How do witches fly?

This was originally a guest post I wrote for fellow historical fiction writer C.W. Gortner's blog Historical Boys. Gortner's wonderful novel The Last Queen is being released in paperback tomorrow!

How do witches fly?

One of the prevailing characteristics of witches throughout time immemorial has been their ability to fly. Before broomsticks came into the picture, medieval imagery depicted witches flying on tree branches, as in this woodcut from De Lamiis, a pre-1500s tract written by German professor Ulrich Molitor to confirm the existence of witchcraft.

But how might a witch elevate herself? What provides the power that thickens the air and permits her to ride it?

We turn to the Malleus Maleficarum for the answer. The Malleus Maleficarum translates to “The Witch’s Hammer”—not the hammer a witch uses, but one that is used on her. This book, written in the 1480s, provides information on how to identify, question and punish witches, in essence a witch hunting Bible. Two German friars wrote it, based on their experiences roaming the countryside ridding it of witches. No less a personage than Pope Innocent VIII issued a papal bull complimenting these men on their hard work and providing an endorsement for them.

The book became a bestseller of its day, going through multiple editions over hundreds of years… and today, you can purchase a 1970s edition that is still in print. The Malleus purports to be legalistic and reasonable, even while it contradicts itself and provides flabbergastingly ridiculous examples of witchcraft. My edition provides nearly 300 pages of wince-worthy material… we would be laughing uproariously if hundreds of thousands hadn’t died because of its convictions.

So, the answer on how to fly. This comes from Part II, Question I, Chapter 3 (you can see that the very format of the book lends officiousness and dignity):

Now the following is their method of being transported. They take the unguent which, as we have said, they make at the devil’s instruction from the limbs of children, particularly of those whom they have killed before baptism, and anoint with it a chair or a broomstick; whereupon they are immediately carried up into the air, either by day or by night, and either visibly or, if they wish, invisibly; for the devil can conceal a body by the interposition of some other substance, as was shown in the First Part of the treatise where we spoke of the glamours and illusions caused by the devil. And although the devil for the most part performs this by means of this unguent, to the end that children should be deprived of the grace of baptism and of salvation, yet he often seems to affect the same transvection without its use. For at times he transports the witches on animals, which are not true animals but devils in that form; and sometimes even without any exterior help they are visibly carried solely by the operation of the devil’s power.

So there you have it: you must murder children before they can be baptized (saved), and create a potion from their limbs. Or with the devil’s help, you can dispense with the unguent and ride a devil in animal form, or just fly away solely.

The Malleus follows this information with a real-life example, to fortify its truth. The friars write of the town of Waldshut on the Rhine. Here lived a woman everyone hated so much that they didn’t invite her to a wedding that all the rest of the townsfolk attended. Indignant of the slight, she raised a hailstorm to ruin the festivities and prevent the guests from dancing.

Witches “usually” raise hailstorms by pouring water into a trench—since she had no water, she instead urinated into a little hole she dug and stirred it with her finger. A devil stood nearby, and when she was finished, he raised up the liquid and transformed it into the hailstones that fell on the celebrants.

[Quick tangent: how sad that she had no water. Was this indicative of the fact that she was a beggar and scorned for her inability to get food and drink for herself, to the extent that the town excluded her from the wedding celebration?]

As the woman re-entered the town, everyone who had been marveling at the hailstorm saw her and thought, “Aha!” Later, shepherds who had been tending their flocks and saw her urinate into the trench shared what they witnessed, and the witch was arrested.

She confessed to spoiling the wedding because she had not been invited. And they burned her at the stake.

What a frightening land and time to be a person that no one likes. Burned at the stake for the whims of weather, paired with guilt over not providing feast food for the one woman in town who was probably the most hungry.

As I wrote this guest post, I found myself wondering whether Waldshut really existed. Thanks to Wikipedia, I see that it is today amalgamated into the city of Waldshut-Tiengen.

And in the town, yes, still stands the Hexenturm ("Witches' Tower"), a round tower of the medieval fortified walls where witches once were jailed.

Photo credit is from Kors & Edwards: Witchcraft in Europe 1100-1700.

How to interrogate a witch

Apologies if this is content you've seen before... I originally wrote this as a guest post for Lee Lofland's wonderful blog The Graveyard Shift, and provided a link to it. Now that a respectable amount of time has passed, I'd like to post it on my blog as well.

The Graveyard Shift is an incredible resource for crime writers. Many thanks to Lee for letting me guest blog. My name’s Erika Mailman and I’m warping the concept of the blog a tad… I’m not displaying the latest crime-fighting gadgets or talking about police procedures. Instead, I’ll discuss the “cops” of the medieval Dominican monastery, the tonsured friars who hunted witches.

Instead of the Macavity-nominated Police Procedure & Investigation, the book that guided friars in their interrogation of witches was the Malleus Maleficarum. Written in the late 1400s by two German inquisitors, this book addresses every question that a witch hunter might ask.
An exceedingly popular book, the Malleus underwent multiple printings. Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press 30 years earlier made possible its widespread dissemination. It’s still in print after 500 years (I got my copy on Amazon), and a more chillingly misogynistic book can’t be found.

In pseudo-reasonable legalistic writing, the friars set about instructing readers how to identify witches, what to do with them once they’re in custody, how to interrogate them, when and how to use torture, and how to determine if the “extreme penalty” (death) is warranted.
In this post, I’ll be highlighting some of the information found in the book.

Ø Not believing in witchcraft constitutes heresy. The authors knew that in some communities, witch hunters would face opposition from those who argued that witchcraft didn’t exist. Their solution: disbelief in witchcraft became heretical itself. While people might stick their neck out to protect a wrongly-accused neighbor, their willingness would abate if doing so put them under suspicion.

Ø Women are more likely than men to be witches. The title Malleus Maleficarum, which means “The Witch’s Hammer” (i.e., the book is a weapon to hurt witches with), gives the word “witch” a feminine gender. Although medieval witch woodcuts often depict men and women in equal number, and data shows that in the 1300s both were equally targeted, the Malleus clearly finds women more culpable.

There are two reasons for this. They are “feebler both in mind and body” and therefore unable to resist the Devil’s allure as easily as men. But the second, more overwhelming reason, is that women are unspeakably carnal. The authors in Freudian slippage delighted in describing the various lustful abominations women indulge in. [Remember, friars undertook vows of abstinence.] They wrote, “To conclude. All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable.”

Ø Women steal penises. One of the strangest things women were accused of doing was stealing penises. They either pilfered the member outright, or rendered it smaller. The Malleus devotes incredible amounts of ink to this problem; no less than three full sections deal with the issue. The book earnestly reports that witches “sometimes collect male organs in great numbers, as many as 20 or 30 members together, and put them in a bird’s nest, or shut them up in a box, where they move themselves like living members, and eat oats and corn, as has been seen by many.”

The image of corn-eating phalluses would bring a smile to your face if the consequences weren’t so severe. And so terribly, terribly current. Believe it or not, a penis theft epidemic rages in certain African countries today. As recently as April 2007, Congolese men tried to lynch witches who had stolen their members. In 2001, a mob beset five people in Benin for the crime. Reminiscent of being burned at the stake, the vigilantes doused four of them with gasoline and set them on fire; the arguably lucky fifth was hacked to death.

Ø They don’t recommend attorneys for these kinds of cases. Although witches desperately wanted someone to speak on their behalf—especially since so many of them lived powerlessly on the fringes of society—they would have to fight to convince someone to do so. Why? Because any advocate of theirs would be defending heresy… and therefore also a heretic. The Malleus states, “Such cases must be conducted in the simplest and most summary manner, without the arguments and contentions of advocates.”

Ø It’s best that the witch not know who her accusers are. For fear that the witch would demonically retaliate, the Judge suppressed the names of the witnesses. The Malleus does admit that personal feuds may lead to an accusation, and in that case the accused should be released. That sensibleness is tempered, however, by stating that “It is very seldom that anyone bears witness without enmity, because witches are always hated by everybody.”

Ø The judge and inquisitors must be careful to protect themselves. Lest the witch target them, the officers of the church and court took protective measures. They did not let the witch touch them, and to prevent the evil eye, she would be led into their presence backwards. They wore a necklace called Agnus Dei (“Lamb of God”) that contained consecrated salt embedded in wax. The witch would be shaved (everywhere) to locate any powerful amulets she might’ve hidden on her body.

Ø How to obtain confession. First, the witch’s friends were brought to her, instructed to tell her that she would be spared her life if she confessed. If that did not work, the Judge would “order the officers to bind her with cords, and apply to her some engine of torture; and then let them obey at once but not joyfully, rather appearing to be disturbed by their duty.” If she still resisted, “let her be often and frequently exposed to torture.”

Ø What to do after she confesses. Lifetime imprisonment was the proper sentencing for normal heretics. But witches were more than simple heretics; they were Apostates (people who forsake religion). As such, they had to suffer the extreme penalty, even if they were penitent and immediately confessed. Thus, the only value to confession was to avoid torture before execution.

Ø So… what about that promise to spare her life if she confessed? This forms the most egregious part of the Malleus Maleficarum. The book suggests that the Judge may pass the buck: “The Judge may safely promise the accused her life, but in such a way that he should afterward disclaim the duty of passing sentence on her, deputing another Judge in his place.”




* * * * *

And now we bring you your weekly gross-out

Please don't read this if you are eating! Switch screens and come back when you're done. I'll even give you a few "carriage returns" so your eyes don't happen to fall on anything gross.

la la la

la la la

la la la

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For today's excerpt from the Malleus Maleficarum, the witch hunting Bible penned by two medieval German friars, the blog will turn a bit scatological.

Amusingly enough, this quote comes from the section entitled, "Whether Witches Can Sway the Minds of Men to Love or Hatred":

We know of an old woman who, according to the common account of the brothers in that monastery even up to this day, in this manner not only bewitched three successive Abbots, but even killed them, and in the same way drove the fourth out of his mind. For she herself publicly confessed it, and does not fear to say: I did so and I do so, and they are not able to keep from loving me because they have eaten so much of my dung - measuring off a certain length on her arm. I confess, moreover, that since we had no case to prosecute her or bring her to trial, she survives to this day.

In the immortal words of E.L.O., she's "got a strange magic."

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Contest winners

I’ve pulled two winners for the two separate editions of The Witch’s Trinity and am announcing them here. I plan to do another giveaway over the summer and hope to blog on a more regular basis, so I hope you will bookmark this page and check back here now and then.

The winners are:

U.S. hardcover: Wanda

U.K. paperback: Nightdweller20

I have asked them to respond by Thursday midnight EST with their addresses; if I don’t hear from them, I will pull other winners from those who entered.

I used a somewhat unconventional method to select the winners. I had heard other bloggers talk of “auto randomizers” that they used for their contests, so I imagined it would be an easy websearch to find one. Well, I failed on that end, and noticing the luck of having 51 entries, I thought, “That’s almost a card deck!”

I eliminated the Seven of Clubs, since long ago some rabid Hearts-playing friends and I decided that was the most worthless card. I organized the suits by how I like them (which probably does not match their ranking in poker): Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds and Spades.

If you’re still following my [questionable] logic, the first 13 names on my list corresponded to the Ace through King of Hearts. The second deck was Clubs, skipping from six to eight to avoid the hapless seven. And so on.

So, to get the actual cards to pull, to correspond to the numbered list of entrants? I pulled up Solitaire on my computer and looked at the hand it dealt me. Believe it or not, the Seven of Clubs was the first card on the left! So I skipped him and went to the next two, the Eight of Diamonds and the Queen of Spades.

If you are double-checking me, there may be irregularities because I missed two people’s comments when they initially posted, and so tacked them onto the end of my list when I did my double-check just before the [skillfully-done] drawing. I used my own numbered list which I added names to as they posted.

It’s a good thing I don’t run a corporation and I’m not in charge of anything important.

Anyway, I enjoyed this process and I thank everyone who took the time to enter to win. Those who didn’t, I suggest asking your library to purchase a copy and/or putting it on your gift wishlist. Or just wait for the next giveaway!

Many thanks! And Happy Earth Day....



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Get yourself ready for May

A few days left for the giveaway of Witch’s Trinity! Scroll down a few posts to learn how to put your name in the (pointed) hat.

In the meantime, find yourself a willow tree and quickly. You have only a week or so to protect your livestock against a year’s worth of witchcraft.

According to the witch hunting Bible The Malleus Maleficarum,

On the first of May before sunrise the women of the village go out and gather from the woods leaves and branches from willow trees, and weave them into a wreath which they hang over the stable door, affirming that all the cattle will then remain unhurt and safe from witchcraft for a whole year.

This was a “common practice” in Swabia, a region in Germany.

You’re welcome!

. . . . .

If you’re looking for The Witch’s Trinity giveaway, keep reading; it’s the post under this one.

It’s been a long time since I posted an excerpt from the Malleus Maleficarum; it’s time. I’m going to write about an anecdote the friar authors relate, about a woodcutter in Strasburg.

While he was cutting wood one day, a large cat attacked him. While he drove it off, another appeared, larger and more fierce. He fought off those two, then a third showed up. He crossed himself, and in a great panic beat them away by hitting one on the head, one on the back, and one on its legs.

He returned to his work. An hour later, two men came and took him to the magistrate. He was under arrest!

The judge kept his distance from the man and refused to listen to him—the man was tossed into “the deepest dungeon of a certain tower, where those who were under sentence of death were placed.” He stayed there three days, begging his jailers to help him get an audience with the judge.

Finally the judge relented, and he got his hearing. He threw himself before the magistrates and pleaded to know what his crime was. The judge said:

You most wicked of men, how can you not acknowledge your crime? At such a time on such a day, you beat three respected matrons of this town, so that they lie in their beds unable to rise or to move.

The man protested his innocence, said he was cutting wood all that day, and in fact the men who arrested him could attest that that was what he was doing! Upon further reflection, the man remembered the cats. “I remember that I struck some creatures at that time, but they were not women,” he said.

The woodcutter told of the three large cats that attacked him. Horrified, the magistrates let him go.

The anecdote ends there, but the Malleus goes on to examine it. Did devils arrange the attacking cats without the presence of the witches, or were the witches actually there in the shape of the cats?

The friars believe the second:

For when the devils attacked the workman in the shapes of cats, they could suddenly, by local motion through the air, transfer the women to their houses with the blows which they received as cats from the workman; and no one doubts that this was because of a mutual pact formerly made between them.

As with all the anecdotes, I try to reason out a reasonable explanation, but sometimes the stories are simply too farfetched to do so. With this one, I came up with a few ideas:

A. The man really did attack these women in a fugue state. Returning to his work, possibly one cat snarled at him, and he confused that brief cat skirmish into the maelstrom of beating. He did say that during the cats’ attack he was “more panic-stricken than he had ever been,” which may explain his increased adrenaline after the real attacks on the women.

B. Rabid cats? But that doesn’t explain the damaged matrons who sent the magistrates after him.

C. Pure, total, crazy fantasy on the part of the witch hunters. The Malleus says it is “charitable and honorable” to withhold the name of the town in Strasburg where this happened. Makes it kind of hard to double-check facts when the scene of the crime is unknown!

For those interested in reading more, this is from Part II, Qn. I, Ch. 9 of the Malleus Maleficarum.

Image is from www.bottesfordhistory.org.uk and is a woodcut from The Wonderful Discovery of the Witchcrafts of Margaret and Phillipa Flower, about women executed at Lincolne, England in 1618.

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Giveaway!

Update: The contest is now closed. Please bookmark and check back later: we will do another giveaway over the summer.


In tandem with Literate Housewife's posting of an interview she and I did, I'd like to offer two copies of The Witch’s Trinity as a giveaway.

One is a hardcover U.S. version, a first edition (left).

The other is the U.K. mass market paperback version (right).

All you need to do to be considered is to post a comment here. The deadline is midnight, April 21, 2009, so that the next day—Earth Day—I can post the two winners. Somewhat befitting since what the earth does and doesn’t do in medieval Germany is the crux of my novel.

I will use an auto-randomizer to pick a hardcover and paperback winner. I will mail anywhere; all nations welcome.

Please also check Literate Housewife on Monday for the interview.

P.S. Please either leave your email address in the comment or make sure to check back here on April 22 so I have a way to let you know if you won!

. . . .

Timberline's true name

This blog is currently about witchcraft persecutions, ancient and modern, but now and then I will dip into material regarding my first novel Woman of Ill Fame. The novel is about a Gold Rush prostitute in a dangerous, brand-new San Francisco.

A few days ago, someone was in my archives and saw my post about the real-life prostitute whose image is featured on the cover. All I knew was that her name was Timberline, she was a Dodge City prostitute, and her image is in the collections of the Kansas State Historical Society.

Well, the anonymous commenter wrote that her name was Rose Vastine.

That for one thing totally threw me. Although I fashioned my character based on this photograph and named her Nora, for some reason I had “felt” that this real woman’s name was Kate.

Secondly, the commenter wrote that she earned the name Timberline for being 6’2” in height. Another big surprise. In my mind, the nickname had dirty connotations!

Armed with her real name, I consulted Professor Google.

The first link I accessed made me gasp out loud in the café I was working in, and literally grab my forehead. According to Linda Wommack’s Ladies of the Tenderloin, “Timberline climbed up into the hills above Creede and shot herself not once, but six times.”

When you have spent so much time staring at someone’s photograph and constructing an entire novel around them, you develop a strange and intense connection to them. It was almost as upsetting as hearing this news about someone I knew…but not only was Timberline a stranger to me, but she died 150 years ago. Whatever sorrows she endured, they are dust now.

I dedicated the novel to two wonderful women the world lost at an early age, and on the second line dedicated it to “Timberline and the other girls of the line: I hope the world was kind to you.”

And here was evidence that the world had not been kind to her.

The link went on to say that Timberline did not die from that suicide attempt, but strangely enough, another link had her recovering from an “intended overdose.” Is it apocryphal that she tried to kill herself with such vastly different methods and survived both times? Whatever the truth is, she must have been an unhappy young woman.

Several sources have her living in Creede, Colorado, a silver mining camp 420 miles from the Dodge City that her photograph is labeled with. Sure enough, the website for Creede, Colorado mentions Timberline on its “About Creede” page. Bat Masterson too (whose biography the commenter mentions) lived in both cities, so maybe she hitched a ride with him.

If anyone has any more information on her, I’d most definitely love to know it.

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The Pope in Angola

Probably this is old news to many, but I wanted to belatedly link to the BBC’s article “Pope Warns Angola of Witchcraft.”

In it, the Pope is quoted as saying,

“In today's Angola, Catholics should offer the message of Christ to the many who live in the fear of spirits, of evil powers by whom they feel threatened, disoriented, even reaching the point of condemning street children and even the most elderly because - they say - they are sorcerers."

It’s interesting to me that as witchcraft beliefs have spread through southern and central Africa “over the last few years,” as the article says, the phenomenon is echoed by an exponential increase in western novels about witchcraft in medieval Europe and colonial America. Something is drawing western novelists to explore the lives of people living in such abysmal conditions that they seek a scapegoat (a witch), at the same time that people across the world are still LIVING that reality.

In the last paragraph, the article notes the Pope’s shameful refusal to support condom use in combating HIV/AIDS, which is such a tragic epidemic and, I might note, a trigger for witchcraft persecutions. Just as medieval people blamed the plague on Jews poisoning the wells, some Africans blame the spread of AIDS on “witches.” The case of the young girl burned to death in Papua New Guinea a few months ago may have been a result of such an accusation.

Here is the BBC article in full.


. . . . .

Witch killing country

"I am driving deep into witch killing country," writes Johann Hari in an extraordinary Independent (U.K.) article.

Hari reports on Kenya and Tanzania's overt "witch" murders, with old women paying the price for living too long. I was especially struck with the story of women blamed for the death of a young child from diarrhea--that was one of the more serious accusations leveled against my ancestor in 1656, that she had killed her neighbor's newborn, while really flux (the old term for diarrhea) was the cause.

1656 was 353 years ago... is it not outrageous that these same tragic issues are still happening, with parents bewildered by the brutality of their child's unfortunate death, and casting their eyes about them for someone, anyone to blame?

"Witch killings are a daily event in Sukumaland," writes Hari. This is an agricultural area of Tanzania. A daily event.

Hari tackles one of the more touchy aspects of discussing modern witchcraft persecutions: the fact that it renders the western world patronizing and meddling and oblivious to the aboriginal culture:

Africa consists of hundreds of fissiparous cultures and no culture anywhere is homogeneous and unchanging. The culture of Massachusetts was to burn witches not so long ago – until some people there began to stand up and oppose the practice. In the same way, there are huge divisions within African societies.

To read the entire article, which is quite in-depth with much anecdotal evidence (and tackles genital mutilation as well as witchcraft), please visit here.

To help support those fighting against witchcraft, visit HelpAge.org, which is teaming with Comic Relief to help elder women in Sukumaland. The article also mentions Maparece, an organization working against female genital mutilation, but I couldn't find an online presence for it to create a clickable link.



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Welcome, English readers!

Today the Witch's Trinity launches in England in its mass market paperback format. It's the same novel as the hardcover, but in the back there are now a few extras:

1. Five medieval woodcuts of witches and demons
2. A Q&A with me (also to be found on my website)
3. Book group discussion questions (ditto)
4. A brief list for further reading on witchcraft.

Since I believe strongly in authors helping each other, I will also post that list here:

The Last Witchfinder by James Morrow
Entertaining Satan (nonfiction) by John Putnam Demos
The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent
The Witch of Cologne by Tobsha Learner
Witch Craze (nonfiction) by Lyndal Roper

Meghan of Medieval Bookworm posted the first review of the new paperback here at her blog. Thanks, Meghan!

Today is also World Book Day in the U.K. and Ireland. Started by Unesco, over 100 countries participate, but most do it on April 23. [Why? Because the tradition started in Spain, and that is the date of Cervantes' death. It's also connected to St. George's Day of the same date, a celebration that since medieval times has entailed a man giving his love a rose, and her ---or him! As I type this, the Supreme Court is deliberating on Prop. 8---returning the favor with a book.]

In Ireland and U.K., children are given a special token that they can use to buy one of six specially-published books at a bookstore. What a neat idea... get kids into bookstores, and armed with a special coin to buy a book!

Sadly, I don't think this is a holiday that the U.S. participates in. I have never heard word one about it before, and I am a regular library and bookstore visitor. Maybe I'll write a letter to President Obama about it. After all, we share the same Random House imprint... he'll have to listen to me! ;)



. . . . . .

Behind the Pointy Hat

Cue the music for "Behind the Music"... this is an expose of the "dark" side of witchcraft.

A good friend, LeAnn Lewis, agreed to write about her experiences working at the Salem Witch Museum. LeAnn and I were in the same writers group in San Francisco for years; I had no idea until recently that she had this “witchcraft” background. Upon learning it, I of course begged her to do a guest post for me. She now lives in Paris and very kindly agreed.

Without further ado, here are her hilarious ruminations on one of the best jobs ever!


The Official (Slacker) Witch of Salem
By LeAnn Lewis

I have had many jobs in my life before obtaining the current one that I have had now for five years, that of teacher. On average I was able to hold a job for three months. That is approximately what it took before someone was forced to let me go, without being legally responsible for firing me. I am really good at job interviews; I always know just the right tone to hit, what to wear and I myself get caught up in my own enthusiastic falsehoods. People were so sorry when they hired me. And I felt sorry for them as well, and convinced that I could change…If I could only make a job out of job interviews---I really do think I have crafted it to an art.

In my late teens and early twenties, I was a bartender, waitress, bike messenger (with no bike), headhunter, diet counselor, personal trainer, human resources consultant, psychic hotline operator, ice cream sundae smoosher (you know, at one of those places that custom mixed in the Snickers bars), secretary, and witch. Yes, I did say that, witch.

Not only was I a witch but also again I only lasted the three months of witch-in-training before they hired someone else at the Salem Witch Museum. Apparently I was not nice enough.

I was a Slacker Witch specifically. I think the people who hired me should have known that I would not work out. Firstly because I did not even apply for the job; I got it through the back door, by being Replacement Witch when my friend Spring Break SubWitch was too hung over to show up for work. It was sort of an “acting” job: tour guiding. So one could also say I was also an “actress,” but you need to make the air-quote sign with your fingers.

To understand this job fully one must understand the epoch. It was the ‘80’s: neon colored T-shirts, bangles, Big Bangs. So Big that they were ready to pierce the sky. Big Bangs that I still wore as a Witch. The job was designed to supplement my alcohol budget, Lisa Lisa and the Cult Jam cassettes, and spray needs for my Big Bangs.

At the time we were both in college and very excited about our illicitly-obtained I.D.’s. Going out every night was essential. Spring Break SubWitch “was,” according to her lost/stolen I.D., a 40-year-old woman with prematurely grey hair named “Carol.”

I “was” a blonde with blue eyes that did not fit my brown hair and hazel ones, and my I.D. read “Shayna.” We secretly thought Shayna was a stripper, because she kind of had a louche look about her. "Carol" was jealous because my photo was sexier. "I look like a.... like a mom," she would complain, as if this was the worst fate imaginable for anyone. "I wanna be Shayna!" I, however, was jealous of hers because Carol seemed normal, whereas Shayna seemed the type of woman destined to drive intentionallyfast into all life's bad turns. Who knew what would become of a woman like that?

We would often forget to call each other our new names in front of overweight bouncers and we would make dramatic eye rolls to express our fear that we would be discovered as 19 and kicked out of Trackside, the bar everyone went to. But nobody cared; I.D. was a formality to get in the door.

However, that summer in Salem was also my first summer as an Adult: I had just had to file taxes for the first time, pay for my own health insurance and portion an amount of my paycheck to pay for Rent (!), Food (!) and a mimosa-colored towel set, my first adult home purchase at Kmart (being the burgeoning alcoholic that I was, the big joke was that I could only describe colors by comparing them to cocktails, a trait I still share with “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” hosts, apparently). Being a Witch therefore was also part of the plan to Be. An. Adult, and thus pay my own way.

I would work the morning as a Witch and the evenings as another version of a witch: a constantly stressed out waitress at the Hawthorne Inn.

Soooooo my first day. I showed up as Replacement Witch in jeans and my wrinkled Absolut Vodka T-shirt that some publicity company had given me the night before and explained that I was subbing for my friend because she was “sick.”

I told my new potential bosses that “Carol” and I had both been in the same production of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest;” had they not seen me? I was, I assured them, as my new “bosses” nodded confusedly, a big star in Salem at the dinky community theater. Did they not see me? (This was true. I had been in the production, but “star” was stretching the point). Finally they made out amongst my confused babble that “Carol” was not coming, and since the door was opening soon, I had the job!

Yes they had seen me, they assured me, and they thought that I was a good enough “actress” to do the job. Just for the day. They asked me if I had my script. I did. I dug it out of my jeans. It was written on a cocktail napkin before “Carol” passed out the night before. I had memorized it on the bus.

Sort of.

The gist of the meaning of the lines.

My job was to act on a stage with one other “actress” and nine paper mache dummies with voice-boxes (because there was only a budget for two live people). We would re-enact a trial scene from the Salem Witch Hysteria for busloads of tourists and then give them tours. I was Ann Putnam. The other actress was Goody…Something. My job was to say my line and time it correctly to be responded to by either Goody Something or the paper mache dummies’ voice boxes. Could I do that? For $9 an hour?

“Cool.” I said. “No prob”.

I couldn’t wait to tell my friends that I was a real actress. It was the most money per hour that I had ever made.

They gave me my uniform. A ankle-length dress, petticoat, and bonnet with attached fake curls coming out of its sides like Nellie from Little House on the Prairie (that looked mysteriously like my I.D....) My bangs made the top of the bonnet look Teepee-ish. Then they ushered me into the barn theater where my “debut” would take place.

A typhoon of searing heat blasted me, and this was how I discovered that the stage was not air conditioned in the 100-degree Salem heat wave that occurs every summer in Massachusetts. I slumped into the green room and met Goody Something, a 56-year-old early retiree who had had a health scare recently, which, upon her being cured, saw her quitting her high-paid financial job in Boston to move to the North Shore and take classes at Lori Cabot, “The Official Witch of Salem’s,” Crow Haven Corner (which is now franchised to someone). She was busy reading some book on chakras and gave me a perfunctory nod as we passed though. I was told by my new employers that I would also be conducting a tour through the “dungeon” below the barn after the show and then coming back to repeat the performance. 10 times. Where would Goody be?

“Oh, she just does the show. We like the younger girls to give the tours. She will just wait in the green room”.

I already did not like this job, ageism that did not favor me. Why did she get to read about chakras while I was slavin?

“Anything else?”

“Yeah. Uh. How many tours?” I asked.

There was tour every 40 minutes and the show lasted 15 minutes. I would have five minutes to recoup and slug down a Crystal Light. I would be there for a six-hour shift.

“Ready?"

“Uh, yeah.”

When the curtains came up I was confronted with my first audience: an entire tour bus of Floridians with large lapels of sunflowers on which were marked the names of Marge, Leon, Geraldine...there was even a Carol that looked like “Carol” but no Shayna. They all smiled sweetly. I started my speech, looking down nervously at my crumpled Trackside napkin. A little old man tottered to the front and heaved a video camera that was the same size of his body in my face and stage whispered in an echo, “Excuse me, dear, could you please speak up? The video is a present for my granddaughter’s birthday. She likes witches.”

“While what-for with, my good man,” I improvised gratefully but I was slightly disturbed with my ability to suddenly channel a former life Renaissance Faire Wench so easily.

I stumbled through my lines, instantly forgetting what I had memorized on the bus, replacing old English with “the gist” and interrupted various voice boxes.

“So he be-eth…er, I see-eth, um, the point is that he is, is-th, uh, a witch, a um witch-eth?”

However, I still, 25 years later, remember the first lines that I was able to actually memorize: “My name is Ann Putnam. I be a single woman of Salem Village who has been aggrievedly abused by Goody Something who, while the good lord left me lie sleeping, did visit me and performed with my person ungodly acts!”

At this point, Goody Something would interrupt me to say “No, NO!” Then the voice box of the Judge would continue “Now, fine people of Salem…”

Then, after several minutes of this dialogue, I was to throw myself on the floor, convulse as if I was having an epileptic seizure, while accusing her of bewitching me so as to avoid being persecuted myself. Then the curtains closed.

Goody would leisurely pull out her chakra research or open up a bento box complete with matching plastic Hello Kitty chopsticks and begin to pose bits of sushi delicately in her mouth while I tripped down a creaky stairway in my skirt and bonnet to try to usher arthritic oldsters through a very cost-efficient dungeon in a record amount of time. Usually I had to push them on to get them out in time for the music, which, once it was starting, was a sign for me to get on stage and for Goody to wipe the wasabi off her bonnet ribbon. The curtains would fly open, the voice boxes would start to accuse and then I would commence “My name is Ann Putnam. I be a.…”

Somehow the job continued. Spring Break SubWitch was on a bender, so I substituted the next day. And the next. I tried at different points to get Goody to do her fair share by hiding her bento box or spilling my Dunkin Donuts iced coffee on differing chakras, but she held firm. She was not willing to do the tours.

On humid days sometimes the voice boxes would get stuck and drone out the same lines and I would have to have my epilepsy a bit closer to the paper mache judge, to “accidentally” kick him to stop it. The moisture also did damage to their forms and often the limbs of the mannequins would fall off in the middle of my “soliloquy.” This wasn’t too hard to handle: I would just accuse Goody Something of bewitching them too.

I have a low attention span. Once I master something, I need to be challenged. After a day I mastered my “script,” I started improvising. Goody reprimanded me. I told her that she was hindering my creative growth and that this was Strasburg method acting. Or was it Stanislavski? Or Spanikopita acting? Something like that. Even Brando knew it.

She told on me and I got written up. I invited my boyfriend and his friends to come see my “professional acting” and they threw spitballs at Goody in revenge and oooohed and guffawed (as only 21-year-olds can do) when the voice boxes, or I, repeated the words “ungodly acts” which I had not noticed, until then, was so prevalent in the script or so salacious sounding…. Goody complained, and I was warned that my friends could not come and see me “on set.”

Then there was also the problem with my other job at the Hawthorne Inn. Despite the lack of a bonnet, I was still recognizable as the witchly tour guide. One night while waitressing, I approached a table and the youngest started screaming and hitting the banquette.

“What is it, honey?”

“No, I don’t want her giving me food! She is a witch!”

I had to explain to my boss what that meant. He was annoyed; now he understood why I was not flexible to work lunches. My temper started getting shorter in the heat. I was getting madder at Goody Something. I was spitting out my lines to the audience and screaming into their video viewfinders, “I BE A SINGLE WOMAN IN SALEM!”

This turned out to be true when my boyfriend dumped me for a blonde that looked like my wig. She was uncomplicated and did not have to work two jobs. She had time for him.

“Besides, you keep saying your lines in your sleep. And then you have your convulsion sometimes too. It’s freakin me out. Have you thought of just taking out a student loan?” he mumbled.

The fall leaves began to blow across Salem Center Park. Laurie Cabot, the “Official Witch of Salem,” switched her summer pointed hat for a sturdier winter one, and a black long shawl. Goody Something started to bring soup instead of sushi. It was the dreaded time of year; the re-start of school and homework, the end of my first summer with Shayna’s I.D., the horrible possibility of running into the blonde and the boy who had broken my heart and the end of the sun. My costume was not causing me to sweat anymore; in fact, there was no heat in the barn and it was freezing. One day I slunk into my costume feeling sicker than usual, despite not having drunk the night before. I could not understand why. Then, I remembered.

It was the three-month review.

“You have done a very nice job and we really appreciated all your help this summer, but we think we are going to start with another girl. You know, I think you have really gone above and beyond our expectations; you have actually merged with your character,” my boss said, smiling only with her mouth.

Then she showed me a few customer complaints. I was rude, curt, too mean on stage, and brusque during the tour.

“You really did find a witch, didn’t you,” said one.

I hung my bonnet up and walked past Goody Something slurping her soup, as haughtily as only a 19-year-old can. She was there. I was movin’ on to better things, I told myself. I wouldn’t end up like her, defeated, desperately clinging to illusion, fleeing my day job. I was a Real Actress. My life would hold better things for me…and it did, but getting older myself now I realize that she too was doing her own thing…. courageously.

One never knows where life’s turns take you, to New York, to San Francisco, to other countries, even, all the way from the North Shore. And looking back now, there are worse places to come from, and worse ways of spending a teenage summer, than being the Official (Slacker) Witch of Salem, Massachusetts.

. . . . . .

Gratitude

Throughout The Witch's Trinity, the main character Gude remains conscious of extending gratitude to the things in her life that sustain her: the water in the river, the buds under the snow, the meat on her plate.

Today I came across a news story I wanted to post... about a 40 year old woman who tracked down the firefighter who saved her life as a newborn. Evangeline Anderson told Boston Globe reporter Maria Cramer:

I didn't want him to leave the earth, or I to leave the earth, without saying thank you.

They were reunited yesterday for the first time, 40 years after firefighter William Carroll crawled on his stomach through an apartment black with smoke, to find baby Evangeline in her crib unconscious with soot dusting her face.

It's an emotional read, and I invite you to read it here.

And then for one moment, think of something you are intensely grateful for. Blessings are falling out of our fingers, and we need to number them.



. . . . .

Witchvox essay

I'm happy to say that the witchcraft website Witchvox has published an essay I wrote for them. You can read it here.



. . . . . .

A very stirring morning

It’s been an incredible, moving day. I’m ebullient, lifted, feeling—very sincerely---hopeful. I believe President Obama’s earnestness, and I believe he has the power to make many (or hopefully all) of the things he talked of become a reality.

His inaugural speech was moving in part because, as one commentator said, it referred to values, not just a series of policy promises. It was a mission statement of sorts. Obama’s mindset is not just red, white and blue: it is about the peoples of the world, and how our country affects how the world operates.

He spoke directly to poor nations, telling them we felt a responsibility to help them establish healthy farms and clean, running water—and then he spoke to other wealthy nations and reminded them that we have a duty to help those poorer nations. That was the part of his speech that affected me the most: it made me see that we elected someone who can’t freely enjoy this country’s prosperity knowing that others around the world have nothing to eat, and are drinking from contaminated water, or none at all.

My book club for the first time eschewed our policy to read only fiction, and we are reading Dreams from My Father, President Obama’s first book. I am only 40 percent of the way through it, but I am awed by his writing power, not only in his turns of phrase, but also his sense of history.

In his 1995 introduction, he writes,

“[This book] is autobiographical, although whenever someone’s asked me over the course of these last three years just what the book is about, I’ve usually avoided such a description. An autobiography promises feats worthy of record, conversations with famous people, a central role in important events. There is none of that here.”

Reading that through the film of 14 years of hindsight, it’s poignant. Not only has President Obama had discussions with famous people, he is famous. He will play a central role in important events and perform feats worthy of record. He is one of only 44 people in the history of the world who have led this brash country founded on beautiful, simple democratic values.

His sense of history is strong, as his book explores his own familial story against the backdrop of the larger march of time. His world sense is keen: he spent formative years witnessing devastating poverty in Indonesia, and he has seen racial attitudes from Hawaii to Manhattan, including his own white grandmother being afraid of an aggressive, panhandling black man.

He represents the “patchwork” he referred to in his speech. He is named “Barack” after his African father, but the name itself is Moslem and means “blessed” in Arabic. His family roots are as “apple pie” as small towns in Kansas, and as worldly as Kenya. He has spent many years examining himself, his family’s story and the larger story of the world, and his conclusions are solid, compassionate and so desperately needed at this hour.

. . . . .

A few things to share

I have a few updates to share.

First, my last-ever reading for The Witch's Trinity will be in a few weeks. 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, Jan. 27 at Booksmith, 1644 Haight St. in San Francisco, 415-863-8688.

Secondly, Booksmith is such a wonderful and enterprising bookstore that they hired local filmmakers to do a video of me and four of the other authors reading there this month. The filmmakers describe it as a "video love letter" to San Francisco. You can go to Booksmith's website and it is featured there on the home page. It's also playing on YouTube.

Thirdly, the fabulous Marshal Zeringue invited me to do a guest blog over at his My Book The Movie site. The idea of the site is that he invites authors to fantasize about who might play their characters if their novel was made into a film. It's really fun to read through his archives.

He also runs The Page 69 Test, another creative blog where he asks authors to open their book to page 69 and comment on whether that page is representative of the whole, and why/why not. He invited me to post at Page 69 back in 2007 when Witch's Trinity came out in hardcover (and that hyperlink brings you to my post). Thanks so much, Marshal.


. . . . .

More thoughts on the woman burned in Papua New Guinea

Tonight I made pasta, and as I put a single campanelle on a spoon to blow on it and then taste it to see if it was done, it jounced off the spoon and fell flatly against my bottom lip. It was only there for a second before it fell off, but the stickiness of the pasta meant it did stay there for a beat. And it burned. I immediately thought of that poor young woman--just a second of burning on my lip was agonizing. And she felt it everywhere, until she died.

Another thought. I told a friend about this news story, and he got caught up in the detail that she had been placed atop a pile of tires to be burned. He said, "A culture advanced enough to have tires, and yet they're still burning people alive for witchcraft?"

He also pointed out that Papua New Guinea was one of the last places to give up cannibalism (just 50 years ago, as a quick Google search reveals).

The entire news story on the woman burned to death for witchcraft, as reported by CNN, can be read here.


. . . .

Young woman burned alive

My heart sinks every time a new witchcraft item makes its way into the news. I wish I never had anything to blog about. Today’s horrifying news headline from CNN is “Woman Suspected of Witchcraft Burned Alive.”

The lead sentence is:

A woman in rural Papua New Guinea was bound and gagged, tied to a log and set ablaze on a pile of tires this week, possibly because villagers suspected her of being a witch, police said Thursday.

Just as in medieval times, victims provide scapegoats for others’ misfortune. The article, by Saeed Ahmed, describes how Papua New Guinea’s high AIDS rates give rise to witchcraft accusations, as people believe witches spread HIV and AIDS.

Police don’t know who the woman was and are asking people to come forward. “Somebody lost their mother or daughter or sister Tuesday morning,” a policeman is quoted as saying. Her remains indicated she was probably in her late teens or early 20s.

She was not the only victim of recent times, Ahmed's piece relates:

The country's Post-Courier newspaper reported Thursday that more than 50 people were killed in two Highlands provinces last year for allegedly practicing sorcery.

In a well-publicized case last year, a pregnant woman gave birth to a baby girl while struggling to free herself from a tree. Villagers had dragged the woman from her house and hung her from the tree, accusing her of sorcery after her neighbor suddenly died.

She and the baby survived, according to media reports.

There is much more in the full article; click here.

. . . . . .

Witchcraft ritual

January is the month of inaugurations. This year I am thrilled beyond belief that we have an incoming president who can do so much positive work for our country. And he’s a writer, no less!

In other inaugural news, I’m proud to present my first-ever guest blog post.

Bill Baldwin is a fellow writer, and I met him recently at the Book Group Expo in San Jose. He graciously accepted my offer to write about modern-day witchcraft here. In October, he organized a Samhain ritual—Samhain is the pagan precursor to Halloween—and here he writes about that experience.

Thanks, Bill, for sharing this information. I welcome any comments that I can pass along to him.

So what do modern Wiccan Witches do? Do they have anything to do with the witches we read about from hundreds of years ago? “Yes and No; How would we know?”

I don’t know so much about medieval witches, but I know quite a bit about modern Witches. I’m a legally recognized priest of the Covenant of the Goddess, a witches’ organization. And I often organize community rituals in the San Jose area.

The Samhain (Halloween) ritual I recently presented was intended for a medium-sized group (25-30). South Bay Circles has been offering the eight Wiccan sabbats to the San Jose Pagan community for over twenty years. Its rituals include the basic Wiccan elements of casting a circle and invoking the directions and the Goddess. But I also wanted the ritual to hold personal meaning for me and the participants.

My basic concept was Shamanic – the willing offering up of the shaman to symbolic death and dismemberment in order to achieve wisdom for the sake of the Community.

But I didn’t want the ritual to be too scary. How could I make people laugh at Death? Of course Halloween-time is also the time of the Mexican Day of the Dead.

In the spirit of play I decided to include children’s songs and games: “London Bridge” (to represent Death by Engineering Disaster), “Ring-A-Round-The-Rosie” (to represent Death by Disease), and “Rock-Paper-Scissors” (to represent Death by Violent Competition).

I also decided to perform the entire first part of the ritual counter-clockwise, the reverse direction from usual, to represent dissolution.

I began by honoring witches killed in the witch persecutions. Then, invoking the Three-Form Goddess, I remembered friends and lovers who had died.

Then the children’s games, one by one, left all participants on the ground – “dead” – waiting for rebirth – as I read passages from T. S. Eliot’s “Ash Wednesday” and performed a brief drumming meditation on death, dismemberment, and disintegration.

Then I invited people to awake in the Land of Hades and Persephone. We shared a meal with the Dead -- in contrast to classical myths where you are *forbidden* to eat in the Underworld. By eating with the Dead we accept their deaths, our own deaths, and our connection to those who have gone before us.

Then reconstitution and resurrection, to the song “Them Bones”, based on the Biblical vision of Ezekiel. And a Spiral Dance, leading into the circle counterclockwise, then bending back on itself to return from the circle clockwise.

From here on, everything continued in the clockwise (sunwise) direction of growth. We had offered ourselves for death, met Death, communed with the Dead, been reformed, and returned to Life. What we have learned in this encounter is meant to help us live a better life.

And we have remembered our loved ones who have died, acknowledged that we too shall die, and resolved to live in service to the Community.

. . . .

A documentary to watch out for

Released Sept. 15, imdb lists a documentary titled "Children of Congo: from War to Witches." Knowing what we know about young children abandoned by their parents for the crime of witchcraft, as well as the tortures in the name of exorcism, this will be a tough one to watch... but important to do so.

The plot summary reads:

Over five million people have died during the past decade as a result of the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Few people are aware of the unimaginable scale of human suffering, death, and destruction that has occurred in this vast country deep in the heart of Africa. In the aftermath of this brutal war, children have endured the brunt of the suffering. This 67 minute film documents the plight of thousands of street children living in Kinshasa and confirms the wide-spread accusations of child witchcraft, torture and child prostitution. The film also examines the efforts to reintegrate demobilized child soldiers, displaced refugees, and orphaned children following the eruption of the massive Nyiragongo volcano, near the city of Goma in Eastern Congo. These heroic efforts are finally bringing some measure of hope and stability to the lives of the Congolese people.

The link for this film is here. I'm going to see if I can find it on Netflix.



. . . .

Writing workshops

My friend, and a wonderful writer, Jordan Rosenfeld is offering fiction workshops along with Writer's Digest Magazine editor Maria Schneider. They begin in January. For details, click over here to Jordan's blog.

I should probably mention that I too will be beginning an online Advanced Novel Writing class through Mediabistro in January. The online chats will be Wednesday evenings starting Jan. 21. For more info, click here.



. . . . .

I've been tagged

My friend, a wonderful writer named Jordan Rosenfeld, tagged me for a meme. Here goes:

RULE ONE, I have to grab one of the books closest to me, go to page 56, type the fifth line and the next two to five lines that follow.

Well, the closest book to me is a little pile of my own novel The Witch's Trinity. I won't be so self-promotional as to include lines from that. So next, I turn my eyes to the left of my computer, where one of three bookcases in our house stands.

Balanced precariously on the top of the bookcase (where books aren't supposed to be) is Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell. On the top shelf, the closest book is Marie Antoinette by Antonia Fraser. The second shelf, Strong Measures by Dacey & Jauss. Third shelf, The Malleus Maleficarum by our wicked German friars. Fourth shelf, Hayden's Ferry Review, Spring/Summer 1996 issue. Fifth shelf, The Great Pharaoh Ramses II and His Time, a museum catalog from the Montreal exhibit my father took me and my mom to in 1985 (thanks again, Dad!)

So, in the Ramses book, p. 56 is a description of a rake-comb, none too interesting. The Malleus quote, predictably about impotence, is too fractured by picking it up on line 5. I have to laugh, because p. 56 is literally BLANK in the Marie Antoinette book! So, how about a selection from Russell's book:

I felt like a film star with my cloche hat and dark glasses, dressed perfectly for the late-afternoon warmth in a linen dress that stopped at my knees. I fancied that the Egyptian women envied me. Poor things, I thought, sweltering in their robes and veils!

RULE TWO, I have to pick five people who love books. My five picks are (in no particular order):

Joe Quirk
Tamim Ansary
Christopher Gortner
Michelle Moran
Holly Payne



. . . . .

Butterfly effect

I had the honor of meeting another one of Mary Bliss Parsons’s descendants at my reading at Books Inc. in Palo Alto. We are related through Mary’s son Joseph, but after that the ancestors differ: I am the descendant of Joseph’s son Josiah, while she descends from his son John.

I noted that Joseph was only nine years old at the time of his mother’s first witchcraft trial. In a sense, that gives me a genealogical sigh of relief: even if she had been executed, he was of a “safe” age and would have still gone on to sire his line.

However, we will never know if her presence saved him at some later point: did she nurse him out of a fever as a teenager? Did an errand she asked him to perform mean that he was not in the “wrong place, wrong time” during an Indian raid? (One of her other sons, Ebenezer, died in a surprise Indian attack at Northfield, Massachusetts in 1675.)

He must have been one terrified nine-year-old, knowing his mother could be put to death in front of the whole town… and him.



. . . .

Please help make the holidays easier for down on their luck families

Dynamic fundraising meter for your Red Kettle campaign.

An update on medieval glass

My friend Carolyn saw my post about the stained glass windows still “moving” and sent me this link to a NYT article that says that is probably a myth:

It is well known that panes of stained glass in old European churches are thicker at the bottom because glass is a slow-moving liquid that flows downward over centuries.

Well known, but wrong. Medieval stained glass makers were simply unable to make perfectly flat panes, and the windows were just as unevenly thick when new.

Yet most people don’t understand why glass should be a liquid and so, well, solid-seeming. Even physics people are involved in this discussion, with Harvard physics professor David Weitz reported as saying, “It just can get so controversial and so many loud arguments, and I don’t want to get involved with that myself.”

One of the controversies involves why molecules in some part of glass move faster than in other parts—but to the eye, the glass appears the same in both regions.

If anyone can find the article I’m thinking of (circa 2001-02) that talked about conserving Europe’s stained glass, with the lead soldering suffering from the glass seemingly moving, please send a link. Thanks for this one, Carolyn! Lots of food for thought.



. . . .

Stained glass

At the book signing after my panel at Book Group Expo, a reader asked what made me include the stained glass window. [Don’t worry… no plot spoiler. I’ll talk about it very generally.]

A number of years ago, I came across a newspaper article* discussing conservation of stained glass in European cathedrals. Apparently, the molten glass continues to move, infinitesimally slowly--somewhat like a glacier-- so that hundreds of years down the line, the soldering needs to be conserved. Soldering is the lead outline between the different colors of glass.

I found that idea very compelling, that the seemingly-static images of saints were slowly creeping from their bounds.

I also liked the idea that a medieval glass smith, while unable to know the future of his chemical handiwork, might intuitively guess that the glass still moved.

For my novel, having the subjects depicted in stained glass meant that they could still progress, and this worked for the notion of remembrance and legacy that I was looking for.


*I tried to google this particular article but was unable to locate it.



. . . .

The missed salon

Somehow I missed the fact that Kate Harding at salon.com blogged about my Chicago Tribune op-ed on witchcraft, also discussing Starhawk's piece in the Washington Post. Here's a link to the Salon piece.

I appreciated Kate's piece--and I enjoyed looking through the various comments to her post. Unfortunately, I'm so late to the game that no more comments are permitted. That's a shame because I'd like to clear up one bit of misinformation left by a commenter.

Very quickly, my op-ed talks about my ancestor Mary Bliss Parsons, who was accused of witchcraft, and how I view the playful Halloween decorations a little differently now, thinking of her own potential execution (she was acquitted). The commenter incorrectly stated that Mary was not immune to accusations herself, that she in fact accused her own husband of witchcraft.

There were, believe it or not, two different Mary Parsonses of Springfield, Massachusetts, both accused of witchcraft within a few years of each other. That's why I am always careful to state that my ancestor is Mary BLISS Parsons--the other is Mary Lewis Parsons.

The two Mary Parsonses knew of each other... in fact, as Mary Lewis Parsons caused the minister's children to suffer fits in church, somehow Mary Bliss Parsons also spasmed although she was an adult, and not connected to the minister. This is, in fact, one of the first things that began to cause suspicion against my ancestor.

Mary Lewis Parsons was found guilty and condemned to be hanged--but her execution was delayed due to her sickness and it's believed she died in prison. Her husband was also found guilty, but he was released after his wife's confession and acquitted in 1652.

It was a few years later, in 1656, that Mary Bliss Parsons first went to court for a slander trial against the neighbor who most stridently called her a witch. She won! (Actually, her husband won; he filed the suit on her behalf). But 18 years later, she found herself a defendant, when that strident neighbor's daughter died--supposedly as a result of her witchery. Once again, she prevailed and was acquitted.

Later, I'll post more about Mary Lewis Parsons. Her story is absolutely horrifying, for many reasons. She did accuse another woman of witchcraft, and indeed her own husband. But she is not the one I wrote about and that I am related to. This is all very confusing, and I will freely admit that when I first began learning about my ancestor, I too was momentarily misled by the two women's similar names.


. . . . .

Misery heaped upon tragedy

The AP wire reported this summer that doctors in Spain were preparing to offer low-cost in-vitro treatments to women in certain African countries (not necessarily Zimbabwe, as I mistakenly wrote in my last post). The procedure, which costs thousands in the U.S., will be offered for a mere $200.

Why? Because infertile women run the risk of being accused of witchcraft.

As if the heartache of infertility isn’t enough, these women fear for their lives—because as I’ve been blogging about for a while now, being called a witch can get you killed in Africa (lynched, set on fire with gasoline, lynched: these are just a few that spring to mind from news reports in the last few years.)

The article reports that one in three women in Africa suffers from infertility. These high rates are due to “complications from unsafe deliveries, abortions or infections.”

"The cost of being infertile in Africa is much greater than in the West," said Oluwole Akande, an emeritus professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Akande acknowledged the price of the procedure would still be available only to Africa's upper and middle classes.

He said that in many parts of Africa women who are unable to have children become social outcasts, are labelled as witches, and in extreme cases, are even driven to suicide.

Anyone who has ever endured infertility knows how it bewilders you, makes you feel your body is betraying you, and puts that germ of fear in your heart that you will never have a child. To add the jimmies on the crap sundae, so to speak, and realize your neighbors think you wield dark magic … well, that just would make me go into a room and close the door. For a long time.

The full story can be found here.

. . . . .

Pardoning witches

My editor at Random House forwarded me this CNN news item about a campaign in England to pardon its executed witches between the 16th and 18th centuries.

This is great news, and I hope Queen Elizabeth II will indeed extend the pardon.

A London costume supplier called Angels launched the campaign, which in some ways raises my eyebrows: was this a bid for publicity around Halloween by a large store that presumably does most or all of its business this time of year? Fortunately, Angels enlisted a witchcraft historian named John Callow to help them compile evidence, lending some scholarship to their cause.

The article states that 400 souls, men and women, were executed in England, while an exponentially larger 4,000 were killed in Scotland.

Angels put up a website to garner signatures for their petition—when you click through to the story, there’s a link to that site as well.

The piece mentions Salem’s witchcraft trials (all were eventually pardoned), but not the other 150-odd cases in the U.S. It’s so strange—people tend to believe that the Salem trials represent America’s only foray into witchcraft persecution.

Sadly enough, the Angels spokesman Benjamin Webb said the pardon isn’t a given:

Webb said while few people today may believe those men and women deserved execution, their stories still generate suspicion and stigma. That extends to modern-day criticism of children dressing as witches at Halloween with the idea that it's evil or connected to the devil, he said.

Welcome to November

Wow, October was really flurried, and I hope November will slow down somewhat. I'm trying to get up momentum to post about low-cost, in-vitro fertilizations being offered to women in Zimbabwe, since infertile women run the risk of being called a witch. Yes... that's today. Not five hundred years ago.

In the meantime, I guest blogged yesterday at the Historical Tapesty blog as part of their "Why I Love" series. I wrote about loving historical fiction, how I'm grateful I live when I do, and how fertility issues lay at the heart of many witchcraft accusations--including for my ancestor, Mary Bliss Parsons. Please check it out.

I'll be doing three book events for The Witch's Trinity this month: Nov. 19 at Books Inc. in Palo Alto (7 p.m.); Nov. 21 at Book Passage, Ferry Building, San Francisco (6:30); and Nov. 22 at good friend Kathleen's bookstore A Great Good Place for Books in Oakland (7 p.m.).

Finally, here's the link for yesterday's op-ed in the Chicago Tribune about witches vis a vis Halloween.



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More guest blogging

I'm happy to send people over to Shana's Literarily blog today, where I've posted about my ancestor Mary Bliss Parsons, who was accused of witchcraft in the mid 1650s in Springfield and Northampton, Massachusetts. I discuss how mundane squabbles over little things could easily lead to a witchcraft accusation, and often did. For instance, my ancestor scolded her neighbor about his whipping an ox too hard--and soon she was fighting for her life.

I'm also giving away a copy of my novel The Witch's Trinity through the Literarily blog--all you need to do is comment on her blog to enter.

I'm excited to announce that the Chicago Tribune and the San Jose Mercury News will be running slightly different op-eds of mine tomorrow, Halloween Day, about witchcraft. And in the city of my alma mater, Colby College, the Waterville Sentinel and the Kennebec Journal will run my op-ed too.

And please come back after visiting Literarily and/or the newspapers' online sites: I've posted a lot of information on witchcraft (both medieval and modern-day) and you can read older posts on that topic. I'm working on a witch--a real witch, a neopagan--to write about his experiences planning a local Samhain celebration. Samhain is the pagan holiday that gave rise to today's Halloween. Check back later for that.

Finally, if you'd like to visit my website, it's www.erikamailman.com. Thank you for stopping by.

What allows witches to fly?

I'd like to send readers over to C.W. Gortner's blog today---he invited me to guest blog on the topic of witchcraft, and I chose to write about what permits witches to fly.

Gortner is the author of the The Last Queen, a highly-regarded historical novel about Juana La Loca. I bought a copy this weekend at Book Group Expo, where he and I met. He's a charmer and completely friendly--and it's fabulous to meet another historical fiction writer. We also learned through chatting that we had some other writer friends in common.

Thanks so much, C.W.!

Witchcraft ancestry

It's been amazing to hear from readers who also share a link with an ancestor accused of witchcraft. Author John Putnam Demos tracked 139 cases of witchcraft in 17th century New England (excepting the Salem trials). Given the large families colonial settlers seemed to have, it makes sense that there are many descendants of accused witches today.

The earliest case was Jane Hawkins of Boston, accused in 1638; the last was an unnamed female in the 1680s, possibly in Salem. Demos tracked the 1600s only--the last witch trial in the U.S. took place in 1706, when Grace Sherwood underwent the dunking trial at what is today Virginia Beach.

Her thumbs were tied to her big toes, arching her back, and then she was tossed into the river. She floated...which meant she was guilty. But instead of being executed, Sherwood was imprisoned for eight years and then released. She was actually given a posthumous gubernatorial pardon two years ago!

Demos's book with a chart of all the trials is Entertaining Satan. He has a new one out this year that I am putting on my wish list.



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Free copies of Witchs Trinity

Would you like to win a free copy of my novel? Please visit Literate Housewife... she and I are giving away two more copies.



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Graveyard Shift

Please go over to Lee Lofland's blog Graveyard Shift to see my guest blog on how to interrogate a witch. Lee was really kind to permit me to post, and the comment trail has some interesting back-and-forth on witchcraft versus wicca. Tonight, visit www.talkradio1150.com at 5 p.m. Pacific Time (or 8 p.m. EST) for my radio interview with Ken Hudnall. He will be taking callers (and I think you can email questions, too, from that site), which I would fervently appreciate.

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Okay to bring a witch to court in Zimbabwe

This is news already two years old, but I just ran across it while researching the issue.

In July 2006, the BBC reported that Zimbabwe lifted its more than a century old ban on witchcraft.

Back in 1899, Zimbabwe—then Southern Rhodesia—passed the Witchcraft Suppression Act, which despite its foreboding name was actually a positive thing. It made it illegal to accuse someone of witchcraft. Those early colonial settlers remembered the disastrous witch persecutions in Europe and wanted to avoid a similar situation.

But two years ago, the government amended the Act, positing that the supernatural—and witchcraft—exists. Now Zimbabweans can prosecute someone for witchcraft, so long as it’s the bad kind, meant to harm someone. Positive witchcraft, to protect property, for instance, is fine.

The Worldwide Religious News also reported the story, with a very different angle, that the Amendment furthered Zimbabwean culture. It included this quote:

"By rejecting the existence of witchcraft, whites managed to destroy one of the tenets of African traditional beliefs as a way of disenfranchising the blacks of their religious bedrock," said one analyst.

On the plus side, the Amendment does criminalize witch hunting, with a fine or jail time as punishment.



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Upcoming events

Things are getting exciting... the paperback of Witch's Trinity launches next Tuesday, the 7th. Seven has been a lucky number for me (along with four, my favorite number), so that's auspicious. The book has a brand-new cover, the dramatic red and black silhouette of a forest that you see over to the right. From the 7th to the 20th, it will be on the New Paperbacks table at all Barnes and Noble stores... and hopefully most independents will have stocked it as well. Halloween isn't really a gift-giving holiday (other than individually-wrapped candy), but this might be a good present for someone interested in history, women's stories, and witches. See more about the book at my website.

Tomorrow, the 4th, I'll be appearing at Litquake, San Francisco's madhouse of a literary festival. I say madhouse because they pack approximately 50,000 events into one week. It's a ride. I'll be at the SF Main Library from noon to 1 p.m. as part of an afternoon's worth of readings. At 5 p.m. we all adjourn to Books Inc. in Opera Plaza for a wine and cheese reception and book signing.

Next Wednesday the 8th, two pretty exciting things are happening. I'll be guest blogging at Lee Lofland's blog The Graveyard Shift. Lee's an amazing writer, nominated for a Macavity award. Since his blog focuses on cops and robbers, my guest blog will address medieval inquisitors as the "cops" of their day--what methods they use, how they extract confessions, etc.

Then that night, I'll be interviewed on Ken Hudnall's radio show out of El Paso. He focuses on the paranormal. You can listen to it live-streaming here at 5-6 p.m. PST on Wed., Nov. 8.

As mentioned in the last post, I'll be guest blogging at Literate Housewife's site on Oct. 23. And then on Halloween day, she will post our upcoming interview.

The final news for October is that I'll be at Book Group Expo in San Jose on the 25th. From 1:45 to 3:00 I'll be on a panel called Which Witch is Which with Brunonia Barry, author of The Lace Reader, and Kathleen Kent, author of The Heretic's Daughter. This is the third year of the expo, and I've been every year, once as a reader and twice as an author. I love it. Instead of a series of writers reading excerpts, the focus is on discussion--so during each panel, the majority of time is spent fielding audience questions. Tickets are still available, and the expo continues on Sunday the 26th as well.


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Literate Housewife

I'm thrilled beyond belief that Literate Housewife has chosen Witch's Trinity for the inaugural installation of her Spotlight month.

She's a great blogger, nominated for many blog awards. She reads like a maniac (11 books in September!) and posts thoughtful, incisive reviews.

Each Thursday throughout the month, she'll be posting new material relating to witchcraft. She and I will do an interview together and we talked about my doing a guest blog. Under her auspices, I'll be giving away three free copies of The Witch's Trinity--the new paperback version that will be released Oct. 7. That black and red cover you see over to the right is the book jacket, which I'm really happy about.

This Saturday the 4th, I'll be reading at San Francisco's riproaring Litquake Festival (so many readings, so little time! Or maybe that just refers to the infamous Pub Crawl night that is an annual tradition). I'll be at the San Francisco Main Library at Civic Center, at the Koret Auditorium, between noon and 1 p.m. I'll be reading with several other authors, and the readings continue all afternoon, culminating in a reception at Books Inc. in Opera Plaza at 5 p.m. Hope to see you there.


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The witchcraft just keeps coming...

I've been amazed in recent weeks that the witchcraft news keeps evidencing itself.

A few weeks ago, there was the riot at a soccer game in Congo. It began with taunts that one of the players was a witch, and then fisticuffs got involved, and then the police fired warning shots in the air which totally terrified everyone. The crowd stampeded towards the exits, leaving 15 trampled... to death. Many of them were youths. This is so sad and ridiculous.

Then, of course, there's the YouTube video of Sarah Palin being blessed against witchcraft.

I shake my head in disbelief.


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The Malleus is scientific

The Malleus Maleficarum, written in the 1480s, very carefully outlines how to locate witches, question them, and punish them. The authors, two friars, structured the book like a legal argument, with questions posed, considered and then answered. This structure makes the book feel reasonable and logical. That's one of the most chilling things about it.

Here is a scientific analysis of how dreams work. It's under Question VII of Part I: "Whether Witches can Sway the Minds of Men to Love or Hatred." Among other methods, witches work to sway opinion while the person sleeps:

The apparitions that come in dreams to sleepers proceed from the ideas retained in the repository of their mind, through a natural local motion caused by the flow of blood to the first and inmost seat of their faculties of perception; and we speak of an intrinsic local motion in the head and the cells of the brain.

And this can also happen through a similar local motion created by devils. Also such things happen not only to the sleeping, but even to those who are awake.

See, we are influenced by the scientific-sounding description of blood through the cells... and then the friars slide in the reference to devils. It is hard to argue with such authoritative-sounding facts. And unhappily, few medieval folks did.




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Be careful who you burn

The Malleus Maleficarum notes that those who bring the witches to the stake may put themselves in fatal danger:

And lastly, in the same diocese, in the territory of the Black Forest, a witch was being lifted by a gaoler on to the pile of wood prepared for her burning, and she said: ”I will pay you”; and blew into his face. And he was at once afflicted with a horrible leprosy all over his body, and did not survive many days.

In my novel The Witch's Trinity, the officials at the witchcraft trials take pains to protect themselves, both by the use of salt (which the Malleus says can protect them) and by covering the eyes of the accused so she cannot give them the evil eye. Here's a Malleus quote about salt:

They [inquisitors] must not allow themselves to be touched physically by the witch, especially any contact of their bare arms or hands, but they must always carry about them some salt consecrated on Palm Sunday and some Blessed Herbs.

I think if I was minutes away from burning, I would also pretend to hex my executioners... after all, what do you have to lose at that point? And much to gain... the reverse placebo effect, where whatever ills they endured would be accounted back to the angry spell. (Although how often does leprosy just hit you?)




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Incubus

Incubus is not only a great band, but also a word dating to the 1100s, referring to a demon that comes in the night and has sex with a woman as she sleeps. (A succubus is the accompanying demon for men… interestingly, that word dates to 1350, so men didn’t get their nightly visits for another couple centuries.)

For today’s selection from the Malleus Maleficarum, the famous witch hunting bible from 1400s Germany, we will look at a passage about incubi (plural of incubus). This section deals with whether incubi are visible to bystanders, or if they do their nocturnal pleasuring invisibly:

But with regard to any bystanders, the witches themselves have often been seen lying on their backs in the fields or the woods, naked up to the very navel, and it has been apparent from the disposition of those limbs and members which pertain to the venereal act and orgasm, as also from the agitation of their legs and thighs, that, all invisibly to the bystanders, they have been copulating with Incubus devils; yet sometimes, howbeit this is rare, at the end of the act a very black vapour, of about the stature of a man, rises up into the air from the witch.

But true to the contradictory, irrational nature of the Malleus, a paragraph later the authors state that incubi are sometimes visible:

It is certain also that the following has happened. Husbands have actually seen Incubus devils swiving their wives, although they have thought that they were not devils but men. And when they have taken up a weapon and tried to run them through, the devil has suddenly disappeared, making himself invisible. And then their wives have thrown their arms around them, although they have sometimes been hurt, and railed at their husbands, mocking them, and asking them if they had eyes, or whether they were possessed of devils.

In my novel The Witch’s Trinity, I did not include accusations of incubus visitations. However, there is one moment where my character Güde reflects that the cat sitting on her chest is similar to an incubus.

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