My Life's Journey as Researcher

In this narrative of my life as a researcher, I have presented my understanding of research practice, basing it of course on a sample of size one--myself, nonetheless observed carefully for over four decades now. Therefore, the readers may take it as a trigger to clarify their own self-understanding as researchers. In my life’s journey as a researcher, I have followed my passions and charted new territory, sometimes inadvertently. Research has been for me a life-long journey of discovery--of who I am, of the world around me, and the meaning of life. This has driven me beyond the boundaries of received tradition, often into uncharted territory. Over the years I have put together my own tool kit, sharpening my intellectual skills as needed for the problem at hand. The focus of my research has been myth and image in their cultural context. My research on the miniature paintings of India, and their organic links with certain texts and cultural modes of being, have transformed me in fundamental ways. I have come to regard my own experience of being a woman as central to my experience of the world. In the more recent years, I have been inquiring into the religion of the Mother Goddess. This has brought me to Orissa for fieldwork in a living tradition--that of the village goddess. I have reached so far in my journey of research by continuously expanding my intellectual boundaries as well as pushing the edges of my discipline into new frontiers

Rituals of the Dark Goddess

This panel discssion was part of the From the Realm of the Ancestors: Language of the Goddess conference sponsored by the Women’s Spirituality Program at CIIS (June 12-14, 1998 at Cowell Theatre, Fort Mason in San Francisco) in honor of the pioneering archeologist Marija Gimbutas. The conference focused on the necessity of refocusing our collective memory, and to the cultivation of vision, creativity, insight, and the celebration of life. The conference was moderated by Joan Marler and featured presentations by scholars and artists who acknowledge the significance of Dr. Gimbutas’ research and theories. Gimbutas’ discovery of Goddess-centered, matristic societies that preceded the development of patriarchy in Europe has initiated a new perception of European prehistory that challenges traditional assumptions about the origins of western civilization