Thursday, May 17, 2007
Goddess Reading List
Goddess Reading List:
"The White Goddess" - Robert Graves -
"Amazon" - Barbara G. Walker
"The Chalice and the Blade" - Riane Eisler
"Old Europe" - Marija Gimbutas
"In Seach of God the Mother" - Lynn Rollers
"The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory" - Cynthis Ellers
"Sexual Peace" - Michael Sky
If you happen to know of more books on this subject will you please add them to the list.
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Queen takes King -- and a whole lot more
Reviewed by Allen Barra
Sunday, May 2, 2004
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback | FAQ
URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/05/02/RVGKF69AR11.DTL
Birth of the Chess Queen
A History
By Marilyn Yalom
HARPERCOLLINS; 276 Pages; $24.95
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Chess, as any devoted reader of the novels of Vladimir Nabokov knows, is a superb metaphor for life. Now, as it turns out, and as Marilyn Yalom illustrates in a fascinating new book, the metaphor works the other way as well. In "Birth of the Chess Queen," Yalom, a senior scholar at the Institute for Women and Gender at Stanford and the author "A History of the Wife" and "A History of the Breast," has written the rare book that illuminates something that has always been dimly perceived but never articulated, in this case that the power of the chess queen reflects the evolution of female power in the Western world.
In India, where the game began, probably in the fifth century, there was no female game piece, and for centuries there were none in Persian and Arab countries, where versions of chess had gained widespread popularity. (That, however, didn't keep women from playing chess; "The Arabian Nights" tells of a caliph who paid 10,000 dinars for a chess-playing slave girl who, after beating him three times, won the life of her lover. The Arab version of the game is still all male, "having resisted changes that took place in Europe a thousand years ago." The chess queen got her first written notice in the West in the 990s in a Latin poem by a Swiss monk, though the queen had not yet evolved into the mighty force that would come to dominate chessboards. By the 12th century, she was ushered into the Spanish game by both Christians and Jews, replacing the vizier, who had begun as the king's chief counselor in Eastern chess (apparently Spaniards were taking notice of who got the most attention when he or she whispered in the king's ear). From Spain, chess moved to the south of France, where Eleanor of Aquitaine -- duchess of Aquitaine, countess of Poitou, queen of France, queen of England, to list just a few of her credits -- gave the chess queen her first real-life superstar role model.
Eleanor, writes Yalom, "epitomized the trappings of queenship that worked their way into the symbolic system on the chessboard." By the end of Eleanor's reign in 1189, the only vizier that remained on European chessboards was to be found in parts of Spain where Muslim traditions dominated. European men fought over her, as indeed they had fought over Eleanor. According to English legal documents, there were at least two "chess homicides," in 1251 and 1256, and in 1291 the Archbishop Peckham condemned a prior and canon to three days and nights on bread and water for "being led astray by an evilly- disposed person ... who had actually taught them to play chess." But thanks in large part to the popularity of the medieval best-seller "The Book of Chess" (by the year 1500, the Bible was the only book in Europe more widely printed), there was no stopping the girl. The chess queen finally reached the summit of her power in the late 15th century under the rule of Isabella of Castille, the most powerful of all Spanish queens.
"What was and is often referred to as the 'game of kings,' " Yalom says, "could henceforth be equally identified as the 'queen's game.' " Today, "the chess queen is still a fitting image for women's place in the world. ... She has entered the academy of gendered icons, alongside the Earth Mother, the Amazon, and the Virgin Mary." Now if we can only get Osama bin Laden to play some chess.
Allen Barra is a staff writer for the New York Times.
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback | FAQ
Marilyn Yalom with their latest book “Birth of the Chess Queen” has a
good feeling for history.
Indeed I proved after 20 years study with three books (1994, 1997 and
february, 2004) that Isabella I of Castile is the symbol of the new
powerful chess queen.
See www.damasweb.com and http://www.damasweb.com/ingles/
Govert Westerveld
There is also an article about our beloved Ricardo Calvo, aka Chief Sitting Bull.
Hi Sis,
Thanks for starting a "Goddess Reading List."
You and I are on the same weave-length! Tonight I was thinking about The Chief myself, waxing sentimental.
I will add to the list some "chessly" reads:
"Chess Bitch" by Jennifer Shahade
"The Polgar Sisters" by Cathy Forbes (published in 1992)
"Breaking Through" by Susan Polgar
"How I Became a Grandmaster at 14" by Alexandra Kosteniuk
"Silver Queen" by Maria Ivanka
I think I'll start a "permanent list" for us.
Ugh - I can't stand Cynthia Ellers.
For other Goddess books:
The First Sex by Elizabeth Gould Davis (out of print, but essential . You can usually find it on Amazon for under 10 dollars.)
The Spiral Dance by Starhawk
The Holy Book of Women's Mysteries by Zsuzanna Budapest
The Once and Future Goddess by Elinor Gadon
Ariadne's Thread by Shekhinah Mountainwater
When God was a Woman by Merlin Stone
The Great Cosmic Mother:
Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth by Monica Sjoo
Goddesses in Everywoman : Powerful Archetypes in Women's Lives by Jean Shinoda Bolen
The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image (Arkana)
The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image (Arkana) by Jules Cashford, Anne Baring, and Laurens Van Der Post
I also recommend everything by Mary Daly
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