• – THE🔮WORLD

“Some have suggested that women’s behavior was a contributing factor to the craze. According to this theory, some accused women believed that they were indeed witches, and thus fed the men’s fears – sort of a mass ‘folie a deux’ in which each side’s madness reinforced the other side’s delusions. The transcribed confessions of some witches indicate that the accused seemed convinced that they flew through the night on broomsticks. Under torture, many babbled detailed accounts of their gatherings in the woods and supplied imaginative descriptions of their sexual trysts with the devil. The plight of a woman ensnared in the witch craze was hopeless. She was utterly without advocates. She could not expect a white knight to free her, because the white knights of society - her pastor, her king, her magistrate, and her pope - were her tormentors. Women who went to their excruciating deaths, convinced they deserved their fate, had been subjected to the most severe psychological, sexual, and physical terrors in the long, baleful history of patriarchy.”

— Leonard Shlain, The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image

“‘Hysteria’ is an unmanageable fear expressed by emotional excess. It is a type of behavior many men associate with women; the word itself derives from the Greek hystera, meaning womb. But no superstition that any group of women as ever believed has come close to the level of credulity and psychosis that seized the most educated male elite during the witch craze. As if in a deep hypnotic spell, men accepted as fact a phantasmagoria that defied comprehension – that little girls in pigtails, pregnant women, and weak, elderly widows posed a mortal danger to society. The witch craze was an example of masculine hysteria and gullibility without a parallel in any other culture. In the light of such evidence, lexicographers might well consider coining a new word to accompany “hysteria” – “testicularia” would be appropriate.”

— Leonard Shlain, The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image

“In earlier times, men and women alike acknowledged the skills of female shamans. The wise woman had tucked in her bag of tricks both ergot root for inducing abortion, and belladonna for preventing miscarriage. Many men readily acknowledged the superiority of the medicine practiced by women healers. Paracelsus, the greatest physician of his age, acknowledged that he “had learned from the sorceress all that he knew.””

— Leonard Shlain, The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image

“A witch was qualitatively different from a heretic. The latter deviated from Church dogma. Witches, however, possessed supernatural powers and carried out the devil’s bidding. Although their form remained human, the Prince of Darkness had captured their souls. Church authorities, convinced that witches had infiltrated their parishes, became obsessed with rooting them out. ‘The Hammer’ explained in detail how to distinguish a witch from a God-fearing Christian. Upon arriving in a village, witch hunters hired informers to report mysterious illnesses, deaths, misfortunes (hail storms, crop failures, death of livestock), or the sudden onset of impotence (a favorite). Widows, spinsters, sexually attractive women (the ones who could really cast a spell over men), healers, and magicians, as well as “scolds,” “crones,” and “hags,” were then arrested as prime suspects.”

— Leonard Shlain, The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image

“…women were more susceptible to the devil’s advances than men, the learned clerics asserted, because women as a gender were frivolous and gullible. Sprenger and Kramer declared as fact that a witch’s look alone could cause sickness and death, shrivel crops, and induce abortions; her image was her most dangerous weapon. Witches, they asserted, kidnapped Christian children and tore out their hearts, which they then roasted and ate as part of their satanic rituals. Associated with dance, night, nature, the moon, sexuality, and procreation—witches possessed all the attributes previously accorded the Goddess. In the joyous ancient fertility rites of field and forest, women could worship one of their own. The two authors made such rituals seem to be sinister cabals worshipping the anti-Christ.”

— Leonard Shlain, The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image