Notes for Chapter 15. Crossing the Abyss to Male Blood Power
The work of Marija Gimbutas, James Mellaart, Sir
Leonard Wooley, and other archaeologists forms the basis of physical evidence.
Some researchers argue that Neolithic awe of woman's ability to bear children,
coupled with a belief in her innate kindness, resulted in the eventual deification
of women's nurturing and "life giving" capacities. This seems to
me a simplification that sentimentalizes the feminine as tender and benevolent
and the masculine as inherently violent and dominating. Such stereotypes
reproduce the myths of romantic and warlike patriarchal cultures. In this
view, the "Goddess Mother" represents only "life," and
her associations with death, sacrifice, and murder are ignored. Riane Eisler's
description of Neolithic culture is typical: "Symbolized by the feminine
Chalice or source of life, the generative, nurturing, and creative powers
of nature not the powers to destroy were . . . given highest value" (The
Chalice and the Blade, p. 43). Eisler and many others have credited "the
power to destroy" exclusively to men, to "the Blade."
Weideger, Menstruation and Menopause, p.
115. [p.302]
Beckwith, Hawaiian Mythology, p. 530.
Knappert, The Acquarian Guide to African Mythology,
pp. 161-62.
Griaule, Conversations with Ogotemmêli, p.
193.
Ibid., pp. 193-94. The ritual thieves of the Dogon
nowadays steal sheep and poultry to commemorate the smith's daring theft
of fire. Such thefts often require ritual payments. Perhaps a male ritual
tradition also existed in older times around the stealing of young animals
from the wild. I am reminded that a shepherd's "crook" is also
a term for thief in English. That ritual stealing may be an extension of
menstrual rite is suggested by the fact that horse stealing was a part of
the carrot festival of my mother's ancestors in Scotland. See Ross, The
Folklore of the Scottish Highlands, pp. 148-49.
Genesis 30-31 (KJV) relates a story of Jacob's "stealing" his
father in law's herd by arranging the breeding to come out in his favor.
He had been given any "speckled cattle" born to the herd, and he
used selective breeding to make sure the young were speckled more often than
not.
See Evans, Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture;
Sjöö, The Great Cosmic Mother; and Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia
of Myths and Secrets. Ancient Snake/Satan is still venerated, his rites
kept intact by a small priesthood in the hills of Syria who say that the
powers of darkness must be remembered. Satan lives in a cave, where they
tend him in his serpent form. (This cult is not to be confused with underground
Satanism in the United States, which reportedly practices violence, torture,
and abuse of women and children.)
Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Library, p. 130.
Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and
Secrets, p. 815. "India's Kali Ma was the same creating-and-destroying
Goddess, with a special incarnation as Kel Mari the Pot Goddess. Since
she made the first man out of clay, her people were Aryans, from arya,
'man of clay.' Kel Mari was related to Mari of Mesopotamia, or Mariamne,
or Miriam, or Mary, whose name was connected with the deaths of both John
the Baptist and Jesus. Her earth, which drank the blood of sacrificed men,
might have been the same Aceldama that drank the blood of Judas."
Jayakar, The Earth Mother, p. 60. See also
p. 39: "The carpenter ministrants . . . break the glass bangles on the
goddesses' wrists, strip them naked, take the red powder off their brows,
pull off their heads, hands, and legs, and put them into the baskets. Then,
mourning the death of the divine ones, they carry the baskets to the goddesses'
temple and lay them in the idol room for three days." In many other
places, goddess statues had removable limbs and head.
Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran,
Surah 81:8-9: "And when the girl child that was buried alive is asked/For
what sin she was slain . . ."
Diamond, "The Arrow of Disease," p. 66: "Smallpox,
flu, tuberculosis, [p.303] malaria, plague,
measles, and cholera -ka--- are all infectious diseases that arose from diseases
of animals."
Ibid., p. 73.
Marija Gimbutas, cited in Eisler, The Chalice
and the Blade, p. 45.
Jayakar, The Earth Mother, pp. 37-40.
Robbins, TheWoman's Encyclopedia of Myths and
Secrets, s.v. "Sexism." See also Briffault, The Mothers,
vol. 2, p. 387: In the nineteenth century, people of the Lake Tanganyika
region of Africa believed that consumption was caused by a menstruant's
kindling a fire.
Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and
Secrets, p. 187. "In the 17th century A.D., Christian writers
still insisted that old women were filled with magic power because their
menstrual blood remained in their veins. This was the real reason why old
women were constantly persecuted for witchcraft" (p. 641).
Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and
Demonology, p. 193.
Yet as late as the 1800s it existed in Scotland.
Old women called "gallas" -- (hence "gals"?) -- mourned
professionally, an office recorded in ancient Sumerian myth as that of gallaturra
or gallas. See Ross, The Folklore of the Scottish Highlands, p. 115, and
Wolkstein and Kramer, Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, p. 191.
Noble, World without Women, p. 163.
Sheldrake, The Presence of the Past, pp.
23-28, and chap. 2 generally.
Frazer has many examples of taboo associated with
war games and male sacrifice. He believed such games as football were once
sacrificial. Baseball also has metaformic elements. Originally, the game
was English "rounders," played with four pegs as bases (Seymour, Baseball:
The Early Years, pp. 4-6). The ball, white with red stitching, is lunar.
After three strikes (dark moon) the player is "out" ("dead" in
menstrual terms). If the player's stick (tree) lifts the ball in a long enough
arc (full moon), it goes off the field and the player runs "home." When
four (number of the earth) balls are pitched wide, the player walks the base
path -- perhaps in earlier times oriented toward the four directions. One
player's turn may be "sacrificed" in an easy out for the good of
the team. Chewing tobacco and beer are part of baseball's mystique.
MacCulloch, The Religion of the Ancient Celts,
pp. 178-79.
Ross, The Folklore of the Scottish Highlands,
p. 25.