I haven’t posted here for quite a while, as finishing my book Witches and Pagans: Women in European Folk Religion, 700-1100, kept me more than busy, what with illustration and book design and starting a publishing house, Veleda Press. (See that link for Table of Contents, Preface, and book excerpts.) My hands are still full, but I’d like to share links to some of my work, including articles, videos, dvds, web pages, posters, webcasts and online course, on the web or in hard copy.
I founded the Suppressed Histories Archives in 1970 to document global women’s history, to find out where in the world women were free, and what that looked like; and to track the patterns of domination and women’s experiences and achievements in the full spectrum of world cultures. During decades of research, I built a collection of over 30,000 images on ancient female iconography, matricultures, patriarchal systems, female spheres of power; on goddesses, rebellious women, and witch hunting. From these I created over 100 slideshows, which i have presented in person, at grassroots venues, universities, and internationally. Now i’m able to share them via online courses and webcasts as well.
More on all these subjects can be found on the Suppressed Histories website, which has many articles, image galleries, and links to videos. A major update of the site is coming soon, which will incorporate content from seven years of posts on the Suppressed Histories Facebook page, organized in a more accessible and searchable way. (It just passed 153,000 likes.) But in the meantime, the best way to explore what’s on there is to go to the Photos page.
More articles are downloadable as illustrated pdfs from my page on Academia.edu (which requires registration, but it’s free and quick). You can find “The Meanings of Goddess” in three parts on the Goddess Pages e-journal out of Glastonbury, England. (The hyperlinks go to parts I, II, and III.)
My book Witches and Pagans: Women in European Folk Culture, 700-1100, was published in August 2016 by Veleda Press. (You can read table of contents, preface, and excerpts from links on that page.) This sourcebook is Vol VII of my series Secret History of the Witches (which could as well be called, What Happened in Europe) but it is the only volume published so far. (Vol. II is coming next, see below.)
I talk about Witches and Pagans in this video from the book release party at the Berkeley UU, and a couple of other clips. You can access some audio clips from an interview by Giana Ciachelli here. A recent article, “Visions of the Fates, Faeries, and the Old Goddess,” draws on material from Witches and Pagans, but through the lens of my own art. Published in October 2016 by Pantheon, A Journal of Spiritual Art. New material is also regularly posted on the Witches and Pagans Facebook page.
That’s some of the written stuff. But I believe in the power of the image and music to awaken deep memory and awareness and connection. That’s why i produced two women’s history videos with musical underscores. The most recent is Woman Shaman: the Ancients (2013). (That page has links to two trailers, as well as to the entire transcript of the video, Open Source.) My first video is Women’s Power in Global Perspective (2008), which surveys cultural founders, political and spiritual leaders, mother-right societies, builders, weavers, potters and other kinds of mother-tech; as well as healers, witches, doctors, writers, and female rebels, warriors, and liberators.
Currently I am working on Vol. II of my series Secret History of the Witches, titled Pythias, Melissae and Pharmakides, and teaching an online course by the same name. Pythia means Snake Woman, the title of the oracles of Delphi, a thousand-year-long lineage. Melissa means Bee-Woman, by which name the priestesses of Eleusis and other goddess temples were known (but here it stands for priestesses and women’s ceremonies more generally). Pharmakís originally meant Herb-Woman, but eventually expanded and stretched to mean “witch,” “enchantress.”
Subscribers can join the course anytime through April, for advance readings from the manuscript, discussion, images, links, and monthly webcasts of slideshows on Crete, Greece, and whatever else seems relevant. I will be offering other, non-course webinars in the coming months, to be announced, which will be free to all course subscribers. Some titles include Rebel Shamans: Women Confront Empire; Women’s Power, Women’s Oppression, Women’s History. I just created a new visual talk, The Cosmic Weaver, which doesn’t even have a web page yet. It premieres in Guatemala in February. Another on Persecutory Cultures is in the works.
The Women’s Heritages Poster series is another visual resource that gathers together images of cultural patterns such as the ancient Female Icons; Sacra Vulva, or as Miriam Robbins Dexter calls it, Sacred Display; Vulva Stones, a most archaic kind of spiritual artifact that is global in scope; and Breastpots, another precious archaeological reflection of ceremony. These posters are 18 x 24 inches. A smaller set of prints (8.5 x 11), the same kind of composite images, can be viewed here.
You can find many videos clips on youtube (on the Max Dashu channel). These include numerous clips from the Women’s Power dvd and various recorded webcasts from my online courses, including Grandmother Stones from Megalithic Europe, Female Icons (globally); Magna Mater / Isis of 10,000 Names; and Ancestral Mothers of the Paleolithic.
And a page with radio / webstream interviews is coming…