On Dec. 5, Rochelle Smith, a University of Idaho humanities librarian, gave a speech titled “Demons and Doggedness.” This talk, which took place in the Lionel Hampton School of Music, was a part of the Renfrew Interdisciplinary Colloquium.
The Malcolm M. Renfrew Interdisciplinary Colloquium is a series of lectures given by UI faculty and staff who present their teaching or research they have done. The lectures are meant to explore interdisciplinary work and explore the specific subjects and methodologies the speaker uses.
Smith’s lecture was about the research she did over her sabbatical in 2022. During this time, Smith researched based on the question: why do gods and deities do craft skills? This research led her to write a book using the research she did about craft mythology.
To begin, Smith gave examples of some gods and deities from different cultures that deal with crafting somehow. Khnum, an Egyptian deity that creates humans from clay on a potter’s wheel, Iya Mapo, a Yerba goddess of pottery and fabric dyeing, and Frigg, a Norse goddess who is a spinner, among other examples.
“All of these deities, in one way or another, deal with craft,” Smith said. “This whole project started because I was having a conversation with an author answering a reference question about making, makers, and craftspeople. As a side question, she asked, ‘Why are so many gods and goddesses makers? Why do they make stuff?’”
“I was like, ‘That’s a really interesting question,’ I mean deities can make things happen with just their thoughts,” Smith said. “If you can just think something, say something, or sing something and stuff happens, why would you get your hands dirty? Why would they do that?”
Smith mentioned how they are often teaching humans how to do things.
“They are called culture heroes, where they bring the knowledge of something to humanity so we can have a better chance of surviving,” Smith said. “That something could be medicine, it could be law, it could be writing, it could be agriculture, it could be lots of things. But very often it’s craft making.”
While the author Smith worked with moved on with her own research, Smith was captivated by this question of deities working craft skills.
She piled all the information she could find on various crafting deities from all over the world. What she thought would lead to a short article, soon grew into a book where each section would cover a different craft and the deities who do them.
A lot of the spinning and weaving deities were women, Smith noticed, likely because it is a gendered skill in a lot of cultures. Smith was also interested in cloths that are not spun or woven, which led her to explore more about felt.
“It’s made by applying pressure and friction and dampness to fibers to encourage them to be matted together and form a cohesive fabric,” said Smith. “Felt is an incredibly important material all across Central Asia.”
As many cultures in Central Asia are nomadic and live in the steppe, felt has been important to their lifestyle for thousands of years due to its water resistance, lightness, and insulating properties.
In the latter half of Smith’s presentation, she outlined the process and methodology she used while trying to find a myth about felt she thought certainly must exist for a widely used and important material. She could not find any such myth, which led her to get creative in how she searched for reference materials.
Eventually, after an exhaustive process of reading various books and articles, searching the internet, reaching out to other librarians, and various other processes, Smith found a reference to felt that she was looking for.
In the sixth branch of the Buryat version of the Epic of Gesar, a Tibetan and Central Asian tale reminiscent of the King Arthur tales, there is a reference to felt.
In the story, Gesar, a great warrior, is fighting Sherem Minaata, an evenly-matched demon. They fight to no avail, so Gesar seeks help from his goddess grandmother Manzan Gurme Toodei. She gives him the stick she used to beat wool, or rather a stick used to make felt. He later uses that stick to beat Sherem Minaata, shrinking him much like the stick would shrink wool to make felt.
“Not only did Gesar Khan, this hero in battle, this vanquisher of demons, heed his wife’s advice [to ask his goddess grandmother for help],” Smith said. “He also needed a women’s felting tool to defeat this enemy. And this felting tool was owned by a goddess.”
Smith acknowledged that this story is the tip of an iceberg, that it was just a passing reference to a Central Asian goddess.
Smith faced many walls when searching for stories of Mongolian goddesses. There were only brief references to them in other epics, but no stories solely belonging to women deities.
“The fact that that exists means there must be so much more out there. I am so hoping that somewhere right now there is a woman in an archive in Mongolia, combing through books and stories to find those women deities,” Smith said.
“When we ask questions when we assume women have a role in things, we’re probably going to find them. If we don’t ask questions, we won’t,” Smith said.
“Anyone can do research,” Smith added. “If you get passionate about something or you want to find out more about something, it’s all worth studying.”
Georgia Swanson can be reached at [email protected]
Max
Excellent and very interesting.