herstory – Page 5 – Feminism and Religion

The Wisdom of the Beguines: The Forgotten Story of a Medieval Women’s Movement by Laura Swan, part 1 by Theresa C. Dintino

Moderator’s Note: This piece is in co-operation with The Nasty Women Writers Project, a site dedicated to highlighting and amplifying the voices and visions of powerful women. The site was founded by sisters Theresa and Maria Dintino. To quote Theresa, “by doing this work we are expanding our own writer’s web for nourishment and support.” This was originally posted on their site on July 5, 2022. You can see more of their posts here.

Around 1200 AD in Europe, communities of women often called beguines began to form. These women were not nuns, they were devout and devoted to the tenets of Christianity but did not belong to any church. They were independent communities of women who often created their own industry, trade or other means to produce income. They were self-sufficient and generally concerned with helping the poor, especially women. They lived in convents. This was the origin of that word.

“These women were essentially self-defined, in opposition to the many attempts to control and define them. They lived by themselves or together in so-called beguinages, which could be single houses for as few as a handful of beguines or, as in Brugge, walled-in rows of houses enclosing a central court with a chapel where over a thousand beguines might live—a village of women within a medieval town or city”(2).

Witch Power? part 2 by Sara Wright

You can read part 1 here

After being nailed as a witch I separated myself from the word and witch power in general. The word witch had a very dark side and could be used in the same frightening manner as it had been during medieval times to label and to expel any woman who lived on the edge (source of my original sense of unease). Especially one who lived alone in the woods and loved animals like I did.

Why had I been singled out? I was an outsider whose crime was to animate nature. Anything associated with nature was suspect if not ‘evil’.

Feminists beware. If you claim to be a witch – recall that the word is loaded. Personally, I think the label has backfired reducing our overall power as women. Perhaps making us more suspect than we already are.

Filigreed by Diane Finkle Perazzo

Dressed in filigreed art deco daffodils,
dainty and tucked among tailored leaves
held proudly — almost defensively.
Elegant and demure;
your shapely neck flares with grace.

You are such a small and lovely thing:
light as a feather and yet
you carry the weight
of an American woman’s silver-plated dreams.

Like her, you were designed to be admired –
fashioned to be lifted lightly.
Pretty and proper at the table and
placed just so.

Comfortable in your simple life of service.
Polished until your delicate silver skin
wore thin and the truth
within your copper heart could be revealed.

********

Apaḥ and the Nāga: Water and the Snake by Lenore Lowe

Image © 2024 Compilation of Lenore Lowe and Freepik.com

As I write this, water has slowly leaked in my front yard for a day. It has already turned what was dry and brown to moist and green. It seems fitting on the day of Nāga Pañcamī (worship on this particular 5th day of the half moon). It’s fitting that water—apaḥ—has gently made its way to the surface. It has wound around pipes, rocks and roots like a cobra—nāga—to come up to show itself. Though, there are financial challenges in fixing the leak, I can’t help celebrate it as a blessed omen of goodness to come.

After all, it’s arrived for this extra auspicious day in the most favourable month of the vedic calendar. I admit some of my frivolity may be from feeling better on my 5th day of covid. (The significance of the number 5 is not going unnoticed: linked to Patañjali and the great Yoga Sutras.) My mind too feels like it’s been making its way back to the surface. The seepage also keeps bringing me back to thoughts about the watery world of emotions, and new depths of emotions seem to be rising up in me. They feel deeply personal and universal at the same time. The celebration is devotional, the auspiciousness of having this extra time off of work to bring roses to the Mother.

Witch Power? part 1 by Sara Wright

On my grandparent’s farm witch hazel trees were common, sprouting up around old fieldstone walls at the edges of the forest. I loved these trees that bloomed in the fall after all the leaves had fallen. Masses of buttery yellow spindles covered bare twigs. Clusters of blossoms stood out starkly against the trunks of most of the hardwoods – hickory, beech, maple and oak.

As a child I carefully inspected each clump of blossoms. On some branches I found empty seed capsules which I learned much later expelled their seeds all at once the year before. Even these bird beaked pods looked to me like a kind of flower. I also saw little round balls that I later learned were next year’s buds already formed and that the identical looking flowers were either male or female. If I stood beneath a tree, the tangled shapes of the branches wove a loose string -like tapestry above me, one that was often mirrored by a cobalt blue sky.

Herstory Profiles: The Season of the Witch by Anjeanette LeBoeuf

Throughout the modern ages there have been stories, legends, myths, and historical accounts of threatening people, mainly women, who have been linked with the supernatural, with containing powers, engaging with elements that go beyond the natural world, and who decentralize, shake up, and counter mainstream patriarchal systems and groups. And the predominate word which can be translated and transcend languages is that of WITCH. And since we are in the month of October, when it becomes somewhat acceptable for people to deck their houses with items long been associated with witchcraft, this month’s herstory profiles is diving into all things witchy.

So, lets deconstruct what witches do and how they function in history and in modern times. When we look at the origins of magic – at the very core- is the manipulation of the natural world for supernatural outcomings. Those outcomes can be a range – from conversing with supernatural beings, healings, prophecy, alchemy, transformation, and to even holding secret knowledge. The word magic has origins in Ancient Persian and Proto-Indo-European languages with concepts of “being able to” and to “have power.” If we look at ancient cultures, civilizations, and religions we found multiple variations of people and roles being able to contain, control, and weld magic.

REMEMBERING THE MAGIC OF MAMA DONNA HENES: 1945-2024 by Diane Saarinen

For those who don’t know who Donna Henes was, her official bio:

Donna Henes is an internationally renowned urban shaman, spiritual teacher, award-winning author, popular speaker and workshop leader whose joyful celebrations of celestial events have introduced ancient traditional rituals and contemporary ceremonies to millions since 1972. More at her Wikipedia page here.

Donna, known affectionately to many as Mama Donna, was so in tune with the seasons (even putting out a quarterly publication for a time called Always in Season), that when her time came to leave this sparkling, stunning incarnation of hers, she left on Autumn Equinox Eve 2024, just two days after her 79^th birthday.

Sad news to those she left behind and sad news to the planet. But as we approach Samhain, Halloween and Day of the Dead, what wonderful memories my friend Donna Henes left me with! And “what is remembered, lives.” So live on, Mama Donna!

*******

Incredibly! The Inquisitional Cultural Mechanism Rears its Hydra Head by by Elisabeth Sikie

As a young witch hungry for feminist sisterhood and spiritual wisdom in the 90s, before the blooming of the internet, I discovered a mag called The Beltane Papers. I remember devouring an article featuring channeled material of women killed during the European witch hunts. This transmission revealed past voices of everyday people living their lives until they were snagged by the slow creep of an increasingly oppressive cultural trajectory. What struck me was the normalcy of their voices, the deceased echoes of regular women trying to make sense of events beyond their control until they were taken by a system that destroyed them. What stayed with me is the author’s observation that even at their violent end these women’s voices remained “incredulous”.

Decades, and seemingly lifetimes later, I completed my dissertation for my PhD in Religion and Philosophy in which I excavated some of the subaltern history of my European Ancestors and their female shamanic practices. At one inevitable point in my research – kicking and screaming – I reluctantly faced the inquisitions and witch trials. After waving a sage wand and cracking a sacred beer, I cracked open the Malleus Maleficarum, the infamous “Hammer of the Witches”.[1] This notorious guidebook, a how-to for career Christian Inquisitors written by two Dominican Friars[2] during the Middle Ages, details moral arguments supporting the legalized suppression, interrogation, and eradication of women designated by the church-state as heretics.

Queering Herstory Profiles by Anjeanette LeBoeuf

We are back with a new volume of uncovering and focusing on extraordinary persons. We start our first post of Volume II with 4 figures who in many ways throw history, narrative, and the status quo off their axis. All 4, if alive in 2024, would find solidarity and kinship with the Queer Community. So let us being.

Hatshepsut (1508-1458 BCE) Egyptian Pharaoh.

Hatshepsut was the daughter of Thutmose I, wife to Thutmose II, and stepmother to Thutmose III. Her husband died while his heir was too young to ascend the throne. Hatshepsut became not only the acting regent but full fledge ruler. She would reign for 21 years as the 5^th Ruler of the 18^th Dynasty of Egypt. Her reign was prosperous including funding for art, statues, and monuments that have stood the test of time and active destruction. Deir –el-Bahari became a significant temple for Hatshepsut.

The Awakened Woman: Remembering and Reigniting Our Sacred Dreams by Woman Writer Dr. Tererai Trent by Maria Dintino

Breaking the Bronze Ceiling – Statues of Real Women in Public Spaces

I cannot imagine a woman more deserving than Dr. Tererai Trent, her likeness one of ten life-size bronze statues unveiled in New York City on Women’s Equality Day on August 26, 2019.

Australian global public artists and activists, Gillie and Marc Schattner, revealed the statues of these inspirational women on 6th Avenue (Avenue of the Americas) that glorious summer day! Their organization, Statues for Equality, is on a mission to achieve gender balance in public statues worldwide. In NYC prior to their unveiling, only 3% of the statues depicted females; this climbed to 10% on August 26.