Matri Blog

Summary of The Herbalist, Charter of King Henry VIII:
It is well known that the Surgeons who are organized under their own trade guild and recognized by law, have done nothing but tend to their own lavish financial enrichment, have done nothing to ease the distressed patient, but have spent an enormous amount of time suing and harassing honest persons who have the knowledge of nature and how to use this knowledge, however obtained, and generously minister to the sick.
It is also well known that Surgeons will not provide services to the sick unless they receive great sums of money and even then, often cause harm to their patients.
For this reason, from this time and forevermore it shall be lawful for every person who lives in any part of the Realm of England or any of its dominions, and who has knowledge and experience of the healing nature of herbs, roots and waters, or the operation of same, to be free to treat the sick without “suit, vexation, trouble, penalty or loss of their goods.”

"The health of nations is more important than the wealth of nations." - Historian Will Durant (a matriarchal thinker?)

Tami Blumenfield and Ryan Kedar are organizing a film festival at Lugo Lake January 2006 on documentaries made of the matriarchal Mosuo. They are calling for submissions - more info here. The Moso Film Festival will be held on the shores of Lugu Lake, in southwest China's Yunnan Province, from January 14-19, 2006.

What has a blog in common with the old American newspaper-rocks? Oh – you don’t know what a newspaper-rock is?
The largest known collections of petroglyphs (images recorded on stone) are in eastern Utah, western United States. Archaeologists call them newspaper-rocks.

The African counterparts are the memory boards. They all serve the same purpose: Keeping the history and the tradition of a people alive. Members with a perfectly good memory are the guardians of the political continuity of the tribal community. They know everything by heart about their ancestors, events of the people’s myth, sacred places of the region where spirits and ghosts live, their names, countless proverbs, code words, songs and lyrics.
The rock or board is a memory tool for instructing the initiates, who become the next generation’s guardians of the tradition.

Right: Rock painting, Tassili^[?], Algeria, North Africa (click image to enlarge)

The symbolism is quite complex and also universal. You can find the same symbols in many other places on this planet and they are used until up to date!

They can be found on cave paintings in the south of France or in Spain or in the Tassili, Algeria. Still the Celts had them on their coins.

Left: African memory board (click to enlarge)

Matri-Blog is quite the same: it is a memory tool about humankind’s history, about its myths and symbols, about sacred places and spirits and all what is important to a social community, which is worth this name.