In this presentation, I will address two fundamental problems that the endowment creates for women; first, that they are ordained as priestesses to their husbands rather than as priestesses to God and, second, that in the endowment there is missing the presentation of a female divinity. My paper is divided into two sections addressing at least four pieces of important historical evidence that show that women were ordained as priestesses to God in Nauvoo; I will then employ mythic patterns to disclose the hidden presence of the Goddess in the temple endowment ceremony.

Margaret Toscano