The Witches Among Us
I often think, when I'm reading the news, of the years I spent working as an undergraduate and graduate student to understand, through my study of history, of why people interact with one another the way they do. I was especially interested in notions of "community," of how communities define themselves as much by what they "are not" as by what they are.
In for example, Quattrocento (15th century) Italy, war raged (those pesky French were always invading, Constantinople fell), disease raged (the Black Plague originally swept through Europe in 1348, carrying off at least one-third, and possibly one-half, of the populace), crops failed, etc, etc. (Amazing how one can use "etc" to casually dismiss the untold suffering of thousands of people. You know, like Iraq, etc.)
In the Quattrocento, Franciscan Observant preachers--such men as Bernardino da Siena and Bernardino da Feltre--berated, warned, and raged at the communities in which they traveled to preach about tolerance of "sodomites," witches, and Jews. Allowing sodomites and witches to live amongst the Christian members of a community was sure to call down God's wrath, and Bernardino da Siena had no shortage of precedent from the Bible to cite as proof of God's hatred of tolerance. Later, Bernardino da Feltre would get it into his crazed head that Jews drank the blood of Christian boys during Passover, and caused the tragedy surrounding the death of Simon of Trent.
I spent a lot of time studying witchcraft. Not actual witchcraft, which I'm sure never existed--at least in the ways it was defined by the witch hunters. I wanted to know why 80 percent of those accused were women; why the panics got worse after the Reformation, and were especially virulent in newly Protestant nations; how witch panics operated like ripples in a pond but would come to a sudden end; how Plato and Aristotle played a part; how stripping away from people a notion of "good works" led to the kind of ostracism of old, poor women who sometimes were accused of witchcraft; how the horrendous rates of infant and maternal mortality led people to believe that malevolence had been directed at those who died.
In short, this blog entry could potentially turn into a dissertation, so I'll try to steer it back to the article at hand.
Witches are being persecuted in various villages in Africa. In northern Ghana, for example, 80 suspected witches were expelled from their village. They are sent to live in "scruffy camps".
Like the witches' trials in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692 or the Cold War persecution of alleged communists in 1950s America, the fate of a suspect often hangs on the word of another.
Death, illness, dreams, superstition or even visible signs of success may be enough to provoke accusations of sorcery.
No matter how hard the allegation is to prove -- or how hysterical the accuser -- the fact that witchcraft is virtually impossible to disprove means many women are forced to live outside their communities, some for as long as 30 years.
Many of the women and men who find themselves in the camps are there because of the kinds of bad things that happen to ordinary families: a child dies, a marriage goes bad. A desire to assign agency to evil leads to accusations of witchcraft.
And, of course, there's always envy. Or perhaps more telling, the idea that someone, especially a woman, has stepped outside of her traditional role.
In some cases, witchcraft offers an easy explanation as to why one person is successful and another is not.
"In cases where successful women, brilliant women, have gone beyond the confines of their status as women, witchcraft is used as an explanation," said Dr Abraham Akrong, of the University of Ghana's Institute of African Studies.
While the writer of this article seems surprised, the following statement is not ironic at all:
Ironically, the rise in Ghana of charismatic Christian churches, with their focus on the fight against evil, has intensified fear and belief in witchcraft, even among educated people, Akrong said.
As I said, witchcraft persecutions increased in those areas that had supposedly traded in their superstitious beliefs in relics and saints and priests for the "more rational" religion of the various sects of Protestantism. Fundamentalist Christians are the descendents of Protestants, not Catholics, and the increasing belief among Fundamentalist Christians that evil operates with agency in the world (the devil is afoot) feeds directly into traditional beliefs in these villages that evil can be explained by a witch's bad will.
So, what does this have to do with us? (Who you calling us? Okay. Americans living in the US in 2007 under the rules of the Patriot Act.)
Being labeled a witch begins with word of mouth. A neighbor gets into a dispute, accuses another neighbor of witchcraft, and the rumour mill grinds up another victim. In this country, right now, suspicion of being a terrorist, terrorist sympathizer, etc is enough to launch an investigation. Step out of line in the airport security checkpoint and you might find yourself held overnight in a jail cell. And now, anything you send through the U.S. mail service may, if it's deemed "suspicious", can be opened according to the president's signing statement.
In many ways, we are no different than the neighbors who accused each other of being secret Jews, or sodomites, or witches. We have new words to define our fears--we call the folks who could potentially hurt us "terrorists." We watch them closely. We sit in our houses, afraid to go out for fear that the terrorists are going to blow up a plane, or put poison in our food, or make us sick. That they will destroy our cities because we tolerate their presence.
The two Bernardinos are laughing in their graves.
Image details: ID F064-002
Title Cerbère [et] Léonard
Medium photo-offset
Book Bataille. Le Diable au XIXe Siècle. Paris et Lyon : Delhomme et Briguet, 1895. Page 937.
Notes Les principaux démons, tels qu’ils appparaissent d’ordinaire d’après les diverses constatations: Cerbère [et] Léonard. anthropomorphic dog with bird’s feet; horned devil with witch’s broom, lifting skirt to show his other cheek
Theme The Marvelous
Subjects satan/devil
Rare and Manuscript Division, Cornell University Library
Bookmark/Search this post with:
| 
| 
| 
| 
| 
moving forward?
Submitted by Lorraine on 5 January 2007 - 11:49am.
I didn't think it would ever happen to me, but I've become convinced that folks are incapable of moving forward. If history teaches us anything, it's that people will fall for the same old shit time after time after time.
I guess I don't subscribe to a notion of "progress" in history. I see it as cyclic, and I see human nature as essentially unchanging. Envy, greed, gluttony, sloth, lust, wrath, and pride will continue to battle it out with peace, love, and understanding. Quite frankly, at this moment, I think peace, love, and understanding is getting its ass kicked.
I'm also wondering which "near genocide" you are referring to.
Wars in Europe (AKA flee to North America)
Submitted by SteamGeek on 5 January 2007 - 12:09pm.
Depending on which reference I read, its suggested the 30 years war directly and indirectly resulted in the death of as much as 1/3 of the continental European population.
Perhaps this isn't the blog Post to explore these numbers precisly as its likely impossible to pin down with any real accuracy, but it illustrate no matter what the number, how far certain parties will go to be right.
absolutely
Submitted by Lorraine on 5 January 2007 - 12:21pm.
The 30-years war was Christians killing Christians, not to mention that whole "who got to be king of the castle" thing. I can't remember the numbers from the 30 years war, I just haven't heard those numbers referred to as a genocide.
But I appreciate the point you made.
2 sides / 1 coin
Submitted by SteamGeek on 5 January 2007 - 12:44pm.
I don't see any difference between who got to be King, and who got to be Pope (the two were always joined at the hip), the Wars were fought for one reason and only one reason for over a thousand years (being right).
Sorry
Submitted by SteamGeek on 5 January 2007 - 1:02pm.
That wasn't the direction I was trying to go, I could have been more careful.
My point was / is that I struggle to see that we collective "Earthlings" have learned from our past. I was trying to illustrate the current domestic and international status quo compared to history seems to suggest this.
smiley emoticons
Submitted by Lorraine on 5 January 2007 - 1:22pm.
I should have put a smiley emoticon after my last comment. i just thought it was kind of funny that we were getting into a "who's right or wrong" sort of thing and I wanted to teasingly point it out.
I didn't take offense, and there was none intended.
Historical Cycle of Superstition
Submitted by JJ Ross on 5 January 2007 - 1:39pm.
To cycle means what goes up must fall again, right?? Primitive superstitions rise and fall together in the social mind (when belief rises in supernatural good that determines the course of human events, belief also rises in supernatural evil?)
I think in every cycle, cultural abdication of Reason plays both sides of the ball, exacerbated by the human instinct to crave the illusion of certainty offered by limited options like fight-flight or sleep-wake, over the uncertainty of progress. Hence our persistent social cycle toward binary debate and decisions administered through adversarial government models. War that is won or lost rather than transcended. All of which is, I agree, terrifying when one stops to really think about it!
Very Jacques Barzun . . .
Although the picture Mr. Barzun paints is one of cultural desolation, he nevertheless manages to end on a note of cautious optimism. Even if present trends continue and society becomes more routinized and culturally sterile, human ingenuity can surely be counted upon to precipitate a rebellion against the spread of bureaucratized futility. Sooner or later, some few intrepid souls will turn with new curiosity to the neglected past and use it "to create a new present," discovering along the way "what a joy it is to be alive." The forces of decadence that Mr. Barzun describes are formidably potent. But decadence is no more inevitable than progress.
I'm tingling in anticipation of the imminent end to our current decay into incoherent primitivism and the mystical meme! Barring my being struck dead by some (Christian or Muslim) Sam Harris style evil in the guise of God's will, I might live to see the rise of our next Enlightenment.
Hi Lorraine, a pleasure as always to see your complex and nuanced writing -- JJ
cycles
Submitted by Lorraine on 5 January 2007 - 1:54pm.
I keep thinking about the rise of Fundamentalism (which is predicated on binary oppositions) as a response, a reaction to modernity and rational thought. Not that rational thought is necessarily the way to go--the 20th century, that great century of rationalism, gave us the Holocaust, the nuclear bomb, etc.
Thanks for the Barzun reference. Always a pleasure to read. And thanks for the nice response.
Binary thought?
Submitted by SteamGeek on 5 January 2007 - 2:00pm.
I like that term, being a "bit" of a computer geek. I don't recall it being used that way before.
Someone pointed out to me not long ago that our Western Objective reasoning habits go all the way back to Greece, this issue of forcing yes / no answers, for example our guilty / not-guilty legal system.
As apposed to the more Eastern philosophical reasoning leaning in the more open ended continuous question.
Ally McBeal swam in that universe with endless shades of gray, instead of make believe black and white limitations.
I suppose reconciling the "poles" might be a useful skill.
Stuart Clark
Submitted by Lorraine on 5 January 2007 - 2:08pm.
Stuart Clark wrote some articles in the 1980s that were really important in terms of looking at w/c beliefs in terms of binaries. He published an absolutely magisterial book called Thinking With Demons that takes those short articles and looks at them through a lot of different lenses. Perhaps your local university has a copy? I remember spending a mortgage to buy the book in hardback when it first came out.
Thank you.....
Submitted by SteamGeek on 5 January 2007 - 2:43pm.
for the reference list, I'm known to keep half.com and eBay quite busy.
I offer in return "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Pirsig and also "Das Energi" by Williams.
I also gift "Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth" by Fuller as often as I can find a used copy.
Oh Pirsig!
Submitted by JJ Ross on 5 January 2007 - 5:36pm.
Actually not ZMM but "Lila" is what I read of Pirsig, so glad you reminded me! I hadn't thought about it in years but YES - it reflects and informs how I think about what has real quality and "value" and how I obsessively keep expanding my own definitions of everything . . .time to reread that, and check out some of the others you offer.
Too bad
Submitted by NanceConfer on 5 January 2007 - 11:51am.
And, of course, there's always envy. Or perhaps more telling, the idea that someone, especially a woman, has stepped outside of her traditional role.
******
This does not bode well for Oprah's girls.
Nance
Polarization
Submitted by Teacher With a Tude on 5 January 2007 - 2:33pm.
I shall have to look at the material on binary opposition.
I recently heard a fascinating interview on NPR with a former reporter, female, who had been based in Afghanistan. She wrote a book based on her experiences, and talked in the interview about our need to polarize EVERYTHING. We lose the Cold War, we gain the War on Terror. As long as there is something to fight against, the status quo is protected.
What is it about humanity that makes us so prone to this?
the cycles are about three generations long
Submitted by Cpt Blood on 5 January 2007 - 1:58pm.
maybe with the information age they could be quicker but generally speaking each generation rebels against either; too loose morals or too uptight, until a tipping point is reached. The reactions then go the other way...Also seems to affect hem lines, superstition and state of the economy. Chicken and the egg theory though, you dont seem to have one without the other and I prefer a rich economy myself. Good economy longer hem unfortunately...
History
The time frame and wars mentioned above roughly translate to the latter part of a long running history of the Crusades and Inquisition. Specifically these many centuries of religious warfare more or less culminated in the near genocide conducted on the European continent with the 30 years war and the subsequent demise of the Holy Roman Empire.
Considering the trash talking politics of our modern political attack ad methods, common methods in debate of attack the apposing person instead of address the material at hand, do you see that we've evolved much?
What suggestion for moving forward might we explore?