Shamanic Wise Woman

Shakti Woman: Feeling Our Fire, Healing Our World

The New Female Shamanism Paperback

July 19, 1991

by Vicki Noble

$15.61

Review Written By: Sidonia Nightsky

Shakti Woman by Vicki Noble and published in 1991. As the creator of the Mother Peace Tarot Deck/Book, she refers to those publications frequently in Shakti Woman along with her relationship with her former lover Karen Vogel, and husband.

However, the book has great illustrations of historical female icons and historical accounts of the female blood cycle from all over the world.

Noble’s perspective of the Goddess and power of women, how men become dominant and women subservient is enough to make religious persecution obvious. Women were magical, able to give birth and feed their young. Women have instincts and intuition. Because of these biological differences, the basis of female shamanism is the blood cycles according to Noble (pp. 11).

Noble writes how different cultures celebrated rites of womanhood, and the goddesses associated with those rites. The Moon Goddess regulated woman’s cycle, and at one time women all cycled according to the moon. Even the planets play an important part in our lives and can be used to determine the best times for holding energy, doing shamanic work, getting married, planning a family.

Noble writes in the first person, describing her experiences through the drug era. Shakti appeared as a spider to her, the Dark Goddess, with a dark jewel-like, sexual power (pp. 117). Tarantula, like snakes shed their skin… power animals came to her in dreams.

Noble weaves the story of shamanic journey into her story, and the entering the ecstatic trance states. She experimented with different ways to reach ecstatic trance states. Then talking about how trance work is practiced by the shaman to help others.

Vicki Noble has a tendency to jump about a lot– from history, to her current life, then shamanic practice, and then her past experience.

In all I would rate the book on the scale of 1-5 about 4, for the shared information on Female Rites, and Female Goddesses.