Holy pot has been smoked by Goddess worshippers since before history, and Marijuana and the Goddess

was first banned by those who sought to subjugate feminine spirituality by Chris Bennet, (01 Sept, 1998) Part 5 of "When Smoke Gets in my I" a series on the history of cannabis and human consciousness. In most ancient hunter-gatherer societies, women balanced the males' supply of game with their collected harvest from the surrounding wilderness. Women therefore became the first to learn the secrets of plants, and how they propagated themselves. This knowledge led to the development of agriculture, and the evolution from the animal totems of the hunter-gatherers to images of the Great Mother, who with proper worship produced her abundant harvest in the same way that women produced children. Cannabis is among humanity's oldest and most useful cultivated crops, and so it is not surprising to find that cannabis, in all its forms, has been intricately associated with Goddess worship in many cultures, throughout history. Kali-Ma The most ancient goddess still worshiped in the world today is the Indian KaliMa, the Mother of Life and Death. Her worship stretches back into pre-history, and is believed to predate that of her more well-known consort Shiva, the longest continually worshiped god on earth. Both Shiva and Kali are strongly associated with marijuana. Kali is generally depicted with a girdle of human arms and a necklace of skulls, and represents the dark aspect of the goddess trinity of virginmother-crone. Both ancient and modern devotees of Kali partake of marijuana in various forms as a part of their worship. Devotional ceremonies to Kali

ritual sex, which is directed at raising the Kundalini energy from the base of the spine up into the higher centres of the brain. Otherpot-goddesses The worship of Kali, under various names, extended into the ancient Near East, and cannabis was also used by many of the worshippers of Kali's ancient world counterparts. Kali is the Hindu counterpart of the ferocious and sensual Canaanite goddess Anath, (part of a similar trinity with Ashera and Astarte)who is also described with "attached heads to her back, girded hands to her waist." In ancient Germany, marijuana was used in association with Freya, the slightly tamer Kali-like goddess of Love and Death. ScythianHempsters It is generally accepted that it was the horseback-riding Scythians who spread the combination of cannabis and goddess worship throughout much of the ancient world. Readers of part two in this series (CC#2) will remember that the Amazon-like Scythian women fought alongside their warrior mates, and that these "Hell's Angels" of the ancient world were known to have used cannabis in funeral rites, doing so in veneration of their own variation of the Goddess Mother of Life and Death, Rhea Krona. Showing cannabis' strong ties with Scythian mythology, Rhea Krona came to reap her children in death with the scythe, an agricultural tool named for its Scythian origin, and originally designed for harvesting cannabis. This scythe image has survived through patriarchal times and into our modern day, with both Father Time and the Grim Reaper still carrying Rhea Krona's ancient hemp-harvesting tool. The Treeof Life In a cave where an ancient urn was found that had been used by the Scythians for burning marijuana, there was also a massive felt rug, which measured 5 by 7 metres. The carpet had a border frieze with a repeated pattern of a horseman approaching the Great Goddess, who holds the Tree of Life in one hand and raises the other in welcome. Imagery of the Goddess and the Tree of Life is also found amongst other cultures with whom the Scythians came into contact.