Ecclesiastical records show that these aspects of European women's spiritual culture survived state conversions to Christianity. She examines archaeological finds of women's ritual staffs, many of which symbolize the distaff, a spinning tool that connects with broader European themes of goddesses, fates, witches, and female power. She fleshes out the spiritual culture of the Norse völur (?staff-women?), with their oracular ceremonies, incantations, and ?sitting-out? on the land for wisdom. She shows that the old ethnic names for ?witch? signify wisewoman, prophetess, diviner, healer, shapeshifter, and dreamer.
Swa wiccan taeca?: ?as the witches teach.' So, explained the Old English translator, it was witches who counseled people to ?bring their offerings to earth-fast stone and also to trees and to wellsprings.' His contextualizing commentary on a Frankish penitential reveals the witches? intimate association with animist, earth-based ceremonies, contradicting the now-engrained idea that they were ?wicked.' In a compelling exploration of language, archaeology, early medieval literature and art, Max Dashu pulls the covers off ethnic lore known to few except scholarly specialists.
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