by Hypatia X
A new age of witch hunting has arrived. Over the centuries, the witch hunt has taken many different forms, but its central character has remained the same; it is a campaign of terror directed against those who represent a political, religious, or sexual threat to the regulatory power of the Christian church. From the media, the church, and the political office, the new hunters hover over us, protective parents, spreading shame, fear, panic, and an epidemic of hate.
Contrary to popular myth, the witch hunts of past ages were not the result of disorganized mobs responding to some unexplained outbreak of mass hysteria, and the witch was neither the village madwoman nor the instrument of Satan. Looking at the Malleus Maleficarum (``Hammer of Witches''), it is easy to see that the witch hunts of antiquity followed a set of well organized legal procedures. 1 The founders of this nation were familiar with the history of theocratic government and went to great lengths to build a wall of separation between church and state. Their ancestors had fled Europe to escape the terror which swept the continent when church and state joined together in initiating, financing, and executing the campaigns against witches and heretics. The witch-craze which had gripped New England the century before served as further evidence that the separation of civil government from the church served to protect citizens from the excesses of either.
How well organized were the medieval witch hunts? There is documented evidence that the location chosen for a witch hunt and the timing of the Inquisition's arrival in an area corresponded with popular uprisings in relation to great economic, religious, or social changes taking place in that locality. The local priest or county judge was instructed by the church or state to incite mass hysteria. The Malleus, which was on the bench or in the church library of virtually every civil or religious leader, instructed the official to first post a notice which would:
``direct, command, require and admonish that within the space of twelve days... that they should reveal it unto us if anyone know, see, or have heard that any person is reported to be a heretic or witch, or if any is suspected especially of such practices as cause injury to men, cattle, or the fruits of the earth, to the loss of the state.''
Popular uprisings were brought to a chilling halt by the posting of one of these notices, as the common people faced the possibility of being charged as a heretic or suspected of witchcraft. Failing to report a friend or neighbor whose ``crimes'' might later be uncovered also left one vulnerable and subject to a long list of punishments, including execution.
What does this have to do with us today? Unlike the medieval church, today's radical, rightist, religious fanatics do not have the legal power to use force to silence dissidents within the Christian faith or abridge the civil rights of non-Christians. However, we cannot afford to underestimate the grab for political power being made by the so-called ``Religious Right''. These pseudo-Christian leaders want a return to the position the church held in medieval society - in short, they want absolute control over both public and private life.
Millions of dollars are being poured by the Religious Right into an organized campaign to rewrite our constitution, take over our local, state, and national governments, and make their brand of Biblical morality the law of the land. Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition alone provides 25 million dollars to this effort. Robertson's followers have had tremendous success on the local level, and control fourteen state legislatures at the time of this writing. Their power is so strong within the Republican Party that they hold veto power over the GOP's nomination for president in 1996. They also want tax dollars turned over to religious charities for distribution to the needy, thereby giving the church power to make moral judgements over distribution of public funds.
The ``witch'' goes by many other names in the current campaign but, just as past generations leveled charges of witchcraft which ranged from religious heresy and blasphemy to political subversion and lewdness, the New Right demonizes a multitude of political, religious, and sexual threats to their ambitions. Their campaign is nearly as ``fresh'' today as it was then. Take a closer look at the three most common types of crimes which could brand one a witch under medieval law. Most of the list will have a familiar ring in the present era of social and political change.
First on the medieval list was sexual crimes. Anyone, but especially a woman was suspected of witchcraft for any form of sexual pleasure. The Papal Bull also blamed female witches for ``inclining the minds of men to inordinate passion''. 2 Yet, an undesired woman was equally at risk, as was a childless wife. Sterility and impotence were the work of a female witch. Using contraception, seeking an abortion, giving contraceptive aid or performing an abortion was cause to be burned alive as a witch, as was homosexuality or masturbation.
When was the last witch hunt? Last week? Last night? Is it in progress now? When was the last woman persecuted because her rapist was ``unable'' to resist the temptation she ``caused''? When was the last gay man arrested? Women who embody every principle of the women's movement are afraid to be called ``feminists''. Thousands of young people end their lives because they are afraid they might be ``queer''. The sexual witch hunt is behind the male fear of being thought ``feminine''. It is also entwined in the complex battles over abortion, contraception, divorce, fertility, and welfare. Guilt, shame, fear and self-hate are passed on as terrorized people point the hunter's gaze toward the sexual evil of their neighbor in the hope that he will overlook their own.
Unlike Paganism, which sees the sexuality of the human body as a gift from the gods, Christianity teaches that desire and sexual pleasure, passion and lust are evil and the natural urges of the human body must be fought. Christians must fear punishment from God or, barring that, from society. Without the force of law, the church has been unable to control the private behavior of its members. In a nation which is overwhelmingly Christian, the idea of sex as evil, outside of procreation by married couples, has been rejected. One by one, the laws affecting divorce, birth control, and homosexual behavior are being overturned. The Religious Right has responded by making a last-ditch effort to take over the state and turn back the clock.
The second most commonly listed charge against those suspected of witchcraft was the ``crime'' of being organized. Kramer and Sprenger spent a great deal of time speculating about the activities of secret societies, covens, and Pagan gatherings. They developed elaborate theories about what went on at the ``witches' Sabbath''. For the most part, the authors of the Malleus obsessed on the eating of unbaptized babies, bestialism and mass orgies as they taught that:
``All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which in women is insatiable... for the sake of fulfilling their lusts they consort with devils... it is no matter for wonder that there are more women than men found infected with the heresy of witchcraft... blessed be the Highest Who has so far preserved the male sex from so great a crime...''
The charges made against fifteenth century witches bear a remarkable resemblance to the accusations made about witches today. In the past, Pagan organizations were largely made up of peasants who could not read or write, and the history was written by the church. Whether the secret societies existed before the witch hunts began and what actually went on inside the covens is difficult to determine. The organizations condemned by the church may well have been a byproduct of the culture of fear created by church prosecution. There is much yet to discover about the past. We do know that small local groups did meet secretly and an underground developed to keep Pagans in touch with one another. Groups were able to come together in crowds of hundreds or thousands for festival days. The festivals were occasions for Pagan religious worship, but they were also a place to pass on news, freely exchange medical knowledge and religious ideas, as well as trade medicinal and magical products.
The underground organizations were able to build some degree of personal autonomy as well as a collective spirit among Pagan villagers by creating methods of communication and symbols of recognition. Few of these have filtered down to our time; however, within the Mother Goose rhymes is one tantalizing example:
Ride a cock horse to Danbury Cross
To see a fine lady upon a white horse
Rings on her fingers
Bells on her toes
She shall have music wherever she goes
There is little information about the political and social structure of the secret Pagan societies. Just by being organized, they would have attracted social, economic, and political dissidents of the rapid change sweeping across medieval Europe. The coded rhymes created by the Pagan networks could be worked into the performances of the bands of jugglers, charmers, and minstrels traveling from village to village and thereby inform villagers of where to meet and how to recognize their guide to the festival or gathering. The system developed was very similar to the one developed some four hundred years later by another largely illiterate people half a world away, the enslaved Africans traveling the American underground railroad. Their conductors,
like the traveling minstrels of the fifteenth century, found themselves fighting the combined forces of church and state for freedom, and facing death for their actions.
Presently, Pagans are fighting the misinformation being spread by the Church on one side and unconstitutional legal practices on the other. The coopting of Pagan horned gods into the image of the Christian devil leaves Pagans at war with the myth that Pagan rituals are ``Satanic rites''. Despite the fact that no evidence of a Pagan coven harming a child has ever been produced, the wildly imaginative rumors of abuse have caused Pagan parents to have their children taken away. Pagan circles and churches across the nation are locked in expensive legal battles to protect their freedom of religion. Many Pagans believe that the answer to this problem is the same in this century as it was when our forebears first landed on this continent. Practicing our faith in secret is not the answer, for as long as the extremists of the Christian faith are allowed to define Paganism in their terms, Pagans will be systematically persecuted.
The Religious Right has used silence as if it were assent to shape national policy. They would have us believe that this is a ``Christian Nation'' because Christian beliefs are the only basis of many of the laws which restrict civil rights. When the Bible is removed from the discussion of human rights issues, the argument for treating people of disparate races, religions, ages, sexes, and sexual orientations differently is considerably weakened.
While it is true that Christians outnumber non-Christians in this country, and that Christianity has had a major impact on our laws, it does not make laws that favor Christian moral values just. As long as the rights of one person are given legal precedence over the rights of another, justice has not been achieved. Silent assent will not change the balance of Justice's scales. We must stand up for what we believe and make dissenting voices heard in the halls of justice. Minority voices can and have changed laws in this country, but only by being willing to risk all they had for the cause they believed in.
The third large group of charges made against those accused of witchcraft was that they possessed magical powers. Witches were anyone who possessed the power to affect health. Not only were witches accused of magically harming others, but also of healing. The Church taught that sickness came from sin. Suffering was a punishment from God, and the wise women and wise men who worked to relieve suffering were therefore instruments of the Devil, who used their magical powers against God's will. The greater people's power to help themselves, the less dependent they were on God and the Church. Witch-healers were especially accursed, because they were the doctors of the poor and eased the pain of childbirth. One witch-hunter went so far as to say, ``It were a thousand times better for the land if all Witches, but especially the blessing witch, might suffer death.'' 3
Today the idea of a blessing witch has been lost, and medicine is the provence of doctors. While doctors themselves remain suspect to a fringe group of Christians, it is the evil witch who is most reviled. Recently, midwifery, alternative medicine, holistic healing, and sensory treatments have been coming back into the healing professions. Pagans have been at the forefront of these movements. Yet, Paganism itself has largely been kept secret within the work. One holistic health worker explained it as an economic necessity: eighty percent of her client base was Christian. She simply could not afford to be `out' as a Pagan.
The association between witchcraft and the worship of the Devil is automatic within our culture. Right-wing Christians have actively worked to keep that association alive because as long as people fear Pagans, we do not pose a threat to their ambitions. As long as it remains economically and socially impractical to be `out of the broom-closet', they can marginalize our opposition to their agenda. However, Pagans are no more alone in this religious demonization of difference now than they were in medieval times. Members of other minority religions, liberal Christians, the poor, the old, feminists, ethnic minorities, civil and human rights activists, environmentalists, lesbigays, and many others are being demonized by the new right. The epidemic of hate, accompanied by fear, shame, and panic has already begun to achieve its goal. Groups which should be joining together to fight the witch hunters among us are instead turning their attention toward pointing out their neighbor's evil in the hope that their own will be overlooked.
If right-wing Christian organizations are allowed to continue unchallenged, they will succeed in gaining the political power they seek. Considering what they want and how they have used the power they already possess, we cannot allow the power of law to lie in the hands of those whose faith is not in the people of this world, but in the promise of another.
We cannot expect those who wish to set our moral standards, control the fate of our land, and decide our laws to rule wisely when they believe that they are not part of this world. The Christian faith teaches that this world and its inhabitants will be destroyed and that the Christian god has prepared another for his followers. There is no need to preserve the Earth or care about nature in this mind set. The Christian ideas of salvation from the mortal world and redemption from evil provide a place in heaven for believers and as an added bonus provides eternal punishment to non-believers. Their faith relies on a system of reward and punishment of an essentially sinful people, and sin is everything natural.
These radical Christians are the wrong people to guide the nation because they do not separate their religious beliefs from public responsibility. Civil government must govern without evoking images of the Devil, sin, or eternal punishment. Civic leaders have the delicate task of developing a moral code for society which makes the individual responsible for his/her own public actions in this lifetime and leaves one's private morality between the individual and his/her god. The radical Christians have already shown an amazing talent for intruding in areas of private life which are none of their concern, as well as an annoying tendency to make their religious beliefs part of everyone's public life. With government in their hands their church would be the state and the state would be their church.
Endnotes:
1. Hammer of Witches was written in 1484, by Reverends Kramer and Sprenger, the sons of Pope Innocent VIII. The book was the unquestioned authority on how to conduct a witch hunt for three centuries. It was used by virtually every judge and witch-hunter and contained a long section on judicial proceedings which clearly defined how to set off mass hysteria. The Malleus Maleficarum was translated into English in 1928 by Montague Summers and published by The Pushkin Press, London. It is the most authoritative text on the operation of witch hunts and insights into the mind of the witch-hunter, but difficult reading for modern-day scholars.
2. Kramer and Sprenger list seven methods by which women ``infect with witchcraft the venereal act''.
3. Satanism and Witchcraft, by Jules Michelet: The Citadel Press, 1939. A French historian's work from the mid-nineteenth century on the Middle Ages, witchcraft, and the Church.