.
 * The ESP8266 and ESP32 microcontrollers will display "Guru Meditation Error: Core X panic'ed" (where X is 0 or 1 depending on which core crashed) along with a core dump and stack trace.
 * VirtualBox uses the term "Guru Meditation" for severe errors in the virtual machine monitor, for example caused by a triple fault in the virtual machine.
 * E23 displays a "Guru Meditation" and restarts when severe errors occur.
 * Some Nintendo DS homebrew titles display a "Guru Meditation" error when an issue occurs, likely when the title crashes.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Guru Meditation


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Gnumeric

Gnumeric is a spreadsheet program that is part of the GNOME Free Software Desktop Project. Gnumeric version 1.0 was released on 31 December 2001. Gnumeric is distributed as free software under the GNU General Public License; it is intended to replace proprietary spreadsheet programs like Microsoft Excel. Gnumeric was created and developed by Miguel de Icaza, but he has since moved on to other projects. The maintainer was Jody Goldberg.

Features
Gnumeric has the ability to import and export data in several file formats, including CSV, Microsoft Excel (write support for the more recent  format is incomplete ), Microsoft Works spreadsheets, HTML, LaTeX, Lotus 1-2-3, OpenDocument and Quattro Pro; its native format is the Gnumeric file format (  or  ), an XML file compressed with gzip. It includes all of the spreadsheet functions of the North American edition of Microsoft Excel and many functions unique to Gnumeric. Pivot tables and Visual Basic for Applications macros are not yet supported.

Gnumeric's accuracy has helped it to establish a niche for statistical analysis and other scientific tasks. For improving the accuracy of Gnumeric, the developers are cooperating with the R Project.

Gnumeric has an interface for the creation and editing of graphs different from other spreadsheet software. For editing a graph, Gnumeric displays a window where all the elements of the graph are listed. Other spreadsheet programs typically require the user to select the individual elements of the graph in the graph itself in order to edit them.

title: Gnumeric


text:
GNU Debugger

The GNU Debugger (GDB) is a portable debugger that runs on many Unix-like systems and works for many programming languages, including Ada, Assembly, C, C++, D, Fortran, Haskell, Go, Objective-C, OpenCL C, Modula-2, Pascal, Rust, and partially others.

History
GDB was first written by Richard Stallman in 1986 as part of his GNU system, after his GNU Emacs was "reasonably stable". GDB is free software released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It was modeled after the DBX debugger, which came with Berkeley Unix distributions.

From 1990 to 1993 it was maintained by John Gilmore. Now it is maintained by the GDB Steering Committee which is appointed by the Free Software Foundation.

Features
GDB offers extensive facilities for tracing and altering the execution of computer programs. The user can monitor and modify the values of programs' internal variables, and even call functions independently of the program's normal behavior.

GDB target processors (as of 2003) include: Alpha, ARM, AVR, H8/300, Altera Nios/Nios II, System/370, System 390, X86 and its 64-bit extension X86-64, IA-64 "Itanium", Motorola 68000, MIPS, PA-RISC, PowerPC, SuperH, SPARC, and VAX. Lesser-known target processors supported in the standard release have included A29K, ARC, ETRAX CRIS, D10V, D30V, FR-30, FR-V, Intel i960, 68HC11, Motorola 88000, MCORE, MN10200, MN10300, NS32K, Stormy16, and Z8000. (Newer releases will likely not support some of these.) GDB has compiled-in simulators for even lesser-known target processors such like M32R or V850.

GDB is still actively being developed. As of version 7.0 new features include support for Python scripting and as of version 7.8 GNU Guile scripting as well. Since version 7.0, support for "reversible debugging" — allowing a debugging session to step backward, much like rewinding a crashed program to see what happened — is available.

Remote debugging
GDB offers a "remote" mode often used when debugging embedded systems. Remote operation is when GDB runs on one machine and the program being debugged runs on another. GDB can communicate to the remote "stub" that understands GDB protocol through a serial device or TCP/IP. A stub program can be created by linking to the appropriate stub files provided with GDB, which implement the target side of the communication protocol. Alternatively, gdbserver can be used to remotely debug the program without needing to change it in any way.

The same mode is also used by KGDB for debugging a running Linux kernel on the source level with gdb. With KGDB, kernel developers can debug a kernel in much the same way as they debug application programs. It makes it possible to place breakpoints in kernel code, step through the code, and observe variables. On architectures where hardware debugging registers are available, watchpoints can be set which trigger breakpoints when specified memory addresses are executed or accessed. KGDB requires an additional machine which is connected to the machine to be debugged using a serial cable or Ethernet. On FreeBSD, it is also possible to debug using FireWire direct memory access (DMA).

Graphical user interface
The debugger does not contain its own graphical user interface, and defaults to a command-line interface, although it does contain a text user interface. Several front-ends have been built for it, such as UltraGDB, Xxgdb, Data Display Debugger (DDD), Nemiver, KDbg, the Xcode debugger, GDBtk/Insight, Seer, and HP Wildebeest Debugger GUI (WDB GUI). IDEs such as Codelite, Code::Blocks, Dev-C++, Geany, GNAT Programming Studio (GPS), KDevelop, Qt Creator, Lazarus, MonoDevelop, Eclipse, NetBeans, and Visual Studio can interface with GDB. GNU Emacs has a "GUD mode" and tools for Vim exist (e.g. clewn). These offer facilities similar to debuggers found in IDEs.

Some other debugging tools have been designed to work with GDB, such as memory leak detectors.

Internals
GDB uses a system call named ptrace (the name is an abbreviation of "process trace") to observe and control the execution of another process, and examine and change the process' memory and registers.

A breakpoint is implemented by replacing an instruction at a given memory address with another special instruction. Executing breakpoint instruction causes SIGTRAP.

An example session
Consider the following source-code written in C:

Using the GCC compiler on Linux, the code above must be compiled using the  flag in order to include appropriate debug information on the binary generated, thus making it possible to inspect it using GDB. Assuming that the file containing the code above is named, the command for the compilation could be: And the binary can now be run:

Since the example code, when executed, generates a segmentation fault, GDB can be used to inspect the problem.

The problem is present in line 7, and occurs when calling the function  (because its argument, , is  ). Depending on the implementation of strlen (inline or not), the output can be different, e.g.:

To fix the problem, the variable  (in the function  ) must contain a valid string. Here is a fixed version of the code:

Recompiling and running the executable again inside GDB now gives a correct result: GDB prints the output of  in the screen, and then informs the user that the program exited normally.

Documentation

 * Richard M. Stallman, Roland Pesch, Stan Shebs, et al., Debugging with GDB (Free Software Foundation, 2011) ISBN 978-0-9831592-3-0
 * GDB Internals

Tutorials

 * RMS's gdb Tutorial (Ryan Michael Schmidt, not Richard Matthew Stallman)
 * GDB Tutorial

title: GNU Debugger


text:
Talk:Goddess

Goddess
I see others have already noticed the articles lack of neutrality... or the errors in statement. I am far from an expert on the subject. However, I am personally aware that "Goddess" can be and used in monotheism, instead of exclusively as goddess of the polytheistic belief. Thus I find the very first statement the article makes to be... well simply wrong.

The Flower of Life

The convergence is that both Judaism and Christianity view God as an omnigender entity. It is both male and female, and neither at the same time.

However, especially with Christianity, it is equally as valid to see God, instead as the Goddess. Using the book I linked as an example, the theory is the following.

We see 'God' or 'Goddess', or a Prana/Force/Holy Spirit as separate because we are riding our bodies through our life. Everything around us is essentially transient and insubstantiel. However, we 'perceive' this realm as 'real'. That reason in reverse is why we see the Goddess as three separate entities.

Anyhow, I will end at that because this isn't the time or place. Yet, I felt a want to offer more than a single line statement. Thank you for sharing your time, and Force. Witkh13 (talk) 09:17, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Lack of Information on Sacred Feminine
The section on the 'sacred feminine' is both vague and disconnected. The only information provided is when and who popularized the term, without any definition or context. (A hint of definition exists in the beginning of the article, far away from its respective section.) As far as I can gather, it's an Americanized term that refers to a central importance of a feminine figure in worship. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.247.117.154 (talk) 16:37, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Jargon
Article's intro is so rife with jargon and POV I cannot read the rest now, but I have to comment on second and third paragraphs. ("As the concept of monotheism and polytheism can be relativistic, so too can related concepts be culturally misunderstood. The concept of gender as applied to a god and goddess, may connote deeper tendencies of patriarchy and matriarchy, which may have equivalence to the rift between monotheism and polytheism. The Goddess concept is advocated by modern matriarchs and pantheists as a female version of, or analogue to God, (i.e. the Abrahamic god) who in feminist and other circles is perceived as being rooted in patriarchal concept of dominance— much to the exclusion of feminine concepts. Use of parallel language such as "patriarchy" and "matriarchy" to indicate gender tendencies can add to the misunderstanding of the social organizational preferences of women and men, as evidenced in archaeological and cultural anthropological findings.)What the heck does this mean? Run on sentence plus jargon = confusion, but I think the writer's point and POV is that insinuating gender distinction into religion is, well, dumb. Now, I happen to disagree, in that I think it may not even be possible for human beings to de-genderize concepts of deity - so why not get it out into the open? And in discussing gender and religion, why not seek NPOV in the finest Wikipedia tradition? People believe in Goddesses; that's a fact, and shouldn't that fact and its various expressions in human culture and history be the subject of this essay? SC 04:31, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

 * I am in total agreement with you on that. The introduction is not very comprehensible and seems lacking in understanding of the theology of polytheism, and the article as a whole seems to be focused on a few apparently arbitrarily selected topics while completely ignoring many others (what about the goddesses of various ancient polytheistic religions? the "Great Mother/Mother Goddess" myth? goddesses in other forms of Neopaganism besides Wicca? goddesses in literature? women as goddesses as a part of feminist self-empowerment rather than a recognition of sex appeal - for example, the Go Goddess! board game?) - AdelaMae (talk - contribs) 18:40, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Signature removal
attention Shan, I've removed your signature--no offense, I hope. We have long since stopped signing Wikipedia articles. A few of us did in the first few months, but it's long become clear that, in a collaborative environment, signing an article tends to make people less likely to contribute to an article. --LMS

Lawrence that's fine. I thought I saw some comment in intro text that we could sign or not optionally. If it is true memory and not mistake from learning curve, and I come across it again I'll let you know so it can be deleted as out of date. Shan Jayran

Oy, yes, we need to delete that. --LMS

Some cited source(s)
I have to ask here one particular cited source may be invalid. It comes from the The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets By Barabara Walker. The problem is she has much critizism in the area of historical accuracy. > Some of Barbara's sources are outdated, not cited(at all), or says something completely diffrent than what she says. Could someone either fix this (in the Arabia sec) or confirm it's authenticity with an outside source? Xuchilbara 00:56, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

 * I would have to agree that Barbara Walker is not the best source to use. Academic ones are preferred. If you have the information required to fix that part, I encourage you to do so. ~ Kathryn NicDhàna  ♫ ♦ ♫ 04:49, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Passage clarification request
I don't understand this passage, I think it needs to be cleared up, or perhaps deleted.

"While most societies have goddesses, if not now not long ago, it is Western societies that have most obviously taken Goddess devotion and forged with it both a resting place and a battle ground of gender. Women and men alike look to Goddess to heal the lack of power they feel and create a new way of being spiritual. This is a spirituality not of either/or, but of both/and, so that body becomes sacred in both menstrual and seminal ways, and heaven is crafted here in an inevitably changing, unstable earth, rather than glimpsed far away somewhere else as an absolute. (cf. creation spirituality) "

 * The first centence refers to which time period? Now? If anyone can specify this?
 * The second centence seems to me to refer to wicca, in its modern variety. Is this meant or if not, can it be clarified?
 * The third sentence seems too general to me. It suggests that what is there is true for all Goddess-worship, while it seems to me to be known for more modern versions (wicca again).

kh7 06:54 Apr 4, 2003 (UTC)

'Goddessing'
The first half of the article discusses some kind of neo 'Goddessing' concept, seemingly labelling it as a distinct belief set or philosophy but neglecting to define it or demarcate it with historical discussion of goddess(es). IMHO the whole top of this page should be completely rewritten, the lower part should be mostly moved to Pagan and simply paragraphed with a link. --prat
 * Just to clarify, does anyone know the background that most of the top half of the page comes from? If we can't find it, I say we chop it.    --prat

POV issues
This article is quite POV and I've spent awhile trying to balance it out somewhat with alternative views. —Ashley Y 13:46, Nov 15, 2003 (UTC)
 * I agree. This article needs a major rewrite, a reworking into something less like a thealogian's exposition of principles and more like an encyclopedia article: it needs to be just a bit more dispassionate and neutral in tone. --Mirv 07:00, 26 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * I despair of editing this. In the end I can only add my own (quite contrary) POV to its POV, which NPOV does not quite make. —Ashley Y 01:29, Feb 1, 2004 (UTC)

Problems
This article is rife with problems. It not only promotes misconceptions and ideological fallacies about Hinduism, but it completely misreads worldwide Goddess culture by seeing it as some new-fangled Euro-American cult without considering the major influence of long-standing traditions in India and elsewhere. The author(s) were limited by not knowing any sort of theological nomenclature outside of 'monotheism' and 'polytheism' and thus gave horribly inaccurate descriptions of Hindu goddess worship. Also, proper terminology and better knowledge of the history of Hindu goddess worship, which is really the only major goddess religion of many years, would inform the seemingly 'new' ones coming up in the new-age goddess worship culture so popular in the states. I don't know whether I will or won't dedicate time to this page, but misconceptions I will try to work on, as I have begun a bit today. --LordSuryaofShropshire 14:35, Jun 16, 2004 (UTC)

 * I agree with most of this. But could we remove the Hinduism link block? I certainly think the Hinduism sections are helpful, but at the same time, this article should not be just a piece in the Hindu puzzle. —Ashley Y 04:54, 2004 Jun 20 (UTC)

 * Absolutely... I don't remember putting in the Hinduism message link board thinggy (what the heck is it called!?) and it shouldn't be there.... frankly, I feel that since Hinduism is the only major extant religion with heavy Goddess worship, it's important, but is amply dealt with in Devi (which means Goddess). So, references are vital, especially since most Wiccan and 'neo-pagan' rituals are often derived from Hindu Tantric and devotional practice. --LordSuryaofShropshire 05:20, Jun 20, 2004 (UTC)

Rituals
I like the Hindu and Devi references... but not because "most Wiccan and 'neo-pagan' rituals are often derived" from them; FYI that statement is probably as accurate (and offensive) as saying most Moslem and Christian rituals are probably derived from Judaic devotional practices. The statement causes more need for clarification than clarity. SC 04:31, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Reorg?
I'm thinking this should be reorganised something along these lines:

 * (intro)
 * Hinduism
 * Judaism & Christianity
 * Neopaganism & the Goddess movement

...and where other cultures can be added in (Shinto for instance). —Ashley Y 09:49, 2004 Jun 21 (UTC)

 * That's a good idea, though I would say that cultures like Christianity and Judaism, whose "goddess" culture isn't really tenable aside from some marginalized Mother Mary sects (such as the Fatima in Portugal), should come towards the end. I mean, Hinduism, Shintoism, and the BUddhist 'Tara' (and its connection with the Tara of earlier Hindu culture), and of course greek and Roman cultures, plus current views on modern goddess worship, such as Gnostics, Hindus, Shintos, and the New-agers/Wiccas... --LordSuryaofShropshire 16:55, Jun 21, 2004 (UTC)

OK, I've reorganised it, but it still needs work. I think "Neopaganism" and "the Goddess movement" sections need to be merged. —Ashley Y 10:14, 2004 Jul 9 (UTC)

Split?
I'm thinking maybe we have two articles here, one about goddesses (including any monotheistic Goddess) in all cultures, and one about the Goddess movement in the West. Perhaps this article should be split? —Ashley Y 06:04, 2004 Oct 16 (UTC)

OK, I've done this. Sections still might need to be moved around, but I'm hoping this will make overall editing and so on a bit more tractable. —Ashley Y 04:10, 2004 Oct 21 (UTC)

Satanic Verses
Pre-Islamic Arabia, and indeed in parts of Persia, there was dozens, if not hundreds of Goddesses. This Sub-Sectin does not deal with these Goddesses, but with 3 mentioned in the 'Satanic Veses', and about the novel by Salman Rushdie with the same name. The Section was, thus, poorly names, and I renamed it. --195.7.55.146 12:38, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

 * I see. But clearly the scope of the paragraph is wider, and more goddesses should be added, or at least the fact that there were more should be explained. Don't change the title, fix the paragraph! dab (ᛏ) 14:21, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

 * Most of it is arguments too and fro, that should more likely be located be the article Satanic Verses. There is little information about actual worship or anything such, it should probably be pre-islamic arabia with a footnote about their cameo in islam. Unless something more substantial can be found.--Tigeroo 19:42, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Modern popular culture
I don't think people currently associate the term godess with female deity. All males I know think godess refers to Britney, Beyonce, Basinger, Bundhen or Kidman (not mention Elle the Body). No one cares a damn about feminist whinings against no priesthood for chicks. -Anonymous

Anonymous, please stop holding back and tell us what you really think. SC 04:31, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Kari Byron is a godess, the fact that you reverted my edit, is offensive towards my religion! - Rift14
 * I think that this whole goddess thing is wrong. Mainly because of how it is fake and a crazy thing to worship. Don't you agree? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Biblereader (talk • contribs).

 * Oh I agree, its as crazy as worshipping that Jesus wierdo —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.207.208.6 (talk) 10:36, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Gaia
How can you go through all this information about "Goddess" and neglect to mention Gaia? ...and Daphne...the priestess of Gaia? A phenomenal book called THE GREAT GODDESS by Jean Markale would lend greatly to the information found in your discussion about "Goddess". The introduction especially offers a great amount of history and information about the development of goddess culture and belief and how it was supplanted by a patriarchal oriented society.....NRS

 * Well we wouldn't mention Daphne because this page is about GODDESSES, not their various priests or priestesses. Secondly the historic Daphne was a priest of Apollo, not Gaia. And finally because the "goddess culture" was never supplanted by anything, it never existed to begin with. Gods and Goddesses co-existed with each other in the ancient world's mythology. This page is about the history of concept of goddesses, not modern fiction.

The Goddess in Wicca
The Wicca and Neopaganism section contains the prominent and rather provocative statement that
 * Wiccan mythology mostly draws on historically inaccurate depictions of European mythology

while other Neopagan religions supposedly are much more accurate. While Wicca has a specific understanding of the Goddess that is somewhat different from other traditions (historical or modern), I think it's a little unjust to label us as "historically inaccurate" for this. Early authors on Wicca theorised that the religion was the survival of a pan-European witch-cult concerned with the worship of a Goddess and God - these theories have long been discredited though, and I suspect that only a minority of Wiccans still believe in a wide-scale organised witch-cult during the witch-trials. Interestingly, the historical widespread association of goddess-figures with witchcraft in Europe is now fairly convincingly confirmed by such notable historians as Carlo Ginzburg and Eva Pocs.

There has been some influence on Wicca from authors like Robert Graves and James Frazer, which could be called historically inaccurate, but as far as I can make out, the only clearly identifiable influence from these sources has been in books by Wiccan or Wiccan-inspired authors - the teachings and rituals in the Book of Shadows and other traditional sources are somewhat different. Graves' concept of the Triple Goddess, for instance, is not found in traditional Wiccan sources, which tend to treat the Goddess as a single being. The concept does, however appear in the works of certain Wiccan authors, and has been repeated ad nauseam by hundreds of Wiccanesque and neopagan books.

Saying this, I have no problem with the Maiden/Mother/Crone aspects of the Goddess — they are true aspects of her — however I don't claim that these aspects grouped in this way were a widespread phenomenon throughout Europe.

Trying to understand how the Wiccan religion was formulated and has continued to develop, I would say it has been led by what worked rather than an attempt to match some historical standard. I don't think most Wiccans consider Wicca to be a 'revival' religion - we view our Goddess a particular way because that's the way she speaks to us, not because that's what some fellow wrote down a couple of hundred years ago.

Wicca's early history is rather confused, I admit. However the major confusion nowadays, as I see it, is from a new generation of "Eclectic" Wiccans, who often step onto their spiritual path armed with a strong sense of "whatever works for me is just fine". This is great, but by calling this Wicca they're eroding the religion's popular image to the point where it can encompass any concepts or none. A whole industry of books has appeared to serve this market, often bearing almost no resemblance to Wicca and certainly often lacking in historical accuracy. I'm rather unhappy at seeing Wicca become a term of amusement because of the shortcomings of some non-traditional Wiccans. Before I go too far in offending people, I should say that I know and work with several witches of non-Wiccan persuasion who are very competent. They don't call themselves Wiccans (serious witches in NZ realise the difference), but I'm sure there are very competent "Eclectic Wiccans" too. Initiatory Wiccans don't claim to have the monopoly on being serious and competent. But what these other witches and neopagans do is different to traditional Wicca (more so than many of them realise), and if they are misrepresenting my religion, it's a real pain.

Sorry, that became a rant. But my reasoning stands: most Wiccans (traditional at least) don't claim that their religion is historically-based (perhaps historically-inspired in some respects though), therefore claims of historical inaccuracy are unjustified. Fuzzypeg 06:55, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
 * This is a simple fact. Wicca is a mishmash of unrelated cultures and largely historically inaccurate depictions of aspects of those cultures beginning at its its very Abrahamic monotheism-influenced Gardnerian origins. This should be stated pretty up front when compared to other groups, since there are various reconstructive groups that are exactly the opposite, despite the misunderstandings surrounding the common "neopagan" classification and it is one of the most basic differences between them to outsiders. I suggest you look into polytheistic reconstructist groups - Some of the more informative ones documented on Wikipedia are Germanic neopaganism groups - where the necessity of such a description may become more apparent. bloodofox: 09:31, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Wicca is only historically inaccurate in regards to the claim that it is a direct survival of a European witch-cult, which, as I expressed above, is now a minority view (I believe). Would you call Vodou historically inaccurate simply because the slaves in Haiti incorporated elements of diverse religions and societies, using whatever appealed to them and whatever worked? Of course not (even though they have their mythical history too). Basically, the development of a religion is quite a complex affair. It is unavoidably influenced by other religions and philosophies, both current and historical, and there is also a great deal of internal development that will mark it as different from anything else. If you limit your analysis to only historical external influences, and view them in light of an old theory that has long fallen into disrepute, you are both oversimplifying and being unjust. I think the concept you're looking for is not "historically inaccurate" but rather "syncretic".
 * I also notice you have sectioned off part of the text as a "Wicca" subsection. This needs changing, because most of it is unrelated to core Wiccan tradition, being rather the beleifs of certain sub-groups or individuals. The ideas are nice, but not representative of Wicca. I'll have a go at writing something better when I get the time (I was going to do this anyway). Fuzzypeg 01:39, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

 * I'm not interested in a lecture regarding religious developments, a religion that founded in 1954 cannot be compared to a subsect of Africans who were colonialized and seperated from their original culture. However, to state that Wicca is some sort of "continuation" of any tradition is simply wrong and misleading. Wicca is most defitely not the only form of neopaganism there and a very small percentage of "Wicca" then and now has anything to do with previous pre-Christian indigenous European practices. bloodofox: 05:16, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

 * This is a straw doll argument. As I have said twice now, I don't think most Wiccans believe Wicca is a continuation of a pre-existing tradition. It is largely syncretic in that it draws from diverse areas such as folklore, freemasonry, solomonic magic, modern poetry and literature, etc., etc. It has also, like other syncretic religions, undergone its own internal development based on discovering what works.
 * And of course I can compare Wicca with Vodou if I have a valid point to make. Vodou is a good and obvious example of a syncretic religion.
 * I understand from looking at your talk page that you probably represent one of these Germanic reconstructionist religions mentioned in the article, and that's great, however I detect from the original wording in the article, and from your comments here, a certain "holier than thou" attitude that makes me squirm. I see you have several criticisms on your discussion page regarding historicism too. I suggest that perhaps you are so immersed in the labours of historical validation that you're forgetting that not all religions see themselves as historically-based.
 * Most religions have a certain amount to be embarassed about, particularly when it comes to the myths surrounding their inception, but it is common practice to treat them with a lot more charity than this article was treating Wicca. And I'm serious, I think your conception of Wicca as a hodge-podge of happy goddess-y stuff is based on misrepresentation. As a Wiccan High Priest and a serious occultist with years of experience in Qabalah, Freemasonry, Vodou and other ceremonial magic, in my experience Wicca has been by far the most effective, challenging, rewarding, joyful, scary and beautiful of all my practices (it also encompasses all my other practices in that wonderful way that a syncretic religion can). The Wiccan initiates I know are amongst the most competent priests and priestesses and the the most skillful ritualists I have met. Fuzzypeg 06:18, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

OK, I've finally got around to rewriting the section. I'm not sure I've included all the necessary references yet; I'll go back and check soon. (running short on time right now) I've yanked some stuff that I couldn't really figure out how to include: I don't recognise it as any common form of Wicca. If anyone wants to claim it, make sense of it and put it in its appropriate place under Neopagan religions (not under Wicca, I believe), feel free.
 * They revere the yoni or vulva as a symbol of the Goddess, together with the cowrie shell, the (Moon) Crescent, the Earth, the Serpent, the Tree, the five pointed pentagram and the Eight Pointed Star, the Quartered Circle (compare Celtic Cross), and many animals and birds.

The following text includes several epithets that don't to my knowledge have common Wiccan use; also the list of different cultural goddesses seems to serve no particular purpose: these are no more prominent deities for Wiccan worship than any other:
 * In some New Age and Wiccan-influenced religions, the Goddess can appear as the "Lady of the Ten Thousand Names", as did Isis. Adherents refer to her as 'Queen of Heaven', 'Lady of the Beasts', 'Creatrix' and just 'the Lady.' Worshippers sometimes approach her through "different aspects," represented by often culturally unrelated goddesses such as Sarasvati, Lakshmi, Uma, Kali (of the Hindu tradition), Isis, Guan Yin, Pele or Athena in a form of universalism.

I'm quite happy to leave both of these sections of text out of the article. Neither seem particularly representative of Wicca or any other prominent Neopagan religion that I know of. Fuzzypeg ☻ 07:35, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

These two sentences are unclear or confused IMHO: "She is described as a kind of tribal Goddess of the witch community,[2] who seems largely to be modelled on Aradia, the messianic daughter of Diana described in Charles Leland's Aradia. She was held to be neither omnipotent nor universal, and it was recognised that there was a greater "Prime Mover", although the witches did not concern themselves much with this being." Granting Gardener's importance to Wiccan thought, "a tribal Goddess of the witch community" is just a description of his and I don't think it reflects a common view in contemporary Wicca, as the heading would suggest. If Gardener's description is to be in there, it should be stated as such: "According to Gerald Gardener..." The second part of the first sentence asserts that the Wiccan Goddess is "largely modeled" after Aradia. That seems like an overstrong claim, and no source is given. Leeland's Aradia is a messianic figgure, but is it fair to say that about the Wiccan concept of Goddess in general? The second sentence seems to refer to Aradia, rather than the Goddess. Again, if it stays it should begin something like "Aradia was held to be...." Furthermore, the second uses the past tense and refers to "the witches," as if it were a direct quote from Gardener or some other 50s text. I think the two sentences should be deleted, and if not should be revised. Thoughts? D. Winchell 01:10, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

 * I've done a little clarification, and removed the reference to Aradia. Treat this as a preliminary suggestion; feel free to alter further or remove the sentence entirely. I note though that I don't believe this statememt is only of historical interest; it helps indicate that there are alternative views amongst Wiccans, and in fact there are some who still regard the Goddess in these terms. Fuzzypeg ☻ 01:59, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I have removed 'and "the Lady"'. As a practicing Wiccan of 20 years, I have never heard the Goddess refered to as 'the Lady'-SE —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.25.109.195 (talk) 15:35, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

 * I'm not that concerned about your change to the article, but I thought I'd comment that while I've only been an initiate for half that time, I've found our Goddess more commonly referred to as "The Lady" than as anything else. Both in schlock pop publications which have little to do with initiatory Wicca, and in Alexandrian and Gardnerian covens. "The Lady" just rolls off the tongue really well, I guess... Fuzzypeg★ 01:58, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

"Secular use" section
It is not immediatey obvious to me that this section is encyclopedic. Jkelly 23:38, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
 * It is a little more fleshed out now, with several examples in Shakespeare. I think there's literary and sociological interest in references to goddess as metaphor, which this section briefly touches on. - Reaverdrop ( talk /nl) 00:53, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
 * That is a bit better. "Goddess as metaphor" seems like a perfectly reasonable section.  It's the danger of a "List of women called goddesses by news reporters" that I am concerned about.  Jkelly 00:56, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Without looking, I'm sure someone has already created such a list for an entry on Maxim magazine. - Reaverdrop ( talk /nl) 00:59, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

4.4 Religious Feminism Section
Section 4.4 Religious Feminism was marked as a "stub" that needed more material in it. So I wrote a couple of paragraphs. I also added references for this material to the References section. Hope it's okay.Judith Laura 21:04, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Early Islamic historians referencing
Re: the inclusion of the early Islamic historians. If a further citation is needed and their pages on Wikipedia are not adequate then I suggest you may need to remove the unsubstantiated claim that their writings were forgeries. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.135.200.247 (talk • contribs • WHOIS )

 * I suggest that the section really needs a copyedit -- we introduce the two scholars in question twice now. Jkelly 23:50, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

It is the claim that their writings are forgeries which is in fact unsubtantiated. The opinion of an Egyptian politician of the 19th century should not be considered definitive. Both of the Islamic historians are highly regarded. Geryon2006 23:52, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

What is the point of mentioning Rushdie's work on the section about Islam? The quality of this section's content is quite bad and, unlike Judaism and Christianity, is irrelevant to the subject. --24.211.184.243 11:14, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
 * It seems more like things that should be moved to the Satanic verses page where it is more relevant, with a short cameo mention about its featuring in an Islamic controversy and re-focus on the actual pre-arabian goddesses and that area in general.--Tigeroo 19:44, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Lilith?
This is really annoying, I came ot this page and it looks like some femenist or Lilith lover has edited this page with a demon, I think it should be taken off, especially since the  Lilith as a Goddess is a modern creation.. But instead I see someone lumped her in the Mesopotamian section. Obviously someone here has not done their research. And put two pictures of her? Why 2 pictures? Why not pictures of OTHER Goddesses? Why is the 2nd pic in the HINDUISM section? (Wouldn't you think Kali or Uma (goddess) would be a more appropiate Goddess for that section? Seeing as Lilith has ntohign to do with India or Hinduism.) And the first pic is a 19th centuary painting of Lilith, why can't we have a pic of ancient Ishtar or a REAL Mesopotamian Goddess picture?(all the other Goddess pictures are.) Besdies, the 2nd picture is of that of the Burney relief which is arguably Lilith, but has NEVER been proven to be her, in fact it's less likely to be Lilith than how it is optimistically potrayed as such.

Someone needs to do some clean up and research, because Lilith is no Goddess in ancient sense, which someone has lumped her in with Ancient KNOWN Mesopotamian Goddesses. WTF? True she is Mesopotamian, but she's a female night demon! Sounds like someone is trying to re-write history.

In fact maybe there should be a section talking about Lilith modern day reinvention as a Goddess.(In a Neopagan sense. She's usally listed as a Hebrew Goddess by Modern sense.) becasue I assure you putting her in there with Ishtar(Who's comparable to Inanna, in which Lilith was mentioned with in the Epic of Gilgamesh, and that's Mesopotamian !  Notice the describtion demon Lilith.) is a insult to the Mesopotamian religion. They never worshipped her as a goddess at all, she was feared and/or avoided. I'd also like to see some more citations in this article.

And on Lilith's wiki you can see that she's a demon, first sentence is:

(I think we had a debate on in her article awhile back too. You can see the evidence that she's a demon, especially in the discussion page.)

I normally wouldn't make a big deal of it, but the Lilith thing in this article is not matching up historically, or to the ancient worshippers. Xuchilbara 20:14, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Provided that there actually were any ancient worshippers... Tom e rtalk  07:33, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

There aren't any of Lilith, I know that much. Whereas we have evidence of ancient worship(temples etc) and accounts for the others. Lilith doesn't have any. Because she isn't a Goddess.Xuchilbara 22:15, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

 * Looking at the history of the article, both pics were actually in the Mesopotamia section. It just looked like one was in the Hinduism section because it extended down that far. The pre-raphelite painting was a quite recent addition. Now what constitutes a god or goddess? Must they be kind and beautiful to be given that title? I think of some of the Norse Gods, figures like Loki, Hel and so on, who were called gods, but had some pretty scary sides to their characters. I can well imagine that some considered them demons, and I can just as easily imagine some ancient people considering Lilith a goddess. I haven't gone looking for references yet, but I know that this Wikipedia article is not the first place that claimed her as a Goddess. I can think of one source from 1900, Charles Leland in an appendix to Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches. That of course is not the kind of citation we're looking for here, but lets not be too surprised if we actually do find evidence that she was revered as a goddess. I'll start looking.
 * A hint: if you use your "show preview" button rather than the "save page" button while you're still working on your post, the history page won't get cluttered up with scores of separate edits. Otherwise when another editor tries to do a diff against an older version, it's all the more likely that that version will have dropped off the bottom of the displayed list, making it much more of a rigmarole. Fuzzypeg ☻ 21:27, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

 * OK, there were two Babylonian deities, En-lilla and Nan-lilla ("Lord of the mists" and "Lady of the mists"), who seem also to have been Bel (note: not Bel-Marduk) and Beltu - "Lord" and "Lady". "Beltu" came to be a title given to many goddesses. It is from this figure that "Lilith" is derived. I don't know anything about the Dr. M. G. Magee who wrote the page I found, but it looks fairly reasonable. It seems to establish her origins in a fairly eminent goddess, however it still doesn't say much about how she was perceived by the time she was called Lilith.
 * It seems clear that Lilith was not (widely) considered a goddess by that name, but has her origins in a major goddess. However she may have still been a goddess in some applications, or for a minority of people. We can find many similar situations in later mythology: for example the German Frau Perchta is widely considered a demonic figure, dangerous to pregnant women and children, while some traditions see her as benificent and protectress of mothers and children; the Alarvady from Azerbaijan and Georgia is seen in almost identical terms; the ancient Hecate again is seen in almost identical terms; also the Rusalky of the Ukraine, etc., etc. All these figures have been described with two completely polarised characters, as witch- or ghost-like malevolent figures who attack children and mothers, and as the protectresses of children and mothers.
 * That Lilith might have had a positive side is of course pure supposition on my part. However my meagre research so far was not likely to have found any such evidence, and I'm not yet satisfied that she wasn't a goddess in some applications at least (even a malevolent goddess like Ereshkigal!). I suggest a   tag might be appropriate. Fuzzypeg ☻  22:21, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

IDk if this'll help. The debate is argued fairly well here: http://www.lilitu.com/lilith/lil_alt-myth.html

And this is a good source on Lilith herself : http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~humm/Topics/Lilith/

Xuchilbara 23:24, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

 * I don't know. I can't make out what these say about Dr. Magee's info, and I don't have the time to research further. I'm not terribly fussed whether or not she appears in the Mesopotamian goddesses section, but perhaps we should remove her for the moment. It sounds like if she was a "goddess", she was either revered under a different name or else by a minority of people. She could be listed under "Neopagan goddesses" if need be. If someone wants to list her in the section where she currently is, the onus can be on them to supply evidence. Sound OK? 210.55.244.243 00:00, 6 November 2006 (UTC) Sorry, WP logged me out: Fuzzypeg ☻ 00:02, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I'll defenatley accept that. I'll won't deny her modern reinvention as one. Thanks.

The thing that bothered me was that you go to Lilith's page and it's saying something a little on the contrary to this article's claims. We had issue's with the goddess thing before on her aricle and it came under many discussions. finally, some ppl cleaned it up enough, where we don't see this anymore, which is good, and you can see her actual history. (Although I wish more was added like about her daughter of the same name.) Th disscusion page of Lilith's is real intresting, I would suggest reading it.

Another thing was the Burney relief picture with the inscription Lilith. The fact is that some ppl opitimisticaly assumed this to be her, with much enthuasim.(As many WANT Lilith to be a Goddess and it somehow hold up in history, unfortunaley this is not the case. This is where alot of debate comes in, well some of it.. Some of the Neo pagans are trying in words of many others "re-write history" about her. I've notice the shakey history, Neo pagan thing to extend far beyond Lilith. Such as with many Wiccan/Neo Pagan authors out there. )But more evidence shows it to be Ereshkigal or her sister Ishtar rather than Lilith. So I didn't think the claim right off about Lilith to be accurate. Evidence is showing the conrary about the relief, and most scholarly opinion is that it's one of the two Goddesses I named. So I didn't think it appropiate, and I had to call it like I see it.

I think it was the fact that this article inaccurately potrayed Lilith to be a Mesopotamian deity, without citation, lack of historical evidence, and is basing this claim on many modern Feminist and Neo Pagan views. It started out with Lilith becoming a feminist icon, for her refusal of Adam, claiming they are equal, it escalated to a belief that Lilith was a Goddess, demonized by the wicked Jewish patriarchal socity or a original Matriarcal society turned Patriachal and their consequent distest of females and anything feminine. Though there are cases of this, for example the Goddess Astarte to the demon Astaroth.(One reason being that she was worshipped in the same temples of God, and some of the religious leader distain of this.)

this isn't found with Lilith however, I remember someone claiming on the owl page that Lilith was a Iraq Goddess, this I've never heard before, not just in modern view, but also in historical view.(And Lilith's page certinaly doesn't support this.) Most Neo Pagan's in books I read etc, take thier sources on her as a "Hebrew Goddess", taken from the Adam & Lilith Jewish myth as mentioned above. the biggest ironic thing here is that Eve's ( Ninti's story.) myth and herself actually DOES have Goddess orgins rooted in the story of Adapa and Enki. Whereas Lilith never has. However some modern opinion sees Lilith and Hecate as to have paralels or the same, the more of fact is that Lilith is thought of as the Greek equalivent of Lamia(Greek for witch) rather than Hecate. Lamias' being Hecate's children in some stories.

One other thing that i fnd wrong a little with this article(off subject of Lilith real quick) is how it ignores Mesoamerican & African Goddesses and their roles in religions, I do remember that the Goddess plays a huge role in Voodun. A good example is the African Goddesses Oshun & Yemaja.

Xuchilbara 00:46, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

 * The Goddess playing a huge role in Vodou: I can't really say so much about Nigerian Vodoun, but Haitian Vodou is a monotheism, rather like Roman Catholicism. The various Loa, of which there are thousands (though a few very widely-worshipped ones) are powerful spirits, but they are not gods, although many show signs of having evolved from African or native Indian gods. The most loved female loa is probably Erzulie, loa of love and beauty; she has an alter-ego as La Siren ("the Mermaid"), wife of Agwe king of the sea.
 * I don't consider her a goddess, though, and I believe most Vodouisants make this same distinction. Fuzzypeg ☻ 11:12, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd have to be more skilled on the subject, so I can't say exactly either. Voodoo varies from area and influence I think. Xuchilbara 21:06, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup
Oh dear Goddesses, does this article need work. I made a start. The only way I could avoid deleting even more of the opening was to place *citation needed* tags. I can source some of that, but don't have time tonight. I only glanced at other sections, but saw a lot of problems. If we don't overhaul this ourselves, and pretty soon, I think we'll need to place a general cleanup flag on it. ~ Kathryn NicDhàna ♫ ♦ ♫ 05:16, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

 * Urgh. I have to agree the article is a shambles. It lacks overarching cohesion and focus. It's one of the more randomly constructed articles I've seen. I'm tempted to just start anew. (thinking hard). We'll see what can be done with this mess. -- Pig manTalk to me 02:17, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

 * OK, just as a point of comparison, take a look at what the article was like in July of 2004. Yes, there were plenty of problems as well but it had a bit more readability and cohesion. I'm particularly looking at the listcruft of the various cultures' goddesses which has crept into the current version of the article. I feel like scrapping all of that stuff, particularly since a sizable portion of it is wrong. Still thinking but I'm leaning toward being bold about this. Comments? -- Pig manTalk to me 00:06, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

 * Do it while the inspiration's hot. I've struggled with this article a little too; I ended up just contenting myself with trying to get the Wicca section working, because the whole thing was too much to bite off. I'm in favour of being bold. Fuzzypeg ☻ 20:26, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Christianity...
I had a few questions about the Christianity section, which I wanted to ask because they seem wrong to me, but I no expert. One (I don't know how to quote): The blanket statement that 'Christianity' views God as genderless in general strikes me as wrong... while there are sects that do, there are those that don't as well, so the blanket statement is not appropriate. Also, why are members of the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints only 'professedly Christian?'While unfamiliar with their beliefs, they have 'Jesus Christ' in their name, and such a statement seems to be neglecting NPOV. Or, if 'Professedly' is supposed to be a reference to the way in which they believe in the Heavenly Mother, that sentence should be restructured so as to avoid confusion.

More Cleanup
First of all, what the hell is a "pentabarf"?

Second, as with a few other entries on Sikhism I've seen on wikipedia, the one here looks like it was written by a devotee and sounds preachy, it stands out from the rest of the article and doesn't sound objective.Rglong 06:18, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

 * Wow, okay, apparently there really is such a thing as the pentabarf. However it comes from what seems to be a parodic religion.  That should be mentioned.Rglong 06:21, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Just to add what was mentioned above: it seems like a lot of the sentences are too long and disorganized. There were way too many commas being used and there was no direct point coming across in the article. The information is too convoluted and I think this article needs to have major improvements with regard to spelling and grammar, but most importantly sentence structure. The information needs to be presented in a more clear and concise manner. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Agallin2 (talk • contribs) 23:38, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

A valid source? (under Christianity)
From the article:

"Some people believe that the example of Jesus and the tradition of centuries has Christians refer to and address God as "Father", not "Mother". However, this is not the real meaning of the words Jesus used to describe the deity. The original words have a meaning of both mother and father."

There's no source for this that's cited, and I think it's a pretty big thing to say without a source. If there's a valid source, I think that information would be very interesting. Without one, though, it seems not so believable.JamisonK 09:39, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Citations and POV-pushing
While I won't try to deny that a Prime Goddess is a widespread belief, this article seems to push its argument (which it shouldn't actually have) in a few odd places - for example, the Sikhism or some of the Abrahamic sections, where the belief that the prime god is not defined by physical gender like humans allows it to be interpreted as a Goddess - when gender neutral would actually place it farther from Goddess than even God (male) would be.

It also has a woeful lack of sources in places where they are badly needed - I'm sure you all know the opening, but other sections seem more like someone trying to post their own reasoning, and less like synthesis from available sources. Not even Mr. Lister's Koromon survived intact. 23:44, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

 * Also, the tone is rather woeful, telling us "some people believe this", "some people believe that". Sure it has been common practice to depict and describe God as masculine, and that's fair to say, but dwelling on what people believe and how wrong they are, rather than cutting to the chase and just stating facts gives this section a polemical tone. Fuzzypeg ☻ 23:29, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Grammar
In the section under "Judaism", there are some statements made about the grammatical gender of Hebrew terms for God that are not referenced in the original laguage (e.g., merely to say that YHWH is feminine is insufficient--what verb-derived form is it specifically?) and which have no citations. I don't have a problem with the statements as long as they are properly cited and referenced. I would also point out that the translation of "El Shaddai" as "breasted" or "many-breasted god" is not uncontroversial. From what I understand, shaddai could also be construed as "god of the mountains", since the root from which shaddai comes is ambiguous. I'm not an expert on this, and I don't mind the contentions--I just think it should be made clear that there are different perspectives on this in order to avoid POV problems, and that grammatical claims should be specific and properly referenced. Turmarion (talk) 17:01, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I highly doubt (from my limited knowledge, albeit) that YHWH was feminine for the simple reason that in earlier times he was known to have a female consort, Asherah. 24.36.78.185 (talk) 22:42, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Section about Madonna and the Goddess
Pop singer Madonna often deals with the theme of the Goddess in her work, for example the song "Oh Father" and "Papa Don't Preach", and on the American Life album she sings a song called "Mother and Father" which contains the lines: "My father had to go to work/ I used to think he was a jerk." And in an episode of Family Guy, a show fittingly about the importance of fathers, the father, Peter Griffin, discusses Madonna with his own father, saying, "With Madonna, it's all just about getting back at daddy." So, I think this article would be much improved to include a section about the importance of Madonna's relationship with her father Silvio Ciccone, and perhaps her relationship with brother Christopher Ciccone who has commented on the importance the Goddess plays in Madonna's work. Thank you. -- Copy Editor (talk) 07:12, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism
I just reverted some miscellaneous vandalism that had accumulated in this article over the last few weeks. If you're reading this, please take a moment to look over the article and make sure I didn't miss anything! Also, please keep an eye on this article, since vandalism is obviously slipping through the cracks. - AdelaMae (t - c - wpn) 16:59, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

The Section on Hinduism is incomplete, it seems to ignore that not all branches of Hindusim believe that all the gods and goddesses come from one being the Brahman, for example the Dvaita seems to view god (in that case Vishnu), as being seperate, but supreme to all other gods and goddesses (with Lakshmi) as well as the souls of living beings, Samkhya for example doesn't even believe in Brahman or Ishvara. The section in this article seems to focus only some of the branches of the Vedanta tradition.

Section on Hindusim seems incomplete
The Section on Hinduism is incomplete, it seems to ignore that not all branches of Hindusim believe that all the gods and goddesses come from one being the Brahman, for example the Dvaita seems to view god (in that case Vishnu), as being seperate, but supreme to all other gods and goddesses (with Lakshmi) as well as the souls of living beings, Samkhya for example doesn't even believe in Brahman or Ishvara. The section in this article seems to focus only some of the branches of the Vedanta tradition. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.207.208.6 (talk) 10:55, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

So
Where has it gone?
 *

 * Austerlitz -- 88.75.203.240 (talk) 07:51, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

-- 88.75.203.240 (talk) 07:56, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Kuan-yin Devotion in China

judaism
I just wanted to know what are the jewish sources for the lilith being the 'ahsera' and 'Ishtar'. I also looked for the 'original' story of lilith as adams   supposed wife but i didnt find it anywhere in the talmud and the midrash. I think that it'll be a good idea to check this paragraph and see if these arent myths about jewish folklore. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.86.64.85 (talk) 21:12, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Lilith was never an ancient Jewish or Hebrew goddess. She was a demon whom people feared. The Alphabet of Ben Sira is where her as Adam's first wife comes from which is from the medieval period. For the record, Mahalath is not a goddess either. The Judaism sections needs serious clean up and not any more feminist revision. As much as people want Lilith to be an ancient deity, she is not. Wikipedia should reflect academic standards such as The Hebrew Goddess by R.Patai, which covers actual goddess mentioned in the bible and not some Neopagan revisionist history. Xuchilbara (talk) 01:21, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Agree with the 2 posters here, regarding Lillith. She was looked down as demonic, in Jewish mythology & folklore. Would make far better sense to have Rachel in the Judaism subcategory, just as Mary, mother of Jesus is in the Christian subcategory.--Splashen (talk) 00:29, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Other religions w/ females goddesses need to be mentioned
...Like Shinto for example. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.72.219.104 (talk) 02:14, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Christian Goddesses
Shouldn't there be a section on the religion of Collyridianism, a Christian sect that worshipped the Virgin Mary? Information found here: --Willthacheerleader18 (talk) 03:35, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Monotheistic "Great Goddess" is historic, not imaginary
This paragraph is just plain odd and needs to be edited...

...The primacy of a monotheistic or near-monotheistic "Great Goddess" is advocated by some modern matriarchists as a female version of, preceding, or analogue to, the Abrahamic God associated with the historical rise of monotheism in the Mediterranean Axis Age.

The existence of a monotheistic Goddess religion is hardly the imaginary creation of modern matriarchists (whatever those are.) The archaeology and historical evidence is quite abundant of a monotheistic Goddess religion practiced in the fertile crescent (Mesopotamia to Anatolia) prior to Babylon and certainly prior to the Abrahamic God. The religion lasted in some areas into historic time (in other words, there is written evidence) and last temple was shut down in Ephesus in 380 A.D. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.141.254.254 (talk) 00:59, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Highly unlikely, since monotheism was practically nonexistent at the time. You're thinking of Henotheism. Bataaf van Oranje (Prinsgezinde) (talk) 12:53, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

No, goddess worship is pantheistic, not monotheistic. The reason why is because, when male creates, he creates outside of himself, whereas when female creates, she creates inside of herself. Therefore, when a person addresses the Deity as 'God,' he/she is expressing a belief that the Deity Created Outside of Himself, but, when a person calls the Deity 'Goddess,' he/she is expressing a belief that the Deity Created insideof herself. Eg: Earth worship is always worshipping the Deity as a goddess.--Splashen (talk) 19:53, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Gender of the God of Judaism
There appears to be a contradiction between the lines:

''Judaism is a Patriarchal religion, with emphasis being placed on God as having creating Adam is his own image. Eve is a secondary addition to creation, having been created from Adam's rib. God is referred to as "He" and family lines through Abraham are followed in a Patrilinear fashion. The concept of a Goddess seems to be absent from all but the original Creation myth which some scholars say appears have roots in the nearby Babylonian creation myth, Enuma Elis.''

in the Judaism section.

and

(Judaism never recognized any gender for God)

in the Goddess Movement section

This should not be too difficult or controversial to resolve.

Robertcurrey (talk) 11:39, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Spelling
This needs a WP:ENGVAR cleanup, with the spellings of "honor" and "honour" both appearing in normal text (as opposed to quotations, for example), and a quick scan of the article didn't help me to find other spellings that are clearly in favo(u)r of using US or using UK spellings. Someone more familiar with the article needs to do a good copyedit, also fixing numerous non-spelling mistakes such as "Hinduism also worships multitude of goddesses". Nyttend (talk) 04:41, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Shinto
It says in the subcategory of Shinto, that Amaterasu is the chief among the Shintogods. Actually, I believe that her parents, Izanagi and Izanamiare the chief Shinto gods & goddesses.--Splashen (talk) 17:08, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Honors World Religions
— Assignment last updated by Bag0hchipz (talk) 02:07, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Article issues and classification
Greetings, This article has failed the B-class criteria (#1) since being admitted to the "Articles with unsourced statements from December 2009" and "Articles with unsourced statements from October 2010" club. -- Otr500 (talk) 02:44, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Goddess