Dear Folk,
On October 9, 1586 Agatha Weiss, Anna Dormar and Christina Mayer were burned to death because they were convicted of being witches in Waldsee, Germany. This was in the center of the Witchcraze or Burning Times.
Recently I have been in a pushing match, not very enlightened one on my side I admit, with someone who repeatedly told me "Wicca and witchcraft [she seemed to think they were different] are abominations unto the Lord." That really took me aback. I have been living out in coastal California and had gotten oblivious to this sentiment which remains in some parts of Christianity. Further, I got angry with her, felt some and said some unpleasant things. I guess you folk know me well enough by now to know that when throwing rocks at shore birds, I leave no tern unstoned. It was a short hop from flaming instant messages to surfing the Internet for historic and hysteric truths.
Killing folks over religion is nothing new, nor is it completely out of fashion. Check the Middle East on any sunny day. Look in Africa to see whole families harassed and murdered for "being witches." Early accounts of whomping up on witches go back to the Old Testament. Deuteronomy, Exodus, and Leviticus all have injunctions against folks who "observe the times" [presumably astrologers], pass their children through the flames [jumping bonfires? Maybe purification rites or just barbecue] and conjuring of any sort. If there were those laws against it, must have been folks doing it.
We have already talked about the Salem Witch Trials. Quick: how many were burned there? Did you answer: none, there were 19 hangings and one pressing to death? Good, I knew you would remember. Let us talk a touch about Germany a couple years before.
Germany alone put to death approximately 30,000 people. And although we will never know exactly how many were killed in Europe, the sanest estimates are about 500,000. In most places there were pretty strict controls over accusation and the trials of suspected witches. Germany was a very big and bad exception: it was a madhouse. What resulted from the spasm of torture and killing in the mid-fifteenth, sixteenth, to early-seventeenth centuries can be seen in the art and culture of the day. There was no strata of society untouched. As we saw in Salem, in the early phases, the accused were mostly older women, grannies. As the hunt got in full swing, women of all ages, men and even children could become its victims. It even devoured the upper classes.
Was it a gender issue? In Europe, including Germany, the gender of arrested and executed "witches" was 82% women. It was in the use of torture that Germany seemed to focus on gender specific applications. Torture was used both to get a confession and as a punishment. The horrific details of this torture is not for this column. If you wish to read about that, search the Internet under witch trials.
Having said that, the most effective torture was enforced sleeplessness. After only a few days and nights of sleep deprivation, the accused was ready to confess anything. When details could not be guessed by the guilty, the examiners were quick to supply them. After that, the confessed witch needed to supply a list of others whom they had seen at their infernal gatherings. Once again, a new set of tortures and line of questioning were applied. One family member under torture would indict the rest of their family, friends, and neighbors. Anything to make it stop.
For those of you sitting in the warmth and safety of your home who are saying "I would never do that; they could kill me before I would turn in my parents or children," I tell you that you do not know. You cannot know what you would or would not do and that is a blessing. I was tortured only a short while. It only cost me partial use of my right knee. I resisted for that short while. The torture was very unsophisticated.
So to what were they confessing? Mostly devil worship was the charge. There has been no substantiated evidence that there was any organized demonic worship either in Europe or in America at that time. The book of the time was Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of the Witches) You want something to keep you awake at night? Try reading that piece of self-righteous paranoia. It was written in 1484 and plainly shows how women are evil, consorts of the devil, killing infants [a charge often leveled at would-be enemies who needed tarring], suckling familiars, organizing all sorts of infamy and nasty devil worship. Really nice look at the ladies.
Under Roman Catholicism, there were laws to protect those wrongly accused. Torture was not allowed until after the defense had made its case and there was still clear evidence that the accused was a witch. Okay, that was not always adhered to but it was there. By the sixteenth century, the Church had passed these trials over to secular courts. Horribly enough, there were no such protections. Torture was used even after the confession. Women were raped and otherwise sexually assaulted and abused.
This sexual abuse of women fit in with the prurience of the accusations made. From fornication and "unnatural acts" with the devil to abortion, adultery, and infanticide, the women were tortured until they admitted all of these evil-minded, sexually repressed inquisitors' charges. Midwives were particularly at risk for these types of accusations. At least one woman was executed for teaching other women about contraception. In France, for instance, women were required to register their pregnancies and have someone witness the birth or be prosecuted and executed for murder if the infant died.
While in other places, the condemned might be strangled before taken to the stake, in Germany it was truly 'The Burning Times." It was a brutal way to die. The families of those victims, if not already victims themselves were often made to watch or later to see broadsides clearly illustrating the torture and execution.
In all fairness, of the half million tortured and killed in the witch trials, probably not many were witches. They were mostly old ladies, then younger ones, some too ugly, some too pretty, some too poor and some too rich. Witch? Satanist? I don't think so.
Another thing, some Wiccans claim a long, unbroken tradition of the craft from Neolithic shaman through the European midwives and strega to Starhawk and Diane Valente. Maybe that is true but it could be Gerald Gardener was more of a neo-traditionalist than some would credit. Nevertheless, we neo-pagans embrace these unfortunate "witches" who were burnt as our own. I am sure they would have been horrified of that, too.
Returning to my earlier searches, I did read the Old Testament. That person was right: it says right there about witches and I even found the part about it being the right thing to kill them and homosexual men. Yep, says right there them folk are an abomination to the Lord. There's a passage or three about using badger skins which really cheeses me off to no end. There are a lot of other things in those old books which I am sure the modern Christian does not observe. A great and good friend of mine, a Christian whom I love and trust, calls the folks who use the Bible as a tool for hatred "Smorgasbord Christians:" they pick and chose what they want.
What have we learned from this? A lot of pagan folk and a lot of Christians can find all sorts of reasons for hating each other? A person can admit to anything under torture? Men can do horrible things to women? Generational guilt is stupid and wasteful of human lives? How about we can choose to love or hate and that is the greatest freedom of all? Use that freedom well, my friends. Big clue to my brothers in the Middle East!
If you are out there sleeplessly reading old books, planning a vacation in Europe, or just acting abominably and you want to forward these missives to others, please do but leave my name and sig. attached.
Loving my "enemies" and driving them nuts,
Ellsworth Weaver
SCA – Sir Balthazar of Endor (Endor is in the Bible, too; look it up)
AS – Polyphemus Theognis
TRV – Sebastian Yeats
Some people call me Maurice.