Talk:Starhawk

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Ashley_Y could we discuss the category issue? I think that Starhawk's work shouldn't be restricted to just Wicca. Her contributions effect the larger category of Paganism in my opinion.

- FSVallare

Could we put her in both Neopaganism and Wicca? —Ashley Y 21:32, 2004 Jul 18 (UTC)

Sounds like a great solution to me. Will do that now. -- FSVallare

I did remove Paganism though, unless she has some connection to paganism other than neopaganism. Actually I don't really like the word "neopaganism" but it's kind of stuck here to mean specifically contemporary paganism in the West.—Ashley Y 01:29, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)

Hmm...well the reason I listed Paganism is due to her connection with Marija Gimbutas' work. To me that connection to the past moves her work out of purely Neopaganism. In the part of the country I'm in Paganism is the more predominate description vs. Neopaganism, so that is also part of it. - FSVallare 18:12, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

She apparantly has two residences, though the RUMOR is that she doesn't spend very much time at the SF one.

"Starhawk lives part-time in a solar-powered cabin in the remote Cazadero hills of western Sonoma County, near the 485-acre Black Mountain Preserve. It's more than a two-hour drive along some of the North Coast's most wicked roads, the kind that snake through the hills in endless spirals.

She also lives in a townhouse (a collective called the Black Cats) on a busy street in San Francisco's Mission District with her husband, David Miller, and a half dozen housemates, including a schoolgirl who's learning about magic."

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/10/29/NBGRE9FM091.DTL&hw=starhawk&sn=001&sc=1000

Starhawk is not Wiccan. She believes in Goddess Spirituality. Her first books she did identify herself as being Wiccan (which can cause alot of confusion), she does follow Goddess Spirituality. Disinclination 03:12, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Note on edit of 9/2/06: Source for addition of Starhawk's mother's middle name Claire is the Minnesota Birth Index, File 1951-MN-035927. (Existing information on DOB, name, and father's name are also verified by this file.) - Zinning 23:30, 2006 Sep 2 [EDT]

Witchcraft vs. Wicca

I hope I didn't step on anybody's toes by changing the link for "Witch" from Wicca to Witchcraft, but I think that this change better reflects Starhawk's position. While she once identified as a Wiccan (as someone else mentioned above) that is no longer the case, as far as I know. Many, if not most, people involved in Reclaiming identify as Witches but not as Wiccans. If someone disagrees with this... let's talk about it! Thanks, romarin [talk ] 19:21, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

She doesn't call herself a Wiccan. She's not somebody that I would recognise as a fellow Wiccan. She does however have beliefs and practices that match what Wikipedia labels "Wiccan". I don't like Wikipedia's definition of the word, but if that's the way it's defined, then surely it should be used throughout?86.47.160.33 (talk) 13:50, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Impact

I've added an impact section that talks about the impact her works have had. mainly about her popularisation of the nine million witches figure, but also one line about how "The Spiral dance" was arguably the inspiration behind the neo-pagan movement. Feel free to add to this. It would require, I think, a review of the book, it's main themes and the popular impact that the book has had, specifically with reference to neo-paganism and wicca. the paragraph I've written (about her popularisation of the incorrect figure of nine million witches killed during the witch hunt) can be considered as one small part of this. It is for others to write the rest.Steve3742 12:52, 22 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Since this new content was almost entirely about the book The Spiral Dance, I've moved it over to that article. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 14:17, 22 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you read "The Spiral Dance" you'll read about how she was influenced by people in the Neopagan movement. It can hardly therefore have been the inspiration for it. Nor can she be given credit/blame for popularising the 9,000,000 figure; it was already popular amongst witches thanks largely to Gerald Gardner and amongst Feminists thanks largely to Mary Daly and Andrea Dworkin. Since Starhawk's influence is where these to groups meet, this was ground already covered - if anything it was the very idea of the nine-million that gave her a fertile bed to work from. It was still reasonable scholarship for someone for whom relevant history wasn't their field working from available sources when Starhawk was first writing so she can't be blamed for keeping the idea in circulation after it had been debunked. In all she's not particularly significant in this regard. Where she is significant is in being a leading figure in combining the two groups for which the nine-million held particular emotional significance86.47.160.33 (talk) 13:59, 21 April 2008 (UTC).[reply]