TITLE: Waking the Moon
AUTHOR: Elizabeth Hand
GENRE: Fantasy
PUBLISHED: 30/05/1994
RATING: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon
MOBILISM LINK: Mobilism
Description: Steeped in the explosive passion and seductive power of Anne Rice, this novel is an unforgettable tale of modern love and ancient ritual. Within the imposing towers of Washington, D.C.'s University of the Archangels and St. John the Divine, a clandestine order prevails. The Benandanti has secretly manipulated every government, every church, every institution in the world since antiquity. But now the Moon Goddess has returned. And she wants her world back.
Review: When I read the description for Waking the Moon, it gave me chills. Not only do I have a special place in my heart for stories featuring two opposing powers struggling for the fate of the world, but since childhood I have devoured stories of goddesses from all over the world. A little more research told me that Elizabeth Hand’s novel is a cult classic, winner not only of the James Tiptree Jr. Award but the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award as well, and a nominee for the World Fantasy Award. When I was told it was concerned with the Goddess Revival movement and the upsurge of feminism and feminist spirituality in the last few decades, I knew I had to read it.
Waking the Moon is not, at first, anything like what I was expecting. If anything, the style reminded me of Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin, with the protagonist Sweeney exploring the University of the Archangels as a first-year student; the main difference being that Sweeney’s story is told from first-person, whereas Tam Lin is written in third-. But where Tam Lin was a chore to slog through, with only the quickest, briefest glimpse of magic in the final pages, Waking the Moon wastes very little time in pulling back the curtain on the fantastical element, with portals, teleportation, angels, and miracles taking up only the smallest part of it. Although Sweeney is the main character, several other characters act as third-person narrators, giving the reader a more complete view of the goings-on than Sweeney herself has. I thought this was done very skillfully, not least because every one of Hand’s characters is three-dimensional and fully developed, from the goddess-worshipping Magda Kurtz to Annie Harmon, seeking revenge for her cousin’s suicide only to become a lesbian icon.
In fact, Sweeney herself is the only ‘normal’ character in the cast – and well she knows it. Hand, however, manages to neatly side-step the problematic (and unforgivably dull) problems of the ‘Mary-Sue’ syndrome by never giving Sweeney supernatural beauty or abilities. One of my favourite aspects of the novel was that, despite being the main character, Sweeney is not at all the focus of the bigger picture. Being used to the kind of story where the average girl turns out to be the chosen one, I was all prepared for Sweeney to be revealed as the goddess’ chosen Kurtz and the secretive Benandanti were looking for.
But she isn’t.
I don’t consider that a spoiler, because that little reveal happens very early on, and the main part of the story happens twenty years later –
Well. Let me start over.
Waking the Moon is built around the idea that, thousands of years ago, most if not all of the planet worshipped a mother-of-all goddess figure, the source behind such objects as the Venus of Dusseldorf. (A great deal of research has clearly gone into the book, and I approved; although I knew most of it already, readers who have no familiarity with the topic won’t have any problems in diving in and getting lost in the story.) Worship of this goddess, with her varying names, eventually faded out, leading into the prototypes of the modern Judeo-Christian religions and a completely different, patriarchal, culture.
When Sweeney starts college, she is unaware that St John the Divine is the home-place of the Bernandanti, an order who has been managing the modern world. In particular, they have done their best to stamp out all goddess worship, fearing more than anything the day when Othiym – a catch-all name for this All-Mother goddess – attempts to return. Unfortunately for them, one of the other new students, Angelica, is one of Othiym’s chosen ones – and before even a full term has passed, she has discovered just that.
Sweeney is swiftly wrapped up in Angelica and her friend/lover, Oliver. Both Angelica and Oliver are more-than-real characters; both wealthy, both intelligent, and both heart-stoppingly beautiful, Sweeney is constantly amazed that they have any time for her. The three of them are tightly tangled up in each other, but eventually it all comes unravelled when Angelica begins to come into her power.
I loved the relationship between Sweeney, Angelica, and Oliver, even if it wasn’t very healthy. Oliver is clearly not well – in hindsight Sweeney speculates that he might be a latent schizophrenic – and beneath her veneer of sweetness and light, Angelica is all too happy to use and/or dismiss those around her. Sweeney is in over her head, but it takes her a while to realise that. She, like everyone else, is completely unprepared for what Othiym actually is.
This, I think, is where Waking the Moon really shines: not just in the ritual poetry that sent shivers down my spine, but in the complex examination of just what the Goddess is. As a pagan, I’m quite familiar with how most modern goddess-worship identifies the mother-goddess as, primarily, a loving, caring figure. The idea that the Goddess has Her darker aspect is acknowledged, if you know where to look – but isn’t something that most people want to talk about, or really face. Waking the Moon is about the Goddess as a figure capable of great violence, one who demands human sacrifice to slake Her hunger. I still can’t decide if Hand was trying to preach – although clearly she doesn’t mean anyone to take the human sacrifice bit seriously – or if it was just an interesting plot device she wanted to explore. Either way, it’s extremely convincing –
I say, ‘Enough.’ We’ve all put in our time being Aphrodite and Hera”—the goddesses of Love and the Hearth respectively—“we’ve all been the dutiful daughters and good mothers and noble prostitutes and loyal secretaries. It’s time to acknowledge that there are other roles for us to play. That we can be warriors, not just in the skies and in the armed services, but on the home front, where most of the battles are fought anyway. That we can be lovers but also leaders; that we are not victims!
It's this philosophy that is at the heart of the book – the controversial, sometimes problematic issue of women reclaiming (or just claiming) power. It’s certainly problematic within the confines of the book, since Angelica’s Othiym demands human sacrifice – although even this manages to present itself in a disturbingly logical light, reminiscent of Tepper’s Gate to Women’s Country, when Angelica, speaking of sacrificing a small number of men every year, says
"And so for twenty thousand years we had these relatively peaceful matristic societies. No wars, no warriors. If we bought that peace at the price of a few men or boys a year, well so what?"
I think it’s a testament to Hand’s skill that she manages to half-convince the reader of the logic of this argument, even though she makes it abundantly clear, through the reactions of various other characters, that no, this really isn’t acceptable.
Or is it?
I thought this was going to be a typical battle between two powers. And it is a battle, but the powers aren’t the ones I expected. More than a war between the Judeo-Christian God and Othiym, it’s a story about the balance between men and women. Those are the powers at war here – Male and Female, and not in a purely political or social sense, either. Hand weaves in issues like climate change and crime rates into the struggle of her archetypes, and despite the thorny problem of human sacrifice, it really isn’t clear who she’s rooting for. One side ‘wins’, but only by default, and leaving the world’s problems unsolved in the process – making the reader question whether the right side won at all.
One scene that keeps coming back to me is when Angelica – now a well-known icon, leader of her own goddess revival movement – is on a talk show and confronted by a man in the audience...
"Can I finish?" The man broke in angrily. "These women, they get together and they all bitch about how their husbands abuse them and they can’t get decent jobs and I’m a rapist and everything comes down to Men Suck, but I work fifty-hour weeks to support my family, I never lifted a finger against my wife or children, I supported the Equal Rights Amendment and what do I get? My wife left me, she says I was condescending to her, she says I—"
“Well, perhaps she did not correctly perceive your concern,” Angelica suggested smoothly. “Very often men are not aware that they treat their wives in a childlike fashion. You see, we’re still trained to see women in only certain ways—and other countries are worse than the United States in this, when I was in Italy it was very pronounced—the whole Madonna-Whore syndrome. Or you have this whole way of looking at women as either nurturers or as children who need constant protection. Many of the world’s ancient Goddess religions represent the Goddess as having three faces: those of the Mother, Daughter, and Crone or Destroyer. And a number of recent books help women focus on two of those aspects: Gaea, the nurturing Mother, and her daughter Kore. And that’s wonderful. I truly think these books are wonderful and I think that they’ve helped women a great deal; but it’s not enough.”
The camera moved in slowly for a close-up on Angelica’s face. Shafts of light from the silver crescent on her breast flickered across her cheeks and jaw; she looked as though she were rising up from deep clear water. Her voice grew softer, more intense. Beside me Jack leaned closer to the television set, and I could imagine everyone in that audience shifting in their seats, everyone straining to get closer to Angelica.
“—Because we can’t just ignore that other face of the Goddess. For thousands of years we’ve pretended that She doesn’t exist, that human history begins and ends with the Old Testament. But now, for the first time in millennia, women are starting to embrace Her again. And that’s marvelous, but we can’t just pick and choose which of Her aspects to honor. We have to deal with all of them. With the Full Moon and the New Moon but also with the Dark of the Moon, Hecate’s realm. We have to acknowledge the Mother and the Avenger. We must embrace She Who Mourns and She Who Creates, but we must also honor She Who Destroys.
“Because otherwise we will never be whole. In traditional patriarchal societies, men have always acknowledged their own aggressive tendencies—that’s why they’ve always been the warriors and the football players, the generals and bank presidents and—”
“The serial killers!” a shrill voice shouted. Uneasy laughter from the audience; but Angelica only nodded seriously.
“—and yes, the serial killers—but also the great artists and writers and composers. But until we as women acknowledge our own personal need for power and our own capabilities for aggression and independence, we will never be whole. We’ll continue to be good mothers and daughters, we’ll continue to be muses, we’ll continue to be victims—but we won’t be whole and strong. We won’t be the Supreme Goddess that we can be. We need to acknowledge all the aspects of the Goddess within us; we need to embrace the chthonic darkness, to welcome and awaken the Moon; and then we will be whole again. Then we will be strong, unconquerable, sovereigns of the Sacred Earth.
“Then we will be One with Her.”
Angelica’s speech here sent chills down my spine, but I keep coming back to that man in the audience. Because his words are a variation of those I’ve heard over and over again, not just from friends but my husband; the aforementioned ‘problematic’ aspect of feminism. I don’t want to turn this review into soapbox moment, only comment on the fact that this issue – whether feminism is fair to men, and all the things wrong with that statement – is a genuine argument feminists are having with non-feminists in real life, and I was glad that Hand touched on this too. On a personal note, I don’t know what I think about it, and Hand deftly avoids declaring one side right and one wrong. As with pretty much every other aspect of this book, she leaves it up to the reader to decide.
Waking the Moon isn’t a philosophical tract; there is real, vicious, bloody magic, and more than one literal battle between the opposing forces. And I loved every single thing about it; the characters, the relationships, the queer content, and the wonderful deluge of goddess mythology. I loved how Hand challenges her reader to keep up, how she made me think and consider things I hadn’t before. The goddess hymns she wrote for the worship of Othiym made me ache with awe. It probably doesn’t need to be said that I’m off to devour every one of her books I can get my hands on. I’m jealous of every one of you who will get to read Waking the Moon for the first time – it’s genuinely an experience. I hope you enjoy it.
From the purity of your blasted lands I come, Pure Queen of Those Below,
Of Hecate and Durga and the other Goddesses immortal.
For I claim that I too am of your blessed race.
I have flown out of the sorrowful weary Wheel.
I have passed with eager feet to the Circle desired.
I have entered into the bosom of Desponia, Queen of the Underworld.
I have passed with eager feet from the Circle desired.
O Blessed Othiym, thou shalt make me Goddess instead of mortal.
Haïyo Othiym! Othiym Lunarsa.