Tammy Gulotta got started on the path of goddess spirituality about four years ago when she was pregnant for the first time with her son, Isaac.

“When I became a mother, the immense love and feeling I had for my child was overwhelming. And I started to picture the deity as being that,” said Gulotta, 27, a Lawrence resident.

Sue Westwind offers priestess services through her Prairie Goddess Ministry, and she teaches classes about her faith, which she has done for about 20 years. Westwind often retreats to natural areas near her home in rural Jefferson County to meditate.

“I don’t believe the deity is necessarily male or female, but I identify with the feminine aspect. To picture the deity as the mother who is unconditionally loving and caring just really strikes home with me because I know what that feels like.”

Her epiphany that grew out of becoming a mother launched her on a journey to learn more about modern goddess spirituality.

Through reading on her own and attending workshops, Gulotta has found the transcendent connection to life she was looking for.

“When I look at nature and the way things are, there’s such a balance. There are male aspects, and there are female aspects. I identify with the female aspects of it, maybe because I’m a female and a mother,” she said.

“I see nature constantly giving birth, kind of like a female. There are seeds involved, and planting. I really feel the female energy around me all the time.”

Gulotta is just one of a growing number of Lawrence-area women who are plugging into workshops and other resources to learn more about goddess spirituality, a movement informed by feminist thought, ecology and earth-based worship systems.

Greek goddess Artemis

That often means enriching their spiritual lives by revering a variety of goddesses from different religions and cultures, such as Hinduism’s Durga, Buddhism’s Kuan Yin or the West African Yorba people’s Oya.

Female-honoring path

One of the resources to whom Lawrence-area women turn is Sue Westwind, a rural Jefferson County resident who has had a one-woman ministry of goddess spirituality for about 20 years.

Westwind, 51, has offered many workshops and led different groups at the Unitarian Fellowship of Lawrence, the Light Center in rural Franklin County, the Learning for Life Center in Topeka and the House of Menuha in Kansas City, Mo.

Westwind, who has a master’s degree in religious studies from Kansas University, offers “priestess services” through her Prairie Goddess Ministry.

“I give workshops and classes related to the goddess in her many guises, with an emphasis on women’s empowerment and Earth-based spirituality. I also facilitate rituals, such as weddings, new-baby blessings and a croning ritual for older women entering their wisdom years,” she said.

Virgin of Guadalupe

A crone is a wise woman who is past her child-bearing years and is treasured as a respected elder, according to Westwind.

In 1985, Westwind trained at Jughandle Farm in Mendocino, Calif., with Starhawk (Miriam Simos), an activist and author of books such as “The Spiral Dance: Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess.”

Westwind explained her understanding of modern goddess spirituality:

“It’s an earth-based path that fosters care and concern for the planet and activism along those lines. I think it’s a feminist-honoring path. It’s not Yahweh in drag, Father God dressed up in a skirt, the same-old, same-old with female parts,” she said.

“It’s not dogmatic. There’s a sense of ethics and values honoring the earth, (a sense of) egalitarianism.”

Connected to paganism

Yorba goddess Oya

It’s difficult to pin down exactly what goddess spirituality is because there’s a wide variety of women’s groups who approach it in different ways.

But it’s possible to trace its development in recent decades.

Tim Miller, a professor of religious studies at KU who specializes in American religion, said the modern wave of this movement emerged in the United States in the 1970s.

Feminine spirituality and a range of earth-based worship systems fall under the umbrella of paganism, according to Miller.

“I think there are two keys to the success it’s had. It’s environmentally conscious; saving the Earth is a big part of it. The other leg it stands on that’s equally powerful is feminism. It has plugged into that very effectively,” he said.

Fertility and an appreciation of the female aspect of the divine were obvious themes of ancient religions, but little is actually understood about this.

Sue Westwind, of Prairie Goddess Ministry, has set up an altar in a loft in her home, featuring statuettes of various goddesses and other sacred items.

Many pagans and Wiccans believe they are continuing ancient European goddess-spirituality traditions or have recreated those religions.

“But the truth is, we know so little, it’s hard to say. We don’t have any texts; no Scriptures have come down. We have artifacts, figurines and stone circles,” Miller said.

“But that, in a way, fuels the whole thing because you’re not very limited and you can interpret things as you like. You can read all kinds of things into it.”

Understood as archetypes

Goddesses have been a part of religious practice throughout human history, according to Marti Ukena, who recently moved to Lawrence from the Light Center in Franklin County, a spiritual retreat facility where she lived for about a year and offered workshops.

Hindu goddess Durga

“Every culture, if you follow it back, is going to have one or more goddesses. Some of them just aren’t talked about or acknowledged, but they’re there. Even in the Christian religion, there are goddess figures,” said Ukena, 56.

She has found courage and strength by gaining a deeper understanding of Mary Magdalene, the Virgin Mary, Kuan Yin and the White Buffalo Calf Woman, an American Indian goddess.

“I don’t see a lot of benefit of raising up these goddesses as something to be worshipped (in and of themselves), but rather as archetypes from which we can gain insight into our own self, our own walk on this Earth and in relation to the creator,” Ukena said.