Women Who Fly: Goddesses, Witches, Mystics, and other Airborne Females

388 Pages·2018·9.6 MB·English

by  Serinity Young

WOMEN WHO FLY
Women Who Fly
GODDESSES, WITCHES, MYSTICS, AND OTHER
AIRBORNE FEMALES
Serinity Young
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Young, Serinity, author.
Title: Women who fly : goddesses, witches, mystics, and other airborne females / Serenity Young.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017011532 (print) | LCCN 2017052609 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190659691 (updf) | ISBN
9780190659707 (epub) | ISBN 9780190659714 (oso) | ISBN 9780195307887 (cloth)
Subjects: LCSH: Goddesses. | Wiccans. | Women mystics. | Women. | Supernatural.
Classification: LCC BL473.5 (ebook) | LCC BL473.5 .Y685 2018 (print) | DDC 200.82—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017011532
For Rawn Harding
Flying is woman’s gesture—flying in language and making it fly.
, “The Laugh of the Medusa”
HÈLÉNE CIXOUS
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Female Flight
Heroines, Freedom, and Captivity
Transcendence and Immanence
Shape-Shifting
1. Earth, Sky, Women, and Immortality
Earth, Sky, and Birds
Magical Flight, Ascension, and Assumption
Dreams, Women, and Flying
Humans, Divinities, and Birds
Apotheosis
Birds
Bird Goddesses
PART I SUPERNATURAL WOMEN
2. Winged Goddesses of Sexuality, Death, and Immortality
Isis
Women, Death, Sexuality, and Immortality
The Ancient Near East
Ancient Greece
Athena and the Monstrous-Feminine
Aphrodite
Nike
3. The Fall of the Valkyries
Brunhilde in the Volsungs Saga
Images and Meanings
Brunhilde in the Nibelungenlied
Wagner’s Brunhilde
4. Swan Maidens: Captivity and Sexuality
Urvaśī
Images and Meanings
Northern European Tales
Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake
Asian Swan Maidens
Feather Robes and Dance
Two Middle Eastern Tales
Hasan of Basra
Janshah
5. Angels and Fairies: Male Flight and Contrary Females
Angels and Demons
Fairies
Morgan le Fay
Fairy Brides
Asian Fairies
6. Apsarās: Enabling Male Immortality, Part 1
In Hinduism
Relations with Heroes
Seducing Ascetics
Kings, Devadāsīs, and Fertility
In Buddhism
Seductresses
The Saundarānanda
7. Yoginīs and Ḍākinīs: Enabling Male Immortality, Part 2
Tantra
Yoginīs
Yoginī Temples
Practices and Stories
Sexual Yoga
Taming
Ḍākinīs
Subduing
Tibetan Practitioners
PART II HUMAN WOMEN
8. Witches and Succubi: Male Sexual Fantasies
Medea
Ancient Witches and Sexuality
Circe
The Witch of Endor
Succubi and Incubi
Witches in Christian Europe
The Witches’ Sabbath
Women and the Demonic
Flying
9. Women Shamans: Fluctuations in Female Spiritual Power
The Nišan Shaman
Becoming a Shaman
Magical Flight, Ritual Dress, and Spirit Animals
Gender
Transvestism and Sex Change
Sexuality
10. Flying Mystics, or the Exceptional Woman, Part I
St. Christina the Astonishing
Flight and Sanctity
St. Irene of Chrysobalanton
St. Elisabeth of Schönau
Female and Male Mystics
Hadewijch of Brabant
11. Flying Mystics, or the Exceptional Woman, Part II
Islam
Rābi’ah al-‘Adawiyya
Other Aerial Ṣūfī Women
Daoism
Sun Bu’er
Daoist Beliefs and Practices
Buddhism
Human Ḍākinīs
Machig Lapdron and Chod Practice
12. The Aviatrix: Nationalism, Women, and Heroism
Wonder Woman
Amelia Earhart
Death and the Heroine
Hanna Reitsch
Women, Heroism, and Militarism
Conclusion
The Exceptional Woman
Women and War
NOTES
WORKS CONSULTED
INDEX