Re: Witchcraft, Lycanthropy, Drugs & Disease (Review)
Jenny
jennyg@compuserve.com
Mon Oct 12 10:11:57 1998
: : You're right -- they can't.*br*:*br*: Ah, I like the sound of that.  I rarely hear those words.*p*What words?  The first or the second half of the sentence? <g,d,r>*p*: I try to avoid *br*: the term entirely, actually, because I tend to be called *br*: Wiccan when I mention I'm pagan, and I am not.  *p*It gets even worse when you say (as I do) that you're a Witch, not a Wiccan.   *p*: I am, by *br*: modern standings, pagan, and I don't even like the word, *br*: sounds weird, IMO.*p*Well, history's on your side on this one.  Traditionally, "Pagan" is an outsider's term for our faiths.  Pagans didn't call themselves "Pagans" -- Christians did.  The word defines us by our relationship to another religion (we are pre-Christian or non-Christian) rather than by our religions' own merits.*p*I still use it, though, because there's nothing better around.  Some of the Slavic language actually do have a word for people who follow the Old Ways -- lucky buggers.  English-speakers have to make do with Pagan.  And I think things are changing.  As Neo-Paganism becomes a more visible, large movement, the term "Pagan" is losing its anti-Christian aura.*p*: Is a Christo-pagan anything like a Catho-witch?*p*Exactly the same.  Except that after the Reformation it includes Prod-witches too. <g>*p*: I've had people argue with me that the Burning Times was, by *br*: and far, the biggest atrocity to ever visit itself upon *br*: humanity.  *p*As far as sheer size goes, it doesn't even make it onto the radar.  It wasn't one of the greatest slaughters of its own time, let alone of all times.*p*The Reformation was a monstrous period, fraught with terrible, lethal religious warfare.  Ronald Hutton pointed out that when the city of Madgeburg fell, its 60,000 inhabitants were all killed for adhering to the "wrong" type of Christianity.  The Burning Times, by comparison, were 40,000 - 60,000 deaths spread out over five hundred years.  Madgeburg was like taking the whole Burning Times and compacting it into one week...*p*(Now you see where I get in trouble for "dishing" the Martyrs? <g>)*p*The horror of the Burning Times doesn't lie in its size -- it's in its details.*p*: Oh, I didn't mean to say it shouldn't be studied and learned *br*: from, but it does shift the importance and message to be *br*: derived from it. *p*Definitely!  Most Pagan writing on the subject seems to distill down to one message:  "Look at the awful things the Church has done to ME!"  Z Budapest, as one example, says that all Witches should meditate on these horrors, so that they remember what the Church did to them, and the terrible legacy of pain and suffering that is the heritage of "women's religion."*p*For me, *that's* painful.  That's co-opting another person's suffering and pretending it's your own.  *p*And it's not only painful, it's dangerous -- a philosophy that's likely to lead us directly back to the Burning Times.  You see, all of the web-sites I've visited assume that we Witches were always the pure, innocent victims of the horrors.  We're never the Bad Guys, the ones responsible for the mess.  Therefore we modern Witches don't need to worry about our actions.  We *can't* be witch-hunters:  we're Witches!  The Burning Times are about what They did to Us, not what We did.*p*Which is completely untrue:  witches were some of the most avid supporters of the Burning Times.  As Diane Purkiss notes (in _The Witch in History_), a "white" witch was far more likely to be found aiding a witch hunter than to be a victim of his attentions.*p*Witches, like doctors, blamed illness and misfortune on baneful magick.  Like most people of the times, they divided magick into "black" and "white".  They themselves were always "white" witches of course.  But they were more than willing to point fingers at a neighbor and call her a "black" witch.  If I had to guess, I'd say that 50% of the English trials I know of involve a "white" witch who encourages the persecution.*p*Take the case of the Earl of Derby, who died in 1595.  The Earl became deathly ill and exhibited what to modern eyes look like classic symptoms of arsenic poisoning.  Doctors were summoned.  They diagnosed natural causes, though their purges and concoctions did nothing to ease the Earl's pains.  Meanwhile the Earl became convinced that he was bewitched.  When the doctors disagreed, he summoned a local wise-woman, who confirmed his fears.  Her potions and spells *were* effective.  One of the doctors finally became so upset that he physically attacked the woman and kicked her and her herbs around the kitchen.*p*On the surface, this looks like a classic feminist fairy tale about a competant, knowledgeable woman healer maligned by jealous male doctors.  On a deeper level, it's not so simple.  Yes, this woman's herbal knowledge was amazing -- and so was her prejudice.  She did terrible damage:  she convinced the Earl and his family that these troubles came from witchcraft.  That somewhere out in the countryside there was a "black" witch who needed to be found and killed.*p*If we forget witches like this woman, we forget the Burning Times.  We forget *our* role in the persecutions in our self-righteous indignation about what other peoples did.  *p*And that has dire implications for modern days.  Sociologists and historians note that there were amazing correlations between the Burning Times and the Satanic Panics of the 1980's.  Yet we Pagans didn't notice this (and I lump myself in there too -- I didn't notice at the time, either).  We're so used to thinking of the Burning Times as what They did to Us that we were completely blind to the signs that the Times were making a come-back around us.  Worse, I heard Pagans say that we ought to use our magick to divine who these evil cultists were and to protect our communities from Satanic witches -- which is EXACTLY what the "white" witches of the Burning Times did!*p*: I have a *br*: feminist in my office, and it took me over a year to get her *br*: to "fess up" to it, because she got tired of the *br*: more "inspired" telling her she wasn't.*p*I'll spare you my customary rant on how radical feminism has embraced the tools and ideology of patriarchy and become Big Brother in drag.  But it's like Nietsche said:  "He who fights with monsters should take care, lest he thereby become a monster.  And if you gaze for long into the Abyss, the Abyss gazes also into you."*p*Jenny
Re: Witchcraft, Lycanthropy, Drugs & Disease (Review)
Infiniti
60
Sun Oct 11 23:20:25 1998