Blimey! That was quick. Nice work, Michelle!MichelleH wrote:Not a bad idea at all.......War Arrow wrote:Michelle (assuming it was you) as the forum has recently expanded beyond the traditional guest book, discussion forum, and events, sections - how about an everything else, all-encompassing off-topic section in which we can have polls on avatars, discussions such as this one, football, hairdos, off-topic, gags and funnies, cool links, fave films or whatever - a sort of run-off valve for this section if you see what I mean. Just a thought.
Sex in the palaeolithic period
Moderators: MichelleH, Minimalist, JPeters
Ishtar wrote:Hi Johnjohn wrote:1. Ishtar, in her political path, is running as much of a political/sexist number as the men she accuses. And, by the way, Ishtar, I partially agree with you. However, every man and every woman has free access to this forum. My question to you is why is there not more participation from women? Your insinuation - to me - is that they are somehow denied. Talk to me.
john
I'm talking to you.
My view is that this is nothing to do with politics or some sort of misplaced feminism. I'm talking about commonly agreed standards which communities observe to make each other feel comfortable enough to participate. When segments within a community don't observe those standards, it's perceived as a hostile and aggressive act by those most affected.
For instance, we have a commonly held standard that we don't steal from one another. So if someone steals your car, you feel violated and affronted by that person and their act.
Similarly, the sexually explicit content on some (OK, mainly one, but we've agreed to talk in general terms) of the posts falls way below commonly held standards. So if the moderators uphold this, it is perceived (in this case, by women) as a hostile attack. The underlying (possibly even subliminal) message to women is that they are not welcome in this arena.
Now you can say that women shouldn't think like that. But would you similarly say to the car owner that 'all property is theft' and that he should hand over his keys to the car thief?
Life isn't a free-for-all. Even Nature isn't free - she has rules. If she didn't, we'd all be in chaos, in fact, we wouldn't exist because the conditions for us to do so could not have been created and sustained.
Similarly, in order for this forum, this community to be sustained, there has to be commonly agreed and observed rules.
Like someone else said earlier, if you wouldn't say it to your mother, why would you say it here? And as another said, if you wouldn't say it in a business communication, why would say it here?
Ishtar -
I think the discomfort you are talking to has to do with the schism between a society and a civilisation.
In my opinion, a society is by nature inclusive, and a civilisation exclusive as regards "aberrant" behavior.
For example, read the translations of the Nag Hammadi gospels and then compare them to the archival history of the Spanish Inquisition. Thus went the transition from an early Christian society to a later Christian civilisation.
By the way, I have no religious axe to grind here; the above is just a particularly apt example. And there are many of them.
A society simply agrees. This is not a naive statement, as that agreement may include banishment or bloodshed. In any case, both discussion and and action tend to be face to face, party to party.
A civilisation tends to operate in the third person. Don't like tribe X? Send out the army. Make, and enforce laws, and taxation. Segregate the population into socio/economic/sexual classes - call them castes - to maintain overall ongoing control.
The Roman chestnut of providing the common people with "bread and circuses" is an early, classic (no pun intended) example.
So, my point of disagreement is this. You seemed to following a "civilized", rather than a "societal" methodology to deal with behavior aberrant to the general tone of this forum.
Which, to me, runs absolutely counter to your stated shamanic worldview.
john
"Man is a marvellous curiosity. When he is at his very, very best he is sort of a low-grade nickel-plated angel; at his worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm."
Mark Twain
Mark Twain
-
Rokcet Scientist
I'm just putting a real pic of myself for a bit, for War Arrow, who was thinking that I'm a Japanese cartoon character.
War, this is me and I live in Sevenoaks.
DayBrown, if those who know don't speak, and those who speak don't know - then how do we interpret the fact that you go on and on and on and on so much about sex all the time?
War, this is me and I live in Sevenoaks.
DayBrown, if those who know don't speak, and those who speak don't know - then how do we interpret the fact that you go on and on and on and on so much about sex all the time?
Last edited by Ishtar on Sun Nov 04, 2007 1:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
Ishtar of Ishtar's Gate and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
Hi John
I've read the Nag Hammadi gospels and totally understand how the Roman Catholic Church evolved from that simple Gnostic mysticism. But that took place over hundreds of years.
We are dealing with the present moment and current societal norms. Would you find it acceptable for someone to break into your house and start having sex with your wife? Would you pat him on the back and say "That's OK. That's the sort of thing people did in Babylonian times."
We can discuss openly the sexual mores of other civilisations, where relevant, but withn the context of the standards of our own, so as not to alienate others.
But if we bang on and on and on about sex ad infinitum, we become a sex chat room and not a serious forum for academic debate.
By the way, there are very firm rules in shamanism as shamanism works with Nature, and nothing is more structured and organised than Nature which uses the law of evolution to reject any aberrant organism. Everything hangs together by the Rule of Sound. If the sound changes, so does the structure. That's why mantras are so powerful.
I've read the Nag Hammadi gospels and totally understand how the Roman Catholic Church evolved from that simple Gnostic mysticism. But that took place over hundreds of years.
We are dealing with the present moment and current societal norms. Would you find it acceptable for someone to break into your house and start having sex with your wife? Would you pat him on the back and say "That's OK. That's the sort of thing people did in Babylonian times."
We can discuss openly the sexual mores of other civilisations, where relevant, but withn the context of the standards of our own, so as not to alienate others.
But if we bang on and on and on about sex ad infinitum, we become a sex chat room and not a serious forum for academic debate.
By the way, there are very firm rules in shamanism as shamanism works with Nature, and nothing is more structured and organised than Nature which uses the law of evolution to reject any aberrant organism. Everything hangs together by the Rule of Sound. If the sound changes, so does the structure. That's why mantras are so powerful.
Ishtar of Ishtar's Gate and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
Wooah! Hail Kentish sister - I lived in both Maidstone and Chatham for a long time, still have many friends there and also in Sevenoaks. If your post is delivered by a tall, skinny woman called Sue, say hello from me.Ishtar wrote:I'm just putting a real pic of myself for a bit, for War Arrow, who was thinking that I'm a Japanese cartoon character.
War, this is me and I live in Sevenoaks.
DayBrown, if those who know don't speak, and those who speak don't know - then how do we interpret the fact that you go on and on and on and on so much about sex all the time?
Not wishing to appear like I'm ganging up, but I have to admit Daybrown -I'm afraid I tend to skip some of your posts. This is not necessarily because I doubt the validity of any point you may be making (upon which I am not sure I am entirely qualified to comment anyway) but simply because they are phrased in such a way as to present the impression that whatever the point may be is almost subsidiary to what really does (whether intentional or not) present itself as an obssession, as manifest in phrases like "I know a dildo when I see one". By this I mean I find it very difficult to see beyond the surface grammar, I'm afraid. I suppose the best analogy I can make is if I were to tailor my every comment with regards to some hypothetical struggle between ruling elites and commoners. In some instances it would apply, but in others it would be of little or no relevance, and whilst I realise I may only be referring here to a cross section of your posts, it does seem as though there was a time during which I would scroll down each of your mini-essays and inevitably come to the customary references to Amazons and "men knowing what's good for them" usually about two-thirds of the way down the page.
Seeing as all I ever do myself is (arguably) bang on about Mexico (being generally underinformed beyond the confines of the subject), perhaps I'm in no position to offer comment. For the record, this is partially why I remain absent from many threads. I find the HNS debates (for example) interesting, but am rarely in a position to add anything of value. Similarly, even if I am in a position to add something, I tend not to if the thread has turned into another commentary upon the sex-aids of the ancients etc, because simply I find the topic becomes rather draining. Not shocking, or challenging, just draining.
I'm not keen on confrontations, and would rather not post at all than get involved in slanging matches of any kind. The above is simply my viewpoint and is not to say that you don't know what you're talking about (this is not an accusation I would level at you) - however, I do believe that Ishtar has a valid point here, so I thought it might at least aid a mutual understanding of the situation if I added my own perspective for whatever that may be worth. From the general tone of your posts you come across as being a pleasant and likeable chap, I just wish you'd tone it down somewhat and thus give whatever your points may be a little more room to breath.
Au Contraire, if we are to understand ancient peoples, we must disabuse ourselves of our Christian socialization and get past the prudery, which is part of why my tagline is what it is.
The Bishops began burning witches in the 5th century because of their family planning and gynecological services. I dont doubt for a minute that they would take a sniff, and being familiar, like experts on cheese, of just what they were dealing with. Do doctors do this? The odor of infection is considered, but rarely. But before the Christian era, the pagans were not ashamed of their bodies, and when they had a genital lesion, brought it in for treatment.
Part of the cosmological change in the 5th century was that because Roman roads sped travel, men who had formerly died of some infection en route, now survived to spread STDs in town, and the clap in particular was far more deadly to women. The witches didnt know what they were dealing with, and were therefore disempowered.
In like manner the temples to the goddesses, which had always been extremely profitable and economically powerful, lost the income as well as the credibility from the end of temple prostitution. This created a power vacuum filled by jackasses, and their misogyny has been with us ever since.
Whatever the customs of monogamy were from the paleolithic, we all agree that lots of men took every opportunity to screw around on wives. The fact that 20-25% of the Y chromosome lines done come from where the birth records say is clue that while women lied, they had someone to lie with them.
But then along comes HIV, and the long tradition of hypocrisy is now getting wives and faithful husbands killed. People could turn a blind eye to bastardy and cuckholdry, but that's kinda hard to do with *death*.
So- this is making people rethink their Christian family values, and to do that, take a look at the ancient and anthropological record to see what mite work more reliably. But to understand those cultures, you have to put aside your sexual sensibilities.
If you think my tagline is offensive, just wait. Watch what your daughters do. Young women are coming to realize that young men today are like most other things: abundant, cheap, and poorly made. Studies have shown how readily young men will agree to meet a strange woman in a hotelroom. Does anyone trust them to use condoms properly?
So- it is an incremental process, where the young women buy fluff bunny books on wicca & magic, hoping for some clue that will give them more control over the risks they face if they ever do get mated to a young man. But the next step, as they become more educated and mature, is to approach the web looking for more detailed and diverse information.
I dunno what they are getting off the web, but I am now hearing some questions about the use of psychedelic potions, which is in the same class as sex. Unless you do the potions, you dont understand why the artwork is as it is.
Likewise, you dont understand what's going on with Enkidu in "Gilgamesh", or see how a woman used her sex to *tame* a Neanderthal, and brought him into the city to the sacred bed of Ishtar. Nor would you understand that bed had a woman who incarnated the goddess for that sacred sexual ritual.
The temple at Sabatinovka shows us the same kind of ritual bed, And on it a set of goddesses morphed with dildos. Moldavia, 4800 BC.
I dont doubt for a moment that there are women today who are reconstructing that ritual, and will, as a result, get enuf support from men of talent and character to also reconstruct the great economic empire that the temples to Ishtar formerly owned and ran.
While the numbers now engaged are trivial and way below the radar, if the economy has a serious crisis in which women loose their investments, The temple models are going to be the quickest, and safest, way for them to regain some degree of economic security.
I am not asking you to change your opinion, sensibilities, or customs; but if you can think about this, then as these cultural changes unfold, you'll be much more able to understand what is going on. It went on before.
The Bishops began burning witches in the 5th century because of their family planning and gynecological services. I dont doubt for a minute that they would take a sniff, and being familiar, like experts on cheese, of just what they were dealing with. Do doctors do this? The odor of infection is considered, but rarely. But before the Christian era, the pagans were not ashamed of their bodies, and when they had a genital lesion, brought it in for treatment.
Part of the cosmological change in the 5th century was that because Roman roads sped travel, men who had formerly died of some infection en route, now survived to spread STDs in town, and the clap in particular was far more deadly to women. The witches didnt know what they were dealing with, and were therefore disempowered.
In like manner the temples to the goddesses, which had always been extremely profitable and economically powerful, lost the income as well as the credibility from the end of temple prostitution. This created a power vacuum filled by jackasses, and their misogyny has been with us ever since.
Whatever the customs of monogamy were from the paleolithic, we all agree that lots of men took every opportunity to screw around on wives. The fact that 20-25% of the Y chromosome lines done come from where the birth records say is clue that while women lied, they had someone to lie with them.
But then along comes HIV, and the long tradition of hypocrisy is now getting wives and faithful husbands killed. People could turn a blind eye to bastardy and cuckholdry, but that's kinda hard to do with *death*.
So- this is making people rethink their Christian family values, and to do that, take a look at the ancient and anthropological record to see what mite work more reliably. But to understand those cultures, you have to put aside your sexual sensibilities.
If you think my tagline is offensive, just wait. Watch what your daughters do. Young women are coming to realize that young men today are like most other things: abundant, cheap, and poorly made. Studies have shown how readily young men will agree to meet a strange woman in a hotelroom. Does anyone trust them to use condoms properly?
So- it is an incremental process, where the young women buy fluff bunny books on wicca & magic, hoping for some clue that will give them more control over the risks they face if they ever do get mated to a young man. But the next step, as they become more educated and mature, is to approach the web looking for more detailed and diverse information.
I dunno what they are getting off the web, but I am now hearing some questions about the use of psychedelic potions, which is in the same class as sex. Unless you do the potions, you dont understand why the artwork is as it is.
Likewise, you dont understand what's going on with Enkidu in "Gilgamesh", or see how a woman used her sex to *tame* a Neanderthal, and brought him into the city to the sacred bed of Ishtar. Nor would you understand that bed had a woman who incarnated the goddess for that sacred sexual ritual.
The temple at Sabatinovka shows us the same kind of ritual bed, And on it a set of goddesses morphed with dildos. Moldavia, 4800 BC.
I dont doubt for a moment that there are women today who are reconstructing that ritual, and will, as a result, get enuf support from men of talent and character to also reconstruct the great economic empire that the temples to Ishtar formerly owned and ran.
While the numbers now engaged are trivial and way below the radar, if the economy has a serious crisis in which women loose their investments, The temple models are going to be the quickest, and safest, way for them to regain some degree of economic security.
I am not asking you to change your opinion, sensibilities, or customs; but if you can think about this, then as these cultural changes unfold, you'll be much more able to understand what is going on. It went on before.
Any god watching me hasta be bored, and needs to get a life.
You've come up with a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.daybrown wrote:Au Contraire, if we are to understand ancient peoples, we must disabuse ourselves of our Christian socialization and get past the prudery, which is part of why my tagline is what it is.
Please support this with references. I don't think it's true. Imho, the Church began to burn witches because they saw their powers as a threat to their own, and no wonder. The church men didn't have any power, whereas the witches had the spirits. Of course they had to eradicated.daybrown wrote:
The Bishops began burning witches in the 5th century because of their family planning and gynecological services.
daybrown wrote: I dont doubt for a minute that they would take a sniff, and being familiar, like experts on cheese, of just what they were dealing with. Do doctors do this? The odor of infection is considered, but rarely. But before the Christian era, the pagans were not ashamed of their bodies, and when they had a genital lesion, brought it in for treatment.
Great...but I think we all got your point the first time. Can we move on? Why are you so stuck on this point? Is it because you get a rush to the groin every time when you talk about it?
Again, please support with references. Otherwise, if's just fantamagorical blatherings. I'm sure the witches would have known how to deal with STDs. It's modern medicine that cannot cope with disease because it doesn't understand about Nature, the province of the witches.daybrown wrote: Part of the cosmological change in the 5th century was that because Roman roads sped travel, men who had formerly died of some infection en route, now survived to spread STDs in town, and the clap in particular was far more deadly to women. The witches didnt know what they were dealing with, and were therefore disempowered.
No, that's not the story of temple prostitution. The church wiped out all the temple prostitutes or female devotees of Vesta. The only ones who stayed alive did it by making a deal with the church. They could continue to be devotees of Vesta and stay in the temple, but they had to celibate - thus the term "vestal virgins". Otherwise, they were killed. It was nothing to do with STDs.daybrown wrote: In like manner the temples to the goddesses, which had always been extremely profitable and economically powerful, lost the income as well as the credibility from the end of temple prostitution. This created a power vacuum filled by jackasses, and their misogyny has been with us ever since.
daybrown wrote: Whatever the customs of monogamy were from the paleolithic, we all agree that lots of men took every opportunity to screw around on wives. The fact that 20-25% of the Y chromosome lines done come from where the birth records say is clue that while women lied, they had someone to lie with them.
But then along comes HIV, and the long tradition of hypocrisy is now getting wives and faithful husbands killed. People could turn a blind eye to bastardy and cuckholdry, but that's kinda hard to do with *death*.
Unsupported opinion.
Daybrown, this is just unsupported, meandering drivel. OK.. I'm getting bored now...daybrown wrote: So- this is making people rethink their Christian family values, and to do that, take a look at the ancient and anthropological record to see what mite work more reliably. But to understand those cultures, you have to put aside your sexual sensibilities.
If you think my tagline is offensive, just wait. Watch what your daughters do. Young women are coming to realize that young men today are like most other things: abundant, cheap, and poorly made. Studies have shown how readily young men will agree to meet a strange woman in a hotelroom. Does anyone trust them to use condoms properly?
Don't you just love saying 'fluff bunny' Daybrown? Doesn't it just give you a lovely tingling feeling?daybrown wrote: So- it is an incremental process, where the young women buy fluff bunny
Yawn .....yes, and that's not stating the obvious is it?daybrown wrote: books on wicca & magic, hoping for some clue that will give them more control over the risks they face if they ever do get mated to a young man. But the next step, as they become more educated and mature, is to approach the web looking for more detailed and diverse information.
It would take a pretty stupid women to use magic mushrooms instead of the Pill as contraception. Come off it, Daybrown. You just like talking about sex 'cos it gives you a hard on.daybrown wrote: I dunno what they are getting off the web, but I am now hearing some questions about the use of psychedelic potions, which is in the same class as sex. Unless you do the potions, you dont understand why the artwork is as it is.
Of course we understand that Enkidu was civilised by a sacred temple prostitute. Why wouldn't we? Oh yes, I see....you just like to talk about it. It gives you wet dreams....sorry, do go on.daybrown wrote:
Likewise, you dont understand what's going on with Enkidu in "Gilgamesh", or see how a woman used her sex to *tame* a Neanderthal, and brought him into the city to the sacred bed of Ishtar. Nor would you understand that bed had a woman who incarnated the goddess for that sacred sexual ritual.
In your dreams, big boy. Only in your endless wet dreams..daybrown wrote: I am not asking you to change your opinion, sensibilities, or customs; but if you can think about this, then as these cultural changes unfold, you'll be much more able to understand what is going on. It went on before.
Last edited by Ishtar on Sun Nov 04, 2007 3:44 pm, edited 3 times in total.
Ishtar of Ishtar's Gate and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
Sex is not enlightenment. But- the neurological changes during orgasm can result in it. The ancient record says so, the modern neurology explains a lot about how it can produce an altered state of consciousness. I dont try to speak about how that is done, nor does Vatsyayana; altho mutual simultaneous orgasm seems consistent on where he's coming from. But the issue a lot like trying to explain sex to virgins. what you can *say* is rather pointless.Ishtar wrote: DayBrown, if those who know don't speak, and those who speak don't know - then how do we interpret the fact that you go on and on and on and on so much about sex all the time?
The other factor is that there have always been two ways to control men: sex or violence. Pick one. The latter has led to nukes and WMD, so, I try to look at the other choice. Distasteful as that is, it dont get people killed.
Those who speak come before us in the media with economic support and the profit motive behind them. I'm nobody nowhere, and its easy to ignore what I have to say. I am not selling a book not going on a lecture tour, not going to appear on TV, or found a religion.
I do try to draw on the archaeological record to see clearly what was in order to see more clearly what will be, whether we like it or not. I caught a clue last nite, a few minutes of "Saturday Nite Live", of this big black character, (in drag?), holding up a barbie doll- that was carefully decked out like a street whore. I dont think they hadda do much to the Barbi wardrobe to get the effect. But "she" was saying that this is what girls now are being raised to be.
Its not upta me, but I've lived long enuf to see the change in Barbi. When Barbi first came out, girls could fantacize that some attractive young man would come along to provide them with all the upscale tokens. But now, the only young men who make that kind of money are pimps.
Any god watching me hasta be bored, and needs to get a life.
Yawn, yawn, yawn.....
Wake me up when you've finished patronising me.
Wake me up when you've finished patronising me.
Ishtar of Ishtar's Gate and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
<Please support this with references. I don't think it's true. Imho, the Church began to burn witches because they saw their powers as a threat to their own, and no wonder. The church men didn't have any power, whereas the witches had the spirits. Of course they had to eradicated.>
Gibbon for one. He calculated the population of the Roman empire in the era of Augustus, IIRC, at 100 million. But he sees the decline, which was already known, and suggests that this is why Augustus became what we now call a "family values" guy with a number of incentives to inicrease the birth rate.
Gibbon also reports that when the Romans took Britain, the population was 12 million, but when the Romans left, it was 4. "Silphium" was commonly thot to be a primary reason. Reports are that it was a member of the carrot & fennel famiily. Well, if you look up fennel and fenugreek, you find out that they contain phytoestrogen and diosgenin. Which are the active ingredients in the birth control pill.
http://www.sisterzeus.com/qaluse.htm tells us that Queen Anne's lace is a member of the carrot family. I grew quite a bit of it this year. But its also noteworthy to consider that the Latin word for 'witch' meant "poisoner". To be sure, the witches were another power base the Bishops and government wanted to eradicate, but they were also the midwives, so they were shooting themselves in the foot.
All that marvelous marble work should have been used to improve agricultural production and better nutrition. But the male ego being what it is... the bishops blamed the witches for the decline in the population. Gibbon makes clear that the legions became slave raiders going across the Danube and Rhine so much that that region was depopulated but for the most violent barbarian groups, most notably the "Allmani" or 'all men' united by one idea, from all other tribes, of seeking vengeance.
Modern archeology supports Gibbon in this, finding a vibrant barbarian culture with cities that was 200 or more miles from the Roman frontier. But all built in timber frame, so it was only the utilization of magnetometers locating the burnt stubs of the posts to reveal the cities.
I read another posted report saying that the condition of the slave skeletons in the graveyards deteriorated after Christianity took over. They said the women were so malnourished they would have been infertile.
Course, from the standpoint of the slavemasters, if Jesus was going to reward the slaves in heaven, there was no reason to do so on earth. But whether from malnutrition or merely women not wanting to bother with babies who would only grow up to suffer slavery, Gibbon reports that large estates were increasingly abandoned because of the slave shortage.
He also reports that to cover the decline in production, the Dinari, which was originally pure silver, was corrupted with ever more lead, until it was down to just 5% silver, and that they even produced a sandwich coin that had a copper core faced with silver.
It all fits a problem Diamond outlines in "Collapse". What we see is that as the resource base shrinks, the power elites, rather than cutting back to buy time to look for solutions, actually increases exploitation of all lower classes until nobody but the power elite has any investment in the system and there is collapse, anarchy, and/or revolution.
I cant evaluate how effective the witch's family planning services were, but its a no brainer to see the bishops scapegoat the witches saying they were the cause in the low birth rates.
I dont think moderns appreciate how much forest was in ancient Europe, and there is still quite a bit of it. But with primitive farming tools, it was only possible to work the most fertile alleuvial floodplains, and the upland forests were left alone.
Soil cores pulled in Greece show how the early 7th century BC pioneered the river valleys, but then subsequent generations began moving up onto the benches of the valley walls. These thin soils (which I see in the Ozarks) play out after only a couple generations, and the soil cores show the eroded soil washing down into the river bottoms.
If you look at 19th century National Geos, you can see how the land in the Levant, Greece, and the Roman mediterranean was nothing but rocks with goats and brush. That didnt change until the introduction of modern chemical fertilizers and the efforts to plant and maintain trees.
Most of the Roman empire was played out ground by the time Christianity rose to power, and people thot it was due to apostasy. Again, witches were even blamed for the infertility of the land.
There still exist some medieval letters to the bishop explaining how brother stud muffin had been 'bewitched' and kept by the witches during the whole of the growing season. Then, when they didnt need his ass anymore, sent him back to the monastery. Do we have to go into how the witches motivated him with sexual services, or do you have some other idea in mind? The witches didnt have gold. The Church did.
Look at the misogynistic myth about witches and see all the sexual acts that were associated with them. That was not something that was invented during the rise of Christianity, but rather a distortion of what had gone on for millennia.
The Latin word "pagan" after all, meant 'rural'. Since I was born on a farm, I have a different sensibility than those raised in cities that many regard as crude, but which the pagans I know use deliberately as part of their own cultural identity. I still live in the same kind of rural & forested world the ancient witches did, I saw sex, birth, life, and death, sometimes killing the animal myself, and then cutting a carcass up. It is all, from sex to meat, of one continuous universe that is not mediated by clerics.
Fluff bunnies dont do well out here, and I doubt real ancient witches would have had much time for them either.
Gibbon for one. He calculated the population of the Roman empire in the era of Augustus, IIRC, at 100 million. But he sees the decline, which was already known, and suggests that this is why Augustus became what we now call a "family values" guy with a number of incentives to inicrease the birth rate.
Gibbon also reports that when the Romans took Britain, the population was 12 million, but when the Romans left, it was 4. "Silphium" was commonly thot to be a primary reason. Reports are that it was a member of the carrot & fennel famiily. Well, if you look up fennel and fenugreek, you find out that they contain phytoestrogen and diosgenin. Which are the active ingredients in the birth control pill.
http://www.sisterzeus.com/qaluse.htm tells us that Queen Anne's lace is a member of the carrot family. I grew quite a bit of it this year. But its also noteworthy to consider that the Latin word for 'witch' meant "poisoner". To be sure, the witches were another power base the Bishops and government wanted to eradicate, but they were also the midwives, so they were shooting themselves in the foot.
All that marvelous marble work should have been used to improve agricultural production and better nutrition. But the male ego being what it is... the bishops blamed the witches for the decline in the population. Gibbon makes clear that the legions became slave raiders going across the Danube and Rhine so much that that region was depopulated but for the most violent barbarian groups, most notably the "Allmani" or 'all men' united by one idea, from all other tribes, of seeking vengeance.
Modern archeology supports Gibbon in this, finding a vibrant barbarian culture with cities that was 200 or more miles from the Roman frontier. But all built in timber frame, so it was only the utilization of magnetometers locating the burnt stubs of the posts to reveal the cities.
I read another posted report saying that the condition of the slave skeletons in the graveyards deteriorated after Christianity took over. They said the women were so malnourished they would have been infertile.
Course, from the standpoint of the slavemasters, if Jesus was going to reward the slaves in heaven, there was no reason to do so on earth. But whether from malnutrition or merely women not wanting to bother with babies who would only grow up to suffer slavery, Gibbon reports that large estates were increasingly abandoned because of the slave shortage.
He also reports that to cover the decline in production, the Dinari, which was originally pure silver, was corrupted with ever more lead, until it was down to just 5% silver, and that they even produced a sandwich coin that had a copper core faced with silver.
It all fits a problem Diamond outlines in "Collapse". What we see is that as the resource base shrinks, the power elites, rather than cutting back to buy time to look for solutions, actually increases exploitation of all lower classes until nobody but the power elite has any investment in the system and there is collapse, anarchy, and/or revolution.
I cant evaluate how effective the witch's family planning services were, but its a no brainer to see the bishops scapegoat the witches saying they were the cause in the low birth rates.
I dont think moderns appreciate how much forest was in ancient Europe, and there is still quite a bit of it. But with primitive farming tools, it was only possible to work the most fertile alleuvial floodplains, and the upland forests were left alone.
Soil cores pulled in Greece show how the early 7th century BC pioneered the river valleys, but then subsequent generations began moving up onto the benches of the valley walls. These thin soils (which I see in the Ozarks) play out after only a couple generations, and the soil cores show the eroded soil washing down into the river bottoms.
If you look at 19th century National Geos, you can see how the land in the Levant, Greece, and the Roman mediterranean was nothing but rocks with goats and brush. That didnt change until the introduction of modern chemical fertilizers and the efforts to plant and maintain trees.
Most of the Roman empire was played out ground by the time Christianity rose to power, and people thot it was due to apostasy. Again, witches were even blamed for the infertility of the land.
There still exist some medieval letters to the bishop explaining how brother stud muffin had been 'bewitched' and kept by the witches during the whole of the growing season. Then, when they didnt need his ass anymore, sent him back to the monastery. Do we have to go into how the witches motivated him with sexual services, or do you have some other idea in mind? The witches didnt have gold. The Church did.
Look at the misogynistic myth about witches and see all the sexual acts that were associated with them. That was not something that was invented during the rise of Christianity, but rather a distortion of what had gone on for millennia.
The Latin word "pagan" after all, meant 'rural'. Since I was born on a farm, I have a different sensibility than those raised in cities that many regard as crude, but which the pagans I know use deliberately as part of their own cultural identity. I still live in the same kind of rural & forested world the ancient witches did, I saw sex, birth, life, and death, sometimes killing the animal myself, and then cutting a carcass up. It is all, from sex to meat, of one continuous universe that is not mediated by clerics.
Fluff bunnies dont do well out here, and I doubt real ancient witches would have had much time for them either.
Any god watching me hasta be bored, and needs to get a life.
Ishtar wrote:Hi John
I've read the Nag Hammadi gospels and totally understand how the Roman Catholic Church evolved from that simple Gnostic mysticism. But that took place over hundreds of years.
We are dealing with the present moment and current societal norms. Would you find it acceptable for someone to break into your house and start having sex with your wife? Would you pat him on the back and say "That's OK. That's the sort of thing people did in Babylonian times."
We can discuss openly the sexual mores of other civilisations, where relevant, but withn the context of the standards of our own, so as not to alienate others.
But if we bang on and on and on about sex ad infinitum, we become a sex chat room and not a serious forum for academic debate.
By the way, there are very firm rules in shamanism as shamanism works with Nature, and nothing is more structured and organised than Nature which uses the law of evolution to reject any aberrant organism. Everything hangs together by the Rule of Sound. If the sound changes, so does the structure. That's why mantras are so powerful.
Ishtar -
Are you managing shamanism to appease civilisation, or managing civilisation to appease shamanism?
"Banging on and on about sex ad infinitum....."
I agree completely about that point. I'm after a larger point.
"and nothing is more structured and organised than Nature which uses the law of evolution to reject any aberrant organism."
WHOA.
First of all, evolution is precisely and exactly and only composed of many, many "aberrant organisms" which were more successful than their predecessors.
Their predecessors died, they lived.
I encourage you to look at the societal reflection and/or serendipity of this genetic process, as a measure of ultimate survival within the last 500k years of evolution of the various species of Homo.
Lares and penates included.
Now, I know I'm singing to the choir here, but you can't have it both ways.
john
"Man is a marvellous curiosity. When he is at his very, very best he is sort of a low-grade nickel-plated angel; at his worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm."
Mark Twain
Mark Twain
John, I think I'm genuinely not understanding your larger point here. I can't see the link you're making between civilisation and shamanism and how it relates to this topic.john wrote: Ishtar -
Are you managing shamanism to appease civilisation, or managing civilisation to appease shamanism?
Could you please have another go at explaining? Sorry.
This may be a matter of definition, and perhaps "aberrant" was the wrong word for me to use. If they evolved from their predecessors, but evolved differently, that may be because the conditions were such that those who evolved in a so-called "aberrant" way were more suited to grow in such conditions, and therefore, they survived. So this is just evolution.john wrote:
First of all, evolution is precisely and exactly and only composed of many, many "aberrant organisms" which were more successful than their predecessors.
But Nature is the visible face of Spirit, the power of this universe. So she rejects all that that doesn't support her wider purpose, (Her own/the Earth's survival) which is why she's now building up to getting rid of us! Think of it like when a foreign substance enters the body. In a healthy body, the immune system would kick in to produce substances to kill it and eject it from the body.
My point was that Nature has rules, as some people (not necessarily your good self) think that to be natural is to be free to do what you like. That's not my experience.
Ishtar of Ishtar's Gate and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
Daybrown - you said that you used Gibbon as a source for your material. That surprised me. Not that I don't think such a great historian should not have his place, but I wouldn't rely on him for this subject. This is because he took his material from 4th and 5th century Roman moralists and was, like most of his time, contemptuous of what he saw as a Middle Ages steeped in superstition - the Dark Ages, in fact. He was definitely a post so-called Enlightenment thinker, and therefore one with little to no understanding about witches.
On a further point, I have a question. As this topc of "Gynaecology down the ages" interests you so much, why don't you start a thread entitled just that? That would mean that your posts on the subject would be in one place where those who wanted to explore your ideas could go if they wanted to. And it would prevent what's happening here, and what seems to happen in pretty well every thread that you contribute to, which is that you go off topic to wax on ad infinitum about your pet subject - women's pussies.
On a further point, I have a question. As this topc of "Gynaecology down the ages" interests you so much, why don't you start a thread entitled just that? That would mean that your posts on the subject would be in one place where those who wanted to explore your ideas could go if they wanted to. And it would prevent what's happening here, and what seems to happen in pretty well every thread that you contribute to, which is that you go off topic to wax on ad infinitum about your pet subject - women's pussies.
Ishtar of Ishtar's Gate and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
Oh brother.
To recycle part of a sentence from my previous post:
And by the way, I too was raised on a farm and was thus up to my armpits in blood and guts until the age of about 10 when my dad managed to get a job that paid more than about three quid a week.
This is reminding me somewhat of a good point made against Arch (by either Frank or Marduk) that believe it or not, not everyone is purely interested in archaeology simply as a means of proving biblical claims, and I feel the same may apply here.
I've no great objection to The Unofficial History of the Flange so long as I'm not obliged to read it or take an interest so I would say the suggestion made above of limiting such observations as those referred to here to specific threads is a good one. One thing I like about this forum is the occasionally rambling digressions such as when Min or Beagle suddenly start talking about football in the middle of Stone Henge Built By Australians! - I don't like or understand football mind, but you know - a few sentences can provide light relief and harm no-one. When Stone Henge Built By Australians! turns into Stone Henge Built By Australian Men Under The Control Of Women's Bits and then into The Ancients Who Knew What Was Good For 'Em Hurr Hurr Hurr...
...ugh... will to live receding... can't even finish rest of post...[/quote]
To recycle part of a sentence from my previous post:
DB - in response to the suggestion that people might be unwilling to deal with whatever issues you might be trying to raise in these minge-related essays due to the prudery instilled by a christian upbringing, I'm not sure you're in a position to make such judgements of the people on this forum particularly given that objections have already been fairly clearly stated. I for one have not had a christian upbringing and the idea that I am a prude is frankly comical. Were I to post long obssessive essays on the third reich (great uniforms after all, let's not deny it) would I be justified in accusing anyone who objected of being a commie sympathiser?the thread has turned into another commentary upon the sex-aids of the ancients etc... I find the topic becomes rather draining. Not shocking, or challenging, just draining.
And by the way, I too was raised on a farm and was thus up to my armpits in blood and guts until the age of about 10 when my dad managed to get a job that paid more than about three quid a week.
This is reminding me somewhat of a good point made against Arch (by either Frank or Marduk) that believe it or not, not everyone is purely interested in archaeology simply as a means of proving biblical claims, and I feel the same may apply here.
I've no great objection to The Unofficial History of the Flange so long as I'm not obliged to read it or take an interest so I would say the suggestion made above of limiting such observations as those referred to here to specific threads is a good one. One thing I like about this forum is the occasionally rambling digressions such as when Min or Beagle suddenly start talking about football in the middle of Stone Henge Built By Australians! - I don't like or understand football mind, but you know - a few sentences can provide light relief and harm no-one. When Stone Henge Built By Australians! turns into Stone Henge Built By Australian Men Under The Control Of Women's Bits and then into The Ancients Who Knew What Was Good For 'Em Hurr Hurr Hurr...
...ugh... will to live receding... can't even finish rest of post...[/quote]