The Burning Times: fascinating docu on women's power before Christianity

In reply to dittany, Mon 30-May-11 23:06:21 :-

Yes, I do think that such misrepresentation of facts, on a feminist platform, plays into the hands of rape apologists. This is because a common rape 'apology' is that women rewrite history and contort facts in order to incriminate men.

Going further, misogynists often aim to debunk feminist theory by highlighting factual errors and deliberate misrepresentations. It breaks my heart that this is quite easy to do. I see it often on these threads - too often to respond, unfortunately.

It's not good enough to say "Men rewrite history; why shouldn't we?" Our arguments should be rock solid - logical to the core - so as to withstand attack. Polemic doesn't stand the test.

(Although actually I am not sure if I want my Motherliness worshipped in any case.)

Long academic/literary history arguing for pre-historic matriarchy/matrilinearity/goddess worship: Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht, Jane Ellen Harrison, Themis, etc.

Then there's the prevalence of Venus figurines from the stone age. Tempting to assume there was a dominant mother goddess cult.

"women being tortured to death for carrying out spiritual healing" is one representation of what happened. In my understanding, they weren't murdered for spiritual healing, they were murdered because they (were perceived to have) threatened the absolute rule of the church: something it was very easy to do in those times, even unintentionally, since the rules kept changing.

The church viewed any form of science as a threat, including medicine. Galileo had to recant his physics theories in order to avoid being burned. Herbal medicine was supposed to be the exclusive domain of monasteries. It was, as usual, about a monopoly of power. As usual, too, women caught the sharp end of the power struggle. But that doesn't mean it was an offensive against women specifically.

Thank you, Milly. I did, obviously, know about the Greek and Roman and Norse ones. Quite a lot about them, from a geeky childhood.

Sorry MI, I have crossposted with you.

See my post above. That's the 'goddess-worship' referred to quite a lot, including on this thread. And I do not know much about it, and/or the evidence for it, and I think this is interesting. In point of fact I do not think that whether or not goddesses were worshipped actually matters very much in terms of where we are today, in the multicultural 21st century UK, but I like the idea of it.

MotherInferior, there were goddesses in Greek culture, in Roman and in Norse culture. Norse religion wasn't mainly replaced with Christianity until quite late, and people often combined the two after Christianity was introduced. There was Goddess worship in Celtic society.

In Britain, there was Goddess worship in the late Pre-Roman Iron Age. Whether this was a belief that arose in Britain or was imported from mainland Europe as part of Celtic influence is unclear. We don't know if before the Iron Age, the Ancient British saw Gods as being like humans, much less gendered humans, at all.

THe 'pre-Christian religion' to which LRD refers above, adding that we don't actually know all that much about it.

Oh for heavens' sake, I know about the Greeks and the Romans and the Norse goddesses and all of them. Of course I do. (I also know about the Hindu pantheon worshipped on my mother's side of the family.) It's the Women's Power Goddesses, the deities of female energy stuff we all used to go on about, that I am asking about.

I'm sorry, I'm going to stop for the night.

Dittany, you should be ashamed.

No, of course you're not alone. And plenty of others have made that point about the need to be academically and historically rigorous.

swallowed, why do you think the film showed an image of the goddess Sulis as a precursor to talking about the pre-Christian time when women's power as witches comes from? What was the point of it if we weren't meant to think the two times were the same?

Cross-post.

Swallowed, I didn't make that point of out cynicism, I promise. Can you not tell I'm angry and upset, really? I know tone doesn't come across on the net but I am upset by this and I've said from the start how I feel. To falsify women's history is a horrible thing. I can't pretend it seems any other way to me. It is a stupid, awful thing for women to present falsified history as feminism, and yes, that does have a bearing on the rape debates. How can it not?

Please someone tell me I'm not on my own seeing this?