JERI STUDEBAKER

Swtiching to Goddess: Humanity's Ticket to the Future

ISBN-978-1-84694-134-4

First published by Moon Books, 2008
Moon Books is an imprint of John Hunt Publishing Ltd., Laurel House, Station Approach, Alresford, Hants, SO24 9JH, UK

 

 

 

ENDORSEMENTS: 

 

 

Zsuzsanna Budapest | One of the founding mothers of the Goddess Movement. 
....A message ... that will radically change your life and save this planet. Clever, humorous, feisty, breathless adventure, easy to grasp, hard-hitting, blunt feminist ...who got Z Budapest up on her feet shouting YES! YES! YES!!!

 

Dr. Elinor Gadon | Cultural Historian, Brandeis Uand author of the immensely popular The Once and Future Goddess: A Sweeping Visual Chronicle of the Sacred Female and Her Reemergence in the Cultural Mythology. 
The author argues that the 6000-year-old switch from guiding mother goddesses to sky/war/father gods must be examined and reversed if humanity is to survive. She presents evidence from archaeology, anthropology, mythology and the physical sciences suggesting a correlation between social "utopia" and female deity on the one hand, and on the other, social "dystopia" and the war/sky/father gods now worshipped by a majority of the world…. "Switching to Goddess" is almost certain to provoke lively, animated discussion.

 

Karen Tate | scholar, lecturer, radio show hostess, and film maker; author of Sacred Places of Goddess: 108 Destinations and Walking An Ancient Path; www.karentate.com. 
Studebaker is on fire as she cleverly and humorously retells Goddess history that has been hidden for thousands of years. Juxtaposing past with present, using science alongside psychology and religion, she exposes the methods and explains the errors of patriarchy and monotheistic religion that are bringing about the downfall of humanity. I know the history, but with the zeal of this new convert carrying the torch for the Sacred Feminine, I wanted to read it all again as Studebaker candidly infuses contemporary relevance with herstory.

 

Kathy Jones | organizer of the UK's annual Glastonbury Goddess Conference and a co-founder of the Glastonbury Goddess Temple. Her latest book: Priestess of Avalon: Priestess of the Goddess. 
Jeri has written a feisty, upbeat exploration of the place of Goddess in the ancient and modern worlds. In an entertaining and invigorating way she looks at present day remnants of Goddess-loving cultures, the earliest Mesolithic and Neolithic Goddesses, the coming of the war gods and their societies, the power of the women's hormone oxytocin to 'tend and befriend,' and today’s reawakening interest in Goddess. She explores what it will take to replace war-god dystopia with Mother Goddess utopia, where everyone is loved the way healthy mothers love their children.

 

Tim Ward | author, Savage Breast: One Man’s Search for the Goddess.  
Fierce, playful, visionary, "Switching to Goddes" makes the compelling case that most of humanity’s violence, injustice and misery can be traced to the rise of war gods (such as Jehovah) in ancient times, and that reconnecting with the Great Goddess who guided our earliest civilizations is the key to healing ourselves and our planet. Author Jeri Studebaker's book is a crash course on how to make the Switch happen. Hey, I’m convinced. I’d rather Switch (to Goddess) than fight!

 

Geraldine Charles | Editor, Goddess Pages, http://www.goddess-pages.co.uk. 
I am normally a silent reader, not one who leaps into the air, fist clenched, shouting "YES!" every now and again. My unusual cheerleading behaviour was entirely due to the fact that I was so happy to read a book about goddess that actually proposes some real, radical solutions to the mess our world is in right now…. Books that tell me about ancient Goddesses are still great, but I was really starting to yearn for more…. The greatest thing about the book is - quite apart from the fact that it might help to save the planet and us all - is its readability and the feeling of breathless adventure I got from it. What's coming next? How can this work? I was particularly keen to get to the part where I would find out just how in goddess' name we were going to get from here to there, how the big switch could happen. We need more books, and more thinking, along these lines, and we need it very, very soon. To have more books with this kind of clarity and readability would be fantastic.

 

Claire Hamilton | author of Maiden, Mother, Crone: Voices of the Goddess. 
A hard-hitting get-up-and-go book that challenges the reader with its racy style and punchy arguments. Backed up by scholarship, it is a clarion call for our times.

 

Morgaine Swann | author of The-Goddess weblog, http://the-goddess.org/ 
Jeri Studebaker's book has filled me with hope. She took her natural gift as a story teller, and applied it to a text that describes the ancient world of the Great Mother Goddess, in glorious detail, with meticulous research and sets forth her goal of getting us back to the Goddess by 2035. It can't happen soon enough to suit me. I say we get this book on the shelves and into our schools ASAP, and pray to our Divine Mother that many more follow from many men and women who "get it," too. Brava!

 

Judith Laura | author of Goddess Spirituality for the 21st Century: from Kabbalah to Quantum Physics and She Lives! The Return of Our Great Mother. 
...Jeri L. Studebaker doesn't mince words in her bold assessment of where "war-daddy god" worship has gotten us and why we need to return to the female divine. While her slangy style and in-your-face approach may engender controversy, her fearless fiery writing, reminiscent of the earlier Mary Daly or Barbara Walker, will invigorate and engross both newcomers and people already close to Goddess.

 

Dr. Harald Haarmann | culture historian, internationally-known linguist, Vice-President of the Institute of Archaeomythology, Sebastopol, CA, and author of over 40 books including Interacting with Figurines. 
This is a provocative and, at the same time, programmatic book. The provocation does not delimit itself to an outcry of the sensitive mind against the growing disorder in our conflict- and crisis-stricken world, to a lament about the desolate state of humanity.  

The author, eloquent in her diction and versatile in her argumentation, pinpoints the crucial problem area, going straight to the heart of the matter: monotheism and its bellicose dogma of exclusive authority claimed for the one and only male god. In a richly documented synopsis, a fabric of religious thought, humane cosmology and gender balance for modern societies is woven, based on teachings and insights of common sense. Such a fabric vigorously defies the existing encrusted and unreflected conventions of social relationships in societies governed by male monotheism which does not tolerate any competition or challenge to its worldview. 

The author makes a strong case for switching to Goddess as a viable option for restoring a balance in our social lives, a balance that once existed in the Neolithic oecumene or commonwealth, a model of society based on the principle of socioeconomic egalitarianism. The cultural memory of a powerful female deity that once blessed civic institutions and functioned as the guarantor of harmonious interaction between the cultural space of human beings and the natural environment is illuminated and its potent energy revitalized. The image of the Goddess of the past is not lost but lives on in this dynamic approach to the urgent needs of humanity. The author strives for the emergence of a novel, and yet familiar consciousness, focusing on the protective presence of the Goddess.