Archaeology

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Curiosity About Everything and the Language of the Goddess

The was originally posted on April 14, 2014

My recent discovery of Marija Gimbutas on Youtube rekindled my admiration for her work. In her slide-lecture “The World of the Goddess” Marija Gimbutas allows us to follow the line of reasoning she used to decipher the “language of the Goddess” in Old Europe.

Careful attention to her lecture shows that Gimbutas did not close her eyes, dream, and then attach her own ideas and intuitions to the artifacts she later discussed. Rather, she catalogued groups of images with similar symbolism and used her knowledge of nature (what does a water bird or an owl look like?) and folklore (she collected thousands of songs connected to the agricultural and life cycles in her native Lithuania in the 1930s) to unlock the meaning of ancient symbols.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: GODDESS AND SACRED COW: A RE-EXAMINATION OF THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE SACRED BULL

This was originally posted on August 5, 2013

Most archaeologists and visitors to museums assume that when they see a horned bovine, they are faced with the image of the male God or the image of the bull sacrifice. In the minds of many, these two are one, as we have been taught that the male God who was the consort or son-lover of the Goddess was sacrificed. Yet horned Goddesses are not infrequent in the history of religions and Hindus still revere the sacred cow.

Cattle have played an important role in human life from the beginning of agriculture. Cows provide milk which is also turned into butter, cheese, and yogurt. Most of the young males and some of the females are killed for meat or leather, while a few males are kept to impregnate the females. Though the “raging bull” is the lens through which most of us think about mature male bovines, I have been told by a friend who raised cattle that in fact bulls are for the most part gentle and even sweet–though of course they are also potentially dangerous.

Return to Mountain Mother[1] by Jeanne F. Neath

Mountain Mother, I hear you calling me.
Mountain Mother, we hear your cry.
Mountain Mother, we have come back to you.
Mountain Mother, we hear your sigh.
Lyrics by Carol P. Christ [2]. Sung to the tune of “Ancient Mother.” (origin unknown)

What do a bunch of feminist women do while riding a tour bus around the Mediterranean island of Crete? If they are on the Goddess Pilgrimage started by Carol Christ and continued by Laura Shannon, they sing songs honoring the Goddess. The song that drew me most from the first time I heard it on the fall 2022 Goddess Pilgrimage was “Mountain Mother.” Not surprising since the rocky, sparsely vegetated, yet hauntingly beautiful mountains of Crete surrounded us much of the time as our trusty bus wound its way up and down and around the island.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: The Mountain Mother: Reading the Language of the Goddess in the Symbols of Ancient Crete

The blog was originally posted on May 22, 2017

Before he told the story of how his people received the sacred pipe, Black Elk said:

So I know that it is a good thing I am going to do; and because no good thing can be done by any man alone, I will first make an offering and send a voice to the Spirit of the World, that it may help me to be true. See, I fill this sacred pipe with the bark of the red willow; but before we smoke it, you must see how it is made and what it means. These four ribbons hanging here on the stem are the four quarters of the universe. The black one is for the west where the thunder beings live to send us rain; the white one for the north, whence comes the great white cleansing wind; the red one for the east, whence springs the light and where the morning star lives to give men wisdom; the yellow for the south, whence come the summer and the power to grow.

But these four spirits are only one Spirit after all, and this eagle feather here is for that One, which is like a father, and also it is for the thoughts of men that should rise high as eagles do. Is not the sky a father and the earth a mother, and are not all living things with feet or wings or roots their children? And this hide upon the mouthpiece here, which should be bison hide, is for the earth, from whence we came and at whose breast we suck as babies all our lives, along with all the animals and birds and trees and grasses. And because it means all this, and more than any man can understand, the pipe is holy. [italics added]

In this passage Black Elk illustrates the multivalency of symbols: the sacred pipe does not have a single meaning, but many meanings, in fact, more meanings than anyone can understand.

Asking Her Blessing by Christine Irving

… if the carving is in reach of its admirers,

the yoni will often be polished to a shine

by the touching fingers wishing to evoke

the blessings of the Goddess.

~Adele Getty, Goddess: Mother of Living Nature

My book Sitting on the Hag Seat carries the blue cover I designed. Buried in the blue, riding the spiral Wheel of Return, stands a small Sheela-na-gig. The Sheela’ s origins remain unknown and controversial. It sometimes seem to me that the less explanation exists for a mysterious object or occasion, the more emotional attachment accrues to the opinions of diverging theorists. However, no matter what symbolism is ascribed to Sheela-na gig, her frequent placement above church doors or in the walls of cities, castles and watch towers, does seem to support a protective aspect not necessarily at odds with other attributions.

TRAVELOGUE INTO HISTORY: MY BIG FAT GREEK ODYSSEY (Part 2) by Sally Mansfield Abbott

Part 1 was posted yesterday. You can read it here.

Arriving in Heraklion on Crete, I was enlivened by the sea air and the informal “island” vibration. My sister and I made our way through its labyrinthine streets, following Daedalus, a pedestrian street named after the legendary creator of the labyrinth at Knossos, the prototype of the artist, who Joyce names as his stand-in in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses. Our hotel was on Theotokopolous Street. (They’d call you El Greco too if your name was Domenikus Theotokopolous.) Nikos Kazantzakis was also from Heraklion, a city noted for its artists.

Knossos was a small, contained place circled by pine trees, unlike the sprawling sun-drenched expanse of a typical archeological site. There were restored ocher columns, four storeys to the palace, open courtyards for bull leaping, and cisterns that had been used for self-purification. Its red clay and turquoise frescoes were so familiar to me, with their vivid colors and playful lines that Matisse could have envied. No wonder it was the prototype of a work of art!

TRAVELOGUE INTO HISTORY: MY BIG FAT GREEK ODYSSEY (Part 1) by Sally Mansfield Abbott

My sister and I arrived in Athens midafternoon on Lamas, the feast day of the first harvest. A blast of dry heat greeted us as we left the airport and surveyed the barren brown hills. It transported me to my childhood when I’d lived in distant and exotic climates, and I felt the old excitement of being abroad again.

Going to Greece had long been a dream of mine. It was a spiritual pilgrimage, a Hajj to be undertaken at least once in a lifetime. Greece figured prominently in the college classes on the Goddess I had taught for ten years, but I’d only known it through the books and slides I lectured from. I longed to see its sacred sites in person.

Our hotel was at the base of the Acropolis, within a block of the Acropolis Museum, a stunning work of modern architecture that quotes the structure of the Parthenon. The Parthenon and Erechtheon had been stripped of their bas reliefs and engravings—even the famed Karatydids– were now housed in the museum, either already or soon to be replaced by copies on the temples.

The Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Was Ariadne the Most Graceful Bull-leaper of All? Deconstructing and Re-visioning Greek Mythology

This was originally posted on March 3, 2014

Sometimes we think of Greek myth as a pre-patriarchal or less patriarchal alternative to the stories of the Bible. After all, Goddesses appear in Greek myths while they are nearly absent from the Bible. Right?

So far so good, but when we look more closely we can see that Greek myth enshrines patriarchal ideology just as surely as the Bible does. We are so dazzled by the stories told by the Greeks that we designate them “the origin” of culture. We also have been taught that Greek myths contain “eternal archetypes” of the psyche. I hope the brief “deconstruction” of the myth of Ariadne which follows will begin to “deconstruct” these views as well.

bull leaping ring before 2000 bc phourni

Ariadne is a pre-Greek word. The “ne” ending is not found in Greek. As the name is attributed to a princess in Greek myth, we might speculate that Ariadne could have been one of the names of the Goddess in ancient Crete. But in Greek myth Ariadne is cast in a drama in which she is a decidedly unattractive heroine.

The Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Dance of the Bees: Reading the Language of the Goddess

This blog was originally posted on December 1, 2014

The image from an ancient Cretan bowl (c.1700 BCE) from the Sacred Center of Phaistos pictured here has often been interpreted as an early depiction of Persephone’s descent or rising. But are clues from later Greek mythology pointing in the right direction in this case?

Recently, my colleague Mika Scott posted the Phaistos bowl image on our Goddess Pilgrimage Facebook site in conjunction with the bee pendant from Mallia. This juxtaposition led me to think again about the importance of bees and pollination in agricultural societies and to offer an alternative reading of the symbolism on the bowl.

The Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Weaving and Spinning Women: Witches and Pagans by Max Dashu A Review

Moderator’s Note: This was originally posted on September 19, 2016

Max Dashu’s Witches and Pagans: Women in European Folk Religion 700-1000 challenges the assumption that Europe was fully Christianized within a few short centuries as traditional historians tell us. 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. Careful readers of Dashu’s important new work will be challenged to revise their views. When the full 15 volumes of the projected series are in print, historians may be forced to hang their heads in shame. This of course assumes that scholars will read Dashu’s work. More likely they will ignore or dismiss it, but sooner or later–I dare to hope–the truth will out.

History has been written by the victors—in the case of Europe by elite Christian men. These men may have wanted to believe that their views were widely held, but Dashu suggests that they were not. 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. 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. 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. Using these clues, Dashu provides intriguing new readings of the Poetic Edda and Norse sagas.

Carol P. Christ’s Legacy: THE LABRYS: A RIVER OF BIRDS IN MIGRATION

Moderator’s Note: Carol Christ died from cancer in July, 2021. Her work continues through her non-profit foundation, the Ariadne Institute for the Study of Myth and Ritual and the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete. This blog was originally posted July 29, 2013. You can its original comments here.

“There’s a river of birds in migration, a nation of women with wings.” —Goddess chant, Libana

On the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete, I explain that many of the names given to “Minoan” (c. 3000-1450 BCE) Cretan artifacts and architecture are products of patriarchal and Eurocentric imaginations, and as such, are misleading. For example the name “Minoan” was given to the culture of Bronze Age Crete in honor of “King Minos,” who was said to have ruled in Crete a few generations before the Trojan War–several hundred years after the end of the culture to which his name was attached. In fact, despite his eagerness to find evidence that King Minos ruled at Knossos, the excavator Sir Arthur Evans finally had to concede that the best he could do was to produce a fresco of a “Prince of the Lilies” which he identifed as the image of the male ruler of the culture he called “Minoan.” Evans’ Prince had white skin, a fact that Evans conveniently overlooked–because according to his own interpretation of “Minoan” iconography, white skin would mark the figure as female. Mark Cameron, who reviewed Evans’ reconstruction of the fresco, suggested that the Prince is more likely to be a young woman who is perhaps leading a bull to take part in the bull-leaping games. He also stated that the “crown” belonged to another fresco altogether.

Carol P. Christ’s Legacy: Of Birds, Angels, and Tidings of Great Joy

Moderator’s Note: We here at FAR have been so fortunate to work along side Carol Christ for many years. She died in July this year from cancer. To honor her legacy as well as allow as many people as possible to read her thought-provoking and important blogs we are pleased to offer this new column to highlight her work. We will be picking out special blogs for reposting. This blog was originally posted December 23, 2013. You can read it long with its original comments here

A link to a video of a Crow Uses Plastic Lid to Sled Down Roof Over and Over Again on a mayonnaise-lid sled appeared on my Facebook timeline a few days ago. {moderator’s note: I believe this is the same video that Carol originally posted. The link has been updated since 2013 } For me this crow expresses the “spirit of the season” as aptly as anything I can think of. She brings a smile to my face on a grey and cold morning. She makes me want to climb up on the rooftop and slide down with her. She reminds me that we humans are not alone–we share the world with a vast multitude of other intelligent creatures. She tells me that there is nothing more sacred than the joy of life.

My Encounter with the Venus of Dolní Věstonice by Ivy Helman.

Marija Gimbutas, in her book Language of the Goddess, mentions only one goddess figurine from what was, at the time of her writing, Czechoslovakia (pages 31-32). That figurine comes from Předmosti, in the very eastern part of what is now the Czech Republic. However, there are more, and I would like to introduce you to the one that I encountered during a visit to another part of the Czech Republic several weeks ago.

Meet what Czechs refer to as the Venus of Dolní Věstonice. There is not a lot of information about her, so I have pieced together what I can find. Said to be the oldest known fired terracotta figurine (some 29,000 years old), she was first unearthed in 1925. She was found broken into two pieces at the site of the Stone Age settlement known as Dolní Věstonice, in the southeastern part of the Czech Republic. This settlement, according to Archeo Park Pavlov, was part of the Pavlovian culture, a Stone Age culture local to the area.

Author’s photograph of a replica of the Venus on display at Archeo Park Pavlov.

The Red Hand on the Cave Wall by Carolyn Lee Boyd

As I have gotten older, I find I am drawn more to non-anthropomorphic, inexpressable-in-words, nature, and everyday focused visions of the Divine. Whereas before my spiritual practice involved more rituals and circles, unusually indoors, with others, now I more often engage in solo quiet contemplation, outside in the wild when I can. I think more about ways of being rather than ways of doing and more about the small messages I want to leave to generations to come instead of major accomplishments. I feel as if I am contracting in towards the center of the spiral of my spiritual journey.

All over the world, very ancient cave art includes hand prints made by painting or blowing ochre around a hand or putting ochre on a hand and pressing it to the wall. Research has shown that about 75% of these were made by women, making them a very early form of feminist art. I wonder if some of them might have been made by women who had transformations and thoughts similar to mine. Here is a poem in the voice of such a woman.

What If We Begin from the Hypothesis that Ancient Crete Was Matriarchal, Matrifocal, and Matrilineal? by Carol P. Christ

If we begin from the hypothesis ancient Crete was matriarchal, matrifocal, and matrilineal, what would we expect to be the central focus of the its religion?* Harriet Boyd Hawes and her colleague Blanche E. Williams presented an incipiently feminist, woman-centered, analysis of the religion of ancient Crete in Gournia, the book describing their excavation of a Minoan village at the beginning of the twentieth century. Boyd Hawes argued that the archaeological evidence showed not only the pre-eminence of the Goddess, a conclusion with which Williams agreed, but also the strength and independence of women in a culture she defined as matriarchal and matrilineal, centered around the Mother family. If ancient Crete was matrilineal, matrifocal, and matriarchal, we should expect to find evidence that women were not only strong and independent, but also that they had leadership roles in religion and culture. Williams noted the presence of priestesses. The miniature frescoes from Knossos show a group of older women sitting in the place of honor and a group of women performing a ritual dance. Where evidence concerning leadership roles is lacking, it should not be assumed that leadership must have been in the hands of men.

We should not be surprised to find the Goddess or mother earth to be at the center of rituals and ceremonies in ancient Crete. However, to say that the Goddess is central begs the question of what we mean when we say Goddess. In the west, deity is understood to be transcendent of the world, imaged as a dominant male other, and as the judge of the living and the dead. Citing the Oxford English Dictionary, archaeologist Colin Renfrew bases his discussion of Minoan religion on the idea of divine transcendence. But if we accept Marija Gimbutas’ insight that the Goddess represents the powers of birth, death, and regeneration in all forms of life, a different picture emerges. The Goddess is immanent in, rather than transcendent of the world. She is the enlivening force in human beings and all of nature. She is not the judge of the living and the dead, for the dead are returned to her body. Unlike later Greek deities, the Goddesses of Old Europe and ancient Crete are not generally portrayed as idealized human beings. Though they often have eyes, breasts, and sacred triangles, they also have beaks and wings, are shaped like mountains, and decorated with flowing lines symbolizing rivers or streams. These hybrid forms suggest that all of life is in the image of divinity and that humans are not higher, better, or separate from other life forms. Hybrid images celebrate the connection of all beings in the web of life and call human beings to participate in and enjoy this world, not to seek to escape or rise above it. A religion centered around gratitude for life in this world is very different from one that centers around fear and judgment and a longing for life after death. Jacquetta Hawkes’ insight that the religion of ancient Crete celebrated “the grace of life” is exactly right.

Is the Old European or Minoan Goddess one or many? Monotheists have insisted that there can be only one God, yet polytheists revere a plurality of images, while animists celebrate the spirits of (perceived) living beings such as rivers and trees, mountains and caves. The terms monotheism and polytheism are not neutral. Both were developed by monotheists: monotheism describes the correct beliefs of the self; polytheism, the false beliefs of the other. I find theologian and liturgist Marcia Falk’s distinction between exclusive and inclusive monotheism helpful in resolving the question of the one and the many. According to Falk, inclusive monotheism is an intuition of the unity of being within the diversity of the world: celebrating the unity of being, it welcomes a plurality of images to represent diversity and difference in the world. From this point of view, the boundaries between monotheism and polytheism are porous. When Gimbutas spoke of the powers of birth, death, and regeneration in all of life, she was referring to the unity of being underlying the diversity of life forms, including plants, animals, and human beings. Similarly, when indigenous peoples speak of mother earth as the giver of all and all beings as relatives, they recognize that all life is sustained by a single source. The fact that ancient Cretans imaged divinity in different ways and with different characteristics does not require the conclusion that they worshipped many discrete deities as some archaeologists argue: I suggest that they intuited a unity of being while celebrating the diversity of life. This appears to have been the conclusion of Williams who wrote of “the prominence of a goddess under various aspects.”

If matrilineal, matrifocal, and matriarchal cultures tend to view the earth as a great and giving mother, we can expect this insight to be expressed in rituals and ceremonies. Gratitude is the appropriate response to gifts freely given. I suggest that gratitude for the gift and gifts of life was not only a focus, but the central focus, of religion in ancient Crete. If this is so, we should expect to find rituals celebrating the gift of life in the birth of babies, the coming-of-age of girls, as well as in as well as in death rituals honoring the ancestors. We can also expect to find rituals honoring the mother line and expressing gratitude for the wisdom of ancestors. Many of these rituals would have taken place in the matrilineal House as archaeologist Jan Driessen suggests. Rituals for the ancestors might also have taken place in cemeteries. We should also expect to find rituals expressing gratitude for the food that sustains life, for example, in offerings of first fruits to mother earth and in the pouring of libations that are absorbed back into her body. If, women invented agriculture, and if as Gimbutas argued, Old European religion celebrated the processes of birth, death, and regeneration in all of life, we should find rituals focused on planting, harvesting, and storing seeds. Some of these rituals might have taken place in the matrilineal Houses, while others surely took place in nature and in the fields. If pottery-making and weaving were understood to be mysteries of transformation involving birth, death, and regeneration, we might find evidence of rituals associated with these activities in the Houses or in workshops. It is known that rites in ancient Crete involved trees, mountains, and caves, as well as water sources. We must ask if and how such ceremonies expressed gratitude to the mother earth, the source of life, and the cycles of birth, death, and regeneration.

*These musings are part of an early draft of the methodological prologue to an essay I have been asked to write on Religion in a Minoan Village to be published in the archaeological report on recent excavations at Gournia. In the preceding part of the prologue, I discuss the theories about matriarchal, matrifocal, and matrilineal cultures of Harriet Boyd Hawes, Blanche E. Williams, Marija Gimbutas, Heide Goettner-Abendroth, and others.

Carol P. Christ is an internationally known feminist and ecofeminist writer, activist, and educator who lives in Heraklion, Crete. Carol’s recent book is Goddess and God in the World: Conversations in Embodied Theology. Carol has been leading Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete for over twenty years: join her in Crete. Carol’s photo by Michael Honneger.

Listen to Carol’s a-mazing interview with Mary Hynes on CBC’s Tapestry recorded in conjunction with her keynote address to the Parliament of World’s Religions.

This is What Female Leadership Looks Like! by Vicki Noble

Continue reading “This is What Female Leadership Looks Like! by Vicki Noble”

Ancient Mothers, I Hear You Calling Me to Crete by Carol P. Christ

On a cold and rainy morning in Lesbos, I ponder the advice of my intuitive friend Cristina to reflect on the spiritual dimensions of my decision to move to Crete. When asked why I am moving from Lesbos to Crete, I tend focus on the negative: I am lonely in my small village; and I am disheartened by my neighbors’ lack of compassion for the refugees who come to our island from Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan.

As I begin to think again, I recall the many wonderful things I have experienced in Lesbos. This is the island where Sappho sang, and I too have been inspired by the muses who arise from the land. It is here that I first felt Greece calling me to leave my home. It is here that I learned to speak Greek. It is here that I listened to the stories of the old people who remembered a time when everyone lived closer to each other and the land. It is here that I learned to dance the traditional dances of Greece. It is here that I learned to identify over 300 species of birds that visit the wetlands on spring migration or are year-around or summer and winter residents. It is here that I dedicated a decade of my life to the effort to protect the wetland home of the birds I came to love. It is here that I was asked to run for regional and national office by the Green Party Greece. It is here that I met green friends I will always hold in my heart. It is here that I became an amateur geologist, learning the volcanic history of an island that has been declared a UNESCO Geopark. It is here that I imagined the time before 1922 when Turks, Armenians, and Greeks lived together in my village. It is here that I renovated a small Turkish house in a neighborhood that once had a mosque and later, a Neoclassical “mansion” (not particularly large by American standards) built by a Greek shipowner who transported goods brought by camels along the silk road from China. It is here that I learned to drink retsina and to relish food drenched in olive oil. I will carry all of this with me, for it is in my blood and in my bones.

But now, Crete is calling me. Continue reading “Ancient Mothers, I Hear You Calling Me to Crete by Carol P. Christ”

Harriet Boyd Hawes, Marija Gimbutas, and the Religion of Ancient Crete by Carol P. Christ

One of the projects I am working on these days is an essay on the religion of ancient Crete for a series of books on various aspects of the Minoan site of Gournia.

Harriet Boyd excavated the Minoan town of Gournia in 1901-1904. She was one of the first woman archaeologists and the first woman to run her own excavation in Crete, to be followed by Edith H. Hall whom she trained. She was also the first to excavate a Minoan town as opposed to a “palace,” providing the first evidence of daily life in Minoan Crete. Harriet Boyd might have continued to excavate in Crete, but her marriage in 1906, followed by the birth of her son soon thereafter, caused her to lose interest in a career as an excavator. Nonetheless, she published the results of her excavations in her book Gournia in 1908 and taught at Wellesley College until she reached retirement age.* Continue reading “Harriet Boyd Hawes, Marija Gimbutas, and the Religion of Ancient Crete by Carol P. Christ”

On Va’etchanan: Do Not Murder, Rather Love by Ivy Helman

29662350_10155723099993089_8391051315166448776_o Va’etchanan (Deuteronomy 3:23-7:11) gives us pause for thought in its contradictions. First, the parshah (Torah portion) contains the aseret hadibrot (Ten Commandments), among which is: you shouldn’t murder (5:17). Then, pasukim (verses) 6:4-5 contain the shema (Hear O Israel! The L-rd is Our G-d. The L-rd is One!) followed by the admonishment to: “love the L-rd, your G-d, with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your might,” (Deut. 6:4-5). Finally, pasuk 7:2 instructs the Isrealites, upon entry into the Promised Land, to kill and “utterly destroy” the various groups of people living there.

In other words, one is supposed to not murder. One is reminded to love G-d. And, then, G-d commands the Israelites to commit mass murder. I can’t help but think about the mass murders in the United States. Continue reading “On Va’etchanan: Do Not Murder, Rather Love by Ivy Helman”

“Old South Asia” and “Old Europe”: New DNA Research Suggests Tantalizing Relationships by Carol P. Christ

When European scholars began to study Sanskrit they were surprised to discover linguistic similarities between Sanskrit and Greek and Latin. Old Persian was found to be even closer to Sanskrit. Scholars thus began to speak of related groups of Indo-European languages stemming from an earlier language they called Proto-Indo-European.

Tracing the earliest incursions of Indo-European speakers into Europe from the north along the Danube River, Marija Gimbutas hypothesized that the Indo-European homeland was in the steppes north of the Black and Caspian Seas. DNA research has confirmed Gimbutas’ view: Indo-European-speaking men from the Yamnaya cultural group who carried the YDNA gene R1b–which now is the largest YDNA group in Europe–arrived in large numbers about 2500 BCE from a homeland north of the Black and Caspian Seas.

Until now DNA evidence confirming the Indo-European incursion into India has been lacking. Hindu nationalist groups and some scholars have rejected the Indo-European hypothesis because it suggested that Hinduism and by extension “Indian culture” had a “foreign” origin.

Recent DNA research forwarded to me by Goddess scholar, iconographer, and bibliographer Max Dashu confirms that Indo-European-speaking Yamnaya men carrying the R1a gene entered Persia (Iran) and India in the second millennium (2000-1000 BCE). Moreover, this new DNA study finds the R1a gene in India to be located primarily in the Brahmin or priestly caste associated with the introduction and preservation of the Vedic religion and the Sanskrit texts. Continue reading ““Old South Asia” and “Old Europe”: New DNA Research Suggests Tantalizing Relationships by Carol P. Christ”

What Is “Egalitarian Matriarchy” and Why Is It So Often Misunderstood? by Carol P. Christ

In their purest form, “egalitarian matriarchies” place the mother principle at the center of culture and society. Their highest values are the love, care, and generosity they associate with motherhood. These values are not limited to women and girls. Boys and men are also encouraged to honor mothers above all, to practice the traits of love, care, and generosity, and to value them in others.

“Egalitarian matriarchal” societies are matrilineal which means that family membership and descent are passed through the female line. They are also usually matrilocal, which means that women live in their maternal home all of their lives. Family groups are usually extended rather than nuclear. Often there is a “big house” in which groups of sisters, brothers, and cousins live together with mothers, aunts, grandmothers, and great-aunts. In what I imagine to have been the original form of the system (still practiced by the Mosuo of the Himalayas), men also live in their maternal house, visiting their lovers at night, and returning home in the morning.

These societies practice small-scale agriculture. The women are owners and guardians of the land, which is held in common by maternal clans. They are also the guardians of the secrets of agriculture, food storage, and food preparation, which are passed down from mothers to daughters through songs, dances, rituals, and stories that celebrate the Earth as a great and giving Mother. The powers of women as birth-givers and as the guardians of the mysteries of the agricultural cycles are symbolically related to the powers of birth, death, and regeneration in nature and in all creative processes.

Women seated under trees in place of honor at Minoan festival

These social and cultural systems must have first developed at the beginning of the Neolithic era, when “woman the gatherer” first discovered the secrets of agriculture that allowed people to settle down and farm the land. If women discovered agriculture, then it makes sense that they would have been leaders in the first settled communities and guardians or owners of the land they farmed. They would have been the ones to build the first homes on or near the farmland. Sons as well as daughters would have been born in these early settlements.

The males of the families or clans continued to hunt. Over time they became responsible for building and heavy farm labor and for grazing flocks and seeking raw materials away from the settlement. It makes sense that they would be the ones to venture away from the community to gather information and to trade. In a recent documentary, Mosuo men stated that they don’t work as hard as women. This may not have been the case in the past. Today products and raw materials are brought in through the capitalist economy: traditional roles of traders are obsolete. Information gathering was an important part of trade expeditions: this is how new technologies spread rapidly in the Neolithic era; religious and cultural symbols were also shared by traders. Today there are books, newspapers, television, and the internet. Nor are Mosuo men involved in inter-clan negotiations in the People’s Republic of China.

From the division of labor in these societies, an egalitarian system of governance developed in which the elder women or grandmothers supervised the “internal” life of the house or clan. The “internal” domain included family and farm and all of the rituals surrounding birth, puberty, and death, as well as planting and harvesting. Women played central roles in creating and enacting all of these rituals. Through their expeditions and trade activities, elder men, the brothers of the grandmothers and uncles of the next generations, became responsible for the “external” relations of the clan, meeting people from other cultures when they were away from home, and welcoming visitors who arrived on their home territory.

Because of this division of labor, the elder men would have been the ones to meet and greet colonists and invaders and also to speak with storytellers, historians, and anthropologists, most often also men, who were interested in learning about their culture. If foreign men came from patriarchal cultures, they would have assumed that the men who met them were the leaders of their groups. The party line in the field of anthropology, which is followed by academics in other disciplines, is that “men wield the power” in matrilineal societies. I was disappointed to read this when I first started learning about matrilineal societies as a graduate student and to find it repeated in a recent article arguing that Minoan culture might have been matrilineal and matrilocal.

Those of us who have been socialized in patriarchal societies in which “men wield the power” cannot easily imagine alternative systems. When we begin to think about female power, we immediately conjure up pictures where “women wield the power” by going to war, keeping men as slaves, sexually abusing and raping them, and forcing them into subordinate positions. Such images are so abhorrent that we may conclude that patriarchy is not so bad after all. And this stops us from looking for or wanting to envision alternatives.

In 1981 anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sanday challenged these conventional views in her ground-breaking Female Power and Male Dominance. Examining all of the pre-urban societies documented in anthropological records, she discovered that societies that celebrated and valued female power were not female dominant but egalitarian. She also found that societies that celebrated and valued male power were almost always male dominant. They tended to develop in times of external threat (when men became warriors) or environmental crisis (when the female power of the earth was viewed as having failed the community). Though Sanday’s arguments are convincing, they failed to change that anthropological consensus that “men wield the power” in all human societies, including those that celebrate female power and are matrilineal and matrilocal.

What the consensus that “men wield the power” in matrilineal, matrilocal, and matrifocal societies does not recognize is the power women hold in the internal relations of the group. For example, in the Iroquois culture, the councils of female elders that managed the day to day life of the clan were just as important as the councils of male elders that through their “chief” met with European settlers and invaders. In fact, the councils of female elders were slightly more powerful than those of the male elders. Iroquois women could remove male leaders they did not approve of and reject decisions of the male council to go to war. This power of the female council did not mean that Iroquois women dominated Iroquois men. Rather it was an important check-and-balance ensuring that men’s councils could not unilaterally take actions that would negatively affect the internal relations of the clan.

What should we call societies such as these? Obviously we should continue using the terms “matrilineal” and “matrilocal” where they apply. But what term should we use to describe these cultures as a whole? Archaeologist Marija Gimbutas called the egalitarian societies of Old Europe “matrifocal” because she recognized that the term “matriarchal” is usually (mis)understood to mean female dominant; this decision did not protect her work from being criticized for its challenges to the patriarchal consensus.

Peggy Reeves Sanday redefines matriarchy as involving “cultural symbols and practices associating the maternal with the origin and center of growth processes necessary for social and individual life.” Heide Goettner-Abendroth defines matriarchy to mean “mothers at the beginning,” based on one of the meanings of the root word “arche,” while at the same time insisting that matriarchies are egalitarian.

I dared to use the “m” word after reading Peggy Reeves Sanday and Heide Goettner-Abendroth. I define egalitarian matriarchy as a society and culture organized around the mother principle of love, care, and generosity, in which mothers are honored and women play central roles, and in which men also have important roles and every voice is heard. My new suggestion is that the “m”word always be preceded by the “e” word, in other words that we not use “matriarchy” unmodified, but always write and speak of “egalitarian matriarchies” in order to make it clear that we are not talking about female-dominated societies. This will be my practice in the future.

*You can read more in Societies of Peace by Heide Goettner-Abendroth, in Women at the Center by Peggy Reeves Sanday, and in Daughters of Mother Earth and Iroquoian Women by Barbara Alice Mann. Or watch The Women’s Kingdom or other documentaries on the Mosuo.

Carol P. Christ is an internationally known feminist writer and educator currently living in Heraklion, Crete. Carol’s new book written with Judith Plaskow, Goddess and God in the World: Conversations in Embodied Theology, is on sale for $3.71 kindle on Amazon in May 2018. FAR Press recently published A Serpentine Path: Mysteries of the Goddess. Carol has been leading educational tours based on the religion and culture of ancient Crete for over twenty years. Carol’s photo by Michael Honegger.

Marija Gimbutas Triumphant: Colin Renfrew Concedes by Carol P. Christ

The disdain with which the work of archaeologist Marija Gimbutas has been held in the field of classics and archaeology was shown to me when I stated quietly at a cocktail party at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens that I was interested in her work. This comment, tentatively offered, unleashed a tirade from a young female archaeologist who began shouting at me: “Her work is unscholarly and because it is, it is harder for me and other women scholars in the field to be taken seriously.”

Responding to the backlash against her theories, Gimbutas is said to have told a female colleague that it might take decades, but eventually the value of her work would be recognized. It is now more than twenty years since Marija Gimbutas died in 1994, and the value of her work is beginning to be recognized by (at least some of) her colleagues—including one of her harshest critics. In a lecture titled “Marija Rediviva: DNA and Indo-European Origins,” renowned archaeologist Lord Colin Renfrew (allied with the British Conservative Party**), who had been one of Gimbutas’s most vociferous antagonists and a powerful gate-keeper, concluded the inaugural Marija Gimbutas Lecture at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago with these words: “Marija [Gimbutas]’s Kurgan hypothesis has been magnificently vindicated.” Continue reading “Marija Gimbutas Triumphant: Colin Renfrew Concedes by Carol P. Christ”

Corra, Celtic Serpent Goddess by Judith Shaw

judith shaw photo Even though snakes never inhabited Ireland, as in the rest of the ancient world both the serpent and the dragon were ancient symbols of life, fertility, wisdom and immortality for the Celts. Ancient Celtic ornamental work is entwined with serpents and dragons. The Celtic Knot can be seen as a never-ending serpent. A large stone with a carved serpent is found at the sacred cairn sites of Knowth. The megalithic structure of Brug na Bóinne (Newgrange) has multiple serpent-like spirals on the entrance stone.

In Scotland there is the earthen serpent at Glen Feochan, Loch Nell. The Pictish Aberlemno Serpent Stone is engraved with a serpent and other symbols. The torque collar, a symbol of kingship and status was created in the form of a hybrid horned dragon/snake. The serpent was connected to healing pools and springs and the Druids believed the serpent had healing powers together with a certain type of egg shaped stone called a “serpent’s egg.” Continue reading “Corra, Celtic Serpent Goddess by Judith Shaw”

In the Words of the First Poet and Historian: “I am” by Michele Stopera Freyhauf

These days I find it hard to write – I feel plagued with negativity, and the news and violence and overall hateful actions of others have weighed deeply on my soul. While I personally am ready to celebrate a milestone birthday, am another year closer to completing my Ph.D., witnessed the graduation of one daughter, experienced the independence of another, a milestone for my twins, as well as my father’s successful completing of another orbit around the sun after a year plagued with health issues – rather than joy, my heart is filled with pain – pain of the election, pain of the failure of our political system’s supposed checks and balances, pain of violence and bigotry like that enacted in Charlottesville, pain of terror attacks in England, Spain, Finland, France, etc. Where we ought to be united, we are divided. Thus, I write from a place of remembering – a place of strength – a place to say I count (as you count) – and I begin this blog in the voice of Enheduanna, where she becomes the first voice in history to reveal herself – her name, by simply stating – – “I AM.” Continue reading “In the Words of the First Poet and Historian: “I am” by Michele Stopera Freyhauf”

The Mountain Mother: Reading the Language of the Goddess in the Symbols of Ancient Crete by Carol P. Christ

Before he told the story of how his people received the sacred pipe, Black Elk said:

So I know that it is a good thing I am going to do; and because no good thing can be done by any man alone, I will first make an offering and send a voice to the Spirit of the World, that it may help me to be true. See, I fill this sacred pipe with the bark of the red willow; but before we smoke it, you must see how it is made and what it means. These four ribbons hanging here on the stem are the four quarters of the universe. The black one is for the west where the thunder beings live to send us rain; the white one for the north, whence comes the great white cleansing wind; the red one for the east, whence springs the light and where the morning star lives to give men wisdom; the yellow for the south, whence come the summer and the power to grow.

But these four spirits are only one Spirit after all, and this eagle feather here is for that One, which is like a father, and also it is for the thoughts of men that should rise high as eagles do. Is not the sky a father and the earth a mother, and are not all living things with feet or wings or roots their children? And this hide upon the mouthpiece here, which should be bison hide, is for the earth, from whence we came and at whose breast we suck as babies all our lives, along with all the animals and birds and trees and grasses. And because it means all this, and more than any man can understand, the pipe is holy. [italics added]

In this passage Black Elk illustrates the multivalency of symbols: the sacred pipe does not have a single meaning, but many meanings, in fact, more meanings than anyone can understand. Continue reading “The Mountain Mother: Reading the Language of the Goddess in the Symbols of Ancient Crete by Carol P. Christ”

Weaving and Spinning Women: Witches and Pagans by Max Dashu: Reviewed by Carol P. Christ

carol p. christ photo michael bakas Max Dashu’s Witches and Pagans: Women in European Folk Religion 700-1000 challenges the assumption that Europe was fully Christianized within a few short centuries as traditional historians tell us. 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. Careful readers of Dashu’s important new work will be challenged to revise their views. When the full 15 volumes of the projected series are in print, historians may be forced to hang their heads in shame. This of course assumes that scholars will read Dashu’s work. More likely they will ignore or dismiss it, but sooner or later–I dare to hope–the truth will out. Continue reading “Weaving and Spinning Women: Witches and Pagans by Max Dashu: Reviewed by Carol P. Christ”

In Search of Ancestral Wisdom by Max Dashu

Max 2011

What is the preserving shrine? Níansa (not hard).
The preserving shrine is memory and what is preserved in it.
What is the preserving shrine? Níansa.
The preserving shrine is Nature and what is preserved in it.
—Senchas Mór, Ireland

In a world in extremity, we are searching for the wellspring, the inexhaustible Source known to all our ancient kindreds. Many of us have been cut off from our deep roots, and especially from the ancient wisdom of women, and female spiritual leadership.

My long quest has been to discover the lost strands of my own roots, the old ethnic cultures of Europe, and to reweave those ripped webs. I have spent decades searching for authentic cultural testimony about women’s spiritual ways before Christianity, before the Roman empire, before men commandeered all positions of religious leadership. My book, Witches and Pagans: Women in European Folk Religion, brings together these ripped strands of the cultural web. Continue reading “In Search of Ancestral Wisdom by Max Dashu”

Fear and Loathing in Discussions of Female Power in the Academy by Carol P. Christ

Carol Molivos by Andrea Sarris 2 No matter how carefully developed they are, theories of female power in pre-patriarchal societies are dismissed in academic circles as “romantic fantasies” of a “golden age” based in “emotional longings” with “no basis in fact.” I was reminded of this while reviewing three books about the Goddess last week.

In one of the books, the co-authors, who define themselves as feminists, summarily dismiss theories about the origins of Goddess worship in pre-patriarchal prehistory. In another, the author traces the origin of certain Goddess stories and symbols found in recent folklore back to the beginnings of agriculture. Inexplicably, she stops there, not even mentioning the theory that women invented agriculture. Considering that possibility might have suggested that the symbols and stories the she was investigating were developed by women as part of rituals connected to the agricultural cycle. To ask these questions would have raised a further one: the question of female power in prehistory. And this it seems is a question that cannot be asked. This question was addressed in the third (very scholarly) book, which I fear will simply be ignored. Continue reading “Fear and Loathing in Discussions of Female Power in the Academy by Carol P. Christ”

Argument from “Absence” and Absence of Dialogue by Carol P. Christ

Recently in a conversation with a noted archaeologist and his male graduate student assistant, I proposed that the absence of war and the trappings of war, including images of larger than life-size warrior kings, suggested to me that we should not understand the social structure of ancient Crete on the model of patriarchal kingship. “Kings are always warriors,” I said, “yet there is no clear and convincing evidence of organized warfare in ancient Crete. And,” I continued, “because warrior kingship is not a ‘natural state,’ but one achieved through warfare and domination, kings must legitimate and celebrate their power through larger than life-size images of themselves. Such images were common in ancient Sumer and in ancient Egypt, but are not found in ancient Crete.”

The response I received was unexpected: both archaeologists seemed dumbfounded. “Is kingship always associated with war?” they asked. “Yes,” I responded, “this is a conclusion I reached many years ago while studying the cultures of ancient Greece and ancient Israel, and I have recently elaborated this theory in a series of essays on the blog Feminism and Religion ( See “Patriarchy as a System of Male Dominance Created at the Intersection of the the Control of Women, Private Property, and War”).” Continue reading “Argument from “Absence” and Absence of Dialogue by Carol P. Christ”

Is There a Such Thing as a Code of Ethics in Academia? by Michele Stopera Freyhauf

One of things that has dismayed me since I began graduate school and started focusing my study on the Bible, is how much sensationalism exists. We are told in the academy not to use Wikipedia or watch the History Channel. The first, as we know, is unreliable due to the fact that anyone can enter information and make changes. The other caters to the general public. What compounds this problem is the fact that scholars, many times – even reputable ones – appear on these shows. Sometimes creative licenses are exercised by the producer distorting or otherwise shifting the message of what the scholar was trying to explain. Other times, scholars will just give the producers and the public exactly what they want to hear and thus perpetuating myths rooted in literalism.

Alpocalypse_Cave — Cave in the Church of the Apocalypse in Patmos, Greece

This is not the only time this issues manifests. The other time I encountered this is when I travel to sacred or holy sites in the Middle East. The people in charge of sites may want raise money and increase tourism – so they give the people what they want. What do I mean by this? Walking into a place that has a story whether true or not provides pilgrims a sense of awe and wonder.

Certainly I am not saying that this experience should be diminished or should be taken away. What I am saying is that we should be a bit more truthful in our descriptions and remove the shroud of literalism that seems to fuel tourism and not faith. What was difficult for me when visiting Patmos is the rhetoric surrounding the island. It may or may not have been where John had his visions, but certainly the mystique surrounding the Church of the Apocalypse seems to perpetuate the literalism that surrounds the Book of Revelation as being prophetic in dealing with the end times. Moreover, the vendors around the Church certainly focus their merchandise to support this myth. However, while I study the Book of Revelation and teach that it is something other than prophetic, a person visits the island and the church, are told that it is prophetic – who is a person to believe? Me or the religious order running the Church or the vendors living on the island?

This also happens at dig sites. If a tourist is led by a guide or lead at a holy site being excavated and they tell them what they want to hear so they come back and tell their friends, who has more creditability – me or the person who guides on the site? When scholars like myself, write about a topic that seems to gel with what the commonly held view of the academy, and goes against literalism or fundamentalist beliefs, we become heretics in relation to the information being fed by the sensationalism on the History Channel and the tourist industry. So the popular view does not change and the academic view is left on the margins and Biblical literalism wins.

Continue reading “Is There a Such Thing as a Code of Ethics in Academia? by Michele Stopera Freyhauf”