This is not the final editing, we are still tweaking.
This is a free preview of the Introduction for the
Historical Baggage: The Book, Healing History

 

Kathryn:

Kathryn:
I am the organic dark chocolate addicted mamasita. My father always called me a shit stirrer. I prefer the label - Revolutionary. No longer am I walking on eggshells, apologizing for the fact that my research pisses some people off. Everyone worries about political correctness, but the real correctness people should be concerned with are the basic rights of humanity, which have been suppressed by the patriarchal (patriarchal does not equal man) Indo-European culture. I am a researcher of archaeology, ancient linguistics and writing systems, paleo and comparative belief systems, and ancient history. In a sense, I am an ancient tracker, I follow the trails of the ancient ones. The ancient matrilineal (not = to matriarchy) cultures were more concerned with living life, than recording conquerings, taxation, revisionist history and egotistical kingly accounts to leave much of a “written history”. Uncovering the matrilineal history involves teasing out the older accounts from the earliest patriarchal Indo-European revisionist accounts, deciphering the proto-writing system of the matrilineals, understanding their functional artwork, their linguistic transmission and their transmission through time of their symbols. By doing so, my goal is to heal history and restore an egalitarian culture.

Though I explain a wee bit of myself in the introduction, it is simply for the reader to understand where I came from and how I got to this point. This book is not about me or my journey, but the research of the ancient matrilineal cultures juxtaposed against the thousands of years of the patriarchal Indo-European cultures that subjugate women, men and transgenders. I supply the ancient egalitarian context, in hopes that this knowledge will also liberate others from the damages of an oppressive culture.

I saw a quote by a Zuni student many years ago - "When the legends die, dreams die also. And when dreams die, there is no greatness. And when there is not greatness, who will suffer the most? Well, I will tell you - the people. The people who dont know their own shadows, and cannot see their visions clearly. And the ones who dont know themselves pretty well. But someday when you stop and think, you'll see the real image of yourself and the ones that were before you and then you'll see." That is how I feel about the work I do, revealing the ancient matrilineal cultures so that we can see our real image.

I had a hard time growing up, wishing that I was a male, to not be hindered by how a girl is “supposed to behave” and what she can participate in or achieve, or even to be allowed to wear pants to public school in the 60's and 70's. I was a feminine tomboy, wearing skirts and dresses with shorts underneath, participating in the sports that were available at the time. Thankfully, I was raised by a father who let me mow lawns and taught me how to work with tools, which I am naturally drawn to. I kept scoring in the 90 + percentile on the mechanical aspect of those bloody preference tests, causing me to have to take them again because “girls don’t score high in that subject,” so there had to be something wrong. Our patriarchal culture made me feel that as a female, I was what was wrong.

I was not born into or raised in a patriarchal Indo-European Christian religion – I unwittingly chose it. Raised in an atheistic home, I began a search for the “Creative Force” when I was young. Not having much exposure to other faiths, I ended up with a blended faith of non-denominational Christianity with a strong Hebraic background when I was 16. As with everything I do in my life, I don’t do it half assed. I am a researcher by nature and have to know “why” or ”how” for everything. I had many questions about the Tanak/Bible and sought answers beyond the “just have faith” and the “I don’t know” of pastors. I began learning Hebrew and then studied some Greek, to get to the root of some of my questions. Unfortunately, instead of answering all my questions and the clearing up of apparent contradictions, the linguistic understanding created more questions. The more I delved, the more I saw an older Hebraic faith, which my family and I began following. For 10 years we kept biblical feasts and Torah, all the while the questions continued to outnumber the answers that research provided. After a while I resolved that there were too many scribal cooks in the kitchen of the canonized Hebrew text. History became dominated by archaeology and my world began changing radically. I had a major textual upheaval on my hands that required a tremendous amount of multi-disciplinary research to find answers.

I have always been a very independent woman, but I had willingly subjected myself to patriarchal Christianity and somewhat to a very patriarchal Hebraic faith in my spiritual search, not realizing, at the time, the patriarchal Indo-European origins of both Abrahamic faiths. Over the decades I experienced how misogynistic the very foundation of these faiths were. Later, I chaffed at the church telling me that despite all my knowledge, a woman was not allowed to teach in the church, yet these men wanted my notes and research to preach from the pulpits. Cause everyone “knows” that woman was the one to sin, therefore they can’t have authority over men. I resented that the church told me that I had to submit to a husband that hardly even read or knew what was in that bible, especially a man that was verbally and physically abusive. I was repeatedly told that I had to look at his abuse like an illness and had to pray for his healing. I didn’t understand then that the patriarchal good ole boys club included the church leadership. I even tried being more submissive as pastors counseled, to the point of nearly losing myself, which ironically made my husband more violent. Through fearmongering the church tries to control people. Trying to abide by their rule book, I was finally able to secure a divorce and get the hell out of “Dodge”.

Through the research on the Worthless Deities in the Hebrew Text, I became aware of two opposing cultures in the Tanak/Bible: the patriarchal Indo-European and the matrilineal. This awareness actually shed much light on many of the contradictions I saw and questions I had over the decades. The by product tremendously liberated me from the patriarchal Indo-European culture that I had ignorantly accepted. I realized that I was no longer constrained by those patriarchal laws and filed for a divorce. I may be white, but my gender has been enslaved longer than Europeans were capturing slaves in Africa. I decided to not go back to my maiden name, showing that I was not the property of my father, nor keep my last husbands name, which indicated that I was his property, according to the patriarchal Indo-European customs. I chose to use my middle name QannaYahu, a name which I had adopted after my first divorce to replace an unused and disliked middle name, as my last name. This was a sign of my new found independence from the patriarchal slave system, much to the disapproval of the DMV that strenuously wanted me to have a middle name and suggested I go back through the whole name change and social security card process to get one (not happening). I am my own person, not defined by my relationship to the men in my life.

As I continued my research, I was still stewing from the lies and deceptions that patriarchal Indo-Europeanism has imposed on men and women for thousands of years. I needed an outlet, short of walking around town with a sandwich board sign (or worse-getting a Facebook account and venting my research and warnings there), I had to do something about this. Why does our culture accept the lies of patriarchal gender roles? Why can’t we just exist as humans? Gender roles exist because of the patriarchal Indo-European caste system and its religious beliefs. It permeates our Indo-European languages, the history written by the patriarchal scribes and is the cornerstone for the governing and economic systems of most of the world. History is written (and rewritten) by the winners and these warmongering conquers appropriated ideographic language systems of the conquered, creating syllabic and alphabetic languages, removing the meaning from the original languages and with it, the real history. This book is a bridge between the technical reference books and the average reader looking to find some answers to this patriarchal Indo-European oppression.

The patriarchal Indo-European culture has enslaved women (as well as men) for over 6000 years; portraying mothers as dragons and serpents to be slain; the sexual women into whores and prostitutes; the sages and wise women into crones and witches. The homosexuals and transgendered as diseased and deformed. The beliefs of the matrilineal cultures, equal and strong, went underground and became expressed in the beliefs of the folk cultures. So what does it mean to be a person outside of the misogyny of the patriarchally created images? You will see the real image of yourself, in the beautiful images of our ancestresses - the creatresses, the clan mothers, the artisans and wise women, the “Shining Ones” (transgenders) -  the women and men before the vilification and deification. We need to reclaim the beautiful imagery, symbols, terms and ideographs that spoke of our true essence, equality and capabilities. I primarily write this from the perspective of a woman, but these symbols apply to the culture of equality, that of equal men, women and the transgendered.

Historical Baggage is a line of bags that I created, inspired from these histories and artifacts from around the world, taking a purely functional bag, using the language of their ancient symbols and imagery to weave their story in textiles ( I am an artist as well). Transmitting their history, like mothers did to daughters, to become your story. From this research Leviyah (my older daughter) and I decided we needed a book, to share with men and women. Partly therapeutic, but mostly to give a hand to those that have not had the benefit of the educational resources; those that are forced to wear veils or have a part of their sexuality mutilated; those that have been forced into being breeding stock; the sexually slandered and maligned; the people accused of witchcraft, heresy, blasphemy because they did not fit within the misogynistic, patriarchal mould they created to transform their “Stepford” societies into.

This book is just as much for men, because patriarchal Indo-European misogyny needs to be exposed, unlearned and stopped. There are many men that are just as oppressed as women by this system, unless you happen to belong to the racial king / warrior caste or their priestly caste, you are just as vilified or forced to conform to something that goes against your grain. Young boys are forced into the warrior caste or are left behind. Only these days some of it is called sports or the military. The sports heroes still reign supreme. “Geeks” and artists, are derided, often with the same derogatory terms that are applied to women, showing the contempt of the users for any males that don’t tow the patriarchal warrior line. Men that don’t “man up” are pussies, ladies, bitches, queens. etc. The patriarchal second caste, that of the warrior king’s administrator priests has branched to become the double edged sword of religion and politics, which once was one and the same. You can probably add the corporate rulers into this group as well, since the commerce and taxation was originally handled by the priestly administrators.

In ancient Greek misogynistic, patriarchal religion, there is an account of the creation of woman (not a real woman). Zeus, a major Indo-European destroyer and usurper, decides that mankind should be punished for accepting the fire from Prometheus. So he sends a trojan horse, so to speak, in the guise of a woman. Originally she is not named, but later associated with Pandora. She is created from the earth as a beautiful evil, and her gender to be a plague to men forever. “From her is the race of women and female kind; of her is the deadly race and tribe of women who live among mortal men to their great trouble, no helpmates in hateful poverty, but only in wealth.” Each of the gods (and goddesses) contributes to her creation: beauty, charm, they dress her in finery, textile skills, strong desire, sly manners, lies and crafty speech, and the “morals of a bitch.” The deep and total trap was complete and sent to man. She was given a cask, the proverbial Pandora’s Box, which she opened and unleashed a myriad of additional evils on men, as if she was not bad enough.

This is the patriarchal view of women and this is what they create when they remove equality, respect, education, skills and such from the world of women, relegating them to the house to concern themselves with self adornment, treated as a slave and breeding stock. Do you want to see real women? Then treat them as equals, as human beings and be one yourself.

As for the women, working within a patriarchal Indo-European cultural system does not fix the situation, it is still a patriarchal system that will never have equality for all people, especially women.  “For this reason, the more powerful a woman is under patriarchy, the more ‘unsexed’ she becomes in the eyes of others as her female cultural identity recedes beneath the mantle of male-identified power and the masculine images associated with it.” – The Gender Knot, pg. 7.  For those of us in the United States, it does not matter if the 19th Amendment gave women a right to vote. It is still an amendment to a patriarchal Indo-European constitution that constantly needs patches to make it even quasi acceptable. After over 200 years, you would think that we had progressed as a people to create a new constitution that provides the basic rights of humanity for all, regardless of wealth, gender, race, age, religion or sexual preference (have I left anyone out?). Whether it is a country or a company, the patriarchal Indo-European template is founded on slavery and doomed to corruption and suppression.

We don’t need the bullshit pseudo “scholarship” that I keep coming across, primarily written by women, for women, to inspire them against the patriarchy, or sometimes just men in general. As if creating a matriarchy will undo thousands of years of patriarchal slavery. A hierarchical matriarchy is no more healthy than the cancerous, parasitic patriarchy has been. Some of these books are filled with assumptions (and bad ones at that) stated as facts; fucked up “documentation” like stating that bull leaping was depicted in paintings at Catal Huyuk or that writing did not occur before 3000 BCE. The bull leaping frescoes were at Knossos on Crete; and the Neolithic Vinca culture, dating from 5500-4500 BCE exhibits a writing system that carries the foundation of the same symbols that later came to be used in all the surrounding writing systems such as Paleo-Phoenician, Linear A, Cretan, Cypriot and Luwian Hieroglyphics, which gave rise to Greek, Etruscan, Raetic, Glagolitic, Lydian, Lycian, Tifinagh, Hebrew, Aramaic and Runic scripts.  While I could spend my time going through these books and websites, documenting all the fallacies, I would much rather spend it promoting what is real from the outset, what has been consistently attributed through time, from the Neolithic to the present. Not wild ass speculations and catchy one liners that this sensationalist fast food generation thrives on because they are too lazy to do the real research. Or worse, because the real research does not support their bullshit theories.

There is an old Chinese proverb, “When sleeping women wake, mountains move.” I have awoken. We need to awaken the sleeping women, men and transgenders, that have been enslaved by the patriarchal Indo-European cultures. Lets cast off the patriarchal historical baggage, taking up the ancient imagery of the egalitarian matrilineal cultures, freeing ourselves, not only healing history, but our future generations.

 

Leviyah:

I would like to begin with the idea of equality. After a brilliant late night discussion on the way to a seafood boil I began to re-evaluate the words present in so many human rights movements. Dictionaries define Equal as having equal quantity, equal measure and equal value. The next word is often Equalize, which is to make of equal value or balance out. The human reaction is similar. First we define equal, then we attempt to equalize. In mathematics we are taught not to compare apples to oranges and yet we all try to apply mathematical terminology to widely varying human factors. And rather than learning how measure to measure apples to oranges, we instead equalize. Chopping bits of apple, hybridizing oranges, trying to mould all into the same quantifiable image. Failure follows.

I propose instead that no two beings are equal, all are worthy of living and to love is easier than to measure.

The information you will read in this book, brought me freedom to discover this thought. It taught me the false measure of an apple and the intoxicating fallacy of the righteous orange. To live with rules of righteousness leads inevitably to a view of and subsequent judgment/punishment of unrighteousness. For my own part, judgment was harshest when turned inward. I was in my early twenties (earlier twenties I should say) when I recalled the bible verse touting ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ and knew I had a problem. I, as many Christians, always read and thought of the neighbors first, or rather thought of them as proof of righteousness. I did not love myself, at all. Instead there was a well developed framework of judgment, approval/disapproval, and punishment. And I gave to others all that I gave to myself. Because I was going to do it well. It was ugly. And how do I love what is wrong? Wait?! Who decides what is wrong? Ahh, and there is the crux of it.

For those of us growing up with patriarchal religion, god told man what was wrong, and there is no arguing with god. The right and wrong line is all too clear, and we are most often on the side of wrong. Even those on the side of right are then occupied with drawing the line between themselves and others. For those raised secular there is still the struggle of growing up masculine or feminine. Societies’ rules are just as strict about gender roles, having come from the same patriarchal source. All of these rules were ordained, have been and boy do they matter. Kathryn’s exhaustively researched depiction of the rulers who instituted these rules and the aftermath wrought of their lies and fear mongering tends to result in the glorious question, “Shit! What do we do now?” Trust me on this, in the absence of fear and judgment, the human being is limitless with creativity and love. You will know exactly what to do. Living is first nature. I am at all times a problem solver, ready to move forward. Without the confusion of domination based rules, I flew forward. It is that perspective that I intend to couple with Kathryn’s research and insight into this ugliness.

My own awakening with self love and subsequent neighbor love was coupled with two events. The first was an introduction to Hafiz, translated by Daniel Ladinksy. I highly recommend it. The second was the beginning of Kathryn’s (or my mother’s) research. Her work was a compliment to all of the Hafiz, Leviyah and hippy inspired thoughts that were forming in my world. Quite often we sat down to express new ideas only to discover the same idea in the mouth of the other; inspired from different sources. Her research provided proof of the shackles we suspected we were wearing. With knowledge comes power. One by one the burdens we carried were laid down, let go and sometimes vehemently thrown from the cliffs. I don’t miss them. In their place has grown appreciation. Without a measure of right or wrong all things are seen for their unique, beautifully unequal greatness. In discovering and accepting the nature of me, that I was told was wrong by patriarch religion, I was able to accept those around me. How we treat others is a reflection of how we treat ourselves.

Much of the information written will cause rage. At the least it will cause heartbreak. There is no easy way to discuss genocide, slavery or mass deception. It is harder still to see how engrained these lies are in contemporary living. This is not an old topic we discuss. The domination propagated by patriarchy is alive and well in our country of democracy. I grew up carrying the lies of these fear/control based religions. My mother, only a generation prior, carried more. Many of those newly living are being raised in the same domination I am so recently free of. Going postal is hardly an option, neither do we intend to create further division between the genders. Instead we intend to present the information, with quite a lot of sarcasm on the part of my mother, and to present the calm after the storm. After every rage can be found reason. I have found loads of it. My intent is to share that reason as you read. For the sake of neighbors everywhere I am writing to remind you of that creativity and love throughout the harsh topics presented.

 

 

Thank you for your support,

Kathryn QannaYahu