witches and pagans women in european folk religion

Marija Gimbutas’ early work on women’s planting and harvesting ritual songs of her native Lithuania demonstrated that women continued to pass the “secrets” of agriculture from generation to generation for thousands of years. I have long understood these inventions to involve the discovery of mysteries of transformation: seed into edible plant, wool or flax into thread into cloth, clay into fire into sturdy pot. These are the invention of agriculture, the invention of spinning and weaving, and the invention of fired pottery. I have long known that women were responsible for three inventions that marked humankind’s entry into the Neolithic or New Stone Age. Still, it is hard to deny that if her work is taken seriously, this is precisely what others will be inspired to do.įor me the most interesting part of this book is the new information about rituals connected to spinning and weaving. Dashu herself is the first to admit that she has not yet put all the pieces together into a new comprehensive her-story of Europe. The sheer number of facts and suggestions of facts is overwhelming. Reading this book is like opening a box filled with jewels left to you by ancestors you never knew you had. Using these clues, Dashu provides intriguing new readings of the Poetic Edda and Norse sagas. To paraphrase Shakespeare: “Methinks the cleric doth protest too much.” Were these things not happening and happening often, there would have been no need to condemn them. Clerics rage against people-particularly women–who continue to visit holy wells and sacred trees and to practice divination and healing rituals invoking pagan powers. Combing artistic and archaeological records, Dashu finds (to give one example) that images of Mother Earth nursing a snake are far from uncommon and can even be found as illustrations in Christian documents and on Christian monuments. These men may have wanted to believe that their views were widely held, but Dashu suggests that they were not. History has been written by the victors-in the case of Europe by elite Christian men. More likely they will ignore or dismiss it, but sooner or later–I dare to hope–the truth will out. This of course assumes that scholars will read Dashu’s work. When the full 15 volumes of the projected series are in print, historians may be forced to hang their heads in shame. Careful readers of Dashu’s important new work will be challenged to revise their views. Most of us were taught not only that Europe became Christian very rapidly, but also that Europeans were more than willing to adopt a new religion that was “superior” to “paganism” in every way. Max Dashu’s Witches and Pagans: Women in European Folk Religion 700-1000challenges the assumption that Europe was fully Christianized within a few short centuries as traditional historians tell us.

Witches and pagans women in european folk religion