Grandmother Stones of Megalithic Europe The great stone slab sanctuaries, stone circles, and statue-menhirs are the foundational culture of ancient Europe. Max Dashu provides a visual overview of the female menhir-statues of France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Sardinia, even Germany. She lays out their similarities to Algerian and Ethiopian menhir-statues, and explores recurrent symbolism such as the "ancestor-face" and swirl-patterns in megalithic chambers. These early monumental women are omitted by nearly all histories and minimized even in many archaeological surveys. The cultural focus on ancestral mothers suggests matrilineage, while the communal burials in the megalithic womb tombs ("passage graves") reflect a collective clan-oriented society. See the powerful symbolism of the petroglyphs at Gavr'inis, Bru na Boinne, Loughcrew, Bouhôa, and get a taste of the ancient cultures that preceded Greece and Rome by thousands of years. a visual presentation by Max Dashu (digital)

As we approach the Winter Nights, the realm of the Old Goddess, we invoke the pagan Goddess of the witches—Holle, Diana, Befana, Abundia, Andra Mari, Fraw Perchta. We’ll see fatas, faeries, and the “good women who go by night” with the Goddess.
This ancient veneration persisted in Europe, while the bishops fought to suppress it: Norns, the Weird Sisters, Befana, faerie godmothers, Eorthan Mother and her serpents, Sapiente Sibillia, the Baba Yaga, Diana—and the shamanic myth of the witches' flight and ecstatic festival dances.

slideshow by Max Dashu (Carousel)

© 2010 Max Dashu