Memories of the Goddess: Malta’s pre-historic megaliths

Once upon a time, there lived an island of temple building people in what is now known as Malta. These people were peaceful and egalitarian. Highly technologically and artistically advanced, they constructed megalithic temples that endured for millennia, and in these temples, they worshipped Goddesses. 

The Maltese temple building society existed from at least 5000 BP, to its sudden, and unexplained, cessation in 2500 BP. From 3500 BP to that date, the people who lived on the island created gigantic, and technologically sophisticated stone structures that are the oldest of their kind.[i] Wrought of coralline and globigerina limestone, forged from unhewn blocks weighing up to 30 tons, and erected in sacred spots on the landscape, these temples have left an awe-inspiring legacy.

Ta’ Ħaġrat temple, August 2021

Tombs and Shrines 

It is most likely that the first farmers settled on Malta approximately 8,000 – 7,000 years ago in 6th millennium BP, around the same time that they settled Sicily. However, our first concrete evidence of their inhabitation is in 5266-4846 BC when the earliest evidence of them and their religious practices can be found on what would become the temple sites. 

The early Maltese were ‘a stable, peaceful, artistic, people.’ [ii] Their life was based on mixed farming and survived with very little change for thousands of years, although their population substantially and naturally grew throughout the period. Whilst their temples were of majestic limestone, their own houses appear to have been made of mudbrick.[iii]

Although, in the beginning, evidence from deposits found on the oldest temple site; Skorba, indicate the ancestors to the temples were shrines made of mud brick. These shrines were ancestral, in both architecture and function, to the later temples. Rock-cut tombs were the other ancestors of the temples. The earliest egg shaped rock-cut tombs were found at the Zebbug and Xemxija tombs (4000 BP). Their shape prefigures the later temple’s lobed ‘apse’ interiors, and show similarity to those found in Sardinia and southern Italy. Grave goods and figurines that were found in these tombs represent early portrayals of a divinity associated with the tomb: a Goddess of death and regeneration.[iv]

For the ancient Maltese, death was believed to be followed by rebirth, and religion was about reconciling humans with their mortality. The burial rites of the temple building people did not change much during the period. As with other Old European civilisations, their tombs were reminiscent of a womb: graves were made in the shape of eggs; often a simple egg-shaped pit or a rock-cut tomb to which the dead were placed in a contracted foetal position and sprinkled with red ochre. Newborn babies were buried in egg shaped pots. The placing of red ochre in graves and niches of subterranean tombs was an almost universal feature; it was extensively sprinkled on the skull or scattered all over the body. Red ochre is used world-wide symbolically for blood, and therefore life and regeneration.[v]   

Red Ochre in the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum: Burial chambers and traces of red ochre in the Lower Level; and Red ochre painting in the middle level, photos from Heritage Malta.

Red ochre is a natural oxide of iron and it does not occur in Malta’s geology. Therefore, the presence of red ochra, as well as black obsidian, provide evidence of connection of the temple builders with other peoples. 

The nature of the burials show it was an egalitarian society. This can be seen by the stark contrast to hierarchical societies where burials divide into numerous poor and simple ones contrasting with a few in which the dead were buried individually with large amounts of precious and exotic goods. These goods were imported deliberately to emphasise the prestige of an elite over the common people whose surplus production was tapped to support it. In contrast, in early Maltese burials, there is little differentiation between poorer and richer burials. Not until the much later Punic period could any tombs be described as wealthy, and still not as markedly as in many other places and in later times.[vi]

The Temples 

Today, thirty temples are known about, however there were probably once many more. These Neolithic temples, along with their ancestral caves and tombs are roughly classified in seven phases, and the temples belong to the 5th, 4thand early 3rd millennia:

Chronological Chart of Malta

From Gimbutas, Marija, 1991, The Civilization of the Goddess: The world of Old Europe. Harper San Francisco: New York p. 174

The design of Malta’s temples is unique, they are unlike any other Neolithic structure to have been found in the world.[vii] By combining the two ideas of a built shrine and ancestral tomb, it is easy to see where the first lobed temples could have come from.[viii] The lobes of the tombs became the apses in temple architecture. These egg/womb shape bulges are arranged around a central temple entrance.  

Temples of Mnajdra (photo: Daniel Cilia)

As the temples developed from shrines and or tombs, the temples themselves also developed in form over time. The six most intact temples that exist in Malta today, demonstrate how the temple’s size and structure developed: they seem to have been gradually made bigger during the period. For example, Dr John Evans sorted the temples into a developmental sequence: The first were the irregular lobed temples like Mgarr East and Kordin III; these evolved into the three-apse trefoils like Ta’ Ħaġrat; later temples had four or five apses; finally, another pair of apses were added to give Tarxien Central its six apses and a niche.[ix]

Diagram at the National Museum of Archaeology, Valetta, Malta

In the same way that the shapes of the earliest tombs have been likened to eggs or the goddesses wombs the four or five-apse temples have shapes that can be likened to that of the rotund goddess sculptures.[x]

The temples were built near each other. They tend to be clustered in pairs, threes and there is one four. Typically the groups of temples occur in larger pairs with one complex significantly larger than the other, like mother and daughter, a pair of sisters, or the representation of two different aspects of the same divinity: youth and maturity, or death and regeneration. The east has long symbolised birth and the west, death. This seems to be reflected in the temples, as in their pairs, the western temples tend to have paraphernalia to do with death and regeneration and they tend to be built of darker brownish-red limestone. The eastern temples are lighter, more spacious and made of a lighter limestone.[xi]

Inside, the temples have three zones. The first, the forecourt, is spacious and open to the sky. It seems to have been designed for public and religious gatherings. Then there were two other zones within the temples: an internal central court with apses which lead off from it, and then an inner part with closed off smaller chambers. Sometimes these zones are open, and sometimes they are closed off from each other by a barrier or doorway.[xii]

The temples placement demonstrates a knowledge, and celebration, of astronomical alignments. At the Mnajdra South Temple the building marks the sunrise of the Equinoxes and Solstices. At sunrise on the Spring and Autumn Equinox the sun rises in line with the middle of the doorway to the temple. At sunrise on the Winter Solstice, the sun’s rays light the edge of a large, decorated slab to the right of the entrance, and on the Summer Solstice the sun’s rays light up the edge of a similar slab to the left of the same entrance. Two megaliths in the East Temple at Mnajdra seem to have been used to mark observations of the stars, through the drilling of a series of holes. Ħaġar Qim temple also seems to demonstrate an astrological alignment. On sunrise on the Summer Solstice, a ray of light enters through an elliptical hole in the wall of the main building. The light is projected as a crescent on a stone slab at the entrance to the apse and as the sun rises higher in the sky, the crescent of light travels down the slab onto the floor and slowly returns to a disk. The shard of a pot was also found at Ħaġar Qim which carries what looks like a solar wheel. A stone slab found at Tal-Qadi temple was found decorated with eight-pointed stars and a crescent moon.[xiii]

Although burials were found in the megalithic temples, this was not a practice of the temple building people. There is no sign of burials within the temples themselves until after they had been abandoned as places of worship. Instead, during that time, burials were confined to the underground cemetery temples: the hypogea. In fact, it seems likely that each community on the island would have excavated themselves their own hypogea, linked to the overground temple’s complexes.[xiv]  

By the later Saflieni and Tarxien times, the great necropolises of Ħal Saflieni and the Xaghra Circle were in full use. The elaborate Ħal Saflieni is a complex and architecturally awe-inspiring underground graveyard. With its chambers, and ornate carved structures and ritual paraphernalia, together with the Xaghra Circle hypogeum, it is clear that these places were more than just cemeteries: They were temples in their own right.[xv] At Ħal Saflieni, aural effects would have been used in worship: the Oracle room in the Hypogeum has a niche which allows the voice to reverberate throughout the underground rooms. [xvi] The curved enclosed chambers, painted liberally with red ochre represent a regenerative womb.[xvii]

Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum: Burial chambers in the middle level and the main temple in the middle level, Heritage Malta.

Goddess Worship

The temples were the centre of communal religious activity. Several have heat-reddened hearths indicating the use of fire.[xviii] It is most likely that they were presided over by a priestess or priest, rather than encouraging individual trance-like shamanistic religious activity.[xix] Indeed, the sophistication of the design and build of these megaliths makes it difficult to see how they could have been planned, and the logistical problems of their construction overcome, without a small body of people organising the work. As those people were not chieftains, they are far more likely to be priests’ or priestesses.[xx]

One striking feature of the Maltese temples are that hundreds of ceramic figurines were found depicting the female form: evidence of Goddess worship. Ceramics were invented in c. 6500 BC and this marked the appearance of thousands of figurines and vases, temples and their miniature models, wall paintings, reliefs and countless ritual articles across the world.[xxi] The earliest pre-temple site – the Red Skorba shrine – housed five figurines made of stone and terracotta in the north room. Although none were complete, between them they allowed the full reconstruction of a standing female figure 9 cms high.[xxii] That they represent the Mother Goddess, archaeologists state ‘is the most economical explanation of these intriguing objects.’ [xxiii]

The figurines found in the temples differ in size, and form, however the vast majority of them are clearly feminine. Some of the earliest are depicted with large vulvas or pubic triangles. For example, the clay and stone figurines found in the Red Skorba temple were wearing triangular masks, with long necks, large breasts, a large posterior and a large public triangle. They wear a cinch belt and a necklace. In Ħaġar Qim temple, the best known stone sculptures of seated, squatting and standing fat ladies were found which show the remains of ochre paint and stand about 20 cms high.[xxiv] Another figurine found there was carved in a realistic form and standing 12.9 cms high, and is  known as the Venus of Malta. At the Xaghra Circle a statue of two seated ladies, with their knees drawn up close to them, were found. A figurine known as the sleeping lady was found in the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum. She is a highly detailed figure and lies on her left side on a bed 12.2 cms long.[xxv]

Red Skorba figurine; Venus of Malta from Ħaġar Qim; the sleeping lady from Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum.

The role of the figurines was to represent life, as well as death and regeneration: the Goddess personifies the eternally renewing cycle of life in all of its forms and manifestations. From the artifacts, it seems clear that women’s ability to give birth and nourish children from her body was deemed sacred, and revered as the ultimate metaphor for the divine creatrix.[xxvi]

The latest dated temple - Tarxien west temple – housed the largest goddess in statute form. Cut from limestone, ‘Our lady of Tarxien’, would have stood at nearly 2-2.75 metres, however the figure is broken off at the waist.[xxvii] The supernaturally large figure’s surviving body wears a pleated skirt which is in the same style as other statutory found on the figurines of Ħaġar Qim. Her calves are unnaturally thick, but her feet are tiny. Given its size and prominent position, it is clear that the statute is a representation of the Goddess.[xxviii] Her obesity seems to depict regeneration.[xxix]

Peace and disappearance 

Prehistoric Maltese society had an economy that supported complex architecture and art of an entirely different order of magnitude, far in advance of its neighbours. Although the society was only just above the subsistence level, they produced a small surplus to allow the import of a modest quantity of raw materials from abroad and a few luxuries such as stone for miniature axes.[xxx]

The architects who planned and oversaw the work, the masons who quarried and dressed the stone, and the sculptors who produced their carved or modelled masterpieces, must have been specialists, not just farmers working part-time. Those who made the pottery that has been seen in the temples were clearly accomplished. As such, there must have been some redistribution of resources to allow these skilled craftspeople to engage in their specialised temple building.[xxxi]

A remarkable fact about the culture of the temple building people is the complete absence of any form for warfare, whether weapons, defensive sites, wounds on skeletons, or any other.[xxxii] Whereas in other prehistoric societies warfare is evident in the burials in the form of weapons and defensive or fortified sites, in Malta, there was no evidence of conflict, either within communities in the islands or between them.[xxxiii]

Yet in 2500 BP, this extraordinarily sophisticated culture, suddenly ceased.[xxxiv] With the great temple of Tarxien, the temple building period of Malta came to an abrupt end, and it is not known what happened for the temple builders to disappear.

The people that inhabited the island after the temple building people were completely different from them. No single element of the culture of the people who replaced the temple building people can be traced back to them.[xxxv] Their pottery showed a complete break from the pottery-making traditions of the previous phases in every respect:  they differ in thickness, colour and vessel shape.[xxxvi] Their burial practices were completely unlike their predecessors: the newcomers cremated their dead before burying them. Finally, these new people brought knowledge of metal with them.[xxxvii] Malta has no natural metal sources, and the temple building people did not seem to know about its means, yet these new people must have obtained metal from abroad and it to fashion weapons: flat metal daggers.[xxxviii]

With the influx of these new people the temples collapsed literally as well as metaphorically. At Skorba great chips were knocked out of the temple structure before new and rougher walls were botched in the Bronze Age. Without exception, the temples were abandoned for religious practices. Tarxien was turned into a cemetery and Skorba and Borg-in-Nadur were taken over by squatters. The others appear to have been left to crumble away, perhaps deliberately avoided for superstitious reasons.[xxxix] The Xaghra Circle hypogeum was sealed off.

In stark contrast to the temple building people, the newcomers were war faring people. Daggers were prominent in the succeeding Tarxien cemetery, and fortifications of impressive size were found at Borg in-Nadur and elsewhere showing evidence of war. They built their homes on hilltops in order to provide a natural defence as well as showing evidence of defensive walls.[xl]

We do not know what happened in Malta in c. 2500 BP to change the society from that of a technologically and artistically advanced, egalitarian goddess worshipping civilisation, into  a less sophisticated culture based on hierarchy and war. What seems most likely is that the destruction of the Maltese temple building society was simply the next victim of the wave of Indo-European incursions that were spreading across Europe from 4500 to 2500 BC. This wave was transforming European society economically and socially from a learned theocracy to a militant patriarchy, from a sexually balanced society to a male dominated hierarchy.[xli]  

By whatever means the temple building civilisation passed away, the glory of the temples was gone, and it was succeeded by a much lower level of culture, apparently owing nothing to what had gone before.[xlii]

Temples that you can visit in Malta: 

·       Ħaġar Qim Temples

·       Mnajdra Temples

·       Ta’ Ħaġrat Temple

·       Skorba Temple

·       Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum

·       Tarxien Temples

·       Ggantija Temples

References

[i] Trump, David, H. 2002. Malta: Prehistory and Temples. Malta’s living heritage. Midsea Books ltd: Italy. p. 69

[ii] Trump, David, H. 2002. Malta: Prehistory and Temples. Malta’s living heritage. Midsea Books ltd: Italy. p. 236

[iii] Trump, David, H. 2002. Malta: Prehistory and Temples. Malta’s living heritage. Midsea Books ltd: Italy. p. 208

[iv] Gimbutas, Marija, 1991, The Civilization of the Goddess: The world of Old Europe. Harper San Francisco: New York p. 174

[v] Gimbutas, Marija, 1991, The Civilization of the Goddess: The world of Old Europe. Harper San Francisco: New York p. 281 & Trump, David, H. 2002. Malta: Prehistory and Temples. Malta’s living heritage. Midsea Books ltd: Italy. p. 45

[vi] Trump, David, H. 2002. Malta: Prehistory and Temples. Malta’s living heritage. Midsea Books ltd: Italy. p. 235

[vii] Trump, David, H. 2002. Malta: Prehistory and Temples. Malta’s living heritage. Midsea Books ltd: Italy. p. 70

[viii] Trump, David, H. 2002. Malta: Prehistory and Temples. Malta’s living heritage. Midsea Books ltd: Italy. p. 88

[ix] Trump, David, H. 2002. Malta: Prehistory and Temples. Malta’s living heritage. Midsea Books ltd: Italy. p. 86

[x] Gimbutas, Marija, 1991, The Civilization of the Goddess: The world of Old Europe. Harper San Francisco: New York p. 174

[xi] Gimbutas, Marija, 1991, The Civilization of the Goddess: The world of Old Europe. Harper San Francisco: New York p. 176

[xii] Trump, David, H. 2002. Malta: Prehistory and Temples. Malta’s living heritage. Midsea Books ltd: Italy. pp. 106-108

[xiii] Stroud, K. 2015: Ħaġar Qim & Manajdra Prehistoric Temples. Heritage Books in association with Heritage Malta pp. 42-43

[xiv] Trump, David, H. 2002. Malta: Prehistory and Temples. Malta’s living heritage. Midsea Books ltd: Italy. p. 116

[xv] Trump, David, H. 2002. Malta: Prehistory and Temples. Malta’s living heritage. Midsea Books ltd: Italy. pp. 117-118

[xvi] Trump, David, H. 2002. Malta: Prehistory and Temples. Malta’s living heritage. Midsea Books ltd: Italy. p. 111

[xvii] Gimbutas, Marija, 1991, The Civilization of the Goddess: The world of Old Europe. Harper San Francisco: New York p. 286

[xviii] Trump, David, H. 2002. Malta: Prehistory and Temples. Malta’s living heritage. Midsea Books ltd: Italy. p. 107

[xix] Trump, David, H. 2002. Malta: Prehistory and Temples. Malta’s living heritage. Midsea Books ltd: Italy. p. 115

[xx] Trump, David, H. 2002. Malta: Prehistory and Temples. Malta’s living heritage. Midsea Books ltd: Italy. p. 236

[xxi] Gimbutas, Marija, 1991, The Civilization of the Goddess: The world of Old Europe. Harper San Francisco: New York p. 222

[xxii] Trump, David, H. 2002. Malta: Prehistory and Temples. Malta’s living heritage. Midsea Books ltd: Italy. p. 42

[xxiii] Trump, David, H. 2002. Malta: Prehistory and Temples. Malta’s living heritage. Midsea Books ltd: Italy. p. 43

[xxiv] Gimbutas, Marija, 1991, The Civilization of the Goddess: The world of Old Europe. Harper San Francisco: New York p. 176 & p.223

[xxv] Trump, David, H. 2002. Malta: Prehistory and Temples. Malta’s living heritage. Midsea Books ltd: Italy. p. 100

[xxvi] Gimbutas, Marija, 1991, The Civilization of the Goddess: The world of Old Europe. Harper San Francisco: New York pp. 222-223

[xxvii] Gimbutas, Marija, 1991, The Civilization of the Goddess: The world of Old Europe. Harper San Francisco: New York p. 181

[xxviii] Trump, David, H. 2002. Malta: Prehistory and Temples. Malta’s living heritage. Midsea Books ltd: Italy. p. 112

[xxix] Gimbutas, Marija, 1991, The Civilization of the Goddess: The world of Old Europe. Harper San Francisco: New York p. 265

[xxx] Trump, David, H. 2002. Malta: Prehistory and Temples. Malta’s living heritage. Midsea Books ltd: Italy. p. 234

[xxxi] Trump, David, H. 2002. Malta: Prehistory and Temples. Malta’s living heritage. Midsea Books ltd: Italy. pp. 215-216

[xxxii] Trump, David, H. 2002. Malta: Prehistory and Temples. Malta’s living heritage. Midsea Books ltd: Italy. p. 239

[xxxiii] Trump, David, H. 2002. Malta: Prehistory and Temples. Malta’s living heritage. Midsea Books ltd: Italy. p. 235

[xxxiv] Trump, David, H. 2002. Malta: Prehistory and Temples. Malta’s living heritage. Midsea Books ltd: Italy. p. 238

[xxxv] Trump, David, H. 2002. Malta: Prehistory and Temples. Malta’s living heritage. Midsea Books ltd: Italy. p. 245

[xxxvi] Trump, David, H. 2002. Malta: Prehistory and Temples. Malta’s living heritage. Midsea Books ltd: Italy. p. 270

[xxxvii] Trump, David, H. 2002. Malta: Prehistory and Temples. Malta’s living heritage. Midsea Books ltd: Italy. pp. 246-247

[xxxviii] Trump, David, H. 2002. Malta: Prehistory and Temples. Malta’s living heritage. Midsea Books ltd: Italy. p. 292

[xxxix] Trump, David, H. 2002. Malta: Prehistory and Temples. Malta’s living heritage. Midsea Books ltd: Italy. pp. 238-239

[xl] Trump, David, H. 2002. Malta: Prehistory and Temples. Malta’s living heritage. Midsea Books ltd: Italy. p. 252-234

[xli] Gimbutas, Marija, 1991, The Civilization of the Goddess: The world of Old Europe. Harper San Francisco: New York p. 401

[xlii] Trump, David, H. 2002. Malta: Prehistory and Temples. Malta’s living heritage. Midsea Books ltd: Italy. p. 241

The Witching Cycles

Once upon a time the word witch was not a negative title. Although the etymology is somewhat unclear, it most likely came from the verb wit “know” (as in wit and witty). And this makes sense, because we know that witches were our wise women. They were our healers, our carers, and the custodians of knowledge.

Halloween, otherwise known as Samhain, marking the decent into winter, is the first of eight Sabbats in the witches’ calendar; the ancient Celtic Wheel of the Year. 

Like Mexico’s day of the dead, Samhain is about introspection and remembrance - paying respect to those that have passed. This year, when we have not just a full moon, but a blue moon, and that moon gleaming over us as we face a global pandemic, it seems like a good time to reflect on how our ancient healers were slandered and devalued. 

As we pay tribute to our health workers today, let’s take a moment to remember those health workers who have gone before.

It began in the 14th century. Wealthy men in Europe called it a period of ‘Enlightenment’ (to cover up their exploits with femicide and slavery). There was an active takeover of the practice of medicine by men. University-trained male physicians had emerged the century prior, yet they were not a patch on the traditional women healer, and so they needed to play dirty to vanquish the competition.  

The establishment of medicine as a profession requiring university training made it easy to exclude women from practice, as women were conveniently already barred from universities. Better-off, literate women who practiced medicine anyway were then hit by licensing laws that prohibited them from doing so. In Paris, in 1322, Jacoba Felicie was brought to trial by the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Paris, on criminal charges. The primary accusations against her were that “she would cure her patient of internal illness and wounds or of external abscesses. She would visit the sick assiduously and continue to examine the urine in the manner of physicians, feel the pulse, and touch the body and limbs.” Six witnesses affirmed that she had cured them, one stating that she was wiser in the art of medicine than any master physician in Paris. Clearly, she was pretty good at her job, yet patriarchy didn’t like it, so the evidence was used against her to stop her practicing. By the end of 14th century, male physicians monopolised all aspects of medicine except obstetrics and midwifery.

Wise women continued to practice local medicine, they had been community doctors for centuries, and weren’t going to be displaced that easily. So, harsher measures had to be taken. In 1484 Pope Innocent VIII gave authority to the Church to find witches and kill them. Witchcraft was branded ‘crimen exceptum’ – an exceptional crime – and two years later, in Germany, Kramer and Sprenger wrote ‘the Hammer of the witches’. One of the most misogynistic books ever created. 

In 1542 the British Parliament passed the Witchcraft Act which defined witchcraft as a crime punishable by death. Then, James 1st, obsessed with witchcraft and the only monarch to author his very own witch hunting manual; ‘Demonology’, got heavily involved, and a further law in 1604 transferred the trial of witches from the Church to the ordinary courts. 

The witch hunt was on.  

From 14th to 17th century, well-organised campaigns against women healers, initiated, financed, and executed by the Church and State, were run across Europe. Women were accused of simply being sexual, or more specifically to their healing tradition, having magical powers affecting health: both harming and healing. Some had specific criminal charges against their possessing medical or obstetrical skills. “No one does more harm to the Catholic church than midwives,” Kramer and Sprenger had blustered in their Hammer. 

The witch craze spread across Europe like a misogynist plague. Executions were often live burnings at the stake, beheadings, or drowning. Peasant women were executed as in Italy and Germany, then in the mid 16th century the terror spread to France and reached a frenzy in England, seeing the North Berwick witch trials in Scotland in 1590. The 17th century opened with the Fulda witch trials in Germany between 1603-1606 which resulted in the deaths of 250 people, and continued with the 1609 Basque witch trials in Spain at the hands of the Inquisition, and the Torsåker witch trials in Sweden which saw  71 people (65 women and 6 men) beheaded and burned. The end of the century saw the craze spread to America, and the infamous Salem witch trials of 1692–93, where more than 200 people were accused of witchcraft.

Some scholars have estimated that between 40,000 and 100,000 people were executed for witchcraft across Europe and America, others say it was far larger. Of those tried, around 85% were women, and mostly poor women over the age of 40. In truth, we will never truly know how many of our ancestresses perished under these barbaric circumstances. 

The witch hunts did not manage to completely eliminate woman healer, but they branded her as malevolent and discredited her, associating her with devil worship and all that is bad. Whilst many of the herbal remedies developed by wise women found their way into modern pharmacology, such as using ergot for the pain of labour, much of the other wisdom went underground. 

All that witches represented, practiced and were killed for: wisdom, sexuality, power, and freedom, all so despised by the patriarchy, had to be veiled behind more acceptable forms of femininity. 

The laws against witchcraft were repelled in England, in 1736, but were replaced with fines against people practicing witchcraft. After over 200 years, and the tireless campaigning of the mother of modern witchcraft Doreen Valiente this act was repelled in 1951. But again, it was replaced with another law, the Fraudulent Mediums Act, repelled only in 2008. 

Today, witchcraft is emerging from the shadows as women recognise and revel in their ancient birth right to a liberated spirituality and wisdom. Modern witches such as Lisa Lister and Juliet Diaz are sharing this wisdom with a new generation.

Samhain marks our remembrance, but let’s not forget that it is part of a cycle. As we pass into what it likely to be a difficult winter period, it serves us to embrace every part of the coming yule at the winter solstice and what it has to bring us. Then, as the wheel cycles us into the new year, we can look forward to Imbolic in February, Ostara at the spring equinox, and Beltane on May 1st. We shall hopefully be seeing the last vestiges of the pandemic as we roll on to Litha at the summer solstice, or Lammas on July 31st/August 1st. Maybe by Mabon, the autumnal equinox, we will be able to look back on everything we have gone through, wiser, and in a better place to begin again.

Whatever may happen as we ride out the cycles of the year, let’s make sure that we live in a way that makes our ancestress witches proud.

An abuser’s best friend: How the UK's C-19 lockdown colluded with domestic abusers

Many domestic abuse charities were dismayed when the coronavirus lockdown was announced, with no thought for how women at risk would be protected during this time. Rooted in the knowledge of how domestic abuse works, they could immediately see why this policy could provide carte blanche to the perpetrators of abuse if it did not have adequate safeguards.

Domestic abuse is all about control. As the domestic abuse charity Solace’s Power and Control Wheel highlights, perpetrators do not need to use physical violence every day, and some never use it at all. Violence is used by perpetrators when they believe that other tactics are failing. Whilst domestic abuse is perpetrated by any sex, men are much more likely to use violence when they believe their tactics are failing, which is why so many woman are killed by their male partners. Other tactics that can be used by the abuser include sexual or financial control, bullying behaviour, denial and blaming the victim, and, crucially in this context: isolation.

Isolation tactics include refusing to look after the children if the victim wants to leave for work or other reasons, moving her to a remote place, and gradually distancing her from her support networks such as family and friends. With a policy dictating social isolation for all, the government have made this tactic much easier, and also morally sanctionable. It helps the abuser to see that isolating someone is acceptable, and not abusive. It plays into their distorted beliefs that isolation is really ‘protection.’ In this context, the government slogan ‘stay safe, stay at home’, implies you will be safe at home. For many women, this is simply a lie, and yet now the abuser has a government endorsed reason to continue.

The government have set a number of new rules in place as part of the C-19 lockdown, restricting how often people can leave the house and who people can and can’t see. In doing so, they are a larger embodiment of the way an abuser will sanction certain behaviours and disallow others. A perpetrator will see his partner as a possession and believe that she should obey him: the rules he imposes keep him knowing whether or not she is under his control. A victim might be told that she can only go out at certain times, to certain places, and that she is not allowed to see certain people. By mimicking this controlling behaviour at the national level, the government is setting a dangerous example for perpetrators.

As any victim understands, it is breaking the rules, whether these rules are clear to the victim or not, that will lead to an outburst. Sometimes she will deliberately refuse to comply, but most of the time she will unwittingly break a rule because the rules change arbitrarily. In either case, once the rules are broken, it throws the perpetrator into a sense of panic, and powerlessness: because the victim has asserted her own agency, it challenges his sense of control, triggering the desperate need to re-assert it. Sometimes his sense of control will be challenged by things that are nothing to do with the victim breaking a rule, but with the circumstances of the perpetrator’s life changing. Maybe he loses his job, puts on weight, or has to deal with the threat of the Covid-19 pandemic. In any case, it is at these times that the perpetrator will do whatever he can to stay in control himself: by controlling his partner, including using violence.

Perpetrators of violence use excuses to justify this violence to themselves, absolving them of guilt. They will do this both before, and after the violence has occurred. Typically, they will tell themselves that the victim deserves it, that they provoked it, that the victim only responds to violence. With the draconian use of lockdown, the government allows any perpetrator to use the lockdown measures as justification for violence. Using violence is OK because I had to force her not to leave the house. Using violence is OK because it’s the only way to keep her in and to keep us safe.

On top of creating an enabling environment, the government is exhibiting the same kind of cognitive dissonance that simultaneously facilitates and disavows the abuse. With the one hand they say they care about stopping domestic violence through initiatives such as the Domestic Abuse Bill, and Home Office support, yet other actions and messages send an alternative message. The result is confusion, which is ultimately exactly the kind of state that most victims of abuse will find themselves in day to day, preventing them from being clear about what is going on in their lives.

The statistics already give some indication of the dire situation for women experiencing domestic abuse during the pandemic. So far at least 19 women have been killed by my men during lockdown and the Met Police are answering roughly 100 domestic abuse calls per day.  There have been over 4000 domestic abuse arrests in London in the 6 weeks from 9th March – 24th April, a 24% increase compared to the previous year.

It is tragic and paradoxical that the risk of death as a result of lockdown policies is higher for some than from the disease measures are supposed to combat. Had the government been more strategic and more cognisant of what damage the lockdown would do, then we would not have been seeing the rising numbers of deaths that we have already seen. When government analyses the deaths as a result of the coronavirus, it needs to consider the deaths of innocent children and women at the hands of their partners in lockdown, and the responsibility its policy had for it.

What the coronavirus response teaches us about patriarchy

How did one sex come to dominate the other in virtually all areas of the world, and for so long? The response to the coronavirus, leading, in weeks, to the lock down of over half the world’s population, holds some clues. Because, of course, half of the world’s population has been confined before.

When I watched what seemed like extreme behaviour from the Chinese government, quarantining 60 million residents in their homes in Wuhan in January 2020, I was laughably naïve. It was something that seemed to have very litttle bearing on my own freedom. March 2020 changed everything.

On March 9th, Italy was the first European country to place its entire population on lockdown. Soon after, on March 13th, Spain and the USA declared national emergencies, unlocking presidential emergency powers. The next day, March 14th, France, the country of “liberty, equality, freedom” confined all people to their homes with 100,000 police enforcing the lockdown. It wasn’t until March 23rd, but the UK followed, with 66+ million of us ordered to stay in our homes. India, with a population of 1.3 billion, joined the lockdown on March 24th. Then, in the next few days, Italy introduced prison sentences, and the UK passed emergency legislation and regulations restricting movement. On March 30th, Austria joined Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Bosnia-Herzegovina in making the wearing of face masks out of the home compulsory. Russia, the largest country in the world, began locking down its 144 million population, and instigated emergency laws enforced by fines and prison sentences on the last day of March.

The take up of lockdowns, enforced by the law and the police, created a domino effect across the globe. It struck me that, like the deadly disease, the spread of patriarchy must have followed a similar dramatic path. A poisonous trend, transformed a world which respected women as central, into one that moved them indoors, excluded them from economic and public life, and curtailed their physical and bodily freedom with the strong arm of the law. When patriarchy began, whilst there were clearly long-standing trends in place to change lineages from following the mothers’ to the fathers’ line, and worship gods rather than goddesses, other situations must have accelerated and solidified women’s subordination.

The law, and punishment, is a key tool used in the coronavirus response as well as patriarchy. Going back 4000 years, the very earliest law codes, such as the Code of Ur Nammu (2100–2050 BCE) were tools to restrict women’s behaviour, a trend that was built on by successive legislators. By the Middle Assyrian period (1363–1057) laws demanded certain women cover their head when they went out on the street alone (MAL 40). It was not long before veiling and the sequestering of women spread across the globe through trade, conquests, and wanting to emulate the more powerful. Laws have successively been used as a female subordination tool ever since.

Yet laws have no power without the people. The coronavirus response doesn’t work without majority cooperation, and so too with patriarchy. Whereas the original Middle Assyrian law had to punish ordinary men who did not alert the authorities to women’s veiling transgressions, this stopped being a problem as time passed. And actually it turns out that societies can change their minds quickly. While face masks are now mandatory in certain European countries, they were not worn routinely here a month ago. The disapproving looks which now enforce their uptake, would have previously been bemused looks which prevented people from wearing them at all.

Most of us are very obediently policing ourselves during the coronavirus response. Women haven’t always been very cooperative in our subordination, or else we wouldn’t have had to be incessantly restricted, controlled and belittled over millennia. Yet we got to a point when we didn’t need to be policed because we were policing ourselves. Two months ago, the idea that I would be confined to my flat on the order of the government would not just have been galling but terrifying, and yet here I am, quite quickly settling in to a new normal. A government order becomes a personal decision that distinguishes you as a public health saviour or a public health pariah.

Perhaps at some point around 8,000 years ago, women initially agreed to some form of restriction for a temporary period. Maybe it was in order to get over a crisis or some kind of disaster, and then the practices that needed to be enforced during that time got written down, and then violently enforced by male authorities. Then, before we knew it, peer pressure and our own self-policing carried it on until we woke up one day and it was suddenly too late. The laws and myths were in place, the world was dominated by men, and they weren’t going to share their power very easily.

We are not over patriarchy. The majority of our world’s governments are still male dominated, and it is they who are deciding, and instigating the response to the coronavirus. Given their continuing control, and that C-19 seems to be more deadly for men than women could our future see a response that focuses solely on the restriction of women, acceptably subjugating one sex to protect another? Might one half of the population get out whilst the other stays confined?

What we have seen across the world, within a month, is the sanctioning of personal loss of freedom on a scale unprecedented in modern times, and yet what is interesting is that we asked for it. It has been quick, government led, and we, the people, are following gratefully. Now it is considered not just acceptable, not just appropriate, but a welcomed requirement to stay in our homes, and to cover our faces if we leave, and to fine us or put us in prison if we don’t comply. We can see that such powers are easily abused, and yet we don’t complain. Or at least not at the moment, and maybe by the time we do it will be too late.

The biggest lie the world has ever been told

The biggest lie the world has ever been told is that men have always dominated it. Male domination has been marketed as natural, immutable and eternal. It is all we have ever known, so it’s easy to believe that it might be all we have ever had. 

Yet, a couple of years ago, I learned that this was not the case. In fact, I learned that in the grand scheme of things, male domination, aka patriarchy, is a relatively recent phenomenon. Given that our species of human emerged about 300,000 years ago, and patriarchy reared its ugly head an estimated 8,000 years ago, it is clear that it had a beginning, and a relatively recent one at that. The problem is that patriarchy came just before our first extant written records, and so what has been passed down to us is what these victors wanted us to believe, not necessarily what was actually true. 

What lies in the little glimpse we know of what was before is exciting, empowering, and addictive. I learned a bit and now I can’t put it down. I want to know as much as I can, and I want everyone to know the truth that has been buried, destroyed, and lied about for millennia. 

There are three main things I have discovered recently that are not in mainstream consciousness:

1.    All society used to be matrilineal. In case you’ve not heard the term, ‘matrilineal,’ means descending from the mother’s line. Nowadays the majority of societies are patrilineal, descending from the father. A woman is given her father’s name, and when/if she marries, she takes her husband’s name, and the mother’s line is lost. But this did not use to be the case. In our etymology, and in fragments of our earliest documents, we see clues to a past where people followed their mother’s line. Early Chinese dynasties traced their descent from women, and in ancient Greece, Arabia and Rome, decent was originally matrilineal. In Egypt, royalty was transmitted through the female line, up to and after, Cleopatra’s day. Female descent was found among the early Teutons, the Celts, the Picts and Eskimos. There are even societies that remain matrilineal today. A matrilineal belt runs across Africa, and matrilineal societies survive among the Mosuo of China, the Minangkabau of Indonesia, and others.

2.    Communities were centred around women in the matri-clan. This is not matriarchy, as it is commonly perceived, but matricentricity. Society was not dominated women, society was egalitarian, yet mothers were the focal point (aka matrifocal) and made key decisions. In all of our pre-historic societies, organised by the mother’s clan, mothers lived with their brothers and sisters and male spouses came to live with the woman’s family. This arrangement is called matrilocality, as opposed to patrilocality, when the wife goes to live with the husband’s family, as it is in many societies today. In ancient society, Hebrews were originally organised into matri-clans that were also matrilocal. It was also seen among the Goths, and Japan was both matrilineal and matrilocal until the fourteenth century. There are still some places that are matrilocal today, such as some communities in Malawi, and the Hopi and Navajo Native Americans. Yet the majority of those recorded have died out as they have moved gradually to patrilineal, patrilocal, and then to patriarchal society.

3.    We worshipped Goddesses. Before we were told God was male, we celebrated her as a Goddess. The earliest representations of female divinity are vulvas engraved on rocks in the caves of Abri Blanchard, Abri Castanet and La Ferrassie in France during the Aurignacian period. These evolved into statuettes of Goddesses which have been found from 35,000 years ago in Palaeolithic Eurasia, predating pottery. They have been found worldwide from Valdivia and Mesoamerica, to the Fertile Crescent and Neolithic Anatolia, to Jomon Japan. Whilst some seem desperate to dismiss these prolific figurines as pornographic or toys, or translate their femaleness into expressions simply of fertility, their ubiquity implies a more universal mother diety. Their presence is made stark by the fact that there is no trace of any kind of male figure in the Palaeolithic period, or indeed any male idol to be found before the Bronze age. Female-creation stories breathe life into these figurines. Our very earliest creation stories were Goddess myths. From the Sumerian goddess Nammu who created sky and the earth, to the Babylonian goddess Tiamut, who gave birth to gods and goddesses with her consort, to the Dohomey’s goddess Mawu and the Greek Gaia who created the earth, Goddesses were clearly originator creatrices and a central part of our religious past.

When you put these three things together; a world of matrilineal decent, matricentric societies, and extensive Goddess worship, and contrast them with what we see in our world today; patrilineal decent, patrilocality, and major world religions that centre around a male God, we can see how radically different our past must have been. 

The question now is: How did we move from this female focused egalitarian society to a society dominated by men? This is the question I will not rest until I uncover. 

Brexit: Another mess of patriarchy

What Brexit really embodies is the dominance of patriarchal values in Britain today. 

In the red corner, was a demand for control. In the blue corner was a demand for, er, the maintenance of control. The appearance of having self-control, and control over others is a tenant of masculinity. Men have been taught that their excellence as men will be judged by the way they control people, by how well they promote themselves, and by whether or not they stay ‘on top.’  Control has been a central value of patriarchy, since our history books began. Control is what we reach for when we feel fragile, and powerless, when we are scared and seek to preserve our ego above everything else. 

Brexit has been dubbed an ‘un civil war’ and that is what it became. Patriarchal societies value the fight more than they really value the outcome. It is not so much what you win, as long as you do win. The reverence for competition in our society is endemic. Competition, or fight is meant to achieve the greatest outcome. However competition ensures only that if you win, you did a better job than the other side. It is clear that the red side did better than the blue side at the competition and so they won. But the winning didn’t achieve an outcome that was actually good for the country. 

Maybe the programme was biased to white male actors, but on the assumption that it was not, clock the massive majority of white, wealthy and privileged male ‘elite’ on both sides. One thing all of them were concerned about was preserving their place in the elite. Showing themselves to be the strongest, the smartest, the best. There was very little working together, both sides were fraught with in-fighting, because so few of them were really thinking about what matters, which is the people they are meant to be protecting. 

Masculinity doesn’t allow much room for being ‘wrong’. When your primarily impulse is to protect your reputation and status, you cannot be seen to have made a mistake or change a path. Even if that path is destructive and harmful. Even if that path might destroy you and everything around you that you love. 

Patriarchal values are destroying our society in many ways, and Brexit is a prime example. Patriarchy glorifies hierarchy, duality, liner and separateness thinking. It divides everything in two: masculine and feminine, winner and loser, dominant and passive, Linear thinking rates and grades people and is the notion that all accomplishment lies in defeating people and that the world is that it is eminently controllable. These values have been harmful to us over centuries and they continue to destroy us.  

Values that have for too long been seen as lesser, or weaker, because they have been associated with women such as trust rather than control, cooperation rather than competition, and interdependence rather than independence, need to be injected into our judicial, political and media establishments as soon as possible if we are ever going to create a society where we can heal this terminal divide.