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From the American Atheist Radio Series...

WITCHES

by Madalyn Murray O’Hair
(Program 52, broadcast May 26, 1969 on
KTBC Radio, Austin, Texas)

GOOD evening. This is Madalyn Murray O’Hair, American Atheist, back to talk with you again.

I received a curious book in the mails today. It is written by one Augustin Jacobson, published in Chicago in 1881, by a now defunct publishing house and titled Why I Do Not Believe. There have been many of these books published in America, and we are trying to collect them all, despite the fact that many of them are quite extraordinary and poor literature.

This one intrigued me because it recounted two events which had occurred in the year prior to the writing of the book which is indicated as one year before publication, or 1880. The author quotes from Chicago newspaper reports at that time, two of which are quite curious. It seems that in 1879 in Russia, Agrafena Ignatief was shut up in her own house and burned alive by the peasants of Zrochcheff, because they thought she was a witch! At the trial of the peasants for burning the supposed witch, Katharina Ivanora testified that she had been bewitched frequently by Agrafena, and while Katharina was yet speaking on the witness stand, the church bells mysteriously began to ring and Katharina fell down in a fit. This was taken to be evident and unquestionable manifestation of supernatural power and had a great effect upon the judges who tried the case.

At the same time in America, in 1880, the Seminole and Creek Indians were very excited by the belief that their cattle and swine had been bewitched. The Seminoles tried and condemned a Negress for practicing the black art upon their animals and, but for the intervention of the United States Marshal, would have hanged her.

We still follow some of the old and famous Blackstone Commentaries on the Law of England, and prior to all this above, he had pronounced that a man who does not believe in witchcraft is “not to be reasoned with.” This intrigues me because my grandparents were young people at the time all of this happened. They already had some children. My mother was born just about ten years later. When I was very young, my mother told me many tales of witches and the black arts and said that once she had heard a part of the black mass but could only remember one phrase of it concerned with, “Go, ye walking devils, and hellish hosts!” I think that perhaps my mother believed in witches when she was young, and may have derived this belief from her parents, so close are we yet to the liberation of our minds from the grossest errors.

Worry about witches and witchcraft looms large in the Bible. The one that has caused more women to die than any other Bible citation is the law of Moses set out in Exodus 22:18, where in the categorical command is made to all: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Deuteronomy 18:10 repeats that, “There shall not be found among you ... a witch,” for this is “an abomination unto the Lord.” II Kings 9:22 worries about Jezebel and her witchcrafts. In II Chronicles 33:6 Manasseh uses witchcraft, to the consternation of god. Micha 5:12 has the lord again threatening to “get” witches in the future. One of the reasons for the wrath of the lord against the city of Ninevah was that therein were mistresses of witchcraft, as related in Nahum 3:4. In I Samuel 15:23, the word of Samuel is that rebellion is as heinous a sin as witchcraft. The condemnation of witchcraft extends into the New Testament with the assurance that those who cannot inherit the kingdom of god are those who engage in witchcraft. (Galatians 5:20).

Right now in America the idea of witches and witchcraft again is gaining credence. The cinema Rosemary’s Baby gives it a thrust anew and, of course, have in America the phenomena of Sybil Leak, a bona fide witch who was born in England but has come to America to live. She appears often on television and I have enjoyed the pleasure of her company several times in hotel rooms as we waited for our respective performances at diverse television stations. A quite popular television series, Bewitched, gives the idea of witchcraft a pixie quality, and tends to show the foolishness of the idea.

Except for Miss Leak who claims that all her ancestors were witches and that she is a bona fide witch, we have no material available at all from the viewpoint of the witch. Most of the tracts available consist of trial transcripts or reports when witches were tried or examined, or are learned accumulations of material from very religious writers who set out to prove that the witch is a nefarious anti-Christ.

The estimates of the number of persons slaughtered as witches, mostly women, vary with every author. Over the history of Christianity, the number is staggering by any method of count. One fairly accurate estimate based on court and other records indicates that in the three advanced and civilized countries of the world, executions for witchcraft in England have been about 30,000; in France, about 75,000; and in Germany, 100,000. This has nothing to do with all the people made miserable by trials, who were not executed, or the lives ruined in the examinations of those days.

The investigation of the phenomena and history of witchcraft has produced treatment of the subject which is unworthy, unscholarly, reprehensible and dishonest. The most “objective” study I have been able to obtain states that “however loathly the disease, the doctor must not hesitate to diagnose and probe,” and then goes on to indict witchcraft as being even more loathsome before the investigation begins. The women involved are described as crones and hags. From an attempted earnest beginning study of witches -- and with the material at hand I may never get beyond a beginning study -- it becomes clear that witchcraft was an anti-Christian movement and that women led the fight. Beyond this, very little can actually be said, although I can here give a rough outline of the propaganda extant against this original force.

The person who has translated most of the material about witchcraft, and who had edited it, (which is most important) was Reverend Montague Summers, and his editing of the materials extant of the original witch theories and ideas has this to say:

“I have endeavored to show the witch as she really was: an evil liver; a social pest and parasite; a devotee of a loathly and obscene creed; an adept at poisoning, blackmail and other creeping crimes; a member of a powerful secret organization inimical to Church and State; a blasphemer in word and deed, swaying the villagers by terror and superstition; a charlatan and a quack; a bawd; an abortionist; the dark counsellor of lewd court ladies; a minister to vice and inconceivable corruption; battening upon the filth and foulest passions of the age.”

With an “objectivity” such as this, one can hardly come out with any idea of the ideology, the philosophy, the practices, the sociology, the culture or the history of witchcraft.

Although one can trace the etymology of the word “devil” back to the Greek for “one who slanders,” or of “Satan” back to the Hebrew “adversary,” there is rather singular controversy over the word “witch”, with which the word “hag” appears to be synonymous. Does it mean “house,” or “wicked,” or “wise,” or “diviner” or “poisoner?” It all depends on who is tracking down the term -- the more religious the researcher, the more damning the invective.

Exodus 20:8 is an admonition to “remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy,” and of course the Sabbat or Sabbath is that day when the witches met. This was the “seventh day” and began at midnight after the first six days of the week. The place chosen for meeting, according to the finest authorities, either had to have a clump of trees on it, or a cross. Also, according to the finest authorities, this was not true at all. It had to be absolutely barren, or rock-like, with not a whisper of a tree, but it simply had to have water. If the water was not there, the witches dug a hole and urinated in that hole in order to simulate water.

I want to explore the beginning of it, not the corruptions of later practices, for rituals which are stylized and meaningless now, once had specific meanings to them. We do know that apparently there was a ritualistic dance. There was food eaten. There was a “mass” celebrated. Now, the saying of mass originally had to do with eating. The word derives from the activity involved in eating something, or kneading, like the kneading of bread dough to eat. The wafers of the Eucharist are still of a bread-like substance. The only other special thing about witches and their Sabbat is that they arrived at the place of meeting in a mysterious manner of locomotion. This has always been related to flying, if not upon any other thing, then upon (at least) a broom.

These are the only things about those far distant ideas and practices which are really substantively clung to during all of the years of witch history. This is all that is actually known about witchcraft. At trials through the ages, over a thousand years or more, witches were badgered into saying any number of things. There are all kinds of descriptions of variations on the mass, on the mode of travel, on the foods eaten, on the dances -- particularly if there were sexual or not. We hear of herbs connected with witches, but that has to do apparently with the eating activity and the mass. We hear of divinations connected with witches, but that has to do with hopes for future activities.

Now, apparently a singular person appears at these Sabbats ever so often. This person is always in disguise. The identity of the person is guarded. For some authorities it was the figure of a man. For other authorities it was the figure of an animal of some kind. Usually this was thought to be the devil, or Satan. And apparently this was a fallen angel. The word “angel” derives from an original idea of “messenger.” The words “Devil,” or “Satan,” however, derive from an original idea meaning either “slanderer” or “adversary.” Was the “messenger” a person or being who was an “adversary?” Someone who, under cover, was fighting and especially slandering whomever had sent that first messenger? It is quite conceivable that the original devil or Satan was a woman. It is quite conceivable that this is a repeated and repeated and repeated acting out of a very important meeting. Somewhere, some time in human history, when someone, sent to meet with women, stayed with them ... and was an adversary to, or a slanderer of, the person or persons who had sent that messenger to that meeting. Or, is this the return of a woman who had been brave enough to go somewhere and come back to this group of women with a report?

Let’s see what we know now: (1) By peculiar locomotion, women met; (2) at a regularly set time, a fixed number of days; (3) the object is to meet someone in disguise who also comes; (4) there is dancing; (5) there is eating, but the witches carry nothing to this place; (6) there is an expression of gratitude that the food is there; (7) the meeting place -- the site -- is very important; and (8) there is a dispersal back to ordinary places in the community after this meeting.

The person in disguise does not always appear. Yet, always the over-all characteristic of the meeting is happiness. Noise is made. There is no effort, really, to hide. The only thing which is a secret is the identity of the one in disguise.

It is fascinating, but our time is up for tonight. We can continue this and speculate on it at another session.

Meanwhile, I will be back with you again next week, same day of the week, same time, same station... My sponsor is the Society of Separationists, a non-profit, non-political, educational organization dedicated to the complete separation of church and state.

Copyright © 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 by American Atheists.