The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets

Barbara Walker's The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (HarperCollins, 1983) is an extremely valuable reference, based on the author's wide reading in folklore and mythology. It documents, entry by entry, the fate and historic distortion of matriarchal religion by triumphant patriarchy in the last few thousand years and makes sense of many of the seemingly senseless customs and rationalizations of creeds and beliefs of our major religions and our folkloric traditions. The Los Angeles Times called it a feminist-scholar's gold mine and a browser's delight. The San Francisco Chronicle called the book a mountain of scholarship, a vast mass of supremely documented material. The praise seems to be well-deserved. This book will encourage you to do independent research into history, anthropology, the pagan religions and other disciplines and the political struggle between the patriarchal religions and the pagan religions.