Jailbreaking the Goddess: A Radical Revisioning of Feminist Spirituality

I received this book by the author before it was released in exchange for a review and I'm so glad that I did. This book spoke to me in a way no other spiritual book has. Over the last few years I have become very disillusioned with Paganism and the labels within it. My practice no longer filled me with joy and I began to search outside of my faith. Reading Jailbreaking the Goddess has awoken me to an entirely new world. I love the creation/idea of the five faces of the goddesses instead of the traditional three-fold goddess which has never been a connection for me. It is based on biological phases that some women never enter and can't fit into. The five faces of the goddesses removes those ideas that are based upon a women's capability or inability to breed and instead focuses on THEM. What a novel concept! I loved how the author encouraged creating your own rituals, beliefs, and concepts based upon what works for the individual and not traditional methods. Social movements that were discussed in this book that have been on my mind lately about how to be inclusive of transgender women in women's only circles and creating those safe spaces and the idea of cultural appropriation. Finally someone in the spiritual community is bringing these ideas out into the open and saying it it is time to take a hard look at our actions and fix the issues at hand. I think that Jailbreaking the Goddess is a book that is going to take a lot of people by surprise because it challenges so many traditional ideas in the Pagan and Witchcraft communities that people have just accepted as fact and instead encourages them to think outside the box and start thinking for themselves. This book is a gamechanger in the magickal community and I think that is is high time that someone put these views out there. Thank you Lasara Firefox Allen for Jailbreaking the Goddess; you have changed this witch's life, practice and outlook and for that I am deeply appreciative.

I received an e-copy of this book for review purposes.Reading Jailbreaking the Goddess was like reconnecting with a long-lost friend. Every few paragraphs I found myself saying “Yes! She gets it!” or “Of course! That makes perfect sense!” The questions Lasara poses are challenging, because they require us to look deeply at our own spiritual practices and see if we are honoring or appropriating with our religious practices; if we are helping others for our own spiritual and political gain or because we are working towards a common goal.There are many strands of feminist spirituality that have relied heavily on Maiden, Mother and Crone archetypes, but Lasara shows how this relies on the assumption that women exist to bear children for men and is deeply problematic because it deprives women of agency. The five-fold model she proposes is fluid, allowing us to move between archetypes or phases as we need to. It was great to read a book on feminist spirituality that I could recommend to any of my LGBTQI friends without a second thought.Her emphasis on decolonizing our spiritual traditions is also something I gladly welcome. She tackles cultural appropriation head on, which is something I see a need for in the larger Pagan spiritual community. I think my favorite part was the section on intention- it reminded me of a very dear mentor of mine.This is a book I will be rereading and referring to again and again. I am going to be incorporating the five-fold goddess model and sigils into my own spiritual practice because they matched my own experiences on such a deep level. I also loved Lasara’s term “organic magick”- now I finally have a term for what I’ve been doing all along!

For years I've struggled against the norm of "Womanhood" in particular the whole "Maid, Mother, Crone" dynamic. As a woman who does not want to have children right now, I realized that I did not have a place in that norm (and I refused to see myself as a child indefinitely just because I didn't want to reproduce). So a friend recommended this book to me and I absolutely fell in love with it. The author totally challenges the social norm by encouraging women to focus instead on life stages that all women go through and continue to go through their whole life. In her book she lists 5 stages (the inner child, the warrior, the scholar, the creator, and wise woman), and even better those stages are not cemented in a woman's age bracket or affiliated with their reproductive organs. For example, one of the stages focuses on the inner child and the author says that the inner child is with us all the time. We can be 60 and still have moments where the inner girl child comes out and we be silly. We've all seen those silly free-spirited older ladies. They are embracing their inner child. How cool is that?!! Aside from her system, the book also has a bunch of exercises that the readers can do to become more in tune with their spirit and the things that influence their life. Finally, if that's not enough, the author provides some lovely short biographies on various Female leaders who embrace each one of the various stages in order to make positive changes in the world. So overall the book is jam packed with lots of info and deep spirit work to help women channel their divine feminine.

replacing one system of sorting the deities with another. Many of my friends have been raving about this book, but I just can't find my way into it. First the author explains that the "maiden-mother-crone" system is harmful to modern women because it is too rigid for the modern world. But then she goes and replaces it with a just-as-rigid system consisting of deities such as the "creatrix", who is nothing but the mother. I don't know, maybe it's just the right book for you, but for me - I was hoping for someone to show the deities in all their glory, instead of providing just a different sorting box.

Challenging and thought provoking. Intended to make you think.