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

An ancient stone goddess watched over a sacred spring at Saint-Martin de Belleville, on the French side of the Alps. Her veneration in Savoy goes back before the beginning of the written record. An influx of Celtic culture swept into this high valley of Doron de Belleville around the 400 bce, and it is full of early sites of the La Tène era.

Notre Dame de la Vie, before 1960

The Goddess statue was probably carved in the early centuries bce. She stands just over five feet tall, with a body that widens into a skirt at the base. Her eyes are large and close-set, with a “grave and meditative expression.” She holds a large cylindrical vessel over whose surface spill flat carved drops of water:

“These globules appear in strong relief, under each of her hands, three on one side, four on the other, and form a liquid flowing out of the reservoir, first obliquely, then vertically.” The sculpture symbolically conveys “the birth of a spring, over which the feminine deity presides.” [Thevenot, 194] The fountain poured into into a stone cist. Thousands of people came there to drink its waters, perform ablutions, and ask for healing and other blessings.

Over a long process of Christianization—one that was never completed—successive chapels were built at the spring sanctuary of this Goddess. In countless places around Europe, pagan sanctuaries were christianized by building churches on the spot, and bringing in a statue of Mary or another saint. But what happened here was exceptional. For nearly two millennia, an ancient Celtic goddess remained in her spring sanctuary, disguised under the Christian nomenclature of the Virgin Mary. She was given the thinly-christianized title Notre-Dame-de-la-Vie, “Our Lady of Life.”

The clergy moved the Goddess from her original position, probably among the rocks of the spring, and had her built into the foundation wall of the most recent of the chapels. Otherwise unchanged, the Goddess of Life continued to receive the devotions of Savoyards at her mountain spring. As Emile Thevenot says, “the church did not even ‘substitute’ the Marian cult for the mother-goddess, personification of the spring of Life. It was enough to discreetly juxtapose it, and the old statue continued to receive its due of tribute, even as the rite of ablutions was kept going.”

Veneration of the Goddess and her waters continued into modern times, when she was esteemed as a source of tremendous healing power. Records show that extremely rich offerings were being made at this shrine in the 1600s and 1700s (and doubtless many more humble ones). In the same time period, dozens of  murals were painted in the chapel depicting stories of miraculous cures by the Lady.

The spring water flowed into a stone tank, and in recent times was rechanneled through a pipe

The Goddess originally had full breasts. In the mid-1800s, a pious fanatic hacked them off—without doubt considering them too pagan, indecent, too full of naked female power. He left tool marks in the stone. Someone, probably the same person, also tried to drive a cross into her head, splitting the stone through the entire face of the icon. (This topping with crosses was often done to megalithic monuments and other known recipients of pagan reverence.) Someone drilled a hole into her neck, and passed a pipe through it to divert some of the spring water  through the opening. This did not work out well, because the photo above shows the ugly raw pipe bypassing the Goddess altogether. These damaging interventions made it necessary to patch the statue, with white cement visible in the picture above.

An eyewitness account from the 1930s describes one of the annual pilgrimages of to Notre-Dame-de-la-Vie. Savoyards came from villages near and far, often on foot, with their offerings and prayers. (One online account said that in the past surrounding villages pretty much emptied out to attend her annual festival in late summer. The chapel was furnished with special trunks for offerings of rye and wheat; people put cheeses and other dairy products near, and even on,  the altar. Live animals were tied up for later sale, with proceeds going to the chapel.

The witness saw women approaching a rough statue embedded in the wall that supported the chapel courtyard. The fountain poured into an old rectangular stone receptacle, the “tank of ablutions.” The women had brought clean linen to dip into the water and sponged their faces, eyes and breasts with it. Everyone regarded the water as “saving and fertilizing.”

The Goddess of Life after removal from the spring shrine

The Goddess of Life had survived christianization, medieval bishops, the Catholic Reformation, and even those 19th century mutilations — but not modernity. In 1960, church authorities removed the ancient statue from her place at the spring. They put her in a covered gallery, leaning against the west wall of the chapel. (Thevenot comments that this was “a real relegation.”) The Goddess no longer stood in the open air, and there was no longer room for people to gather around her. The receptacles for depositing offerings remained in place, but the pilgrimages fell off after the goddess was enclosed by the church. [191]

This move by the priests succeeded, at long last,  in driving popular veneration in a more conventional, doctrinal direction. It refocused attention to the chapel, adorned with standardized Catholic art.  It made Notre Dame de la Vie disappear from view, literally. The only pictures I’ve ever been able to find of her are in Thevenot’s book, written over 40 years ago.

Thevenot tells of another water goddess in the mountains of Savoy who survived under a Christianized veneer. The chapel of Notre Dame des Vernettes was built around another “miraculous and healing” spring to which people made pilgrimages. “We are assured that, even in our times, the ablutions, condemned by the hierarchy, continue to be practiced in an open or clandestine manner.” [194] So the struggle to suppress ancient cultural practices continues.

Lots of other pagan survivals exist in these mountains. La Pierre Chevettay (the “Owl Stone”) in the little hamlet of Villarenger hamlet is a huge block balanced on a small square. On its surface are six or seven cupules connected by grooved lines. People said this sacred stone preserved the village from floods and fires. It underwent the same de-paganizing indignities as Notre Dame de la Vie which, however, may have saved it from being destroyed entirely: “Numerous crosses were engraved on it to christianize this magic stone.” [192]

Going further afield, Madonnas in other parts of France were often located near springs and wells. The Black Virgins of Rocamadour, Vassivieres, Cusset, Clermont and Chartres all stood near wells or

Black Madonna of Vassivières, Auvergne

fountains. In Clermont, the tiny, very old black statue of Notre Dame du Port stood at a subterranean altar next to a sacred well. The Lady of la Font Sainte (“holy spring”) was carried in procession to and from her summer and winter shrines.

A legend from around 1400 describes how similar processions with the image of Notre Dame de Vassivières originated in a struggle between the peasants and clergy. The highland altar of the Black Madonna of Vassivières stands near an ancient spring venerated since Celtic times. Ecclesiastics removed her statue down the mountain to a church in the town of Besse. “Here the priests could keep an eye on her, rather than leave her in the hands of the laity in her outdoor shrine in the cow herding hamlet.” ["Vassivière"] But she soon vanished from the church. An old woman bringing her cow to the town market told people that the Lady had reappeared over the sacred fountain in the heights.

A tug-of-war followed: the priests kept taking the goddess to the church in Besse but the peasants always managed to smuggle her back to Vassivières. Finally the clergy struck a compromise with the rural people that allowed her to stay the summer in her highland sanctuary, but to spend winters at the Besse church, in captivity like Persephone. [from Frances Marion Gostling, Auvergne and Its People, 1935] The church set a new condition for allowing the Lady to return to her mountain: a priest had to be present to supervise what people did. A report from 1321 refers to the practice of many “profane and inappropriate” things of Vassivières. “They say strange things were practiced here. We don’t know what.” ["Vassivière"]

© 2012 Max Dashu

Sources:

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

“Vassivière: Our Lady of Vassivière.” http://www.interfaithmary.com/pages/Vassiviere.htm

Next: Notre Dame de la Vie, the compassionate savior of infants

Moonhorn, lake Zurich

Some are pure crescents, like the above, others are stands with two or three legs.
This example shows how like an animal’s horns some of them appear.

Others are more clearly crescents, or even appear shiplike:

Moonhorns, Mörigen, 900 bce

They are often marked with symbols, line patterns, indentations and swirls.

Moonhorn with three legs, findspot unknown

They’ve been compared to “Cretan horns of consecration.” Some have speculated that they were firedogs (hearth supports for logs) but this utilitarian explanation does not account for the careful decoration, nor for the appearance of the clay crescents in other contexts. Here is a clearly related pot-lid from France in the same time period:

Aube-et-Marne, 1250-850 bce

Some of these crescents are marked with chevrons and other symbols, as in the examples above, and below:

Mondhörner, Switzerland

The Moonhorn at left, above, especially calls our attention because of its resemblance to another group of ancient crescents, this time in northwestern Europe. The lunulae of Ireland and Britain are incised with very similar patterns: fine zigzag borders, vertically marked-off fields filled with chevrons, and empty spaces. The one below is from an unidentified site in Ireland.

Lunula, bronze age Ireland

Here’s another, below, from Blessington, County Wicklow; the overexposure of the photo makes it hard to see, but it too has the chevron patterns along the “horns.” This Blessington lunula is dated to 2200 bce. (I’ve seen dates closer to 1500 for others.) They may have been produced over many centuries. Were they ritual regalia or aristocratic bling?

Blessington, Co. Wicklow, Eire

Some of them were found by peat-diggers in the Irish bogs.

Llanllyfni, Wales, Britain

Here’s a beautiful example from Wales. The patterns etched into the gold are so fine they are hard to see, but still the zigs and chevrons.

But what do these earlier lunulae, clearly meant to be worn, have to do with the clay Moonhorns of the continent? I don’t know, except for the evocation of the lunar crescent. But the symbolism has an even broader reach, going much further back in time on the western edge of Europe, in Portugal. Here it dates to the late neolithic, around or after 3200 bce.

Statue-menhir with lunula, Almendres Stone Circle

The stone circles of south-central Portugal include statue-menhirs (monoliths carved with human attributes) that are wearing lunulae on their chests. At right, one of the rough reliefs on a statue-menhir at Almendres. Two other stone circles in the same region, at Mogos and Vale Maria dos Meios, have similar statues with crescent breastplates. (The necklaces at the latter site are more deeply U-shaped than crescent, and curl up at the ends.) Some of the menhirs are breasted, others not, and often they show belts or other faint ornaments. Some of the monoliths hold crooks, or rather, because no arms are shown, these are placed against their chests. Schist crooks of the type shown have been found in Portuguese dolmens, some of them very finely incised with triangles, chevrons, and zigzags. They also appear on pottery pieces.

But it gets better. Actual examples exist of the lunulae worn by the ancient neolithic people who raised these stone circles. Excavations in the area around Lisbon have turned up limestone lunulas incised with lines similar to those on the (much younger) Moonhorns in Switzerland.

Limestone lunulae, Lisbon peninsula

Here are drawings (no photos located yet) of the neolithic limestone lunulae of the Lisbon peninsular. This symbolism persists, or rather recurs.

In a much later period — long after the neolithic, long after the bronze age lunulae of Ireland and Britain (Scotland has at least one too), and even after the clay Moonhorns of Switzerland, metal lunulas show up in Portugal.

Here are several from the southern Alentejo region (no date given, possibly in the Celt-Iberian, or more appropriately, the Lusitanian era):

Torque-like lunulae from Baleizao, Alentejo, Portugal

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And here’s another (probably later) lunula in silver, with various symbols, animals, knotwork, and possibly breasts or eyes, and serpent torc finials. What is the story behind this lunula? This whole post is about questions, not conclusions. But the recurrence of this theme is fascinating.

Silver lunula torc from Chao de Lamas, Portugal

Max Dashu

When I heard about the protest (as it was first told to me) / silent meditation that Thorn had called for outside of Z’s ritual, I realized that I would have to be present to hold space. I was acutely conscious of the larger context of the sit-in: the ongoing campaign to ban all Dianic lineages whose rites were for women born and raised, and the vitriolic outpouring that happened to Yeshe Rabbit last year. I was concerned that things could go that way, again, and affect a lot of women—for starters, anyone who wanted to attend Z’s ritual, and ultimately a much larger community of Dianics.

The issue paramount in my mind, and forgotten amidst all the righteous rhetoric, was the sovereignty of women, our right to set our own boundaries and to decide who are our peers and allies. (Yes, of course   trans women too.) Women, that most divided of all groups, make different choices based on who we trust as allies. How can forcing boundaries of self-determination earn that trust? especially when breaking down women’s boundaries is and remains a historically enforced imperative. I was aware that honorably taking responsibility would make me a target; that many people would make unwarranted assumptions, in the gossip and aspersions that run wild out on the wire. But I would have to leave them to it.

The rights to self-determination and to resist coercion do not necessarily entail challenging someone else’s gender identification or the existence of multiple genders. (I am not going to address this very big subject, on which opinions differ even among queer theorists, here.) My own posts have moved about who is and can be an ally. My core criterion is caring deeply about women’s liberation. I will not stand for silencing or coercion of women, and I’ve seen a lot of that in these recent backlash decades. I am looking to broaden my alliances, but will not back down on these principles.

Passing by the restaurant at the Con, I saw Z and Glenn talking, and immediately knew why. So I horned in on the conversation. I told Z I would come to hold sacred space at the door to the ritual. I know that Thorn intended to create sacred space herself and was doing what she thought was right, by her lights. I respect her even when I don’t agree with her. We have common mystic ground. We haven’t had a chance to dialog about these issues, though I came to hear what she had to say at the Gender and Paganism conference last fall.

I had a sinking feeling just thinking about the radioactive zone of pre-judgment, assumptions, polarization, and frenzied name-calling that surrounds this issue. However, that couldn’t be helped. There were things that had to be faced, and said, and lived out. I heard that the controversy would be discussed at the Pagans and the Media panel, and attended it. Some very good things were said, others that I disagreed with or that were, frankly, irrelevant. There was a certain amount of circling around the issue, with one exception: Z was called out by name, in a way I have never seen done to anyone in all the years I have been coming to Pantheacon, in her absence. I could not remember or imagine a male elder coming close to being verbally targeted in this way, for anything. It’s not that an elder can never be wrong, but this breached the pan-tradition protocol of respecting face for elders. It would be far, far surpassed by what transpired later online.

Several years ago, when I heard an archdruid at the Con ridicule “matriarchalist fantasies” as having no historical basis whatsoever, even as he asserted the total non-sexism of his own tradition, no one said a peep. Some people laughed knowingly at the gibe. Sexist generalizations, no prob! I knew, too, how unlikely it was that anyone would challenge the fellow sitting two rows in front of me during the Media panel. He sported a leather jacket emblazoned with a woman tightly gagged and bound, and running along the border of chains, the inscription, “Bound to Please.” Though I find this symbolism of male dominance deeply offensive, I didn’t say anything to him. Nor was I going to bother people who went to bondage-themed parties or rituals glorifying “sacred prostitution,” or which banned women on their bloods, or honored gods linked to male dominance mythologies.

Pantheacon is a libertarian space, and so has places and scenes where I am a complete outsider (something I have a lot of practice at). At times I feel completely alienated, like the year our booth was next to the corset shop, which was mobbed by women forking over hundreds each for this constrictive garment. (The vendor moaned with relief when she took hers off at day’s end). Many people have this experience of alienation, for a whole variety of reasons, and not just at this conference. However, I feel that the people who run the Con (and thank you to the many volunteers) do a marvelous job holding the space for everyone, the whole disparate lot of us. Herding cats! The theme Unity in Diversity was an attempt to address the dissension and polarization.

During the question period of the panel, I spoke about what it means to deride female sovereignty in the context of the intense anti-feminist backlash we are living through now. Margot Adler had mentioned the shrinkage of feminist spaces, bookstores and Women’s Studies. I talked about how that had affected my work, as women’s history got thrown overboard in the stampede to Gender Studies. It’s not because women’s oppression has been solved! I said that this debate has got to get unstuck off the “essentialism” refrain. As long as the issue keeps getting cast only as biological determinism (and I see people in both camps insisting on this discourse in different ways) other real concerns are not being addressed, even effectively denied or misrepresented. We need to have a deeper conversation about the complexities, the differences and the commonalities, between cis, trans, and those who don’t fit this new gender binary. In the current climate such a dialogue, multilogue actually, seems impossible. May the time come soon when we can do so without it turning into a destructive beatdown.

It is hurtful to call people “transies,” but what about “bigot”? This word has been hurled in a steady stream since the 80s, and is in full cry in the current dispute. It is itself used in bigoted ways, especially against lesbian feminists, radical feminists and butch lesbians, who are routinely denounced. Doctrinal certainty cuts more than one way. Last year, Rabbit came to my booth in distress. She didn’t say what had actually gone down, and neither did Amethyst, who came by equally upset for opposite reasons. Only later did I hear about the confrontation at Rabbit’s ritual. I read through the ugliness on the blogs, and was horrified to see what they said about her, the curtain of contempt that descended. Someone even felt entitled to make death threats. This year, people on both sides say they feel that they are unwelcome at the Con, unsafe attending a ritual, or unsafe because they are not allowed to attend that same ritual. Ironically, people who sat in outside the Dianic ritual chose to do so rather than to attend a trans-inclusive Dianic event in the very same timeslot, a much better-attended event.

Coercion and derision is not the way to change someone’s mind, and projecting mistaken assumptions from what one person says or does to entire groups is guaranteed to harden lines. I was well aware that sticking my neck out on this issue would, for many, conflate me completely with what others said or did, regardless of what where I actually stood. It would not matter a whit to them that my events are open to everybody. A lot of things would not matter in the heat of this destructive, vicious argument.

Last weekend, it looked increasingly likely to me that historic lineages of Dianics could get drummed out of Pantheacon, and all in the name of love and justice. (I felt reassured on this score after hearing from the founding elder, Glenn Turner.) Many of the Amazon priestesses were not at the Con this year, such as Ruth Barrett, Ma ShiAat Oloya, Leilani Birely, Falcon River, Anniitra Ravenmoon, Letecia Layson, Wendy Griffin. I can’t speak for them or where they might stand. My concern was to uphold their right to space at the Pantheacon.

So Nava and I decided to weard the door at Z’s ritual: to be there in sacred space, while chanting the Names of Goddess. Perhaps our devotion would touch that of Thorn and others who were meditating. We knew that Glenn would be there too, and were thankful for her holding the space. I knew that Thorn didn’t intend harm with her silent meditation, even if she had made her intention to pressure clear. Still the polarization was daunting. The coercive aspects of the ongoing Urania / Pluto square were on my mind.

We came early to settle in next to the door, me on the floor. I wrapped my Raven mantle around my hips in case it got chilly. Then I began to chant the Sri Lalita Sahasranama. This is one of the Thousand Names of Devi litanies from India, invoking the divine qualities that are within all of us. Nava was meditating and praying too, and Glenn sat beside her, and a while later, Bobbie sat down. Thalassa was there, though I didn’t see her at the time. Elders of various vintages were in the house.

My eyes were closed most of the time, so I missed seeing much of what was going on. I could tell that people were lining up to enter the ritual to my right—door still closed—and facing them were the silent protesters. (Although Thorn didn’t use this word, many did and still do.) I found out afterward that many of these women felt like they were walking a gauntlet as they came down the hall. This feeling only  intensified when some of the protesters took pictures of them. (There is no other word for that but intimidation.) I caught a whiff of disagreement between staff and Bobbie, when they told her not to film what was going on. Some attendees later said no one had stopped protesters from taking pictures of them.

I kept chanting the invocations: Compassionate Devi. Blessed Wisdom. Supreme Power. Origin.  Thousand Petaled Lotus Pouring Forth a Stream of Divine Essence, Foreknower in Perfection, Remover of Obstacles, Dispeller of Fear, Dweller in the Heart. Mother of Ten Million Universes, Shining Embodiment. Wish-fulfilling Vine, Remover of Bondage from the Bound. Immeasurable. Bliss of Truth. Mother. Liberator. Peacefulness.

At one point I felt more people arriving. Rabbit had brought people from her ritual to hold space between the two groups. They sang We All Come From the Goddess, and we sang it along with them. They alternated it with another beautiful chant of Thorn’s. Women inside were also singing We All Come From the Goddess. Z came out and spoke. She apologized for hurting anyone, and she upheld her right to perform her rites. I couldn’t see any response, except when Rabbit admonished Z for forthrightly addressing “your side.” She told her, “There are no sides,” which sounded cosmic and everything, but unconvincing under the circumstances. We weren’t in Rumi’s field yet, where there is no judgment, no rebuke. People came to “take a stand” and there was no mistaking the opposition.

I can’t remember what Z said, but here is her written statement: “I know you are here for me. I come out to say something to all of you. I am sorry if I have hurt anyone’s feelings.  I apologize. I stand for your right of sacred space for the trans community. I stand with my life’s work for the women to have the right to their sacred space equally. I have supported PantheaCon goals for unity and diversity for the 18 years this conference has existed and an opportunity to have everyone to express themselves in a safe place. Peace.” This apology, as difficult as it was for a proud Hungarian priestess to make, has barely been acknowledged in the blogosphere rants, or it has been rejected, for the most part, because she did not back down on the parameters of her rituals.

The silent meditators continued on. Z went back in and the ritual began. I resumed chanting the Sahasranama of Devi. After some time, the silent people wrapped up their meditation and dispersed. I continued chanting for a while longer. Then Glenn, Nava, Bobbie and I talked, a good, long conversation. I felt relieved, for the moment, but less so when the ritual participants came out and talked about having to pass through hostile terrain. I later found out that some even thought that we by the door were there to protest too, adding to their feeling of isolation and outcast. On the other side of the hall, I heard later, certain protesters had said angry words to Rabbit and Devin, assuming that they were on the “wrong” side.

It was truly the cusp of a stellium in Pisces, with a new moon (and therefore sun, plus Mercury and Chiron) joining Neptune, fresh after its entry into its own oceanic sign. Confusion, illusion, and smoking mirrors; also the fragrance of devotion and love, the potential for inspirational vision, and perhaps, in time, the dissolution of acrimony into ho’oponopono. We are all being ground on the anvil of Urania squaring Kali, with many more passes to go. The larger perspective on this tempest will make itself felt in time.

We came home exhausted, after loading and packing up the booth, then unloading after the drive. We had sold little more than half of what we did last year, and were wrung out. Then I saw the firestorm of denunciations on the blogosphere, once again. The comments section on The Wild Hunt was inhabited by torrents of rage and outrage. Bigot, bigot, and bigot to the tenth power. Accusations of man-hating were repeated, in various iterations. Curses uttered, even. My womb was hurting, no lie.

One blogger purported to give a dispassionate account of what went down at the protest. Sitting by the door, he wrote, were “three cis-gender crones,” one of whom was rocking and “muttering.” Ah, the muttering of crones, that phrase really takes me back. I recognize the meme of an old woman singing Goddess invocations, interpreted as muttering some incomprehensible spell, questionable and perhaps diabolic. So now I was seen as a muttering cis-gender crone. But I had plenty of new identities to choose from, if I cared to, in the online vilification stream.

Bigots, manhaters, transphobes, and bigots again, were being cast into outer darkness. The rightful recipients of love and understanding and solidarity and sympathy were clearly marked out. The Others who must be expelled were radical feminists, and if Pantheacon continued to harbor them, it must be boycotted. One man outright called Z “evil.” Women piled on too. Stones were flying in the cyber village square, in the name of tolerance and acceptance. Every time I look again I am heartsick.

A few brave souls waded in to defend against the pan-defamation. (Thank you.) On another blog, a woman begged for forgiveness for really, really needing to attend that ritual, because of the sexual violence and abuse she had suffered: “Instead of taking part in a ritual which I needed I’m sitting in a hotel room writing this letter. I didn’t attend the Sacred Body ritual hosted by Z Budapest because I couldn’t face the protest. A protest sparked by pain. I know pain. I was sexually abused in my marriage for 17 years.  Then I was abused for 5 more years by different men. I hated my womanhood and my body.  Rituals like the one offered by Zsuzsanna have helped me begin to heal and I need them. I’m not a bigot.  I don’t hate you. Please, sisters, hear my words.” Some people relented a bit, but others were sternly implacable. One man tried to invalidate her concerns by a comparison to racism. (Dood! it’s not for you to pass judgment on any woman, least of all one who has suffered beyond your understanding.) http://pncminnesota.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/letter-to-the-editor-ciswomen-only-ritual-at-pantheacon/

Some people have chosen to forget, if they ever recognized it, the long history of bludgeoning women into submission, of public humiliation and denunciation, ritually repeated. This is not the dialog that needs to happen; it is no dialog at all. Thankfully, I am seeing a breeze of reasonableness come through on some blogs, like that of Gus diZerega, who I just met at the Con. He spoke about the importance of harmony among participants for a ritual to work, and said of Z’s ritual:

“She and those who attended did not make a statement about how the larger community should conduct their rituals let alone setting their ritual up as a proper guide for all, or for all women. Quite explicitly otherwise. In the context of Pantheacon this was a ritual for people wanting to attend a ritual with particular parameters. Those desires were legitimate and indeed are present in almost every Pagan society. (I say “almost” because perhaps somewhere there is an exception, but I doubt it.)” Read more: http://blog.beliefnet.com/apagansblog/2012/02/pantheacon-2012-politics-and-the-controversy-over-womens-rituals.html#ixzz1nTnSL37I

Something strange: the comments link on Rabbit’s blog post about this controversy comes up blank, and so does Devin Hunter’s entire blog post. I have heard that other posts describe the experience of women who attended the ritual, but am just now finding links to them. Some I can’t post because they are restricted to the person’s Facebook friends. This one comes from the HecateDemeter blog (Undermining the Patriarchy Every Chance I Get. And I Get a Lot of Chances.) It’s called, I Contain Multitudes:

“What I want is a Paganism full of diversity. I want to honor and respect those who draw a circle that includes me and those who draw a circle that says, ‘We need to be inside here for a time. That means that we need you to stand outside. Can you please stand here and guard our door?’ We need rituals that are drawn as tightly as needed to guard the sanctity of those who have been othered and excluded. Of those who need to other and exclude themselves in order to preserve their own sacred and diverse identities. Of those who simply want to draw a circle and stand inside it without being attacked.” http://hecatedemeter.wordpress.com/2012/02/19/i-contain-multitudes/

Rock painting near Escalante, Utah

A circle dance painted in ochre, near Escalante, Utah. Not making any gender claims for this one, but it had to be included! You can see vandals have gouged, and possibly shot, at the ancient art. Such attacks are unfortunately all too common in the U.S., stemming from a long-standing hostility to Indigenous people and their culture.

Dance of the Mandan Women, 1833

“Dance of the Mandan Women,” 1833, shows a winter ceremony of the female White Buffalo Cow Society. This women’s ritual group danced to call the buffalo in wintertime, wearing white buffalo skin crowns adorned with magpie and owl feathers and eagle down. In summer, it was the Goose Society who danced for the crops, in women’s planting and harvesting rites. More info here. Mandan women were great farmers of the upper Missouri River Valley. Their matrilineal families lived in large round earthen lodges. Their agronomy and ceremonies influenced those of the Hidatsa (and Crow offshoots who moved to Montana) and the Siksika peoples (Blackfeet, Kainai, Piegan) who borrowed their motokiks or matoki ceremony from the Mandan women. A photo of the Mandan women’s Buffalo headdress is here.

Matoki ceremony, Northern Plains

Another picture of the Matoki ceremony, probably Siksika/ Blackfeet Confederacy, who lived further west from the Mandan in Alberta and Montana.

Basket Dance

I don’t have digital scans of the Southwestern shows, so apologies for the poor quality of this unidentified net grab. “Basket Dance” is a Euro name for this widespread Pueblo women’s dance, but that’s the best i can do without knowing where this painting comes from. (Once i figure it out, I’ll post an update.) The Hopi call it Lalakonti or Lakon, and do it sometime around harvest.

Basket Dance, Pablita Velarde

Here’s a Basket Dance painted by the late, great artist Pablita Velarde of Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico. She had far-reaching influence in the Indian arts world, and her daughter, Helen Hardin, became a famous artist in her own right, and so did her grand-daughter, Margarete Bagshaw.

Sacred Corn Dance of the Kiowa

Kiowa women consecrate their seed corn (represented by the ear of corn at left, next to the fire). Southern Plains. Painting by Cherokee artist Jimslee Burton, 20th century.

Ghost Dance, Wounded Knee, 1890

More than a celebration, the Circle Dance gives spiritual and healing power, and many communities have reached for it in times of trauma. So it was with the Ghost Dance that spread from western North America across the Plains following the European conquest. The decimated People reached for vision, inspiration, and connection with the Ancestors in the midst of trauma, occupation, and the starvation that resulted from the settler state confining them to reservations.

This is an artist’s rendition of Lakota Ghost Dancers right before the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890. European settlers were afraid of its power, and the US government sent armies to suppress it. They used Gatling guns, the first machine guns, to mow down the Indian warriors. Whites’ hostility to what they called “the Messiah Craze” led directly to the death of Sitting Bull. Because so many men died fighting for their people and country, the number of women dancing in these circles was large.

Similar spiritual liberation movements arose in many parts of North and South America during the European conquests, The Guaraní gathered for ceremonies calling on Ñandecy, “Our Mother,” for deliverance, and envisioning the destruction of the invaders taking over Paraguay. Centuries before, people in some parts of Europe dealt with the trauma of mass deaths from bubonic plague and feudal wars by trance-dancing in groups, especially around the traditional summer solstice holyday.

Black Hawk Ledger, Sans Arc

The Round Dance continued after the US government suppressed the Ghost Dance and forced Indian religion underground.  One of the masterpieces of ledger art from the early reservation period after the US Army seized treaty lands on the Great Plains, this drawing was created by Black Hawk of the Sans Arc Lakota in the late 1800s. He shows young women and men apparently doing a Round Dance, the women identifiable by their belts and trade cloth, the men in tunics and striped leggings. These dances continue today at pow-wows across North America.

All the school and media emphasis on European history barely grazes huge areas, such as women in rock art. Spain has some stunning examples of women dancing in groups, such as this rock shelter mural at the site Moriscas III.

Moriscas III, western Spain

They dance with their arms raised in a forest setting. Helechel region of Badajoz, Extremadura, western Spain. (Here again i’ve colorized a B&W drawing and added a rock background.) Dating is difficult, anywhere between the Mesolithic and the Bronze Age.

Moriscas III rock shelter, western Spain

Here again the drawings are very rough, but clearly show women dancing with raised arms, who appear to be wearing feathers or fronds on their head.

Cretan fresco of dancers

Not sure if this is from Knossos or some other temple/palace. The brownish areas are the original surviving painting; all the rest is a reconstruction. The theme of female dancers is repeated in ceramic art and in the legends of Ariadne, priestess of the Labyrinth in Knossos.

Dancers with snake, Palaikastro

In the ancient Aegean many clay and stone assemblages of women dancing rounds have been found, this one from Palaikastro, Crete. The woman in the center is dancing with a serpent, a shamanic theme frequently found in Cretan and Mycenaean art. This sculpture is centuries later than the classic Cretan art, created after the Greek conquest of the island, yet shows the persistence of old cultural patterns.

Greek dancers, circa 750 bce

Barebreasted women dancing naked with leaf skirts is not what most people envision when they think of Europe, still less what we have been taught about Greece. This bowl dates from the Archaic/Geometric period, circa 750 bce. See more painted ceramics at http://www.suppressedhistories.net/Gallery/greek/geometric.html and the following page, linked at bottom.

The Libyan Connection

This Archic / Geomoetric style shows Libyan influences at times, most dramatically in this magnificent round dance of women and men. I’ve been calling attention to this Libyan connection for some time, beyond the much-discussed Phoenician influence on Late Archaic Greece (known as the “Orientalizing” period). The painted figures here resemble the Garamantes style of Libyan rock art in the 1st millennium BCE.

Greece, 750-700 bce

Here’s another of women dancing, this time naked, with snakes rising between them. (These snake squiggles are a frequent pattern in Geometric Greek amphora painting.)

Matrons dancing, south Italy

Women’s dance in southern Italy — Magna Graecia as they say, Greek-speaking and cultured, — at some as yet-to-be-disclosed location. Matrons (as signaled by the veils) in a beautifully dynamic flow, with an interwoven arm-grasp of a kind still used by dancers in Greece and the Balkans.

Rock mural at Genaadeberg, South Africa

A circle of women with ceremonial staffs (possibly the same as their digging sticks) at Genaadeberg, Orange Free State, east-central South Africa. I really wish this was a photo; the drawing only hints at the original.

Dancing and walking with digging sticks

The central panel could be a scene of women heading out to gather food, but dancers are shown at left and lower left, and these scenes seem to be related. Euro-settlers have vandalized these historic paintings with graffiti, as in North America.

San women raising digging sticks

Other ancient San paintings show women raising their digging sticks in invocation or ceremony, one example of how daily life was integrated with spiritual custom.

Rock mural somewhere in South Africa

A procession of women with upturned bows. Possibly a hunting dance. Many societies used bows as musical and divinatory instruments as well. No site given.

Salmans Laagter, South African Cape

San painting of women dancing in the Cape region of South Africa. What a difference a color photo makes with this rich red-ochre art. Traditionally it has been San women who gathered and ritual anointed or sprinkled people with red ochre. One important occasion for this ritual act was at the end of womanhood initiation ceremonies, when the new women blessed others in the community. The Apache have a parallel custom. Dating is notoriously difficult with these ochre paintings. Some are many thousands of years old and others are centuries old.

Chikupa, Zimbabwe

Women’s procession, with wands / staffs, in rock mural at Chikupa, Zimbabwe. (This was a black and white line drawing; i’ve added rock texture as a background.) Archaeologists think these paintings are at least 2000 years old, made by Khoisan peoples well before the Bantu immigrations to southern Africa.

Brandberg, Namibia

Another low-quality drawing (but I’ll take what I can get) of a procession, this time with several men, from the Brandberg in Namibia (southwestern Africa). Full of fine rock art, it takes its name Burning Mountain from the brilliant orange ochre rock formations.

Mural at Springfontein, Zimbabwe

One more from Zimbabwe, three women walking or dancing in a detail of a much larger mural at Springfontein.

Three dancing women, Algerian Sahara

The Sahara has many very ancient rock murals of women dancing or walking in ritual procession. This one is from the Tassili-n-Ajjer region of southern Algeria, dating from about 6000-4000 bce. (That’s no  error; these are really old.) The women are “painted up” in yellow ochre, in patterns seen in many other murals, including the Horned Goddess of Aouanrhet, and like her they wear ritual ties around their arms and lower legs.

Raising Power, southern Algeria

A group of women clap, sing, and dance, with an older woman seated at right as if presiding. This mural from the Tassili-n-Ajjer region of southern Algeria is many thousands of years bce, so old that it has acquired a thick, glossy desert patina from wind driving micro-bits of silica into the rock face over ages.

Menal, Ennedi region, NE Chad

Saharan rock painting of a line of women with a frame drum — that is how I interpret the disc in the hand of the woman at far left — at Menal, Ennedi hills, northeastern Chad. Circa 2000 BCE?

Women in long white skirts dance hand in hand in mural at Baradergolo I, Ennedi, Chad.

Baradergolo I, Chad

Another, broader view of the Baradergolo I mural, in a modern painted reproduction. Women dancers, amidst other family scenes with cattle. This is dated to the Late Bovidian period (before desertification put a stop to cattle herding) circa 3000-2000 bce.

Fada 5, Ennedi

A modern painted reconstruction of an ancient mural at Fada 5 site in the Ennedi region of Chad. Also dated to late Bovidian, circa 4000 to 5000 years ago.

Ochre-painted pot, Tiddis

Women also are painted dancing hand in hand in northern Algeria, here on a pot at Tiddis. This motif was widespread in Saharan ceramic art, which influenced the Phoenicians who settled in Tunisia, and who in turn spread it to Etruria and Spain.

Golden dagger haft, Egypt

The Gebelein dagger shows a common theme in predynastic Kemetic art: women dancing hand in hand, one holding what appears to be a ritual fan.  This scene is also found, with exactly the same elements, on a painted ceramic in the form of an animal, with a ship on the reverse side. These dancers also appear on many other painted vessels of the 4th millennium, often with the same fan.

For more on this, see my photo essay on the Suppressed Histories Archives site.

Zerovschan, Tajikistan, Central Asia

Women’s circle dance in bronze age rock art from Zerovschan, Tajikistan, with numinous quadrant in center. They appear to be wearing skirts, but the dot between the legs is a very common female sign, or the dot in vulva which may also figure  here.

Tepe Sialk, Iran, 5th millennium bce

Neolithic Iran is extremely rich in ceramic paintings of women’s circle dances, running around the circumference of what were probably ceremonial vessels.

From Ray (Rhages) Iran, 4000s

Here is one of the finest Iranian paintings, showing women wearing tall headdresses, communal female potency in sacred movement, their rhythm pulsing through the brush. Ray (Rey, Rhae, Rhagae, Rhages) is near Tehran.

Iran, site unknown

This is really tiny, grabbed off the web with no info at all, but also from neolithic Iran, and it speaks. The zag patterns around the are also found in Turkmenistan and Iraq in the same late neolithic timeframe.

In Syria, too: left, Halaf; right, Sabi Abyad. More tall headdresses! Both of these sites were important cultural centers in 6000-5000 bce, with their own characteristic styles of ceramic female icons. The Halafian style spread widely in the mid-6th millennium, peacefully, by diffusion from village to village, not centralized trade. Women making their own images, in clearly recognizable styles that still varied from region to region.  The importance of this international neolithic pattern has not been widely recognized, yet; but someday i’ll find color photos of this cultural testimony.

Diyala region, eastern Iraq, 4300-3100 bce

Conflicting information on this one, either from Tell Agrab or Tell Hassuna, both in Iraq river valleys. Three women (vulture-headed?) with animals and growing things. They are holding discs which may be drums, the other hands would then be drumming with sticks. Vulture-headed female figurines are common in Egypt in the same time frame.

Samarra, Iraq, circa 5000 bce

A classic from Samarra, Iraq, circa 5000 bce. This neolithic town created a long line of splendid painted ceramics and female figurines (which start back in the pre-pottery era, so old is the tradition there). Here women stand in the quadrants, their hair whirling in the Four Winds, circled by a ring of scorpions. Scorpion Goddess is common in ancient Iraq and Iran as well as Egypt — Serqet, the companion of Auset (Isis) — and also known in Central America.

Harappa, Indus River, Pakistan

The women dancing with streaming hair, this time from Harappa, Pakistan. Also neolithic. As in Iraq and Iran, women in the Indus foothill villages painted many pots showing their ceremonial dances. But here, and also in Iran, the ibex and mountain goat are common themes. A Goddess connected with these animals is still revered by the Kalasha who keep alive very ancient forms of culture of this region.

Kulli, Pakistan, before 3000 bce

The Women’s Dance from Kulli, Pakistan. This image was so commonly repeated that it became highly abstracted into a few strokes over time. Artists emphasized the flowing hair and dynamic movement of the Round Dance, still performed by women in the Punjab and among Adivasi (Aboriginal) women in India. These ancient ceramic paintings, fragmentary as they are, speak of a deep history of neolithic village women that has been obscured and overlaid by so many layers that few ever know that it exists.