Daughters of the Inquisition: Medieval Madness: Origins and Aftermath

INTRODUCTION

THE SEARCH FOR WOMANSPIRIT

This book is the fulfillment of a promise made twenty years ago during an illness which nearly took my life and from which recovery was both physically tedious and psychologically challenging. That promise was to connect with Spirit as first priority in my life and to find the WomanSpirit with which to align myself. Since then, a personal journey toward my soul’s unification with Spirit has immersed me.

My own world originally began with chaos and was steeped in terror. I have had a very long way to come in the rebirth of my own spirit, and to recover from my own early years of near annihilation and shame before I could personally reconnect with a greater truth. And you as reader may ask quite naturally how I traveled from Mommie Dearest written in the late 70’s to this present work on the Inquisition. Assuredly it has been a long and bumpy road. Since my teenage years I have been immersed in issues of social justice, first trying to right the wrongs in my personal life and then looking outward to become proactive in society. The Inquisition is one of the most enormous instances of social injustice ever endured, yet no one seemed to connect it in any meaningful way as an influence on women today. In fact it had nearly disappeared from the radar screen of current perspective. I decided to change that equation, never imagining that it would take so many years of my life, require such tenacity or become so daunting a task. For me it would not be enough to know the details and bring the travesty into present consciousness. I needed to know what women’s lives were like before the Inquisition in order to fully appreciate what was lost. Then I wanted to know how and why such a phenomenon ever occurred in the first place. For instance, why were secular men continuously exhorted by churchmen to degrade women? Why did the Inquisitors resort to barbarous violence against individual females, stalking them for fifty years, driving them to insanity through torture and imprisonment, even cutting off a woman’s breasts as a public spectacle when the condemned was being hauled in cart through the streets on her way to being burned alive at the stake?

The first question turned out to be: Where was it, this WomanSpirit? To my dismay, wherever my initial journey took me, Spirit bore no resemblance to Woman. Spirit had distinctly male characteristics. In my heart, I knew that could not be the truth. Because Woman represented more than half of the human race, it seemed clear to me that Spirit must also have a female face. What sense does the universe make otherwise?

The next question was what to look for? What was uncovered and is described in the following pages of this book evolved as though following many threads of different colors gathered on a loom that appear from various directions and chronologies, slowly being woven together. If one only sees the threads, although some are fascinatingly beautiful in themselves, one does not appreciate the pattern as it slowly emerges on the loom to create a final portrait. And if one hurries to see the finished product, full appreciation of the excitement of seeing a pattern revealed from a thousand seemingly separate threads is diminished.

The process has been to discover an authentic threshold of knowing one’s own womanhood first, through accumulation of accurate information about our ancient past. Why? Because truth from the past is of great value, learning what our predecessors knew, uncovering an unfolding mystery from physical evidence, taking charge of our existence and in this instance, gaining new insight into the place of Woman in the universal system. Archeology, the unearthing of the physical past, is an exciting challenge to mitigate misconceptions about our own past, particularly the past of Woman. And from there it is to become knowledgeable about the spiritual legacy of Western womanhood: what happened to us, why it occurred, how it changed all of us. Then having lived through this journey together, this is now the question: How do we use the information to become stronger and wiser?

There is no painless or gentle way to say what needs to be said, or write what needs to be written or, for you the reader, to see what needs to be seen. How do I know? Because it has been neither painless nor gentle for me, the author and woman, as the years spent working on this project became all-consuming. When I began this project, the idea was to write a women’s history of the European Inquisition because such a work did not seem to exist, or at least none that I could find. But to my dismay, after spending some time on both research and writing, I realized that taken as a stand- alone construct, the Inquisition did not make sense. My task then was to fit these centuries into a context that was comprehensible. Eventually, the only way I could see was to walk backwards in time until I found what was missing. Where I landed was in the Goddess cultures of the Neolithic (8000–3500 BCE) having to learn new terminology and envision a vastly different world from the one in which we live today. In that world women governed, were self-sovereign and revered a female Creatrix. But how did the Western world transition from a world where women were endowed with inalienable rights to one of the Inquisition where they were being exterminated? Without map or guide, at first it was a matter of trudging doggedly and stubbornly, from dead end to blind canyon, finding only an obscurely worded reference here and there until I found the crossroads at which the two diametrically opposite concepts met and clashed. Unraveling the details meant searching out ancient reference sources with archaic language, some of which are included in this book, and additionally pouring over biblical text. Persistence meant taxing every last bit of experience as writer and woman, engaging my intuition, perseverance, education and life skills to continue forward progress. That process has become the focus of this work.

Since my rather solitary journey has now taken me through this learning and truth-telling process, it is clear to me that my life will never be the same again. There were many moments when, temporarily overwhelmed by the enormity of what faced me, there were thoughts that this was too difficult and too enormous a task. And then there were other times when the work flowed magically, and help or information arrived right on time!

So, it may be that reading this book will bring up in your own life many hidden aspects now asking to be addressed. Together we are seeking a 21st century WomanSpirit, founded in knowledge, assisted by choices of many different role models and guided by that Spirit of Woman who, as you will see, successfully led the people of the Western world in health, peace and prosperity for thousands of years, but, until recently, we knew almost nothing at all about Her.

Previously, I had seen other women embark on spiritual journeys only to become frightened and turn back. Become frightened of what, I needed to ask. Today I believe that it was the collective remembrance of being historically, systematically, and culturally shamed, which was accompanied by the real annihilation that followed. At least in part, I believe it was actually the long-forgotten memory residing in the collective unconscious of what happened to women during the 700 years of the Inquisition, a memory which tells us that strong-willed, independent women seeking alternatives are still never very far from the stake.

Most of Western history, throughout the past two thousands years and particularly during the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, has been written by men about the male experience. Men, therefore, are accustomed to having their history fully available to them. Women, on the other hand, have been systematically denied access to herstory. In fact, past versions of history cannot be considered entirely the truth when they omit reference to one half of the human population, concentrating solely on the feats of the male.

Then, there is another facet to consider: when a person is presented with information containing an emotional component which appears to contradict what they have been previously taught by sources or persons they believe to be correct, they are faced with cognitive dissonance. In order to accommodate this information, which is causing immediate discomfort and does not fit into their existing belief system, the person is faced with at least three choices: ignore it, deny it, or find ways to assimilate it. The first two are chosen as a result of fear of the new or unknown. The third choice is the ultimate goal of this work.

Now that I know where the journey of this book goes, let me share a brief overview. We begin with a glimpse of women and their lives as our ancestors in the Western world in the ancient past based on relatively recent discoveries in archeology. How they conceptualized energy, religion, sex, healing, family, birth, death and related to men was quite different from ours in the present. In each section of the book, these ideas will be revisited to see how they change. Over time these women built cities, invented agriculture, pottery and weaving, evolved a high level of art, architecture and commerce, and reigned over stable communities for long periods. They achieved through their ability to innovate and through a process they evolved for living in peace. But nothing lasts forever, and when the transition times do come they bring with them enormous changes through weather, warriors and the introduction of a new male deity. The women assimilated these people and the changes until all out war was declared upon them, their institutions and their Goddess Creatrix. This was the process which would result in the Inquisition of the Middle Ages and persist until after both the American and French Revolutions.

I invite you to come with me now on the discovery of Herstory. Assuredly, we are not alone.

PART ONE

THE GODDESS: HERSTORY

WomanSpirit – Free

THE ANCIENT NEOLITHIC WESTERN WORLD 8000 to 2500 BCE

I wish we could sit together around the fire and tell one another the story of WOMAN, recounting the ceremonies of reverence for our deity and us in Her Image.

I wish we could collectively hear the seasoned voices of our aunties, our grand-mothers and their grand-mothers through them, telling the age-old story of the love of woman, the love of life, the love our connection to the great mother Earth, from whence we come and into whose loving womb we will return when this journey is over, to be reborn again.

Herstory begins with birth and the mystery of initiation into the life of a devotee of the Goddess, the woman who became priestess: sacred incarnation of the Goddess; sacred sexuality; giver of law, grantor of justice; provider of abundance, creator of music and dance; sweet strands of harmony on winged strings; diviner, teller of the future, holder of fate; snake goddess of transformation; knower of secrets beyond time; foreteller of fortune, queen of death and rebirth; keeper of the eternal circle of life death and renewal. We would say that She is Silence, Wisdom, Ecstasy, Joy, Terror, Sun, Moon and Starlight, Holy Blood, Sacred Earth. We would tell the daughters legends of the mystery of all the plants and animals, also the beloved creatures of the Goddess. They would come to know that She is also the Huntress, the mighty Serpent, the Honey, the Bees who made it, and great Auroch Bull. She is the Cow Mother, the Daylight, and the Dark. She is forever who ever was and who will ever be.

We would arise from the fire and take our daughters into the mystery as our mothers before had done with us. Taking our daughters deep into the caves, washing them in the sacred springs, adorning their precious heads with wreaths of flowers and herbs, painting their lovely skin with blood-hued Goddess signs, recounting to them the age-old story that life is a transit, therefore, ecstasy is precious – a life-affirming tribute to the great Goddess who is all life.

Women fasted and sang as they walked deeper and deeper into the great womb, the source, the life spring, the pulse, the blood, the beginning of all. Hand-in-hand they walked with their precious lifeblood daughters who were as beautiful as they were strong and loving, filled with joy and trust.

When they returned once again to daylight, these daughters were initiated. They belonged forevermore to the Mother Goddess, following in the footsteps of their own earthly mother and the mothers who came before they did. In full honor and glory, they took their places in the sacred temples. They became the young hearthfire keepers, graduated to being diviners with the help of the sacred snakes always held close. These new temple daughters divined for the people as countless others had done over the ages, imbibing of the sacred serpent nectar and achieved untold powers, needing no ramparts, no battlements, no weapons of sharp metal. The great Mother had given more than mortal minds could have ever conjured and provided eons of natural defense, because no one dared risk the vengeance of the diviners who knew about life, death, and the future forces across all time. In sacred SILENCE, the Wisdom of Sophia ruled supreme.

Who were these people? Where did they come from?

The people worshiping a female deity lived in Persia, Turkey (Anatolia), throughout the Middle East, the Mediterranean coastal areas and the Balkans (Old Europe), and into the islands beyond, now called Ireland and England.

They built houses, established permanent villages, and developed agriculture to ensure a stable food supply. Their trade routes flourished; they raised and domesticated animals, hunted and fished but were primarily vegetarians.

A new picture emerges of villages housing women, children, and the elderly with the men elsewhere tending herds, working fields or hunting and fishing. This would have been close to the model in nature which the people witness involving animals, particularly herd animals. Among grazers, leaders were females. Young males were permitted until puberty. Adult males were accepted only at mating time.

Adult women and men may not have lived together on a year-round basis. Perhaps this kept the peace. Perhaps this was the best model for delegation of responsibilities. But, as a result, women developed very different concepts about the cosmology of the world than did men.

The woman who lived in agricultural villages, which later became cities, developed a stable, communal, circular sense of time and social order with space for artistic endeavor because she had no need of self-defense. She was attuned to a natural cycle of birth, death and rebirth within the circular, lunar, cyclical sense of a time-space continuum which she chose as her attunement with the workings of the cosmos. She is earth centered, nurturing and believed in a personal attachment with the lunar planet.

These people who worshipped the female principle as deity believe She was the divine creatrix, the great mother, the goddess of all beginnings, the mother earth. Although she was called by a variety of different names, she was essentially the Goddess of all – all people, plants, animals, heavens, water, earth. She was Life, Death, Regeneration. She was the basic organizing principle around which all life, culture, religion, and art revolved, evolved, and nurtured the people of her communities.

The man is nomadic, constantly changing territory. He is a herder, but he is also a fighter, a killer, a follower of men stronger than he, even accustomed to being seasonally homeless. His loyalty is to his leader, his horses, dogs, weapons, and probably to his male lover, because often he has no access to women. He is attuned to the light of day wherein he is relatively safe because the ever present danger is more visible to him. He views life as having a definite beginning and end, with a sense of finality. He is born of woman and often dies at the hands of other men. He is steeled to hardship and taught to overcome weakness. The sun is his best friend, even when harsh. It awakens his sense of being nurtured by the light, which warms him and lights his way as he tracks across the land with his herds. He comes to revere and depend on this solar light, which guides him in the cold, frightening vastlands.

The man knows death firsthand. He has hunted animals for food and clothing, killed his enemies to ensure his own survival. He understands the finality of killing and being killed. He has a natural sense of this linear path of life, a linear sense of time. Start to finish, life for him is a line of time, from birth to death, and death is the end. Because within his physical being he has no power of regeneration, no power of giving birth, no power of creating life, his linear view of the life process will translate into a linear conception of the spiritual process when he becomes the one in charge of developing religious systems. The two – female and male – develop very different outlooks on natural life.

Much of what we know about the civilizations of the Neolithic in Europe has been unearthed recently: within approximately the last forty years. Even the archeologists have been astonished by what they discovered. Much work and research still is being done, but the basic facts have been established. However, because it is so recent, many are not yet aware that the information has now changed perspective on these ancient peoples, particularly on ancient women. Two people are credited with major finds in this area. They are James Mellart and Marija Gimbutas. Both have written extensively: Mellart on the city of Catal Huyuk in Turkey and Gimbutas on what she calls Old Europe. Even with these extensive studies, what emerges are tantalizing fragments: glimpses into a world completely different from our own. We know a lot more about all of it than we ever did before, but it is still not a complete picture. Therefore, what proceeds in the following pages are snapshots of life from those ancient times, which are to be used as guides while Herstory unfolds.

Archeologist Marija Gimbutas was Professor of European archeology at UCLA and participated directly in excavations for nearly thirty years. Her legacy on the very ancient cultures of the Goddess is contained in many journal articles and three books, published between 1974 and 1991, which form the foundation for some of the information contained in this work but have also been fundamental for the study of this subject internationally. The books are The Goddess and Gods of Old Europe; The Language of the Goddess; The Civilization of the Goddess. There may still be those whose education did not include study of this material, and they may doubt such cultures ever existed, but there is no longer any academic reason to dispute the legitimacy of the archeology.

In the Neolithic period between 6500 and 5500 BCE in Old Europe, a system empathic to the nurturance of human beings flourished. People could gather into larger groups in permanent settlements, develop an economy which created a new means of retaining surplus food, including both production and distribution, which today is called agriculture. Agriculture is the ability to plant domesticated seeds in order to produce reliable crops. Those crops in the Neolithic consisted of wheat, barley, flax (fiber for weaving cloth), legumes, domesticated forms of tree fruit (apples and plums), and the opium poppy for healing and sacred ceremony. Animals had been domesticated earlier than plants. Earliest were sheep, goat, and dog (from the wolf). Some people ate dogs, but the dog was used mainly for protection and to work the herds of animals before the horse was introduced from Eurasia centuries later. Sheep and goats were used to produce fiber from their hair with which to weave, skins for warmth and containers, meat and milk for food. Cattle, pigs and the horse were the second tier of domesticated animals.

At the dawning of human development, there appear to have been three different groupings of lifestyle in the temperate zones. The first is the hunter/fisher. It is most ancient and attributed to the Cro-Magnon of Old Europe. The second is a food-gatherer who became the food producer/agriculturist who came originally from the Middle East and North Africa, slowly migrating from the Mediterranean regions into Old Europe, the Balkans and Turkey (Anatolia), eventually traveling to the Atlantic islands of Britain and Ireland. The third lifestyle was called pastoral. These were the nomadic herders of animals, primarily sheep and goats. Pastoral people inhabited the vast lands and mountains beyond the temperate zones, to the East near present day China and the steppelands near Russia.

It appears that the muscular, rather massive Cro-Magnon and the more slender Mediterranean peoples did intermingle in very early Old Europe. Certainly they would have met on the waterways as they traveled and met again in the fertile valleys because these prime locations were chosen by both as places to live. One group wanted them for fishing, the other for agriculture. This intermingling was so successful that Cro-Magnon disappears as a separate identity. Throughout this introduction of peoples there is no archeological evidence of fortification, no use of weapons against one another, and no evidence of territorial aggression. The entire period was made notable because of orderly human expansion and increased trade: expanding villages, stable communities, the creation of crafts and artwork. All of this was made possible by peaceful coexistence and the continuing development of agriculture. With surplus food equitably distributed, humans could put their primary focus on improving the quality of life for all because they were not engaged in defending against war.

The archeology indicates that women and children lived together for most of the year, inviting males when it was time to procreate, to mate usually in the springtime. Otherwise, the males were sent away and not accepted in the social structure.

It has been supposed by many and written by some that the reason human men lived with this social positioning for thousands of years is because they did not understand the value of their role in the creation of new life. These men were breeders and herdsmen, intimately familiar with animal husbandry, which renders that explanation unlikely.

It has always been believed that the woman has a power of perception beyond what is literally seen and heard. Whether it is called sixth sense or woman’s intuition, it is a highly developed, extra sensitive ability to see what is behind and forward in time. The culture of the Goddess appears to have developed this natural ability and made it into a source of power and prestige for thousands of years.

The ancient natural powers of the woman appeared as the first of the Great Mysteries. And in the circle of time with which women are so familiar, the Mystery became synonymous with Woman. Mystery is the name for the initiation process for ultimate spiritual development of woman from girlhood into adulthood. Mystery became the name of the religious process of the Initiation itself.

Men were permitted to have an initiation also, if they agreed to serve allegiance to the great deity of the Goddess – birth, death, rebirth and, therefore, life everlasting. (Later, many of the famous male philosophers in classical Greece chose to do just that.)

The culture these people evolved was women-focused, matrifocal and matrilineal, which is to say that inheritance and clan belonging was passed through mother to daughter, and only the relationship to one’s mother determined belonging. However, all evidence from burials and art indicate a non-hierarchal structure with equality and division of labor between women and men. In governance, there is no evidence of master-slave or domination of ruler over subject.

These people lived in peaceful, equalitarian, agricultural communities, which developed a rich and sophisticated artistic expression and complex symbolic systems formulated around the worship of the Goddess and Her various aspects, and thrived from approximately 7,000 BCE to 2,500 BCE, about 5,000 years.¹ As pottery replaced stone carving, jewelry in copper and gold appeared, as well as thousands of figurines. And, it is these figurines that lead us to the discovery of an intensive religious ceremonialism according to Gimbutas. She writes,

The emergence of great numbers of figurines – anthropomorphic and zoomorphic, female and male – as well as anthropomorphic, bird shaped, and animal shaped vases, miniature replicas of furniture, stools, tables, and thrones, miniature offering tables and containers, libation vases, and lamps, as well as temple models, coincides with the early ceramic period.… the second half of the 7th millennium BCE A pattern of worship (a rich Neolithic pantheon of Goddess and gods) is established which continues to the end of Old Europe, 2500 BCE. Specific places of worship – the temples are incorporated into housing with courtyards, altars, offering places and temple workshops for making pottery and bread.²

From 5,500 to 3,500 more changes occur. Copper metallurgy occurred about 5,500 BCE and increased throughout the millennium. Gold was also discovered and used for both secular and religious purposes. Trade routes flourished, causing some of the people (usually the men who were more attuned to moving) to travel long distances on foot, leading pack animals such as goats or sheep, before the horse was introduced.

Advancements in more complex architecture led to building multi-room/multi-story houses, in which one room always was used as a temple, usually on the second floor. Bread ovens, grinding stones, exterior ash pit collection areas, spinning whorls and food storage areas are now standard features in the village housing complex. There are underground food storage areas dug underneath the houses, complete with ventilation. The Bird Goddess was the main deity of the household and the Temple. Temples, pottery and houses abound with a symbolic script evidenced in painting on pots and walls, doorways and pillars, as well as on all the figurines of women.

Ritual headdress and costume are clearly detailed on pottery vases and figurines, leading to the possibility of eventually deciphering and understanding these complex belief systems and ritual ceremonies. Vertical looms for weaving cloth and loom weights are found now in every village excavation.

In addition to the Bird Goddess, archeology also uncovers the Snake Goddess, mothers holding babies (i.e. madonnas), and in various zoomorphic figurines representing snakes, frogs, hedgehogs, fish. There are also male figures wearing ram or Billy goat masks, making up about 20% of figurines.³

Here we also find the Centaurs for the first time in Southern Yugoslavia. The Centaur is the representation of a masked human head grafted on a bull’s body. This is a figure of male mythology. The great Auroch bull of Old Europe (now extinct) represented the male life-force of all nature and was featured in regeneration ceremonies. The blood of the bull was rubbed on sacred objects and spilled over the fields for fertile harvest. In Hungary today there is still a red wine named for bulls blood, as are various other modern drinks produced elsewhere, which are thought to produce increased stamina and energy.

Large owl-faced vases used for liquid containers are found. The owl can see in the night, and no doubt the liquid was part of a divination process, possibly a liquid made from the opium poppies planted by Neolithic farmers.

The figures were carved out of marble, alabaster, opalite. Pottery had beautifully painted spirals, energy symbols, snake and water markings along with triangles. The pubic triangle of the Goddess and vulva symbol of birth and sexuality was virtually ubiquitous, incised or painted on clay, bone, stone, animal and human skin as tattooing.

The pottery was decorated with astonishingly modern motifs, not literal drawings, or representational art. The decorations are spirals, triangles, water meanders; all these energy motifs were fluid and symbolically beautiful. They are sophisticated, decorated with graphite and gold by the 5th century BCE. Neither in pottery nor sculpture was realism the desired outcome. Little is focused on realistic human details; rather, the goal is schematically representing a universally shared understanding of intrinsic significance. Some figurines show breasts, belly, buttock, symbolic of regeneration and birth – but no realistic faces. Ritual masks cover the human head – to represent the ritual or spiritual function understood to be performed by the wearer. Here are found the Bird Goddess death masks and owl masks for seeing in the dark (divination). Male figures are rarely if ever found.

These people are identified as gracile, small statured Mediterranean with narrow face and dolichoeaphic head, a far cry from the stocky Cro-Magnon of a thousand years before. Genetics had favored the more slender.

Their settlements had a circular formation with houses radiating out from a temple center. The settlement had no protective moats or walls; however, they were encircled by ditches which evacuated waste water and were done for the dual functions of spiritual and physical health. These permanent settlements prospered and grew to populations of up to 4,000 people. One circular settlement discovered in the Balkans could have housed up to 10,000 residents and must be considered a city in the modern sense. It was replete with two-story houses, temples, workshops, large storerooms, bread bakeries, offering altars and graves. Extensive farm fields and constructed animal stalls existed contiguously, but outside the city ditches.⁴

Around this time a new figurine was found in graves: It is an elongated slender female figure with oval mask face, bird wing protuberances for arms, breasts and pubic triangle defined and perforations along the sides of the figurine to attach feathers or some other decorations. These figurines are called stiff nudes, partly because they appear in gravesites in groups of three and partly because they are so distinctly different from the exaggeratedly round breasts, buttocks, belly, and legs of the classic pregnant birth-giving Goddess found in the temples.

While figures of males are uncommon, nevertheless, three types have been found: They are 1) A seated man who appears to be mourning, with head covered by hands, 2) an older bearded man, 3) a slender young man, often ithyphallic (displaying erect penis), who seems to be a helper attendant to the Goddess in a ritual capacity. This may be an early ancestor of the later son/lover/king/consort of Priestess Queens in Goddess cultures we know through later written accounts.

Two story temple workshops from 4,000 BCE have been found in present day Bulgaria, giving us many clues to the relationship between workshops and reverence.

The second floor is the temple with a stone-offering altar. It was an open room providing space for community to gather en-masse. The first floor is divided into two or three rooms with ovens for both bread and ceramics. They have beautifully and elaborately decorated ritual pottery and the many tools for decorating, including polishers of deer bone, awls, flat stones for crushing ochre, which is the red dust put onto bodies at burial signifying the blood of rejuvenation. There are bird bones, flint blades, pick-like tools from finds in corresponding grave sites, and from them it is learned that women were the potters and decorators. Pottery decorating tool kits with sample bones and pebbles, polishers and paint, were found in the grave sites of females. From observation of temple models, only women are shown producing pottery in temple workshops.

At first, this beautiful pottery was produced using the coil method, whereby clay is worked and hand rolled into long ropes which are then stacked into rounds, one on top of another to be fashioned into pots, vessels or other objects. Around 4000 BCE, a rotational device was invented which would become the potter’s wheel, still in use today. But much earlier, around 6000 BCE, at what is thought to be the initiation of ceramic pottery production in the Neolithic, the pottery kiln (firing oven) was invented. When the potter’s wheel came into use, the women potters were able to achieve firing temperatures of approximately 1,000 degrees C., according to modern analysis.⁵

THE GODDESS AND HER CHILDREN

For both daughters and sons, everything derived from the mother. Names came from mother’s clan/family name only, no father’s name. The daughters were taught everything they would need in an entire lifetime by the women in the mothers’ lineage, including the sacred laws, the sexual practice and the endeavors which provided abundance for community. These were the fundamental building blocks upon which new generations were acculturated, nurtured, and prepared for adulthood with awesome responsibility vested in each girl on her way to womanhood.

The women were dedicated to the Goddess herself, whether they were baking bread in the sacred, round ovens or weaving cloth on the small looms, or creating Goddess votives in clay, sitting in the Temple courtyards, and baking the votives in the same ovens used for bread. Both were life staples, one for body, one for spirit, and the two ideas were not yet separated. All were dwelling in a primarily vegetarian population.

Ceremonies of regeneration, sometimes in caves deep underground in magical grottos, sometime in tombs signifying the cycle of life-death-rebirth were led by women. The postulants crawled in the tomb/womb complex through a giant rock cut-out resembling a vagina, the birth canal. The people prayed, staying inside the tomb/womb for a prescribed amount of time and reentered the daylight plane initiated into the mystical cycle of spiritual rebirth and personal transformation. There is evidence that a Priestess of healing was with them throughout this journey. The presence of the Goddess was always with them.

Pubescent girls had communal public ceremonies to mark the onset of menarche, menstruation, and to celebrate their entrance into female adulthood, life giving, child nurturing, sexual exuberance and joy. (In contrast, modern women are often told they are getting the curse.)

All adult women were dedicated to the service of the Goddess. Some families chose the honor of serving Her in the Temples as priestesses. This was a lifetime choice, but they did not forego sexuality on her part. In fact, the Temples were not only the seat of community justice with priestesses serving as judges, they were also the location of service of another sort.

Then as now and perhaps forever, some men will have problems with sexual performance: Some are homosexual, some bisexual, some prefer women as sexual partners. For those who preferred women or were bisexual, the sacred women of the Goddess are the viagra of the very ancient world.

All young women of certain Temple families were required to dedicate several years of their lives to service in the Temple compound as holy women, helping the men of their community overcome sexual challenges and become united with their Goddess through sacred sexual union with Her through the dedication of Her holy women. These women were not permitted to choose among the men, but they took each in his turn on an equal basis. Their mission was to restore each man to his Goddess-given sexual capacity in the energy return of life force and to be able to provide the other half of sexuality manifested in the expression of human ecstasy, which was a primary focus of Goddess culture. This public expression of ecstasy is portrayed in artistic wall painting, on pottery, in sculpture, on megalithic stoneworks and tomb/womb regenerative resting places.

The people of the Goddess understood the vitality of sexual youthfulness on the energy field of the Goddess representative, the Queen/Priestess, because everything in this culture was aligned with energy transmission and received male sexual energy kept the vital flow alive.

Women kept the people healthy through knowledge of plants for medicinal use, through their knowledge of divination/shamanism for contact with alternative realities, and also through their knowledge of psychotropic substances for knowledge of prophecy and foretelling of future outcomes. Daughters are the inheritors, the heiress of name, material goods, the sovereign right to govern and to sit in council, deciding the fate of others. Daughters are the prophetesses, the diviners, the healers and foretellers of the future. Daughters are the Priestess/Queens of tomorrow and, in times yet distant, the warrior/protectors.

Sons are the divine son, the son/lover and son/consort of adulthood. Sons are symbolic of the Tree of Life, the sacred male sexual energy, the protectors of that which is wild, and the other source for fecundity in yearly vegetation upon which the entire community depends for existence. This spiraling, ever-recycling female and male energy, pulsing and rotating, ebbing and flowing again, gives essential impetus to sexuality and its eternal celebration on earth.

Later Indo-Europeans (who migrate into Old Europe and eventually subsume some of the traditions) have shared cultural traditions with the Aryans, coming from Central Asia and the aboriginal population of the Indian sub-continent, while the still mysterious ancient Indus civilization acted as a cultural intermediary. One of the founding myths of Hinduism presents us with a divine male being, sacrificed, cut into pieces, and buried in the earth to make it fertile. For it is the earth that is the Mother: she gives birth, of course, but she takes back into herself what she has given in an unending cyclical process.⁶

In the 18th and 19th Centuries when ancient sites were first being excavated by English and European men, this son/lover/consort relationship with the Goddess was not yet understood by male archeologists because it was a vision of life so different from their Victorian socialization. As a result, some Goddess statues found with a small male sitting on a woman’s lap were incorrectly identified as the king sitting on the lap of his nurse! It is now known that the Goddess was always shown as being larger than everyone else, even if those others were adults and even if those adults were males. This stylistic feature is intended to reveal largess in the spiritual or cosmic sense.

The young male lover gave all his beautiful, youthful sexual energy to the Goddess/Queen/Priestess. It was this increase in energy that was highly valued and venerated by erecting tall pillars, trees of life, phallic replicas, for the people to rejoice in, whether they were inside the Temples as decorated pillars or outside as treepoles in springtime or maypoles around which young girls danced while women kissed and fondled them, lovingly seeking fecundity.

The Goddess system of governance and spirituality transmit a powerful message to current generations, teaching that egalitarian treatment of the entire population and sacred sexuality between women and men are vital keys to human interaction without resorting to control of one over the other by means of violence.

THE RITES AND SYMBOLS OF THE NEOLITHIC GODDESS

Gimbutas writes, According to the myriad images that have survived from the great span of human prehistory on the Eurasian continents, it was the sovereign mystery and creative powers of the female as a source of life that developed into the earliest religious experience.⁷

This experience becomes the great Mother Goddess on earth, giving birth to all creatures and creating life itself out of the darkness, her womb. Early people had intimate knowledge of and relationship with the cycles of the natural world. The formation of the reverence for the Goddess of creation was enhanced by the cyclical understanding of life as a continuous process: birth of life, then death, and regeneration or re-birth. So the frame of reference was not linear but cyclical – not a straight line (birth, life, death) but a circle – birth, life, death, re-birth/regeneration. Regeneration is birth again, so it is a never-ceasing process. The universal symbol of this circular life process is derived from the physical anatomy of woman: the triangular pubic/vulva area. So it is the symbolic triangle, the V, which becomes the first shorthand representation of the Goddess language and is universally understood by the people across thousands of years and territories.

From as early as 100,000 to 40,000 BCE (the Middle Paleolithic) triangular stones were placed above burial sites and cup marks engraved into the stones. The Goddess was present to ride with them to guide them back into another life on earth or onto life everlasting. Archaeology has also discovered a beautiful proliferation of art in Old Europe between 27,000 and 25,000 BCE through cave paintings, rock carvings, and sculptures depicting seasonal ritual ceremonies, initiations and other, as yet undefined sacred dance behaviors, related to the life cycles.

The ancients were fond of miniature sculptures, perhaps so that many people could have one to hold in times of need. Three thousand miniatures that have been excavated at sites of habitation from present day France to Central Siberia attest to the prevalence of the Goddess in Her many shapes and forms. It was the female, and not the male, who was venerated as the deity of life and creation. Gimbutas clearly states, there are no traces in Paleolithic Art of a father figure. She is also clear that the female miniatures were neither Venus nor fertility charms; they were more important, the giving and protecting of life, and not subject to denigration as merely the object of male fantasy.⁸

The Neolithic is the flowering of art and the invention of ceramics about 6,500 BCE. These appear as thousands of examples of wall paintings, ceramic figurines, miniature temples, and religious articles. Groups of figurines may have been used for reenactments of rituals and ceremonies. From Paleolithic through Neolithic (about 50,000 or more years) in the Western world, there is an unbroken line of unity in the belief of one deity – the Goddess, in her myriad aspects is the earth and the natural world and humanity, all connected, intertwined and sacred.

Based on her archeological work, Gimbutas divided the sculptural aspects of the Goddess into four categories: First, the generative forces of nature of life giving, life stimulating; second, the Death Goddess who takes life away (sculpturally the slender stiff nude, symbolically the bird of prey, i.e. Vulture, raven, owl, or poisonous snake); third, the Goddess of Regeneration who controls life in the entire world of nature symbolized by the uterus, pubic triangle, toad, hedgehog, frog, bullhead, bee, butterfly, double triangle or double axe. The Goddess of Death and Regeneration is understood by the people as one deity, inseparable from life itself.

The fourth category represents only 3% to 5% of all sculpture found in the Neolithic: These are male deities. Over the years, many speculations have been offered as to why men in these societies are so under represented with creator deity aspects without any definite conclusions.

The portrayal of the Creatrix Goddess in many art forms represents aspects of Her all inclusiveness. The remnants of these symbols allow us moderns to trace, decipher, and understand how the Goddess lives among us today in myth, legend and allegory. The people are gone who knew the meanings, and there are no words left to explain. But when one sees the ancient symbols once again, we are reminded.

Deer Mother—Among peoples from Scotland and Ireland, through Asia the pregnant deer is the Goddess Mother symbol.

Bear Mother—From 5th Millennium BCE to present day, the Bear Mother with child is the masked Goddess with bear cub; the Greek Goddess Artemis associated with bear and deer; the Celtic worship of Deo Artio in historical times and in Crete, Feb. 2 is celebrated as Mother of God of the Bear.

Lions/Leopards—As early as 6,000 BCE in Catal Huyuk leopards and their spots are found as decorative motives nearly everywhere … on interior house walls, in temples and on pottery.

Cow/Bull—The famous bulceranium in Catal Huyuk, where the skullheads of bulls surround the ceremonial room, the bull head skull was identified with the human female reproductive organs of womb and fallopian tubes, the ultimate symbol of life.

Cow Mother—Is separately worshipped as sacred in India, was sacred in Egypt and seen as manifesting the Goddess as Mother in Old Europe.

Bee—Honey bees and their famous food which does not spoil and can be made into delicious alcoholic drink called mead was seen as the fertility/food aspect.

Snakes—There is no single symbol other than the triangle/vulva more synonymous with the Goddess than the snake. Thousands of figurines, paintings and statues portray the Goddess holding snakes, entwined with snakes, with snakes forming headdresses, crowns, necklaces, staffs and girdles around the waist. As an aspect of the transforming Goddess, the snake is able to shed all skin with eyes open, in order to grow, quite a miraculous feat, unknown to other creatures. Some snake relatives have venom which is often poisonous. However, in very small doses, this venom apparently had psychedelic properties which, when ingested, were used to transport the initiated snake Priestesses into the realm of divination, in which she was capable of seeing into the future and then returning to heal human ailments and/or mediate political situations peacefully in the present. This talent became a source of great power, used for benefit of both individuals and the community.

It may well have been so great a source of power that weapons were unnecessary to keep the community peaceful. In later times this ability to transport oneself into another realm and bring back the information to heal people in the present would be called shamanism, which has been practiced in various forms from Europe, to Siberia, to India, and through the Americas.

The snake of Old Europe represents the antithesis of Christian, Semitic and Indo European religions. She assures the well being and continuity of life through intimate identification and harmony with the cycles of nature. Through seasonal renewal of vital energy, the snake assures and protects the life of humans and animals.⁹ The snake Goddess figures with which we are now most familiar are from Crete from 1600 BCE and represent a developed, sophisticated continuum from the Neolithic nearly 4,000 years earlier. It is a continuum in medicine, healing, divination, life energy, the idea of immortality of utmost importance that persisted over thousands and thousands of years.

Birds/Masked Goddess—Bird masks, owl masks, birds of prey. The owl can see in darkness – one of the shamanic talents of the Goddess priestesses. The eye of the owl is frequently seen on pottery and menhirs. Birds can fly, which reminded the people of another shamanic talent – the Goddess diviners being able to transport themselves mentally to other places while the body stayed in the same earthly place. A Bird Goddess with wings for arms and streams of energy flowing past is seen in a Paleolithic cave painting in France, c. 23000 BCE. Sculptures of masked Neolithic Greek and Macedonian Bird Goddess with neatly braided hair decorated with chevrons, meanders, zig-zag lines and the number three, wearing a large collar necklace and having diagonal lines painted across her cheeks, were discovered from c. 6000 BCE.

Vultures exist in their natural habitats of the Mediterranean, between Spain and Turkey. In Old Europe the birds of prey (death aspect of the Goddess) are predominantly owl, raven, hawk, crow, seagull and jay. Also in Old Europe during the Neolithic, birds of prey, particularly ravens and vultures, were utilized to remove flesh from deceased persons who were laid out on platforms high above the ground, before they were suitable for burial because only the clean, dry whitened bones were presented to the Goddess for Her to regenerate. This integral step in the birth, death, rebirth cycle represents both Her most fearsome and most deeply compassionate aspects.

Water—This is the life force, the wellspring, the element essential to life itself. Springs issuing forth from the sacred earth are sources of worship from the most ancient times to present day. Villages were built around them. Later European churches are often built directly over ancient springs. These were places of worship, part of the sacred Earth aspect of the Goddess and emanations from the Earth energy, nourishing the people, healing and cleansing them. (Chartres Cathedral in France is one of the most famous of these sacred spots, built over a sacred Goddess spring which was used in Roman times by Celtic Druids for their festivals and later taken over by the Christians who built a church dedicated to their Mother of God.) Neolithic pottery is covered with meanders which are meant to portray flowing water and, therefore, the life force. This meander form also becomes the letter M. and the word MA.

Tree—The tree of life is the pillar going to sky, the gift of strength, the standing people (to North American Indians), the Druid Temple, the gift of healing, warmth, shelter, food and invisibility. The tree is also the phallic symbol of male energy, and tall poles are found in the middle of Goddess Temples.

Triangle—Vulva yoni female symbol of life-giving channels represent sacred sexuality. The triangle is also the strongest structure. Later the double triangle becomes the double axe – symbol of the Goddess in her full power of life and death, particularly evident in Crete and the Mediterranean.

Pig—All during the early Goddess cultures, for perhaps 8,000 years, the pig was a sacred animal of Mother Earth symbolizing the ability to grow, fatten and reproduce rapidly and abundantly. The young pigs were sacrificed, buried in the earth, and then brought to the temples to be mixed with seed and sown in the earth again to ensure abundant harvest, a very different but original source of using animal remains as fertilizer.¹⁰

Mother Earth—The land was worshipped and held deeply sacred as the source of food and mysterious life. The darkness of the earth, the moistness, the caves and springs, contained Her Mysteries most ancient and all pervasive. It is the ordinary people to whom this ancient Mother appears, rekindling awareness.

All religion begins with an experience of mystery. The first and primary human mystery is the ability of women to give life, to regenerate, to bleed and not die. And so the first religions became those honoring this regeneration as a whole process – life, birth, death and new life, or regeneration. Time was a circle, a cycle of life, death and rebirth – all of life followed this naturally observable pattern. Life sprang from female humans, from animals, water creatures (both birds and fish), and the earth Herself in the form of universal food products. This was a true, observable fact. Earth and women were both the Regeneratrix.

The great Neolithic burial mounds of Knowth in New Grange, Ireland, are made in the shape of female wombs, where one enters through a vagina passageway with the dead residing in egg shaped or oval series of chambers. Because these Neolithic people also knew sophisticated astronomy, in addition to being highly skilled architects, a small window opening in the mound is situated so perfectly that the rising sunlight streams in at exactly the time of the spring equinox, shining directly into the grave site, declaring the light of rebirth each spring. The light of the spring equinox cycle is completed every year, millennium after millennium with the Great Goddess watching over all and fulfilling Her promises of protection and life everlasting. These are amazing accomplishments for our ancient ancestors, who used to be condescendingly termed new stone age people and relegated to the primitive.

Colors important to the Neolithic peoples were related to function:

Black, the color painted on most pottery and many statues, was the representation of abundance, fertility of black earth, from which grew food for humans and animals. Black is the darkness of the womb from whence came life and the color of caves, grottos, and deep springs which became sacred places for ceremony and seasonal rituals dedicated to the Goddess. Black was the color of the female principle in her pre-birth phase.

Red, the color of blood, was life itself. It was the menstrual blood of women’s mystery, the sacrificial blood of the great Auroch Bull scattered in farm fields to ensure good harvests for the people and sacred to the Goddess as representation of reproduction and great strength. Red ochre, from iron ore deposits, was ground to power and put on the reburied skeletal bones of the dead ancestors, painted on the inside walls and outside entrances of passage grave mounds.

White, the color of death, was taken from the color of bones bleached in the sun after the flesh was removed either by cremation or the defleshing excarnation, courtesy of the birds of prey. Whereas the Goddess statues and paintings showing aspects of living were done with rounded and curved lines, the statues of the death aspect of Goddess were stark, thin, linear and white, made out of marble, bone, white clay, or stones of light color. Even in death these figures have the pubic triangle signifying the cycle of regeneration. Archeology has labeled them stiff nudes, but they bear striking resemblance to the current fad of anorexic stick-thin female figures, particularly among the young and affluent, the rich and famous. (Some women of the 21st Century have been sold a concept of attractiveness our ancestors equated only with death, the destruction of the living, and the already long dead.)

The Concept of Regeneration—Regeneration is the foundation of all other beliefs in this culture. Although the symbols of death were synonymous with the totality of the Goddess, death was not the conclusion; it was not the final answer.

The people of the Goddess were far more sophisticated in their understanding of the astrology of heaven and the nurturance of earth than we were led to believe even a few generations ago. To them all, living was a circle without end, without termination, without permanent finality so that one was always connected to those who went before and those who come after. Death was a temporary way station between births, and because no human family ever let go of the ancestral ties, the spirit was never abandoned by the Goddess. One came physically from the Mother, lived with the Goddess while breathing, and then was taken back to the sacred womb of the Mother Earth Goddess to be reborn again through Her and the human female as Her manifestation.

Everything was tangible. Birth was human, animal and plant reality. Death was witnessed as being universal for all the living. The reward of all the processes was part of the everyday being of the people, all of whom lived together, communally, sharing the goods, the work, the fruits, the sacred ceremony, and the seasonal rituals of life and regeneration. And so, because life, life, and more life was the reason for existence, nurturance, sustenance, abundance, caring, sharing, and teaching had to be the focus also.

Neolithic Burial Practices—The burials of Neolithic Old Europe deposit purified bones of human skeletal remains (sometimes without skulls) in egg-shaped graves, passage graves, graves under house floors or even in burial urns with the understanding that they are being returned to Mother Earth, Great Goddess, through Her sacred body which is the earth, to join the community of other ancestors and be regenerated into new life. It is the continuum, not the individual human being, which is celebrated. Objects found in these graves are in honor of Her, such as animal antlers, dog skeletons, ox skulls, bits of clay, fabric, needles, or spindle whorls for weaving. They are not offered in great profusion as grave goods showing wealth, but to be carried forward into a newly useful life.

For these people living six to eight thousand years ago, The tomb was the womb, says Gimbutas.¹¹ Some of the tombs found have an entrance similar to a pair of legs which led to an opening into inner chambers of rebirth. In the egg-shaped tombs, skeletons were placed in the fetal position and dabbed with red ochre. Both infants and human skulls were placed in egg-shaped pottery pots for reburial.

Individual and communal burials were practiced. In Northern Old Europe, individual burials predominated. During the Fifth Millennium, collective family burials were common. In Mediterranean Europe, communal burials in megalithic graves and underground chambers called Hypogea are prevalent, most significantly on the island of Malta, c. 5000 to 3000 BCE. This Hypogea was constructed over many centuries and is one of the most spectacular temple/grave structures in Old Europe.

Collective graves are reused with rearrangement of bones in order to accommodate new arrivals. This was practiced in areas of Western Neolithic Europe in the fifth and fourth millennium BCE in what today is called Brittany (France), Portugal, Spain, and England. Skulls are always respected, even if disturbed during new burials, and, if so, they are neatly stacked alongside the graves and covered again with red ochre. Sometimes the skulls are decorated with blue paint, shells, or amber discs placed in the eye sockets. It was believed that the spirit resided in the skull. As a consequence, complete skeletons are rarely found. In New Grange, Ireland, where cremation was a common practice to ensure defleshing before burial, the burned bones are scattered amongst the other ancestors, perhaps to promote peaceful coexistence or more accelerated regeneration; one cannot be certain.

Other symbols