wise womyn and the wondrous weed...

little did i know that sitting down to read my latest edition of the NORML newsletter today would take me on a journey back through centuries of herstory to the christian inquisition...

i started with the article "Latest Research On Pot and Schizophrenia Runs Contrary to Mainstream Media Hype", moved on to "Marijuana Prohibition Corrupts; Absolute Marijuana Prohibition Corrupts Absolutely", read a few more articles, checked out the NORML Women's Alliance page and then ventured over to the site "mums for marijuana" where i watched this very interesting video:

     

that then led me to more research and the most interesting (and stimulating) reading of the day -the use of cannabis by womyn throughout the centuries - and the outlawing of it by the catholic church...

"During Europe's dark ages, pagan herbalists and witches - mostly women - used cannabis in their ointments and cures. During a time when illness was equated with evil, these pagans attracted a devout following for their miraculous healing lore.

The Catholic Church, threatened by the resurgence of ancient religions and by forms of medicine that challenged their exclusive right to perform healings, gruesomely tortured these women to extract confessions of supposedly satanic allegiance, and then burned them to death in public forums.

Cannabis was a common feature of pagan fertility celebrations in the first 1000 years AD. Like Ostara, the love goddesses Freya and Venus were also often worshipped with cannabis offerings.

Pagan healers, mostly wise women, used cannabis for a number of medicinal benefits. Curiously, some of the earliest evidence of medical-cannabis using pagans comes from the writings of famous Catholic nun and herbalist Hildegard von Bingen of Germany (1098-1179). Hildegard's self-education included ancient Greek medicine and local pagan folk remedies. From her education with pagan wise women, she learned of cannabis' healing powers. In her famous work Physia, in an entry titled "Of Hemp", she writes that "hemp is warm - it is wholesome for healthy people to eat - it can be easily digested, and it diminishes the bad humours and makes the good humours strong."

Curiously, Hildegard also wrote poetry to the "Green Power," and had strong visions, similar to Joan of Arc, who was accused of using the psychedelic mandrake plant and then burned as a witch. Hildegard von Bingen's unprecedented influence on the early German pharmacopoeia ensured that cannabis remedies would eventually become common across Europe - especially as the terrors of the Black Death crept up from European sewers and into the homes of millions, making the purveyors of mainstream medicine seem like helpless fools."... you can read more at cannabis culture

i did a bit more reading and came across a few references to a book called "The emperor wears no clothes" by Jack Herer, an american cannabis activist... and discovered the book online on his website... the following excerpt is from chapter 10 -  "Myth, Magic & Medicine: A Look at the Sociology of Cannabis Use Throughout World History"...

"From at least the 27th century B.C. up until this century, cannabis was incorporated into virtually all the cultures of the Middle East, Asia Minor, India, China, Japan, Europe, and Africa for its superior fiber, medicines, oils, food and for its meditative, euphoric, and relaxational uses.

Hemp medicine was found effective as wound healer, muscle relaxant, pain reliever, fever reducer and unparalleled aid to childbirth, not to mention hundreds of other medicinal applications.

Hemp was a major industry in biblical times. As in other cultures throughout the Middle East, the Hebrew tradition of mysticism (e.g., Cabala) was aware of, and entwined with, regional sects using natural intoxicants in their rituals. As usual, they hid this knowledge behind rituals, symbols and secret codes to protect natural sacraments like “sacred mushrooms” and mind-elevating herbs, including cannabis."

With constantine’s eventual (strategic) conversion to Christianity – hence the merging of church and state – "in the 4th, 5th and 6th centuries A.D., pagan religions and all the different Christian sects, belief systems, knowledge, gospels, etc., such as the Essenes, Gnostics and Merovingians (Franks), were either incorporated into or edited out of official doctrine and hierarchy.

Finally, in a series of councils, all contrary dogmas (e.g., that the Earth was round, and the sun and stars were more than five to 17 miles away) were summarily outlawed and driven underground during the Dark Ages, 400 -1000+ A.D.

By the early Middle Ages, at the beginning of the 11th century A.D., virtually all powers were placed in the hands of the Church and Pope" - the divine right to rule had become their dogma and the pope had become infallible!!!!

"To prohibit knowledge, people were literally kept in the dark, without a piece of paper to write on. The monasteries preserved and guarded hemp’s secrets. They saw that cannabis held two threats to this policy of absolute control: papermaking and lamp oil.

While embracing wine as a sacrament, and tolerating beer and hard liquor, the Inquisition outlawed cannabis ingestion in Spain in the 12th century, and France in the 13th. Many other natural remedies were simultaneously banned. Anyone using hemp to communicate, heal, etc. was labeled “witch.”

Virtually the only legal medical cures allowed the people of Western Europe by the Roman Catholic Church Fathers at this time were:

1. (a.) Wearing a bird mask for plague. (b.) Setting fractured bones or cleaning burns.

2. Bleeding pints and even quarts of blood from all flu, pneumonia or fever patients (victims) which was the most used treatment in Europe and America by doctors until the beginning of the 1900s. It does not work! And did not work no matter how much blood they took.

3. Praying to specific saints for a miraculous cure, e.g., St. Anthony for ergotism (poisoning), St. Odilla for blindness, St. Benedict for poison sufferers, and St. Vitus for comedians and epileptics.

4. Alcohol for a variety of problems.

Saint Joan of Arc, for example, was accused in 1430-31 of using a variety of herbal “witch” drugs, including cannabis, to hear voices.

In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII singled out cannabis healers and other herbalists, proclaiming hemp an unholy sacrament of the second and third types of Satanic mass. This persecution lasted for more than 150 years. Satanic knowledge and masses, according to the Medieval Church, came in three types:

• To summon or worship Satan;

• To have Witch’s knowledge (e.g., herbalists or chemists) of making, using or giving others any unguent or preparation including cannabis as medicine or as a spiritual sacrament;

• The Mass of the Travesty - doing irreverent, farcical or satirical take-offs on the dogmas, doctrines, indulgences, and rituals of the R.C.Ch. mass and/or its absolute beliefs.

Because medieval priest bureaucrats thought they were sometimes laughed at, ridiculed and scorned by those under their influence - often by the most learned monks, clerics and leading citizens - ingesting cannabis was proclaimed heretical and Satanic.

For cannabis-related knowledge, or hundreds of other “sins” - owning a devil’s tool (dinner fork), reading a sorcerer’s book or speaking in tongues (foreign language), having a different faith, having the witch’s habit (taking a bath or falling into a river), etc. - from 10% to as many as 50% of the people in Western Europe were tortured or put to death without trial during the medieval Roman Catholic Church’s 500-year Inquisition (12th to 17th centuries).

The Pope could declare anything “heresy,” and use it as an excuse to legally rob, torture and kill his enemies or anyone else accused. For over 300 years, inquisitors divided up the property forfeited to them by suspected witches and heretics. Whoever denounced you got 1/3 of your property, 1/3 went to the government and 1/3 went to the Papal hierarchy."

the government and church definitely had a vested interest in whipping up a frenzy of fear... and what an incentive - accuse or be accused!!!! fear compels some to do terrible things - and fear always reigned... poverty could be alleviated by an accusation – greed could be rewarded - jealousies could be assuaged and competition could be gotten rid of - of course the worst atrocities were brutally perpetrated by the witch-hunters, who could satisfy their misogynistic and sadistic desires through terrible tortures, with suffering and death the result... it's estimated that anywhere from hundreds of thousands, to millions, of womyn died - but no matter the exact number, it was without a doubt a holocaust...


a little bit more reading enlightened me to the fact that Bast is the most important "goddess of cannabis witchcraft"...

"Bast, or Bastet, is one of the oldest of the Kemetic neteru (egyptian deities). The city of Per-Bastet, capital of the Am Khent sepat (or state), was dedicated to the worship of Bast. Bast is a very complex and complete Goddess. She if often described as the Goddess of cats and usually depicted as a beautiful human woman with the head of a cat. She is also the Goddess of cannabis and every cannabis plant is a physical embodiment of Bast. All followers of Am Khent Kemeticism are required by their religion to honor Bast, cats, and cannabis.

The Greeks called this same Goddess Artemis, one of the most widely venerated of the Ancient Greek deities. Some scholars believe that the name, and indeed the goddess herself, was originally pre-Greek.. The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world."

and then there is Diana, the Roman version of the magick Goddess of cannabis, also known as Queen of Witches... "One of the primary goals of the Christian Inquisitions was to stamp out worship of Diana. Some scholars think this was the original reason for the Inquisition. The Christian clergy proclaimed that Diana was the Queen of the Witches. Torquemada, an infamous witchhunter and grand Inquisitor, claimed that Diana was Satan."... she was also called Goddess of the Pagans and the Night Goddess...

you just never know where a newsletter will lead... and now i'm off to partake of the 'witches weed'...

variations on a theme...

the origins of valentine's day and its traditions have been blurred over the centuries so it's hard to glean the actual facts as 'history' has constantly been altered by the prevailing 'powers that be' (and as a consquence 'herstory' has been well and truly buried within the annals of time) ... there are variations on the theme but consensus has its origin as a pagan fertility festival... but in honour of which deity?

"The tradition of Valentine's Day is believed to have originated from the pagan customs of the Third Century or Fourth Century B.C., when the Parentalia and Feralia Festivals of Purification were celebrated in Ancient Rome between February 13 and February 18. This was also the time of a Fertility Festival which celebrated a young man's rite of passage and involved animal sacrifices and fertility rituals. February 13, the opening day of the festivals, was dedicated to peace, love and household goods. February 14, the second day of Parentalia was called the Lupercalia... a day some sources believe was dedicated to Juno-Lupa, the She-Wolf." ... read more here... 

ovid wrote “A she-wolf which had given birth to her whelps came, wondrous to tell, to the abandoned twins. She halted and fawned on the tender babes with her tail, and licked into shape their two bodies with her tongue. The she-wolf (lupa) gave her name to the place, and the place gave the name to the Lupacalia. Great is the nurse for the milk that she gave.” from an essay of Lupacalia

this, from an article lupercalia, she-wolf - "The rite began in the cave of the She-Wolf in the city of Rome where legend had it that the founders of the city, Romulus and Remus, had been suckled by the wolf before they were found by a shepherd. The sacred fig tree grew in front of the cave. Vestals brought to the site of the sacrifice the sacred cakes made from the first ears of the last years grain harvest.

Two naked young men presided over the sacrifice of a dog and a goat. With the bloody knife, their foreheads were smeared with blood, then wiped clean with wool dipped in milk. The young men laughed and girded themselves in the skin of the sacrificed goat. Much feasting followed. Finally, using strips of the goat skin, the young men ran, each leading a group of priests, around the base of the hills of Rome, around the ancient sacred boundary of the old city called the pomarium.

During this run, the women of the city would vie for the opportunity to be scourged by the young men as they ran by, some baring their flesh to get the best results of the fertility blessing (you can see why the Christian church tried so hard to get this ritual banned, but it was so popular that it continued for quite some time under the new regime)"...

according to wikipedia the festival derives from "Lupercus .. a god sometimes identified with the Roman god Faunus, who is the Roman equivalent of the Greek god Pan. Lupercus is the god of shepherds. His festival, celebrated on the anniversary of the founding of his temple on February 15, was called the Lupercalia. His priests wore goatskins. The second-century Christian apologist Justin Martyr mentions an image of "the Lycaean god, whom the Greeks call Pan and the Romans Lupercus,"nude save for the girdle of goatskin, which stood in the Lupercal, the cave where Romulus and Remus were suckled by a she-wolf. There, on the Ides of February, a goat and a dog were sacrificed, and salt mealcakes prepared by the Vestal Virgins were burnt." ... same festival, different deity (female usurped by male!)


and then this allusion to female sexuality and connection to nature in  She-Wolves, Lupercalia, and Prostitutes - "Etymologically, Luperci, Lupercalia, and Lupercal all relate to the Latin for 'wolf' lupus, as do various Latin words connected with brothels. The Latin for she-wolf was slang for prostitute. The legends say that Romulus and Remus were nursed by a she-wolf in the Lupercal. Servius, a 4th century pagan commentator on Vergil, says that it was in the Lupercal that Mars ravished and impregnated the twins' mother."

Juno-Lupa was only one of the many epithets of  Juno - meaning 'vital force' - a juno is also the term given to the protecting guardian spirit of females.

Juno is the roman counterpart to the greek Hera.

"The month of February was sacred to Juno Februata, the Goddess of the 'fever' (febris in Latin) of love in ancient Pagan Rome. She was also the goddess of women and of marriage. feb 14 was her festival day. At that time, a box was provided from which single men could draw a "billet" -- a small piece of paper on which a woman's name was written. The couple would then form a temporary liaison for the erotic games to follow. They would remain partners for the following 12 months. Sometimes marriages resulted from this practice." ... http://www.religioustolerance.org/valentine1.htm

"With the advent of Christianity, priests attempted to replace such ancient heathen practices. In the Fifth Century A.D., the Church resolved to abolish this pagan celebration by creating its own holiday around the same date and selecting a saint who was remembered for his devotion to love. In A.D. 496, Pope Gelasius outlawed the Lupercian Festival, but cleverly retained the Juno Februata lottery. However, in order to lend the festivities Christian meaning and eliminate the pagan overtones, the drawing of saints' names were substituted for the names of unmarried girls. The names were placed into an urn or box and then young people (both male and female) drew a name from the container. During year which followed, the youths and maidens were supposed to emulate the life of the Saint whose name they had drawn. It took some time for this new tradition to garner popularity" ... http://www.novareinna.com/festive/valentine.html

 

it's been fascinating reading, and i do like the 'she-wolf' representation - of course i can't pass up the opportunity of adding another lovely wolf graphic!

before i finish, i have to acknowledge another celebration today - chinese new year - based on the lunisolar calendar - with 2010 being the year of the tiger...

but with as few as 3,200 surviving in the wild it's not looking good for the survival of these magnificent creatures by the next year of the tiger in 2022... read about their plight here 

happy  lunar  new  year,   cheers... 

the language of fear...

triskaidekaphobia...

an abnormal fear of the number 13

paraskevidekatriaphobia (wouldn't want to have to say that in a hurry)...

an abnormal fear of friday the 13th...

are these fears inherently misogynistic?

the number 13 is closely aligned to the moon and the menses - it's the number of lunar cycles, the number of menstrual cycles, in a solar year... a number intimately connected with womanhood...

christian fear of pagan female deities, fear and hatred of the female body, and the persecution of strong, independent women created an anti-pagan, anti-woman fervour, hence the original word for the fear of both friday and 13...

friggatriskaidekaphobia...
from Frigga (Norse goddess associated with Friday) + triskaidekaphobia (fear of the number 13)

"Frigga (also known as Frigg, The Beloved) was the goddess of love, marriage, and destiny. She was the wife of the powerful Norse god Odin, The All-Father.

A sky goddess, responsible for weaving the clouds (and therefore for sunshine and rain and the fertility of the crops), she was also responsible for weaving the fates. She was known as a 'seer', one who knew the future though she could never change it." the goddess gift website

"Friday is Frigga's Day. Frigga (Frigg) was an ancient Scandinavian fertility and love goddess, equivalent to the Roman Venus who had been worshipped on the sixth day of the week. Christians called Frigga a witch and Friday the witches' Sabbath." the skeptic's dictionary

"When Norse and Germanic tribes converted to Christianity, Frigga was banished in shame to a mountaintop and labeled a witch. It was believed that every Friday, the spiteful goddess convened a meeting with eleven other witches, plus the devil - a gathering of thirteen - and plotted ill turns of fate for the coming week..." wikipedia

according to the article "The church, a witch, sex and satan: oppressing witches: symbolic of oppressing women's sexuality" "the christian concept of "evil" has long been synonymous with sexual desire and the rejection of women in general and women's sexuality in particular."

from an article entitled "hammer time: portrayal of witches, witchcraft and medieval christianity" "it is amazing how celibate men became obsessed with the sexuality of women. as it is stated in malleus malificarum: all witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is, in women, insatiable."

the infamous 'malleus malificarum' (the witches' hammer) became the torturer's bible, and Nancy van Vuuren in "The subversion of women as practiced by churches, witch hunters and other sexists" states "...the women's sex organs provided special attraction for the male torturer".

 

black cats have long been associated with friday the 13th and the feminine - they were seen as the familiars of witches - wise women and healers - but the rise of christian 'hysteria' introduced the concept of witches' pets as evil, and agents of the devil

the number 13, religious intolerance, persecution, and fanatacism, the subversion of women - fascinating topics which deserve to be explored more thoroughly... but that'll have to wait for another day...

hope you had a wonderful friday the 13th!!!

may day... pagan and political

Couldn't let May Day go without acknowledgement (even if I am a day late!!!)



its pagan origins...


"The earliest May Day celebrations appeared in pre-christian times, with the festival of Flora, the roman goddess of flowers, the Walpurgis Night celebrations of the Germanic countries." ... Wikipedia.


from "The Origins and Traditions of Mayday... "It was the festive holy day celebrating the first spring planting. The ancient Celts and Saxons celebrated May 1st as Bealtaine, or the day of fire."



its political origins here in Australia...

"From 1887 to 1889 the 1st May was remembered and celebrated in Australia only by anarchists associated with the Melbourne Anarchist Club." Read more from Radical Tradition.

From Workers Online: "The first May Day march was held in Barcaldine in 1891 by striking shearers. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that 1340 took part.

Henry Lawson's well known poem Freedom on the Wallaby ... was composed in Brisbane at the time the striking shearers were facing the troopers guns at Barcaldine."

"... So we must fly a rebel flag
As others did before us,
And we must sing a rebel song
And join in rebel chorus.
We'll make the tyrants feel the sting
O'those that they would throttle;
They needn't say the fault is ours
If blood should stain the wattle"

the pagan is political...

i came across this article by the Midnight Notes collective, and found it very interesting reading... The Incomplete, True, Authentic and Wonderful History of MAY DAY - go on, check it out!

and, on that note, I'm going to do some 'domestic stuff' and then think about my next 70s post...