By: Keitha (FireWind)
Posted: Aug.18th/99
Think back...think way, way back. About 30,000 years ago, people lived in small
hunter-gatherer groups. People hadn't begun to settle into agriculture, yet.
Although both men and women were able to hunt, women were sometimes tied down
with childbearing. It was the women who were chiefly in charge of gathering
plants for food. It was usually, though perhaps not always, the women who
developed healing medicines from these same plants. Today, we are still looking
to the natural world for medicines. For example, the chemical in Aspirin is the
same one found in willowbark.
The origins of magick may have been sympathetic. It perhaps was believed that if
you 'killed' an animal ceremoniously, you would have a better chance when it
actually came to the hunt.
Fertility of the plants and animals was important to the continuation of people.
If there were no animals, and no plants, the people would starve. However, the
fertility of the people was just as important. No children meant the people
would not continue. In a time when it was not understood how women got pregnant,
it is no wonder there seemed to be an emphasis on the divine Feminine. The Venus
of Willendorf, and other Goddess figures' seem to suggest this. These figures
show women with exaggerated hips, thighs, genitals, and frequently they appear
to be pregnant. The face and arms are rarely defined, and sometimes the legs are
pointed, as if they were to be placed in the ground.
Women were a source of mystery. Sex was probably not linked to pregnancy, since
a woman did not get pregnant every time she had sex. A woman magickally became
pregnant, and produced a child. She bled every moon cycle. Frequently, even
today, menstrual cycles harmonize and many women cycle together. There are many
cultures that demand menstruating women to be separated from others by going to
a specific place, or sometimes a special hut. It is easy to imagine that this
activity must have mystified the men even more since, well, what did they do in
there?
As the source of life, women were also the source of the divine. Earth Mother
provided for Her children and the Earth. Usually, the women were the healers,
the mothers, the midwives, the nurturers. The woman was close to the Earth
because she could be a mother. But it was also this motherhood which restrained
her. A woman with five or six living children would certainly have had her hands
full. And pregnancy certainly slows a woman down when she's trying to chase a
mammoth, a boar, or a horse. It would be only reasonable that if she had a mate,
he would do the hunting for the family while she was caring for her unborn
child. Of course, this respite could have provided the needed time for learning
healing and spiritual knowledge.
Later, people began to split into different cultures as the world settled into
agriculture. It is not clear why this happened. Agriculture actually takes more
work and more time than hunting and gathering. The need to settle in one place
for agriculture meant less intermixing between different peoples, and gradually,
different cultures began to emerge. In time, Patriarchy began to develop, at
around the same time as written history. The last of the major Matriarchies was
the Celtic peoples, as recorded by the Romans. Although Matriarchies tended to
be slightly less war-like than their counterparts, the world was growing more
violent. In time, it was put up or shut up, and Matriarchies either dissolved,
or learned to fight for themselves.
THE ROMANS AND EARLY CHRISTIANS
Rome was actually a very tolerant place. It was a melting pot of religious
ideas, with temples to many different Gods. Even the Jewish faith, which has
been mistreated horribly over the centuries, was tolerated. There were charges
made against them, but they did not stay in hiding, and so were not seen as
dangerous; generally, they were given at least some respect.
Roman officials were disturbed by the small, but determined religious sect known
as 'Christians'. This Jesus guy had riled up the people, worked apparent
miracles, challenged the established order, and said that rich people were
selfish. When they finally managed to off him, people started saying he had
risen from the dead. How dare he? And to make matters worse, his followers
stayed in hiding, and rumours abounded about their lecherous rituals. (This
isn't being flippant; how would you feel if some apparent cult leader showed up
doing the same things today? Pretty unnerving).
This is what one Pagan at the time believed about Christians: "I am told that,
moved by some foolish urge, they consecrate and worship the head of a donkey,
that most abject of all animals. This is a cult worthy of the customs from which
it sprang! Others say that they reverence the genitals of the presiding priest
himself, and adore them as though they were their father's...As for the
initiation of new members, the details are as disgusting as they are well known.
A child, covered in dough to deceive the unwary, is set before the would-be
novice. The novice stabs the child to death with invisible blows; indeed he
himself, deceived by the coating dough, thinks his stabs harmless. Then - it's
horrible! - they hungrily drink the child's blood, and compete with one another
as they divide his limbs. Through this victim they are bound together; and the
fact that they all share the knowledge of the crime pledges them all to silence.
Such holy rites are more disgraceful than sacrilege. It is well known, too, what
happens at their feasts... On the feast-day they foregather with all their
children, sisters, mothers, people of either sex and all ages. When the company
is all aglow from feasting, and impure lust has been set afire by drunkenness,
pieces of meat are thrown to a dog fastened to a lamp. The dog springs forward,
beyond the length of its chain. The light, which would have been a betraying
witness, is overturned and goes out. Now, in the dark, so favourable to
shameless behaviour, they twine the bonds of unnameable passion, as chance
decides. And so all alike are incestuous, if not always in deed at least by
complicity; for everything that is performed by one of them corresponds to the
wishes of them all...Precisely the secrecy of this evil religion proves that
all these things, or practically all, are true."* (Italics added by Keitha).
A lot of the problem was the secretive nature of Christianity. After the Roman
emperors began to deify themselves, the Christians had an added problem. Their
God was the ruler of the universe, and demanded reverence for that. But the
Roman emperors demanded the same thing. Thus, they had to stay in hiding. And in
hiding, rumours spread, and they were seen as 'evil conspirators' who wanted to
destroy the state. The idea of the feasting on the 'body and blood of the Son of
Man' was easily misunderstood as children.
Christians being thrown to the lions: this began in the 2nd century C.E.
Usually, the rich paid for gladiators to fight, but this was expensive. When a
law was passed allowing criminals to be used instead, this became more popular.
Christians were often arrested for religious reasons, because they were seen as
conspirators. The persecution of Christians lasted for about one century.
THE RISE OF CHRISTIANITY AND THE FALL OF THE DIVINE FEMININE
By about the third century C.E. Christianity was becoming a major religion. With
the conversion of Emperor Constantine, it gained the final, solid foothold. At
first, the religion had no problem with magick. Priests, Abbots, even some Popes
practiced magick. There were laws against burning Witches. But eventually, as
the religion gained ground, it began to change this policy. Men could do magick
by the will of God, women did it by the will of the devil.
During the Renaissance era, there was a vast literary and philosophical debate
called the querelle des femmes. In this debate, men, and a few women, debated
the nature of womankind. Were they evil for having tempted Adam in the Garden?
Were they evil by nature? Did they have a soul? Were they human? Gradually women
lost all their rights, and were seen as property: sexually insatiable creatures
who must be controlled at all costs. Man was light, woman was darkness; darkness
was evil. Anything feminine was dirty, evil, and temptation in disguise. It was
woman who made man sin, and so she must be punished.
Women were still the healers, however. It was they who delivered babies with the
most success. It was they who understood the healing power of plants. It was
they who understood the innate energies of life. This brings up the doctors. At
the time, midwives had a better chance of healing a patient than a doctor who
had studied at a university. At the time, doctors were cutting people open and
letting them bleed out all the 'bad blood'. As you can imagine, mortality rates
were high. However, somebody, a doctor, invented the forceps. These greatly
increased the chances of a live birth. They would hide the forceps from the
delivering mother, and the easier birth would be attributed to the skill of the
doctor. This did not help the case of the midwives. Midwives were a threat to
the medical profession, and the doctors worked hard to discredit and eliminate
them. To a somewhat limited degree, they succeeded. This may have been one of
the causal factors of the burning times.
Paganism still survived. There were isolated pockets of the Old Religion
scattered around. Where Christianity now dominated, the old Gods became the
'Little People'. Where Churches were built on sacred Pagan places, the Pagan
artisans and stonecutters carved their Gods into the walls. Isolated families
held to the old beliefs. When the Church annexed the Pagan holidays, the old
customs continued to flourish. Customs that once had religious meaning were
still carried out, albeit robbed of their mystical significance. Today,
Christmas is still Yule, Easter is still the Spring Equinox, and May Day is
still Beltaine. People still bob for apples in some places on Samhain, children
still dance around maypoles, and people still kiss under the mistletoe. Paganism
is still an important part of today's culture.