Title from second page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 319-330).

This thesis explores the cult and mythos of the goddess Kali both in her Eastern and Western contexts, comparing and contrasting them in order to gain a better understanding of the Western appropriations of Kali within feminist goddess spirituality. Utilizing a variety of methods, including ethnographic research conducted at Kali temples in California, this research is aimed at providing an entry into the lived contemporary tradition of the Western Kali within goddess spirituality circles, focusing on embodied experience, devotion, ritual, and syncretic practices. Kali, a fierce Indian goddess, is often seen in the Hindu context as a central manifestation of the all encompassing Mother Goddess (Mahadevi, Devi, Shakti, etc), and therefore is a particularly engaging example of contemporary Western appropriation of religious and cultural symbols and narratives. This thesis contributes to understanding Kali in her new North American domain, as well as serving as a case study of the shifting religious landscape in the West.

Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Faculty of Arts, Department of Media, Music, and Cultural Studies, 2009. / Bibliography: p. 303-332.

In this dissertation the tracing of a personal shift in consciousness is evidenced in my art production and through self-interrogation. Investigations into feminist theology proved resonant with a personal apostasy and provided a base for a feminine identity and language. The schism perpetrated by this pivotal thesis in the revisioning of women, its subsequent antithesis, motivated a search for synthesis. A scientific enlightenment in the field of quantum physics promotes the notion of a unified consciousness. Psychology investigates the realities of mysticism and exposes commonalities within eastern and western religions revealing a thread of unified metaphysical thought. The twentieth century has witnessed a radical in the art expression of the spiritual, some coincident with the revival of an interest in oriental art, and some as a manifestation of zeitgeist or collective consciousness. This past century of rapid technological change, clearly has its attendant spiritual shifting patterns. The process of creativity in art-making has proved to be a conduit for an evolving consciousness. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2000.

This thesis explores the cult and mythos of the goddess Kali both in her Eastern and Western contexts, comparing and contrasting them in order to gain a better understanding of the Western appropriations of Kali within feminist goddess spirituality. Utilizing a variety of methods, including ethnographic research conducted at Kali temples in California, this research is aimed at providing an entry into the lived contemporary tradition of the Western Kali within goddess spirituality circles, focusing on embodied experience, devotion, ritual, and syncretic practices. Kali, a fierce Indian goddess, is often seen in the Hindu context as a central manifestation of the all encompassing Mother Goddess (Mahadevi, Devi, Shakti, etc), and therefore is a particularly engaging example of contemporary Western appropriation of religious and cultural symbols and narratives. This thesis contributes to understanding Kali in her new North American domain, as well as serving as a case study of the shifting religious landscape in the West.

This thesis explores the cult and mythos of the goddess Kali both in her Eastern and Western contexts, comparing and contrasting them in order to gain a better understanding of the Western appropriations of Kali within feminist goddess spirituality. Utilizing a variety of methods, including ethnographic research conducted at Kali temples in California, this research is aimed at providing an entry into the lived contemporary tradition of the Western Kali within goddess spirituality circles, focusing on embodied experience, devotion, ritual, and syncretic practices. Kali, a fierce Indian goddess, is often seen in the Hindu context as a central manifestation of the all encompassing Mother Goddess (Mahadevi, Devi, Shakti, etc), and therefore is a particularly engaging example of contemporary Western appropriation of religious and cultural symbols and narratives. This thesis contributes to understanding Kali in her new North American domain, as well as serving as a case study of the shifting religious landscape in the West.

In this paper I explore what Catholic feminist Ignatian spirituality can contribute to the conversation between faith and culture, conversation that is too often muddied by vague and superficial argument and by an ‘us’ vs ‘them’ attitude driven by extremes to which the majority do not belong. The secular and the religious spring from a common past, though they exist now within the nova effect of spiritualities available today in our modern Western or North Atlantic, “secular 3” world. The 500-year-old Ignatian Exercises can be a coherent voice speaking in the cacophony of the contemporary context especially when a feminist lens is used to expand them in a more comprehensive way by applying classic feminist thought on anthropology, names of God, embodiment, and the ontological centrality of relationship to human existence. This application of a feminist hermeneutic helps us explore human reality more fully – a reality that is “irreducibly plural and not merely hierarchically dualistic.” This, in turn, helps us communicate the Exercises and a truer, deeper Christianity, than contemporary conversation typically allows. I map out the basic structure and purpose of the Exercises and offer examples of a feminist retrieval of a variety of meditations and contemplations from the “weeks” of the Exercises to illustrate how this retrieval does not negate traditional interpretation of scripture but expands it for the benefit of all – Christian and non-Christian alike. The Ignatian Exercises address questions we all ask – they help one to “play the game of the truth of existence” and to reach both inward and then outward toward neighbor and world. The bridge I am attempting to build between faith and culture is made up of the Exercises as a grounded answer to the yearning in this unbelieving world that is, nevertheless, still haunted by belief. The feminist lens is the car that drives us over that bridge.

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The HIV/AIDS pandemic is a crisis for the South African government, society and Church. About sixty percent of the HIV population are in Sub Saharan Africa with women being three times more likely to be infected with HIV than their male counterparts. Governmental, societal and Church responses seem to have had little effect in reducing the pandemic as can be seen from the rising prevalence rates. Responses to the HIV/AIDS pandemic lack a gender focus. Some churches have not responded to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Other Church-based responses have been isolated and simplistic in that they have concentrated on one aspect of the HIV illness. The HIV/AIDS pandemic is a growing crisis to which the Church should respond. The hermeneutical point of departure in this thesis is to express a preferential option for the poor by standing in solidarity with a group of women living on the margins of society. To this end the perspectives of black people, who are materially poor, HIV positive and part of support groups are articulated in the study. The research project suggests that the preferential option for the poor has the potential to contribute to the personal and social transformation of society. Focussing on the deep-seated longing many desire for fullness of life, this thesis explores and describes a gendered Christian response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic that could contribute to the full humanity of people. Full humanity is understood as transformation to wholeness and incorporates unity with God, others, creation and within oneself. A multifaceted, integrated and gendered response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic is suggested by way of a model of full humanity. The South African context of HIV/AIDS, patriarchy and poverty pose a challenge to the way that Christians develop their spirituality. This thesis aims to explore and describe aspects of a fully human spirituality emerging from the South African situation. The study suggests that a clearly integrative and holistic approach that embodies the gender perspective is necessary for churches to adopt in responding to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D.Th.(Christian Spirituality)

Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Faculty of Arts, Department of Media, Music, and Cultural Studies, 2009. / Bibliography: p. 303-332. / Carnal transcendence and sexual difference -- An amorous exchange -- Angels playing with placentas -- Fluid subjects -- Poetics -- Oneiric spaces -- Conclusion. / Carnal transcendence imagines a world in which the carnal has the weight and value of transcendence, and the divine is as liveable and readily evoked as the carnal. Carnal transcendence offers a means of thinking through difference in the work of Luce Irigaray, who asks: "why and how long ago did God withdraw from carnal love?" (1991a, p 16). This thesis argues that Irigaray enables her readers to explore the relationship between carnality, transcendence and difference, but resists elaborating it in her work. Carnal transcendence as difference risks remaining an exercise in rhetoric, rather than the transformative and creative philosophy that Irigaray imagines. -- Irigaray's resistance to the carnal is evident in her arguments for sexual difference, which offers our "salvation" if we think it through, and heralds "a new age of thought, art, poetry, and language: the creation of a new poetics" (1993a, p 5). Note the language of transcendence used here. When considered in the light of carnal transcendence, sexual difference imagines a differently sexed culture. This thesis argues that Irigaray's writing is contradictory on this point: it articulates the plurality of women's sexuality, but emphatically excludes theories of sex and gender that emphasise multiplicity. This thesis challenges these limitations by exploring the possibilities of the "other" couple in Irigaray's writing-mother and daughter - for thinking through carnal transcendence as difference. -- This thesis not only explicates a theoretical model for carnal transcendence as difference; it also attempts to put into practice a poetics - a playful rewriting of theory. This celebrates the carnality of Irigaray's writing - evident in her complex imagery of the two lips, mucus, the placenta and angels-and enables an exploration of the philosophical space of the "new poetics" that Irigaray is attempting to engender. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / 332 p. ill (some col.)