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CHAPTER
III THE ORIGINS OF THE WITCH THE witch,
in the broader sense of the word, may be said to have existed ever
since
mankind first evolved an imagination, and may be expected to expire
only with
the death of the last woman. Given the supernatural, and sorcery must
follow in
some shape or other as its corollary. Whence also the witch is as
ubiquitous as
she is enduring. Under some form or other she exists, and has existed,
in every
quarter of the globe; she is as familiar to the English peasant as to
the West
African, in South America as in Japan. Her attributes vary, and have
varied,
with the racial temperament and the religious conceptions of her
worshippers
and persecutors, as widely as do, and have done, their gods. But it was
left
for mediaeval Christianity to give her the definite shape in which she
is now
most universally recognised, and it is to the Christian ideal of
celibacy that
she owes, if indirectly, the more obscene, and latterly the more
grotesque, of
her attributes, lifting her at first to an evil equality with the
horned Devil
of the Middle Ages, degrading her ultimately to the "horrid old
witch" of nursery legend. It is a
far cry from this same "horrid old witch" to the pagan divinity, but
there is no break in the long pedigree. It may be traced still further
through
the mists of antiquity — to the earliest days of human motherhood.
Only, as
between goddess and witch, we are confronted with a Darwinian problem.
Is the
witch indeed daughter of the goddess, or are both descended from a
common
ancestress? To my mind, the latter is the more correct line of descent,
with the
pagan priestess as connecting link. "To
one wizard, ten thousand witches," quotes Michelet from a forgotten
writer
of the days of Louis Treize; and throughout all the history of sorcery
women
have formed the majority of its practitioners. Our forefathers
attributed this
to the weakness of womankind, always curious to probe the mysteries of
the
Unknown, always prone to fall into the snare of evil. A more charitable — and correcter — explanation would be found
in the greater quickness of her perceptions. If Eve first gave the
apple to
Adam, she gave with it the future of civilised humanity. The first
mother gave
birth to twin-daughters, the goddess and the witch, and from one or
other of
them came the impetus which has carried mankind to its present stage of
progress, and will carry it yet nearer towards Heaven.
The
primitive father was an animal, with potentialities — among animals
without
them. His intellect was concentrated in his activities, in providing
for the
material needs of himself and his family. His position towards his wife
was
very much what satirists would have us believe is that of the American
business
man to-day. His laborious days were spent in tracking his prey through
the
forest, his leisure in sleeping, eating, and digesting. The mother, on
the
other hand, was bound to the home by reason of her motherhood. Less
active, she
was more contemplative, noting in the order of events the best means of
preservation for the small pink thing that could not live without her
care, her
mind always alert to the exigencies of the moment. Thus she acquired
knowledge
of things beneficent or harmful, of the food most apt for its
nourishment, of
the herbs growing around the clearing best fitted to cure its infantile
complaints. She experimented, cautiously but continuously, and with
each
recurrent need she added a little to her small stock of wisdom. Small
in
itself, but vast in proportion to that of men or childless women.
Little by
little she "walked her hospital"; little by little she learnt the
relative value of her simple potions, to whom they should be given, and
how,
and when. To the primitive mind this was cause for wonder, as indeed it
is,
almost as wonderful as the first smile of the first baby. Pain can no
longer
run riot unchecked. If it have not yet found its mistress, at least a
protest
has been entered against it — reason not only for joy and wonder, but
for
respect and gratitude — even perhaps for worship. Whatever
his divinity, Man worships himself. In every form of religion the
worshipped
tends to become confused with the worshipper. Man cannot escape his own
environment. The thunderstorm frightens him; there must be a
storm-demon. What
is that demon but another man like himself, though uglier and wickeder
and very
much more powerful? Such a demon must be flattered and propitiated as
an angry
man of might must be. But a Primitive with his living to make cannot
spare the
time necessary to propitiate a worldful of demons. He deputes the duty
to a
weaker neighbour, one who sits at home, engaging for his own part to
find food
for both. Whence the first priestess — from whom later descends the
first
priest. For who so apt at propitiation as she who can cajole that most
domesticated of demons, the ever-present Pain. So, later, when the
propitiation
of Evil gives place to the invocation of good, who so worthy of honour,
which
is to say of worship, as she who, in the dawning of the race, first
relieved
poor humanity of its bodily ills? Goddess, priestess, White Witch and
Black —
all are but variations on that oldest and most beautiful of themes,
Motherhood. To return
to the first house-wife. Throughout her life she adds always a little
to her
store of natural knowledge, and when she dies she bequeaths it to her
daughters. They in turn add to it until the time comes when to the cure
of
bodies is added that of minds. For Man's nascent mind begins to trouble
him
almost as much as does his body. Already the eternal problem of why and
wherefore raises its head; already he begins his age-long struggle with
the
inevitable. That "all that is, is good" does not commend itself to
Prehistoric Man. He knows so much better. He must often go hungry, his
cattle
die, drought destroys his meagre crops, his neighbour robs him of his
war-spoil. He appeals to the woman, who thinks so much, for a way out.
Cannot
she, who with her potions drove the pain out of his body, help him in
this
also? Can she not cure his cattle? Can she not reason with the
delinquent
rain-demon, or, by making a little rain herself, move him to emulation?
Best of
all, can she not, out of the plenitude of her wisdom, suggest some
means of
outwitting that treacherous neighbour? He will reward her handsomely,
especially for this last. It is at
this point that the priestess and the witch come to the crossing of the
ways,
henceforward to follow divergent paths. The one sister, from whom is to
be born
the devout priestess, is ready to do all that she can. She invokes the
cattle-demon, the rain-demon; she, no more than the man, has any doubt
of their
invocability, but if they refuse to answer it must be because they are
angry.
She cannot make it rain if the demon gainsay her prayer. She is honest,
acknowledging her inferiority to the supernatural. Only she claims to
understand more than most the best way to approach it.
Consider
the other woman — the ancestress of the witch, in the opprobrious
sense. She
knows very well that she cannot make rain. Probably she has made the
experiment
already. But — such faith in her power is tempting — so are the gifts
thus easy
to be earned. The man believes in her —
almost she begins to believe in herself. Perhaps she tries to persuade
herself
that she may succeed this time. She is weatherwise, and she reads in
natural
signs the probability that rain may shortly be expected. If it should
not —
well, she must take precautions against incurring blame. She must
impose
conditions, and any failure must be set down to their non-fulfilment.
There is
a very pleasant sense of power in gulling the overgrown baby who is so
ready to
be gulled. She accepts the trust, commands the rain-demon to let down
his
showers. Her reading of the signs is justified — the expected rain
comes. Her
reputation is assured — until belief in the supernatural shall be no
more. Her
daughter and her granddaughters inherit her claims. They also command
the
storm, using the same form of words. Possibly they are themselves
deceived —
believing that there is some virtue in the form of their mother's
words, now
become an incantation. From the first claim to power over the elements,
to the
finished sorceress, and thence to the "horrid old witch" of fairy
legend, is but a matter of regular evolution. Just as
the priestess was the mother of the priest, so the wizard is born of
the witch.
Man, though he start later — very much as the boy is slower in
development than
is his sister — is not content always to
remain second in the race for knowledge. For a time — perhaps for long
centuries — he has been content to leave things intellectual to his
womenfolk.
But when he starts he is not content to stay upon the threshold of
knowledge,
as woman, who has approached it only from necessity, has done. One day
a male
iconoclast rebels, pitting his awakening intellect against the woman's
inherited reputation. Victorious, he yet trembles at his victory, while
all
Palmolithia awaits the angry fire from Heaven. But nothing happens. No
lightning strikes him; no swift disease destroys him, or his children,
or his
cattle. A new era has begun — the wizard places himself beside the
witch,
slowly but surely to elbow her into the second place.
As the
slow centuries pass society has been gradually forming and shaping
itself. In
his search for a civilisation Man has left the secluded cave wherein he
wrung
the empire of the world from the jaws of the cave-bear and the
scythe-toothed
tiger. He has built himself homes and collected them into villages;
from the
scattered family he has evolved the tribe, and from the tribe the
nation.
Having learned his own power when buttressed upon that of his
neighbours, he is
slowly broadening and extending it until it is little inferior to that
of the
divinities before whom it pleases him to tremble. He — or Nature for
him —
chooses out rulers, who become his gods in all but divinity; and his
respect
for them, if less absolute, is more immediate than for his gods.
Government,
making all things possible, becomes an accomplished fact.
Government,
once instituted, loses no time in measuring itself against Heaven. In
one form
or other the conflict between Church and State —
disguise it as men may — has lasted from the beginning, and must last
as long as both survive. That ideal which reached the point nearest of
attainment in the theoretic constitution of the Holy Roman Empire, of
two
rulers, co-existent and co-equal, governing one the spiritual and one
the
material empire of the world, was in the very nature of things doomed
to remain
an ideal. Either God or Man must be first. With their struggles for the
mastery
the fortunes of the witch, as of all exponents of the supernatural,
were
intimately bound up. At first
sheltering itself beneath the wings of the spiritual power, the
material
flourished — at its protector's expense. The realm of Nature seemed at
first so
inconsiderable compared to that of the supernatural, that he were a
bold
iconoclast who dared compare them. Only, the King was always in the
midst of
his people; the god, century by century, retreated further into the
unscaleable
skies. Slowly the civil power emancipated itself from the tutelage of
the
spiritual — as it is still doing in our own time — slowly and with many
falterings and many backward glances, asserting itself in prosperity,
appealing
for help in adversity, retreating often, but never so far as it
advanced. With the
first introduction of civil government the witch and the priestess
finally part
company, to range themselves henceforward upon opposite sides. It is
true that
as religion follows religion the priestess of the former era often
becomes the
witch of its successor, thereby only accentuating the distinction. For,
in the
unceasing efforts to arrange a modus vivendi between the human and the
supernatural worlds, the priestess accommodates herself to
circumstances — the
witch defies them. The priestess, acknowledging her own humanity,
claims only
to interpret the wishes of the god, to intercede with him on behalf of
her
fellow-men. The witch, staunch Tory of the old breed, claims to be
divine, in
so far as she exercises divine power unamenable to human governance,
and thus
singles herself out as one apart, independent of civil and
ecclesiastical
powers alike — and as such an object of fear and of suspicion. Even so
she is
still respectable, suspect indeed, but not condemned. The public
attitude
towards her is variable; she is alternately encouraged and suppressed,
venerated and persecuted — and through all she flourishes, now
seductive as
Circe, now hag-like as was Hecate. Ages pass,
empires flourish and decay, and slowly a great change is coming over
society.
Unrest is in the air; old systems and old creeds are dying of inertia,
and men
look eagerly for something to take their place. The spirit of
individual
liberty steals round the world, whispering in all men's ears. The
slave,
toiling at the oar, hears them, though he dare not listen, and hugs
them in his
heart — and a heresy, threatening the very foundations of society,
spreads far
and wide. Is it just possible that men are not born slave or master by
divine
decree? The First
Socialist is born in the East. He and His disciples preach a creed so
blasphemous, so incompatible with the rights of property, that it
becomes a
sacred duty, if vested interests are to be preserved, to crucify Him as
an
encouragement to others. He proclaims, in a word, that all men are
equal. It is
well for Christianity that He adds the qualification, "In the sight of
God," or how could either slave or master believe in anything so
contrary
to the senses' evidence? Vested interests notwithstanding, the new
creed
spreads, as any creed so comforting to the great majority, the
downtrodden and
oppressed, is bound to spread. But, though it preached the acceptable
doctrines
of liberty, equality, and fraternity, Christianity introduced with them
sin
into the world. All men might be equal in the sight of God, but they
were all
equally sinners. Humility and self-abasement were to take the place of
the old
pagan joyousness. To the Christian — to the Early Christian, at any
rate — the
world ceased to be man's inheritance, as Heaven was that of a congerie
of
shifting divinities — an inheritance the enjoyment of which was as
blameless as
it was natural. It was become a place of discipline and education, a
hard
school designed to prepare him for a glorious future, and one in which
only the
elect were to share. Everything that did not actively help towards that
end was
evil; all who did not work towards that end were evil-doers. The pagan
and his
easy-going paganism were alike accursed and tolerance a sin. The
contest between two such schools of thought — however long drawn out —
could
have but one conclusion. Capricious persecutions, on civil rather than
religious grounds, gave the iconoclasts the one remaining impetus
needed to
snatch the sceptre of the world. Successful, they persecuted in their
turn,
systematically and with the thoroughness born of conscious virtue. In
spite — or because of — such attempts to
stamp out pagan and paganism together, the old order still survived in
secret
long after the known world was officially Christianised. Naturally
enough, the
Christian could only suppose that such criminal persistence was the
direct work
of that Evil One whom he first had exploited. Pagan rites were nothing
more nor
less to him than Devil worship, those who practised them the direct
representatives of Satan. Some of the pagan gods had been pressed into
the
service of Christianity as saints, their festivals as saints' days.
Those that
remained were classed together, with their ministers and attributes,
under the
generic heading of Magic, shunned and feared at first, but as the
Church more
and more stepped into the shoes of the civil power, warred upon without
mercy. Faced by
such forcible arguments for conversion, the Pagan witch was not long in
adopting the Christian Devil as a more potent protector than the old,
easy-going
gods who had formerly peopled the supernatural world. Pagan or nominal
Christian, she was equally anathema to the Church, if only that she was
consistently Protestant, claiming to hold direct communication with the
Unseen
quite regardless of the proper ecclesiastical channels. And by this
very
independence her hold upon the imagination of her neighbours continued
to
increase as Christianity progressed towards universal empire. The very
definite
pronouncements of the Church against witches, witchcraft, and all kinds
of
magic served to foster the general belief in their powers. What was so
forcibly
condemned must of necessity exist. There was, moreover, a certain
satisfaction
in this same tangibility. It simplified, smoothed out the path of
virtue. With witchcraft
about, your duty was plain and your task easy. You had but to mention a
holy
name, to make a sacred sign, to sprinkle a little holy water, and
victory was
assured. If all assaults of the devil were so straightforward and so
vincible,
the path to Heaven were broad and smooth indeed. It was,
perhaps, the popular sense of victorious ability against her spells
which
protected the witch, per se, against over-severe persecution until
towards the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Absolute confidence in the power to
suppress
an evil diminishes the urgency for its suppression. Here and there a
witch was
executed, local persecutions of inconsiderable extent occurred, but for
general
holocausts we must wait until the more enlightened times of a James I.
or a
Louis XIV. The witch of the Dark Ages might count upon a life of
comparative
security, sweetened by the offerings of those who, pining for present
joys,
acted upon the advice of Omar Khayyam rather than following that of
their
ghostly advisers. Meanwhile, however, a mass of tradition and precedent
was
growing up, to be put to deadly purpose in the animadversions of
learned
sixteenth and seventeenth century writers upon the vile and damnable
sin of
witchcraft. By the
eleventh century the witch was firmly
identified, in popular as well as
the
ecclesiastical mind, as a woman who had entered upon a compact with
Satan for
the overthrowing of Christ's kingdom. The popular conception of her
personality
had also undergone a change. By the twelfth century there was no more
question
of her as a fair enchantress — she was grown older and uglier, poorer
and
meaner, showing none of the advantages her compact with the Evil One
might have
been expected to bring in its train. The increasing tendency towards dabbling in things forbidden brought about greater severity in its repression, but it was not until the days of Innocent VIII., when witchcraft was officially identified with heresy, that the period of cruel persecution may be said really to have begun. Sorcery in itself was bad enough; associated with heresy no crime was so pernicious and no punishment too condign, especially when inflicted by the Holy Inquisition. The inquisitorial power was frequently misused; the fact that the possessions of the accused became forfeit to her judges when tried in an ecclesiastical court may seem to the sceptic to provide ample reason why the ecclesiastical authorities undertook so many more prosecutions than did the civil. But of the absolute sincerity with which all classes set themselves to stamp out so dreadful a crime, the portentous and voluminous writings of the period leave no doubt whatever. Catholic and, after the Reformation, Protestant, rich and poor, patriot and philanthropist alike, vied with each other in the enthusiasm with which they scented out their prey, and the pious satisfaction with which they tortured helpless old women to the last extremity in the name of the All-Merciful.
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