She Changes: A Goddess Myth for Women

Book Review:

By Teressa Mark

This is the classic mythic story described in sacred narratives from around the world. It relates the descent of the Goddess into a threateningly alien world, then Her return-revived and restored-into a world which welcomes Her glorious ascent. This cyclic story, this Goddess heroine, stands to women as Joseph Campbell's Hero of a Thousand Faces-the one who adventures forth, conquers by strength or cunning, then returns to claim power-stands to men. In her visionary work She Changes, Teressa Mark has produced a contemporary vision of this feminine myth, in which a woman leaves the literal sanctuary of a Catholic convent to enter a world which is both more threatening and, ultimately, more rewarding than she ever dreamed. She Changes is of that mixed genre pioneered by Carlos Castenada: is it fiction? Autobiography? Autobiography with the names changed? There are narrative difficulties in expressing nonlinear realities in our language. A spiritual experience transcribed just as it happened might seem flat and uninteresting: I was watching the waves, and then a big wave came in just as a bird flew over. Hmmm, says the reader, so what? Authors such as Mark use a mix of fact and fiction to meld compelling stories which, while clearly not perfectly factual, nonetheless have the ring of lived spiritual truth. Teressa Mark experienced something powerful and strange, and she's captured it splendidly in this narrative. The tale opens with a woman who leaves her convent, but not her order, to gain further medical education. Wrenched from the sacred security of cloistered life, the narrator enters a midwifery school somewhere in the Smoky Mountains. There she begins a transformative journey which leads her to dance by moonlit fires and, finally, to release her Kundalini energy in sacred sex. The story is a page-turner, and like all Delphi books, magnificently designed and executed. Published by Delphi Press, Inc. (PO Box 1538 Oak Park IL 60304) ISBN 1-878980-03-3 225 pages $12.95 (plus $2 S&H for mail order). Reviewed by Patricia Monaghan, author of the Book of Goddesses and Heroines and Seasons of the Witch.