the Women

My research began through the study of six extraordinary women from the Renaissance and medieval eras in northern Italy, identified through genealogical research, ceremonial inquiry, and synchronicity in an ancestral healing project. Their biographies, lands, and legacies inspire through beauty, ferocity, resilience and mystery, and bridge past and future.

top to bottom, L to R: Matilda of Canossa, Matilda of Canossa, Obertenghi family Castle of Arcola in La Spezia,

Adelaide of Susa,

Caterina Sforza,

Bianca Maria Visconti,

Bona of Savoy

Women’s Mystery Traditions

 As elaborated by Michele K. Spike and Selma Sevenhuijesen, Matilda embodied the Frankish/Celtic/Germanic/Indo-European tradition of woman as warrior priestess, a role whose existence was recently proven through advancements in archaeological technology (Davis-Kimball, 2012). All of these women did, and I will investigate the possibility that Matilda and Berta, in particular, also had strong ties to the matriarchal traditions of older tribes on their lands; tribes who were not part of the northern, sky god oriented, warrior cultures but who were a part of what Marija Gimbutas called Old Europe (2007). Several cultures, and possibly multiple lines of women’s mystery traditions—including the tribal warriors, Roman priestess traditions drawing on Greek and Roman oracular practice woven into emergent Christianity, Etruscan, and matriarchal earth-based traditions native to the Italian peninsula since the Paleolithic—came together in these women. Like all priestesses, their power was connected to both heaven and earth.

These women were devotedly spiritual in a transcendental sense. Given their activities and even the artwork they chose for their cathedrals and devotionals, it seems likely their Christian faith was descended from, or at least closer to, Gnostic ideals than the patriarchal Roman Catholicism which would eventually dominate. Research will include coding the imagery I know of and track down any histories of their theological choices and preferred gospels.  Certainly it is known that Matilda wanted women to be allowed to preach in the Church. She argued passionately about it with her close confidant Pope Gregory VII. According to legend he said she could preach after she had built 100 churches, and she died after building 99 (Spike, 2004).

These ancestors were also deeply rooted in the land. They grew up intimately connected to it, hunting, giving and taking life, riding through wild terrain by day and by night on horseback. Researchers at the Heartmath Institute have documented the opening and expansion  effect the magnetic field of the equine heart has on the human field (Baldwin, 2014), and I know from experience how extended time in connection with horses and the land can facilitate mystical experience. I find it difficult to believe that powerful and sensitive women descended from priestess queens would not have had direct spiritual experience with the land in their circumstances, especially given that all of their lands included sites used for women’s ritual continuously since the Paleolithic.

Some of these sites have been in continuous use from prehistory until the present, and are seeing the resurgence of earth-based and women’s wisdom practices which draw on ancient autochthonous wisdom. They offer a source of healing and wisdom with relevance to our current global challenges and crises.

Davis-Kimball, J. (2012). Among our earliest Amazons: Eurasian priestesses and warrior-women. In Labrys, études feministes. July/December 2012. Labrys.net.br/labrys22/archeo/Jeannine_daviskimball.htm