Podcasts by Max Dashu
Herbal mysteries were the province of the Old English lybbestre and Old German luppararā, “female healer.” These words for healing witch- es descend from lyb and luppa, which both mean “vitality,” “medicine.” It designates “medicine” both in the sense of curative herbs or powders, and as something animated by sacred power. Lyb is related to […]
Healers, Lybbestre, Herb-Chanters Read More »
The Latin incantation means “singing into,” invoking through chant, from canto, “song, chant.” The clergy sometimes called witches by the Latin title of incantatrix, which gave rise to French enchanteresse and, in turn, to English enchantress. Church councils were constantly prohibiting the singing of charms. They usually included divinations alongside incantations, as the council of
Chant, Invocation and Charms Read More »
From Chapter III of Witches and Pagans: Women in European Folk Religion, 700-1100, ©2016 Max Dashu Modern “Western” culture is saturated with demonized concepts of the witch, while lacking knowledge about authentic cultural practices in its own past. For this reason, many readers will be surprised to find that the oldest names for witch in
Names of the Witch: Knowers, Seers, Prophetesses Read More »
This audio talk (stream below) delves into female powers which remained active in the patriarchal Hittite empire: a class of priestesses called the “Old Women” or “Wisewomen” or “Magic Women” (possibly “Midwives”) who were recorded in the archives of temples, but were later driven from the royal courts; a sovereignty goddess called “Throne” or “Altar
“Old Women” and Hittite Queens Read More »
The first meaning of “charm” is chant or incantation. We look at healing charms from Romania, Spain, Finland, and Bulgaria and how imagery is used to dispell illness from the body-soul. The first example of this I found is from Romania, where “the Mother of God orders the pain to leave the patient, banishing the
Where no beast roars: charms to banish illness Read More »
For there is a savage race of men, a rustic one under the northern starWhich as yet has no knowledge of true religion:But it worships as deities bluish snakesAnd performs unspeakable rites by slaughtering a ram. —Rector at the university of Konigsberg, 1545 [Puhvel, 105] How Lithuania remained fully pagan up to 1400, and how
Crusades Against the Pagans II: Lithuania Read More »
Cujus baptisatio, ejus regio: “To he who baptizes, to him the rulership.” This was the policy of the Church to christianize pagan countries by conquest, recognizing the feudal overlordship of invaders. Most people aren’t aware that crusades were fought against pagans in Europe, as well as against Muslims in Palestine, Syria, and Egypt. Those invasions
Crusades Against the Pagans I Read More »
After the Inquisition stamped out the Cathars in southern France, the next target was the Vaudois (Waldenses), radical Bible Christians who denounced the wealth and corruption of the church hierarchy. In the early 1300s, they fled into the mountain communities of the Western Alps to escape persecution; and the Inquisition followed. The hounds of orthodoxy
Inquisitorial Crusades in the Western Alps Read More »
In this second excerpt from “Women, Power and Danger,” we go into some of the most detailed accounts about secular witch hunts in the late 1300s. They center on sexual politics: jilted women, love magic, the sorcery of male impotence, wife-battering —and abusive men using the charge of witchcraft to get rid of unwanted wives.
Burned as sorcières in Paris, 1390 Read More »
This episode looks at the sexual politics of western European witchcraft in the 1300s. It’s based on excepts from a chapter in The Sorcery Charge, the 11th volume in my series Secret History of the Witches. Very little of that has been published so far, but this is the first in a series of podcasts
Women, Power and Danger Read More »