For this blog post, I wanted to take a step back to a few weeks ago when
the topic of discussion was the hammer of witches. When our group presented we
posed the question: Do you think that witches have grown stronger or weaker in
power? I thought that I would use this blog post to present my own opinion of
what I think has changed about witches.
In my own opinion, I do not
think that witches gained anymore power. The reason being was that in earlier
readings we learn that witches and demons can cause physical harm to a person
or crops. True they get their powers from Satan and though it is not true
creation, it leaves a great impact nonetheless. In Malleus Maleficarum, it does
provide some examples of what witches can do, such as turn a girl into a horse.
Then the authors go into detail about how the witch did not in fact turn the
girl into a horse, it was all an illusion. In the next example, they state that
witches steal men’s “bits” but that too is just an illusion.
This leaves me to believe that
witches have devolved from powerful beings to more of a scary story you tell
children, a medieval version of the “Boogey Man”. After making this connection,
questions started to flow through my mind, such as why are the people of the
time so afraid of witches, if all they do is create illusions?
Granted back then it was considered heresy if one did not believe in the
existence of witches or even the existence of magic. However, where does it say
that you have to be afraid of them? It is times like these that I wish I had a
time machine to go back and tell the people of medieval times that they are
giving witches power, by just fearing them. Fear is one of the ultimate sources
of power.
I also found it interesting that during the Malleus Maleficarum, it was
more finger pointing than anything else. It was not about blaming women for
being witches because they were eating babies, or wilting crops. Instead, it
was blaming them for being women. They even went as far as to berate
Christianity, by stating that women were made to deceive because they were made
from a bent bone. This statement made me question after our presentation, why
were the authors not called out for blasphemy. Shouldn’t somebody have
questioned them?
Addressing your comment about fearing stuff that is allusion, I think that it just being an illusion would be even scarier. When you know that there is a possibility that things in your life could be an illusion I feel like you would become really suspicious and fear every thing because it could be Satan tricking you.
ReplyDeleteI think that in some cases illusions may be more devastating than the actual changing of of things through witchcraft. Illusions mean that someone or something is obscuring your perception so thoroughly that you can't comprehend anything else. At least if you were turned into a horse you would be stuck like that... but if someone made you think you were a horse then you'd wake up later and hear about your actions from the townspeople, which can't end well.
ReplyDeleteI feel like they conjured up everything bad they could say about women and I feel like a lot of the things they accused women of could be also applied to men and to them too! So I don't know how this made sense to them like at all.
ReplyDeleteFear is seriously the root of everything that separates us as human beings. Actually it is fear of not knowing or understanding that makes the cut. The moment someone feels threaten they have to blame it on something or someone in order to feel safe because the fact of blaming it on the unknown is far more fearful than the event itself.
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