Women witches
October 31st, 2006
This time last year I was in an old French farm building with a few dozen brown-robed nuns. Improbably enough, we were playing a game of aerial apple-bobbing, eating copious quantities of luminous green cake and carving out the innards of apples to make jack o’ lanterns.
This year it’ll just be the Patterner, the screech owls and me. And we’ll only be playing with pumpkins if we finish wood-chopping in time. This is our first axe-session of the Winter in an effort to keep the indoor temperature above freezing tonight. Tea and jumpers can do a lot, but sizzling trees can do more. The un-doing of nature in a fireplace is quite something to behold: no wonder the flames are so bright and so hot - it’s the unpacking of year upon year of sun-drunk rain-watered hard-earned Tree. It took a long time to get there, the tree. And it takes me hardly any time to explode it into flames.
But this hallowe’en I want to follow Heart’s lead over at Women’s Space/ The Margins, and remember all the thousands of women who have, for many hundreds of years and in many countries across the world, been hounded down and murdered as Witches. From 1487 there was even the Malleus Maleficarium, the ultimate comprehensive witch-hunters’ handbook. In Europe, the women who were hunted were the wise women - the women who knew how to heal with herbs or how to abort with them; the women who kept themselves to themselves and simply chose to live alone and assert their independence; or those who were what we would nowadays probably call ‘mystics’. It was these women who were rejected by their communities - and who, when times were hard and spirits angry, were bound to ducking stools, thrown into water in full-kirtle, hanged or tied to a stake and burned. In my own native East Anglia, the hunting-ground of the 17th Century self-styled “Witchfinder General” Matthew Hopkins, on one occasion one hundred women were executed after a trial at Bury St. Edmunds, who was responsible for perhaps 60 deaths across the region [updated]. (( You can see images of various 17thC English witch-hunting pamphlets and read extracts put online by the University of Sydney Library. )) Many of the scenes in The Witchfinder General (1968) (”15th best horror film of all time”) are hauntingly familiar; they are the landscapes of my childhood.
I aspire to be open-minded and non-fearing in the face of strangers who choose an unusual way of life. I hope to be fearless and non-judging before those who are anti-social or loners, those who are mystics or, more simply, those women who are wise.
In memoriam.
7 Responses to “Women witches”
Leave a Reply
Women witches
October 31st, 2006
This time last year I was in an old French farm building with a few dozen brown-robed nuns. Improbably enough, we were playing a game of aerial apple-bobbing, eating copious quantities of luminous green cake and carving out the innards of apples to make jack o’ lanterns.
This year it’ll just be the Patterner, the screech owls and me. And we’ll only be playing with pumpkins if we finish wood-chopping in time. This is our first axe-session of the Winter in an effort to keep the indoor temperature above freezing tonight. Tea and jumpers can do a lot, but sizzling trees can do more. The un-doing of nature in a fireplace is quite something to behold: no wonder the flames are so bright and so hot - it’s the unpacking of year upon year of sun-drunk rain-watered hard-earned Tree. It took a long time to get there, the tree. And it takes me hardly any time to explode it into flames.
But this hallowe’en I want to follow Heart’s lead over at Women’s Space/ The Margins, and remember all the thousands of women who have, for many hundreds of years and in many countries across the world, been hounded down and murdered as Witches. From 1487 there was even the Malleus Maleficarium, the ultimate comprehensive witch-hunters’ handbook. In Europe, the women who were hunted were the wise women - the women who knew how to heal with herbs or how to abort with them; the women who kept themselves to themselves and simply chose to live alone and assert their independence; or those who were what we would nowadays probably call ‘mystics’. It was these women who were rejected by their communities - and who, when times were hard and spirits angry, were bound to ducking stools, thrown into water in full-kirtle, hanged or tied to a stake and burned. In my own native East Anglia, the hunting-ground of the 17th Century self-styled “Witchfinder General” Matthew Hopkins, on one occasion one hundred women were executed after a trial at Bury St. Edmunds, who was responsible for perhaps 60 deaths across the region [updated]. (( You can see images of various 17thC English witch-hunting pamphlets and read extracts put online by the University of Sydney Library. )) Many of the scenes in The Witchfinder General (1968) (”15th best horror film of all time”) are hauntingly familiar; they are the landscapes of my childhood.
I aspire to be open-minded and non-fearing in the face of strangers who choose an unusual way of life. I hope to be fearless and non-judging before those who are anti-social or loners, those who are mystics or, more simply, those women who are wise.
In memoriam.
7 Responses to “Women witches”
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Fire Witch Says:
November 1st, 2006 at 4:14 amHello, and thank you for participating in this Day of Rememberance.
I have typed up an excerpt from Andrea Dworkin’s talk titled “Remembering the Witches” to honor this day.
And the ancestors. Feile Oiche Shamhna!
Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam (A country with a language is a country without a soul.)
Here is the link to the post and Dworkin excerpt:
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Fire Witch Says:
November 1st, 2006 at 5:13 amYikes!
That translation of the Gaeilge should read “A country WITHOUT a language is a country without a soul.”
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natasha Says:
November 1st, 2006 at 10:48 amGood work, Fire Witch.
Always nice to have a bit of Dworkin.
I had a read of the excerpt, and was surprised that she claims as many as 9 million witches - Is there a reference in the hard copy for this statistic? Also, I think that the Malleus Maleficarium wasn’t strictly a Catholic Church document; it seems to have been put on the Church’s Index of Forbidden Works (Index Librorum Prohibitorum) almost immediately…
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Artemis Says:
November 3rd, 2006 at 1:42 amInteresting post! I haven’t seen enough of this on the blogosphere yet… thanks so much! Also - first time here, love the blog!
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natasha Says:
November 3rd, 2006 at 12:24 pmHey Artemis, you’re very welcome.
I have been reliably informed that the University of Adelaide’s assertion that “At one trial, in Bury St Edmonds, something like 250 witches were tried, or at least subjected to initial investigation, of whom over a hundred were executed” is incorrect. I feel duty bound to point that out, even if 100 is a suitably big and powerful number for my purposes here - Once a historian, always a historian.
Perhaps a hundred were found guilty but never more than a handful were executed, it seems. Maybe the ol’ Suffolk lot weren’t that bad after all.
If you know more, please comment…. -
sharon Says:
November 4th, 2006 at 8:42 pmThe 9 million was total guesswork. Dworkin may have got it from Mary Daly who got it from some 19th or early 20th century source; I forget exactly where. My early modern witchcraft books are still mostly in boxes since my house move a couple of months ago, which means I’m not too sure where to look for the current estimates either. Tens of thousands, I think, which is still bad enough.
By the way, Jane Wenham was the last witch only in England. Want a shock? In which century do you think Britain’s last witch was convicted?
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The Chronicler Says:
November 28th, 2006 at 6:22 pmI really should look at your blog more often, Natasha…I am intrigued, as you know, by the phenomenon of witchcraft and witchhunting and I’m interested you mention the ‘Malleus Maleficarum.’ However, very few people who condemn this book have actually read it, and its two authors Sprenger and Kramer were very different characters. Kramer seems to have been in the paranoid, Matthew Hopkins mould but Sprenger was a fine scholastic philosopher - his demonology is in some ways the final fruit of mediaeval thought on the issue. What one can say against the book is that it is a conflation of theology and psychology that we would now find unacceptable - the authors uncritically assumed, for example, that the witches’ sabbath was real. I have never heard that the ‘Malleus’ was placed on the Index and I would consider this very unlikely, since many of its argument were rehearsed in Martin Del Rio’s ‘Disquisitiones Magicae’ which was used in Spain until the 18th century. On the matter of how many witches were burned at Bury at one time, the largest number was 40 (in 1642, I think) when Lows (the minister in ‘Witchfinder General,’ where it’s relocated to Lavenham) was put to death. I love ‘Witchfinder General,’ by the way - it’s the only western set in Suffolk! I’m sure I shouldn’t but I find the film hilariously funny. Incidentally the Witchcraft Act 1736 was repealed only in the 1950s when it was superceded by the False Mediums Act 1955.
November 1st, 2006 at 4:14 am
Hello, and thank you for participating in this Day of Rememberance.
I have typed up an excerpt from Andrea Dworkin’s talk titled “Remembering the Witches” to honor this day.
And the ancestors. Feile Oiche Shamhna!
Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam (A country with a language is a country without a soul.)
Here is the link to the post and Dworkin excerpt:
http://tinyurl.com/w6k8e
November 1st, 2006 at 5:13 am
Yikes!
That translation of the Gaeilge should read “A country WITHOUT a language is a country without a soul.”
November 1st, 2006 at 10:48 am
Good work, Fire Witch.
Always nice to have a bit of Dworkin.
I had a read of the excerpt, and was surprised that she claims as many as 9 million witches - Is there a reference in the hard copy for this statistic? Also, I think that the Malleus Maleficarium wasn’t strictly a Catholic Church document; it seems to have been put on the Church’s Index of Forbidden Works (Index Librorum Prohibitorum) almost immediately…
November 3rd, 2006 at 1:42 am
Interesting post! I haven’t seen enough of this on the blogosphere yet… thanks so much! Also - first time here, love the blog!
November 3rd, 2006 at 12:24 pm
Hey Artemis, you’re very welcome.
I have been reliably informed that the University of Adelaide’s assertion that “At one trial, in Bury St Edmonds, something like 250 witches were tried, or at least subjected to initial investigation, of whom over a hundred were executed” is incorrect. I feel duty bound to point that out, even if 100 is a suitably big and powerful number for my purposes here - Once a historian, always a historian.
Perhaps a hundred were found guilty but never more than a handful were executed, it seems. Maybe the ol’ Suffolk lot weren’t that bad after all.
If you know more, please comment….
November 4th, 2006 at 8:42 pm
The 9 million was total guesswork. Dworkin may have got it from Mary Daly who got it from some 19th or early 20th century source; I forget exactly where. My early modern witchcraft books are still mostly in boxes since my house move a couple of months ago, which means I’m not too sure where to look for the current estimates either. Tens of thousands, I think, which is still bad enough.
By the way, Jane Wenham was the last witch only in England. Want a shock? In which century do you think Britain’s last witch was convicted?
November 28th, 2006 at 6:22 pm
I really should look at your blog more often, Natasha…I am intrigued, as you know, by the phenomenon of witchcraft and witchhunting and I’m interested you mention the ‘Malleus Maleficarum.’ However, very few people who condemn this book have actually read it, and its two authors Sprenger and Kramer were very different characters. Kramer seems to have been in the paranoid, Matthew Hopkins mould but Sprenger was a fine scholastic philosopher - his demonology is in some ways the final fruit of mediaeval thought on the issue. What one can say against the book is that it is a conflation of theology and psychology that we would now find unacceptable - the authors uncritically assumed, for example, that the witches’ sabbath was real. I have never heard that the ‘Malleus’ was placed on the Index and I would consider this very unlikely, since many of its argument were rehearsed in Martin Del Rio’s ‘Disquisitiones Magicae’ which was used in Spain until the 18th century. On the matter of how many witches were burned at Bury at one time, the largest number was 40 (in 1642, I think) when Lows (the minister in ‘Witchfinder General,’ where it’s relocated to Lavenham) was put to death. I love ‘Witchfinder General,’ by the way - it’s the only western set in Suffolk! I’m sure I shouldn’t but I find the film hilariously funny. Incidentally the Witchcraft Act 1736 was repealed only in the 1950s when it was superceded by the False Mediums Act 1955.