Dreaming of and working toward creating an earth- and female-centered future is proving to be my best strategy for surviving and enjoying the ecologically and politically problematic present. Current realities and predictions for the future, such as those made by climate scientists, are certainly grim. What else can we expect in a global society that puts male power and profit above the needs of people and planet?
Those in power cannot possibly undo today’s polycrisis as they are too invested, personally and financially, in the status quo. They cannot even begin to dream of the transformations called for. This is something that we women can do that they cannot. We are the ones who give birth, create new life. We can certainly dream up and create new ways of living.
As I explained in earlier writing on FAR, my 2022 Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete was a grand adventure, filled with great, and often surprising, learnings. It certainly surprised me to realize that my most long lasting challenge came from a song, “Mountain Mother,” created by Carol Christ. Laura Shannon, the current Pilgrimage director, took us through many rounds of this song (and many other Goddess songs), as we sang our tour bus past the double peaks that inspired the song. In one of the lines to that song, we pilgrims told Mountain Mother, “we have come back to you.” This statement felt to me more like a promise than reality. I thought that coming back to Mountain Mother would entail a return on many levels, from the spiritual to the social/political and, certainly, the ecological.
What would be needed for me and many others to come back to Mountain Mother? At first, I thought about this mostly on an individual level: how could I grow more food, rid our Ozark homestead of non-native honeysuckle, and return more native plants to the woods I live in. Over time, I took a broader view, turning my thoughts also to social change. Why not work to create an earth- and female-centered future?
Mountain Mother became both a symbol and a beacon for me. She is Earth, Woman, and Goddess, all in one entity. What would it take for many of us to become fully present to her in her current state of duress? How can we return to her, and with her, to a place of beauty and bounty? I have been thinking not of how to patch things up in the death-dealing society I live in, but how to recreate communities and small-scale societies, a diversity of societies, where Mountain Mother would be revered in her many aspects.
Paths to Mountain Mother
The globally dominant, capitalist, colonizing patriarchy has placed its foot on the neck of every woman alive today. Wherever our ancestral cultures may have been, those cultures have been decimated and, in some cases, eliminated. That patriarchal destruction began over 6,000 years ago in the eastern European matriarchal cultures when the early wave of Kurgan invasions began.[1] For those in Turtle Island (North America) and Abya Yala (Central and South America) full scale assaults began with Columbus.
Different women will likely approach return to earth- and female-centered cultures differently, depending, in part, on whether the dominant culture is their primary culture or whether their ancestral cultures are living cultures that are primary to them.
Ancestral cultures are living cultures and primary. Many Indigenous women participate in the dominant culture, but their primary identification is with their own living cultures. They are working to undo the changes wrought by colonization, in part through reindigenization[2] and resurgence[3] of their cultures. Many, maybe all, ancestral Indigenous cultures were female-centered. Women are reclaiming their power. Reindigenization includes rematriation[4] for many Indigenous cultures. Here, reindigenization and rematriation are the recreating of earth- and female-centered cultures.
Dominant culture is primary. Here, women from any racial/ethnic group may have family or ethnic traditions left, but the globally dominant society is their primary or only culture. Their ancestral cultures may be gone or are too distant or fragmented to be central to their lives. For these women the search for earth- and female-centered traditions may take them deep into the past or to distant lands. For example, I and many other women of European ancestry have become ardent time travelers, studying and reclaiming the female-centered cultures that existed many thousands of years ago in Old Europe.[5] For these women, knowledge shared by peoples living in existing matriarchal or other female-centered societies can be an important guide in the creation of new earth- and female-centered communities and small scale societies. Listening to the voices of any Indigenous peoples or peasants who are tied closely to the land is another means of learning. I am not suggesting the appropriation of traditions specific to any culture, but only an openness to values common to many Indigenous nations and to information that is freely shared. Women who are not indigenous to the lands they live on will want and need to honor the rights of those who are.
Coming Back to Mountain Mother
Many Indigenous women are already returning their societies to traditions that give power to women and honor the Earth, or, in my terms, they are coming back to Mountain Mother. For Indigenous women the pull toward ancestral cultures can be very strong and the lures of the colonizer (dominant) society weaker than for women who have only the dominant society. What will it take for women, like myself, for whom the dominant society is primary to turn our backs on it and begin actively creating earth and female-centered communities and societies? Indigenous women cannot be expected to be the only ones to do this work. Mountain Mother needs us all!
Mountain Mother can be a comfort and a guide for this consciousness change and creative work, particularly through an exploration of each of her aspects: Earth, Woman, Goddess. I’ll be writing more in an upcoming blogs.
Footnotes
1. “Kurgan” is the name Marija Gimbutas used for the proto or early Indo-Europeans. She dated the first wave of invasions at 4400-4300 BCE. Marija Gimbutas, Civilization of the Goddess: The World of Old Europe, 1991. p. 352.
2. Indigenous peoples have been subjected to hundreds of years of assaults including genocide, removal and relocation, and assimilation by European and European American powers. Melissa K. Nelson explains that “the process of reindigenization means we have to decolonize our minds, hearts, bodies, and spirits and revitalize healthy cultural traditions.” (Original Instructions: Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable Future edited by Melissa K. Nelson, 2008, p. 13.)
3. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson has described Indigenous resurgence “as a set of practices through which the regeneration and reestablishment of Indigenous nations could be achieved….” She explains that “the intellectual and theoretical home of resurgence had to come from within Indigenous thought systems, intelligence systems that are continually generated in relationship to place.” The traditional world she learned to participate in from Elders was critical to her vision for resurgence: “I realized that the Elders of Long Lake #58 had pulled me into a Nishnaabeg world and that this world was a very fertile place for dreaming, visioning, thinking, and remembering the affirmative Indigenous worlds that continue to exist right alongside the colonial worlds.” (Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance, 2017, p. 16-17.)
4. Sikowis Nobiss explains rematriation: “It is a call to reestablish Indigenous landscapes, bring back Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge and to give stolen power back to the feminine. In a world where unfettered patriarchal violence and greed has brought us to the precipice of a climate extinction, ReMatriation is the return of the matriarchy. This counterbalances the forces of toxic masculinity that, through Christian colonial-capitalist violence, are intent on holding all power and controlling all the life, land and resources on our Mother Earth.” See “Why ‘ReMatriate’ is a more inclusive term for returning land to Indigenous peoples.”
5. Old Europe is the term Marija Gimbutas used for Neolithic Europe and the female-centered, settled agricultural societies that existed there prior to the Kurgan invasions.
Bio: Jeanne F. Neath Mountain Mother will not let me rest! I cannot help but advocate and explore possibilities for a return to earth and woman-centered communities and societies. “The Earth is the body of the Goddess,” as Carol Christ wrote, and so the feminist spiritual practice informing my writing is one of sitting and walking in awareness of nature. In the 1990s I edited and published the feminist journal, At the Crossroads: Feminism, Spirituality and New Paradigm Science. I have published many scholarly articles on disability and employment. I’ve been a radical Lesbian feminist organizer and activist since the 1970s, working on many grassroots projects from Spinsters Books and Webbery to Radical Lesbian Feminist Uprisings. See more of my ecofeminist writings at ecofeminismblog.org
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Jeanne, your divine communion with Mountain Mother while on Crete echoes my own during my Goddess Pilgrimage seven months ago. Please find my contribution to FAR last fall so we can chat together. Mountain Mother gets into our very bones, doesn’t she? She has been the inspiration for so much healing work, both collectively and personally.
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Wow, Terry! I see that Mountain Mother handed you a truly tough test. And a great deal of comfort. How difficult it must have been to miss so much of the Pilgrimage due to COVID.
In these trying times we, women, need her for sure. I hope we can all give back to her what she needs (and save ourselves as we do the work)..
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The “search for earth- and female-centered traditions may take them deep into the past or to distant lands. For example, I and many other women of European ancestry have become ardent time travelers” Thanks for this way of expressing it. I like the concept that I am time-travelling with my research and re-framing women in the Hebrew Bible, to recover the female-centered traditions and female role models from my own ancestry.
I went to Crete with Carol and have been inspired by Mountain Mothers including Pachamama in Peru and Cybele in Turkey.
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Thanks, Judith! I am glad to know that we share a passion for time traveling (and for the Goddess Pilgrimage and traveling to Crete). Every nook and cranny in the female-centered past holds a key that will help in envisioning and creating a female-centered future. Mountain Mother needs each of us working with her and delving into each of those nooks. I am glad that she has you!
As I write, I am looking at Mountain Mother in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. She is not so tall here as she is in some other places, but she gives me constant inspiration.
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What a wonderful experience you and all those who have gone to Crete with Carol or Laura have had! I am moved by your, Terry’s, and others accounts and so glad you are sharing your insights with us here at FAR. Your post reminds me of a recently published book called “Maternal Thinking: Gifts, Mothers’ Bodies, and Earth — Proceedings from the Association for the Study of Women in Mythology.” In it are many essays addressing very much what you are describing – how do we change our thought processes to live by “maternal thinking,” which features nurturing as the primary relationship, the gift economy, environmental sustainability, reclaiming ancient goddess myths as relevant to our own time, and so much more. I love the tone of adventure in your post – we are all on this adventure together and there are so many who are forging new paths.
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Yes, many of us are traveling together on what may be the most important adventure we could possibly take. What a task we are undertaking to change our thinking and our “doing” to recreate a female-centered future! Mountain Mother doesn’t ask for much, does she? It’s very good to know about the new book, “Maternal Thinking: Gifts, Mothers’ Bodies, and Earth” which sounds like it has much in common with a follow up blog that I hope to publish soon on “Mountain Mother: Earth, Woman, Goddess.”
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“The Earth is the body of the Goddess,” and once that became clear to me such a long time ago now…little changed except that that S/he got bigger! I believe that the Earth is Sacred and therefore spirit, soul, and body all belong to Her as well as to us – The Goddess embodies the Earth… Indigenous folks have always known this though most call her Creator (and how much this has to do with patriarchy – a question I have had for year -and we are not appropriating Indigenous ways when we celebrate her sanctity in our own way. We are coming home to ourselves.. What indigenous peoples object to is appropriation of their ceremonies…. Unfortunately the dominant culture still refuses to sanction Indigenous ways – they knew -and know – we all can learn…the continuing dismissal seems bizarre and more about denial than anything else..
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Oddly the first time the goddess rose up around me it was here in the mountains – there is something –
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Oh, that is something, huh? Telling, I suppose…something about the mountains…!
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Living on a mountainside here in the Ozarks means that I am touching Mountain Mother with every step I take. No wonder I can’t stop feeling her and thinking about her…
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It is a gift to read your post this morning,Jeanne,and the comments that followed. Thank you for the richness of what your share. I haven’t thought of Mountain Mother in those terms, but it’s powerfu – an image that does seem to draw me in. I have been working on my reconnection through gardening and seasonal eating. Practices that help keep me grounded…along with the concept of reciprocity, which has prompted a whole reframing of my relationship to the whole of creation. I’m so grateful for the teachings and pulls to “return,” as Sara has affirmed in her comments. I love to think about the many possible ways and practices, communities aand rituals – no appropriation needed! ❤️ Thank you for your writing!
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Thanks very much, Xochitl! I find the quote (which Sara just gave), “The Earth is the Body of the Goddess,” so very helpful in remembering the basic human needs that we, and our societies, need to prioritize: food, water, medicine, shelter, fire/energy. I love Maria Mies and Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen’s book, The Subsistence Perspective: Beyond the Globalized Economy, because these women make it so clear that we don’t need capitalism and consumerism, that the subsistence economy is the basis of all human societies. Of course, our needs include the other aspects of the Goddess too, not just Earth. Mountain Mother covers it all: Earth, Woman, Goddess!
Sending you blessings for your garden. We have tiny kale, mustard, bok choy and beet chard coming up here. Lots of work left to do.
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Jeanne, this is so beautiful and powerful! I love how you make the connections between personal and political, present-day and eternal, always with a thought to building a future where we are ‘actively creating earth and female-centered communities and societies’. It was such a blessing to have you and Paula with us on the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete in 2022, and I rejoice that the seeds sown by your experience of Mountain Mother continue to bring such a ruch and bountiful harvest. You are so right, Mountain Mother is ‘Earth, Woman, and Goddess, all in one entity’ and ‘Mountain Mother needs us all!’ I can’t wait to read what else you write inspired by your deep personal engagement with the embodied Mountain Mother of our beloved Crete.
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Thank you so much, Laura! Hearing from you in this context is calling forth not only Mountain Mother, but sitting and singing with you and the other pilgrims on the tour bus, soaking in the waters of Mediterranean Mother, standing up despite the winds on Mount Juktas, and all kinds of fine Greek foods. The Goddess card I drew for the Goddess Pilgrimage told me “Don’t Back Down” and our adventure on Mount Juktas taught me to stick with Mountain Mother and stand up to whatever comes. These learnings are so useful in living in this end-stage patriarchy.
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In my decades-long desire to unearth the female-centered reality of my own European ancestors, I thrilled in 2022 to read an essay titled, “The Vast and Beautiful World of Indigenous Europe. Lyla June is an author and activist of Diné and European heritage. She wrote, “This precious world [Indigenous Europe] can scarcely be found in any literature, but lives quietly within us like a dream we can’t quite remember.”
Judith, in her comment, mused about the women of European ancestry who have become ardent time travelers in our efforts to recover the female-centered traditions and female role models from my own bloodlines. Jeanne, in her article, has offered us a pathway, a fork in the road, to seek out reliable information (from a variety of sources) about our ancestral cultures. We can integrate and honor the values of earth and female-centered communities to inspire our work and to enrich our lives.
https://whiteawake.org/2018/01/31/the-vast-and-beautiful-world-of-indigenous-europe/
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Paula, thank you for bringing Lyla June’s remarkable essay into the conversation! I just re-read it and was reminded that Mountain Mother plays a key part in Lyla June’s journey to her European ancestors. Here are a few quotes from her essay:
“Now I see I have a double-duty. I must not only honor and revitalize my Diné culture, but also that of my European ancestors. This ancient Indigenous European culture is just as beautiful as Native American culture and was just as tragically murdered and hidden from history books.”
“And so, some years later, armed with this new understanding, I traveled to Europe. I scaled a beautiful mountain in Switzerland to see if I might hear hints of ceremonial songs in the wind. I stepped upon the earth guided by those grandmother and grandfather whispers.”
And then later in the essay she continues:
“My mountain experiment yielded astounding results: the Great Sacred Motherland of Europe is still alive and breathing and waiting for her children to come home! She is waiting for us to ask her for songs so that we may sing to her once again. She is waiting for us to scratch past the surface of time, into the B.C. period when our languages were thriving and our dancing feet kissed the face of the earth. She is waiting. She is waiting for us to remember who we are.”
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