"As the Witches Teach": Down to the Roots

A Livestream Class with Max Dashu

Time and Room Not Chosen Yet for This Class

Swa wiccan taeca∂: A thousand years ago, an Old English monk condemned people who “bring their offerings to earth-fast stone, and also to trees and to wellsprings—as the witches teach.” He shows that the common people still regarded witches as spiritual teachers, and that their ceremonies were based on reverence for Nature (welle-weorðung and treow-weorðung, the weirding of wells and trees). In the process of trying to stamp out the old ways, priestly authorities unwittingly preserved information about them in their canonical denunciations, and in the earliest inquisitorial manuals. We’ll look at those.

Max Dashu will share information and rare images of authentic wiccen heritages—incantation, consecrated knots, amulets, sacraments of spinning and weaving—that have been sequestrated in obscure medieval texts. The penitential books are a rich (though hostile) source, describing folk observances, healing practices, and herbal potions and rites. They show priests interrogating people “Is there any woman who”… lays tables for the fates; or chants over herbs; or gives “diabolical potions” (contraceptives and abortifacients).

We’ll delve into Irish roots to look at Imbas Forosnai, “the wisdom that illuminates”; the Scandinavian art of Útiseta: “sitting out” on the land for wisdom; and Norse seeresses who travel from homestead to homestead to efla sei∂, “hold ceremony,” entering prophetic ecstasy as the entrancing melodies of vardlokkur are chanted. And we’ll talk about “the women who go by night with the Goddess,” les bonnes dames, the faerie host—or the people who are forever changed when the Queen of Elfame transports them to the Otherworld.