Holly Boswell - The Goddess

"We need to recognize that each of us, in our own small way, are makers of our culture."We can exercise that function best by expressing our true selves, not by simply fulfilling our culture's expectations. We are all in transition...

Holly Boswell

Holly Boswell (1950-2017)
Photo - Mariette Pathy Allen

Yesterday Stana reported that Holly Boswell, gender pioneer had passed way. Only 67 years old and someone that made her mark in the emerging and brave gender community of the 1990's. I first met Holly at the Holiday-En-Femme in Burbank California, 1989. I was immediately impressed by this little, beautiful and powerhouse of energy. She was a spiritual person and encourage it in others.  

At most all of our transgender convention she would host a spiritual circle event of drum and/or meditation. Holly was someone that lived her faith and expressed it a quiet and beautiful manner. Thank you Holly for sharing!


Here is an article written by Holly from TV-TS Tapestry issue #61, publication date 1991

A Re-emergence of the Goddess

By Holly Boswell

In her Trinity Award acceptance speech at the IFGE convention in Denver last year, Mariette Pathy Allen challenged the Gender Community with an important question: 

"Do you realize that you would have been the Berdaches in another society? You would have been the spiritual leaders, the visionaries who saw the bigger picture, because you see from more points of view... It is critical that you claim that position now. It is yours." 

Rena Swifthawk, a Native American medicine woman, says that she and her elders believe that there is an abundance of transgendered people being born into the world now who can help heal the planet if they chaise to accept this role. Many so-called New Age thinkers, peace activists, ecologists, radical feminists …  even anthropologists and psychologists are advocating the need for a new set of values based on cooperation, balance, and harmony to re-place the institutionalized ethics of com-petition. polarization, and domination. 

There is strong evidence that human cultures up until 5.000 years ago were matriarchal, goddess-worshipping, and egalitarian. Men and women were equal partners, not master and slave, and the global ecology was respected. In her book The Chalice and the Blade, Riane Eisler points out" ... the central religious image [used to bel a woman giving birth and not, as in our time, a man dying on a cross ... in this new reality that is now said to he the sole creation of a male God, the lift-giving and nurturing (qualities have I been displaced by the power to dominate and destroy… " The subjugation of women and of Nature is symptomatic of the disastrous  path we have been traveling for far too long. 

Gender liberation may well be the key to a revolution in consciousness that is needed to resolve our most urgent global crises. Gender is at the very heart of who we are as human beings, and governs how we interact with each other and the world. The inner healing that we as transgendered individuals achieve can be outwardly applied to the imbalance and distress that surrounds us. This used to be standard practice in most "primitive" societies. Some form of transgenderism was a prerequisite for Native American medicine people (Berdache), the Hijras of India, the Mahu of Polynesia, the Shamans of Asia, and elsewhere. Other spiritual disciplines such as Wicca, Taoism, Tantrism, the Christian Order of Mary and Hermetic teachings espouse similar views of gender balance. Despite the errancy of Western Civilization, an androgynous Jesus Christ tried to reassert the feminine values of compassion, responsibility, and love over the masculine excesses of conquest and inequality.   

No matter what our religious background. beliefs, or talents, let us encourage each other to explore the potential of our transgender heritage. In what form will the Goddess emerge through you? What motivates and inspires you? What spiritual and earthly tools will you need to accomplish your work? How will you share your knowledge? Ultimately, how can you summon the potency of your divine grace to heal the disease and suffering of fellow humans of all the other innocent life forms and of Mother Earth herself? 

You will find your calling - where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." 

(A dozen and more transgendered people are forming a Circle, hopefully the first of many, to share and transmute their knowledge into practice for personal and global healing. Mother Earth needs you, too - Form more Transgender Healers' Circles.)