My Little Introductions to Witches

It's that TIME OF YEAR AGAIN.

From about 900-1400 CE (AD) the general idea was that witches didn't really exist and if they did, no one really wanted to talk much about witches, maybe out of fear and superstition, maybe out of doubt, and maybe because it was just not a popular descriptive in their culture and language, and the local authorities in power just didn't see much advantage to it. There were lots of cunning folk, which is often confused in this conversation and I am going to be posting about them lots for Halloween Time here. Data confirms, witches were just not very important politically until later.

[Yes, witches were mentioned here and there and mumbled in dark corners, etc. and so forth. But these were not the 'Burning Times' which is sort of a misrepresentation, too. Witches were also beheaded, hanged, and drowned. Some were strangled in other ways, some crushed under stones, or simply tortured to death. And let's face it, were any of them really witches at all! Like witches on broomsticks?]

Then came the Reformation and the Catholic Church was under assault. Popish superstitions were banished in many countries. And the word witch became common vocabulary. I mean, it was out there, everywhere. I've read so many books and papers on this topic that I now see The Burning Times, which is an iconic symbol of female oppression, as a financial competition between Protestants and Catholics fighting for the religious market. And along the way, that market aka people became political capital. People have been collecting data for years now, going through historical papers, trying to document just how many witches were tried and how many died. Most of them were tried and died between 1530 and 1630 CE (AD) (though witch trials went on for another 150 years.) That period of high witch trials is often referred to as The Great Hunt. "Sorcerers will suffer eternal fire." Many of those died within a 300 mile radius in France. Yes, it's true. Most of the others died in Germany and Switzerland. This Great Hunt was really religious and political wars where people became a capitalistic product to win that war. In predominately Catholic countries, where Catholicism was not in any danger, there were few witch trials at all. Witches persecuted in those countries were usually political targets and their trials and executions were like political rallies and ads between Republican and Democratic USA parties today. The parallels are striking. But where Popish ideas were banned, and people resisted, witches burned and burned. The data is striking. England's Reformation was mild compared to that in Germany.

Were there any real witches as we think of them?

Well, yes and no. Cunning folk were out there, everywhere. These are folk people, and they were making herbs to heal and offering advice on failing crops and even livestock. So yeah, if you want to call them witches, have at it. Superstitions were plentiful in the Medieval times. People were paying for curses and blessings and potions and that sort of thing. (Rome did it too) A lot of so called witchcraft was a preventative effort against personal disaster. In Italy some witches were were working and controlling the crops with a hidden magic. Oh, my! Some people were diviners. There were all kinds of seers and fortune-tellers. There were all kinds of rural people who looked odd and were odd. There was unexplained mental and physical illness. (Vampires anyone).

People wanted explanations. But books were rare and most people could not read and so an eclipse, a falling star, a comet invited confusion and fear, only explained by superstitions. There were no TVs, nothing to tell people that a storm was even brewing. They lived in mostly candle light and the dark, waiting for the sun to rise. Superstitions were everything. Even royalty employed seers. I am stressing this because superstitions, folk medicine, love potions, and ordinary fears are why we have any witches at all. A lack of any science, a lack of understanding nature, although these people were really closer to nature than modern urban dwellers. But they did not have the knowledge we do.

Modern witches are their descendants in ways. In some modern cases, religion and witchcraft coexist, such as in Hoodoo and other folk traditions from specific cultures. Some modern witchcraft is purely aesthetics and a form of personal representation and psychology, even a trade. But witchcraft still has history shadowing it, weighing on it. Because that is what history does. And one can hardly separate, even in these modern times, the forces of religion and witchcraft. (I am going to talk about Belief and Faith in the Medieval Ages and how it developed in my posts.)

Today, some of the religious in many countries, in many faiths, use talk of witchcraft and sorcery as a way to control heretics and modernity and politics. And yes, a way to control women. It is true, that women have been the center of witchcraft hunts and burnings. Mostly because many of them were expendable in cultures controlled by men. Most women had little power. The tone and the context of the image I have posted, which I love and keep, a modern mailbox in a rural area in the USA, is that we who use sorcery will be burned in hell, so says the believer who put this on his/her mailbox. I think that we women are the real blasphemers, shouting out our resistance against oppression of any kind. It is no small thing that Alito used a witchcraft source in his defense of nullifying a law that served specifically women's issues. It was perfectly medieval.

As one of my Facebook friends often writes, Hex the Patriarchy.

EDITED OCTOBER 23. I never did return to discussing witchcraft at all here. I decided not to, as I was ill and I posted about vampires on Facebook for some fans. I wanted to reread Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat, her finest book, and then a couple of other vampire books. I haven't felt myself. I've also had to make new plans on how I move forward on social media and even this blog. I have too much writing to do in the next several months to play online. SO much for good intentions.