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I remember when a teen-aged child of a friend of mine heard Hendrix for the first time and thought it was some hip new heavy metal band. We then played Steppenwolf, Janis, Cream and a few others for him and blew his socks off. The latest generation is easily convinced they invented what is cool, or hip or just plain better than what has gone before. Certainly it is wilder.
New Age spirituality offers a refreshing take on the universe, and often enjoys the mystical facet of spirituality, but it isn't as new as many folks think it is. In the annals of history we can find an intriguing thread of female mystics who envisioned God (and Jesus) as androgenized, who emphasized female qualities in God, and often experienced their relationship with God in direct and sexual terms.
Julian of Norwich in the mid 1300's in The Motherhood of God says
As truly as God is our Father, so truly God is our Mother. (And that He showed in all the showings, and particularly in those sweet words where he says "It is I" — that is to say" "It is I: the Power and the Goodness of the Fatherhood. It is I: the Wisdom of the Motherhood. It is I: the Light and the Grace that is all blessed Love. It is I: the Trinity. It is I: the Unity. I am the supreme goodness of all manner of things. I am what causes thee to love. I am what causes thee to yearn. It is I: the endless fulfilling of all true desires.") I understood three ways of looking at motherhood in God: the first is the creating of our human nature; the second is His taking of our human nature (and there commences the motherhood of grace); the third is motherhood of action (and in that is a great reaching outward, by the same grace, of length and breadth and of height and of depth without end) and all is one love. (Ch. 59)
Julian was an anchoress. That means that she lived in a little stone room attached to a local church. The room of an anchorite (male) or an anchoress (female) would be bricked up after the person had entered. There would be a little slit left open facing the inside of the church, and a window left open to the outside world. They lived their lives in contemplation and prayer and writing. Some gained favor as wise counselors and were consulted by townspeople through the outside window.
Hildegaard von Bingen died in 1179. She devoted her life to study and to writing sacred music. She had many visions and believed that "Every element has a sound, an original sound from the order of God; all those sounds unite like the harmony from harps and zithers." And, in a gentle but defiant voice she also said "We cannot live in a world that is not our own, in a world that is interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not a HOME. Part of the terror is to take back our own listening, to use our own voice, to see our own light." When speaking of her own music, she is quoted as saying:
Underneath all the texts, all the sacred psalms and canticles, these watery varieties of sounds and silences, terrifying, mysterious, whirling and sometimes gestating and gentle must somehow be felt in the pulse, ebb, and flow of the music that sings in me. My new song must float like a feather on the breath of God.
Catherine of Sienna reportedly started having visions when she was 6. When her mother instructed her to dress fashionably to attract a suitor, she cut off all her hair in protest. Her life included more visions and many confrontations with the church.
St Bridget of Sweden, also in the late 1300's, married at 13 and had 8 children. After her husband's death, she began having visions. They were written down. translated into Latin and circulated through Europe. She saw no distinction between having religious conviction and an active intellect. Her quote on that topic is:
Let everyone who has the grace of intelligence fear that, because of it, he will be judged more heavily if he is negligent.
The Maiden of Ludmir was Hannah Rachel Werbermacher, a nineteenth-century Hasidic Jewish woman popularly known as the only female Hasidic Rebbe, or religious leader. Her father, a Torah scholar, believed his daughter to have special spiritual gifts. He therefore provided her with
