Join me on this episode as I speak with Karen Tate. Karen is a thought leader, speaker, author and activist, who bridges spirituality, personal transformation, culture and social justice. She has been named one of the Thirteen Most Influential Women in Goddess Spirituality and a Wisdom Keeper of the Women's Spirituality Movement. She is a popular public speaker many public events on the role of the Goddess in history and in modern culture. Karen started the first Goddess tours before they were mainstream and the original and longest running Goddess-oriented radio show /podcast: Voices of the Sacred Feminine. Her several books include Walking an Ancient Path and Goddess Calling.

We begin by chatting about Karen’s early beginnings growing up in the South in New Orleans, Louisiana within a Catholic family. Later her family moved to California, and she discovered feminine faces of the Goddess in ISIS and Sekhmet. Karen became an independent scholar and studied with various Women's Goddess groups such as the Reformed Congregation of the Goddess before following her own interests.

Karen chats about how in the 90’s her and her husband were introducing people to the Goddess through the back door of sacred travel sites. They led sacred tours of the Goddess to places such as Israel, Turkey, Greece, France and England. Karen started writing travel stories which then evolved into her first book called Sacred Places of Goddess. That book kicked off her further books about how to incorporate Goddess Spirituality, spiritual psychology and sacred feminine values into one’s life or community.

Karen's mission is to educate and communicate the ideals and values of the Goddess. Partnership, collaboration, respect, equality and freedom from a dominator culture are part of sacred feminine theology that Karen learned from Riane Eisler’s iconic book: The Chalice and the Blade”. With its key message being that when we value power with rather than power over then that shifts everything. We talk about spiritual or sacred activism and what this means currently and how we can overcome rampant exploitation/abuse and oppression. Karen points out that women need archetypes and role models as many women have internal misogyny because of being damaged patriarchy. We must sit back and rethink what are our values and ethics are and what kind of world we want and then vote for people who support the issues that are important to us.

We chat about Karen’s long running radio show - now podcast, Voices of the Sacred Feminine. A weekly platform for interviews with spiritual leaders and visionaries such as Noam Chomsky, Vandana Shiva, Riane Eisler, Matthew Fox, Starhawk, etc. which is part of Karen’s mission to teach people about the big umbrella of deities, archetypes and the Sacred Feminine. There are so many people with common goals all over the world who share Sacred Feminine values and ideals that they can become our teachers and allies. Tune in and be enlightened! More about Karen at: www.karentate.net

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Support the show

*If you like what you hear; please sponsor my show. https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/oracleoflunapodcast

Subscription page for Premium content: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1445572/subscribe

H. Byron Ballard, is a Folklorist, Author, Priestess and Teacher. She has served as a featured speaker and teacher at several festivals and conferences, including the Sacred Space Conference, Pagan Spirit Gathering, Starwood, Hexfest and many others. She serves as senior Priestess and co-founder of Mother Grove Goddess Temple and the Coalition of Earth Religions/CERES, both in Asheville, NC. She podcasts about Appalachian folkways on "Wyrd Mountain Gals." Her essays are featured in several anthologies, and she writes a regular column for SageWoman Magazine. Her books include four on mountain folk magic. The first was Staubs and Ditchwater, and the most recent (2025) is A Feral Church: A Guided Journey to Find Magic, Kinship and the Goddess.

Byron grew up in the country in North Carolina; she only saw the Goddess within the soil, trees, water and wind around her in Appalachia running in the mountains and playing in her family’s small orchard playing with crawdads and salamanders. Outside in nature is where Byron felt the divine most strongly. She sometimes saw the Goddess as anthropomorphic. Byron never saw the divine in male form. She calls herself an Animist at heart and also a polytheist.

Her grandmother and several cousins had the sight or prophetic dreams and also the ability to interact with spirits- even though their religion was Methodist. These abilities were deeply ingrained in the culture that Byron grew up in. Appalachia’s energy is deeply magical and broad and often manifests in deep spirituality which permeates the culture. It also has some of the oldest mountains in North America and two of the oldest rivers flowing through it in the world. There many different kinds of religion there. The intersection of Indigenous, African Scottish/Irish, Welsh and German cultures contributes to a unique Appalachian spiritual culture.

We chat about Byron’s newest book A Feral Church. She wrote it after the death of Carol Christ and her work was a great inspiration to Byron. She decided it was time to write another Goddess spirituality book. This book takes us Solstice to Solstice on inner and outer journeys to meet spiritual beings and connect with the Mother Goddess. It’s about stepping out of domesticity and accessing your wild essence in our own hearts. We encounter spiritual beings who teach us about aspects of our wild spirits in different parts of the world.

We chat about her role as a Priestess at the Mother Goddess Temple In Asheville NC which is a 501c3 church. She does interfaith work and outreach as well as holding Sabbats celebrating the wheel of the year with her community there. Byron believes that the Goddess is the root and foundation of all of us and from that we do the work that we are called to do in these perilous times. The Goddess is much needed especially for Women. Byron ends our episode by giving us a truly beautiful Goddess meditation for love and support. More about Byron at www.myvillagewitch.com

Tune in and be enlightened!

Support the show

*If you like what you hear; please sponsor my show. https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/oracleoflunapodcast

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