The Burning Times

 

A propos of Hallowe’en, the following appeared yesterday in my Facebook feed, titled “Let’s have fun, but not forget about history”:

“Annual reminder about where the ‘ugliness’ of witches comes from. That ugliness was the result of beatings and torture by animals. This is why I deplore the green face witch caricatures. 

Each year they parade her about, The traditional Halloween witch. Misshapen green face, stringy scraps of hair, A toothless mouth beneath her disfigured nose. Gnarled knobby fingers twisted into a claw protracting form. A bent and twisted torso that lurches about on wobbly legs.

Most think this is abject image to be the creation of a prejudiced mind or merely a Halloween caricature, I disagree, I believe this to be how witches were really seen.

Consider that most witches were women, were abducted in the night and smuggled into dungeons or prisons under secrecy of darkness and presented by the light of day as a confessed witch.

Few, if any saw a frightened normal looking woman being dragged into a secret room filled with instruments of torture, to be questioned until she confessed to anything that was suggested to her, and to give names or say whatever would stop the questions.

Crowds saw the aberration denounced to the world as a self-proclaimed witch. As the witch was paraded through the town, in route to be burned, hanged, drowned, stoned, or disposed of in various, horrible ways, all created to free and save her soul from her depraved body.

The jeering crowds viewed the result of hours of torture. The face, bruised and broken by countless blows, bore a hue of sickly green. The once warm and loving smile gone, replaced by a grimace of broken teeth, and torn gums that leer beneath a battered disfigured nose.

The disheveled hair conceals bleeding gaps of torn scalp from whence cruel hands had torn away the lovely tresses. Broken, twisted hands clutched the wagon for support. Fractured fingers locked like cropping claws to steady her broken body.

All semblance of humanity gone. This was truly a demon, a bride of Satan, a witch.

I revere this Halloween Witch and hold her sacred. I honor her courage and listen to her warnings of the dark side of humanity.

Each year I shed tears of respect.”

Author unknown

This post illustrates the general point that most people seem unable to distinguish fantasy from reality. Both the poster and comments on the post take this as “history,” while it is clearly speculation. “I believe this…” There is one fact in the entire piece: “most witches were women.” The rest is imagined.

There is not a great deal of documentation, but witches were safer in Medieval Europe than in pagan societies. For the Catholic Church did not believe in witchcraft. Pagan societies, on the other hand, like Canadian “First Nations” before Christian conversion, or pre-Christian sub-Saharan Africa, believed in witchcraft. Sorcerers were commonly tortured to death for cursing. If you believe in witchcraft it follows, just as you must prosecute someone for stabbing another to death with a knife. If cursing works, it is the most serious crime imaginable.

Witchhunting in Europe, a pagan practice, revived with the Reformation, and was more common in Protestant lands. This because, the authority of the Church having been thrown in doubt, folk beliefs resurfaced. In this “anything might be true” atmosphere, the witches of fairy tales, who were imaginary supernatural creatures like trolls or fairies, were taken by many to be real, and possibly in the neighbourhood.

I suspect we are currently at a similar point.