Out of the Broom Closet:
A true story of goddess realization
Reviewed by Diane Schulz
Phyllis Curott, a 45 year old lawyer from New York City, seems an unlikely spokeswoman for Wicce, the pre-Catholic Old Religion of Europe, which is exactly what attracted me to this enchanting, richly descriptive autobiography, just out in paperback in time for the "witching" season around Samhain, or Halloween. Witches have been maligned for centuries, suffering from intense religious persecution by the Catholic Church on down to the present with calls from protestant Christian ministers to ban Wiccan services from U.S. Army bases. Although federal courts have recognized Wicca as a faith, most people continue to think of witches as worshippers of Satan.
The author herself questioned this stereotype when she was first invited to join a circle of women learning ritual in the early 1980's. Two of the older members explained the history of persecution, showing her a copy of the Malleus Maleficarum, or The Hammer of Witches, written by two Dominican inquisitors following an edict of Pope Innocent VIII in 1484, declaring witches to be worshippers of Satan. For a religion that already considered women as soulless representatives of carnal lust, this was a natural development of their misogyny, covering up their own failings after the costly Crusades with an attack intended to completely erase any memory of this ancient nature-based religion of the people, thus solidifying their complete control of the people.
Curott's steady realization of the Goddess began from an intellectual exploration, a stance I immediately recognized as my own. She says of her research, "I wasn't looking for an epiphany, nor a basis for conversion or belief. My original interest was intellectual and feminist. I did not have to believe in a feminine divinity to understand the implications for women." (62) She presents us with a richly detailed, compact history of Goddess worship interwoven with her own learning experience of the power of rituals, herbs, symbols and chants.
"Harmonizing all four, and ultimately five, aspects of our humanity -- mind, will, emotions, body, and soul -- is essential to the holistic integrity of our character, for in the Old Religion, all are equally valuable...This work is the heart of ancient 'alchemy', something most people today think of as the impossible, magical practice of changing base metals into gold. Alchemy is actually an ancient metaphor system describing the spiritual work of transforming the dross, or base metal, or an unbalanced, spiritually disconnected personality, into the gold of a spiritually enlightened being." (116)
As her realization of the Goddess through the practice of Wicca grew, she began to understand that "...true Witches work only to gain power over themselves. They work to accomplish self-mastery -- to achieve healing, wisdom, compassion and freedom, and to liberate themselves from the constraints that the world, or their upbringing, have trapped them in." (147) Curott so thoroughly explains the practices of Wicca, including the text of chants reprinted from We All Come from the Goddess by Zsuzsanna Budapest, that any reader will feel fully informed and inspired about the importance of this ancient woman centered religion now re-emerging in the modern world. This amazing woman's story of "coming out of the broom closet", as she describes it, is a book that every woman who has begun to explore her power, and her responsibility to act positively in the world, can read and cherish -- a complete guidebook to female spirituality.
Book of Shadows, Phyllis W. Curott (1998) Broadway Books/Random House, Inc. New York. ISBN 0-7679-0055-3
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