The Queen of Sheba’s visit to Solomon by Tintoretto, around 1555 (Public Domain)Many women today use cannabis medically, and many more just love a good high, which in ancient times was one and the same says Ellen Komp, author of Tokin’ Women: A 4000-Year Herstory of Women and Marijuana and deputy director of cannabis advocacy group, California NORML. “What has come down in recorded history as healing was done in a more ritualistic fashion, tied to spiritual practices where a shaman or shamaness partook of the cannabis or dispensed it to her patients.”
While history has often left women’s stories out, surviving legends of some goddesses and influential women reveal cannabis as central to their powers—at least in theory. Here are some of the biggest names that have carried over maps and millennia: