Starhawk
Starhawk (born Miriam Simos on June 17, 1951) is an American feminist and writer. She is known as a theorist of feminist neopaganism and ecofeminism. In 2013, she was listed in Watkins' Mind Body Spirit magazine as one of the 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People.
Also recorded as Miriam Simos · Miriam Samos · Starhawk (Miriam Simos)
Starhawk
Dedda71 · CC BY 3.0
- Name
- Starhawk
- Birth Name
- Miriam Simos
- Born
- 17 June 1951
- Birthplace
- Saint Paul, Minnesota, U.S.
- Awards
- Samuel Goldwyn Writing Award
- Education
- UCLA (B.A.) Antioch University West (M.A.)
- Spouse
- David Miller
- Nationality
- United States.
- Occupation
- writer, women's rights activist, journalist, environmentalist and psychologist.
- Movements
- ecofeminism and modern paganism.
- Honours
- Samuel Goldwyn Writing Awards and Lambda Literary Award.
- Languages
- English.
VALÉORINE Encyclopedia
VALÉORINE documentary reading
Documentary summary
Starhawk (born Miriam Simos on June 17, 1951) is an American feminist and writer. She is known as a theorist of feminist neopaganism and ecofeminism. In 2013, she was listed in Watkins' Mind Body Spirit magazine as one of the 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People.
Admitted source layer · organised and presented by VALÉORINE
Note VALÉORINE
Starhawk was an environmentalist, journalist and psychologist, among other activities, of American nationality. The environmentalist was born in Saint Paul.
Starhawk was educated at University of California, Los Angeles. The environmentalist was associated with ecofeminism and modern paganism.
Languages used include English. Honours include Lambda Literary Award and Samuel Goldwyn Writing Awards.
Composed from admitted, traceable facts · 27 September 2026
VALÉORINE
Reference Check
Propose documentary evidence for Starhawk. A contribution is never written directly as fact: identity, source, rights and evidence gates still decide.
Sign in to contribute
Documentary evidence
Evidence Panel
not yet certified
- Identity
- resolved
- Independent source families
- 0
- Admitted assertions
- 0
- Open conflicts
- 0
Authority files
gnd · 110746759 · wikidata · Q272205 · wikipedia · Starhawk
In this article
Key facts
Key facts
• Name — Starhawk • Birth Name — Miriam Simos • Born — 17 June 1951 • Birthplace — Saint Paul, Minnesota, U.S. • Notable Works — * The Spiral Dance • Dreaming the Dark • Awards — Samuel Goldwyn Writing Award • Education — UCLA (B.A.) Antioch University West (M.A.) • Website — starhawk.org • Spouse — David Miller
Early life
Early life
Starhawk was born in 1951 in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Her father, Jack Simos, died when she was five. Her mother, Bertha Claire Goldfarb Simos, was a professor of social work at UCLA. Both of her parents were the children of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine. During high school, she and feminist Christina Hoff Sommers were best friends. Starhawk received a BA in Fine Arts from UCLA. In 1973, whilst a graduate student in film there, she won the Samuel Goldwyn Writing Award for her novel, A Weight of Gold, a story about Venice, California, where she then lived. She received an MA in Psychology, with a concentration in feminist therapy, from Antioch University West in 1982.
The Spiral Dance
The Spiral Dance
Following her years at UCLA, after a failed attempt to become a fiction writer in New York City, Starhawk returned to California. She became active in the Neopagan community in the San Francisco Bay Area, and trained with Victor Anderson, founder of the Feri Tradition of witchcraft, and with Zsuzsanna Budapest, a feminist separatist involved in Dianic Wicca. She wrote a book, The Spiral Dance, on Goddess religion, which she finished in 1977 but was unable to publish at first. Feminist religious scholar Carol P. Christ included an article on witchcraft and the Goddess movement in the anthology Womanspirit Rising (1979). Christ put Starhawk in touch with an editor at Harper & Row, who eventually published the book. First published in 1979, The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess became a best-selling book about neopagan belief and practice. A 10th-anniversary edition was published in 1989, followed by a 20th-anniversary edition in 1999. The original text of The Spiral Dance was left largely intact for these editions, expanded primarily by introductions and commentaries reflecting on the book's origins, the rituals described, and the evolution of the author's beliefs and practices. Since its publication, The Spiral Dance has become a classic resource on Wicca and modern witchcraft, spiritual feminism, the Goddess movement, and ecofeminism. The work is distinguished by its visionary mysticism, "broad philosophy of harmony with nature," and ecstatic consciousness.
Beliefs
Beliefs
Starhawk believes that the Earth is a living entity, and that faith-based activism can reconnect oneself to basic human needs. She posits core religious values of community and self-sacrifice as important to eco-pagan movements, as well as the broader environmental justice movement. She advocates combining social justice issues with a nature-based spirituality that begins with spending time in the natural world, saying that doing so "...can open up your understanding on deeper and more subtle levels where the natural world will speak to you." Starhawk's activism is deeply rooted in an anti-war philosophy, as she believes that war teaches one to see people culturally different than themselves as inhuman and dangerous. She has written extensively on activism, including advice for activist organizers, examinations of white privilege within radical communities, and calls for an intersectionality of fighting oppression that includes spirituality, eco-consciousness, and sexual and gender liberation.
Feminism
Feminism
Starhawk's feminism and spirituality are closely interconnected. Her ecofeminism links life-giving Mother Nature with the life-giving of women through birth, as well as the link between ecological destruction and patriarchal oppression under male-dominated Western political economies. She calls for a reconceptualization of the way we think about power that is different from what she posits as our typical understanding of 'power over' others, and believes that patriarchal systems of oppression are dying out and will be replaced by more egalitarian structures that have existed previously with many women in positions of power, including as priestesses, poets, healers, singers, and seers. Such matrilineal lineages, she argues, have been erased from history because of their "political implications." Starhawk argues that our patriarchal culture of domination has confused the erotic with domination and violence. Sexuality, she says, "...is sacred because through it we make a connection with another self — but it is misused and perverted when it becomes an arena of power-over, a means of treating another — or oneself — as an object." Such analyses of gendered power relations are explored in her books Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising (2003) and Truth or Dare: Encounters with Power, Authority and Mystery (1988). In the latter, she links the rise of kinship to patriarchal domination, and traces a psychology of liberation in analyzing an oppressor she argues is embedded deeply in all of us, the 'Self-hater.' She is interested in how such oppressions can be reformed into new sources of power, particularly amongst women, that arise innately and reject dominion over others. Her feminist writings have been used to analyze the differences between mainstream rhetoric and feminist rhetoric, particularly in relation to her motive of writing rhetoric as revealing immanent truths rather than being utilized for persuasion. She views this latter purpose of mainstream rhetoric as adhering to patriarchal logic, and her vision of 'empowered action' – which involves rejecting the tenets of the oppressive system and then openly challenging them – attempts to transform persuasive mainstream rhetoric to immanent feminist rhetoric.
Projects
Projects
In 1979, partly to commemorate the publication of The Spiral Dance, Starhawk and her friends staged a public celebration of the neopagan variant of the Irish Fire Festival Samhain (Halloween) incorporating an actual spiral dance. This group became the Reclaiming Collective, and their annual Spiral Dance ritual now draws hundreds of participants. Starhawk continues to work with Reclaiming, a tradition of Witchcraft that she co-founded. This now-international organization offers classes, workshops, camps, and public rituals in earth-based spirituality, with the goal to "unify spirit and politics". She also works internationally as a trainer in nonviolence and direct action, and as an activist within the peace movement, women's movement, environmental movement, permaculture, and anti-globalization movement. She travels and teaches widely in North America, Europe and the Middle East, giving lectures and workshops. She was influential in the decision by the Unitarian Universalist Association to include earth-centered traditions among their sources of faith. She led numerous workshops for, and was an active member of The Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans (CUUPS), an interest group of Unitarians honoring goddess-based, earth-centered, tribal, and pagan spiritual paths. Starhawk has taught in several San Francisco Bay Area colleges and universities, including John F. Kennedy University, Antioch University West, the Institute of Culture and Creation Spirituality at Holy Names University, and Wisdom University. She is presently adjunct faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and is currently affiliated with United for Peace and Justice, the RANT trainers' collective, Earth Activist Training, and other groups. Starhawk has written a number of books, and has also contributed works in other media. Her works have appeared in translation in Spanish, French, German, Danish, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Czech, Greek, Japanese, and Burmese.
Non-fiction
Non-fiction
• The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess (1979, 1989, 1999) • Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex, and Politics (1982, 1988, 1997) • Truth or Dare: Encounters with Power, Authority, and Mystery (1988) • Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising (2003) • The Earth Path: Grounding Your Spirit in the Rhythms of Nature (2004) • The Empowerment Manual: A Guide for Collaborative Groups (2011)
As coauthor
Fiction
Fiction
• The Fifth Sacred Thing (1993) • Walking to Mercury (1997) (prequel to The Fifth Sacred Thing) • The Last Wild Witch (2009) (children's book) • City of Refuge (2015) (sequel to The Fifth Sacred Thing)
Filmography
Filmography
Starhawk has contributed to films: • Signs Out of Time: The Story of Archaeologist Marija Gimbutas • Goddess Remembered • The Burning Times • Full Circle • Permaculture: The Growing Edge (2010) • United Natures (2013) directed by Peter Charles Downey
Other media
Other media
On YouTube, Starhawk speaks on spirituality and activism at the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA). She also wrote the call-to-action for the women's peace organization Code Pink.
Personal life
Personal life
Starhawk married Edwin Rahsman in 1977. They subsequently divorced. She is currently married to David Miller, and they live in San Francisco. Starhawk also resides partly in Sonoma, California. Starhawk is bisexual, and has also commented that her sexuality is fluid and "has something to do with a deep reluctance to be pinned down." Her writing and activism promote equality for people of all sexual orientations and gender identities.
Identity
Identity
Starhawk is recorded with the occupation women's rights activist. Recorded with the occupation environmentalist. Recorded with the occupation psychologist. Recorded with the occupation journalist. Recorded with the occupation writer. Recorded as writer, women's rights activist, journalist, environmentalist and psychologist. Identity and origins. The authorities additionally record the headings Miriam Simos, Miriam Samos and Starhawk (Miriam Simos). Her recorded language was English. Her recorded confession was Unitarian Universalism.
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 1 entries
1951
Starhawk was born on 17 June 1951.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
Starhawk was born at Saint Paul.
Birthplace
Saint Paul.
Birth place
Discography
She participated in the Reclaiming CDs Chants: Ritual Music, and recorded the guided meditation Way to the Well.
Primary material
Documents and archives
reference work
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q272205: Starhawk
Reputable secondary · Wikidata
- “Starhawk”, English Wikipedia, consulted as further reading
Reputable secondary · Wikipedia
authority file
- Gemeinsame Normdatei 110746759, Starhawk.
Unverified · Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
General and cited sources
General and cited sources
* *
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Starhawk (2002). Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising. New Society Publishers.
- 2.Blumberg, Antonia. Celebrate The Winter Solstice With Los Angeles' Own Eco-Pagans. The Huffington Post. December 11, 2013.
- 3.Watkinsbooks.com. Watkins' Spiritual 100 List for 2013 - Watkins MIND BODY SPIRIT Magazine. February 6, 2013.
- 4.YouTube id=1KrA4BQ6rAY&t=14m37s
- 5.Blumberg, Antonia (December 11, 2013). "Celebrate The Winter Solstice With Los Angeles' Own Eco-Pagans". The Huffington Post.
- 6."Feminist, Earth-based Spirituality and Ecofeminism," in Healing the Wounds by Judith Plant
- 7.Starhawk's Writings.
- 8.Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion (1979) by Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow
- 9.The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess (1979) by Starhawk
- 10.Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex and Politics (1982) by Starhawk
- 11.Truth or Dare: Encounters with Power, Authority and Mystery (1988) by Starhawk
- 12.Foss, Sonja K., and Cindy L. Griffin. "A Feminist Perspective on Rhetorical Theory: Toward a Clarification of Boundaries." Western Journal of Communication 56.4 (1992): 330–49. Print.
- 13.http://www.cuups.org/content2/
- 14.Berta, Marilyn. We Are Sacred as the Earth: An Interview with Earth Activist Starhawk. Sacred Fire. 15. 28–31. n.d. 1557-346X.
- 15.Starhawk. Bisexual Politics: Theories, Queries, and Visions. Harrington Park Press (The Haworth Press). 327. 1995. 9781560249504.
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
authority file
Gemeinsame Normdatei 110746759, Starhawk.Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Partially resolvedreference work
Partially resolvedreference work
Partially resolved
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Books
38,960 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
- Stanley MossAuthor
- Stanley Onjezani KenaniAuthor
- Stanley VestalAuthor
- Stanton Arthur CoblentzAuthor
- Stas MikhaylovAuthor
- Stas PiekhaAuthor
- StasinusAuthor
- Stav ShaffirAuthor
Best supported in this field
For owners
Own a work by Starhawk?
A specialist will read what you send and tell you what the house can establish, what it cannot, and whether the object is suited to sale. There is no charge and no obligation. The object stays with you throughout; nothing is shipped to us unless it is arranged in writing beforehand.