5280 LADY OF THE ANIMALS
(wings, beaks, snakelike bodies, bear heads, and the like) are
common in the Neolithic era in Old Europe (6500–3500
BCE) and elsewhere. Their origins can probably be traced to
the Upper Paleolithic (30,000–10,000 BCE). The Lady of the
Animals is found in almost all cultures.
Because prehistory has left no written records, interpre-
tation of the meaning of the earliest images called Lady of
the Animals cannot be certain. She was known to her earliest
worshipers as “Mother of All the Living” (a phrase used to
refer to Eve in Genesis 3:20), as “Creatress,” “Goddess,” “An-
cestress,” “Clan Mother,” “Priestess,” by a place or personal
name, or, simply, as “Mother,” “Ma,” or “Nana.” Whatever
she was called, the Lady of the Animals is an image of the
awesome creative powers of women and nature. The term
Mother of All the Living may in fact be more accurately de-
scriptive of the wide range of creative powers depicted in im-
ages commonly called “Lady of the Animals.”
A very early sculpture of a Lady of the Animals was
found in Çatalhüyük, a Neolithic site in central Anatolia
(central Turkey), dating from 6500 to 5650 BCE. Made of
baked clay, she sits on a birth chair or throne. She is full-
breasted and big of belly, and she seems to be giving birth,
for a head (not clearly human) emerges from between her
legs. Her hands rest on the heads of two large cats, probably
leopards, that stand at her sides. From Sumer (c. 2000 BCE),
a Lady of the Animals appears in a terra-cotta relief, naked
and winged, with two owls at her sides and her webbed feet
resting on the backs of two monkeys. From Minoan Crete
comes a small statue unearthed in the treasury of the new pal-
ace of Knossos (c. 1700–1450 BCE); staring as if in trance,
she holds in her outstretched arms two striped snakes; her
breasts are exposed, and a small snake emerges from her
bodice.
In Ephesus, an enormous image of a Lady of the Ani-
mals dominated the great temple of Artemis or Diana (re-
built 334 BCE and known as one of the seven wonders of the
ancient world). Her many egg-shaped breasts symbolized her
nurturing power, while the signs of the zodiac forming her
necklace expressed her cosmic power. Her arms were extend-
ed in a gesture of blessing, and her lower body, shaped like
the trunk of the tree of life, was covered with the heads of
wild, domestic, and mythical animals. At her feet were bee-
hives; at her sides, two deer. The city crowned her head.
In Asia Minor the Lady of the Animals is known as Ku-
baba or Cybele and is flanked by lions. In Egypt she is Isis
the falcon or Isis with falcon wings and a uraeus (snake)
emerging from her forehead; she is also Hathor the cow god-
dess or Hathor with the cow horns. In Canaan she is Ashto-
ret or Astarte holding snakes and flowers in her hands. In
India she is Tārā or Parvati astride a lion or Durgā riding a
lion into battle and slaying demons with the weapons in her
ten arms. In Japan she is Amaterasu, the sun goddess, with
her roosters that crow at dawn and her messengers the crows.
In China she is Kwan Yin standing on a dragon that symbol-
izes good fortune. To the Inuit (Eskimo) she is Sedna, god-
dess of the sea and sea animals, especially seals, walruses, and
whales. To the Hopi she is Kokyanguruti, or Spider Woman,
the creatress and guardian of Mother Earth, who presides
over emergence and return. To the Algonquin she is No-
komis, the Grandmother, who feeds plants, animals, and hu-
mans from her breasts. In Mexico she is Chicomecoatl, Heart
of the Earth, with seven serpent messengers. In Africa she is
Osun with peacocks and Mami Wata with snakes. In Chris-
tianity her memory remains in the images of Eve with the
snake and Mary with the dove. She lingers, too, in such folk
images as Mother Goose, the Easter bunny, and the stork
who brings babies.
Composed between 800 and 400 BCE, the Homeric
Hymns, some of which may reflect earlier religious concep-
tions, provide two powerful written images of the Lady of
the Animals that can help us interpret earlier drawn and
sculpted images. In the “Hymn to Earth” she is “well-
founded Earth, mother of all, eldest of all beings. She feeds
all creatures that are in the world, all that go upon the goodly
land, and all that are in the paths of the seas, and all that fly.”
In the “Hymn to the Mother of the Gods” she is “well-
pleased with the sound of rattles and timbrels, with the voice
of flutes and the outcry of wolves and bright-eyed lions, with
echoing hills and wooded coombes.”
In these songs the Lady of the Animals is cosmic power,
mother of all. The animals of the earth, sea, and air are hers,
and the wildest and most fearsome animals—wolves and
lions, as well as human beings—praise her with sounds. The
Lady of the Animals is also earth, the firm foundation under-
girding all life. The hills and valleys echo to her. In these im-
ages she would not be called a “lady of the plants,” which
suggests that the conceptions reflected in these hymns may
have originated in preagricultural times. Jane Harrison
(1903) has suggested that the “lady of the wild things” be-
comes “lady of the plants” only after human beings become
agriculturalists.
THE PALEOLITHIC AGE. Marija Gimbutas, Gertrude R.
Levy, and E. O. James are among those who concur with
Harrison in tracing the Goddess symbolism of the Neolithic
and later periods to the Upper Paleolithic, or Old Stone Age
(c. 30,000–10,000 BCE). Therefore, we must ask whether the
image of the Lady of the Animals also goes back to the Paleo-
lithic era.
Many small figures of so-called pregnant Venuses have
been dated to the Upper Paleolithic. Abundantly fleshed
with prominent breasts, bellies, and pubic triangles, they
were often painted with red ocher, which seems to have sym-
bolized the blood of birth, the blood of life. These images
have been variously interpreted.
These images may be understood in relation to the cave
art of the Paleolithic era. Paleolithic peoples decorated the
labyrinthine paths and inner recesses of caves with abstract
line patterns and with drawings and paintings of animals,
such as bison and deer. Small human figures, both male and
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELIGION, SECOND EDITION

female, were sometimes painted in the vicinity of the much
larger animals. The drawings and paintings of these animals,
and the rituals practiced in the inner reaches of the caves,
have often been understood as hunting magic, done to en-
sure the capture of prey. But Gertrude R. Levy argues that
the purposes of these rituals cannot have been simple “magic
compulsion” but must have involved a desire for a “participa-
tion in the splendor of the beasts” (Levy, 1963, p. 20). If,
as was surely the case later, Paleolithic peoples also under-
stood the caves and their inner recesses to be the womb of
Mother Earth, then is it not possible to recognize the ani-
conic image of the Lady of the Animals in the womb-cave
onto which the animals were painted? And can we not also
see the Lady of the Animals in the well-known Paleolithic
carving found in Laussel of an unclothed full-bodied woman
holding a bison horn? Must we not, then, interpret prehistor-
ic rituals in the labyrinthine recesses of caves as a desire to
participate in the transformative power of the creatress, the
mother of all, the Lady of the Animals?
OLD EUROPE. Anthropomorphic images of the Lady of the
Animals appear in abundance in the Neolithic, or early agri-
cultural period, which began about 9000 BCE in the Near
East. Marija Gimbutas coined the term Old Europe to refer
to distinctive Neolithic and Chalcolithic (or Copper Age)
civilizations of Central and Southern Europe that included
the lands surrounding the Aegean and Adriatic Seas and their
islands and extended as far north as Czechoslovakia, south-
ern Poland, and the western Ukraine. There is reason to be-
lieve that Neolithic-Chalcolithic cultures developed along
similar lines in other parts of the world, including, for exam-
ple, Africa, China, the Indus Valley, and the Americas.
In Old Europe (c. 6500–3500 BCE), Gimbutas found
a pre–Bronze Age culture that was “matrifocal and probably
matrilinear, agricultural and sedentary, egalitarian and peace-
ful” (Gimbutas, 1982, p. 9). This culture was presided over
by a goddess conceived as the source and giver of all. Al-
though originally this goddess did not appear with animals,
she herself had animal characteristics. One of her earliest
forms was as the snake and bird goddess, who was associated
with water and represented as a snake, water bird, duck,
goose, crane, diving bird, or owl or as a woman with a bird
head or birdlike posture. She was the creator goddess, the
giver of life.
The goddess of Old Europe was also connected with the
agricultural cycles of life, death, and regeneration. Here she
appeared as, or was associated with, bees, butterflies, deer,
bears, hares, toads, turtles, hedgehogs, and dogs. The domes-
ticated dog, bull, male goat, and pig became her compan-
ions. To the Old Europeans she was not a power transcen-
dent of the earth but rather the power that creates, sustains,
and manifests itself in the variety of life-forms within the
earth and its cycles. Nor did the goddess represent “fertility”
in a narrow sense of human, animal, and plant reproduction;
rather she was the giver of life, beauty, and creativity. Instead
of celebrating humanity’s uniqueness and separation from
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELIGION, SECOND EDITION
LADY OF THE ANIMALS 5281
nature, Old Europeans honored humanity’s participation in,
and connection to, nature’s cycles of birth, death, and renew-
al. A combination of human and animal forms expressed her
power more fully than the human figure alone. Many ani-
mals, such as the caterpillar-chrysalis-butterfly, the bird that
flies in the air and walks on the earth, and the snake that
crawls above and below the earth, have powers that humans
lack.
In Old Europe, the creator goddess who appeared with
animal characteristics was the primary image of the divine.
According to Gimbutas, the “male element, man and animal,
represented spontaneous and life-stimulating—but not life-
generating—powers” (Gimbutas, 1982, p. 9). Gimbutas
stated that women were symbolically preeminent in the cul-
ture and religion of Old Europe. Although women were hon-
ored, the culture itself was not “matriarchal,” as women did
not dominate men but shared power with them. It is general-
ly thought that women invented agriculture, which led to the
Neolithic “revolution.” As the gatherers of plant foods in Pa-
leolithic societies, women would have been the ones most
likely to notice the connection between the dropping of a
seed and the springing up of a new plant. Women are also
the likely inventors of pottery and weaving in the Neolithic
era, for pottery was used primarily for women’s work of food
preparation and food storage, and weaving clothing and
other items for use in the home is women’s work in almost
all traditional cultures. Each of these inventions of the Neo-
lithic era is a mystery of transformation—seed into plant into
harvest, earth and fire into pot, wool and flax into clothing
and blankets. If these mysteries were understood to have
been given to women by the goddess and handed down from
mother to daughter, this would have provided a material and
economic basis for the preeminence of the female forms in
religious symbolism.
ÇATALHÜYÜK. The culture of Çatalhüyük, excavated by
James Mellaart, seems similar to that found by Gimbutas in
Old Europe. Like Gimbutas, Mellaart found a culture where
women and goddesses were prominent, a culture that he be-
lieved to have been matrilineal and matrilocal and peaceful
and in which the goddess was the most powerful religious
image. In Çatalhüyük the Lady of the Animals was preemi-
nent. Wall paintings in the shrines frequently depict a god-
dess, with outstretched arms and legs, giving birth, some-
times to bulls’ or rams’ heads. Other shrines depict rows of
bull heads with rows of breasts; in one shrine, rows of breasts
incorporate the lower jaws of boars or the skulls of foxes,
weasels, or vultures. Besides the small figure, mentioned ear-
lier, of the seated goddess, hands on her leopard companions,
giving birth, Mellaart also found a sculpture of a woman in
leopard-skin robes standing in front of a leopard. One shrine
simply depicts two leopards standing face-to-face.
Wall paintings of bulls were also frequent at the site.
Mellaart believes that the religion of Çatalhüyük was cen-
tered on life, death, and rebirth. The bones of women, chil-
dren, and some men were found buried under platforms in
5282 LADY OF THE ANIMALS
the living quarters and in the shrines, apparently after having
been picked clean by vultures. According to Mellaart, vul-
tures were also associated with the goddess, thus indicating
that she was both giver and taker of life.
As Mellaart states in Earliest Civilizations of the Near
East (1965), the land-based matrifocal, sedentary, and peace-
ful agricultural societies of the Near East were invaded by
culturally inferior northern peoples starting in the fifth and
fourth millennia BCE. These invaders and others who fol-
lowed set the stage for the rise of the patriarchal and warlike
Sumerian state about 3500 BCE. According to Gimbutas, the
patriarchal, nomadic, and warlike proto-Indo-Europeans in-
filtrated the matrifocal agricultural societies of Old Europe
between 4500 and 2500 BCE. As a result, in both the Near
East and Old Europe, the creator goddess was deposed, slain,
or made wife, daughter, or mother to the male divinities of
the warriors. The Lady of the Animals did not disappear (re-
ligious symbols linger long after the end of the cultural situa-
tion that gave rise to them), but her power was diminished.
MINOAN CRETE. In the islands, which were more difficult
to invade, the goddess-centered cultures survived and devel-
oped into Bronze Age civilizations. In Crete the Lady of the
Animals remained supreme until the Minoan civilization fell
to the Mycenaeans about 1450 BCE. In the old and new pal-
ace periods of Minoan Crete (c. 2000–1450 BCE), a highly
developed pre-Greek civilization based on agriculture, arti-
sanship, and trade emerged. From existing archaeological ev-
idence (Linear A, the written language of the Minoans, has
not been translated), it appears that women and priestesses
played the prominent roles in religious rituals. There is no
evidence that women were subordinate in society. Indeed,
there is no clear evidence that the “palaces” were royal resi-
dences. The celebrated throne of “King Minos,” found by
excavator Arthur Evans, is now thought by several scholars
(including Nano Marinatos, Jacquetta Hawkes, Stylianous
Alexiou, Helga Reusch, and Ruby Rohrlich) to have been oc-
cupied by a priestess or a queen, while others suggest that it
dates from the time of Mycenean occupation of Knossos.
In Minoan Crete the goddess was worshiped at natural
sites, such as caves or mountaintops, and in small shrines in
the palaces and homes. She had attributes of both a moun-
tain mother and a Lady of the Animals. In Crete the Lady
of the Animals is commonly found in the company of snakes,
doves, and trees, particularly the olive tree, which may have
first been cultivated in Crete. In a seal ring found in the Dic-
tean cave, the goddess appears with bird or snake head be-
tween two winged griffins, the same animals that flank the
throne of “Minos.”
Other pervasive symbols in Crete include the stylized
horns of consecration, which evoke not only the cow or bull
but also the crescent moon, the upraised arms of Minoan
goddesses and priestesses, and the double ax, which may
originally derive from doubling the sacred female triangle,
the place where life emerges. Heiresses and heirs to Neolithic
religion, the Minoans continued to understand the divine as
the power manifesting itself in the cycles of nature. Thus,
Cretan pottery and frescoes abound in rhythmical forms; im-
ages of waves, spirals, frolicking dolphins, undulating snakes,
and graceful bull leapers are everywhere. The Minoans cap-
tured life in motion. Exuberant movement must have repre-
sented to them the dance of life, the dance of the Mother
of All the Living, the Lady of the Animals.
GREECE. Eventually all the Neolithic and (isolated) Bronze
Age cultures in which the creator goddess was supreme fell
to patriarchal and warlike invaders. By the time of decipher-
able written records, we begin to see evidence that societies
are ruled by warrior kings; goddesses are no longer supreme
and women are subordinated by law to their husbands. On
mainland Greece, Apollo took over the holy site of Delphi,
sacred first to Mother Earth and her prophetess, after slaying
the python, the sacred snake that guarded the sanctuary. This
act can be compared to Marduk’s slaying of the female sea
snake (or dragon) Tiamat, to the association of the formerly
sacred snake with sin and evil in Genesis 2–3, to St. George’s
slaying the dragon-snake, and to St. Patrick’s driving the
snakes out of Ireland.
According to the Olympian mythology found in
Homer, Hesiod, and the Greek tragedies, Zeus, the Indo-
European sky God, is named father and ruler of all the gods
and goddesses. Hera, an indigenous goddess whose sanctuary
at Olympia was older than that of Zeus, becomes his never
fully subdued wife. Athena is born from the head of Zeus,
but her mountain temples (for example, the Parthenon) and
her companions, the owl and snake, indicate her connection
to the mother of the living, the Lady of the Animals. Aphro-
dite retains her connection to the dove and the goose. Arte-
mis is the goddess of the untamed lands, mountain forests,
and wild animals such as bears and deer. Although she is
named a virgin goddess, she aids both human and animal
mothers in giving birth. Of all the Olympian goddesses, Ar-
temis retains the strongest connection to the Mother of All
the Living, the Lady of the Animals.
What happened to the goddesses in ancient Greece hap-
pened elsewhere. They were slain, tamed, made defenders of
patriarchy and war, or relegated to places outside the city.
Yet the attempt to banish the image of the Mother of All the
Living, the Lady of the Animals, was never completely suc-
cessful. Like an underground spring, she burst forth in im-
ages of Mary and the female saints throughout Christian his-
tory. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries she has
reemerged in the work of feminist artists and in a widespread
Goddess movement.
SEE ALSO Animals; Goddess Worship, overview article; Lord
of the Animals; Megalithic Religion; Prehistoric Religions.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The reconstruction of Old European religion and culture by
Marija Gimbutas can be found in The Language of the God-
dess (San Francisco, 1989) and The Civilization of the Goddess
(San Francisco, 1991); a summary of her conclusions can be
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELIGION, SECOND EDITION

found in “Women and Culture in Goddess-Oriented Old
Europe,” in The Politics of Women’s Spirituality, edited by
Charlene Spretnak (Garden City, N.Y., 1982), pp. 22–31.
Gimbutas’s work has incited scholarly controversy, some of
which may reflect a backlash against feminist uses of her
work; see From the Realm of the Ancestors, edited by Joan
Marler (Manchester, Conn., 1997); Ancient Goddesses, edited
by Lucy Goodison and Christine Morris (Madison, Wis.,
1998); and Varia on the Indo-European Past (Journal of Indo-
European Studies Monograph 19), edited by Miriam Robbins
Dexter and Edgar C. Polome (Washington, D.C., 1997).
The works of James Mellaart, particularly Çatal Hüyük: A
Neolithic Town in Anatolia (New York, 1967) and Earliest
Civilizations of the Near East (London, 1965), are essential
for understanding Goddess symbolism in Neolithic civiliza-
tion. For a brief overview of reconsiderations of Mellaart’s
work, see Michael Balter, “The First Cities: Why Settle
Down? The Mystery of Communities,” Science, November
20, 1998, pp. 1442–1443; visit the website of the new exca-
vation, “Çatalhöyük” at http://catal.arch.cam.ac.uk/catal/
catal.html. Gertrude R. Levy’s Religious Conceptions of the
Stone Age (New York, 1963), originally titled The Gate of
Horn (London, 1948), remains a valuable resource on prehis-
toric religion, especially on the question of cave symbolism.
Jane E. Harrison’s Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion
(1903; reprint, Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1981) has never
been superseded as a comprehensive reference on Greek reli-
gion with particular emphasis on the prepatriarchal origins
of goddesses. Jacquetta Hawkes presents a dramatic contrast
between patriarchal and prepatriarchal Bronze Age societies
in Dawn of the Gods (New York, 1968). Nano Marinatos
presents an original scholarly reconstruction in Minoan Reli-
gion (Columbia, S.C., 1993). For a general overview of God-
dess symbolism in many cultures, E. O. James’s The Cult of
the Mother Goddess (New York, 1959) remains extremely use-
ful. Erich Neumann’s The Great Mother, 2d ed., translated
by Ralph Manheim (New York, 1963), contains a wealth of
information mired in androcentric Jungian theory. Buffie
Johnson’s Lady of the Beasts (San Francisco, 1998) is also
written from a Jungian and therefore ahistorical perspective.
Anthropological research on Goddess symbolism and ritual
in numerous cultures, most of them contemporary, can be
found in Mother Worship, edited by James J. Preston (Chapel
Hill, N.C., 1982). The Book of the Goddess: Past and Present,
edited by Carl Olson (New York, 1983), presents research,
some of it feminist, on historical and contemporary Goddess
religions. Women and Goddess Traditions in Antiquity and
Today, edited by Karen King (Minneapolis, 1997), addresses
the role of women in Goddess religions. The emergence of
Goddess symbolism in contemporary women’s art and spiri-
tuality is discussed in Elionor Gadon, Once and Future God-
dess (San Francisco, 1989).
CAROL P. CHRIST (1987 AND 2005)
LAESTADIUS, LARS LEVI (1800–1861), Sami
minister, writer, ecologist, mythologist, and ethnographer
who became the founder of Laestadian Lutheran revivalist
movement. Laestadius was born January 10, 1800, in the
Swedish Lappland village town of Jäkkvik to a Sami mother
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELIGION, SECOND EDITION
LAESTADIUS, LARS LEVI 5283
and a Swedish father. After Laestadius’s alcoholic father lost
his job, the family went to live with Lars’s half-brother, Carl
Erik, a Lutheran pastor in Kvikkjokk. Carl Erik was an also
amateur botanist and encouraged his younger brother’s in-
terest in the subject.
When Lars was 16, he entered the Härnösand Gymnasi-
um. Three years later his avid interest in botany led him to
take part in a botanical excursion to Helgoland, Norway;
when his report of the journey was published, the Swedish
Academy of Science and Letters was so impressed that it
promised to underwrite his future excursions. In 1820 La-
estadius enrolled at the University of Uppsala, where he stud-
ied botany and theology—excelling in both.
He was ordained in1825, and became the vicar of Kares-
uando a year later. During his years as a minister, Laestadius
continued his botanical studies, joining the scientific society
of Uppsala publishing articles on the flora of Samiland, and
serving as botanist during the years 1838 to 1840 on a
French botanical expedition to the region.
In 1844, after nineteen years in the ministry, Laestadius
underwent a significant “conversion” from inside the Luther-
an Church from its “highly churchly” mainstream to the pi-
etist movement of the “Readers.” He became a revivalist
minister, campaigning for temperance, organizing of educa-
tion for the Sami people, and serving as a newspaper editor.
His dynamic evangelism won him many followers, and even-
tually prompted a following that spread throughout the re-
gion. This religious movement, now known as Laestadian-
ism, began among the Sami Readers in Karesuando and
spread to the Finns at Pajala in the Tornio river valley. Sami
and Finnish immigrants brought Laestadianism to America,
particularly northern states like Michigan, Minnesota, and
Oregon. Laestadius’s role as founder of the biggest religious
movement in northern Scandinavia eventually overshad-
owed his scholarly career, which expanded into several disci-
plines:
1. As an ecologist and botanist he was the successor to
Carolus Linnaeus; he took part in Prof. Wahlenberg’s botan-
ical expeditions from Skåne to Lapland. His unique herbari-
um, containing 6,700 plants, was sold to the French Acade-
my after his death.
2. As a theologian and religious philosopher Laestadius
used his considerable knowledge of Enlightenment psychol-
ogy, philosophy, and theology to preach forceful and dynam-
ic sermons against alcohol and other social eveils. He pub-
lished many of these, including his pastoral thesis Crapula
mundi (Hangover of the world, Hernoesandie, 1843), the
three-volume book Dårhushjonet (The madhouse inmate,
written before 1851), as well as sermons in Finnish, Swedish,
and Sami. Many of these writings expressed his protest
against the spiritually dead doctrinalism taught by traditional
church leaders.
3. Laestadius was a philologist of some stature; in addi-
tion to his mother’s Southern Sami tongue, he spoke Pite
5284 LĀHORĪ, MUH: AMMAD EALĪ
Sami and Finnish. He learned the latter two to be able to
preach in those languages. He transcribed Pite and Luleå
Sami using his own “Lodge Lappish” Sami-based ortho-
graphy.
4. Laestadius was an ethnographer, mythographer, and
a mythologist of the Sami people. He collected information
about the ancient Sami, and compiled folk beliefs and leg-
ends into a system he called a mythology; and as mythogra-
pher used this mythology to write a history for the Sami. His
achievement as mythologist and ethnographer, Fragmenter i
lappska mythologien (Fragments in Lapp mythology), was fi-
nally translated into English in 2002. This manuscript, writ-
ten between1840 and 1845, was not even published fully in
Swedish until 1997.
Laestadius did field work in the heart of Sami territory
as rector of Karesuando and inspector of Sami parishes in
Sweden. In these capacities, he visited every lodge in Swedish
Lapland, as he stated in the Fragmenter preface. Both this
work and Crapula mundi were written during his religious
conversion.
As a religious man he lived wholeheartedly inside the
“interior household of the Sami,” as he called their world
view—or more properly their religion. His 1845 letter to an-
other Lapp mythologist, Jacob Fellman (1795–1875), rector
of Utsjoki, offers evidence of the change already begun with-
in him: “I can no longer undertake any further actions with
regard to this worthy manuscript, because my attention has
become directed elsewhere and been overwhelmed by mat-
ters belonging to the sphere of religion, which seem to me
to be considerably more important than mythology.”
Laestadius’s writings in Latin, Swedish, Finnish and
Sami are extensive. His Sami-language works, Hålaitattem
Ristagase ja Satte almatja kaskan (1839), a talk between a
Christian and an ordinary man, and Tåluts Suptsahah, Jub-
mela pirra ja Almatji pirra (1844), an ancient tale about God
and man, make him one of the first Sami writers. Fragmenter
i lappska mythologien was originally produced for J. P. Gai-
mard, leader of Laestadius’s 1838 royal French arctic expedi-
tion to Scandinavia, the Faroes, Iceland, and Spitzbergen.
Both Gaimard and historian Xavier Marmier recognized La-
estadius’ knowledge of Lappish history and lore. Mythology
and history are intermingled in Fragmenter; the borderline
between the two was extremely vague.
Part I of Fragmenter, “Gudalära” (Doctrine on divinity),
was written in 1840; the next three chapters, including one
called “Comments to Fellman” were completed five years
later. The other parts are offer-lära (sacrifice), spådomslära
(prophesy), Lapp nåjdtro (shamanism), and valda stycken af
Lapparnes Sagohäfde (selection of Lappish folk tales).
Laestadius’s Fragmenter details his vast knowledge of the
Sami people, languages, and religion. His careful criticism
and field observations make him one of the founders of the
Northern Ethnography school.
SEE ALSO Finno-Ugric Religions; Sami Religion.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Franzén, Olle. Naturalhistorikern Lars Levi Laestadius. Tornedali-
ca 15. Luleå, 1973.
Jonsel, Bengt, et al., eds. Lars Levi Læstadius: botaniker-lingvist-
etnograf-teolog. Oslo, 2000.
Laestadius, Lars Levi. Dårhushjonet. In Suomen Kirkkohistorial-
lisen Seuran toimituksia L:1, 2, 3. Vasa (1949), Åbo (1964).
Laestadius, Lars Levi. Fragmenter i lappska mythologien. In Svenska
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JUHA PENTIKÄINEN (2005)
LĀHORĪ, MUH: AMMAD EALĪ (1874–1951),
scholar of Islam and founder of the Lāhorı̄ branch of the
Ah: madı̄yyah movement. Born in Murar (Kapurthala),
India, Lāhorı̄ completed advanced degrees in English (1896)
and law (1899) in Lahore. His life and works are closely in-
tertwined with the Ah: madı̄yyah (also known as Qādiyānı̄)
movement, a minor sect of Islam founded in 1889 by
Ghulām Ah: mad (c. 1839–1908), at whose suggestion
Lāhorı̄ undertook his two major works, a translation of the
QurDān and The Religion of Islam. In 1902, Lāhorı̄ was ap-
pointed co-editor of the Ah: madı̄yyah periodical, Review of
Religions, through which he propagated the movement’s
news and views to the non-Muslim world. This appointment
marked the beginning of Lāhorı̄’s prolific career. He translat-
ed Ghulām Ah: mad’s writings into English, defended his
views in the face of the Sunnı̄ majority’s growing opposition,
and wrote on various aspects of Islam.
In 1914, with the death of Ghulām Ah: mad’s successor,
Nūr al-Dı̄n—a prominent scholar of QurDān considered the
mastermind of the Ah: madı̄yyah movement by its oppo-
nents—the community split over doctrinal issues such as
Ghulām Ah: mad’s claim of prophethood. Lāhorı̄ headed the
splinter group, the Ah: madı̄yyah Anjuman-i IshaEat-Islam,
Lahore, known as the Lāhorı̄ group, which regarded Ghulām
Ah: mad a reformer (mujaddid), not the prophet. This group
was more liberal and closer to the mainstream of Sunnı̄
Islam, but also more aggressive in its outreach and more
vocal in explaining its doctrinal differences with the parent
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELIGION, SECOND EDITION