The Moment Humanity Forgot Its Place in the Circle

 🌱 I’m often asked why I hold such a strong stance on veganism.
The truth is simple, I believe that until we respect all life, we will never truly know peace.
Every cruelty we inflict on others human or otherwise comes from our belief that we own, control, or stand above them. That illusion of ownership began long ago, and it has shaped every injustice since.

So, sit down and read my rather long TED talk, and maybe you’ll understand my way of thinking.

From Shared to Ownership

Once, humans didn’t own the earth...we belonged to it. We sang to the rivers, asked permission of the trees. The sacred was everywhere, and everything was connected.

Around six thousand years ago, the rhythm of the world changed. When humans began to settle and farm, we learned to control seed, soil, and herd. It must have felt miraculous to plant and harvest, to breed and to keep. But in mastering the earth, we planted another kind of seed: possession.

The word mine entered the human story. Where once we had shared what the earth offered, now we measured, stored, and defended it. We learned to fence land and soon, to fence lives. Animals became property. And when that idea took root, it didn’t stop there.

The same logic that turned wild creatures into livestock began to touch women and reproduction. Fertility, once the mystery of the Great Mother, became a resource to manage to guarantee heirs and inheritance. Patrilineal lines replaced the communal web of belonging. To secure them, women’s bodies had to be controlled. The first hierarchy emerged:

 man over beast

man over woman

man over earth

The Rise of the Patriarchs and the Fall of the Goddess

As early civilisations grew in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and beyond, power concentrated around kings and priests. The gods mirrored their rulers no longer the nurturing Mother, but the conquering Father, lord of sky and storm. The divine feminine, still revered in whispers, was slowly rewritten as passive, dangerous, or fallen.

In the old myths, the Mother created from herself. In the new ones, the Father created by command. The voice of the womb became the word of law. Patriarchy didn’t appear overnight; it crept in with every law that defined inheritance, every ruler that demanded obedience. Where women had once been the keepers of birth, healing, and the sacred cycles of the moon, they became subjects of purity codes and property clauses.

Then came the invention of virginity not as holiness, as people were told to believe, but as ownership. The idea that a woman’s worth could be measured by what had or hadn’t entered her body was never divine; it was administrative. It served inheritance, not spirit.
By binding a woman’s purity to a man’s honour, the body became a contract and the womb a vault for lineage.

Before the concept of virginity, sexuality had been sacred a reflection of the creative power of the Goddess herself, the act through which life renewed. But patriarchy recast that fire as something dangerous unless contained, and in doing so, it taught women to fear their own magic. Virginity was never about virtue it was always about control.

Religion, Meat, and the Hierarchy of Life

With control came justification. If man ruled the field, the animals, and the family, he must also rule by divine right. Theologies arose that sanctified domination: man above animal, spirit above flesh and in religious texts heaven above earth.

Animals became things.Their suffering was hidden behind sacrifice, their lives translated into offerings or meals. Because life itself was now a commodity, compassion was recast as weakness.

But violence cannot be contained. Once we allowed cruelty toward the creatures who share this planet, it spread to every corner of human life. The same hand that slit a lamb’s throat could silence a woman’s voice. The same mind that saw a cow as a resource could see a slave, a wife, or a worker as property.

But this is more than philosophy, it’s recognised today in The theory of the interconnectedness of violence.

Scholars and ethicists have shown that societies tolerating cruelty toward animals display higher levels of aggression toward people. Compassion and violence ripple through the same channels.

Until we respect all life, we will never know peace on this earth.
Peace begins on our plate with what we choose to eat, with what we choose to fund, and with what we choose to turn away from. That piece of meat on a plate was once a living, breathing being: a heart that beat, a mind that felt fear and love. When we sanction cruelty toward one, we invite cruelty toward all. Violence echoes outward... but compassion does too.

The Witches and the War on Wisdom

For thousands of years, traces of the old balance endured. wise women, midwives, herbalists, seers. They were the keepers of earth-based medicine and lunar rhythm, the last living threads to the Mother.

The word witch comes from the Old English wicce which means to bend or shape, the one who knows how to work with nature’s forces. These women were healers, counsellors, and protectors of the village. They reminded people that the sacred was still here, in soil and seed and body.

When Church and state fused their power, that memory became a threat. The Malleus Maleficarum of 1487 turned folk healers into demons. Tens of thousands of mostly women were tortured and murdered, not for evil, but for refusing to surrender their knowing. It was the final act in the long story that began when humanity chose ownership over reverence: the systematic silencing of those who still remembered the circle.

Returning to the Circle

This was the first fracture the one that made all the others possible. Patriarchy, empire, and exploitation all grew from that illusion of control. Our cages became temples. Our dominion became doctrine.

But it isn’t beyond repair. The same hands that built the fences can open them again.
Every act of compassion, every refusal to harm, every moment we choose reverence over consumption mends a thread in the web we once tore apart.

Peace begins again the moment we choose gentleness.

 From my altar to yours may we remember the circle, not the chain, and honour every life as sacred once more. May these words remind you that every act of compassion is a spell, and peace always begins on your plate.

From the altar of Lynsey Drewett

Creator, witch, and ethical rebel behind VE Cosmetics.