13 Kerea 3341
Recently, I have been making my way through the entire collection of Madrian writings from their various publications. I have been greatly enjoying it, and finding many pearls of wisdom within the pages of the now expanded Eastminster Library, thanks to the hard work of our diligent brother Race.
However, there is something that I’ve been itching to talk about. The Madrians (original Filianists) took a lot of liberties when writing about the matriarchal history of the world. Whether or not the world has such a history at all is up for debate. I believe it does, as I’ve read of enough evidence to suggest it has. But a lot of the lore and mythology they came up with about the Rhennes, the Amazons etc, was simply storytelling inspired by religious ideas. This is not a bad thing in and of itself. Throughout time, myth and fantasy stories have existed alongside religion (and, in many cases, they’ve been inseparably linked) from the hero mythology of Ancient Greece, to the vast worlds of J.R.R. Tolkein and C.S. Lewis.
The Madrians spoke primarily of two ancient matriarchal societies, the Amazons and the Rhennes.
The Amazons probably did exist in some form, but we have no way of knowing much about their society, other than women were not subjugated to men, were warriors, and they likely worshiped a Goddess (many believe Artemis or Cybele). The Madrians expanded on this idea, and wrote a lot about their lifestyles, ways of governing, beliefs, going as far as to ascribe a type of ‘crusade’ to them where they preached a Drispeal that seems to be entirely their own invention. The Drispeal, which they called The Three Eternal Truths, is as follows:
“One God alone, none other God than She.
One Law alone, none other Law than Her Law.
God became maid that maid might come to God.”
I have Googled far and wide to find evidence of this outside of the Madrians and have yet to find anything that even seems like a different version of this. The only thing I can think of is the statement of early church father Athanasius in which he said “God Became Man that Man Might Become God”. When I was a Mormon I heard this mentioned a few times in reference to their controversial doctrine that men and women become gods and goddesses in the afterlife. This, along with other things, is entirely their own invention. It’s a beautiful statement of faith and can still be used as such, but we must be careful not to ascribe it to any actual historical Amazons that existed. Rather, we can say that it’s the Drispeal of the Amazons of Madrian storytelling.
The Rhennes, on the other hand, are a culture that they came up with based on what they could piece together about Britain before it was ruled by the largely patriarchal Celts. A lot of it seems to be based on things from the Mabinogi, ancient carvings and artifacts pertaining to a horse goddess (likely Rhiannon or Epona), some matriarchal aspects of the Arthurian Legends, etc. It also seems to be based on past life regression of a few Madrians. When I first found out about this, I really resonated with it, and part of me still does. I love living on these fair Isles of Albion, and imagining how my ancestors lived, daydreaming about a time before patriarchy in which ethereal priestesses of Avalon made offerings to Dea. I personally do believe some of what they say about the matriarchal history of Britain may be true. Near my city there is a very old carving of a sun goddess and a horse, which we could easily link to Rhiannon or ‘Rhiannë’, which we can simply take as a pre-Celtic name for the Daughter. But there is absolutely no historical evidence for a lot of the ‘Rhennish’ concepts they came up with, and they even go as far as to state ‘past life regression’ experiences as concrete fact. I do somewhat believe in the legitimacy of such experiences, but not everyone does, and it is not enough to form an entire theory of an ancient civilization on.
I have been quite open about the fact that I used to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or a Mormon. The Madrian storytelling about the Rhennes and the Amazons reminds me a lot of the Book of Mormon. It may be a very well written piece of work that is greatly and reverently in line with Christian thought for the most part, but there is no evidence for these ‘American Hebrew’ tribes that they feature actually having existed.
Whenever I engage with fantasy or sci-fi media (books, movies, TV series, video games) that features a Goddess-centered society, it makes me very happy. I have come to take both the Rhennish and Amazonian lore as faith-bolstering, beautiful, inspirational fantasy stories inspired by our faith. They inspire me to want to be a part of building a society like theirs, full of empowered women, reverence for nature, noble priestesses and princesses, magic around every corner and of course, Dea at the heart of everything. They also inspire me to want to write my own stories based on Filianic-Madrian theology and philosophy, and maybe one day I could become to the Deanic community what C.S. Lewis is to Christians. That would be the dream!
But going forward, I think we all need to be honest with newcomers that there is no historical basis for much of ‘Madrian prehistory’. That doesn’t mean our world absolutely doesn’t have a true matriarchal past, and I personally believe it does, but beyond believing that *it existed*, I can’t pretend to know any of the specifics, neither can anyone. It also doesn’t mean that we can’t love these stories and take them as what they are- very special fantasy stories inspired by spiritual truths. The Madrians should have been clear about this from the beginning, but we must also understand that the religious landscape of the 1970s was very different than today’s one. Many new religious movements were popping up and they were all trying to compete for converts, and they also probably thought this ‘pious fraud’ was okay since it was spiritually bolstering for a lot of people. Today, though, we know better, and must be honest about this part of our history as more people seek to know the beautiful Truths only we can offer.
Let’s focus on building our own, magical, beautiful world, with the love and light of Our Lady at the center of it all, starting from right now.
Madria Guinevere
Light of the Dawn Maiden 
All beautifully said, and thank you for helping to set the record straight on this a bit! It is a topic that I think is often confusing for people who are new to Filianism.
All I wanted to add was that I think the range of interpretation that you (rightly) suggest is, at least in some ways, original to the Madrian conception. Some Madrians, certainly, felt that the historical veracity of the Amazonian/Rhennish cycle of legends had been confirmed for them in past life regression experiences, and these in turn appear to have fed the growth of the legendarium. At the same time, though, a review of the main handbook for their regression technique observed that:
“I believe this [collection of past life accounts] is possible and feel that their experiences ‘ring true’. But whether you believe the technique works or not and whether you feel the accounts are genuine or merely vivid imaginings in many ways matters less than the fact that reading the accounts could give you a whole new outlook on the past.” (EL vol. 3, p. 1396)
For that Madrian, at least, it was valid even at the time to take the stories as an imaginative, creative support to understanding the more conventional Traditionalist vision of the “decline of the ages”. Sr Angelina seems to have taken this even a step further in her “Road to the Future” address, where she opined that:
“We must take active steps to . . . reduce all that is violent, sensual, materialistic or merely trivial in entertainment, to cut down our participation in the cult of the ‘news’, and in general to reduce our dependence on the commercial media. As groups and communities form, we must begin to build a tradition of storytelling; to develop a body of Madrian stories and songs which will make the Madrian fireside the centre of a truly Madrian home . . .” (EL vol. 2, p. 18)
Here, the “body of Madrian stories and songs” is envisioned not as a closed canon inherited from an historical Amazonian/Rhennish past, but as a live creative project of spiritual imagination to which it seems—given her audience at the time—she envisioned that even newly converted Madrians could contribute.
I agree completely that individual Filianists can and should consider the stories on a range of levels. They can take them as literal (pre-)history if they desire (though I know almost none who do) but, more importantly, can take them as spiritual parable and allegory, as a tool for shifting one’s consciousness out of the prevailing culture’s historical assumptions, as a process of critical visioning for social change, as a meditative and devotional exercise through creative arts, or as any combination of these. I don’t know that all the Madrians of the 1970s did, in fact, avail themselves of all these perspectives, but I am inclined to think that it was part of the design and purpose of the Amazonian/Rhennish legends to permit them to, and to permit us to as well.
After reading your post, though, another thought struck me with your reference to Tolkien. When Tolkien described the creative process behind the Lord of the Rings, he always observed that he began with the languages. Quenya and Sindarin were created before his elves, and his elves arose out of his efforts to imagine what kind of people might speak the languages he had crafted in the trenches of the First World War. From there, the whole world of Middle Earth grew. This was natural enough, perhaps, given his background in philology, but it also speaks to his conviction (evident in some of his writings on Esperanto also) that a language does not and cannot exist in a cultural vacuum. There is no clear point of delineation between culture and language, and for a language to feel natural and function fully, it would have to have a broader cultural context to shape and condition it. If you were going to create a language, he had realized, you would have to create a whole culture, too.
What was true of language for Tolkien was certainly true of religion for the Madrians. Sr Julia, for example, noted that:
“Religion is a patriarchal invention. The special area of life set aside and designated ‘religion’ would mean nothing to a person brought up in a traditional Madrian society. To such a person, her craft, with its deep inner meaning and ritual is just as much ‘religious’ as any rite in the Temple, her stories and songs of love and adventure, with their profound traditional symbolism of the soul’s quest are just as ‘religious’ as hymns and sermons. Spiritual truth is simply the meaning of life, the inner essence of everything said and done in a traditional society which lives according to the law and harmony—the ðamë—laid down by God Herself from the beginning. It is only when a society breaks away from this rhythm that something called ‘religion’ as opposed to something else called ‘ordinary life’ emerges.” (EL vol. 2, p. 254)
In this sense, in attempting to restore a Traditional form of devotion to God as Mother, the Madrians, it would seem, faced a conundrum. The time in which they lived was filled with new age sects and new religious movements all creating “religions” that consisted of bodies of specifically and self-consciously “religious” ideas promulgated within, and largely assuming the context of, a fundamentally irreligious modern culture. To the Madrians, I think, this seemed a pointless exercise. They felt the need of introducing a form of worship that wasn’t (explicitly) available in their culture but also knew that, to be complete and to genuinely meet the spiritual needs of human beings, their creation couldn’t be contained within the box of modern “religion”; it would have to have a cultural setting that could be drawn on for inspiration (if not simply implemented outright in the context of their intentional communities). The Rhennish legendarium provided that for early Filianism, just as Tolkien’s Elvish culture(s) gave the requisite depth of background and breadth of framing for Quenya and Sindarin to emerge as living things instead of stage props.
In saying that, I don’t mean to reduce the Rhennish legendarium to the level of “mere” fiction, but only to note that the line between myth and fiction has always been permeable (as you sagely note) and is perhaps especially so under postmodern conditions. (It’s worth recalling that Tolkien understood his work as an effort at a kind of “English mythology” in the deep sense of that term.) In fact, every great religion has a body of legendary material that isn’t quite canonical but that furnishes the imagination of the faithful as they respond to and interpret canon. There are many elements of the Christian understanding of the life of Jesus as it has been shared by the Church across many centuries (St. Veronica on the stations of the Cross is a notable example) that come from apocryphal early Christian literature, not deemed reliable enough or central enough to *require* the belief of Christians, but recognized as having particular stories and images that, whether or not they were historical, reflected some spiritual truth. Likewise, Judaism would be an impoverished thing without the rich undergrowth of Mishnaic stories and tales that have, for over a thousand years, lain outside of Biblical history but informed the reception and understanding of that history. In the same vein, we might ask what Islam would be without the profound folk tales that grew up around the companions of the Prophet. In all these cases, the extra-canonical literature is itself disclosive of spiritual truths in a parabolic or allegorical sense, but it also paints an image of a broader context in which the teachings of the canonical literature can be seen not as something distinct from broader culture—something confined to the narrow box of “religion”—but as the animating principle of an entire manner of human *being*, informing and redeeming every dimension of human activity. The Mishnah, the early Christian apocrypha, the stories of the Prophet and his companions, and similar bodies of literature across the world’s great religions—including, I think, the Rhennish legendarium—provide us the tools to realize the teachings we receive not merely as philosophical points for discussion on Sundays (or Saturdays, or Fridays), but as ways of life that can guide whole persons and, in some cases, whole civilizations.
And all that said, in the end, the Madrians seemed to agree with you (as do I) that the setting of this important body of work in a putative pre-history too often led to unnecessary confusion when received in the context of a very literal and historicist modern culture that it often takes a long time to deprogram oneself from. Hence, the body of legend they originally built around Greek references to historical Amazons got transferred to Herthelan Amazonia and enriched by a further body of very self-consciously imaginative, creative literature able to further adapt the examples and lessons into a vision of a society more relatable to our own moment in the Kali Yuga.
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