29. Burn the Witch!!

“What else is woman but a foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil?” — Heinrich Kramer (Malleus Maleficarum, 1487)Part I, Question VI

Today we travel to Europe's witch trials, the church and government leaders claimed it was to rid the world of women who had made pacts with Satan.

It was really just to remove women from positions of medical and religious power. and to it was to take their wealth and force their obedience. Priestesses, healers, midwives were targeted and the traditional role of women in medicine stripped and given to male doctors. Women who inherited land were targeted so their wealth could be given to powerful men. Women who refused marriage norms, appearance norms... also died in the flame.

The language and history that demonized the sexuality and prowess of women is the same language we hear today in purity and incel culture, with the same motive. The motive of stripping women of power, autonomy, wealth, equality and position,

The woman who refused to give up her power and knowledge, or chose to keep her own wealth, the woman that chose solitude... chose death

Sources

• Boyer, Paul & Nissenbaum, Stephen. Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft. Harvard University Press, 1974.
• Mather, Cotton. Wonders of the Invisible World. 1693.
• Norton, Mary Beth. In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692. Vintage, 2003.
• Reis, Elizabeth. Damned Women: Sinners and Witches in Puritan New England. Cornell University Press, 1997.
• Godbeer, Richard. The Devil’s Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England. Cambridge University Press, 1992.
• Augustine. City of God. Translated by Henry Bettenson, Penguin Classics, 2003.
• Canon Episcopi (c. 906), in Robbins, Rossell Hope. Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology.

• Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica, 13th century.
• Levack, Brian. The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe. Longman, 1987.
• Federici, Silvia. Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. Autonomedia, 2004.

• Ehrenreich, Barbara, and Deirdre English. Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers. Feminist Press, 1973.

• Roper, Lyndal. Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany. Yale University Press, 2004.

• Karlsen, Carol. The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England. W.W. Norton, 1987.

• Kramer, Heinrich and Sprenger, Jacob. Malleus Maleficarum. 1487. Trans. Montague Summers, 1928.

• Tertullian. On the Apparel of Women, 2nd century CE.

• Kieckhefer, Richard. Magic in the Middle Ages. Cambridge University Press, 1989.

• Sharpe, James. Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in Early Modern England. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997.

• Kassell, Lauren. Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London. Clarendon Press, 2005.

• Clark, Stuart. Thinking with Demons. Oxford University Press, 1999.

• Rowlands, Alison. Witchcraft Narratives in Germany. Manchester University Press, 2003.

• Nissenbaum, Stephen. The Battle for Christmas. Vintage, 1996.
• Ehrman, Bart D. Lost Christianities. Oxford University Press, 2003.
• MacMullen, Ramsay. Christianizing the Roman Empire. Yale University Press, 1984.
• Rogers, Nicholas. Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night. Oxford University Press, 2002.
• McDougall, Heather. “The Pagan Roots of Easter.” The Guardian, 2010.

• Clark, Stuart. Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe. Oxford, 1997.

• Campbell, Joseph. The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology. Penguin, 1964.

• Harpur, Tom. The Pagan Christ. Walker & Company, 2004.

• MacCulloch, Diarmaid. Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. Viking, 2010.

• Du Mez, Kristin Kobes. Jesus and John Wayne. Liveright, 2020.

• Beard, Mary. Women & Power: A Manifesto. Liveright, 2017.

• Nagle, Angela. Kill All Normies. Zero Books, 2017.

• Rogers, Nicholas. Witchcraft and the Western Imagination. Routledge, 2020.

• Donovan, Joan. “How QAnon Uses Digital Witch Hunts.” Harvard Kennedy School, 2021.

• Spring, Alexandra. “Inside the Tradwife Movement.” The Guardian, 2020.