Front cover of the double disc set Woman Shaman

After three years laboring in the tech trenches, my new video on medicine women around the world is finally here. It reveals a rich (and long disregarded) cultural record of medicine women, oracles, healers, trance-dancers, shapeshifters, drummers, and dreamers, with commentary and music.

I dug through libraries, journals, the internet and my own archives to put together rare images of women’s ceremonies in Saharan and Azerbaijani rock art; Indus tiger women, Spanish wolf women and Zimbabwean lion women; ecstatic dancers in Chinese bronzes, Mexican codices, Cretan seals; shamanic sculptures from Ecuador and Japan and the Arctic.

This unprecedented global view of female shamans uncovers overlooked depictions in rock art, sculpture, codices, bronzes, and ceramic paintings. The double-disc set includes chapters on sacred dance, staffs, rattles, fans and mirrors; flight; entheogens; serpents, animal spirits, and goddesses with shamanic aspects.

The video (nearly 3 hours total) is underscored with archival world music from Smithsonian Folkways, and

Cover for Disc II, Woman shaman dvd

music from Flute by Cynth; Yolanda Martinez; Layne Redmond; Luisah Teish; Tiokasin Ghosthorse; Suzanne Teng; Viviana Guzmán, Ensemble Pachamama, and more. Taste the trailer! To experience the beauty, power and wisdom of these spiritual legacies is medicine for the spirit. More info, including a complete list of chapters and musician credits, plus orders, here.

Taste the trailer, which gives a short overview.

In future, I’ll be adding the full transcript, open source, along with additional notes, pictures, and links.

From the Commentary that ends the video:

What I’ve tried to do here is to open up a view of the cultural treasures that have been obscured and denied, because they are female, Indigenous, non-Christian—not European.

Cultural gatekeepers screen out certain kinds of images and information, often unconsciously. Their omission of women has a tremendous impact. Even when significant evidence of female shamans exists in archaeology, the habitual focus on males acts as a filter that screens them from view. There is also a marked geographical and ethnic screening-out, the omission of entire regions outside the centers of political power, and exclusion of non-dominant peoples and cultures.

This is not a final analysis but a starting point, for a mosaic that can be arranged in countless ways. It’s a process of re-collecting, comparison, connecting. Many realities remain to be brushed in and fleshed out. We’re approaching a planetary web of history and heritages, of meaning and power. Much more remains to be known, and told, and shown.

But we need this knowledge; it is medicine for the spirit.

Max Dashú

This traditional Manchu longpoem was eventually written down, with some Confucian editorializing. It gives a view from within Manchu culture of the female shaman* Teteke who was considered the most powerful of all shamans, so potent that she could bring a boy back from the dead. This story is a classic example of soul-retrieval from the underworld, by a shaman who chants and drum, goes into an ecstasy so deep that she falls as if dead, makes her journey in the spirit, and must be revived by her assistant.

Back of Numinchen shaman’s robes

During the Ming dynasty, the only son of a rich official died. The distraught family mourned him with a lavish funeral. An old hunchback came and said, Are you just going to let your son go? Why not send for a skilled shaman to bring him back to life? The family replied that the shamans around there weren’t much good, and asked for a recommendation. “Rich sir, how could you not know? There is a shaman by the name of Teteke who lives on the banks of the Nisihai River not far from here. This shaman has great power; she can revive the dead. Why don’t you go ask her?” Then the old man left and ascended on a five-colored cloud (like a Taoist immortal or Buddhist arhat; the implication is that the family’s piety and good deeds were being rewarded).

So the father went in search of the great shaman. He asked a woman hanging clothes where the Nishan shaman lived. She smiled and told them that she lived on the opposite bank (the first of several times that the story shows this shaman as a trickster). The father came to find out that the laundress was in fact the shaman herself, and returned. She demurred at his request, saying that she was only a novice and that they should seek out other, more capable shamans. The tearful father begged her to take the case, and she finally relented.

The Nishan shaman washed her face, set out an incense table, and threw round Go pieces into the water (performing a divination). She sat on a stool in the middle of the room, grasped her hand drum and drumstick, and drumming, “she began to entreat.” Chanting hobage and deyanku, “she implored in a chant, and the spirit permeated her body.” She began to sing a prophecy that described all the relevant happenings leading up to the son’s death. (This prophetic description of the situation at hand recurs in innumerable shamanic tales around the world.) She asked for confirmation, and the father affirmed that everything she had said was true. The text underlines that she was entranced during the ceremony, after which: “The shaman grasped a stick of incense, raised it up, and revived. Then she put away the tambourine and drumstick.”

After more imploring from the official and another demurral from the shaman, she agreed to come to his house to do a ceremony. They loaded up her cabinets of spirit receptacles and brought her on a sedan chair. They set up the spirit placings, and the shaman ate. The other shamans of the village came, but their accompaniment was out of harmony with the chant. Nishan shaman said she would not be able to travel to the underworld that way. So they sent for her assistant, the 70-year-old Nari Fiyanngo who, she comments, “has been filial and obedient.”

When he arrived, Nishan shaman humorously asked him to harmonize beautifully with the tune. “If you do not harmonize with the chanting and murmuring, I will beat your buttocks with a wet drumstick made of cherry wood!” Nari Fiyanngo laughed and replied, “Powerful, strange Nishan shaman, I, your younger brother know this. I do not require a lot of instruction!” And he sat down, ate, and then began to drum. The shaman put on her garments, bells and skirts, “and put the nine-bird cap on her head.” Her body began to wave like a willow and shook with her chanting. She began beseeching her spirits:

Hoge yage Please come, escaping / Hoge yage from the stone pit
Hoge yage please descend quickly / Hoge yage…

The Nishan Shaman with drum, antlered headdress, and robes with leather streamers

And the shaman began to go into ecstasy. The incantation continued as she instructed her assistant to prepare a rooster, a striped dog, and many offerings of bean paste and paper bundles as offerings for the underworld gatekeepers.

Hoge yage I am going to pursue a soul
Hoge yage into a dark place
Hoge yage I will go to the land of the dead
Hoge yage I am going to raise
Hoge yage a fallen soul.

Nishan Shaman instructs her assistant to help her return by reviving her by throwing buckets of water around her face. “Having uttered this, she was thrown down and immediately her appearance began to change.” In other words, her body fell as if lifeless while she began her otherworld journey. The assistant came and laid her down, lined up the offerings next to her, and began to drum and chant in support of her spirit voyage.

Leading the rooster and dog and carrying the offerings, the shaman started off for the land of the dead. As she went, animals ran, birds flew, and snakes slithered. (These represent the creatures of the three worlds — upper, middle and lower — that the Manchu have in common with the Mongols and other North Asian peoples). “Traveling like a whirlwind she arrived at the bank of a river.” She looked around for a way to cross, and called to a lame boatman to take her across so that she could meet her dead relatives. She named her father and mother, then gave a long list of matrilineal relatives (a theme that is repeated further on). She paid him with bean paste and paper, and he ferried her over.

Then the shaman came to the Red river. This time there was no boat. She invoked the great eagle and the silver wagtail, the river snake and eight pythons. She threw her drum in the water, stood in it, and crossed the river “like a whirlwind,” again leaving behind bean paste and paper bundles for the river spirit. In the same manner she went through all the underworld gates and gave offerings to their guardians. (Drum as boat, as horse or other conveyance in the spirit realms is a common theme in North Asia; so is the shaman’s coat adorned with bells, mirrors and pendant amulets, and the cap with feathers or horns.)

“With skirt bells shaking, cap waving, and small bells ringing,
the Nishan shaman was making her voice clang like metal.”

Finally she confronted a lord of the underworld who had carried away the son. Getting no satisfaction from him, she went to the higher lord of the underworld, whose city walls were tightly locked. The shaman made a long invocation to dozens of animal powers to enter the city and bring out the child spirit. “When she finished, all the spirits rose up in flight and became like clouds and fog.”

Numinchen shaman’s robes with brass mirros and bell pendants

A great bird snatched up the boy and brought him to the shaman. Infuriated, the underworld king confronted his underling, who replied that it must have been the Nishan shaman who did this. He pursued her, calling out, “Shaman, elder sister, wait a moment.” He appealed to her, saying that it was not right to take the boy away without paying a fee, since he had made great efforts to bring him there and was in trouble now. They negotiated; the shaman offered him bean paste and paper bundles, but he protested that it was not enough. She added more, but still it was not enough; he asked for the rooster and dog, since the king of the dead has neither, and thus everyone would be satisfied. She agrees, but only on condition that he lengthen the child’s life. A long bargaining session ensues, with the shaman piled up more years of long life, and the spirit throwing in good health and progeny. The deal is done, and the shaman leaves.

But Teteke had one more obstacle to confront. The spirit of her long-dead husband confronted her beside the road, and demanded that she bring him back too. She answered that it was not possible, since his tendons and flesh were rotted, but said that she will make offerings at his grave and take care of his mother. He became enraged and started to reproach her with old marital disputes. She retorted that he had left her with nothing,  and yet she had cared for his mother all these years. Making no headway, at last she called  on a great crane to come and fling him into Fungtu City (Taoist world of the dead). Then she sang an anthem of female independence and nonconformity that affirms the old, pre-Chinese matrilineal traditions of the Manchu:

Deyanku deyanku Without a husband
Deyanku deyanku I shall live happily
Deyanku deyanku Without a man
Deyanku deyanku I shall live proudly
Deyanku deyanku Among mother’s relatives
Deyanku deyanku I shall live enjoyably
Deyanku deyanku Facing the years
Deyanku deyanku I shall live on
Deyanku deyanku Without children
Deyanku deyanku I shall live on
Deyanku deyanku Without a family
Deyanku deyanku I shall live lovingly
Deyanku deyanku Pursuing my own youth
Deyanku deyanku I shall live as a guest
Deyanku deyanku

After singing this, she led the boy quickly through the underworld. Now they came to a beautiful, majestic tower surrounded by five-colored clouds and guarded by two gods in gold armor. She asked them who lived there, and they replied, “Omosi-mama, who causes the leaves to unfurl and the roots to spread properly.” Omosi-mama is the Manchu goddess who gives life to all beings. She endows human beings with three souls: the true soul, which is the lifeforce that, once departed, causes death; the soul-that-precedes, which can travel during dreams or soul-loss, and which the goddess gives to another person after death; and the external soul, which returns to the god of the underworld after death (probably the physical body-soul).

Here Nishan shaman negotiates again with various guardians, giving them offerings. She encounters among the goddess’s attendants the deceased wife of her assistant and exchanges friendly greetings with her. Then she goes to pay her respects to Omosi-mama, an old woman with snow-white hair. She is described as ugly (much like the spinner-faeries in early modern European lore): “her eyes protruded, her mouth was large, her face long, her chin stuck out, and her teeth had become red-unpleasant to behold!”

Numinchen shaman’s collar with cowries, tassels, bells, and embroidered tigers, Manchuria

But however demonized by the storyteller, this Old Goddess remains the life-giver. Around her, women were bustling around making babies, passing around yarn, carrying children to be born, putting them into bags and taking their on their backs out the eastern door. Nishan shaman prostrated nine times before Omosi-mama. The old goddess did not recognize her at first, but then exclaimed, “How could I have forgotten? When you were to be born, I became annoyed with you because you absolutely refused to go, and I placed a shaman’s cap on your head, tied bells on your skirt, put a tambourine in your hand, and causing you to act as a shaman, I playfully brought you to life.”

Omosi-mama spoke of how she had ordained the future fame of the shaman, and how she fated destinies for all the souls who came from her realm. She had her helpers show Teteke around so that she could see the flourishing forests whose willow branches were used to send forth souls who have not eaten horses or cattle, and the sparse woods for those who have (in a bit of Buddhist editorializing against meat-eating). In another building all kinds of animals, birds and fish were being created. There was also a city where ghosts wept and lamented, and where souls were judged for a long list of crimes. The graphic descriptions of punishments also show strong Buddhist overtones, as does the bodhisattva preaching and predicting the future rebirths of the various souls, from palace-dwellers to animals and worms.

After witnessing all this, the Nishan shaman retraced her steps, paying more fees to the various spirits and guardians so that she could return. The ferryman hailed her triumph in bringing back the son from the land of the dead. She reached his father’s house, and her assistant poured the buckets of water on her as she had instructed. Then he burned incense to revive her, singing an incantation praising her achievement and calling on various animal spirits to help her awaken. The shaman got up and began to chant an account of what she had done, and reporting the blessings of Omosi-mama:

Kerani kerani When you serve Omosi-mama
Kerani kerani with respect and purity
Kerani kerani Omosi-mama’s flowers are good
Kerani kerani Therefore do only good.

Dagur shaman with her drum, 1931. From this time forward, repression of shamanic ceremonies increased.

Then the shaman was thrown backward again, and censed again by her assistant. “Then, because the shaman herself fanned the soul into the empty body of Sergudai Fiyanngo, he suddenly came to.” He asked for water and said he had been sleeping and dreaming for a long while. The family rejoiced as he sat up. The father offered wine to the Nishan shaman and her assistant. She praised Nari Fiyanggo, modestly quoting a saying that if a shaman was worth three parts, she will not come back to life unless helped by an assistant of seven parts. Everyone laughed. Then the family loaded up wagons full of payments for the shaman and her assistant.

But the final episode shows the social and political pressures on such a powerful woman at the time this old epic was written down. Her mother-in-law heard that Nishan had refused to bring back her dead husband, and even thrown him into Fungtu city after he threatened to boil her in oil. The mother was furious, and accused the shaman of killing her husband a second time. She went to the capital and filed an official complaint. Nishan shaman was arrested, and her testimony matched the mother’s. So the officials condemned her as a disloyal wife. They could have executed her for this but instead, because she had not lied, they destroyed her shaman’s regalia and drums.

The epic ends with an tacked-on admonition similar to those added to other classics of orature, such as the Icelandic Völuspá, when they were committed to writing by men determined to defuse them. The writer claims that the Manchu poem contains “evil teachings contrary to the great law. People in the future must not imitate them.”

Three different written versions of this story exist. The other two texts lack this sermonizing conclusion. One does not mention any destruction of the shaman’s power objects; the other describes it in a single final sentence which also appears to be tacked-on. The original poem was performed in a broad-based Manchu oral tradition that was dissolving under Chinese influence. At the same time, Manchu kinship patterns moved toward patriarchal Chinese patterns. However, the persistence of maternal kinship terms led Shirokogoroff and other scholars to posit an original Manchu matrilineage. The passages affirming maternal kin in the poem seem to bear out these older maternal loyalties. The very reason offered for the shaman’s downfall was her disloyalty to patriarchy, much more than Confucian or Buddhist officialdom’s disapproval of shamanic rites.

Manchu clans were structured around shamanic spirits—both ancestors and animal guardian spirits. [Nowak and Durrant, 96] The Manchu kept their clan lists secret, guarded in spirit receptacles. Nishan Shaman brings these sacred receptacles with her for the ceremony, implying that ancestral spirits were important for such rites. Her song places strong emphasis on the maternal relatives, and Margaret Nowak suggests that it is “a plea for the old order.” [15] Teteke’s self-affirming chant to her dead husband is “a strong and surprising denial of all that a woman in Manchu culture should live for: husband, husband’s clan, children, descendants.” Nowak contrasts the patrilineage-preserving task of restoring the son to the shaman’s repudiation of marriage and motherhood.

Toward the story’s end, having seen the punishments for sins in the underworld, the shaman ends a love affair with her assistant and breaks from “all strange dissolute matters.” Here Nowak takes the wording of “elder sister”/”younger brother” at face value, and frames the wrongfulness of the relationship as breaking clan taboos around sexual relationships. I disagree; this kind of kinship language is a common Indigenous framing that does not necessarily indicate direct blood relationship, or in many cases a much broader concept of kinship. Here it functions to signal the shaman’s seniority over her assistant. It is the “elder,” not “sister,” that is significant here; and what is disapproved is that the widow has any love affair with anyone.

But this entire theme of transgression is another late interpolation tacked on at the end. The real meaning of Nishan shaman, as Nowak comments, is that “she transcends social norms”and mediates between the worlds. [101-2, 107] Her cleaving to “mother’s relatives” stands in stark contrast to the Confucian norm that drives the story: the official has lost his only son, the second, and thus his patrilineal posterity.

Shaman in fringed robes riding on a deer: petroglyph in  Olyonka Cave, in the upper Amur river

Nowak remarks on another interesting pattern in the poem: that water figures in passages between realms. The shaman throws her divinatory Go pieces into water; she and others wash their faces before the shamanizing begins; she crosses rivers to the underworld; her return to ordinary consciousness is accomplished by pouring water; and the first thing the revived boy does is ask for water. (Passage across the waters is also important in Korean ceremonies of the mudang.)

Nowak also makes an key observation on the realm of Omosi-mama “Here nothing new is ever added; nothing old totally disappears. In cyclic fashion life keeps appearing and reappearing.” Omosi mama is “autonomous,” and oversees this endless process “significantly symbolized by the turning stone wheel.” [112-16]

The epic illuminates the way Manchu shamans did their ceremonies, the kind of incantations they sang, even mentions the cabinets with ancestral regalia referred to by other sources. It portrays Manchu beliefs about life, death, and a great Goddess who is both life-giver and fate-giver. It also repeats the theme of the greatest of all the shaman who is nevertheless modest and retiring, that we have already seen with Pa Sini Jobu.

© 2013 Max Dashu

* Shaman is a word of the Tungusic languages, including Evenk, to which Manchu belongs. Attempts to read it as sha-man, and pluralize it as sha-men, are misinformed. The second syllable -man has nothing to do with English “men,” and in fact the word is not sex-specific.

All quotes are taken from Margaret Nowak and Stephen Durrant, The Tale of the Nishan Shamaness: A Manchu Folk Epic. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977)

Manchuria was historically connected to Korea, and influenced as well by Mongolia on its western border. (They adopted a central Asian script from the Mongolians.) In 1931 the Japanese invaded, followed by the Chinese after World War II. The Manchu are best known for their own conquest of China, founding the Qing dynasty in the 17th century. You are far less likely to read about many Indigenous groups such as the Orochen, Numinchen, Dagur, and others who are culturally closer to their Siberian relatives, the Evenk and Even.

Ilmatar

In the 15^th Rune of the Kalevala (Finnish folk tradition) a valiant witch-mother brings her son back to life. She is not named, but other clues in the tradition identify her as Ilmatar.  She notices baleful omens –the hairbrush of her absent son Lemminkäinen’s is exuding blood . Knowing something is amiss, she rushes north to Pohyola, the northern land of the dead, where her son had traveled on a rash quest, against her advice.

She travels in a shamanic manner:

On her arm she throws her long-robes,
Fleetly flies upon her journey;
With her might she hastens northward,
Mountains tremble from her footsteps,
Valleys rise and heights are lowered,
Highlands soon become as lowlands,
All the hills and valleys leveled.

Louhi spins on a hillside, painted by the Finnish artist Gallen-Kallella

Ilmatar interrogates Louhi, mistress of the dead, whose daughter Lemminkäinen had come to court, to discover what became of her son. Three times she asks before she gets a straight answer, and she goes to find him. Again she travels in a shamanic manner:

Now the mother seeks her lost one,
For her son she weeps and trembles,
Like the wolf she bounds through fenlands,
Like the bear, through forest thickets,
Like the wild-boar, through the marshes,
Like the hare, along the sea-coast,
To the sea-point, like the hedgehog,
Like the wild-duck swims the waters…”

She questions the forest, the pathways, and the golden moon, but all answer that they don’t know, being preoccupied with their own concerns. Finally the sun answers her, saying that Lemminkäinen disappeared into the whirlpool of the river Tuoni.

The mother goes to a smith, asking him to forge a special rake she can use to plumb the waters. She takes it to the river Tuoni, calling on the sun for strength, and rakes the waters looking for her son’s body. She finds his clothing, then his parts of his body—dismembered by animals—and continues until she has found them all. “Then the mother, well reflecting, Spake these words in bitter weeping: ‘From these fragments, with my magic, I will bring to life my hero’.”

Now the poem evokes a very old healing incantation. It resonates with the chant of “bone to bone, flesh to flesh” that is found across northern Europe, including in a rare 10^th century pagan incantation in Old German—the Merseberg Charm. Ilmatar

Shapes her son from all the fragments
Shapes anew her Lemminkainen
Flesh to flesh with skill she places
Gives the bones their proper stations
Binds one member to the other
Joins the ends of severed vessels
Counts the threads of all the venules
Knits the parts in apposition…

Then the healer invokes Suonetar, goddess of the veins, to reunify the severed parts, using charms of spinning, sewing, and rowing to call up the desired transformation:

Skilful spinner of the vessels,
With thy slender, silver spindle,
With thy spinning-wheel of copper,
Set in frame of molten silver,
Come thou hither, thou art needed;
Bring the instruments for mending,
Firmly knit the veins together,
At the end join well the venules,
In the wounds that still are open,
In the members that are injured.

The shaman-mother performs a ceremony to bring her child back to life. Gallen-Kallela has painted small bronze medicine objects that she has thrust into the pebbled shore.

Then the healer invokes a maiden in a copper boat, floating in the ether, to come “from the belt of heaven”:

Row throughout these veins, O maiden,
Row through all these lifeless members,
Through the channels of the long-bones,
Row through every form of tissue.
Set the vessels in their places,
Lay the heart in right position,
Make the pulses beat together,
Join the smallest of the veinlets,
And unite with skill the sinews.
Take thou now a slender needle,
Silken thread within its eyelet,
Ply the silver needle gently,
Sew with care the wounds together.

For good measure, Ilmatar calls on the heavenly god Ukko to mend the wounds. She succeeds in restoring the integrity of her son’s body—but he is still lifeless. Now the medicine woman asks, “Where may I procure the balsam, Where the drops of magic honey,” with which to anoint and restore Lemminkäinen. She sends a bee to gather honey from sacred forests, but to no avail. She sends the bee again to fetch a stronger honey, across the seven oceans to a magic island (a staple of Russian healing charms, too). Still the inert body cannot speak. So she dispatches the bee to the seventh heaven, and tasting the honey, finds it full of healing virtue. She anoints her son’s body and this time succeeds in fully restoring him to life.

She asks Lemminkäinen how he came to this pass, and before long is reproaching his foolhardiness: “O thou son of little insight/ Senseless hero, fool-magician/ Thou didst boast betimes thy magic / To enchant the wise enchanters/ On the dismal shores of Lapland.” The Kalevala contains several of these female commentaries on the recklessness of male heroes, the harms of war, and attempts to dissuade men from battle.

Like Isis, Ilmatar gathers up the parts of her loved one, and like her, uses charms—words of power—to restore him. Also like Auset, she is a goddess—another avatar of the creation goddess Luonnetar—who is represented as a living woman. As in the tradition of Pa Sini Jobu, Lemminkäinen’s body is represented as hopelessly beyond repair: dead for days, rent by beasts. These accounts highlight the revivifying power of the female shaman; even in the direst of circumstances, she is able to resurrect the dead.

We will see this theme repeated in the Manchu epic Nishan Shaman, in the next installment.

The Kalevala translations used here are from John Martin Crawford, The Kalevala: The Epic Poem of Finland, 1888 Rune XV. Online: http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/kveng/kvrune15.htm

© 2013 Max Dashu

Isis the Healer, the Mistress of Magic, in whose mouth is the Breath of Life,
whose words destroy disease and awake the dead. [1]

Shamans are known for their power to heal. They may lay on hands, extract negative energies from a diseased person’s body or infuse it with life essences, chant power songs and curative charms, or make journeys in the spirit to find and recover the soul of traumatized people, thus restoring them to health. Much of the written commentary about “shamanism” focuses primarily on males, so much so that they give the impression that women’s participation is negligible. In stark contrast to this picture are the many world traditions that cast medicine women as the greatest healers, so powerful that they are capable even of bringing the dead back to life. We’ll look at this theme in Egypt, Mali, Greece, Finland, Manchuria, Korea, and Tibet.

Isis

One of the 10,000 names of Auset (Isis) is Weret Hekau, meaning the Great Enchantress, or “strong of magic.” One way that she heals is by words of power. This is how she restored the scorpion-bitten son of a lady in the Delta marshes. Auset is often depicted shaking the sistrum, the sacred rattle of Kemetic temple women, which itself has strong shamanic associations. (Some modern healers in Kenya, Namibia, and elsewhere in Africa, use gourd rattles in their curing ceremonies.) And Auset also possesses the shamanic power of shapeshifting into a falcon-form. She spreads out her protective wings, and beats them powerfully, to arouse vital spirit.

Auset in the form of a kite bird beats her wings over the body of Ausar, infusing life-force into the Stillheart.

To revive the slain and dismembered Ausar (Osiris), she changed into the form of a kite (a falcon-like bird with a flat, owl-like face) and hovered over his body. She “made a shade with her plumage / Created breath with her wings.” [2] Temple reliefs at Abydos and Denderah show Auset flying and beating her wings all around Ausar. Serpents of regeneration rise in the underworld beneath his bier. The deep-eyed Hekat, frog goddess of generation, birth and resurrection, watches over this transfiguration in the Denderah relief. [3]

Although Auset is indisputably a deity, she is also described as a First Woman, with an array of foundational acts to her credit. She is not only a model of queenship, but a powerful sorceress who is “mighty of tongue.” Her shapeshifting and power to restore the dead to life recur in numerous stories about powerful shamans. A very close parallel exists near the bend of the Niger River in Mali, where the great tungutu Pa Sini Jobu shapeshifts into bird form and uses her wings to impart life to a dead body.

Pa Sini Jobu

The Soroko people of Mali remembered Pa Sini Jobu as the greatest of all tungutu, their name for a shaman. She lived a very long time ago. “Pa Sini Jobu is regarded as the ancestress of a Soroko-Bosso tribe which dwells below Jenne ; she attained to extreme old age, and was a mistress of the most marvellous powers. Now, when she arrived at the time when women generally get husbands, she sent all her suitors away.  She had no desire towards marriage.” [4] Pa Sini Jobu’s abundant vital power is signaled by her very long hair and her preternaturally long life.

One day a man killed the sacred ram of the king, whose fortunes were bound up in the animal. The king sent out a desperate call to all the tungutu to come and revive him. “Then all sorts and conditions of men from the uttermost ends of the earth flocked together ; all who were Tungutu… some who could stay under water for three days. There were others who could stay buried in the earth for three days. There were people who could change themselves into fire. Each one tried his powers of wizardry. But the sheep was still dead; he gradually rotted and could not be made living and whole again.”

Then Pa Sini Jobu herself invited a tungutu named Yena to take up the task. He said he could do it if she was able to recover the ram’s liver and other body parts that the hyenas had devoured. Through her second sight, Pa Sini Jobu described the place where the jackals were holed up. She summoned them, and they came to her running. She commanded the jackals to retch up the organs. But the male tungutu was unable to do anything with these dead and chewed body parts. He said, “Thou hast brought back the parts that were missing by thy skill and use of powers, so that I cannot marvel at thee enough and I recognize thy superiority to me without more ado, but I am unable to restore the sheep to life.”

The King sent once more to Pa Sini Jobu, asking her if she knew of any way to revive the now rotting and stinking carcass of his ram. She agreed to help: “I will see to this matter myself. The sheep shall live.”  She set about her task through a classic shamanic ceremony of ecstatic dance:

The tungutu Pa Sini Jobu dances with her staff as the Kie play

Thereupon the King caused all the Kie (musicians) to come together to beat their calabashes. The Kie sat around the square. Pa Sini Jobu took her seat on the ground in the midst of them. Because she was a Tungutu, she had such long hair that it reached far, far down her back, and she could sit on her own hair instead of a stool or a mat. This hair was the gift of her powers.

The Kie began to beat time. The Kie played music. They played and sang faster and faster still. Pa Sini Jobu began to get into a frenzy. Her power was awakened. The Kie played and sang and beat time with ever-increasing quickness. The power of Pa Sini Jobu grew stronger. Pa Sini Jobu screamed ! The Kie beat time.

Pa Sini Jobu rose up. She floated aloft. She floated up to the clouds. She changed her arms while up in the clouds into wings, like the great birds have, and then sank slowly down over the ram. Pa Sini Jobu rested over the ram for the space of six days. During this time she covered the ram with her outstretched wings. On the seventh day she got up. The ram was alive!

She had revivified the animal with her wings, as Isis did for Osiris.

After this exploit, Pa Sini Jobu left her country and traveled. She came to a country ruled by a woman, Queen Na Manj. The queen joyfully welcomed her with a stately procession at the gates of her city. All the townspeople came to greet Pa Sini Jobu, to bring her presents and do honour to her. Na Manj greeted the tungutu warmly, saying: “I have heard of thy great gifts. Do me the pleasure to stay awhile with me so that I may show how greatly I honour thee.” Pa Sini Jobu said: “Thou art very gracious. For a while I will stay with thee.” And she entered the city.

After a few days, Na Manj asked the Tungutu for her advice. She replied, “All that has happened is known unto me. Ask me, therefore, and I will answer thee gladly.” Na Manj said that she needed her help in fighting off a neighboring king whose warriors were disturbing her country. Pa Sini Jobu agreed.

The king lived on an island in the Niger, and the river djinns tried to dissuade her, saying: “Thou art a strange Tungutu, great and mighty — in other places — but here thy powers avail not. Let it be, Pa Sini Jobu.” But Pa Sini Jobu only said, “We’ll see about that.” She went ahead with her ceremony, and the djinn swallowed up the queen and her entire army, leaving only the Tungutu. “Then the djinn took her under the water and instructed her about ‘all the illnesses and all misfortunes and all life on the earth,’ and how each could be remedied. These were teachings about ceremonially seating spirits in sacred pots filled with sacred and charged substances.

This keeping of spirit pots was widespread in West Africa, and the Yoruba and others disseminated it across the African Diaspora. [5] The spirits taking the tungutu “under the water” also compares to the San signification of “underwater” as the Spirit Realm of Ancestors, a timeless dimension where animals spoke to humans and where shamans accessed their powers. [6]

Another tradition of Mali briefly touches on this theme of a woman healer who has power even over death. The Nine Sorceresses of Mande appear in the epic Sunjatta Keita. The Ninth Sorceress is Kulutugubaga, who is able to restore broken arms, heal flesh wounds, and bring the dead back to life. [7] The poet says that all but one of these women fell dead at the coming of Sunjatta — and yet mentions them later, as if they were timeless and deathless.

Medea

Medea of Colchis also was said to have revived a dead ram, but by putting it into a cauldron with potent herbs and incantations. All accounts emphasize Medea’s powers of herbs and enchantment, and repeatedly describe her as restoring life and youth. In Nostoi, she rejuvenated Jason’s father Aeson in a cauldron. Aeschylus has Medea revive the Nurses of Dionysos and their husbands with an herbal potion.

Medea revives an old, dead ram in her cauldron of regeneration. Greek vase painting.

But Euripides casts Medea’s restorative cauldron in a negative light. He makes her ram-rejuvenation into a ploy to convince the daughters of king Peleas to dismember and boil him, in order to make him immortal. Euripides also cast Medea as the murderer of her own children, against older Greek sources who named the Corinthians. [8] Thus Medea was demoted from a goddess, granddaughter of Helios, and the high priestess of Colchis (in the Caucasus), to a witch demonized for fighting back against powerful men.

Notes

1. Margaret A. Murray, Ancient Egyptian Legends. (Mineola NY: Courier Dover, 2000) 47. For the words of power of Isis, see also Nora E. Scott, “The Metternich Stela,” Metropolitan Museum of Art, online: http://www.metmuseum.org/pubs/bulletins/1/pdf/3258024.pdf.bannered.pdf

2. Lichtheim, Miriam, Ancient Egyptian Literature, Volume II: The New Kingdom. (University of California Press, Ltd., Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, 1976) 83. Her hovering over Ausar/Osiris is made clearer in this translation: “She overshadowed him with her feathers, she made wind with her wings, and she uttered cries…  She raised up the prostrate form of him whose heart was still…”  E.A. Wallis Budge, The Book of the Dead: the Papyrus of Ani in the British Museum, (New York: Dover, 1967 [1895]) liii

3.  Max Dashu, Woman Shaman: the Ancients (dvd). Oakland, California: Suppressed Histories Archives, 2013  (forthcoming)

4. Frobenius, Leo. The voice of Africa : being an account of the travels of the German Inner African Exploration Expedition in the years 1910-1912. London: Hutchinson & Co, 1913  Online: http://www.archive.org/stream/voiceofafricabei02frobuoft/voiceofafricabei02frobuoft_djvu.txt. The entire account and all quotes are drawn from this source.

5. Aina Olomo, The Core of Fire: A Path to Spiritual Activism. (Brooklyn NY: Athelia Henrietta Press, 2002) 53

6. J.D. Lewis-Williams, “The Thin Red Line: Southern San Notions and Rock Paintings of Supernatural Potency.” The South African Archaeological Bulletin, Vol. 36 No. 153 (Jun 1981) 11

7. Frobenius, online. See also Dashu, “The Nine Sorceresses of Mande,” 2012, online:  http://www.suppressedhistories.net/articles/9sorceress.html ]

8. Sarah Iles Johnston, Medea: Essays on Medea in Myth, Literature, Philosophy, and Art (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997) 34. Pausanias (III, 27) also mentions these positive traditions of Medea. See also Miriam Robbins Dexter, “Colchian Medea and her circumpontic sisters.” ReVision. San Francisco, June 22, 2002
Next: Ilmatar in the Kalevala

Illustration with Psalm 108, Harley Psalter, 603 F56

I wasn’t sure what biblical passage this illustrated, though i could see the word Psalmus, and now can make out the Roman numerals for 108. But the picture clearly reflected medieval Christian themes from Europe, and what has intrigued me since the early 1980s is its evocation of the clergy’s campaign against folk goddesses. This repression of female deities in popular religion is attested by numerous episcopal decrees and priestly confessional manuals, including the Corrector Burchardi, the Canon Episcopi, and earlier writings by Regino of Prum and Raterius of Verona.

What’s going on in this picture? In the lower panel, naked Pagans pray to a Goddess who is dancing on a stone. Beside her is a Tree of Life, which has a snake, garland, streaming libation vessel, and cornucopia. It could be argued that the Snake and Tree are inspired by Genesis, except that they are also common themes in Germanic religion, for example in the Matronae stones of the Rhineland (2nd-3rd century CE), and indeed around the world. So they predate the christianization of western Europe. The cornucopia originates with the Roman goddesses, particularly Terra Ops, Ceres, and Fortuna, whose bounty it symbolizes. (It  spread far and wide during the empire, not only to Britain, Gaul and Germany, but also to Egypt, added to the attributes of Isis, and into southwest Asia, also in association with goddesses.) Garlands were also widely used in animist ceremonies throughout Europe. As late as 1431, Jeanne d’Arc was accused of hanging garlands on the Fairy Tree for le beau Mai, the old pagan holyday of May Day. The inquisitors and theologians still saw this as a damnable Pagan act.

Caped witch riding tiger, Schleswig church mural, circa 1330

The goddess is bare-breasted, but her cape or mantle hangs from the tree. Some medieval images of witches (for example, a stone panel at Lyons cathedral, and a German church mural in Schleswig, near Denmark) show witches as naked women clad only in capes. They are riding on animals, or on a broomstick. It is this very theme of shamanic theme of women’s flight on the backs of animals that the clergy targeted for repression. They reinterpreted the Women Who Go by Night with the Goddess, in diabolist terms. The Goddess was “really” the devil. Advanced early on by church fathers, this doctrine persisted in Frankish texts about the worship of “Diana” (the interpretatio romana often obscured the names of local ethnic goddesses) or of “the witch Holda” (the German goddess Holle).

Caped witch riding goat (and whirling a hare), relief from door of Lyons Cathedral. Directly opposite, another panel shows a lord in a castle tower ordering armed men with mastiffs to go after the witch.

The central theme in this Harley Psalter picture is supercession. The christian god-the-son is depicted above the goddess, as if replacing her. Not only is he placed above her spatially, but like her, he rests on a stone, and he too has the cornucopia streaming blessings. These are not Christian themes! but they were too deeply entrenched in the culture to be done away with. So they were appropriated as a step in the process of  supplanting Goddess reverence. Between the rival deities, a barebreasted woman tries to approach Jesus,  but an angel drags her away by her hair. I think this is significant since she is one of very few females in the Harley Psalter illustrations. You’ll note that all the other figures in the picture, even the Pagan worshippers and the angels, are male.

At lower left, soldiers are looting from a chest and kicking a man who is begging for mercy. Two of the Goddess worshippers are looking nervously over their shoulders at the soldiers, worried that they will be next. To me, this picture represents state attacks on pagans. Confiscation of their goods was one of the primary punishments, along with flogging and enslavement, for those who adhered to older ethnic religions  in the early middle ages. (It was primarily secular rulers who carried out these penalties, although priestly influence is clear, and bishops had powers both as secular and ecclesiastical lords.) The image comes from the portion of the Harley Psalter which was directly copied from the Utrecht Psalter. That would date the  scene to the 9th century, when such punishments were still widely inflicted on Pagans.

The picture appears as an illustration to Psalm 108. At first, reading the psalm, with its standard exaltation of the Hebrew god, you might wonder: What does this picture have to do with that? The answer appears toward the end of the psalm, where the biblical god claims various territories in the land of Israel. Singled out for humiliation are Pagan lands in modern Jordan, traditional enemies of the Hebrews: “Moab is my washbasin,
 on Edom I toss my sandal… Who will bring me to the fortified city?
  Who will lead me to Edom?” In the mind of the monks who illuminated this manuscript, the common thread seems to be the conquest and suppression of Pagans.

The biblical psalm doesn’t say a word about goddesses, but the Harley Psalter (or its Carolingian model, the Utrecht) understands this supercession as being specifically the displacement of Goddess veneration by the Christian god. In another picture, he is exalted over Mother Earth who is shown submissively gazing up at him, surrounded by her sons (no daughters). She still has the cornucopia, from which watery essence is flowing toward a tree — and the bare-breasted Mother is wearing a cape or mantle.

Mother Earth in the Harley Psalter, 603 F50

Eorthan Modor was just impossible for them to get rid of. She pops up even in the margins of Christian scriptures, on the ivory covers of prayer books, in murals of monasteries. In fact, she will outlive all human constructs — and that goes double for the concoctions of patriarchal theologians.

Copyright 2012 Max Dashu

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Makeda, queen of Sheba, wearing a classically African crown (other known examples are in bronze at Ile-Ife bronze and Sao ceramic sculpture, Lake Chad)

Hearing of Solomon’s wisdom from a traveling merchant, Makeda journeys to Jerusalem. After a colloquy with the king, Makeda declares, “From this moment I will not worship the sun, but will worship the Creator of the sun, the God of Israel.” The Sabeans were famed in both Hebrew and Arabic texts for venerating the sun, moon and stars. The time frame of Solomon’s reign is historically consistent with a powerful state in Saba’. So the Ethiopian queen converts to Judaism.

The next twist, in this text, is that before Makeda departs, Solomon tricks her into sleeping with him. She had asked him to swear that he will not force her into sex. He agrees, on condition that she wouldn’t take anything from his house by force. He feeds her a lot of spicy food, and in the night when she reaches for water in her thirst, he appears and says she has broken her promise, having taken water, the most valuable of all things. (What happened to the famous tradition of hospitality here? and how is this not coercion?) So, says the Kebra Nagast, Makeda assents to sex with Solomon. As she departs, he gives her a ring for their future son. Then Solomon dreams that the sun leaves Israel.

Queen of Saba' and her entourage bring precious gifts to the palace of Solomon (unidentified Ethiopian manuscript, probably the Kebra Nagast)

Makeda bears a son, Menelik. When he comes of age, he goes to Jerusalem for his father’s blessing, and is recognized by the ring. Solomon wants Menelik succeed him as king, but he insists on returning to Ethiopia. So Solomon puts together a noble company to go back with him. Angry at being forced to leave their home and families, these young men secretly take the Ark out of the Temple and away to Africa. Menelik is not implicated in this deceit, but he finds out along the way. He is divinely transported back to Ethiopia through the skies, thwarting Solomon’s attempt to recover the Ark. (Here the ancient theme of Solomon’s straying into idol worship under the influence of his many foreign wives takes a new turn; it now becomes his attempt to console himself for the loss of the Ark.) Menelik’s return is celebrated with great pomp at Axum, and Makeda gives up her throne to him. (Natch!) Ethiopia becomes “the second Zion.”

"The Holy Makeda" as a saint and prophetess

The Kebra Nagast includes a magnificent passage where Makeda speaks of her search for Wisdom:

I have drunk of her, but have not tottered; I have tottered through her, but have not fallen; I have fallen because of her but have not been destroyed. Through her I have dived down into the great sea and have seized in the place of her depths a pearl whereby I am rich. I went down like the great iron anchor whereby men anchor ships for the night on the high seas, and I received a lamp which lighteth me, and I came up by the ropes of the boat of understanding. I went to sleep in the depths of the sea, and not being overwhelmed with the water I dreamed a dream. And it seemed to me that there was a star in my womb, and I marvelled thereat, and I laid hold upon it and made it strong in the splendour of the sun; I laid hold upon it, and I will never let it go. I went in through the doors of the treasury of wisdom and I drew for myself the waters of understanding. I went into the blaze of the flame of the sun, and it lighted me with the splendour thereof, and I made of it a shield for myself, and I saved myself by confidence therein, and not myself only but all those who travel in the footprints of wisdom, and not myself only but all the men of my country, the kingdom of Ethiopia, and not those only but those who travel in their ways, the nations that are round about. [http://www.sacred-texts.com/afr/kn/kn097.htm ]

And then the Kebra Nagast returns to its central preoccupation, which is not Makeda herself, nor the wisdom of ancient Ethiopia of which she is the sole representative to be attested in written history. Instead, Makeda lays out the Solomonic line claim for the Ethiopian royal dynasty, a patrilineage going back to the Hebrew king. The book does credit her with building her capital Debra Makeda on a mountaintop. Other Ethiopian books give more details about Makeda’s parentage. The Ethiopian Book of Aksum describes her foundation of a new capital city at Azeba. Himyarite histories from Yemen also allude to this queen.

Queen of Sheba riding with sword and spear. Ethiopian MS.

At least one Ethiopian manuscript shows Makeda in connection with a labyrinth. One line in the Kebra Nagast, where Makeda speaks of “a star in my womb,” was undoubtedly intended as a reference to her future son and dynastic founder Menelik. But it can be read another way, as her womb in its own light: “And it seemed to me that there was a star in my womb, and I marvelled thereat, and I laid hold upon it and made it strong in the splendour of the sun…”

The Biblical Account

Sheba, Solomon, and son: modern

The oldest account of the Queen of Sheba comes from the Bible, in the book of Kings. It does not give her a name. “When the queen of Sheba heard about the fame of Solomon and his relation to the name of the Lord, she came to test him with hard questions. Arriving at Jerusalem with a very great caravan–with camels carrying spices, tons of gold, and precious stones–she came to Solomon and talked with him about all that she had on her mind.” [10:1-2] He answered every question she asked, and the biblical scribe describes her  as being “overwhelmed” by his wisdom, and by the wealth and splendor of his palace and kingdom.

The Queen praised Solomon and heaped him with precious gifts: “And she gave the king 120 talents of gold, large quantities of spices, and precious stones. Never again were so many spices brought in as those the queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon.” [10:10] The account says nothing about sex or a son, but goes on to describe tribute paid to Solomon, and the glories of Ophir in Arabia — or Ethiopia. In this account, the Queen is a peer, not a subordinated or inferior figure.

The Quranic Account

In Arabia, the Queen of Sheba is named Bilqis. Among the ruins of Mar’ib is a Sabaean temple platform with eight pillars, sometimes called the Temple of Awwan. Yemenite tradition calls it Mahram Bilqis, her  “sanctuary.” The Qur’an also contains an account about the Queen of Sheba. Again, it does not name her. Even though it treats her being Pagan as despicable, she is described as great in glory. The hoopoe bird tells Suleiman (Solomon) about Saba’:

Indeed, I found a woman ruling them, and she has been given of all things, and she has a great throne. I found her and her people prostrating to the sun instead of Allah, and Satan has made their deeds pleasing to them and averted them from [his] way, so they are not guided, so they do not prostrate to Allah… [Sura 27:24-25]

This passage reflects a memory of ancient Sabean queendoms with a strong dimension of spiritual leadership.

Suleiman sends a threatening message to Bilqis, “Be not haughty with me but come to me in submission.” Bilqis talks to her counselors, who say that they will go by her decision. She declares, “Indeed kings – when they enter a city, they ruin it and render the honor of its people humbled.” [27:35] This critique of warlordism is quite an extraordinary political statement for any ancient writing! and even more striking in being attributed to a woman ruler. The queen decides to send a gift, choosing the avenue of diplomacy, and to await Suleiman’s reply. He tells the emissaries that what Allah has given him is better than what they have, insults them for “rejoic[ing] in your gift,” and sends them back with a threat: “Return to them, for we will surely come to them with soldiers that they will be powerless to encounter, and we will surely expel them therefrom in humiliation, and they will be debased.” This is the declaration of a power-mad bully, not a man suffused in spiritual wisdom.

Before she set out to meet Suleiman, the Queen of Sheba locked and secured her throne. But the king sent a spirit to bring the throne to him, and disguised it, and tested her to see if she would recognize it. She did. Then Suleiman boasted of the primacy of his knowledge over hers. “And we were given knowledge before her, and we have been Muslims [meaning in submission to Allah, since this is all supposed to have happened fifteen centuries before Muhammad's time]. And that which she was worshipping other than Allah had averted her. Indeed, she was from a disbelieving people.” [27:42-43]

The Quranic account continues with a story symbolizing the ignorance of the pagan Queen: “She was told, ‘Enter the palace.’ But when she saw it, she thought it was a body of water and uncovered her shins [to wade through]. He said, “Indeed, it is a palace [whose floor is] made smooth with glass.” She said, “My Lord, indeed I have wronged myself, and I submit with Solomon to Allah, Lord of the worlds.” [Sura 27, from http://quran.com/27 (Much more detail here and here.) This passage shows the queen as exposing her body, considered as shameful for a woman, out of a misapprehension of the wonders in Suleiman's kingdom. But like the sibyls of Christian tradition, she also symbolizes a prestigious figure of the old pagan order, now made to yield to new supercessionist religions and their exclusively masculine prophets.

Sura 27 portrays a powerful Pagan woman in a shaming and subordinating light, but nevertheless comes the closest that the Islamic scripture gets to a female prophet in her own right. In the Quranic account, she is shown coming not to seek wisdom but to avert a disastrous invasion of her country. In historical reality, as archaeologists have been discovering, Solomonic Israel was utterly incapable of mounting such an invasion, least of all against far-away Yemen or Ethiopia. Little trace remains of the fabled palaces described by the Hebrew scribes; many archaeologists now think they are likely to have been humbler affairs, as there was never a Hebrew empire like that in the inflated biblical account.

Some medieval Arabic historians have Bilqis arriving at the throne not by inheritance, but by marrying a tyrannical king in order to unseat him. She kills him on her wedding night, addresses the people, and takes the throne by acclamation. Her role is heroic, although the writers seem unable to imagine that such a queen could have ascended to the throne in her own right. However, "the earliest inscriptions of the rulers of Dʿmt in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea mention queens of very high status, possibly equal to their kings."  [Wikipedia cite from this source, which bears further investigation: Rodolfo Fattovich, "The 'Pre-Aksumite' State in Northern Ethiopia and Eritrea Reconsidered" in Paul Lunde and Alexandra Porter ed., Trade and Travel in the Red Sea Region, in D. Kennet & St J. Simpson ed., Society for Arabian Studies Monographs No. 2. BAR International Series 1269. Archaeopress, Oxford: 2004, p. 73]

Because the Queen of Sheba appears in the Qur’an, Muslims spread her story around the world. It became heavily mythologized along the way. Some writers claimed that the Queen was reluctant to uncover her feet because they were deformed, which is why Solomon tricked her into revealing them. But most versions say that Bilqis had the feet of a donkey. This motif belongs to a larger body of faery stories about magical women with the feet of deer (usually), or other hoofed animals, including camels. The glaisteagan of Scotland, huldres of Denmark, and ‘Aisha Qandisha and her company in Morocco, are just a few of them. In the Muslim context, as in the Christian, these stories impute a demonic nature to the spirit-woman (except where an old folk nature spirit motif remains strong).

Such stories were already in circulation in early medieval Islam, with famous theologians like Hasan Al Basri characterizing Bilqis “in a particularly pejorative way as an ‘iljatu meaning ‘she-ass’ or ‘miscreant,’ an expression frequently used to insult non-believers.” (He also insulted her appearance and declared women unfit to rule.) These ideas were common coin, with some going so far as to assert that Bilqis was a jinn, or the “mother of jinni.” ["Bilqis, Queen of Sheba. A democratic queen." Author unknown. www.asma-lamrabet.com/Articles/en/Bilqis%20english.pdf ] Even today, rumors circulate that the Queen of Sheba was really a jinn. (Google Bilqis, you’ll see.)

Christian Representations of Sheba

European authors and artists extend these subordinating narratives that show Solomon as not only the political superior of the Queen of Sheba, but also her spiritual senior and initiator. But now they add a racial distortion, whitening her; whether she came from Ethiopia or Yemen, the Queen of Sheba would have been a dark-skinned woman. This whitening can also be seen in Persian manuscripts.

Female pagan "inferior" before male superior: and de-Africanized at that

I haven’t done an exhaustive study of these representations, but a net search shows that they fall into two primary categories. The first shows the Queen of Sheba approaching Solomon from below, sometimes kneeling before him, or else ascending toward the king who is seated on a dais many steps above her.

The queen on her knees, by Gerard de Jode

Another theme appears in some of the art, however, one of parity and partnership, the true wisdom legacy of the Queen of Sheba. One of these is shown in Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise:

Sheba and Solomon, Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise

We’re now at a moment where women of African descent are re-envisioning who the Queen of Sheba may have really been, beyond the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic scriptural traditions, within her original cultural context. What was the reality of ancient Ethiopian women? the oldest testimony I know of is the ancient megalithic statues of southern Ethiopia, in Sidamo and Soddo, all in the form of ancestral Mothers.

Invoking woman with beaded veil, southern Ethiopia

At one time a stone with two hollows for offerings lay before her, but has since been removed. Nevertheless, the people kept up the custom of garlanding her and placing offerings. “Even in the nineteenth century it was ‘lucky to place a little offering of fruit or flowers, or to spill a few drops of wine at the foot of the statue—‘c’etait une Pierre sante…” (It was a holy stone.) [Kendrick, 17] These offerings continue today, as many pictures online demonstrate.

At one time the statue stood near the Church porch, facing East but, probably because too much veneration was paid to her by parishioners, a zealous churchwarden ordered her destruction.  It was broken in two but such was the outcry that the statue was repaired and placed in its current position.  A metal spike now holds her together but the crack is clearly visible. [http://www.stmartinschurchguernsey.org/historyofthechurch.htm ]

This deliberate breakage (visible in the photo above) was committed in 1860, around the time of the assaults on Notre Dame de la Vie. This period saw another wave of concerted destruction of ancient goddesses of, in Kendrick’s words, “long traditional sanctity.” The site quoted above provides another crucial piece of information: “The church stands on the site of a Neolithic tomb shrine below which two springs emerge.” So this too is a fountain sanctuary.

Megalithic Goddess at Castel, Guernsey

Another statue-menhir on Guernsey stands on a hill near the center of the island, at Castel. In the 6th century a church was built on her site, and she was buried in the area below its altar. So we see both supercesssion (the new religion hiding and placing her beneath) and incorporation (the would-be converts of that time knew that she was still there). In the late 1800s she was rediscovered and again placed outside. The Castel statue-menhir is in the classic form of the megalithic era: a lightly tapered stone pillar with breasts and  necklace. She also wears a headband. Many French statue-menhirs have faces, but this one does not.

La Grand-mère probably looked similar, originally. But her head and shoulders were recarved by Celtic hands, probably during the La Tène period. They added a face, cut out her neck and sharply defined her shoulders, and engraved a necklace or collar. None of these correspond to any style of the megalithic period. (Thevenot compares her to another breasted statue menhir enclosed in a wall at Lichessol, near Saint-Agrève in the Ardèche region, whose head seems to emerge from a round hood as well. But, no photos are available of her, so far.)

Another important, and comparable, Celtic statue is the Goddess of Caerwent. She was venerated by

Goddess of the Silures, Caerwent, south Wale

the Silures, a Celtic tribe of south Wales. Before the Roman conquest, they placed her in a deep ritual deposit pit, eleven feet underground, on the grounds of a sanctuary that later became the Roman temple at Venta Silurum. (The Roman name for Caerwent was Venta Silurum, “marketplace of the Silures.”)

The sandstone statue presents a solemn seated woman holding a branch in one hand and a sphere or fruit in the other. Her flat mask-like face has its lips parted in a slight smile. Her somewhat triangular head is longer than the minimal legs. (These proportions are common in older Celtic sculpture in Britain and Gaul, for example a female statue from Bourges.) The Goddess is naked except for a hood or cape set back on her head. Her hands meet where her legs part, and at certain angles those spindly legs look like a vulva-portal, with a deep hollow between them. I’ve always thought of her as a proto-sheila. The worn surface of the sandstone shows that she’s ancient, how old we have no way of knowing for sure.

Now let’s compare the faces of the three goddesses or, in the case of la Grand-mère, ancestors. All represent an ancient Celtic style of stone carving that predates the Roman conquest. All have flat faces with large oval eyes and long noses and wear some kind of hood. Originally I was thinking that only Notre Dame de la Vie was associated with a spring sanctuary, but now find that so was La Grand-mère du Chimquière: “The church stands on the site of a Neolithic tomb shrine below which two springs emerge.” [from the offical website of St. Martin's Church: http://www.stmartinschurchguernsey.org/historyofthechurch.htm] And re-reading Anne Ross’s magisterial study Pagan Celtic Britain, I find that she thinks the Caerwent Goddess in Wales may have been connected to a healing shrine of the waters. [Ross, 247, 269] Be that as it may!

Left: Grand-Mère, Guernsey; Right: Notre-Dame, Savoy

These photos show the close-set oval eyes with strong upper ridge, the long nose, and nearly identical mouths on the Guernsey re-carve of the statue menhir and on the Goddess of Life fountain goddess in Savoy. The hoods or headdress are also comparable. No frontal angle photo is available as of this writing for Notre Dame de la Vie, who bears many scars from mutilations inflicted in the mid-19th century.

Left: Notre Dame de la Vie; Right: Caerwent Goddess

Here the angle of the photos is more comparable. The face of the Caerwent goddess is more triangular but both have the same flatness, close-set oval eyes, and headdress. What I’m trying to do here is to show artistic patterns in ancient Celtic sculpture from an early cultural layer that predates the Roman empire and has gotten very little attention. Here’s another view of the Grand-mère du Chimquière:

Grand-mère du Chimquière, garlanded

© 2012 Max Dashu

Sources:

Emile Thevenot, Divinités et Sanctuaires de la Gaulle, Paris: Fayard, 1968, pp 191-198.

Kendrick, Thomas Downing, The Archaeology of the Channel Islands, Volume 1. Taylor & Francis, 1928

Ross, Anne, Pagan Celtic Britain: Studies in Iconography and Tradition. Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 1996 (1967)

St. Martin’s Church website: http://www.stmartinschurchguernsey.org/historyofthechurch.htm

Another amazing aspect of the ancient sanctuary of Notre Dame de la Vie was as a compassionate place of refuge from harmful religious dogma. It became a sanctuaire de répit, or “respite sanctuary.”

French women immersing a baby in a healing well

Respite from what? –from the church doctrine of eternal damnation of those who died without being baptized. Notre Dame de la Vie was said to miraculously revive stillborn babies, or newborns who died before a priest could baptize them. People were bringing their dead infants for her intervention from at least the 1600s, as we know from records of hearings in 1664 and 1669. [197] Notre Dame de la Vie thus joined to a larger body — mostly local forms of the Virgin Mary — of female divinities who embodied compassion, mercy, and grace.

Church doctrine forbade the baptism of dead children, and held that they would go to hell. Toward the end of the middle ages, the idea of limbo was invented to soften the harshness of a dogma that caused so much suffering. Mothers already grieving their infant’s death could not stand the thought that it was doomed to be forever damned. Limbo meant the “edge” of hell, and the idea was that the babies would remain there, outside the torments of the damned, along with other good souls unsaved by baptism. But limbo has never enjoyed the status of church teaching. In any case, never being baptized  meant the baby would never enjoy the beatitude of heaven, but would spend eternity as an outsider. Limbo or no limbo, the clergy would not allow stillborns to be baptized or buried in consecrated ground.

Attempting to revive dead baby for baptism

The common people refused to accept these cruel ideas. They sought divine intervention from another source, from Notre Dame de la Vie, or from the Blessed Virgin at other chapels that developed a reputation as respite sanctuaries. Parents would carry the dead child in all haste to the nearest shrine, lay it at the altar of the Virgin, light candles and ardently pray for its revival while a priest performed a rite.

All this depended on the participation of priests, because they had a total monopoly on baptism. Sometimes the vigil for revival would go on for days.  Any sign of movement, breath, change of color, or even passing gas or fluid—all of which are common biological occurrences after death—was taken as a miraculous resusciation or “recovery.” The priest would quickly baptize the child, and in virtually all cases, the child would die “again.” It would either be buried in a special cemetery at the respite sanctuary, or be taken home for burial in the village.

Baptizing a "revived" infant at Notre-Dame des Fleurs de Villambray, Oise

The “respite” baptisms gave peace of mind to parents, and allowed children to be buried in consecrated ground. At St-Martin de Belleville, the record from 1664 says that an uncle brought a dead infant to Notre Dame de la Vie. The curé testified that the baby was seen to open its mouth and move its tongue around, and that its closed fist opened, extending its fingers. This allowed the vicar to baptize the baby, which lived several more hours. Then it was buried in a plot used for foreigners. [197-8] This indicates that the clergy involved still regarded the case as somewhat iffy. The priest performing the baptism would pronounce words to the effect of, “If you are alive, I baptise you.” The hierarchy were much more dubious about such cases, and put pressure from above to quash this practice.

The earliest evidence of respite baptisms comes from the late 13^th century. Church condemnations of these grassroots miracles appear to begin in 1452 with the synod of Langres. Others followed, with denunciations by bishops at Sens (1524), Lyon (1577), Besançon (1592 et 1656), and Toul (1658). But the hierarchy was obliged to repeat its prohibitions over and over as the respite ceremonies spread. They were fighting a cultural movement fueled by love and compassion, that defied their directives.

People were flocking to respite sanctuaries from Belgium all the way down through eastern France and over into western Germany, Switzerland, Austria and north Italy. Most of these shrines of compassion were chapels of the Virgin Mary. Hundreds of cases are on record just for the 1500s and 1600s, just for the most popular chapels for these baptisms, such as Faverney, Avioth, and others in eastern France. By 1729 pope Benedict XIV was forced to rule on the issue, in response to a huge upsurge of respite ceremonies in Bavaria and Schwabia. He condemned the rites and backed up the Inquisition’s position that the “signs of life,” unless they were cries or moans, were not enough to allow baptism, no matter how many witnesses.

Emile Thevenot points to two Burgundian respite sanctuaries that “sprang up in places where there were traces of a defiant custom around a spring cult presided over by a mother goddess.” [197-8]

Frau Holle like Perchta was a protector of babies, including the unbaptized

And that is exactly what had happened at St-Martin de Belleville. As we’ve seen, this sanctuary openly retained the original Goddess who predates even the Roman conquest and was centered around a healing fountain. The refuge its Lady offered to dead newborns connects to widespread folk traditions of pagan goddesses who were seen as welcoming and protecting unbaptized babies rejected by the Church. People linked these “pagan babies” — in Sicily they were actually called paganeddu, in Germany heiden, “heathens” — to the old goddesses, like Zlata Baba in Slovenia, or to faery women, like the Danish huldra. [Dashu, 2007. Read more about folk traditions of the "pagan babies"]

In the German Orla-gau, Perchta keeps little ones who died before baptism. She is ferried across the river with them, recalling Greek and Scandinavian myths of crossing the underworld river of death. Perchta is called queen of the heimchen (“crickets,” an affectionate term for the dead babies). One story says that she once lived in the fertile Saale valley. She fructified the land by plowing it underground, while her heimchen watered the fields. “At last the people fell out with her, and she determined to quit the country.”

Modern view of Frau Perchta as Goddess of the Winter Night

So Perchta departed. Late on the eve of her holyday, the ferryman at Altar was confronted by a tall, stately lady surrounded by crying children. She demanded to be ferried to the other side of the river, and got into the barge. The heimchen loaded in a plough and tools, lamenting that they had to leave that lovely land. Perchta made the ferryman cross again to get the rest of the children. The whole time she was mending the plough. She gave the leftover chips as her fare. The ferryman only took three; by morning they had turned to gold. [Grimm, 932, 276]

Of course, these pagan loyalties, however stubbornly persistent, gave way to the Catholicized Goddess over time. But popular Marian devotion looked very different than the theologian’s concept of the Virign as intercessor. She acted much more like an alternative savior who repudiated the notion that infants who died in the womb or soon after birth were doomed, or at least outcasts. She embodied the compassion of the ancient Goddess whose successor she was.

© 2012 Max Dashu

Sources:

Emile Thevenot, Divinités et Sanctuaires de la Gaulle, Paris: Fayard, 1968

Brigitte Rochelandet, “Sanctuaires à répit, limbes de l’éternité,” Extract from Pays Comtois, No. 63, Online: http://jeanmichel.guyon.free.fr/monsite/histoire/metiers/sanctuairerepit.htm

“Sanctuaire à répit.” http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctuaire_%C3%A0_r%C3%A9pit

Max Dashu, “The “Pagan Days.” Matrifocus Quarterly, Vol 6 – 2, 2007  http://www.matrifocus.com/IMB07/scholar.htm

Jacob Grimm, Teutonic Mythology,  Vols I-IV, 4th edition translated by James S. Stallybrass. London: George Bell & Sons, 1883

More sources on Sanctuaires à répit:

Jacques Gélis, L’arbre et le fruit. La naissance dans l’Occident moderne, XVIe-XIXe siècle, Paris, Fayard, 1984.

Jacques Gélis, Les enfants des limbes. Mort-nés et parents dans l’Europe chrétienne, Paris, Audibert, 2006.

Fiorella Mattioli Carcano. Santuari à répit. Il rito del ritorno alla vita o ” doppia morte ” nei santuari alpini, Priuli & Verlucca -Ivrea 2009

Next: Notre Dame de la Vie III: Archaic Celtic Goddess