Wanderer's Tales #5 - Goddesses
Excerpt: Welcome to Issue 5 of Wanderer’s Tales, the newsletter of Ancient Roads. In this issue is Chapter Five of Shield of the Goddess.
Welcome to Issue 5 of Wanderer’s Tales, the newsletter of Ancient Roads, the web site of Seattle writer and composer Chris Struble.
Here you will find fantasy fiction set in ancient worlds where music makes magic, and the road ahead is always uncertain. Wanderers welcome.
In this newsletter is Chapter Five of Shield of the Goddess, the adult fantasy novel I am releasing here as a web serial in 2025.
This chapter returns to the viewpoint of Shala, a girl who dreams of finding respite from the intrusion of other people’s thoughts. Shala and her father undertake a dangerous sea voyage in a small boat. Along the way, Shala learns more about her world, and finds new courage.
Chris Struble
I have added new music to the site, including Song of the Father, a chant that appears in Chapter Five and plays an important role in Shala’s sea voyage.
Chris Struble
I have also updated People and Places, with new names mentioned in the new chapter and how to pronounce them.
Chris Struble
The theme of this newsletter issue is “goddesses”. In past issues I have been juxtaposing the ancient and the modern, and I will do the same today.
First the ancient. Go back in time more than five thousand years, and most people in the world were polytheists who revered both gods and goddesses. Even in parts of the world with agriculture, most people still lived in villages, and even the earliest cities had no evidence of social classes or warfare. The first empire had not yet happened. Archaeologists call this time the Chalcolithic, or Copper Age.
My novel Shield of the Goddess is set in a fantasy world at such a time.
Fast forward to two thousand years ago. The goddess in the featured image is from that time. It is from the Library of Celsus at Ephesus, in Türkiye, and depicts Arete, the goddess of virtue. I chose this image because it was the inspiration for a statue of a goddess that will appear in one of the upcoming chapters.
Fast forward again to the nineteenth century. Archaeologists, mostly men at that time, uncovered thousands of figurines from the Copper Age and earlier ages representing the female body, but unable to see through the patriarchal fog of time, dismissed them as erotic toys for ancient men, even though similar objects would be considered sacred to the people who made them if they depicted men or animals. Search for images of “chalcolithic goddesses” if you want to see examples of what I mean.
Now to the present day. Our modern world is in the late stage of thousands of years of patriarchy, slavery, and domination that denies the divinity of women in both heaven and earth. Most people today still assume it was always that way. But as I just mentioned, it wasn't.
Last week, April 14 2025, Blue Origin launched a spacecraft with six passengers, all women, including television personalities Katy Perry and Gayle King. I saw the launch live that morning. I heard one of the women exclaim “Oh my Goddess” twice, upon seeing the moon. You can hear it on this video right after 1:30:00.
https://www.blueorigin.com/missions/ns-31
The exclamation of “Oh my Goddess!” is a reminder that there are still people in our modern world who revere the divine feminine, even if our culture cannot see them. I don’t know which of the six women said it or what their beliefs are. But I can imagine that at the edge of space, all social constructs fall away like a booster rocket. There is only the pink moon, the thin blue line between Mother Earth and the darkness of space, and the experience of weightlessness. In other words, the divine.
I am delighted to share that I have eleven subscribers now, and I want to wish you all a happy Earth Day. I hope you find a way to connect with nature this week, and commit to action to protect our Mother Earth in whatever way you are inspired to do.
If you enjoyed this newsletter, or are enjoying the chapters and songs I have been sharing here, please leave a comment.
As always, check out my Books and Music pages to see the ever growing lists of everything I have published here to date.
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See you on the road!
Chris Struble