ABOUT THE BOOK
A Serpentine Path
Carol P. Christ’s moving memoir shares her journey from death to rebirth and regeneration, culminating on the first Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete. Having left behind the male God of traditional religion who rules the world from outside of it, Christ hopes that the Goddess can help her manifest her heart’s desires. Deeply disappointed, she discovers the Goddess as a personal presence who is always with her and every other individual in the world but whose power is not omnipotence. The mystery of the Goddess is revealed at the ancient site of Kato Zakros in Crete as the dance of life: a serpentine path with no beginning and no end, into the darkness, into the light, and back again. Thea-logy, reflection on the meaning of Goddess, emerges from and takes root in a woman’s embodied experience, inspiring others to join the dance.
Praise for A Serpentine Path
“An evocative celebration of Cretan — and female — power.”
— Kirkus
“Like Sappho, the great poet of Aphrodite, (Carol) Christ, agonizing over whether she will ever again experience love, ‘has words with’ her Goddess. The Goddess grants her a healing vision, and Christ ends the book in a new flowering of self-confidence and self-love.”
— Patricia Monaghan, Choice
“In this ‘narrative theology,’ (Carol) Christ shares the spiritual lessons she learns as she seeks to understand her relation to the ground of all Being. Her quest with the Goddess begins out of a jarring sense of loss and abandonment caused by the death of her mother and leads her to an exhilarating experience of healing and rebirth. Her journey confirms for her as well the relational and embodied character women’s experience of the divine. Luminous prose.”
— Booklist
Book Details
Publisher
Women’s Spirituality Studies Press
Publication Date
November 20, 2026
Pages
200
Format
Paperback & Digital
Language
English
Subject
Goddess Studies, Women’s Spirituality
About the Author
Carol P. Christ
A Foremother of the Goddess Movement
Carol Patrice Christ was a feminist historian, thealogian, author, and foremother of the Goddess movement.
About the Author
Carol P. Christ, Ph.D.
Carol P. Christ earned her Ph.D. in religion from Yale and was the author of eight ground-breaking books on women and religion. She was a leading feminist theologian and historian of religion, who was named one of the most influential voices in the Goddess movement. She led the life-transforming Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete twice a year (www.goddessariadne.org); they are now led by her literary executor, Laura Shannon, once a year. She received two National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships and taught at Harvard, Columbia, and Claremont Graduate University. She lived in Greece, where she was active in the Green Party and worked with the World Wildlife Fund. She died in 2021.