{"id":240,"date":"2013-11-12T20:43:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-12T20:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.templeofthegoddess.org\/temple\/?page_id=240"},"modified":"2014-07-26T19:58:53","modified_gmt":"2014-07-26T19:58:53","slug":"about-xia-by-pythia","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.templeofthegoddess.org\/temple\/about-xia-by-pythia\/","title":{"rendered":"About Xia by Pythia"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Jeanne Leiter Clark aka Pythia<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Judy Tatum, also known as Xia (pronounced SHE-ah), is a Priestess and Director of\u00a0 Temple of the Goddess, which received its nonprofit recognition as a church from the IRS in 2004.\u00a0 For more than two decades Xia has walked the path of the divine feminine, committed to her role as an inter-faith ambassador for the Pagan Community. Among her many articles, an essay entitled “Paganism: Out of the Closet and into the Fire”, originally written for her son\u2019s school in Pasadena, California for a\u00a0Diversity in Religion<\/i>\u00a0series, has been reprinted countless times.<\/p>\n

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Xia has also written numerous mythological and ritual works centered around archetypal studies of the Goddess including\u00a0Rites of Passage: A Goddess Ritual for Women<\/i>, which aired onThe Learning Channel<\/i>\u2013showing Pagan rites for Maiden, Mother, and Crone. She also produced and facilitated the segment. Other articles include: “Ritual and the Art of Alchemy”, “The Mythology of Nature”, “The Myth of Matriarchy”, and “Secret Garden of the Feminine”. She is the author of\u00a0Feminine Alchemy: The Ritual Art of Cooking<\/i>\u00a0(publication pending), a treasury of recipes that combines feminine lore and empowering healing rituals with the most timeless of women\u2019s art, cooking.\u00a0Feminine Alchemy<\/i>\u00a0uses cooking as a woman\u2019s metaphor for personal transformation by focusing on the archetype of the divine feminine as a container for healing.<\/p>\n

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As a mythologist, minister, counselor, and healer, Xia has been creating, writing, and facilitating rituals for groups and individuals for more than two decades. She has led thousands of men and women in transformational rituals. For the past five years, Xia has written many contemporary myths for Temple of the Goddess\u2019 Mythic Players, an ensemble of artists that emerged out of the yearly Sabbats produced with Xia\u2019s guidance by Temple of the Goddess. Some of the myths include:\u00a0Lilith and the Fruit of Knowledge, Creator Destroyer: Revelations of Kali, Awakening Our Dream Seeds, A Journey of Balance: Maat & Anubis, Amaterasu and Power of the Sun, Child of Duality, Mystical Time of Twilight, Singing To The Bones, Dance of Polarities.<\/i><\/p>\n

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Temple of the Goddess holds public Sabbats for the Los Angeles community in Pasadena, California. These Sabbats are ritual theatre that follow the seasons and cycles of the Pagan calendar and combine mythology and art to re-connect, as well as strengthen our connection to the earth. The temple rituals are multi-media programs combining music, dance, liturgy, spoken word, visual art, and participatory theater. With her expert spiritual guidance and keen business sense, Xia has brought together a remarkable group of people\u2013singers, actors, dancers, story-tellers, musicians, puppeteers, ritualists, and those who are starving for ritual, to honor the Divine and celebrate the Wheel of the Year. She works toward the day that the spiritual church will become a brick and mortar building, housing space for worship, art, healing, and learning.<\/p>\n

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She also teaches Goddess classes, dance classes, as well as serpent workshops with temple serpents, Isis and Serapis. As a sacred dancer, Xia has been featured in the \u201cTrends\u201d section ofNewsweek<\/i>, and in\u00a0Rites of Passage<\/i>\u00a0on\u00a0The Learning Channel<\/i>. She is also the subject of the video documentary\u00a0Dance is Prayer<\/i>, directed by Jules Hart. Xia has performed as a dancer in Los Angeles and Northern California in such venues as International Woman\u2019s Day, Pagan Pride Day, Isis Oasis, and the Long Beach WomanSpirit Festival.<\/p>\n

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Xia has always considered her two great accomplishments in life, to date, her son Zachary, an actor, writer and dedicant priest of the Goddess; and Temple of the Goddess, a vision given her shortly after the birth of her son\u2013to create a living temple, healing center, education and arts complex.\u00a0 After 10 years of legal work, crafting the language, and dancing with the IRS, Temple of the Goddess was given legal recognition by the U.S. Federal government and became a bona fide Pagan church in 2004. This huge feat she did with grace, dignity, and intelligence, responding to IRS questions such as \u201cWe understand you do ritual, but how do you worship?\u201d\u2013countless times.\u00a0 She met the never-ending barrage of questions from the IRS regarding Paganism by creating all-embracing religious principles, liturgy, and the\u00a0Temple of the Goddess Handbook<\/i>\u2013each destined to become guiding forces in a growing movement.<\/p>\n

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As a writer\/producer, Xia has written a six-part documentary series about the ancient face of the feminine which explores women\u2019s culture, art, and heritage throughout the millennia, called\u00a0Forbidden Knowledge: A Glimpse Behind the Veil\u00a0<\/i>which she continues to develop in anticipation of funding and production in the coming years.<\/p>\n

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As a mythologist Xia believes there is no greater medium than TV and film. In a personal statement she says, \u201cTelevision and movie screens are the flickering fires where we gather and hear the stories of the people\u2014to be entertained, yes and hopefully glean something that will enlighten the human condition. Television, for good or bad, has become the hearth of the home. It is the fire we light when we walk in our cave door. Movie houses are the \u201ccathedrals\u201d of our day as more people attend the ritual of cinema than all the churches combined. As conscious artists, our choice then becomes do we create a life-affirming mythology or a fear-based mythology? Producing film and television gives us the opportunity to tell the stories that impact and influence people. We are the visionaries and mythologists of this millennium and it is our responsibility to create not just profitable entertainment, but \u2018theater of the soul.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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Xia is relentless in all she does and has followed her vision of serving a community of spiritual artists by creating a nonprofit educational arts organization called Nine Muses Arts. She continues to hold the space for Goddess, Pagan, and other like-minded groups who are seeking to become a legal church\/temple to benefit from Temple of the Goddess\u2019 501c3 nonprofit status under the umbrella of Temple of the Goddess group ruling.\u00a0 She continues to be a voice and an advocate for the Earth, the Goddess, the Temple, and the Pagan community.<\/p>\n

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* * * * * * * * *<\/p>\n

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From the author: In 1990 my spiritual path, just discovering the Goddess, met up with Xia\u2019s.\u00a0 We have remained friends through good times and bad.\u00a0 I tell people that she\u2019s a hard friend to have.\u00a0 By that I mean, that she pushes herself to do the best at whatever she\u2019s doing, and expects those around her to do the same.\u00a0 She has coerced more from me when I thought I had given all I had.\u00a0 That is what family and friends do, they make you better, sometimes in spite of yourself.<\/p>\n

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~ Jeanne Leiter Clark\u00a0\u00a0 (aka: Pythia)<\/em><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Jeanne Leiter Clark aka Pythia<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Judy Tatum, also known as Xia (pronounced SHE-ah), is a Priestess and Director of\u00a0 Temple of the Goddess, which received its nonprofit recognition as a church from the IRS in 2004.\u00a0 For more than two decades Xia has walked the path of the divine feminine, committed to her role as an inter-faith ambassador for the Pagan Community. Among her many articles, an essay entitled “Paganism: Out of the Closet and into the Fire”, originally written for her son\u2019s school in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-240","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.templeofthegoddess.org\/temple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.templeofthegoddess.org\/temple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.templeofthegoddess.org\/temple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.templeofthegoddess.org\/temple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.templeofthegoddess.org\/temple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.templeofthegoddess.org\/temple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":703,"href":"http:\/\/www.templeofthegoddess.org\/temple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/240\/revisions\/703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.templeofthegoddess.org\/temple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}