Secret Societies: Inside the World's Most Notorious Organizations (31 page)

In reality, witchcraft was usually little more than an extension of pagan religions that believed their gods were embodiments of natural powers, similar to the Druids. Some of these belief cultures assigned powers not to plant life such as the oak and mistletoe, revered by Druids, but to animals—goats,
cattle and, especially in Europe, cats. A good deal of witchcraft in this period was as harmless as any personal spiritual practice. A few practitioners, however, recognized the power that accrued to anyone who could make a plausible claim to casting spells and mixing potions, activities that generated fear and income among credible neighbors. In this environment, witchcraft was viewed as simply another trade, like the practice of medicine, likely with an equal measure of success and failure.

The advent of Christianity changed everything. Clear distinctions were made between mystical practices in praise of the Christian God and similar activities not sanctioned by the Church. In an ecclesiastical version of the “You're either with us or against us” doctrine, unsanctioned mystical activities were associated with Satan and condemned accordingly.

Of all the sins defined by Christianity, the ones most often linked with satanic practices involved sex, and since power within the Church resided exclusively with men, who frequently found themselves tempted by the sight or the passive activities of women, females became the target of persecution against witches. What better method, after all, did Satan have for tempting a God-fearing man towards sin than through the wiles of a nubile female?

Women were perceived as tools of the devil in his crusade to garner the souls of Christian men and, as much as any other factor, this contributed to hundreds of years of persecution. The hanging, drowning, burning, imprisonment and mutilation of untold thousands of women over the past two millennia had nothing to do with subversive ideology, religious deviation or racial discrimination. It had everything to do with gender, and with the centuries-old dominance of men over women, a dominance that extends beyond sexuality and economic influence to include spiritual authority.

And while we may be more tolerant, and even amused, by claims of witchcraft and its practitioners, Christian fundamentalists need look no further than the Bible for justification to abuse anyone suspected of being a witch. “For rebellion is the
sin of witchcraft,” they'll read in I Sam. 15:23, proof that the major failing of witches is a refusal to follow orders. In search of more direct instruction, Christians might examine Exod. 22: 18: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”

Modern theologians may argue about the true interpretation of these admonitions, but as recently as the nineteenth century European and American civilizations accepted them as explicit authority to burn, hang and drown women on the basis of their witch-like behavior. The leading oppressors of uncounted thousands of women who suffered this fate through the centuries were always men, and the root of their charges against the victim was still associated with one sin above all: sex.

The most devastating charge that could be brought against witches in Christian mythology was that they engaged in sexual acts with the devil. Perhaps as a means of rewarding those who gave in to his lust, Satan was believed to grant his partners occult powers such as controlling the minds of others, casting evil spells, and having the ability to move solid items with a mere thought or gesture.

Through history, the Roman Catholic Church assumed a leading role in demonizing witches, especially in 1450 when it recycled many of its old charges against pagans. Making no distinction between those who chose to identify themselves as witches performing magical acts and earth-based religions that were usually forms of Druidism, the Church's only goal was to convert the “pagans” to Catholicism. As was often the case, its motives and methods were both heavy-handed and reckless with facts. Claiming that pagans “worshipped the devil,” for example, conveniently ignored the fact that the devil is a Judeo-Christian creation. How could pagans “worship” a being whose existence was unknown to them?

Such realities failed to deter Church officials. Witches, they decreed, kidnapped babies, killed and ate their victims, raised hailstorms and tempests, caused horses to go mad beneath their riders, sold their soul to Satan (or at least their bodies, apparently) and, in a remarkable charge coming from men sworn to a life of celibacy, not only caused male impotence and fertility but could make male genitals vanish, the ultimate act of castration.

The fabled broomstick-riding habits of witches evolved from stimulating either crops or orgasms.

Even the clichéd image of a broom-riding witch was linked with sex. Witches might fly, their accusers charged, but riding a broom had more to do with the broom handle's function, in the minds of puritanical Christians, as a dildo to stimulate orgasm rather than an implement for flight. The actual origins may be less sexual; in some medieval cultures, women ran across fields while astride their broom in an effort to coax the grain to grow, or jumped over the broom handle while imploring the grain to grow as high as they could leap.

Protestants were no more enlightened about witches than Catholics. Luther, in his Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, wrote: “I should have no compassion on these witches; I would burn all of them.” (He also wrote: “If a woman grows weary and at last dies from childbearing, it matters not. Let her die from bearing; she is there to do it.”) And Calvin preached: “The Bible teaches us that there are witches and they must be slain….This law of God is a universal law.” John Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church, lectured that anyone who denied the reality of witchcraft opposed not only the Bible but the collected wisdom of “the wisest and best of men in all ages and nations.”

Theologians and psychologists both speculate that the true motive behind the persecution of women suspected to be witches was to assist skeptics in resolving their own doubts about Christian doctrine and strengthen their faith in God. The existence of women receiving evil powers from Satan would be proof of a spiritual world which, extending the idea further, provided proof of the existence of God. Satan could not exist
without the presence of God,
ergo
God exists. One qualified observer of this theory says, “Without witches, some late medieval theologians were left facing their questions as to why bad things happen. In their pre-scientific biblically-based world view, the logical alternative to witches and demons as an explanation of misfortune was a God [either] not powerful enough to stop bad things from happening, or not good enough to try.”

Organized religions have long assigned women the role of ideal scapegoats for events or aspects of life that Church leaders could not explain. Witches were not the only victims of this problem of theodicy, nor were Catholics and Protestants the only groups wrestling with the dilemma of an all-good and all-powerful God coexisting with evil in our world. But throughout Western Europe and America between ad 1000 and 1800, both factions absorbed the Bible's directive regarding witches with totally literal meaning, and while their means of eradicating the world of witchcraft-derived evil differed—in Catholic countries, execution was conducted by burning at the stake; in Protestant countries, the preferred method was hanging—the results were the same.

Evidence was needed to prove that accused women were indeed witches, and their persecutors discovered a remarkable number of ways to obtain it—remarkable because the verdict was almost always Guilty. Consider the means used:

Trial by boiling water
consisted of heating a deep container of water until it boiled, and instructing the accused person to remove a stone or ring from the bottom. The scalded hand was bandaged, and the bandages sealed. If a blister half as large as a walnut appeared when the bandages were removed, the verdict was guilt, leading to a sentence of death. The accused were advised to pray and fast the day before the trial was conducted. Most apparently did. Few apparently benefited.

Trial by fire
was a simple variation, requiring the accused to walk barefooted across a row of metal ploughshares heated to a red-hot glow. An absence of burns on the soles of her feet indicated innocence.

Trial by drowning
represented a historical apex in no-win situations. After throwing the accused into the river, the judges watched to see if she surfaced. If the victim sank to the bottom and drowned, she was declared innocent; if she managed to stay afloat, she was pronounced guilty and immediately hanged or burned at the stake, unless she was tortured first in the usually fruitful expectation that she would implicate others.

The ordeal of the cross
placed the accused and her accuser in a church, usually during a regular service. Both were ordered to stand with arms outstretched, simulating Christ on the cross. The person whose arms dropped first was considered wrong.

Oppression against accused witches rose and fell in waves, linked to various influences ranging from natural disasters to religious in-fighting. The hundred years from 1550 to 1650, when relations between Catholics and Protestants were particularly virulent, saw so many trials and executions of accused witches in France, Germany and Switzerland that the period became known as the Burning Times. During the seventeenth century, attitudes towards accused witches began to soften. In 1610, the Netherlands banned the execution of witches, and 1684 marked the last execution of a witch in England. By the time of the Salem witch trials in New England, when dozens of women and a handful of men were executed or died in prison on charges of witchcraft, the wave had crested in Europe.

The lasting effect of the Catholic and Protestant attacks on people who chose to explore their earth-based spirituality, thus associating them with Satan, was to drive the movement underground, and much of the knowledge and tradition acquired over the centuries before bishops rode in search of devil-worshippers has been lost forever. Practices that were once considered open and free, such as paying homage to nature, could be sustained only at the risk of torture and agonizing death. Many found solace in these actions in spite of the risk; others suffered horribly when they had never considered performing such acts, simply on the accusations of neighbors.

The core beliefs of witchcraft survived because those who observed the rituals and clung to the creed remained secretive. Their spiritual descendants emerged in the mid-twentieth century as members of Wicca, a term used by modern-day practitioners to separate themselves from their persecuted forebears.

The appearance of Wicca as a somewhat cohesive system of principle grew equally from both ancient and recent origins. They include a revulsion against many corporate practices in North America and Europe deemed injurious to the environment, the destruction of rain forests and wilderness, the eradication of native species and the avaricious consumption of limited resources. Bearing many labels, these scattered movements eventually began making their voices heard and attracting various adherents, especially among young people. From an appreciation of the need for conservation and environmental responsibility, it was a short step for these devotees to explore and assume many beliefs of Wicca.

The other driving force behind the re-emergence of Wicca was a revived reverence for shamanism, which was actually the origin of pre-Christian witchcraft. “Shaman” is believed derived from a Siberian native word meaning
he (
or
she) who knows
, although the concept of a tribal or village member possessing knowledge to cure ailments and provide spiritual guidance predates every organized religion. Performing as a shaman was one method for a woman in male-dominated tribal societies to achieve power and status, an attribute that continues to influence Wicca, which boasts substantially more female than male followers. Ancient Greek literature identifies shamanistic rites and practices during the early Hellenic period, many of them later adopted by Roman spiritual leaders. Tibetan Buddhism has remained strongly associated with shamanistic principles for millennia, and every American native band from Arctic Inuit to Patagonian tribes practiced their variations of the same beliefs.

The determination of Christian campaigners to spread their creed universally had the same devastating impact on shamanism
in the Americas as elsewhere, propelled first by Spanish colonialists. Catholic missionaries and priests denounced shamans and their followers as devil-worshippers, executing them by the thousands. Although the bulk of this devastation occurred from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, as recently as the 1970s missionaries in the Amazon region routinely defaced ancient petroglyphs representing shamanistic beliefs or legends.

Things were no better in the north, where Native American shamans were tagged with labels such as
witch doctor,
and claims of healing ailments with naturally occurring ingredients were broadly derided. Later, scientists noted that many universal treatments, such as chewing the bark of willow trees to cure headache and fever, had a basis in fact, because the willow is a natural source of salicylic acid, the primary ingredient in Aspirin. Only after a positive reassessment of shamanistic practices became widespread did shamans receive respect from other cultures. When many of their teachings were assimilated into the growing concern about the environment, Wicca revived those tenets that managed to survive a thousand years of attempts to eradicate it.