How is the "spiritual" political ?
“It's this question of accessing and exerting power that makes the spiritual political and explains the importance of religion in instituting social controls .
When power hierarchies of men over women, conquerors over aboriginal peoples and rich over poor are at stake , [spiritual leadership] has political ramifications . . . Many indigenous cultures uphold female spiritual leadership -- the Mapuche of Chile, the Karok and Yurok of California, for example, as well as others in South Africa, Siberia, and Indonesia (while imperial and feudal societies generally suppress women's open exercise of religious authority …)
Sacramental dance, drumming, and other ways of entering altered states of consciousness often play an important role in these rites that bypass and subvert socially decreed hierarchies . So do animistic consciousness and nature sanctuaries … Barring women from ritual leadership and religious authority has been a key focus in the drive to undermine female power . Scriptures of the "major" religions often ban priestesses and female religious authority, either explicitly or through stories demonizing their power . Over centuries, male authorities carefully selected and edited the religious canon so as to erase traditions of female leadership ( such as the Gnostic scriptures naming Mary Magdalene as the foremost Christian disciple ) . They also expunged female images of the Divine …
The history of priestesses is full of stories about women defying artificial limits and hierarchies . Again and again, they made a way across multiple obstacles, somehow — to lead, teach, counsel and inspire , often outside of official structures of authority, and usually in spite of them .
In Europe, the Church prohibited women's religious leadership, but it persisted for centuries in witchcraft and folk religion . It also bubbled up among the Beguines and Free Spirit heretics and the Spanish beatas and alumbradas ("blessed" and "illuminated" women) .
Patriarchal colonizers stigmatized cultures that honored female spiritual leadership, calling them “ barbaric “ and “ inferior .” A Han mandarin bragged that he had destroyed thousands of shrines of the wu (female shamans) in southern China . In the 16th century, Spanish colonizers were stunned to see that " old women " led most ceremonies in the Philippines . Missionary priests called these female shamans " diabolical witches " and for centuries struggled to stamp them out . They did manage to catholicize the islands, but the babaylan are still around . [See Carolyn Brewer, Holy Confrontation: Religion, Gender, and Sexuality in the Philippines, 1521—1685, Institute of Women's Studies, Manila, 2001]
The same dynamic played itself out in the colonization of the Americas . The Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions persecuted priestesses and curanderas from Peru to Colombia to Brazil to Mexico, targeting Africans as well as First Nations peoples . In Venezuela, Mauricia la Bruja (" the witch ") faced inquistors for holding gatherings in a cave " to sing and shake the little rattle " A voice from the darkness cried like a bird and told the people to keep the ways of the old ones, says her trial record. [Carlos Contramaestre, La Mudanza del Encanto, Academia Nacional de la Historia and Universidad de los Andes, Caracas, 1979, p. 28]
In the 1600s , the Peruvian Inquisition targeted Quechua and Aymara wise women, who kept Indian religion alive and often acted to empower their communities and to protect them from colonial masters & officials . One priest explained that " they encouraged the whole village to mutiny and riot through their reputation as witches " who challenged church and state authorities . Juana Icha was hauled before inquisitors for making offerings to the ancient deities and healing with their power . An informer told the monks that she " worships the earth and the stars and cries to the water " [Irene Silverblatt, Moon, Sun, and Witches: Gender Ideologies and Class in Inca and Colonial Peru, Princeton, 1987, pp. 184—90]
In 1591 , the Brazilian Inquisition tried the Portuguese witch Maria Goncalves (also known as "Burn-tail") for sexual witchcraft and making powders from forest herbs . She defied the bishop, saying that if he preached from the pulpit, she preached from the cadeira ( priestess-chair ) . Afro-Brazilian priestesses came under heavy fire in the 1700s. Inquisitors tried Antonia Luzia for calling together " black and brown women to adore dances " and seeking the ancestors' help in "dominating the masters' wills" The calundureira Luzia Pinta presided over divinatory dances in Angolan garb and an Indian-style feathered headdress . Tall and heavy, middle-aged — with tribal marks on her cheeks — she danced until she entered trance, her body trembling with power . Then " the winds " entered her ears, she prophesied and answered questions , laid people on the ground and leaped over them to cure them, and prescribed forest leaves for healing while holding a dagger [Laura de Mello e Souza, O Diablo e a Terra de Santa Cruz: Feiticaria e Religiosidade Popular no Brasil Colonial, Companhia das Letras, Sao Paolo, 1987]
In 19th century Iran, the poet Qurrat al-Ayn cut a daring figure in the Baha'i movement, astonishing, impressing and scaring the men around her, as she spoke prophetically for the cause of liberation . Later, an Afghani princess fled an arranged marriage in purdah to live under a tree in India as the mystic sage Hazrat Babajan . She initiated several Sufi masters including Meher Baba . Before her — India offered the precedent of a long line of yoginis and avadhutas , including Karaikkalamba, Mira Bai, and the Kashmiri mystic Lalla . Many of these women refused or broke out of marriages in order to freely pursue spiritual realization, dance and chant the divine names .
Female leadership and symbolism were never choked out of Indigenous traditions — and persisted even as these cultures absorbed elements of colonial religions .
ALL OVER THE WORLD 🌍 women are mounting powerful challenges to masculine domination of religious institutions . . . The case for restoring female authority gathers strength by the breaking of these age-old silences . . . ”
(thank you to Max Dashú for these powerful words and remembrance )