Barbara G. Walker is an American author and feminist. She is an influential knitting expert and the author of several classic encyclopedic knitting references, despite "not taking to it at all" when she first learned in college. Other topics she has written about are religion, New Age, the occult, spirituality, and mythology.
Books
Knitting
In the 1960s and 1970s, Walker authored several volumes of knitting references which have become landmarks for their comprehensiveness and clarity. Her Knitting Treasury series documents over a thousand different knitting stitches. Other books considered mosaic knitting, for producing multicolored designs while knitting only one color per row, and constructing knitted garments from the top down rather than the usual bottom-up method used in Western knitting tradition. Most of Walker's best-known knitting books have been reprinted, and starting in the mid-1990s, she has published new knitting books.
Feminism and skepticism
Walker writes about the problems with mainstream religion and how these problems have contributed to patriarchal societies and sexism. In The Skeptical Feminist: Discovering the Virgin, Mother, and Crone, she writes about her belief that there is no god. However, she believes that people, and women in particular, can use the image of the goddess in their day-to-day lives. Walker often uses the imagery of the Mother Goddess to discuss neolithic matriarchies. Her book Woman's Rituals: A Sourcebook is an attempt to show how she puts her "meditation techniques" into practice, and is meant as a guide for other women who wish to do the same.
Criticism
The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets has been criticized for being based on the idea of the "Great Mother" by male writers like Robert Graves and Erich Neumann, and for rewriting myths so they would support the theory of a "Great Goddess".
Personal life
Walker studied journalism at the University of Pennsylvania, then worked for the Washington Star in Washington, D.C. While serving on a local hotline helping battered women and pregnant teens in the mid-1970s, she became interested in feminism. Walker continued a personal study of comparative religions and feminist issues after she graduated which led to her writing The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. Walker describes herself as an atheist. The American Humanist Association named her "Humanist Heroine" in 1993, and in 1995 she received the "Women Making Herstory" award from the New JerseyNOW. She is an advocate of the Christ Myth theory.
