Women in White Explained
Reprinted with Permission
This narrative was developed by Anubh and Etaine of Preachain to accompany these pictures. Many people ask about the origin and history of Women in White, so I am reprinting it here for your enjoyment!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Early in 1995 while doing some light reading on ancient celtic mysteries, I read an account of Gallic women preceding their warriors onto the field of battle. The women wore white dresses and copper belts, were barefoot with hair unbound, they brandished weapons and hurled curses at the enemy. The image really impressed me and I figured, except for the barefoot part,we could reenact it at Pennsic. I asked our founder and then-headwoman Aes to issue a call to Preachain’s women, saying, "Stitch up your old bedsheets!" --and I assured the feminists (okay mostly this was me reassuring myself) that it wouldn't be cheerleading.
Before the procession we paint each other with woad, an intimate act that serves to bless and beautify. We walk all the way from the lake to the battlefield, fighters and women singing together. We don’t take the straightest road to the battlefield; we wind through the marketplace so that our friends and kinfolk there can be a part of our celebration.
Wearing the same color creates the sense that we are there for the same purpose (and white at the end of a dirty week at Pennsic is pretty striking). Our dresses, the singing and the shouting build community and identity: a sense of tribe is fostered as we proclaim loudly to the world who we are, how mighty, noble and great.
Once on the field, the women circle the fighters and dance to lift the hearts and spirits of fighters, to get them ready for the big fight in the field battle. [The fighters are from Preachain, and from our allies—we hire other fighters to strengthen our numbers, and once we know them well, we offer them the chance to participate in this ritual with us. The dance is a Kore dance learned by some of Preachain’s northern Virginia contingent at a goddess workshop years ago—it links the dancers and encircles the fighters, pulses inward and outward, dips to earth and rises to the sky. It originally represented the goddess’s descent into the Underworld and subsequent rebirth.
A few years ago, we added a chant to the dance, invoking our tribal power, the strength of our blood, and calling to the Morrigan. It serves to unify, to raise and focus the women’s wishes for the fighters (protection and honor, glory and safety). Like any ritual, it also fixes us in our place and time, fixes in memory *this* battle, *this* Pennsic, *this* day. The dance and chant begin slowly, gathering energy, faster and faster; the chant becomes a shout, the fighters catch the energy and their excitement feeds ours, and the dance crests in a great blessing.
This whole process works to integrate the fighting with other aspects of the life of the clan. It links fighting to our spirituality and emphasizes the value we place on the women in our group. Traditions like this reinforce the sense that we have all chosen to come together in this place to support each other, to share goals. Every group has community-building traditions; this one just happens to be visible to the rest of the world (we even got photographed by NPR!).
Ten years later I can't really deny the cheerleading part any more, okay it sort of is cheerleading...but the postfeminist I have become realizes that if the honor, beauty, grace and strength of the women in the clan inspires our fighters to great deeds or adds to their experience of fighting, that's not oppressive, that's good for everybody! Any mixed feelings I had in the beginning were very quickly put to rest that very first year by the attitude of the fighters, whose respect and appreciation for the procession and for us are humbling. The fighters raise us up as much as we raise them.
Please don't ask where the account of this procession can be found, it's from a pan-cultural less-than-scholarly goddess book and no primary sources are cited. I knew that, at the time--I was finishing up an MA in Cultural Anthropology so it wasn't through ignorance that the research is slack. Maybe the serious student in me actually sort of liked the rebellion and romance of ignoring Tacitus and Pliny in favor of a half-baked feminist's fancy. Throughout history many glorious traditions have been based on dreams and half-truths. If the tradition is strong enough it gains a life of its own eventually, independent from the initial impetus. In retrospect, as I've learned more about Norse traditions I suspect the author of the book may have confused the Gauls with the Norse, whose white-robed Valkyrie showed up at battles to act as "choosers of the slain"...if anybody thinks I'm a Valkyrie instead of a Celt, I won't be offended. But we're Celts, and proud.
Anubh na Preachain
and Etaine na Preachain
This narrative was developed by Anubh and Etaine of Preachain to accompany these pictures. Many people ask about the origin and history of Women in White, so I am reprinting it here for your enjoyment!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Early in 1995 while doing some light reading on ancient celtic mysteries, I read an account of Gallic women preceding their warriors onto the field of battle. The women wore white dresses and copper belts, were barefoot with hair unbound, they brandished weapons and hurled curses at the enemy. The image really impressed me and I figured, except for the barefoot part,we could reenact it at Pennsic. I asked our founder and then-headwoman Aes to issue a call to Preachain’s women, saying, "Stitch up your old bedsheets!" --and I assured the feminists (okay mostly this was me reassuring myself) that it wouldn't be cheerleading.
Before the procession we paint each other with woad, an intimate act that serves to bless and beautify. We walk all the way from the lake to the battlefield, fighters and women singing together. We don’t take the straightest road to the battlefield; we wind through the marketplace so that our friends and kinfolk there can be a part of our celebration.
Wearing the same color creates the sense that we are there for the same purpose (and white at the end of a dirty week at Pennsic is pretty striking). Our dresses, the singing and the shouting build community and identity: a sense of tribe is fostered as we proclaim loudly to the world who we are, how mighty, noble and great.
Once on the field, the women circle the fighters and dance to lift the hearts and spirits of fighters, to get them ready for the big fight in the field battle. [The fighters are from Preachain, and from our allies—we hire other fighters to strengthen our numbers, and once we know them well, we offer them the chance to participate in this ritual with us. The dance is a Kore dance learned by some of Preachain’s northern Virginia contingent at a goddess workshop years ago—it links the dancers and encircles the fighters, pulses inward and outward, dips to earth and rises to the sky. It originally represented the goddess’s descent into the Underworld and subsequent rebirth.
A few years ago, we added a chant to the dance, invoking our tribal power, the strength of our blood, and calling to the Morrigan. It serves to unify, to raise and focus the women’s wishes for the fighters (protection and honor, glory and safety). Like any ritual, it also fixes us in our place and time, fixes in memory *this* battle, *this* Pennsic, *this* day. The dance and chant begin slowly, gathering energy, faster and faster; the chant becomes a shout, the fighters catch the energy and their excitement feeds ours, and the dance crests in a great blessing.
This whole process works to integrate the fighting with other aspects of the life of the clan. It links fighting to our spirituality and emphasizes the value we place on the women in our group. Traditions like this reinforce the sense that we have all chosen to come together in this place to support each other, to share goals. Every group has community-building traditions; this one just happens to be visible to the rest of the world (we even got photographed by NPR!).
Ten years later I can't really deny the cheerleading part any more, okay it sort of is cheerleading...but the postfeminist I have become realizes that if the honor, beauty, grace and strength of the women in the clan inspires our fighters to great deeds or adds to their experience of fighting, that's not oppressive, that's good for everybody! Any mixed feelings I had in the beginning were very quickly put to rest that very first year by the attitude of the fighters, whose respect and appreciation for the procession and for us are humbling. The fighters raise us up as much as we raise them.
Please don't ask where the account of this procession can be found, it's from a pan-cultural less-than-scholarly goddess book and no primary sources are cited. I knew that, at the time--I was finishing up an MA in Cultural Anthropology so it wasn't through ignorance that the research is slack. Maybe the serious student in me actually sort of liked the rebellion and romance of ignoring Tacitus and Pliny in favor of a half-baked feminist's fancy. Throughout history many glorious traditions have been based on dreams and half-truths. If the tradition is strong enough it gains a life of its own eventually, independent from the initial impetus. In retrospect, as I've learned more about Norse traditions I suspect the author of the book may have confused the Gauls with the Norse, whose white-robed Valkyrie showed up at battles to act as "choosers of the slain"...if anybody thinks I'm a Valkyrie instead of a Celt, I won't be offended. But we're Celts, and proud.
Anubh na Preachain
and Etaine na Preachain
