Month: February 2012

I had no plans to attend Z Budapest’s ritual on Sunday night. I thought about going to Rabbit’s ceremony, but what I really wanted, after a week of hard work, was to kick back in the hotel room and watch Downton Abbey. (A somewhat guilty pleasure, my class loyalties and politics being what they are.) Alas, the Fates ordained otherwise.

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/

by Max Dashu

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, 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

by Max Dashu

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

by Max Dashu

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

by Max Dashu

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

So busy, i haven’t posted for months, but here’s a recent photo essay from the Suppressed Histories Archives Facebook page.  To avoid confusion: descriptions and commentary appear under each image. Enjoy…
—Max Dashu

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.