The Heroine's Journey describes contemporary woman's search for wholeness in a society where she has been defined according to masculine values. Drawing on cultural myths and fairy tales, ancient symbols and goddesses, and the dreams of contemporary women, Murdock illustrates the need for--and the reality of--feminine values in Western culture. This special anniversary edition, with a new foreword by Christine Downing and preface by the author, illuminates that this need is just as relevant today as it was when the book was originally published thirty years ago.

The story of the mother-and-daughter goddesses Demeter and Persephone has seized the imagination of people in every age, from ancient times to the present. Considered today by many to be the archetypal myth for women, it touches on timeless themes in every life, such as the male-female relationship, love between women, initiations into puberty and old age, the mother-daughter bond, death, and ecological renewal. Christine Downing has combined essays, prose, poetry, and even performance art with her own insightful commentary to shed new light on the myth's ancient meanings and to offer new insights in its implications for contemporary men and women.

In a series of chapters each focusing on a different goddess or mythical woman, Christine Downing traces her own path of individuation from maiden-daughter to mature woman. A therapist, university professor of religion, and former president of the American Academy of Religion, she writes what is essentially an autobiography with an inner focus on her dreams and fantasies, and their meanings to her. She writes in a direct and intimate way, using to great bit effortless effect her deep culture and wide learning.

-"The Journal of Analytical Psychology"

"Gleanings" is a gathering of hitherto uncollected essays written by Christine Downing during the quarter century since the publication in 1981 of her seminal book, "The Goddess: Mythological Images of the Feminine." Many of the essays continue her exploration of Greek goddess traditions and other aspects of Greek mythology. Others grow out of her ongoing involvement with the thought of both Freud and Jung. The interrelationship between polis and psyche, city and soul, is a central theme of several of these papers, including those that focus on the Holocaust. Various facets of lesbian and gay experience are also examined.

""Myths and Mysteries of Same-Sex Love" makes a powerful statement about the realities of gay and lesbian psyche. A gay and lesbian psychic perspective may at first be startling, but once examined, it proves to be unforgettable."
-"The Advocate"

These essays are clearly not about play as unseriousness, not about fun and games, a point that should be abundantly demonstrated by the reference to the death camps of the Holocaust. They are about the space, the "Spielraum," necessary for the wheel of life to turn soulfully. Christine Downing's essays may be felt to function as a possible prelude to the play of a truly ludic imagination, which, like Buber's "slow medicine," quietly enters the soul, working into the heart, awakening a secret melody to be noticed only later. "Preludes," indeed!David L. Miller
Author of "Three Faces of God"
and "Hells and Holy Ghosts"

Christine Downing has graced the campus of San Diego State University, returning like Persephone each spring for the past ten years to deliver the annual lecture named in her honor. Printed here in their entirety, the talks are autobiographical, poetical, literary musings on the subjects that have occupied her for the past ten years, including the Holocaust, memory, the Bible, the Goddess, Martin Buber, Sigmund Freud, the myth of Orpheus, Greek tragedy, and the Imagist poet H.D.

Professor Downing's extensive publications on the role of myth in the psychologies of Freud and Jung, and in the contemporary quest for self-understanding, have made her an original source in these fields. Her books include "The Goddess: Mythological Representations of the Feminine," "Psyche's Sisters," "Journey through Menopause," and "Myths and Mysteries of Same Sex Love,"