Focus on God Giving Birth and explore the Background.
Monica Sjöö (1938–2005) was a Swedish painter, writer, and political activist who lived most of her life in Bristol in the United Kingdom. She was involved in the women's liberation movement and spent three months in the United States in the summer of 1968 when she became a part of the emerging second-wave feminism. Back in Britain, she kept contact with the New York feminist Beila Cohen, who sent updates and material from groups such as W. I. T. C. H. Sjöö became an early exponent of the Goddess movement, where she practiced a woman-centred form of modern paganism. Her diary from 1968 lists books she recently had read by authors such as Margaret Murray, Robert Graves and Helena Blavatsky, along with a biography of Aleister Crowley.The most common names or images of God in Sjöö's religious texts are the "Great Mother" and "Mother Earth". In her writings, she frequently used childbirth as a metaphor for creation. The painting God Giving Birth was started just before she left for the United States and completed soon after her return to Britain on 21 September 1968. It was inspired by the birth of her second son, an event she described in several texts as both physically and spiritually transforming. She wrote on her website:For the first time I experienced the enormous power of my woman's body, both painful and cosmic and I "saw" in my mind's eye great luminous masses of blackness and masses of radiant light coming and going. The Goddess of the universe in her pure energy body. This birth changed my life and set me questioning the patriarchal culture we live in and its religions that deny the life-creating powers of the mothers and the Great Mother.
Aleister Crowley women's liberation movement second-wave feminism modern paganism mass Bristol Monica Sjöö Robert Graves Helena Blavatsky Margaret Murray feminist Goddess movement W. I. T. C. H.