In this extensive study Joseph Paper makes a compelling case for male/female complementarity in many of the world’s religions. Paper’s own background is in Chinese studies and in personal work within the Anishnabe religion of northeast North America. However he supplements this experience by co-writing with scholars of Saami, Israelite, Japanese and African religions as well as with his Chinese wife who practices the contemporary Chinese religion commonly dismissed by Westerners as “ancestor worship.”
Paper first became aware of the androcentric bias of Western scholars while studying Chinese traditional religion. He noted that Jesuit missionaries insisted on translating Chinese religious language in ways that seemed inaccurate to him. For example, Tiendi is translated in most texts as “Heaven and earth”, rather than more accurately as “Sky and Earth.” This allowed Jesuit missionaries to give their superiors in Europe the impression that Heaven could be interpreted as a supreme male deity, similar to the Christian God. Yet in actual practice, the sacrifices to Earth performed by the Empress were as important to the stability and prosperity of the realm as those of the Emperor to Sky. Obviously, interpretations of polytheistic cultures by Christian missionaries could not be unbiased. Although, in fairness to Christianity, Paper also sees Buddhism as having contributed to a devaluation of female spirituality in the areas to which it spread, a result not unexpected from a religion preached largely by celibate monks.
The science of anthropology is another source of information about non-Western religions. Yet, while claiming objectivity, anthropologists also produced accounts of native religions with an androcentric bias. Most early anthropologists were men, inclined by their own cultural biases to consider males and their activities as more important than women and their activities. And male anthropologist who did wish to investigate the roles of women would have been unlikely to be given the information by native informants, since many cultures restrict the access of strange men to women and their cultural spaces. Furthermore, until recently, female anthropologists shared the biases of their male teachers and colleagues. Western observers, seeing that female roles differed from those of males, would conclude that the male role was more important, that females were only assisting, or that their absence from certain ritual roles meant that they were inferior or even polluted. For example, in some cultures women do not make or wear sacred masks. Paper notes that female informants have explained that women don’t do the same things as men because they don’t need to. Women already have the power to make life and possess a direct connection to the creative divinity. The young woman in the Mescalero (Apache) menarche ritual actually becomes White Painted Woman and assumes Her power to bless and heal. The male dancers in the ritual need masks and costumes to temporarily assume the powers of the Mountain Spirits. Men have to work to attract the attention of the spirits, whether by making and using ritual regalia or by fasting and other practices. Paper reports that female mediums and shamans frequently enter trance more easily than males, and speculates on the reasons for this phenomenon.
The most common instances of women’s supposed polluting influence surround the menstrual taboos of various cultures. Woman who are menstruating or who have recently given birth refrain from touching men or their weapons and are sometimes isolated from the community. Paper claims that such practices had a practical origin in hunting cultures, as the odor of menstrual blood might alert prey animals,. Since customs may be retained long after the original purpose is forgotten, menstrual isolation was reinterpreted to fit a later negative view of women’s bodies and sexual functions. And in many cultures menstrual blood, post partum flow and the male ejaculate are all considered so powerful that they may disrupt spiritual energies. It is common for shamans and mediums of both genders to refrain from intercourse before ritual practice.
Paper examines female spiritual roles in a variety of cultures, from the almost exclusively hunting culture of the Inuit; the reindeer hunting (later converted to herding ) Saami of Northern Europe; the agricultural and imperial culture of traditional China; the urban culture of modern China; the horticulturalist/hunters of the Amazon; the Inca empire; the Hopi and their neighbors the Dine; and the Yoruba and Akan of Africa, as well as Candomblé, one of the blends of African and Christian elements in the Americas. This wealth of material cannot be summarized briefly and Paper provides ample references to source material while cautioning that many previous accounts are not to be trusted for the reasons given above. Even native informants may be biased if they have been subjected to forced conversion and deprived of contact with their own traditions by a youth spent in missionary schools. The work contains little material on Pagan Europe, northern Africa or southern Asia, a decision made necessary by time constraints.
A notable feature of this book is Paper’s attempt to enter the minds of women in the cultures he describes. In addition to objective descriptions of female rituals and ritual roles the chapters on each culture include a section on female self-understanding. For example, he states that “Hopi women are raised in a world imbued with female numinous beings as well as male. They celebrate this world and continue it with daily rituals, the feeding of sacred household and clan items with cornmeal.” With reference to the self-understanding of Yoruba women, Paper notes: “Because the public governmental leadership roles are male, early western theorists assumed females had no power; they were oblivious to the role of the “Woman King” and the female chiefs. Yet according to a female priest “’If the mothers are annoyed they can turn the world upside down. When an herbalist goes to collect a root at the foot of a tree, the mother s put it up’”. Women have the power of the deities themselves in this view. For a Western male to attempt to evaluate the self image of women in other cultures may seem presumptuous to some. Yet the sections in question appear to be firmly rooted in the surrounding accounts of myth and ritual. In my opinion, these sections provide a valuable counterweight to the assumption that women everywhere have been devalued and brainwashed into accepting an unquestioned inferior status, an impression it would be easy to derive from some feminist works on the suppression of female spirituality.
For modern Neopagans, this work serves to affirm the importance of the female in some of the traditional religions from which we take our inspiration. Neopagan emphasis on female equality in theology and ritual has been criticized by some as a product of contemporary feminism rather than a genuine return to earlier practices. The information in this work provides evidence that women have exercised authority and sacred power in a variety of traditional religions.
I recommend Through the Earth Darkly to anyone interested in the history and anthropology of religion, in the roles of women and goddesses, or in the particular cultures described. Joseph Paper is also the author of The Deities are Many: a Polytheistic theology; Offering Smoke: the Sacred Pipe and Native American Religion; The Spirits are Drunk: Comparative Approaches to Chinese Religion and The Mystic Experience: A Descriptive and Comparative Analysis. Paper is Professor Emeritus of Humanities at York University (Toronto); Associate Fellow, Centre for Studies in Religion and Society; and Adjunct Professor in Indigenous Governance Program at University of Victoria.
