Baring and Cashford

The goddess myth needs to be made known not because it is superior to the godmyth, but because it has been lost so long that we have apparently forgotten what it meant. For all the limitations of its over-identification with the natural world, it did at least give expression to the indissoluble relationship, even the identity that exists between part and whole and between visible and invisible in all orders of being. Above all, it gave emphasis to the wonder and delight of life, because it included all manifestations of life within the sphere of the divine. The question a study of the goddess myth invites us to consider now is whether (and, if so, how) we can participate in this relationship with the whole of life without sacrificing the consciousness for the sake of which we sacrificed the image of the divine in the natural world." Baring & Cashford, p. 484