[This is from S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies (V3 N1, 2023) Its Ebook edition and paperback are available at Mago Bookstore.]
This book includes photos and drawings that illustrate and support the research and arguments contained within thereby making the content more accessible.
In the book, The Woman Who Married the Bear, Barbara A. Mann and Kaarina Kailo, do an excellent job exploring Bear spirituality across cultures in Indigenous North America, Indigenous Eurasia, and the European North identifying clues that Bear traditions can be dated as far back as 80,000–120,000 BP. Studying tales of Bear and the Woman Who Married the Bear they can correlate the changes in Bear spirituality with the shift from ancient matriarchy and its life-oriented values that include gifting, regeneration, and eco-balance to patriarchal values of power, killing, and subjugation. The authors propose that a return to the Original Instructions that Bear had given has the potential to offer modern-day humans “ecological salvation” derived from an emphasis on humans living in balance with nature, other animals, and each other.
The authors have long-standing careers in the academic community and together their experience culminates in decades of research, writing, and teaching. They draw upon traditional academic research, Indigenous wisdom and stories, and archaeomythology. By using archaeological, ethnological, mythological, and literary sources they are better able to compare and discern the implications of Bear spirituality and The Woman Who Married the Bear making thisa very rich book with much to teach and contribute to the field of Goddess Studies.
In the book Barbara A. Mann and Kaarina Kailo reveal the ancient origins of Bear spirituality and its intimate connection with women. Due to archaeological evidence of Bear practices dating as early as 80,000–120,000 BP, the authors propose that Bear spirituality is possibly the oldest – and first – religion.
Stories throughout Northern cultures say that Bear came from the sky to the earth and gave humans the Original Instructions. Bear teaches how to live in harmony with all beings thereby ensuring everyone receives nourishment through modeling “honor, respect, self-sacrifice, kindness, renewal, and spiritual potency.” (41)
After arriving on earth an intimate relationship develops between Bear and woman. People noticed similarities between the Bear’s cave and women’s wombs; they were both dark, and protective, and life emerged from them – in the case of bears when they arose from hibernation it appeared as though they were returning from death. Both Bear and women share the powers of life, death, and regeneration.
Bear not only had an affinity with women but also married a woman becoming a Bear husband who would care for and protect her and their children, even willingly sacrificing himself for them. The motif of women marrying bears creates a bond between species and between the cosmos, from where Bear originates, and the Earth where women originate—reminding humans that we are a part of the ecosystem not separate from it.
The woman-bear marriage formed a serious symbol announcing the kind of spirituality that results from respecting nature and treating it as a partner, as kin, rather than as a mere resource for human consumption and abuse…..Hieros gamos [sacred marriage] provides the key to the message of these tales and their fragments. A woman’s marriage to Bear might have likewise constituted a hieros gamos between Heaven and Earth, as is the case in some Eurasian plots. (99)
Gradually, the Woman Who Married the Bear stories changed from women marrying the bear and creating harmony between species to men becoming the protagonists of the story rescuing a woman – usually their sister – from the “bad” bear and then killing it and feasting upon it joyfully. “This story, once about female fertility, re/birth, and continuance, is now about violence, patrilineage, and male squabbles over inheritance.” (Mann, Barbara A., Kaarina Kailo. The Woman Who Married the Bear. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023. 138). These changes track the takeover by patriarchy as the Bear stories shift from female-centered celebrating life to male-centered celebrating death.
Barbara A. Mann and Kaarina Kailo hypothesize that cultures replaced matriarchial values with patriarchal ones as a way to cope with the massive ecological changes happening across the planet during the Younger Dryas. This epoch was triggered by a meteorite hitting the earth 12,900 years ago.
Invasion by roaming raiders moving east into the Americas and west into Eurasia combined with sky-born calamity to summon the switchover in Bear messages. The false suns rose and the stars fell; nature died, as nuclear winter set in. The humans who survived the drastic thinning of their numbers between 12,900 and 11,700 BP were numb with cold and anger, at the winter that would not end, and at the old ways of matriarchy for betraying them. Patriarchal domination became the new lifeway, with killing and control the new set points. (180)
The authors conclude that the current condition of the planet and our societies is dire and a return to the values and practices of When Woman Married the Bear holds the chance for global salvation before it is too late.
Barbara A. Mann and Kaarina Kailo reveal an ancient spiritual tradition grounded in Bear teachings with a deep connection to women. Uncovering the original stories and lessons of northern Bear spirituality reveals another face of the ancient goddess, “At Neolithic sites dating back to 7,000–6,000 bce in Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and Yugoslavia, researchers have found hundreds of clay figurines representing the bear, suggesting her as epiphanic of the ancient mother goddess.” (Mann, Barbara A., Kaarina Kailo. The Woman Who Married the Bear. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023. 85) The incorporation of this goddess and Bear spirituality brings new depth and an ancient lineage that adds to the growing field of Goddess Studies.
I enjoyed this book and appreciate how much I have learned. By using archaeological, ethnological, mythological, and literary sources the authors create a far more comprehensive study and understanding of the Bear path. They highlight how Western bias in the collection and interpretation of stories and artifacts is yet another way in which patriarchal stories and research have erased the older matriarchial stories and values.
Indigenous women tell women’s tales to women, while Indigenous men tell men’s stories to men, instead of men, alone, in charge of the all-story. These important facts are unfortunately obscured by Western ethnology, which inserted into the traditions it “collected” its own patriarchal assumptions of male creation leading to a male rule, whose over-voice controlled a universal “battle of the sexes.” (20) Tragically, not hearing women’s stories means that half of a culture’s stories are missing from the historical record. This highlights the importance of Goddess Studies and a commitment to female focused cross-disciplinary research that includes Indigenous knowledge and moving beyond the narrow confines of a Western patriarchal frame. Barbara A. Mann and Kaarina Kailo fill that gap and have done an excellent job of contributing deep research and a rich discussion that is not just educational but illuminating. After reading this book I have found hope for the healing of our planet using the teachings of Bear and a return to the Original Instructions as one of the paths humanity can choose to take before it is too late to repair what we have done.
Vivien Gibbons
Vivien Gibbons, PhD. Adjunct faculty in the Women’s Spirituality Department at the California Institute of Integral Studies, CA. Vivien is an accomplished author and educator with a Ph.D. in Women’s Spirituality. Her area of expertise is divination, specifically focusing her dissertation on reconstructing the spiritual technology of the Delphic Oracle. Vivien’s experience extends beyond academia, as she is also a practitioner, having been initiated into three styles of divination within the Dagara tradition, and is also proficient in tarot reading. She remains committed to continuing to learn and share about various divinatory practices. Vivien lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her two doggie fur babies, Luke and Lilith.