The Return of Ancient Midwifery: Remembering the Sacred in Birth

Lux Berndt-Brazilian Traditional Birthkeeper

By Lux Berndt – Brazilian Traditional Birthkeeper

Since the beginning of time, women have guided birth. At first, many laboured and gave birth on their own, in quiet connection with their bodies and the forces of nature, rarely interrupted. Over time, birth became a shared experience: women began to gather, to witness, and to support one another.

From these circles of care emerged the figure of the traditional midwife, carrying wisdom passed down through generations. In their presence, birth was never only a biological event — because humans are not merely biological beings. We are also cultural, social, and spiritual beings. Birth, therefore, has always been more than physiology. It is a sacred threshold where life renews itself, where mystery and trust meet in the body of the birthing woman, and where community once gathered in reverence for the arrival of new life.

In ancient Europe, women gathered around the labouring mother. Midwives and wise women used herbs, songs, and embodied knowledge passed down through generations. Birth belonged to the community, and rituals were woven into the smallest gestures: like closing the locks of the house to protect the newborn’s spirit, honouring the placenta as part of the child, or simply holding silence as the first cry filled the room.

But history shifted. As patriarchal systems consolidated, fertility and birth came under new forms of control. Religious authorities began to condemn the very women who carried birth knowledge. The wise woman became the “witch.” Practices once revered were cast as dangerous, sinful, or unclean. By the Middle Ages, thousands of midwives in Europe were persecuted, their voices silenced, their wisdom erased. The sacred feminine, once celebrated, was replaced with fear and suspicion.

Later, with the Enlightenment and the rise of science, birth moved further away from women’s hands. By the 18th and 19th centuries, childbirth was no longer considered a natural passage but a risky event requiring male doctors and instruments. The introduction of the forceps became a symbol of this shift: a tool that represented both the promise of life-saving intervention and the dominance of medicine over women’s bodies. The home, once the natural setting of birth, gave way to hospitals, where rules, protocols, and authority replaced intimacy and trust.

This cultural transformation was not only about medicine. It was about power. By redefining birth as mechanical and dangerous, society stripped it of its sacredness. Women’s autonomy was reduced; their role was to submit, not to trust. The very word “midwife” — once synonymous with wisdom — was overshadowed by the figure of the obstetrician, the external saviour.

And yet, the memory of sacred birth never disappeared. Across continents, traditional midwives still keep their practices alive. In South America, Africa, and Asia, many midwives continue to attend births in ways deeply connected to nature, ritual, and trust. Their presence reminds us that birth does not belong to institutions — it belongs to life itself.

But at the same time, we must acknowledge that even traditional midwifery has often been colonized by the medicalized, mechanistic, and masculinized view of birth. Many midwives are encouraged — sometimes even pressured — to abandon their natural tools and embrace modern ones, under the promise of “safety,” even when clear evidence is lacking. The sacred dimension, once at the heart of their practice, is easily overshadowed by this imposed model.

When we speak of bringing the sacred back to birth today, we are not talking about reviving religious rituals, specific cultural practices or going back in time. Sacred does not mean dogma or religious beliefs, nor is it tied to one culture. Sacred is universal. Sacred means mystery. It is what connects us to life in its raw, unexplainable force. It is the unseen presence that moves through a woman’s body in labour, the invisible thread linking her to her ancestors and to every mother who has ever given birth.

To reclaim the sacred in birth is to recognize that we are part of the Earth, part of the great cycles of Life and Nature. It is to allow ourselves to be humbled by the unknown, to honour the invisible forces of life, and to create space for trust instead of control. In this perspective, birth is not a problem to be solved, but a profound initiation — for the mother, the baby, and the community.

Today, as more women in Europe and beyond seek to reconnect with ancient ways, we are not longing for the past. We are weaving the old and the new. We are drawing inspiration from ancestral practices while creating new forms of birth care that recover something universal — something that belongs not to any culture, but to Life itself. By reclaiming trust, autonomy, and connection, we remember that birth is not merely a personal event but a reflection of the interconnectedness of all existence.

We are learning from traditional midwives in South America and other regions, not to copy their ways, but to remember that birth can once again be held as sacred. To birth in sacredness is not to escape from reality — it is to embrace it fully. It is to see birth as the place where body and spirit meet, where biology and mystery dance together, where the invisible and the visible weave life into being.

The return of ancient midwifery is, ultimately, the return of trust: trust in physiology, in women, in life itself. And this trust, when lived deeply, is nothing less than sacred.

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Lux Berndt is a Brazilian Traditional Birthkeeper bridging ancient wisdom and care to guide women through transformative, empowered births, while also supporting birth professionals walking this same path.