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By Lor Oldmann (jamwad@hotmail.com)


Two teenaged girls in the Salem witch trials gave evidence that they 'rode through the night air on poles' and did other unchristianlike things like kiss each other in naughty places and dance naked together. Rebecca West, the teenaged daughter of a woman on trial for being a witch in Essex, England, during the Civil War, gave evidence that 'the devil came to her as she was getting ready for bed one night and married her' and we all know what that means. A young man accused of being a wizard in Bohemia admitted that Satan himself, frequently came to him in the night and sucked the hell out of him.

These confessions were accepted as damning evidence of the reality, the presence and the power of witchcraft. In fact, they were presented by those who stood accused as proof of their involvement in witchcraft because it was the common expectation: witches did that sort of thing. They also floated on water, and melted in fire, and danced naked around bonfires, and made pacts with Satan, and had sex with animals, and created havoc by 'magick' and supernatural enchantment.

As in many other departments of human activities, the common expectations of witches and witchcraft were as far from the truth as it is possible to get. For contrary to popular beliefs, witches do not deal in the supernatural; the opposite is true: witches are interested only and entirely with the natural world. Most witches have quite mundane sex lives, some (like catholic priests) chose to live celibate lives (with approximately the same strict adherence to the rules), a few have seriously deviant sex lives, some are utterly sexless, but for all of them sex plays no part whatsoever in their witchcraft.

Satan is a character from Jewish-Christian mythology who has crept into Islam as well; witchcraft has absolutely no place for Satanism, Satan, the devil, imps out of hell, or hell itself. The real witch keeps both feet firmly on the earth. The first rule of witchcraft is perfectly plain and simple: HARM NONE! And that rule prohibits even frightening the crap out of anyone!

But, perhaps most importantly, witchcraft is not, never was and never will be any kind of religion; it is purely and simply what the name implies: a craft, with the same sense as the word has in 'craftsmanship', 'needlecraft', 'arts and crafts', 'stonecraft', or any similar combination.

Consequently, people who claim to be pagans, who deliberately set out to do hurt or harm to other people, to purvey supernatural powers by charms and spells, or who dangle their genitals around a fire, or invite you to exchange life energies (i.e. to drop your knickers), or are in communication with spirits (other than gin, rum or whisky), or indulge in uncontrolled sexual activities, will generally be found to be fraudsters and charlatans; THEY MOST CERTAINLY DO NOT REPRESENT ANY GENUINE BRANCH OF WITCHCRAFT.

The very word 'witch' is derived from an ancient Celtic form which basically means 'a practitioner of wisdom or down-to-earth common sense' and has less than nothing in common with Gerald Gardner's supposed derivation from the so-called Anglo-Saxon 'wicca'. Which means that a genuine 24-carat witch, in the exercise of her/his witchcraft has to possess personal qualities other normal, decent, healthy-minded people can readily recognise and admire.

Not so their detractors. The two monkish gentlemen, Jacob Sprenger and Henry Kraemer, who composed the witchfinder's bible, the document known as 'Malleus Maleficarum' or 'the hammer of the witches', were evil, filthy-minded little bastards who literally saw Satan everywhere, especially up little girls' skirts or inside little boys' breeches. (Monkish or priestly abuse of children is nothing new!) The pair of them started the ball rolling by encouraging the secular arm of the law to burn some thirteen suspected witches including a couple of Jewish money lenders to whom they owed (in spite of their sacred vow of poverty) a considerable amount of readies.

It was pure coincidence that most of the first victims in Mainz, Cologne and Trier were parents of sweet young children whom the original witchfinders, out of Christian charity, took to their beds. This became something of a rule for good Christians in the Middle Ages: it was all right to commit adultery, rape or sexually abuse people suspected of being witches or the children of Satan. Because, after all, it says in the Bible: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!" It's there in the book; look it up in Exodus 22 at verse 18.

No one ever bothered much with the fact that it is as gross a mistranslation as it is possible to get. But who cares? Burn the buggers! It was something more than mere coincidence that their students had appropriate nicknames for their mentors: Sprenger they called 'the Banger' and to Kraemer (also known as Institoris) they gave the appellation 'the pedlar'.

The real prototype seriously dangerous witch hunters, however, were the Spanish lunatics, Tomas de Torquemada, and his uncle, the cardinal Juan. The pair were nothing short of homicidal (and homosexual) maniacs in clerical clothing. The uncle was aggressively and sadistically nice to young nephews (and other boys) who were left in his care, and had an unholy taste for angelic faced little catholic choirboys who strayed from the straight and narrow or took part in some naughtiness that could be interpreted as heretical (that is, witchy) and had to be severely punished. Tomas preferred sexual liaison with fully-grown, dusky skinned, Moorish men with rippling, sinewy muscles who could be reduced to quivering obeisance on the rack. Tomas also had a habit, picked up from his uncle, of baying at the full moon.

The pair of them confused Hakabbalah (the mystical interpretation of the Hebrew Bible and Jewish metaphysical lore) with witchcraft and hence with heresy. And they seriously believed that every Jew (even one who had converted to Christianity) was a Kabbalist and hence a witch.

Consequently, between them, they rid Spain and Portugal of its considerable Jewish population, and in the process removed all the pharmacists, physicians and surgeons in the two countries, most of the teachers, lawyers, astronomers and mathematicians, merchants and craftsmen, and then wondered what the hell had gone wrong with the Iberian peninsula. Together they accounted for more than two thousand deaths by burning and in their interrogations perpetrated several thousand homosexual rapes apiece. And there are those who are still trying to get the Pope to canonise the evil bastards!

The two most famous English witchfinders were Matthew Hopkins, the son of a mad vicar who confined his wife to an outhouse after she was found to pregnant, and John Stearne who, in his mid-thirties, was ten years older than his colleague, but had the emotional quotient of a twelve year old. It was one of those freakish relationships; both men were sadistic, and both were puritan religious zealots with heterosexual hang-ups: the older man was a paedophile, while Hopkins got his sexual highs from seeing naked old women tormented and tortured. Both men had themselves been sexually abused as children, Stearne by his father and Hopkins by a mother driven crazy in her isolation.

The notorious English witch hunts started when a rather simple tailor in Manningtree, Essex, complained that a neighbour, an ancient crone called Elizabeth Clarke, had bewitched his wife so that she had a headache every night! Hopkins and Stearne had no reason to be present at the initial interrogation, but they were, and they while they certainly had no official authority, they volunteered to take charge. They kept watch over the naked old woman for three days to see if Satan or one of his familiars would come to her rescue, and when nothing happened other than that the old woman fouled herself several times, they decided that her case was worse that they thought for she was a self-contained witch, the worst type, and had her hanged.

Next they turned to an acquaintance of Clarke's in the next village. This time both perverts were satisfied, for Ann West at fifty-five suffered from senility and she had a pretty, albeit equally stupid, thirteen year old daughter, both of whom they stripped and 'watched' until the old woman confessed to dabbling in the craft of witches and the girl to having been raped by the devil. It is almost certain that the young teenager gave a practical demonstration of what the devil is supposed to have done to her to Stearne while Hopkins 'was satisfied' with the 'examination and confession' of the naked old woman.

Stearne and Hopkins did not invent the strip search as an acceptable part of normal investigations of witches; that was one of the major contributions of Messrs. Kraemer and Sprenger. Stearne and Hopkins, however, made it an art form, where the body of the accused was minutely scrutinised for specific indications of some kind of sexual intercourse with demonic creatures. The favourite sign was an inflamed third breast or unnatural teats or follicles, but love bites from 'demons' were also sought around the neck, breasts and pudenda.

There were remarkably few able-bodies males, capable of delivering a hefty thump to the jaw of the accusers, charged with witchcraft in seventeenth century England. Men who were accused were invariably pathetic specimens, crippled, soft in the head or weak in body and in poor health. These males were usually lynched by the mob, often for daring to question the whole business of witch hunting or trying to defend the silly old females who were being persecuted.

Witches were never burned in England (or the American colonies) as they were on the continent of Europe. Instead they were hanged after being subjected to sense deprivation, physical torture and (very often) sexual assault. A favourite amusement was the 'swimming' of witches: a kind of trial by ordeal in which the witch was thrown, often bound and naked, into a deep pool. If the victim drowned it was proof of innocence, if she floated or swam, it was indisputable evidence of her guilt.

Popular legend has it that both English witch hunters received their due comeuppance: it is related that Hopkins himself was accused of witchcraft, tested according to his own rules and found wanting, and was hung, while Stearne was haunted by ghostly apparitions to such an extent that he went crazy and committed suicide. Part of the Stearne myth involves the appearance of ghostly children who were tortured, raped and mutilated by him in life. Neither story has any real substance, for both horrible pass into obscurity. It has been suggested that the younger man died of tuberculosis or pleurisy, both of which were common in 17th. century England. Nothing authentic is known of Stearne's demise.

The most famous witch trials in history were conducted in Salem, Mas. in 1692. As a result of this scandalous travesty of natural justice, almost 200 individuals were interrogated, examined and humiliated in public, 140 or more were actually arrested, 19 were hanged publicly, four females died in prison, and one old man was crushed to death under a wooden door on which rocks had been piled. In addition to this, there were at least two miscarriages by pregnant women, two suicides that can be attributed positively to the proceedings, another two premature deaths from coronaries, and two young girls who survived by becoming pregnant by their accusers.

The central figures in this tragic farce were Samuel Parris, Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne. Parris was appointed minister of the local congregation although he had no theological or pastoral training and despite the fact that the qualifications he claimed to fit him for the job were patently false and could quite easily have been seen to be so at that time. Similarly, the two men who were magistrates in Salem, Corwin and Hathorne, occupied their positions under false pretences.

The three men had this is common: they were rank hypocrites who preached temperance, but were extremely fond of their tipple, rum in the case of Parris, claret or kind of rough cider for the other two, and all three were rather partial to female flesh, preferably young and pretty. All three had been involved in incestuous relationships with sisters, daughters, aunts or cousins.

Samuel Parris had been variously a tally clerk, plantation foreman promoted to under-manager, and a small-time merchant. When he appeared in Salem he was accompanied by two slaves, one at least of whom was his concubine, his nine year old daughter Elizabeth or Betty, and an eleven year old niece called Abigail.

Life in Salem was much more restricted and strait-laced than the 'high time to be had by all' of Barbados, and Samuel, addicted to sexual gratification in any form, found the field narrowed down to his two black 'slaves' (one of whom was getting past it), and the two girls. He occasionally visited Boston and a town several miles in the opposite direction which was notorious for its low morals and loose living inhabitants. (Refer to the book 'The Devil's Music')

The minister of the local church left (or died) and Parris applied for the job, was interviewed, produced the necessary credentials and was appointed to the vacancy. It was shortly after this that Betty, then Abigail, began to act in a most peculiar manner, almost certainly as a kind of protest against being knocked up twice weekly by the reverend gentleman. After all, it would never do for a respected minister of religion to be found in a whore house in Boston.

"Join the club!" exclaimed Tituba, the younger of the slaves. And the two girls did just that. How else could they make their protest? Later they were joined by other girls who were being fucked by fathers, bedded by big brothers, and undone by uncles. All the signs are there to read in the evidence given by the girls at the investigation conducted by two of the worst offenders in town: Corwin and Hathorne (or Hawthorn). Riding on poles? Albumen floating on water? Extraordinary use of wax candles? The devil appearing as a raging bull? Or a horny hog? A mad dog? Or demons climbing into bed beside the accused!

If ever there was a case of communal sex abuse screaming for some sort of responsible action, this certainly was it. Corwin and Hathorne (the name in the 17th century was pronounced like 'horn' or 'whoring') took it as their right of office to examine (in elaborate detail) all the young girls involved in the case; the examination of the older women and the few men arraig! ned was largely left to others.

Tituba was tortured and raped by the two magistrates and several other girls were almost certainly subjected to sexual abuse, probably fellatio, by them. Some others girls who were picked up as a routine measure were unaccountably released after supplying favours along with their testimony. There were at least two resignations from the tribunal set up in the town to investigate the alleged incidence of witchcraft. These resignations came from pious men who had become disillusioned and disgusted by the behaviour of the two magistrates towards the younger girls among those accused.

It is doubtful if there was ever a more marked contrast than that between the witches throughout history and their persecutors. No doubt there were renegade witches, just as there were criminals and rogues in every other walk of life, but these were the exceptions. The kind of thing witches did was to brew herbal remedies to ease old wives' rheumatism or to rub on the chest of a sleepless child who had a cough. They may have had a sideline in philtres, but most of the people who made these love potions in the Middle Ages were licensed pharmacists or clerics who also dealt in hallucinogenic drugs and poisons, or by exponents of Voodoo, which is nothing at all to do with witchcraft.

Because of the peculiar nature of witchcraft, there were few genuine written records of their activities; almost all the written material is by their detractors. But not a single word, line or sentence of anything committed to writing by witches would be considered offensive or threatening in any way by any modern standard.

The witch hunters, by contrast, were raving, fanatical lunatics, judged by the same standards, who fulminated, fornicated, lied, robbed, tortured, and murdered in the name and for the sake of religion. To all intents and purposes they were saying to the world at large: my mythology is better than yours conform to mine or die! But first I'll have my bit of fun with you!

END