“The Land is Our Mother: The Indigenous Euro-Slavic Beliefs”

with Patricia Robin Woodruff

Thursday,  October 8, 2026 at 3:00 PM Eastern Time  

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In the Carpathian mountains the spiritual molfar (magician/healer), Mikailovitch Nechay, stated “Earth is our mother, she holds us all.” This is not a figurative expression.  In the native belief preserved in Slavic lands the earth is literally viewed as one’s mother, grandmother, or Primal Ancestor and indeed the same belief runs throughout other indigenous cultures of Old Europe and beyond.  Archaeologist and anthropologist Marija Gimbutas wrote on this concept of Mother Earth/ the Great Goddess in the 1970’s and 80’s.  

Patricia Robin Woodruff was unaware of Gimbutas’ work when she began her research. By tracing the beliefs preserved in the Slavic religions, she found these beliefs extended in a continuous line back tens of thousands of years into the Paleolithic.  Her research provides an independent confirmation of Gimbutas’ work and branches off into unexplored territory with insights into Paleolithic and Neolithic spiritual beliefs.   This presentation explores the multiplicity of Goddesses that have been shaped by dividing cultures tracing back tens of thousands of years, combined with the ancient belief in the power of the word.  These factors brought about the various “names”/ titles used for the Feminine Divine.  As the material is presented the facts reveal that the Earth was viewed as our Mother to whom we are connected by an umbilical cord (or omphalos).  

“This presentation points out that the primarily monotheistic, patriarchal culture of today has a male-centric (and Christian-centric) preconception that creates a blind spot when it comes to the word origins of lands. By using comparative plausibility and the variation of land, country, or town names from cross-cultural comparisons, i will lay out the facts that most of our countries today (and many cities) stem from the local titles of the Earth Mother.”  

Patricia Robin Woodruff is an independent scholar of ancient spiritual beliefs.  Classes in Wicca started her exploring the pre-Christian beliefs of her maternal culture, a little-known ethnicity of Lemko from the Carpathian Mountains.  This resulted in her spirit-led initiation as a Lemko bosorka (a shamanic witch) that derives from the Euro-Slavic indigenous beliefs.  Woodruff has read over 7,000 academic papers related to the topic and is an author of several books including Slavic Deities & their Worship: Book 1.

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Upcoming Salon

Scholar Salon 104:

Thursday, October 22 at 3 PM Eastern Time

How I Found the Lost Goddesses of Early Greece in the Emergence of the Women’s Spirituality Movement

with Charlene Spretnak

This Salon recording will also be available to members when processed after the event. 

“Collective Goddesses in Northern Europe, Part 1: The Matronen”

with Dawn Work-MaKinne

Thursday,  September 24, 2026 at 3:00 PM Eastern Time  

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Abstract: There is a recurring theme in the religious expression of Germanic Europe. It appears again and again over the last two thousand years. This theme is the veneration of the collective sacred female. What is this? It is the idea that deity is a sisterhood, honored as a collective. They may or may not have separate names, but their action is taken as a group, and their worship is as a group. The earliest example of this religious expression is the Deae Matronae, the matron-goddesses, from the 2nd to 4th centuries CE. They are often described as Celtic goddesses, but they also have a particularly strong veneration in Germany.

There we find temples, names and inscriptions on stone altars. The religion is truly syncretic; the goddesses’ names are Germanic or Celtic, but the religion is carried out in a Roman context. Without the Roman presence along the Rhine River, the German Matronae might never be known. My work on the collective sacred female in Germanic Europe also includes the Old Norse Norns and Disir and the Drei Heiligen Jungfrauen (three holy maidens), a collective of Roman Catholic Saints well known over Germanic Europe. We learned of them in a recent Scholar Salon on the Bethen in Salzkammergut, given by Krista Rodin.

Dawn Work-MaKinne is an independent scholar focusing on the sacred female in Germanic Europe and on animism and ancestor veneration in the U.S. Midwest. She holds a Ph.D. in Women’s Studies in Religion from the Union Institute, and her work on the collective sacred female in Germanic Europe formed the basis of her dissertation. The dissertation won the Kore Award 2010 from the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology, and the Marvin B. Sussman Award from the Union Institute for excellence in dissertation scholarship. Dawn plans two additional ASWM Scholar Salons, to delve into the Norns and Disir, of old Norse religion, and the Drei Heiligen Jungfrauen, scattered over Germany, Austria and Italy. Dawn’s current research focuses on the practice of animism and ancestor religion on U.S. land gained by genocide and treaty violation. She is especially interested right now in early Germanic calendar systems. 

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Upcoming Salon

Scholar Salon 103:

Thursday, September 24 at 3 PM Eastern Time

The Land is Our Mother: The Indigenous Euro-Slavic Beliefs

with Patricia Robin Woodruff

This Salon recording will also be available to members when processed after the event. 

“The Goddess of Burning Hair: 37 Poems Giving Voice to Gaia the Great Mother”

with Mary Mackey

Thursday,  September 10, 2026 at 3:00 PM Eastern Time  

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The Goddess of Burning Hair is the first complete collection of Mary Mackey’s goddess poems. Written from 1972 to 2025, the thirty-seven poems in this book emerge from a lifetime Mackey has spent studying, listing to, respecting, and giving voice to the spirit of Gaia the Great Mother in all her forms. Stunningly imaginative, beautifully written, intensely lyrical, mysterious, and sometimes powerfully prophetic, these poems take us into worlds both ancient and not-yet born. 

Here you will find poems about goddesses from Europe like Medusa and Aphrodite; Afro-Brazilian goddesses like Iemanjá, and Yansã; goddesses Mackey has invented like The Goddess of Burning Hair; goddesses who have created themselves and goddesses who are a combination of the research of scholars like Marija Gimbutas and Mackey’s own imagination taken from her four novels about the Goddess-worshipping/Earth-centered cultures of Neolithic Europe. You will encounter prophets like Cassandra who speak warnings no one believes; and last, but by no means least, poems that celebrate those moments when the power of the Divine enters us, moments when we mortals become transformed into something greater and more powerful, and the Earth our Great Mother speaks through us.

“Reading Mary Mackey’s poems in this book is like listening to the Delphic Pythia utter her prophecies from her sacred chasm. With stark fluidity Mary exemplifies the poet as prophet. Her poems are rich and spare—like haikus.” Cristina Biaggi, Author of Habitations of the Great Goddess

Mary Mackey became a writer by running high fevers; visiting the ruins of the neolithic, goddess-worshiping cultures of Old Europe; tramping through tropical jungles; being swarmed by army ants, and reading. Her novels and poems have been praised by by Marija Gimbutas, Marge Piercy, Jane Hirshfield, Maxine Hong Kingston, Annie Finch, Judy Grahn, Cristina Biaggi, Vicki Noble, Starhawk, Wendel Berry, Thomas Moore, Rafael Jesús González, and Pat Conroy for their beauty, precision, gripping plots, originality, and extraordinary range. She is the author of 10 collections of poetry, including Sugar Zone, winner of a PEN Award; and The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams, winner of the Eric Hoffer Award for Best Book Published by a Small Press; as well as 14 novels, including The  New York Times bestseller A Grand Passion and the Earthsong Series, four novels about the Goddess-worshiping people of Old Europe. In December 2026 and January 2027 Open Road Media will reissue the Earthsong Series novels in new editions in both paper and electronic form. The Goddess of Burning Hair, the first complete collection of Mackey’s goddess poems, will be published by Women’s Spirituality Studies Press in September 2026.

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Upcoming Salon

Scholar Salon 102:

Thursday, September 24 at 3 PM Eastern Time

Collective Goddesses in Northern Europe, part 1, The Matronen

with Dawn Work-Makinne

This Salon recording will also be available to members when processed after the event.