I’d watched the six parts of the “Burning Times” documentary a few weeks ago on YouTube. I was really planning to post it on my blog at some point. If you haven’t watched it yet, I highly recommend it.
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
Part 4:
Part 5:
and Part 6:
Herstory, women’s history gets constantly erased and/or wrongly written by male-supremacist culture, which is why I believe that documentaries like these are invaluable to inform us on our herstory.
The witches were women-healers, pagans, midwives and they were a very womyn-centered culture of heretics. The patriarchal Church despised them, just like historical & contemporary patriarchy hates all women.
It was a whole woman-centered culture of female healers that the patriarchal witch-craze attempted to wipe out. What is horrible is that history is written by those who win (as explained at the end of that documentary), and therefore herstory is constantly being erased, e.g. hardly anybody knows that the witch-hunt WAS a women’s ‘Holocaust’.
I can clearly see how the very misogyny that led to the burning, torturing and killing of so many women as ‘witches’, is still well-present today. The only “difference” being that misogyny today exists in other forms (at least in the West): mainstreamed woman-hating pornography, massive, worldwide sexual objectification, exploitation & of women’s bodies, etc. There are still witch-hunts going on in some parts of the world though.
According to the description info posted on YouTube about “The Burning Times”:
This beautifully crafted film is an in-depth look at the witch-hunts that swept through Europe just a few hundred years ago. False accusations and trials led to massive torture and burnings at the stake, and ultimately to the destruction of an organic way of life. The film advances the theory that widespread violence against women and the neglect of our environment today can be traced back to those times.
I once, myself, briefly wrote about the witch-hunt, explaining how contemporary misogyny is closely linked to historical misogyny in this post here.
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Oh Maggie! Your last blog post at the your old place was fricken AWESOME!! And this one is very interesting also, but I’ll have to watch it later.
Thanks, Miss Andrea.
Thanks Maggie 🙂
I saw this posted on the WLM forum but had only now taken a look at it.
Comments containing an unfriendly tone (e.g. mocking remarks, etc) do not get an approval on my blog (see Comment Policy), which is why this one did not get published, sorry. If a commenter gets hostile, I can even start spamming his or her IP thanks to the wonderful WordPress software. . . If a more appropriate tone is used, then maybe I will start publishing. . .
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Herstory: “. . . History considered from a feminist viewpoint or emphasizing the actions of women. . .
[Blend of her and history (under the interpretation of the latter as “his story” )]. . .”
It doesn’t matter that there aren’t two letters ‘s’ in ‘history’: 1) Patriarchy has invented the English (and other) language(s), thus nobody should ever try to control feminists’ language or ‘police’ their words. Most spoken languages were invented by patriarchy, and women’s libbers want to obey no edict or rule (incl. spelling rules) given by the male-supremacist system. Feminists use terms they want to use, sometimes even new terms they invent if they want to; and 2) The history of men has always been more documented in a patriarchy. Patriarchal history has edited so much information out of women’s history; it has almost always excluded women. That’s why accurate documentations of herstory are so important in order to understand how much, as women, we have been hated for a very long time. . . As Adrienne Sere said, in a patriarchy, women’s history is ‘A History with No Name’, so feminists have the right to give it one, IMHO. The beautiful word Herstory was invented by the Women’s Liberation Movement and is even used on feminists sites, e.g. this one.
“Most spoken languages were invented by patriarchy, and women’s libbers want to obey no edict or rule (incl. spelling rules) given by the male-supremacist system.”
I don’t know, some of them have merit. Medical science has been pretty nice to us recently.
Aside from that, this was a good post. I hope you don’t buy into new-age “they had actual magic and the pat killed them ’cause it was JEALOUS” stuff that seems to show up whenever you meet people that take this stuff seriously. I kinda like you. You’re fun.
I don’t know, some of them have merit. Medical science has been pretty nice to us recently.
Sorry, Sadi, while it is important to have somewhere to go when we’re ill, it is important to not forget that:
~ Barbara Ehrenreich & Deirdre English, in Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers
Women have always been healers, and medicine has always been an arena of struggle between female lay practitioners and male professionals. Ehrenreich & English’s book (I just quoted from) explores two important phases in the male takeover of health care: the suppression of ‘witches’ in medieval Europe and the rise of the male medical profession in the Western world.
There are quite a few women doctors (in the current field of medical science) but they are working in a medical establishment that is patriarchal:
~ Heart, in her definition of radical feminism.
I hope you don’t buy into new-age “they had actual magic and the pat killed them ’cause it was JEALOUS” stuff that seems to show up whenever you meet people that take this stuff seriously.
No, I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in the “supernatural”. As I talked about above, the ‘witches’ were in fact frequently midwives and/or female healers. They were especially good at natural medicine and preparing herbal remedies. They were also pagans and they rejected Christianity. The patriarchal Church hated them as women and as heretics.
The Burning Times documentary posted above explains more about what happened.
this was a good post. . . I kinda like you. You’re fun.
Thank you. 🙂
Go you Maggie. Men have completely altered language to suit themselves and marginalize women. If you ask me the whole thing needs reinventing.
Yup, Helzeph! 🙂
Maggie,
I asked this same question in another section of your website and then realized that perhaps this page would be best to post this question on. So I apologize for the repetition.
I watched The Burning Times Documentary and I am still somewhat confused on something. Why exactly has European scholarship and the mainstream conception of “our” history erased the witch-hunt?
Thanks!
Leanna
Why exactly has European scholarship and the mainstream conception of “our” history erased the witch-hunt?
History is written by those who win. And the patriarchs who persecuted the witches and/or who supported witch-hunts are the ones who won that war against women and are the ones who wrote history.
Also, womyn’s herstory is being constantly erased…
8TOANf Thank you for the material. Do you mind if I posted it in her blog, of course, with reference to your site?
Amazing site yours sincerely, Gisele Daddea
I am 16 and praticing to be a wiccan/witch .
I believe in magic and do you have any advice for me? Im learning about “The Burning Times” right now .
I just came across your blog and it looks very good. In the USA many women who were considered witches were women who had feminist ideas i.e. women who believed in the liberation of women and girls from male domination. This was considered a huge threat to the straight white male dominated society. So these sexist oppressors declared these women to be witches and had them burnt, thus feminism was oppressed.
Today feminists still get called witches amongst other words such as Feminazi, bitch, man-hater and some I cannot bring myself to type. It seems not much has changed. However instead of gettin depresed, this should encourage feminists to be more radical in their attempts to destroy male supremacy