Envisioning the Goddess: Modern Pagan Iconography of the Feminine Divine

This thesis investigates the iconography used by specific groups of modern Pagan women in the contemporary United States to represent the feminine divine, the meanings attributed to them by women and by broader communities, and the values these images and meanings reinforce. Through a collection of goddess iconography, interviews with female practitioners, and participant observations in Neopagan events, the personal and communal values of this spiritual movement are explored. This thesis will follow a multi-disciplinary approach, which combines folklore, anthropology, and gender studies. Subcultural scholarship will help to establish whether or not goddess spirituality falls under such a distinction as well as to illuminate the ways in which the images might be subverting the dominant Western culture