Throughout history until today, throughout the world, in all cultures, women have been threatened, detained, imprisoned, tortured, murdered, because they were said to be “witches.” In fact, most were women healers: midwives, herbalists, wise women, prophetesses, and amazons.
I’ll be wearing black on October 31 – Halloween, Samhain — in honor of my people, in honor of all of the women throughout history, and still today, who were and are tormented and even murdered for devoting their lives to women, to healing women, against great odds, facing great danger, with great courage. This is a mostly silent, unnamed and unrecognized holocaust.
Heart
Three hundred or so years ago, men cut out the tongue of the “Witch” on her way to the Gallows, silencing her, so that she could not speak her truth to the crowds. Today, hundreds of years on, when women create a collective to be heard, they attempt to silence us by the sabotaging of our groups, our metaphorical tongue, and our voice.
The last woman to be tried as a witch (and found guilty) in the UK was Helen Duncan in 1944. She was sentenced to 9 months in prison.
http://helenduncan.org/
http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=1597372006
[...] Today is Samhain. Heart has declared this a day of remembrance for all women who have been murdered, tortured, or persecuted, simply for being women. The charge against these women was Witchcraft. Little proof was ever needed to ‘prove’ the charge of witchcraft, and countless tens of thousands of women (and a few men) were executed. Prior to their execution, many suffered various forms of torture in order for them to ‘confess’ their ‘guilt’. [...]
[...] Today is Samhain. Heart has declared this a day of remembrance for all women who have been murdered, tortured, or persecuted, simply for being women. The charge against these women was Witchcraft. Little proof was ever needed to ‘prove’ the charge of witchcraft, and countless tens of thousands of women (and a few men) were executed. Prior to their execution, many suffered various forms of torture in order for them to ‘confess’ their ‘guilt’. [...]
[...] 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 that 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, to guard 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.1 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 was watching a special on the Salem witches yesterday. Basically, the town was pissed off about a few things (nothing to do with women,–yet). One family got their face cracked (embarrassed) in court, the church was involved, money was owed, and then when all the men folks couldn’t take the stress any longer, magically, women became witches and had to be dealt with. Sounds like kicking the dog syndrome. These men do have their syndromes. LOL!
Thanks so much, Heart, for calling for this Day of Remembrance.
In honor of this day, I typed up an excerpt from Andrea Dworkin’s “Remembering the Witches” from her collection of essays titled, OUR BLOOD: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics.
And also, to honor our beloved ancestors: Feile Oiche Shamhna!
Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam (A country without a language is a country without a soul.)
The link to the post and essay: http://tinyurl.com/w6k8e
On a less serious note. (Or maybe not).
In his essay on marijuana the author of The Botany of Desire tells how at one time witches smeared hallucinogenic plants and potions on one end of a long stick and “applied” the drugs by inserting the stick into the vagina. They called it *flying*. This may be the source of the witches broomstick.
I prefer to think that interesting application, and the engaging orgasms that undoubtedly ensued, are why witches were tortured.
Good to see you Pony, I was missing you.