Far be it from me to challenage the “authority” of anyone on any subject, but i must point out a few glaring oversights…
While most people feel that Gardners work was, at best, Shakey on witches… there is some basis in fact that it is an ancient religion. If you take the time to nose around ancient religions, you will find that many cultures had Goddess based beliefs. In many ancient societies, it was the woman who was the leader, or at least if was the woman’s line who gave us leaders. One such is Egypt. A queen was a queen by birth, where as a king was a king only because he married the queen.
When christianity came along, it eventually drove many of these cults underground, where they survived, in a manner of speaking, by becoming generic, and very much a family tradition, where, unless you were born to it, you couldn’t get into it. Many years later, it became “safe” for these family values to once again see the light of day, but many of the specific beliefs had been lost, and thus it became more of a general religion. (Or so I have been led to believe from all of the many resources i have read over the years…)
sigh But that isn’t the reason i was writing… I am writing to let you know that the witch/Broomstick relationship began in the middle ages when the broomstick was used in a fertility rite. The witches would leap and run over fields to ensure the fertility of the crop to be planted in the fields. And yes, the broomstick was used to represent the phallic symbol, since in most types of reproduction you do need both a male and a female (even most plants try to stick to this method lol).
But as for the drug use?? i wouldn’t be so sure of that. (perhaps it was the people who “saw” the witches flying that were smoking something???)
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You said: «In many ancient societies, it was the woman who was the leader, or at least if was the woman’s line who gave us leaders. One such is Egypt. A queen was a queen by birth, where as a king was a king only because he married the queen.»
Are you sure about that? I remember reading an article about Ramses II, one of the most famous pharaohs of Egypt, and he succeeded his father Seti I, and I remember several other cases of pharaohs who succeeded their father (Ramses III for one.)
You also said: «I am writing to let you know that the witch/Broomstick relationship began in the middle ages when the broomstick was used in a fertility rite. The witches would leap and run over fields to ensure the fertility of the crop to be planted in the fields.»
You can read in the threads above some other hypotheses. Such as the following example:
«Suffice it to say that, since most accused witches were regular housewives, the idea of the magic stick transmogrified into regular household objects. This began in earnest probably around the year 1280, the first reference we see to a witch riding a broom being a picture in the cathedral of Schleswig dating from about that time.»
This is, in the view of many, the reason for pharaonic incest; the royal and divine qualities were considered to be transmitted through women. Thus, to ensure that a prince would succeed his father, he would be married to his sister.
The same does appear true of many prehistoric and quasi-historic societies, as best we can guess from traditions and legends (e.g., Elam and Shang China). By the time that they emerge into the clear light of history, however, they have clearly patrilineal monarchies.
As another example, in one of the North American tribes (I don’t recallwhich one, but I’m thinking it’s Navaho), the chief was always male, but was elected by the women of the tribe.
While most people feel that Gardners work was, at best, Shakey on witches… there is some basis in fact that it is an ancient religion. If you take the time to nose around ancient religions, you will find that many cultures had Goddess based beliefs. In many ancient societies, it was the woman who was the leader, or at least if was the woman’s line who gave us leaders. One such is Egypt. A queen was a queen by birth, where as a king was a king only because he married the queen.**
sigh I hate taking a fellow Pagan to task, but…
So far there is VERY LITTLE historical evidence for the supposed matriarchies you imply. Goddess worship was there, but the women-based government system can only be implied, at best.
Mary Renault wrote some interesting pseudo-historical pieces, mainly The King Must Die and The Bull from the Sea but their accuracy is very questionable.
As for Paganism being driven underground, another myth. The last of the Antique Pagan Religion died with the distruction of the temples at Uppsala, Sweden in (I believe) the 12th century. Nothing was driven underground or hidden. What little we have is based upon transcriptions of text by Christian scholars at the time and later transcriptions of oral tales. Nothing more.
The “paganism driven underground” myth owes it’s existence to the overly-active imaginations of various scholars in the mid-19th century, particularly in England and France. Check out Triumph of the Moon by Ronald Hutton for more references.
Agreed. It is a commom misconception that the Egyptians were matriarchal. The line of succession passed through the males, not the females. If it were matriarchal, the females would actually be ruling, when this is obviously not the case. Hatshepsut was the only one who managed to rule for a time, because the true successor (a male) wasn’t old enough. And she had statues made depicting her as a man, so her gender wasn’t exactly keeping her on the throne.
I have a book at home called Women in Ancient Egypt; I will try to post some cites if the topic is still open tomorrow.
That’s what I thought Jean Grey, but I couldn’t remember where I had read it, so I didn’t want to say anything because my source could have been wrong. More information please!
Chapter One The ‘heiress’ theory
For over a century scholars have been reiterating the belief that the right to the throne of ancient Egypt was transmitted through the female line of the royal family in direct descent from one ‘heiress’ to the next. Thus, any king, whether or not he was the son of his predecessor, had to legitimise his claim to the throne by marriage with the ‘heiress’, who would be the daughter of the previous king and his ‘heiress’ queen. This meant that in most cases a king had to marry his sister or half-sister. Although the right to the throne, according to this hypothesis, descended through the female line, the office of kingship was not exercised by the ‘heiress’ but by the man she married.
If this theory were correct, each king would have had to marry a woman of royal birth, and it should be possible to trace a line of royal women in direct descent from one another. A study of the situation in the Eighteenth Dyanasty, the period in connection with which this theory is most offten cited, shows that such a line of descent simply did not exist. Women of royal birth can be identified by the use of the title ‘king’s daughter’, since there is no evidence in the Eighteenth Dynasty of women who are known to have had non-royal parents being given this title. This rules out the possibliity that the title was sometimes awarded to enhance the status of non-royal women. Among the queens of the Eighteenth Dynasty, some bear the title ‘king’s daughter’ while others do not. Although filiation is rarely given for queens, in cases where we find queens filiated to non-royal parents, those queens are not attested with the title ‘king’s daughter’. Thus we can undoubtedly distinguish between queens of royal and non-royal birth, and it becomes clearer that there was not a line of ‘heiresses’ in unbroken descent. By way of refutation, it is enough to point out that the principal wives of Thutmose III, Amenhotep II and Amenhotep III awere all of non-royal origins.
There is no doubt however, that some kings did marry their sisters or half-sisters and had children by them, and the ‘heiress’ theory was developed partly in an attempt to explain a form of marriage which scholars regarded as incestuous. In fact, there is nothing within Egyptian texts to suggest that there was such a thing as an ‘heiress’. Instead we must look for the explanation of brother-sister marriage elsewhere. Such marriages seem to have been rare among non-royal Egyptians, but as we have already seen in the Introduction [of the book], they occur among deities. At the time of creation, the creator god produced a pair of offspring who in turn produced a second divine couple and so on, the most famous being Osiris and his sister-consort Isis. So at the time of creation, choice of partner was perforce limited to brother or sister. By marrying his sister, the king set himself apart from his subjects who did not normally marry their sisters. By imitating the gods, he stressed the divine side of kingship.
> As for Paganism being driven underground, another myth.
> The last of the Antique Pagan Religion died with the
> distruction of the temples at Uppsala, Sweden in (I
> believe) the 12th century.
Lithuania was mostly pagan until the 15th century - the last pagans in Europe. Groves of holy oak trees were still being pulled down in the 18th century.
Lithuania was mostly pagan until the 15th century - the last pagans in Europe. Groves of holy oak trees were still being pulled down in the 18th century.**
Okay, I’ll qualify my statement by saying the Paganism I was referring to is organized Paganism, ie: a group of people who self-identify as Pagan and have some sort of structured body; a recognized place of worship and some sort of priesthood or equivilent thereof. As far as I know, the died with the temples in Uppsala. Can you provide a citation about the Lithuania Paganism?
Freyr: From God’s Playground, A History of Poland vol. I ( to 1795 ) by Norman Davies, Chpt. 5, pg.115: The Lithuanians prided themselves on being the last pagan people in Europe. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries when all their Baltic neighbors - the Prussians and Sudovians to the south, and the Letts, Finns, and Estonians to the north - had been converted to Christianity, they still resisted. Indeed, under their Grand prince Gedymin ( c.1275-1341 ) they forged a state of enormous size and considerable power at the expense of their Christian neighbors.
One of his successors, Jogaila ( Jagiello to the Poles ) ( 1351-1434 ) for purely practical reasons of state accepted baptism in 1386 in exchange for the hand of Jadwiga, the 11 year-old polish princess and last heir of the old Piast dynasty - with it came the Polish throne. This despite the fact that …Of all the neighboring peoples, he had no special love for the Poles, who to his pagan mind were servants of ‘the German God’. Lithuanian conversion is generally dated from this period. But as the previous poster has pointed out, paganism likely held on among the Lithuanian people for quite some time.
Urkk. I actually just stated a falsehood . My assumption that Jadwiga was a Piast is incorrect. She was an Angevin, the daughter of Louis Of Hungary ( from the house of Anjou ) who had been elected to the Polish throne after the death of the Piast King Casimir III ( the Great ) in 1370. Various Piasts did continue on as nobility of greater and lesser status ( but never again held the throne ) until the last dynastic branch petered out in 1675.
Tamerlane ( Whose memory and attention to details is obviously slipping )
. My assumption that Jadwiga was a Piast is incorrect. She was an Angevin, the daughter of Louis Of Hungary ( from the house of Anjou ) who had been elected to the Polish throne after the death of the Piast King Casimir III ( the Great ) in 1370. Various Piasts did continue on as nobility of greater and lesser status ( but never again held the throne ) until the last dynastic branch petered out in 1675.