Cats also are Lunary, whose eye become greater or less according to the course of the Moon, and those things which are like nature, as ceremonial bloods, which are made wonderful and strange things by magicians. The civet cat, also, changes her sex with the Moon, being obnoxious to divers sorceries, and all animals that live in water as well as land, as otters, and such as prey upon fish.
Of the Lineage of Heresy
One usually hears the word martyr used in terms of Catholic saints, but many multitudes were martyred among the pagan healers and wise women of old. It is important to remember and honor those who came before and to celebrate the freedom of religious expression we now have.
One of the major examples of this is the Spanish Inquisition. Witches and those of the Jewish faith were hunted down and killed in droves after the seemingly insecure Pope Innocent III began a crusade against what he called “heretics” in the twelfth century. These heretics were most often women healers and elders of communities and villages whom local folks turned to as authorities instead of the Catholic Church. Charges leveled against these so-called witches were that they “consorted with the devil,” oftentimes accompanied by descriptions of lewd sexual acts with Satan conjured up by the twisted imaginations of the clergy of the day. I say let this be a lesson about what happens with the Catholic Church’s concept of enforced celibacy for the clergy.
Then in the thirteenth century, Pope Gregory IX was caught up in a political dispute with the Holy Roman Emperor over the Inquisition and issued papal orders that this judicial investigation into heresy would be under the special restricted jurisdiction of the church. Pope Gregory IX was also pursuing so-called freethinkers in Germany and France; but once the pope’s lust for blood was roused, his fervor was such that he could not be stopped, and the Inquisition spread throughout all of Europe. In 1252, Pope Innocent IV gave his blessing for the inquisitors to use torture. The pope and his henchmen certainly were theatrical and knew how to manipulate the public to suit their ends. Sentences were declared in public squares, establishing the circumstances for civic judgment and instantaneous punishment, which could range in severity from a pilgrimage to a holy place, to a high fine of money and goods, to a public whipping. The church officers could and did seize property, but their power ended at life imprisonment—they did not have the power to inflict capital punishment, even though they came extremely close with their use of torture. The inquisitors discovered a way around that, however, and began using it immediately. They could hand over certain prisoners and sentenced heretics to the local civic authorities, and in many thousands of such cases, those accused were killed.
Inquisitors set up offices anywhere they liked and probed into the lives of locals, making sure the locals knew of all the tools for torture the inquisitors had in their arsenal. With the arrogance only found in those who believe themselves to be righteous, the inquisitors issued proclamations requiring any heretics to present themselves. Heretics then had one month’s time to confess before such time as a trial. Without a confession, trial proceedings began, and they could go quite quickly, since the testimony of only two witnesses was considered irrefutable proof. Accused heretics had no chance for asylum or sanctuary. Many times, under threat of torture and extreme pain, villagers agreed to say anything about their friends or neighbors just to end the agony.
“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” is a line forever inscribed in popular culture consciousness by the brilliant comic minds of Monty Python. It refers to the very worst of all the Inquisitions. The Grand Inquisitor of Spain was an ingeniously cruel man named Tomas de Torquemada. He personally undertook and oversaw the torture, persecution, and murder of thousands of accused heretics. His brutality knew no bounds, and he took the art of torment to its apex with instruments such as hot iron chairs, chairs with sharp nails, and the insertion of devices into any and all orifices, which were then twisted open while inside the accused. Other special Torquemada torture tools were the Iron Maiden, which was essentially a metal coffin with sharp iron spikes inside, and the rack, a frame on which the prisoner was tied by the arms, legs, and head and stretched until their body was torn apart. Drawing and quartering was a means of death during which each limb was tied to one of four horses and the horses were then driven in four different directions, while the body was torn apart into four pieces.
The inquisitors were phenomenal record keepers, so there are many firsthand accounts and ledgers for modern historians to study. While historians differ on the exact span of time during which these crimes committed by the church took place, the best estimates show that a million people died over a period of some 500 years. The majority of those who confessed to heresy made their confessions under the duress of extreme torture. It is also important to remember that the majority of those who died were women.
The Inquisition was the Vatican’s best effort to wipe out pagans and anyone they viewed as “heathens,” as in not Christian, even Jews and Muslims. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, we have “taken back the night” and our rights to religious freedom. To be a Dark Moon Wiccan is not to be a heretic, it is being really and truly yourself, an authentic individualist. Thousands of witches died in the Inquisition. Remembering and knowing is an important way of honoring those who died.
We must remember our own who died.
Honoring Our Pagan Past
In 1992, on the 300th anniversary of the Salem witch trials, the largest number of witches in history congregated to “reclaim” Salem. Many stayed and have become model citizens and business people with retail outlets, bookstores, workshops, and all manner of successful enterprises. This footnote to our pagan history reflects our high regard for our religious history and how it matters today more than ever.
Another dramatic time in what I call “Witchstory” or “Witch history” took place in colonial America. When two preadolescent girls began having seizures and screaming out, the local doctors immediately declared the ailing girls to be Satan’s handmaidens and said that the entire community needed to fast and pray for the two fallen girls. One of the cures for this affliction was “Witch Cake,” a hideous concoction of rye meal mixed with the urine of the two girls. This supposedly would cause the girls to reveal the origin of their misfortune. With the entire village of Salem putting pressure on for a confession, nine-year-old Elizabeth Parris and eleven-year-old Abigail Williams broke down and named three women they knew to be witches who had them under a spell: Sarah Osborne, Sarah Good, and Tituba, the Caribbean Indian slave of the Parris family. While both Sarah Osborne and Sarah Good pled their innocence, Tituba was tortured and “confessed” that there was a coven of witches at work in Salem.
A trial was convened that went on for weeks, and many of the villagers confessed to having been under the spell of the witches. In 1692, community leaders declared the need for a “witch hunt,” and while they were at it, they took the opportunity to clean up the local riffraff. Again, women were under special scrutiny, and even those not under any suspicion at all were at the mercy of the judiciary, especially women with property ripe for confiscation by greedy public officials. As always, the desired confession was gained under pain of torture. The first to be found guilty of witchcraft was Bridget Bishop; the sentence was hanging. A sort of “witch fever” spread throughout New England, followed by the Andover witch trials. Fortunately, people began to gather round to protect each other and signed petitions asserting the innocence of the accused. Finally, the newly established superior court, founded one year after the hanging of Bridget Bishop, put a stop to the conviction of witches. Unfortunately, the superior court did not act until twenty people had been executed on trumped-up charges.
Donna Read, in her masterful documentary film The Burning Times, explores the history of the Dark Ages, when an estimated three million women were burned as suspected witches. This ongoing torture and murder of millions of women begs the question: Why are women so threatening to men in power? We have seen it time and time again over the millennia, beginning with Eve being blamed for the introduction of evil (read: knowledge) into the world. The sacred feminine is mysterious, with a dark and unknowable aspect that can be threatening to those in power. Women’s wisdom, born from women’s intuition, springs from the well of the sacred feminine. This frightens people who don’t understand or embrace it. Women who spoke their mind, who challenged authority, and who espoused a spirituality outside the codified rules of