After I did my mushroom post, I started making dinner. This is difficult to describe for those who haven’t been following the details, but I’ve been interested in folk symbols in indigenous European embroidery. Something has been pulling me toward it and telling me it’s important. It’s preserved in Slavic regions but it was once pan-European, and I’m being pulled to recover it. I sliced into these Brussels Sprouts and immediately noticed the shape inside looked like Slavic Mother Earth goddess Makosh. So I looked for an image to show my fiancé and was shocked when I couldn’t find the one I was looking for but the one I found was MORE similar! It just seems to me that I’m being pulled ever closer to the divine in the Earth and nature and therein lies the real TRUTH of our indigenous religion. It’s not dogma. It’s eternal renewal of life 🌱

This lovely townhall in Holland is now a happy place. People marry there and when the weather is nice people eat and drink on the terraces of the restaurants there. Long forgotten seem the days of witchhunting in the 16th century. Although witchhunting was never as big in Holland as in other North(Western)-European countries there was witchhunting here too. The attic of this townhall was used to imprison women who were suspects of witchcraft. They were tortured and burned alive in front of the townhall. Fortunately these days are long gone! I always think about these women when i see this townhall and value my own freedom. There is nothing better than freedom!

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The concept of intermediaries/priests/popes/middlemen, came in with Abrahamism.

And although in more recent times, some Christians claim to have a personal relationship with their Christian god, still, the existence of holy books, and the church hierarchy of popes, and priests serves the purpose of intermediaries/middlemen between the Christian/Abrahamic God, and the people.

Some may argue, and say that the old world pagan cultures did in fact have intermediaries, which were the shamans, seers, sages, wizards, witches, cunning folk, druids, volkhvs, etc...

To make it easier I will refer to all of these different names collectively as shamans both males & females. I am not a scholar of this subject. I’m only sharing my current understanding based on all of the information I’ve absorbed, and all I’ve learned over the years.

My personal reply to this comparison between the pagan shamans, and Abrahamic priests would be that they cannot be compared, for they are not the same.