#max dashu

Max Dashu is a prolific writer, feminist, historian-anthropologist who focuses on Womanity (the existence of matriarchal cultures in the past and present).

She is facing macular degeneration, glaucoma and cataracts. If you have the capacity, please donate to help save her eyes and teeth!

Looking for feminist YouTube recs? How about Max Dashu: rogue scholar who created the Suppressed Histories Archive dedicated to "restoring women to cultural memory, political analysis, spiritual awareness through global perspective, over history and across the cultural record, from rock art, archaeology, Indigenous orature, written records, and all testimony."

text: Sapiente Sibillia ("Wise Sibyl") Memory of the prophetic sibyls of Cumae turned, in medieval Italian tradition, into a pagan mountain goddess. Wise Sibillia lived in a subterranean paradise in the high Appenines. Seekers entered it though a grotto with a magical spring-fed lake. Within were caverns full of marvels and treasures, where the immortal Sibillia and her faery women regularly assumed serpent form. They taught the arts of magic. Sibillia blessed those who visited her mountain, and when they returned to the world they passed the rest of their days in joy. It was said that whoever stayed longer than a year could no longer leave, but remained deathless and ageless, feasting in abundance, revelry, and amorous delights. Notecards by Max Dashu Painting by Max Dashu

We all know the archetype and style of the witch woman today, but ever wondered where does it all stem from? Here are some facts behind the historic beginnings of witch style...

Earliest coned shaped hats were found in China. The remains of mummies found there were of sisters accused of practicing magic in Turfan between 4th and 2th century BCE. 

Witches of Subeshi - click here to check out the story and the pics of the mummies. Not for the faint of heart. 

In the Middle Ages in Europe people associated pointed hats with Jewish religion and... Satan. In Hungary for instance during the Witch Hunts, Jewish people were accused of practicing devil worship and magic, and were made to wear the horned skullcap. 

In America, the Quakers were accused by Puritans of being devil worshipers even though the Quaker styled hats back then didn’t match the accusations. 

In medieval Europe, women who brewed beer were considered and accused of being witches, and they actually did wear pointed hats similar to those we see today in media.

A 16th century English prophetess called Mother Shipton wore a tall, conical hat and gave out some surprising predictions regarding the arrival of the internet. Her real name was Ursula and she had a large, crooked nose, hunched back and twisted legs. Her mother had to give her up to the local family because she was completely alone and raised the girl in a cave of all places for two years before securing her a better place. 

Since people mocked her early on because of her appearance, she went back to the forest and near the cave where she was raised and got interested in observing and studying nature. She made remedies from herbs and plants, and later on realized she could predict the future. 

She is believed to have foretold the Black Death, the Great Fire of London, the defeat of the Spanish Armada and the end of the world. And the internet. 

“Around the world, men’s thoughts will fly. Quick as the twinkling of an eye.”

In parts of East Europe before Christianity took off there, the pagan Slavs used to consider female principle of creation and death as rather important. Over time, to end the reign of old Gods and Goddesses, fear based stories and specifically made religious propaganda of women being seduced by the devil turned things around. Back then and even today, women were often called to nurse the elderly or the dying. It didn’t take much to point and accuse the women of being the ones inflicting death itself though. 

According to History.com, the earliest depiction of a witch riding a broom dates to 1451 in the manuscript of a French poet by the name of Martin Le Franc. Two women with brooms are depicted as Waldensians who were a Christian sect that accepted women as priests and were thus in part branded as heretics by the Catholic church. 

A pagan fertility ritual among rural folk in Europe involved jumping over a stick or a broom and or dancing during full moon for the growth of their crops.

Another possible reason why witches were depicted flying with brooms were some historical findings which say that witches made herbal ointments and applied them to their intimate areas or skin to avoid getting an upset stomach and to get high from it. 

“ Priests frequently leveled accusations of sexual magic at European women. The penitential books refer often to love potions. [Rouche, 523] But sexual witchcraft went beyond those, or even the dreaded (and popular) impotence magic. Early medieval writers show that women were using herbal medicine and witchcraft to control their own fertility and childbearing. Bishops in France, Spain, Ireland, England and Germany enacted canons forbidding women to undertake means of controlling their own conception, herbal and ceremonial, as well as to end pregnancies or perform abortions. 

Max Dashu

Gender: Female

Sexuality: Lesbian

DOB: Born 1950

Ethnicity: White - American

“Sisterhood was where our real power lay: changing the way we felt about ourselves, not the way men felt about us; learning to love our female selves and all other women; treating all women as sisters—dropping men's hate-filed -isms about color, size, age, class and nationality.” 

- Sonia Johnson, The Sisterwitch Conspiracy

If you missed the Lesbian Heritages show, you can still see it stream on demand til April 15. Just register and Max Dashu will send you the link.

Regular $20: https://py.pl/1zNJJD

Supporter $25: https://py.pl/1H2wsh

Low-Income: $15: https://py.pl/wkOhd

Lesbian Heritages

International view of woman-loving women, from archaeological finds of paired and embracing women, up to recent history. Khotylevo, Çatal Hüyük, Mycenae, Nayarit, Etruria, Nok, and the Begram ivories. Lesbian love in Hellenistic art, Thai murals, Indian temple carvings, and Japanese erotic books. Some called us mati, zami, hwame, sakhiyani, bofe or sapatão. Lesbians as female rebels: the Amazons, Izumo no Okuni, Juana Asbaje, Louise Michel, Stormé DeLarverie. Women who passed as men in order to practice medicine and roam the world. Punishing the lesbian: in the Bible, Zend Avesta, Laws of Manu; and demonological fantasies. Lesbian musicians (Sotiria Bellou, Chavela Vargas, Ethyl Waters), artists (Edmonia Lewis, Romaine Brooks, Yan María Castro), writers (Emily Dickinson), and actors (Garbo!) Lesbian clubs and scenes in Paris, Berlin, and New York. Lesbian feminists, and Arab, South African, Australian lesbians. And more…