Moderator’s Note: This was originally posted on September 19, 2016
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. 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.
Sheep – soft-footed, fluffy creatures – graze and amble along with frolicking lambs by their sides. Know worldwide as docile and friendly, sheep – in particular the female ewes and their lambs – have come to symbolize innocence, gentleness and peacefulness. The symbolism of rams takes on a slightly different, more masculine tone and will be looked at separately.
Very early in Henri Bosco’s 1948 novel Malicroix, a young man, Martial de Mégremut, living placidly amid fruitful orchards in a tame Provençal village, receives a letter informing him he has inherited “some marshland, a few livestock, a ramshackle house” from a reclusive great-uncle, Cornélius de Malicroix. Against his family’s strenuous objections–with alarm they speak of “marshes, mosquitoes, miasmas”–Mégremut resolves to travel alone to the remote Camargue to claim his “wild” Malicroix inheritance. The house is on an island, and to reach it Mégremut must cross a rough river, at night, in a frail wooden boat piloted by a taciturn old man who meets him at dusk in the middle of a vast plain.
So begins a deeply internal quest narrative, an initiatory journey that forces Mégremut to come to terms with himself and with the elements–earth, water, wind, and fire–that are ever-present, sometimes terrifyingly so, on the island. For once he arrives, he learns that he must remain there alone for a full three months if he wishes to obtain the inheritance. Torn about whether to stay or leave, he finds that the decision to stay is made of its “own accord,” unconsciously.
I felt compelled to visit Scotland without truly understanding why. I said I was called by my studies of Celtic mythology and by images I had seen of the land. I told people in Scotland I was on an artist’s journey. But now I see that Mother Earth wanted my attention – and in Scotland, particularly in the Highlands, Earth energy is strongly present. From the start, a major part of that calling was the ancient Callanais Stones – pronounced like the English translation “Callanish” – located on the remote Isle of Lewis.
Getting around the Hebrides and the Highlands was difficult without a car as bus access is very limited. Though a little restricting, it kept me connected to Earth as I walked and I walked. With every step I felt the call of Earth – from even before the human family began.
It was a glorious sunny afternoon when I arrived by ferry on the Isle of Lewis/Harris. Next was a bus ride north to Stornoway, my base for exploring Callanais. Here I first learned of the Stones connection to the Cailleich, an ancient goddess whose origins are unknown. Her name literally means “the Veiled One” but has come to mean “Old Woman or Wife.” Yet she was all powerful and ageless.
An elder man spoke about Callanias and the Stones’ connection to the nearby mountain – “Cailleach na Mointeach” – Gaelic for “The Old Woman of the Moors” or affectionately called “Sleeping Beauty” as the mountain looks like a woman lying on her back with bent knees. He said you could see this mountain through the stones. His storytelling got me searching for more info on the Cailleach’s connection to the Stones.
Cailleach na Mointeach, Isle of Lewis
First, I learned of the extreme age of the islands and of the stones that make up the land. The Callanais Stones date back to 3500 BC but the rocks that created Scotland come from an inconceivable 3 billion years ago as the landmasses of Earth were created from out of the waters.
Around 450 million years ago, at the beginning of the Caledonian Orogeny, Scotland, Scandinavia and North America were one continent with the now, non-existent Iapetu Ocean separating them from England, which was joined with the rest of northern Europe. This was a long geological period of continental collision and mountain building, that turned Iapetu Ocean into land and fused Scotland and England together.
Quieter conditions occurred for several millennia, covering Scotland with layers of sediment forming various sedimentary rocks until 60 million years ago when Earth moved again and the continent split apart forming the North Atlantic Ocean with volcanoes erupting all along Scotland’s new western edge.
These are the creation stories the science of geology tells us. But our ancient ancestors told a different story of the creation of Scotland and the other Celtic lands. Long, long before the Celts arrived in Ireland and Scotland, the indigenous people worshipped The Cailleach, as both the goddess of creation and the goddess of destruction. She became Calleach Bheur to the Scots. “Bheur” means sharp and she was credited with creating the sharp and biting winter weather, which helped to shape Scotland.
The Cailleach, a Dark Goddess of nature, is one with the land. Sometimes depicted with one eye, she sees beyond duality peering into the Oneness of all Being. She is the embodiment of winter, clothing the land with snow. Sacred Stones are her special places.
She leapt from mountaintop to mountaintop, dropping rocks to create hills, mountains and islands. She carried a slachdam – the Druidic rod, or a hammer with which she wielded power over the seasons and weather.
She is the guardian of the life force, finding and nourishing the seeds, commanding the power of life and death. The Cailleach personifies death and the transformative power of darkness, leading us through death to rebirth.
Our ancestors believed that the rocks on the Isle of Lewis used to create the Callanais Stone Circle were gifts from the Cailleach – from her acts of Earth building. These metamorphic gneiss rocks are among the oldest in Europe and are embedded with various types of crystal such as quartz, feldspar and hornblende. Perhaps these crystals in the ancient rocks create the energy field I felt so strongly on my visit – all coming from the hand of the Cailleach, a personification of the power of Mother Earth.
Archeologists theorize that the 5,000 year old Callanais Stones were a sacred site created for ritual and prayer, in particular from which to mark the 18.6 year lunar cycle – similar and yet more complicated than the yearly Sun cycle of Summer and Winter Solstices.
Callanais Stone Circle seen from Cross Entrance on East
Every 18.6 years, this moon cycle reaches Major Lunar Standstill with the full moon nearest the Summer Solstice. It is viewed through the Callanais Stones rising out of Cailleach na Mointeach – our Earth Mother. Being so far north it only skims the horizon then appears to set among the stones.
Two stones of the Callanais 13 stone inner circle framing Cailleach na Mointeach
It is hard for our modern minds to understand the awe these ancient people must have felt at the beauty and terror of nature during the Megalithic Era – when the human family was first beginning to settle in one place though had not yet discovered agriculture.
Perhaps the ceremonies held at Callanais helped hold the terror at bay. Closing my eyes I can imagine being there on this short night, near mid-summer, for the ritual marking of the passing of winter – I and my tribe had survived the season of long, dark nights. This was the special time that our tribal shaman knew how to mark. We all understood the precariousness of life and that marking the circuits of Earth and Sky provided invaluable knowledge for our survival. I can imagine feeling immense gratitude witnessing the cycles of life unfold as Earth and Sky and human minds interacted and the full moon rose out of our Earth Mother – Cailleach na Mointeach – and then set within the Sacred Stone Circle.
Further illustrating Callanais’ connection to Goddess, its original construction was comprised of 13 stones arranged in a circle – both number and shape are symbols of Moon and Goddess. At some point an even-armed cross was added around the perimeter – symbolic of the sun and of the meeting place of the divine and the mundane.
It seems unlikely that such a magnificent structure was created for use only once every 18.6 years. Of course these people left no written account of their actions, but local legend and lore suggests the Callanais Stones were seen as a fertility power spot. Given the Stones connection to Moon and Goddess that is not surprising. An old legend claims that Callanais is a promising spot to consummate a marriage or become engaged. In fact I overheard a couple of visitors while I was there claiming to have become engaged at Callanais.
But what does a site like the Callanais Stones hold for us today? Can Mother Earth still speak to us there?
After a bit of a wander through and around the Stones, I sat and sketched. Slowly through that act of eye to hand to pencil to paper I began to feel the deep connection that always comes in when I attempt to translate 3D reality onto a 2D piece of paper.
Time passed and soon the only return bus would arrive so I stopped and just sat quietly, listening to the wind and feeling the energy. I felt strongly a sacred presence in this spot where long, long ago ceremonies for Goddess had been held. I heard the Cailleach’s calling – to an acceptance of our modern world and the difficult days of transformation the 21st century offers up. The winds carried her message – a glimmer of hope that we can find our way back to living in balance with her natural rhythms of creation, destruction and creation. I felt her reassurance that though the geography of Earth changes and the epochs of humankind and the flesh and bones of all creatures pass away, the magnificence of life continues. The Cailleach touched my heart there at her Sacred Stone circle, reminding me that, though pain and suffering has been and will always be with us, life is a gift to be cherished.
Here are a few more photos of the Callanais Stones
Judith Shaw, a graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute, has been interested in myth, culture and mystical studies all her life. Not long after graduating from SFAI, while living in Greece, Judith began exploring the Goddess in her art. She continues to be inspired by the Goddess in all of Her manifestations. She is now working on her next deck of oracle cards – Animal Wisdom. Originally from New Orleans, Judith makes her home in New Mexico where she paints as much as time allows and sells real estate part-time. Give yourself the gift of one of Judith’s prints or paintings.
Judith’s deck of Celtic Goddess Oracle Cards is available now. You can order your deck from Judith’s website – click here. Experience the wisdom of the Celtic Goddesses!
This post was originally posted on February 5, 2018
The symbol of the Goddess is as old as human history. The most ancient images of the Goddesses from the Paleolithic era are neither pregnant nor holding a child. In Neolithic Old Europe the Goddess was most commonly linked with birds or snakes and only rarely portrayed as mother. Yet we tend to equate the Goddess with the Mother Goddess. I suspect that images of the Virgin Mary with Jesus on her lap and prayers to God as Father have fused in our minds, leading us to think that the Goddess must be a Mother Goddess and primarily a Mother.
In a recent blog, Christy Croft reminded us that in our culture, women’s experiences of mothering and motherhood are not always positive:
[The mother] doesn’t always appear in our stories in simple or easy ways. Some of us mother children we did not or could not grow in our bodies; some of us birth babies who are now mothered by others. Some of us are not mothers at all. Some of us had mothers who could not love us unconditionally, or did not have mothers in our lives, or had mothers who brought us more pain and humiliation than comfort, from whose effects we are still recovering, are still healing.
Moving from town to town – by train, bus and ferry – I have walked and walked the ancient land of the Scottish Highlands. From Paleolithic to Mesolithic to Neolithic and on to Picts, Celts, Scots, Romans, French and English – many different people have walked these same paths.
Standing Stones, Cupmarked Stones and Pictish Stones along with medieval castles, monuments, graveyards to soldiers lost in centuries of battles and sheep, always sheep – pepper the landscape everywhere.
The Callanish Stones – circa 3500 BC – Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides, Scotland
Cupmarked Stone, Aberfledy, Perthsire
Pastures of Fortingall – a very small village in Perthshire, Scotland
Graveyard to soldiers lost to war, Fort William, Scotland
This land was formed millennia ago when Mother Earth first birthed herself from the waters of our beginnings. Through epochs of volcanic spewings, earthquakes, continents splitting, the ice advancing and retreating – change, always change, remains the one constant. Here in this high land, one is reminded of the smallness of our individuality.
Isle of Skye, East side of island formed by tectonic plate movement
Niest, most westerly point on Isle of Skye
Tales of goddesses, gods, faeries, giants, monsters and countless heroines and heroes inhabit the land.
After the ice receded – the Faery Glen, Isle of Skye
The Faery Glen – another view
All along this way the Ancient Ones have whispered to me – whispered through the rushing streams and babbling creeks, joyous bird song, waves murmuring, waves crashing against the shore, and wind howling through the air.
A beach on the Isle of Lewis
It has rained and rained and yet one day the sun emerged, revealing the vibrant green, green, green – everywhere green – temporarily lifting the blue grey mists and the brown, brackish swaths of horizon.
Every moment has been a joyous exaltation of our beautiful Mother Earth. And of course, along the way I was drawing. Here are a few sketches or dream remembrances.
Sheep, Birds and Trees
On the Banks of the River Tay
Seaweed and Rocks
Loch Dreams
And one day there was snow!
I’ll leave you with just a few more photos – big vistas, trees and small things – all parts of the beauty found in this ancient land of Mother Earth – our mother who sustains and supports us through all time.
Leaving Uig, Isle of Skye by ferry
Uig, Isle of Skye
Judith’s deck of Celtic Goddess Oracle Cards is available now. You can order your deck from Judith’s website – click here. Experience the wisdom of the Celtic Goddesses!
Judith Shaw, a graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute, has been interested in myth, culture and mystical studies all her life. Not long after graduating from SFAI, while living in Greece, Judith began exploring the Goddess in her art. She continues to be inspired by the Goddess in all of Her manifestations. She is now working on her next deck of oracle cards – Animal Wisdom. Originally from New Orleans, Judith makes her home in New Mexico where she paints as much as time allows and sells real estate part-time. Give yourself the gift of one of Judith’s prints or paintings.
Marija Gimbutas coined the term “Old Europe” c.6500-3500 BCE to describe peaceful, sedentary, artistic, matrifocal, matrilineal and probably matrilocal agricultural societies that worshipped the Goddess as the power of birth, death, and regeneration in all of life. Gimbutas argued that Old Europe was overthrown by Indo-European speaking invaders who began to enter Europe from the steppes north of the Black Sea beginning about 4400 BCE. The Indo-Europeans were patrilineal and patriarchal, mobile and warlike, having domesticated the horse, were not highly artistic and worshiped the shining Gods of the sky reflected in their bronze weapons.
In the fields of classics and archaeology, Gimbutas’s work is often dismissed as nothing more than a fantasy of a “golden age.” In contrast, scholars of Indo-European languages, Gimbutas’s original specialty, are much more likely to accept the general outlines of her hypothesis. The German linguist and cultural scientist Harald Haarmann is one of them.
Rather than being a bleeding image of female disempowerment, Medusa may be read as…one of the most ancient European symbols of women’s spiritual abilities… [and] an empowering image of feminine potential.’
–Patricia Monaghan, O Mother Sun! (1994:244)
The name Medusa means ‘sovereign female wisdom,’ ‘guardian / protrectress,’ ‘the one who knows’ or ‘the one who rules.’ It derives from the same Indo-European root as the Sanskrit Medha and the Greek Metis, meaning ‘wisdom’ and ‘intelligence.’ (1) Metis, ‘the clever one’, is Athena’s mother. Corretti identifies Athena, Metis, and Medusa as aspects of an ancient triple Goddess corresponding respectively to the new, full, and dark phases of the moon. (2) All three are Goddesses of wisdom, protection, and healing.
Athena with Gorgoneion in her heart. 5th C BCE.
Athena and Medusa are particularly linked: indeed, one may have been an aspect of the other, ‘two indissociable aspects of the same sacred power.’ (3) Their many common elements include snakes, wings, a formidable appearance, fierce eyes and powerful gaze. The serpent, like the Goddess, has been cast as an embodiment of evil in patriarchal retellings; yet as Merlin Stone points out, serpents were ‘generally linked to wisdom and prophetic counsel’, associated with ‘the female deity’ and ‘entwined about accounts of oracular revelation…throughout the Near and Middle East.’ (4) According to Ovid, the poisonous vipers of the Sahara ‘arose from spilt drops of Medusa’s blood.’ (5) Although this is presented as a further sign of Medusa’s horrifying character, the original Berber inhabitants of North Africa – where Herodotus reports that the Medusa myth began – viewed snakes as bringers of luck and portents of joy. (6)
I often speak of being in the temple of the ordinary, of seeing the enchantment in the ordinary. In the book The Spirituality of Imperfection, the authors write that “beyond the ordinary, beyond material beyond possession, beyond the confines of the self, spirituality transcends the ordinary, and yet, paradoxically, it can be found only in the ordinary. Spirituality is beyond us, and yet it is in everything we do. It is extraordinary. And yet, it is extraordinarily simple.”
This spring, I presented at an event and the concept of “being versus doing” arose. I reminded participants that “being” is not a competitive sport. We cannot not be, we are being all the time. I think sometimes the pressure we put on ourselves to be better, to “do” being better, can be really hobbling. Likewise, the sensation that spirituality is somewhere “out there” or that it has to be bigger than or better than or transcendent instead of present in the ordinary. On a goddess based path, with a feminist orientation, I find that the Goddess herself pervades all of existence, pervades your whole entire life, even the rough and weary places, even the ragged and strange places. Returning to Kurtz and Ketcham, they write: “Now…beyond the ordinary is not meant to suggest something complicated, different, different or self-consciously special. Nothing is so simple, or so out of the ordinary for most of us, then attending to the present. The focus on this day, suggested by all spiritual approaches, attending to the present, to the sacredness present in the ordinary, if we can get beyond the ordinary is, of course, a theme that pervades Eastern expressions of spirituality and other expressions too.”
I know that I often find myself seeking or longing for the special moments, the magic, the flashes of transcendence, and sometimes this can cause me to miss the ordinary, to miss the present, to miss where I am because I’m longing for something else. Adages to the effect of “do what you are doing” and “be where you are” may begin to sound cliché almost and the reason they do is because it’s so simple and so out of the ordinary to simply come back to attending to the present. The present moment is, in my eyes, truly where we find the goddess, in the pulse of presence in the every day. In the book She of the Sea, author Lucy Pearce addresses the question of the transcendent ordinary as well: “I want to write of the oceanic mystery, the soul of goddess magic, the sacred that which lies beyond words, because the repeated deliberate seeking of connection to this is at the heart of what I do and who I am. It is my creative and spiritual practice. I want to speak of this so that you can close your eyes turn inwards and smile knowing, just knowing until our conversation can continue without words…I want to share what I have known and for not to sound strange, yet strangeness is its nature. The soul is not of this world. It’s not rational, the sacred is not logical, but nor is this chaotic, magnificent, contradictory, and complex world of ours. And yet, we insist on pretending that it is and being disappointed, afraid, or bemused when it shows us its reality, again and again.”
The sacred is not logical, and neither is the world itself, but we pretend that it is, and then we get disappointed when we see reality. I originally learned the phrase “don’t argue with reality” from self-help author Wayne Dyer. There can be a whole range of potential experiences that are beyond objective reality or the reality that people sometimes insist is all there is. Jeanette Winterson, in her book Lighthousekeeping writes: “I do not accept that life has an ordinary shape, or that there is anything ordinary about life at all. We make it ordinary, but it is not.”
Maybe we are trying to make things ordinary that are not. My kids are growing up and getting ready to graduate from high school. One of my sons is very into science and loves biology and genetics and he is fond of boiling things down to an “everybody’s just a mass of cells having a collective hallucination” type of rhetoric that leaves little room for the esoteric and little room for inherent meaning. However, for me, I come back to the reality of being human as its own kind of miracle, its own profound magic. The reality of having this body with all these cells, which are doing all these things day in and day out that I don’t consciously know how to do, and yet my body does them every single day. That’s magic, even if we can explain the objective “why” of it. I don’t consciously know how to beat my own heart, but wait a second, yes, I do, because here it is beating every day from birth till death. Some people may be quite attached to maintaining the assertion that life is random and pointless, but this is not the story I see. I see wonder. I see magic. I see a miracle in motion. I am awestruck at the impossible reality of being a bundle of cells typing this essay right now. Yes, I am “only” a bundle of cells and that is absolutely pure magic to me. In fact, your very presence right here, right now is proof of the sacred on this earth in my eyes. May we all love the ordinary and let it whisper of the magic right beneath the skin.
Breathe deep and allow your gaze to settle on something you love. Draw up strength from the earth. Draw down light from the sky. Allow yourself to be refilled and restored. There is good to be done on this day. Let your own two hands against your heart be the reminder you need that the pulse of the sacred still beats and the chord of the holy yet chimes.
Molly Remer, MSW, D.Min, is a priestess facilitating women’s circles,seasonal rituals, and family ceremonies in central Missouri. Molly and her husband Mark co-create Story Goddesses at Brigid’s Grove. Molly is the author of nine books, including Walking with Persephone, Whole and Holy, Womanrunes, and the Goddess Devotional. She is the creator of the devotional experience #30DaysofGoddess and she loves savoring small magic and everyday enchantment.
Feminism and Religion 