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

[sakura]

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ANd why women are feared to the extent that they are accused of witchcraft and killed for it

LRD,

There are indeed those who interpret the R. Catholic religion as one of female spirituality and the church accomodates those who direct their devotions to the Virgin Mary. What we know of pre-christian religious belief is that it was pantheistic, not about goddess worship or any of that twaddle.( that emphasis came largely from new age witches as a reaction against the patriarchal nature of the church) One is as bad as the other.
Someone mentioned Marian churches. It was a policy of the early church to build on sites sacred to pagan deities- both male and female. It was not so much an absorption of the feminine as an absorption of all that preceded it. Similalrly, many saints correspond to pagan deities
This is at the root of the word "catholic"

Are they/were they guilty of the oppression of the masses or just women?

Did men suffer during our middle ages? Were they oppressed too? Was it just women?

I think the area is complex but I think what I am trying to emphasis is the power everyone but particularly women in the western world now have. It is our choice to use it and we must use it well and carefully.

It's no good burning our bra's anymore nor pretending we can do it all cos I just can't. We have to do it our way, in a way that suits us and we will succeed.

I believe that there is another way!

yes AliceWorld[nodding].

tyr, i do agree, in general, with your views on starhawk. as mentioned above, i didn't read the whole thread, and would not have suggested looking at her work to illuminate more work by her if i had! however, i stand by my assertion that she was instrumental in waking me up to certain things that my gcse level history had neglected to educate me about. would hope that i've grown up a little further in the 10-15 years that have elapsed though!

Alice, I said that because Dittany shared that she thought the witch trials had been covered up by history. Whereas, if you go to old cathedrals & large churches (as most people do at some point), you will find accounts of the witch trials and the names of locally well-known witches who were killed. It's not usually offered with any sort of bias afaict, it's an acknowledgement of a violent part of local history in which that church was involved.

I am angry about it, goodkate.

I find it really offensive because I do care about the real women who were alive then, and what happened to them. And I do find it offensive too that this film totally ignores research (lots of it by women) about what was happening, in favour of making up a story.

I am really interested in pre-Christian religion, but obviously it is not easy to reconstruct given that literacy and Christianity are so closely linked in Europe, except for the Romans. Now, we know the Romans were patriarchial as all heck. But it's very hard to tell what and how people worshipped in non-literate societies. There are lots of interesting theories, but instead of discussing them that film presented a completely rubbish made-up definition of 'witch' from Anglo-Saxon ... and we know the Anglo-Saxons didn't venerate woman power, because for them we do have written records. Not to mention, Christianity. Basically, it's a mish-mash of details that sound vaguely erudite (but are crap), cut together with quotations from modern witches talking about woman power.

That's interesting garlicbutter, can you give some examples of cathedrals and large churches with exhibitions about witch trials? I'll have to look out for them in future.

Try - I don't disagree, but I made the point about the RCC because dittany has spent the thread rubbishing it. I think you could argue it's a religion with room for female spirituality, but I hope she will recognize that simply finding artefacts (like the Sulis image) that show women, does not necessary prove that the society who made them venerated, or even tolerated, women.

I agree that Christianity was syncrenistic, just as Celtic religions were before it. As someone keeps pointing out on this thread, the Celts didn't live in Britain, but their culture certainly came here. Religious beliefs changed many times before the Christians came along, and each religion took on some aspects of the one that had been there before, particularly taking over sacred sites. I don't really see any great difference between the extent to which religion changed due to Christianity and the the extent to which it changed between different forms of paganism. One of the reasons Christianity did take hold was because it was so similar to other religious beliefs already in existence.

I don't think the Protestants have got rid of worship of Mary. Most Christians worldwide are still Catholics.

i know a old church
and in a bit of unconcercrated ground there is a grave of a woman.
on the headstone is her name and age ect-it also states she was a prostitute and a witch[but from what i remember doesnt use the word witch
another name]
and at the top of the gravestone its carved with a scull and bones.
occassionally i used to leave flowers with her.
very old grave.
ive never seen a man buried like this.

'I hope that LRD will recognise that nobody actually argued that pre-christian societies venerated women, including the film. In fact (evil pagan) Starhawk pointed out that the woman-hatred of patriarchy had been going on for at least 5000 years.

What the film says was that female divinity and worship of goddesses still existed in pre christian society.'

So, they worshipped women goddesses but didn't worship women goddesses? Or something?

Glad to see you're still making plenty of sense there.

ha-i could sort out my incontanance problem out all in one day-
id go and piss on the lot.

Ever been to this place in London Very moving

(PS not read the whole website, so don't shoot me if there is anything dodge, just mentioning the place)

The Greek and Roman pagan religions did also worship goddesses. People did make offerings and say prayers to female deities. Women were priestesses in temples and the Delphic Oracle was female. Athens was named after Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom. The Christians had to win the ordinary people over by making saints that took the place of some of these female deities.

It does seem like the Church at some point wanted a monopoly on the spiritual and that lies behind some of the witch hunts.

thankyou Aliceworld.
oh it is moving isnt it.

swallowed - This film was conflating worship of Sulis with their presentation of witches as 'strong women' with special power. It wasn't subtle. They were making out that in pre-Christian culture women had special traditions, and that witches later drew on and preserved these traditions. They were saying that their neo-pagan religion was based in a pre-Christian tradition.

If they were trying to say that, in this pre-Christian culture women were also persecuted and oppressed, they did a rotten job of it!