interview

WIE: What would you say defines women's spirituality as distinct from spirituality in general?

Z. Budapest: Women's spirituality is Goddess-centered. That is a revolutionary idea because all the reigning religions are male-God-centered. And the values taught in those religions are jealousy, possessiveness, exclusivity, obedience, guilt, punishment, fear. They are mostly fear-based religions. When you find a male God you find fear. They're sort of synonymous. In turning it around and saying all children come from the Goddess, then we're all equal, there's no reason for fear, there's no punishment, there's no judgment, there's no possessiveness or exclusivity. It's inclusive in that all come from the Goddess, and it's female values, which is the children are all equal.

WIE: Do you think that the spiritual path or process is inherently different for women than it is for men?

ZB: Well, I don't think the spirit has gender. I do think, though, that once the spirit is manifest in a physical body and therefore acquires a gender, spirituality becomes maybe less important for men than it is for women. And the reason I'm saying this is because men are just not that interested in consciousness raising, otherwise they would have created a vigorous men's movement by now that would be promoting it. The first thing that the women's liberation movement latched on to was consciousness. Right away in the early seventies everybody was going to consciousness-raising groups. There is nothing parallel in the men's movement. And there is no political agenda. For the women it immediately spilled into the political arena, it encompassed the entire reality. You don't see a parallel to this with men. And the other thing that is sort of disheartening is that in all denominations—and that is male god, female god, whatever religion you've got—the people who go and promote it and follow it are women, eighty percent, and twenty percent males. Now why is that? Ask why that is and the only answer I can find is that the shoe doesn't hurt that much for men. The women want change and the men just want what men want, mainly making a living and having a wife—which is a big payoff from patriarchy.

WIE: Do you think women are inherently more spiritually endowed or spiritually inclined than men?

ZB: I think in this time and space, in this age of the earth, yes. But it was different in other times. I think back to when we all worshipped the Goddess and the men did not need a jealous and possessive male god to enforce privileges for them. There was once a vigorous fraternity all over Europe dedicated to Pan or Zagreus, the male principle of the universe, who was a joyous guy. He was a party-goer. He played the pan pipes. He was not a rapist, he was not a master and he definitely wasn't a husband. He was an equal with women, and his celebrations were just as numerous and well attended by men as the women's celebrations were by women. And then on occasions when the theme of the season included both sexes, they celebrated together and gave a very vigorous celebration for life. There would be like twenty-one holidays in a year compared to the measly five holidays we have each year in patriarchy.

WIE: It is sometimes said that the paths are many but the goal is one. But recently I've heard people saying that while men seek enlightenment, women's wisdom is about something altogether different—which has even been called "endarkenment."

ZB: Oh, that's bullshit. That's total bullshit and enlightenment is bullshit too. There's no such thing as enlightenment. Transcendence and enlightenment—these are buzzwords for new goals that are hard to achieve. Like it takes you fourteen million years to learn how to levitate, if ever. This is all hierarchy. It's setting up hierarchy and I already smell something funny here: if the women are "endarkening," it's relegating us to the negative. That's just another way of disempowering women after we have worked twenty-five years to get our power, and I reject that totally. It's dualistic, linear thinking pushed into the spiritual realm—and that this is being listened to by someone like you is astonishing to me. How hard they try to disempower women even here where we reign supreme! It's ridiculous.

WIE: Actually, "endarkenment" is a term I've heard women use to describe a connectedness with the body, with the earth. I think what they are getting at is the question of transcendence versus immanence. Because the women's spirituality movement criticizes Judaism, Christianity, Islam and many of the Eastern traditions for a misguided emphasis on transcendence—and instead focuses on immanence. When you speak of the Goddess in your religion, is there a transcendent aspect to it, or is it purely immanent?

ZB: You mean, is any part of the Goddess beyond nature? No, there's nothing beyond it. There's just more nature beyond nature. Everything is nature even if you don't know it yet. A hundred years from now we may learn something new but that was nature all along, we just didn't get it.

WIE: But the path of meditation points to an experience of something that actually does seem to be outside of nature. Something that is beyond change, beyond time . . . the unmanifest.

ZB: The unmanifest is nature too, it doesn't matter. Whatever we in nature can perceive has to be natural. If the Dalai Lama is doing it, it's natural. Whatever the meditation path has come up with is all nature. They just learned a little bit more about nature.