Women and Witchcraft

In the earliest European societies, dating back prior to four thousand B.C.E., people were grouped into tribes. Life was organized around survival. A male's ability to hunt was integral to the societal system, but far more important was the power of women to give birth, thereby sustaining the continuity of the tribe.

Women were also the healers of these early European societies. It was primarily the women who tended to the physical, mental, and spiritual needs of their people. Often, women were the religious leaders of their tribes, guiding people through the different stages of their lives.

The diverse abilities of women were thought to be sacred. These sacred female powers became personified into the figure of a goddess, a deity thought to be the mother of all life. It has been established by scholars that a goddess was probably Europe's primary deity until as recently as three thousand B.C.E. (Eisler 1-7).

Female leaders in religion became increasingly rare in the centuries leading up to the witch persecutions. These women continued to represent feminine authority. They were the sibyls of Greece, the Witches and Druidesses of Celtic Ireland and Britain, women who were now separated from society, but still sought out as well as feared. To the male dominated establishment, these women were now a threat. In a society where God is male, women become devalued.

Witchcraft was (and is) the survival of fragmented pagan belief systems mainly collected from the folklore of Celtic Britain and Ireland. European Archeologist Marija Gimbutas notes that the women called witches "were greatly feared since they continued to represent the power of a formidable Goddess on Earth" (20). When the Catholic hierarchy absorbed Britain and Ireland, it encountered the Celtic people, whose religion and way of life was still contrary to the ideal that women should be obedient to men. The church henceforth set out to eliminate these belief systems, as they had tried to do to the continental pagan religions who were also matrifocal in origin, and they accused these other religious groups of devil worship.

The most harmful work of propaganda ever directed at women was the Malleus Malificarum, or Witches' Hammer. This book set a standard of misogyny so great that Western civilization is still influenced by its hateful ideas. Historian Selma Williams examined the "Malleus" for its sexist content and found statements such as: "A woman is by her nature more quicker to waver in her faith and consequently quicker to abjure the faith, which is the root of witchcraft" (qtd. in Williams 39).

Throughout the witch persecutions, the use of healing techniques was a major issue in the charging and convicting of a suspected witch.The female healers of Europe represented a threat to the church hierarchy, which supported the rising male medical profession. These male doctors catered to the upper class who could afford them. 

The practice of medicine by women was a threat to the Church because medicine contained the power over life and death, a power belonging to God alone, and delegated to his male representatives on earth. 

The sexuality of women was probably the most significant issue involved during the witch persecutions. During those times, in an era when sex was viewed as sinful, women could not hide their obviously s*xual natures: they became pregnant; they gave birth; they menstruated. Negative attitudes about sex were translated into negative attitudes about women, and reflected themselves strongly in witch trial procedures. In the Christian religion, we are often reminded of the temptation of sex; however, in the times of the Witch Persecutions, the church often mentioned s*xual temptation as being inherent in women, therefore making her an obstacle on the path from man to God (Cavendish 3057).


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