The problem with talking about witches is that most of the women who were accused of being witches didn't think of themselves as such. Contrary to popular belief, most of them were not even midwives or herbalists. They were, simply, women (and, occassionally, the men who defended them.) The problem with talking about the "witch craze" was that it was only a battle in a much older war--the war against women and against the earth.
In many ways what we call "civilization" was nothing less than organized misogyny designed to subdue women and the earth, force them both into perpetual fertility, and scapegoat them for the inevitable horrors of trying to control an uncontrollable nature.
[Please note that when I talk about "civilization" I am not talking about culture. For tens of thousands of year, perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, human beings painted, played music, decorated themselves, performed rituals and engaged in a culture the likes of which have rarely been equaled (see the cave paintings that remain and let yourself wonder about all the vanished masterpieces of bygone ages.) No, culture is not civilization.]
Civilization is the city-state. Civilization is what happens when people stop living as hunter-gatherers, following the seasons and migrations, and trusting the earth to feed them, take them back into her womb, and rebirth them.
Much has been written about what happens when people become reliant upon agriculture and the domestication of animals, and a few "reliable" food sources. On the one hand it seems like now we have more food than ever, and on the other that food is vulnerable to disease, insects, shifting weather patterns and soil depletion. On the one hand, women with carbs available year round, become more fertile. On the other, increased progeny means the need for increased crop yields, setting up a pattern of war over land and resources, enslavement to have bodies work on those bigger fields, rape and endemic violence. Perhaps most importantly for our examination of the witch, woman herself becomes "the problem."
For our distant ancestors, the earth was the mother who gave birth to all the animals and plants, whose body fed them, held them, and rebirthed them. For our civilized forbears the earth was the enemy. Why did they have so many "problems?" Surely it was the fault of Pandora and her "curiosity" or Eve and her "disobedience."
But older still in the record is the first witch, the first monster, the first enemy. She is a woman, yes, but she is also, interestingly, a grandmother. Among indigenous peoples elders are valued for their lore about the land, about the weather, about how to eat and how to live. For civilized people old women who can no longer bear children are like fields that can no longer yield crops. Mouths to feed. Useless. Barren. Dried up. What use are they?
Fascintingly in her recent book Bitch: On the Female of the Species biologist Lucy Cooke explores the usefulness of menopause in a variety of different species, including elephants and whales. These grandmothers serve a vital function in regulating the behavior of the community. Without them the bulls will go rogue and the fabric of the herd will unravel. Re-introduce them and all will be well. Similarly studies have shown that the presence of a grandmother improves outcomes in child development among human beings.
But civilization exiles granny to the nursing home or the outskirts of the community. What use is she anyway? One of the oldest written down stories from ancient Babylon, the Enuma Elish, recounts the death of the first grandmother--Tiamat. One of the oldest written down stories we have is, take this in, about the mutilation and murder of an old woman.
Tiamat is concerned about the antics of her grandson, Marduk. He's drinking (the first crops may have been for making beer...) and her husband thinks she should wipe out the grandkids and start over. Tiamat does not...whereupon Marduk kills Apsu and eventually murders his grandmother Tiamat, splitting her body down the middle like a shellfish.
Tiamat is often represented as an ocean monster somewhat like Ursula in Disney's Little Mermaid. The life-giving waters of creation have become the serpent that must be subdued. The murder of the grandmother inaugurates literature as we know it. It is also enshrined in Genesis itself. God begins his work of creation by seperating the light from the chaos of the deep. Interestingly, the word for "the deep" is tehom which is derived from Tiamat. The grandmother no longer has a name or a personhood, she is just a force to be mutilated and controlled.
Why do we need to know this when we are talking about witches?
Because the designation of women as some kind of monstrous force that needs to be destroyed goes back to the beginning of civilization. It's not a footnote. It's what civilization does. There will be many many interations and expressions of this violence--pograms and genocides, edicts and laws, philosophies and agendas.
But we need to know what we are truly up against. We need to step back and look at the big picture and take it all in. We've been fed a lie about civilization and progress, about how life is really getting "better and better" each and every way, new and improved. And meanwhile more than 70 % of the plants and animals on this planet have been made extinct by the actions of civilized peoples. The "witch craze" wasn't a side effect of civilization; it's what civilization does.
What do we do today? Think about an old woman you see today...grocery shopping, pushing her cart through Walmart, sitting by herself....and know she is Tiamat, the lost queen of the sea, your lost grandmother. She is not an herbalist, a witch, or a midwife. She is an old woman who has seen her babies grow up, kept the kids fed, picked up after those who didn't pick up after anyone else. These were the first women to be condemned as witches. The old women society wanted to get rid of...not because they were into the occult, or cool in some folkloric way. No just because they were old and useless, boring and uninteresting.
Talk to them. Hear their stories. Even now they have within them what we need going forward.
So many people want to wrap themselves in the mantle of their specialness…I am a witch, a priestess, an initiate, a goddess. I matter, the want to assert. Of course you matter. Every soul matters. But what if we could aspire to be, simply, powerfully, our own grandmothers again?
So many of the old grandmother goddesses were disappeared along with Tiamat. The Cailleach, Anu....even many of their names are gone to us. Most of them survive only in the heart of the forest, the old hags waiting to remind us that there is always enough to eat if you know that you, too, will one day be eaten.
Most of the women murdered as witches did not think of themselves as witches. They weren't special in any way at all. Some had some herbal lore, because everyone did. Some were midwives, because most women had helped at a birth. But the one thing that the most women who were murdered as witches had in common (in the beginning because later the genocide was ruthless) was that they were old women.
Let us seek out today the wisdom of the old women who knew how their prayers and their spells kept the whole world spinning.
[NOTE: This is seven-part series I am reposting from my Facebook as part of my lead-up to the Day of the Dead]
Please join me for this FREE event in Woodstock on Thursday, November 2nd, Day of the Dead.
So good, so important to read this again. ❤️
I love this so much, Perdita. It should be required reading for all. Not because it's good news, but it's crucial, critical, important. I am in this (old woman) stage of life and although some think I have a lot of personal (and social) power, I feel the raw edge of this threat every day. Brava to you for carrying this story!