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The Woman's Encyclopedia of...


In light of recent discussions brought about by two poems I want to mention a book. I spent almost an hour trying to find a good on line review of the book, but I am not finding it. Guess you'll have to get a review from me.

Essentially, the two poems recently posted approach their material from the distaff side of the family tree. Not to get to cute here, but, viewed from that side, history becomes herstory. It is a slant or perspective based on scholarship extending back to at least the mid-nineteenth century when a German jurist by the name of Bachofen, an expert in Roman jurisprudence, discovered what he decided was a matriarchal, matri-focal substrate in Roman law. Since then scores of scholars have followed his lead, looked into history, cultural anthropology, and religion, asking: is there a matri-focal substrate in the foundations of human civilization? The answer has been a resounding yes. And it extends from ancient Japan, whose society was once strictly matriarchal, to ancient Sumeria, perhaps the birth place of an urban centered agriculturally based civ., to pre-Indo-European Europe one archeologist has dubbed Old Europe. Of old Europe alone the archeological evidence overwhelmingly speaks for the case. Archeologist's name, now deceased, is Marija Gimbutas. With the feminist movement of the last however many years, maybe 25, maybe 50, and the establishment of what gets called Womens Studies, the scholarship has accelerated rapidly. I mention all of this to indicate that the approach of the two recent poems posted on the board is neither exotic or arcane. The evidence is there, scholarship sound and generally accepted, artifacts demonstrating there is just cause in viewing the record, especially since the agricultural revolution of some 7,000 years ago, from the herstorical perspective.

I got this book. Of all my books involving the herstorical perspective it is the most dog eared, in part perhaps because it is an encylopedia and so a quick reference and source. I got it when it first came out in '83. It is discolored with age and humidity, spine broken, and with a few pages torn out by a spurned lover. But it is the best book of its kind. With over a thousand pages it is pretty comprehensive, filled with references to source material, coverage is universal, world wide.

The author's name is Barbara G. Walker. Born in the 30s, so far as I know she is still alive. A trained journalist and an avowed atheist whose philosophical outlook is humanistic. This I think is key. She is not a writer ideologically bent, at least not in the context of the ongoing culture wars.

The book is called The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. It treats with big stuff and with little stuff. In a way I find the little stuff more interesting. A houri, for example, was a "Persian-Arabian heavenly nymph, sexual angel, or temple prostitute..." Cross-referencing to prostitution and I find that temple prostitutes were employed in the years of Goddess worship in the fertile crescent of the Middle East. Their purpose was to bring men into temple precincts in order to insure vegetative fertility through sympathetic magic. Husband is another fun entry. "One bonded to the house" it means in old Saxon (hus)when social organization was a matriarchate, property rights matrilineal. "A husband was not considered an integral part of the matrilineal clan but remained a stranger in the house..." Then there is the big stuff. Originally Lucifer was a consort/lover. His name in Latin means Light Bringer and he was identified with the morning star. He predates the invasion of Palestine, around 1,000 B.C., by the Hebrews by centuries. Here is another big one. Ten pages devoted to the originally magical properties of menstrual blood, what, as we all know, has since been viewed as unclean. For refernences pointing to how it has been viewed through the centuries Walker gives no less than 99. But Walker takes on practically everything: fatherhood, romance, Osiris, martyrs, Christmas, Incest, Incubus, Withhunts, Mithra...

Whenever I smell a red herring in both certain debates and the official records of dominant systems my first check-in is with Walker's encyclopedia. The old saying remains true: the victors get to write, and rewrite, history.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Womans-Encyclopedia-of-Myths-and-Secrets/Barbara-G-Walker/e/9780062509253

Terreson
Jul/26/2010, 5:44 pm Link to this post Send Email to Terreson   Send PM to Terreson
 


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