I planned to get into this after posting evidence that medieval people living near monasteries and priories were very unhappy with their 'beneficent' neighbours. Because of monastic tendencies to:
- charge high land rents
- steal land (fencing others' land, rewriting tenancy contracts into ownership contracts)
- tax roads (by building tollbooths), and
- violence.
Protesting locals could be beaten up or hung from abbot-owned gallows. Officials who attempted to restore order were met by promises of reform, by outright lies and - sometimes - by well-armed 'monks'. I planned to show that the modern perception of 'good' monks is out-of-whack; the result of zealous information management.
However, presenting that case takes a lot of space and Oracle's medicinal cannibalism post leap-frogs us to less well-known ecclesiastic profit lines. So let's look at those instead.
We start with prostitution, then move on to blood harvesting (
virginal and non-virginal).
First, credits: the film clips in this post were taken from these two reports about Spanish brothels:
Pay attention to the signage: it is directed at passing traffic, clearly signals the product offer, and highlights the entrance door.
From a distance:
Above: Catch the eye of passing trade...
Product offer should be unambiguous
Above: Signal the product offer as clearly as cultural norms permit.
In Spanish, 'club' rhymes with 'boob'
Below: As the customer approaches the premises, showcase the entrance and the product offer:
Showcase the entrance. Make it unmissable
Below: Reassure hesitant customers and close the sale:
Pimp that entrance door. And - like the Church - disassociate yourself from the daily grind
Now let's look at sheela na gigs - those mysterious 'fertility symbol' carvings found around old churches, priories and castles:
From a distance:
Above: Catch the eye of passing trade... many sheela na gigs are positioned high on exterior tower and nave walls.
Above: Signal the product offer as clearly as cultural norms permit.
Below: Three wedge-shaped sheela na gigs, probably keystones from former arches:
Showcase the entrance and the product offer. Make the entrance unmissable. Close the sale...
For raw data, we turn to Barbara Freitag's catalogue of 167 Irish and British sheela na gigs in
Sheela-Na-Gigs - Unravelling an Enigma. There we find:
- 67 of the known sheela na gig carvings are thought to have been repositioned at some time, leaving:
- 100 possibly still in their original position.
Of these 100:
- 33 are positioned inside
- 67 are positioned outside
Of the 67 that are outside:
- 16 were first found positioned on a gatepost
- 23 were first found positioned above an entrance door (including three that appear to have been keystones at the top of archways)
Rob Trubshaw in
Rutland Village by Village, 2011 edition, p25 describes a female stone figure found face down and being used as a doorstep at Braunston, Rutland, England:
Draw your own conjectures.
If you're struggling, you can even compare the 'good works' of the Church with a brothel manager's attitude to his job:
We do good work!
We already made a case that
ecclesiasts were active in the business of 'hatches'. What might medieval brothels have to do with famine? And with harvesting human parts for medicine and cosmetics?
Famine first. We're already familiar with the sheela na gig below from
this cannibalism thread post's discussion of
The Time Machine's Eloi.
This time, look at her ribs.
Most sheela na gig images depict women like this: thin with visible ribs. It is probably significant that their creators took the time to carve ribs on what are otherwise very primitive carvings. Only one or two are known to depict the physiques of well nourished women.
Why?
The Great Hunger and the Celtic Gene | Irish America discusses hemochromatosis - a disorder characteristic of survivors of famine. The page focuses on the Great Irish Famine. Bear in mind this IHASFEMR thread grew out of
evidence that North-West Europe went through a series of flood-famine cycles starting approx 1,000 years ago and that the British floods have been propagandised into purely politico-ecclesiastic events.
Hemochromatosis is:
The HFE gene that renders populations particularly susceptible to hemochromatosis:
Female famine survivors tend to show hemochromatosis later in life (10-20 years later) than male famine survivors. Because women periodically hemorrhage iron through menstruation and occasionally through childbirth.
Discussing possible sheela na gig depictions of free-flowing menstruation, Freitag cites research that says
post-menarche female human stock require 'at least' twice as much iron as men. And that most women were - at best - anemic in medieval times.
Summary:
- Famine survivors were more likely to have the iron-retaining HFE gene (the Celtic Gene).
- Women were more likely to suffer from iron deficiency (anemia) than men during famine.
- Surviving women were less likely to suffer hemochromatosis than surviving men after famine.
Most known sheela na gig images are from Ireland and Britain, though there are a few finds (and suspected finds) in France, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. In Ireland and Britain, the distribution of known finds is:
Both maps from Barbara Freitag's
Sheela-na-gigs - Unravelling an Enigma
The evidence and circumstances not only support the Smithsonian's claim that fresh virgin's blood was in demand, but that at times any source of nutritional iron was in demand, and that - sometimes - any form of nutrition was in demand.
The fact that women produce iron-rich blood products through their adult life and during childbirth must have been attractive to farmers of human products. They had a profit motive for herding women - especially virginal women - into centres suitable for regular blood harvesting.
This 1974 image is of the inexplicably large vaults excavated beneath the toilets (in medieval-speak: the 'rere-dorter') at St Michael's Priory, Stamford, England - a nunnery housing 40 nuns (
Google Maps), (
Google Streetview). Source is the collection of images at:
Plate 5: 12th-Century Monastic Remains | British History Online
The vault was nearly ten feet (3m) high. See:
St Michael's Priory rere-dorter, Stamford, Lincolnshire
and
St Michael's Priory rere-dorter, Stamford - 1007811 | Historic England
It's possible - even probable - that Stamford's nuns were composting their crap. So they would need to get under there with a wheelbarrow. But ten feet?
Perhaps they sold compost at the roadside. But economic theory says it made more sense to 'add value' by selling the surplus vegetables they grew in it, along with prepared meals and hospitality to travellers and sailors (Stamford was a major medieval east coast port). Given that virgin blood was in demand and (some) sheela na gig images depict 'bloody flux', can we speculate that St Michael's nunnery's massive toilet vaults are evidence of working space required to collect a premium-priced, iron-rich human product? One that only nunneries could offer?
That's the medicinal side. It's not a big step to consider herding and harvesting of humans for cosmetics,
just as American indians warned us (see section 3).
High on top of a church gable wall, the object beneath the sheela na gig at Taghboy, Ireland, is catalogued as 'amniotic sac ... partially lying on the ground'. That's not what it looks like to me but then I haven't inspected it closely. And there are around nine sheela na gigs where there seems to be no doubt that the 'falling mass' being depicted is either afterbirth or menstrual fluid. It can - just - also be seen in the Rahara and Kilmokea sheela na gig images earlier in this post.
However, there were probably many more. Researchers report the area between the legs of many sheela na gigs has often been severely defaced.
What do we have here?
- We may have menstrual fluid harvesting centres.
- We may have afterbirth harvesting centres.
- We may have abortion clinics. (It's worth reading up on medieval abortificants and the cultural toings and froings around them)
- We may have all three combined.
We also have evidence of intense popular rage over their activities: destruction of images, destruction of churches, monasteries, priories, nunneries - coupled with flood and mudflood.
How did the farmers of humanity respond? Did management and workforce rebrand into our current Church? Or did they migrate to somewhere less... resentful? Or both?
A
llegations about a brothel manager
Do the allegations in the clip give us clues about where hated farmer-managers of humans would migrate to? Summarising:
- Money laundering
- Tax evasion
- Good lawyers
With expertise in products like:
- Pharmaceuticals
- Cosmetics
- Banking
- Time management and time-pieces (Spanish: 'Reloj' and Portuguese: 'Relojo')
- Red crosses on white backgrounds and white crosses on red backgrounds
- Running centres noted for elite arrogance
- Symbolic use of the phoneme 'ch'
- Chocolate (think 'butter fat' as in 'butter crosses', 'butter markets' and 'sacamantecas')
With a love of geographic oddities like:
Where might that be?
