Starhawk
Overview
 
Starhawk is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

 and activist
Activism
Activism consists of intentional efforts to bring about social, political, economic, or environmental change. Activism can take a wide range of forms from writing letters to newspapers or politicians, political campaigning, economic activism such as boycotts or preferentially patronizing...

. She is well known as a theorist of Paganism
Paganism
Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....

, and is one of the foremost popular voices of ecofeminism
Ecofeminism
Ecofeminism is a social and political movement which points to the existence of considerable common ground between environmentalism and feminism, with some currents linking deep ecology and feminism...

. She is a columnist for Beliefnet.com and On Faith, the Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...

/Washington Post online forum on religion. Starhawk's book The Spiral Dance
The Spiral Dance
The Spiral Dance: a Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess is a best-selling book about Neopagan belief and practice written by Starhawk. It was first published in 1979, with a second edition in 1989 and a third edition in 1999...

(1979) was one of the main inspirations behind the Neopagan movement.
Starhawk lives in San Francisco, where she works with Reclaiming
Reclaiming (neopaganism)
Reclaiming is an international community of women and men working to combine earth-based spirituality and political activism. Its predecessor organization, the Reclaiming Collective, was founded in 1979 by two Neopagan women of Jewish descent, Starhawk and Diane Baker, in order to explore and...

, a tradition of Witchcraft that she co-founded in the late 1970s.
She was influential in the decision by the Unitarian Universalist
Unitarian Universalism
Unitarian Universalism is a religion characterized by support for a "free and responsible search for truth and meaning". Unitarian Universalists do not share a creed; rather, they are unified by their shared search for spiritual growth and by the understanding that an individual's theology is a...

 Association of Congregations to include earth-centered traditions in the UUA sources of faith.
Quotations

The witches, the wise women, and the healers were also always the counselors. It's a whole other tradition of knowledge and learning that has been suppressed because it had political implications.

As quoted in The Burning Times (1990)

Each being is sacred — meaning that each has inherent value that cannot be ranked in a hierarchy or compared to the value of another being.

The Fifth Sacred Thing (1994), p. i

Any ritual is an opportunity for transformation. To do a ritual, you must be willing to be transformed in some way. The inner willingness is what makes the ritual come alive and have power. If you aren't willing to be changed by the ritual, don't do it.

As quoted in Infinity in Your Hand : A Guide for the Spiritually Curious (1994) by William H. Houff, p. 151

In the Craft the Goddess is not omnipotent. The cosmos is interesting rather than perfect, and everything is not part of some greater plan, nor is all necessarily under control.

As quoted in Living in the Lap of the Goddess: The Feminist Spirituality Movement in America (1995) by Cynthia Eller, p. 254

Spirituality leaps where science cannot yet follow, because science must always test and measure, and much of reality and human experience is immeasurable.

In the Craft, we do not believe in the Goddess — we connect with her; through the moon, the stars, the ocean, the earth, through trees, animals, through other human beings, through ourselves. She is here. She is within us all.

The test of a true myth is that each time you return to it, new insights and interpretations arise.

This is the stillness behind motion, when time itself stops; the center is also the circumference of all. We are awake in the night. We turn the Wheel to bring the light. We call the sun from the womb of night. Blessed Be!

 
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