Conference turris::womannotes-v3

re .0 

>Excerpts from the Malleus include: "Witchcraft is high treason against 
>God's Majesty. And so [witches] are to be put to the torture in order to 
>make them confess...All wickedness is but little to the wickedness of
>woman...What else is woman but a foe to friendship, an unescapable
>punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation,..All witchcraft comes
                                                      --------------------
>from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable...it is no matter for wonder
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>that there are more women than men found infected with the heresy of
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>witchcraft...blessed be the Highest Who has so far preserved the male sex
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>from so great a crime..." 
--------------------------
    
I couldn't help but think of Karen Horney's counter-Freudian theory
of 'pu**y envy' when I read that.

    What I've never been able to figure out is that if women are so
    subject to carnal lust that we have to be burned at the stake to
    save our souls . . . 
    
    <language follows>
    
    Why the hell aren't we supposed to enjoy screwing with our
    partners/husbands???????
    
    --bonnie

    
    	RE: .2  Bonnie
    
    	It isn't ladylike.
    

    I was reminded of the scene from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" in
    which they proved a woman to be a witch because she weighed the same
    as a duck. It was a great comment on human ignorance, and how easily
    people are led, as well as being very funny.
    
    The story about the inquisition also shows another universal human
    trait; the belief that if we only torture people enough, we can make
    them "confess the truth"; make them say what we want, and expect others
    to believe it. A lot of this continues to happen today, around the
    world.
    
    -roger
    

    I also think it's interesting to look at who were the persecuted
    witches in the States.  I wish I could recall more names/details,
    but in high school (Ashland High, MA), some of our studies covered
    local witches and how they were punished for their crimes.  
    
    Another point about the wickedness of witchcraft and it's treason
    against God-now, I'm not very knowledgable on the subject, but I
    recall a conversation with a friend who subscribes/believes/follows/
    practices (not sure of the correct terminology) Wicca wherein she
    stated that it's against the basic tenets to practice spells for
    personal gain or evil and that such a spell will be followed upon
    you (the practitioner) 3 fold.  Someone who knows more, please feel
    free to add to/correct the above.
    
    RE:  Suzanne & Bonnie
    
    Guess I'm no lady ;-)
    
    Christine

    SARCASM WARNING:
    
    I've NEVER known ANY man to be possesed of insatiable carnal lust!!!
    
    End sarcasm

    re .6 Remember, the definition of 'insatiable' is 'wants more
    than I do'  :-)

    re.7
    
    darn!  I missed that Dana! :-)

    Was there something written about one of the Salem witches that after
    her death the real estate that she had inherited from her deceased
    husband was legally awarded to the person who accused her of being a
    witch?
    
    Did anyone else read anything about that?

    Christine
    
    I guess I'm not a lady either ;-)
    
    the other Bonnie

    Actually, I'd never heard that, but wouldn't be surprised that 
    the accusor would be rewarded for bringing to light such evilness
    (gag).  The climate of the times would support such doings in my
    opinion.  If anyone else knows more about this, please jump in!
    Also, for any of you out there interested in town/local history,
    your local historical societies could be a wealth of information
    on this subject.  I'm going to try and see if I can hit one near/
    or in Pepperell.
    
    Christine

    Bonnie (the other one, well actually both (-: )
    
    I like your style!!!

    re: the midwife theory
    
    I was watching "The Witches of Eastwick" for the first time the other
    night and Jack Nicholson's character (what *was* his name ;) mentioned
    that also - that the powers that be didn't want women gaining power
    through an ability to heal, it ruined their monopoly somehow.
    
    I have also read that the girls in the most read-about with trials (the
    Salem ones) might have been suffering from kind of ergot poisoning from
    the rye they had stored too long or something.  
    
    I've been to the Salem Witch museum and it's quite an interactive-type
    experience.  
    
    -Jody

    re -.1  Jack's name = Daryl
    

    re -.1 Daryl Van Horne ?????
    

    
    From what I've read, the worldy goods that had belonged to people
    accused and convicted of witchcraft went straight into the coffers of
    the Church. (Which was maybe an extra incentive in the witch hunts?) 
    
    D.

Don't know how much truth it had in it but The_Crucible by (I think) Auther
Miller stated that the accusors got the land belonging to the accused. This was
only if they confessed however. If they died under torture without confessing
then their heirs got the land. 

That play forever shaped my views on the witch trials and why things really
happened. I've also heard the ergot theory. Wouldn't be the first time that 
local bigots used a ramdonly occuring event to foster their greedy plans. liesl

    I'd like to believe more of the tale told in Christopher Frye's "The
    Lady's Not For Burning" (one of my favorite plays)....but I'm sure it
    didn't happen like that very often....
    
    The Crucible was awfully chilling, and it's amazing what the
    religionists could convince themselves was right when they wanted to
    (as they did in "A Man For All Seasons")....
    
    -Jody

    
    What was written in the basenote rings true to me, based on what
    I learned in high school.
    
    I think it's an awful comment on society that these trials
    ever occured.  Between the holocaust, the witch trials and the
    horrible things that we hear from third-world countries, it seems
    that people are easily maliable.
    
    
    

	I have a handout at home, which I will bring tomorrow and enter -
	It is about who the Witches are Today - and it is published by
	the Witches League for Public Awareness - with LOTS of information.

	I do believe that it is safe to say that the witches past and 
	present are people (not always women) who do not follow "societal
	norms".  Therefore generating fear among the status quo. "The Burning 
	Times"	are a reminder to all of us what can happen....

	Witches are still persecuted today.  Witness the staging of the
	leagues of Rev Lea followers in San Francisco this Wednesday...

	 
                          The Witching Hour
                           By Joan Connell
                 Mercury News Religion & Ethics Editor
                San Jose Mercury News - Sat. Oct. 20 1990
 
 
		**********************************************
		As Halloween approaches, fundamentalists march
		to the Bay Area to begin a crusade against
		the devil and thousands of pagans and goddess
		worshippers prepare for the onslaught
		*********************************************
 
          A peaceful prayer crusade? Or just another witch hunt?
 
 
    The term "holy war" will take on a whoe new meaning in San Francisco 
onHalloween, as Pentecostal Christans and goddess-worshipping pagans square 
off to prove who's holier than thou.
 
    Texas telvangelist Larry Lea is mustering 10,000 Christian soldiers in
San Francisco's Civic Auditorium Halloween night, to do battle with the 
forces of Satan. And memberso fhte normally low-key pagan community in the 
Bay Area - practitioners of Wicca, nature religions and New Age 
spiritualism - have launched a counter offensive, claiming Lea's spritual
warfare interferes with their constitutional right to practive their
religion.
 
    Lea, a protege of Oral Roberts and former pastor of the Church of the
Rock in Dallas, has made a name for himself among Pentecostal and 
chrismatic Chrstians for a tendency to preach in Army fatigues and hand out 
"prayer army dog tags" to his followers. He is a proponent of "spiritual 
warfare" - using prawer to exorcise demons.
 
    Last month with the backing of 500 pastors of Bay Area churches, Lea
announced a three-day San Francisco crusade to "reverse the curse" of 
Halloween and march through the city to convert those they consider 
possessed by Satan: drug addicts, gay people, the secually promiscuous, 
believers in New Age religionists and Wiccans, those spell-casting, 
goddess-worshipping filks commonly called witches.
 
    "These are not just kids having fun," Lea said at the time. "There
is actual worship of the devil."
 
    Janet Christian, spokeswoman for the Bay Area Pagan Assemblies, an
organization of Wiccans and nature-worshippers in the South Bay, is 
outraged.
 
    "We're goddess worshippers: Witches don't have anything to do with
Satan. Who do these people think they are?" asks Christian, who's group
is sponsoring a Witches' Ball at the Palo Alto Hyatt tonight, an 
open-to-all costume party designed to build bridges of understanding between 
the practitioners of Wicca and the community at large.
 
    "What if we brought some big-name witch to town on Christmas day to
do a ritual outside their churches? We's never do that to them," Christian
says. "Why are they doing this to us?"
 
                           Planning for trouble

     Christian's group has taken defensive action in the pending holy war,
hiring security police to keep out any Bible-wielding Christian soldiers.
But other pagan groups are on the offensive, planning counterdemonstrations
outside the Civic Auditorium and threatening guerrilla actions to disrupt
Lea's crusade.
 
    "Larry Lea's going to find out that there are more of us than he can
handle," ways Eric Pryor, high priest of the New Earth Temple, a San 
Francisco group of Wiccans and other pagans. Pryor is marshalling a show 
of spiritual force at 3 p.m. Tuesday in Civic Center Park, calling together 

New Age religionists, Hindus, Buddhists, humanists and other non-mainstream
faiths to form a prayer circle to counteract the Lea crusade.
 
    Pryor, who says he has repeatedly challenged Lea to public debate but
never received an answer, has called off the annual Hallow Mass ritual at 
his temple Halloween night to attend Lea's crusade in disguise, disrupt the
service and force a confrontation.
 
    "We're not a bunch of uneducated dingbats running around in robes
waving wands," Pryor says. "We're intellegent, purposeful people who have
chosen a particular spiritual path. We have a right in this country to 
practice any religion we choose." No reliable statistics exist on the 
number of practicing pagans in the Bay Area, but estimates range from
30,000 to 50,000.
 
    Lea, who arrived in San Francisco Wednesday to prepare for the crusade
says he was surprised by the intensity of the pagan backlash, which has not
been evident in similar campains in Anaheim, Miami, Chicago and 
Philadelphia. Entreaties from several religious denominations to avoid 
confrontation - including the Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco - 
convinced Lea to cancel plans for his spiritual warriors to march through the 
cith on Halloween night. Instead, Lea says, they will keep a low profile 
inside the Civic Auditorium.
 
                       The right to disagree
 
    "I love people. I love all people. I think we have been misinterpreted;
we don't want to be seen as confrontational," Lea says. "Every person 
has the right to believe what they want to believe. But I have the freedom
to stand up and say they're wrong. To me, there are only two kinds of 
people in the world: Those who have found Christ and those who haven't found 
him yet."
 
    The Rev. Dick Bernall, pastor of Jubilee Christian Center in San Jose
is disappointed that the prayer warriors will not be a visible presence on
the streets of San Francisco. Many of Jubilee's 5,000 congregants are 
expected to take part in the Lea crusade. Bernal's not a complete spoilsport 
about Halloween: Jubilee kids might not go trick-or-treating, but they do get to
dress up as Bible characters for a party at church.
 
    "Larry and I are beginning to look like a couple of wackos," says 
Bernal. "The misconception is that we're a bunch of narrow-minded 
goody-two-shoes.  San Francisco's a city where everybody has parades; I wanted 
our people to be a presence, too. We weren't going to call down fire on 
anybody; it was not going to be a confrontation, just a little show of force.
 
    "But the war on Satan will go on - inside the auditorium. There won't
be any pussy-footing around," Bernal promises. "There'll be singing, 
preaching and speaking in tongues. It'll be wall-to-wall spiritual 
warfare."
 
    Bernal, a former ironworker and self-described hell-raiser who says
he was born-again a dozen years ago, has gained some fame himself as a 
televangelist and spiritual warrior.
 
    After the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, Bernal traveled to
Beijing and in a much-publicized ceremony, annointed the stones of the
square with oil to drive the devil out.  He also has prayed to cast the
devil out of several sites in the South Bay, including the San Jose
Mercury News.
 
    Bernal says he respects the rights of Wiccans to worship as they please.
 
    "They're sweet, sincere people, who are operating out of ignorance,
not malice." Bernal says. "I don't condemn these poor people; I want to
convert them. I was a dope-smoking, LSD taking hippie myself once.  Some
of our greatest pastors today are old, burned-out hippies."
 
    To Eric Marsh, a 36-year old software engineer from Fremont who is a
practicing witch, Bernal's attidue demonstrates the stereotypes that are
inflicted upon Wiccans.
 
    "Fifty percent of big-city witches are involved in high-tech; 90
percent are computer literate.  That's because people in high technology
puersuits have innovative and inquiring minds," says Marsh, who
established a computer bulletin-board network for Wiccans who use the
technology to keep abreast of a variety of spiritual, philosophical and
environmental issues.
 
    What bothers Eric Pryor of San Francisco's New Earth Temple is the
automatic linkage of Satan and Wicca.
 
    "Satan is the best friend the church has ever had. Satan's the
bogyman who has kept them all in business," Pryor says. He adds that the
members of his temple, who follow a Welsh tradition of Wicca and have been
very private about their beliefs in the past, are starting to be more
public.
 
    "People can come in here anytime and see we don't sacrifice babies,
we don't worship Satan and we're not lunatics," Pryor says.  "And the
only good thing about this kind of campaign (that Lea is waging) is that
it makes us open up more and be more accessible."
 
    Carl Raschke, a sociologist at the University of Denver and a
specialist on Satanism in America, regards the pending Christian-Pagan
holy war with a certain amount of amusement.

    "This sounds like the gunfight at the metaphysical OK Corral,"
Raschke says.  "There are Satanists out there: criminal Satanists, who do
violent things in the name of the devil.  There are religious Satanists,
who dress up in black robes and do strange and essentially harmless
things.  And that's part of the whole, exotic religious flora and fauna
that is unique to the Bay Area.
 
    "Doing spiritual battle with Satan is an established tradition going
back to Jesus himself," Raschke says, adding that most spiritual warfare
is done quietly, through the power of prayer and laying on of hands.
 
    "But in the age of TV, there's an impulse to make religion into a
public spectacle.  And the whole thing strikes me as supreme street
theater.  We haven't had a good, crazy religious spectacle since the
harmonic convergence," Raschke says.
 
    "And now, on the streets of San Francisco on Halloween night, you'll
have neo-pagans doing ceremonial magic vs. Pentecostal Christians praying
up a storm.  This is probably better than skinheads bashing Geraldo with
a chair."

    The first source I read about the truth of the European witchburnings
    was a chapter in Mary Daly's Gyn/Ecology- The Meta-Ethics of Radical
    Feminism.  Daly make a case that many episodes throughout history show
    similar, structural clues, that indicate the similarities of the
    persecution of women in all societies.  Her five chapter case studies
    went in depth into the Indian practice of suttee, the Chinese practice
    of footbinding, the African practice of genital mutilation, the
    European withcraze, and the American practice of obstetrics/gynecology.
    Her research led me to Hugh Trevor-Roper's essay on the European
    witchcraze, and since an apologist for the church-sanctioned murders
    had recently entered some notes in soapbox on the topic, I entered
    some of Trevor-Roper's material as well (see pear::soapbox, 302.*).
    
    It was a horrible time; and studying those episodes helps us not only
    to understand societal, institutional misogyny; but such episodes as
    Hitler's Holocaust, or Stalin's war against the Ukranian peasants.
    New England's witchtrials resulted in a few dozen deaths; the Burning
    Times in Europe killed between 30,000 and several millions.  It must
    never be forgotten, lest it be repeated.
    
    Re the question, Who were the witches?  During the years when the
    Church was attempting to conquer the hearts and minds of the peasantry
    throughout Europe, the witches were any who stood in the way; any who
    honored old ways; any who used knowledge of healing arts to succor
    others; any who resisted the whims of the traveling priests.  A huge
    fear campaign was drummed up by the church, and the pope ordered all to
    assist the witch burners, at penalty of excommunication (in the papal
    bull of 1484).  It was an abuse of power by the most powerful
    institution in Europe, and it was targetted at women, who were killed.
    
    DougO

    
    
    Probably an inaccurate quotation, but....
    
    	"To not believe in witchcraft is the greatest heresy"
    				From the "Malleus"
    RE .17
    
    I believe that you're right about the property. If they confessed, it
    went to the accusers - if they stayed silent, it remained with their
    dependants. Apparently this was often a matter of trying to keep quiet
    with a large oak door on top of you being piled with stones....
    At least, that was a common method here in the UK.
    
    I also agree with the idea that the power of some wmn in small
    communities as the focus for healing, "wisdom", midwifery, community 
    memory and the holders of local folk tradition made them a threat to the
    male-dominated Church which was trying hard to establish itself in
    those communities (often so that it could get its hands on the land).
    
    The idea about the bread mould was, I understand, suggested as an
    explanation of the "myth" of (or the "confessions" about) the Witches 
    Sabbat - it was thought that the mould could act as a hallucinogen and 
    the wmn therefore really did believe that they "flew" to the Sabbats 
    (on broomsticks, of course ;-)
    The idea of wmns "insatiable lust" also gave rise to the demonology
    of incubi and succubi - evil spirit-creatures that come and copulate
    with the witch in the nigh, or are sent to "drain" the witch's enemies.
    (Doesn't this make you think that some of these Churchmen felt terribly
    guilty about their wet dreams under the new ideal of celibacy?)
    
    There is a very interesting chapter in "The Wise Wound" about the
    witchhunts entitled "Nine Million Menstrual Murders" - I'll bring it
    in and enter some of it. The witch persecutions were one of my
    specialist subjects at college - particularly in the Languedoc in
    France, but also in Salem and Europe in general.
    
    Great topic. Still very relevant today.
    
    'gail                   
    

I read a book on witches which described in lengthy detail the whole 
sociological background of witches in medaeval times.

According to the book, many witches actually believed themselves to be
witches in the supernatural sense of the word and not just herbalists.
A common practice was to make a paste/poltice out of halluciongenics
similar to psyllocibin (sp?) mushrooms and spread this on the lower
regions of the legs, and ankles.  The resultant "trip" would take them
to higher levels of conciousness and many reported on experiencing
flight during these trips. (Hence the broomstick phenomena).

It was indeed a special cult/sisterhood, but also one that relied on
drugs to attain what they thought was magical power.

This is just an addition to what's been said in the previous replies;
the witches were also a threat to the Church, men (and their power).

Interesting stuff.

Wendy

    many stories exist......including books on Nathaniel Hawthorne, and
    how he struggled with the guilt due to his father (Jon Hawthorne), who
    was a judge for many Witch Trials in Massachusetts.
    
    some things I remember from my research paper (many moons ago) on Salem
    trials, was the split in this State (Mass) of the Farmers vs. Sea
    Merchants around Boston.  The Merchants wanted control of pricing the
    Farmers crops, etc., and didn't want them to have their own Church.
    So, the Merchants banded together and hung a white male priest, accused
    of being a Witch....!   Many women and child house slaves were also
    murdered (trials by Mr. Hawthorne) in the same fashion as well as wives
    of farmers, etc.
    
    Mass politics haven't improved very much!
    
    We MUST band together and vote the current witch judges out of this
    State....
    
        Carol