Women's Rights & Issues
Related: About this forumThe Halloween Witch (why she is green, toothless and scraggly-haired. but there is NO war on women!)
(like the poster, I do not know the author. if someone does, please let me know so I can attribute properly)
The Halloween Witch
Each year they parade her about...the traditional Halloween Witch.
Misshapen green face, stringy scrapes of hair, and a toothless mouth beneath her disfigured nose. Gnarled, knobby fingers twisted into a claw, protracting from a bent and twisted torso that lurches about on wobbly legs.
Most think this abject image to be the creation of a prejudiced mind, or merely a Halloween caricature.
I disagree. I believe this to be how witches were really seen.
Consider that most witches: were women, were abducted in the night, and smuggled into dungeons or prisons under the secrecy of darkness, to be presented by the light of day as a confessed witch.
Few, if any saw a frightened, normal looking woman being dragged into a secret room filled with instruments of torture. To be questioned until she confessed to anything that was suggested to her, and to give names or whatever would stop the questions. Crowds saw the aberration denounced to the world a a self-proclaimed witch.
As the witch was paraded through the town, en route to be burned, hanged, drowned, stoned, or disposed of in various other forms of Christian love...all created to be free and save her soul from her depraved body. The jeering crowds viewed the result of hour of torture. The face, bruised and broken by countless blows, bore a hue of sickly green. The once warm and loving smile gone.
Replaced by a grimace of broken teeth and torn gums the leer beneath a battered, disfigured nose. The disheveled hair conceals bleeding gaps of torn scalp from whence cruel hands had torn away the lovely tresses. Broken, twisted hands clutched the wagon for support. Fractured fingers locked like groping claws to steady her broken body. All semblance of humanity gone. This was a demon, a bride of Satan, a witch.
I revere this Halloween crone and hold her sacred above all. I honor her courage and listen to her warnings of the dark side of humanity.
Each year I shed tears of respect.
http://www.traditionalwitch.net/forums/topic/8213-the-halloween-witch/
polly7
(20,582 posts)niyad
(113,288 posts)niyad
(113,288 posts)polly7
(20,582 posts)Just trying to imagine how it must have been for them - so hopeless, horrible horrible pain, terror, knowing they were all alone ... all those beautiful women, young and old, treated with such savagery and led out to be mocked and scorned before their terrible deaths. It's so, so sad. Thank you for bringing this here ....... yes, they should be honoured.
niyad
(113,288 posts)and knowing how they have treated women all these centuries, it makes me ill.
polly7
(20,582 posts)CrispyQ
(36,461 posts)I don't think there will ever be gender equality as long as the big three exist.
niyad
(113,288 posts)polly7
(20,582 posts)People/religious gathering places pick and choose from whatever religious book they're using all the time for their sermons and to influence their followers ........ when enough people force them to recognize how wrong and barbaric parts of those books are - they can change. They should somehow be forced to change. A pipe-dream though I realize, with billions around the world probably willing to die rather than allow it. At times I think * all religion, then I think of the comfort it gives so many who don't subscribe to the assholey parts of it.
niyad
(113,288 posts)Burning Times
Author: Charlie Murphy
In the cool of the evening they used to gather beneath the stars, in the meadow, circled near an old oak tree.
At the times appointed by the seasons of the earth and the phases of the moon.
In the centre often stood a woman, equal to the others and respected for her worth.
One of the many we call the witches, the healers and the teachers of the wisdom of the earth.
People grew in the knowledge she gave them, herbs to heal their bodies spells to make their spirits whole.
Hear them chanting healing incantations-calling for the wise ones celebrating in dance and song.
ISIS-ASTARTE-DIANA-HECATI-DEMETER-KALI-INANNA
There were those who came to power through domination, bonded in their worship of a dead man on the cross.
They sought control over all people, demanding allegiance to the church of Rome.
The pope commenced the inquisition a war against women whose powers were feared.
In this holocaust, this century of evil, nine million European women died.
The tale is told of those who by the hundreds, holding hands together chose their deaths in the sea.
Chanting the praises of the mother goddess, a refusal of betrayal, women were dying to be free.
ISIS-ASTARTE-DIANA-HECATI-DEMETER-KALI-INANNA
Now the Earth is a witch, we still burn her, stripping her down with mining and the poison of our wars.
Still to us the Earth is still a healer a teacher and a Mother a weaver of a web that keeps us all alive.
She gives us the wisdom to see through the chaos, she gives us the courage it is our will to survive.
ISIS-ASTARTE-DIANA-HECATI-DEMETER-KALI-INNANNA.
http://www.christymoore.com/lyrics/burning-times/