October 26, 2024

Let’s Get Witchy! A tribute to our matriarchal foremothers

Report at National Radical Women meeting by Adrienne Weller, Seattle

Witches are the foremothers of the feminist movement. Thousands of years ago they began the first struggles against women’s oppression. From the dawn of recorded history until their final defeat around the time of the 17th century, witches carried on the struggle.

During ancient history witches were healers and midwives. Under the matriarchy they were leaders of society, and when private property economics developed, subjugating women and the poor, they led rebellions against the patriarchy of feudalism and then capitalism.

This history holds great meaning for feminists, the witches of today. We are continuing the battle which they began and we must be prepared to fight with the courage they have shown.

The history of witches begins in pre-history with the matriarchy. The status of all women under the matriarchy was one of respect and equality. The matriarchy ensured social equality and sexual freedom for both men and women in heterosexual and homosexual relationships.

Women earned the title of “witch” – meaning “wise one” – if they had exceptional skills in the arts of healing and midwifery. Witches were respected and revered leaders in matriarchal religion and society through their understanding of nature. One way we see it reflected today is in the association of snakes with ancient goddesses and with pre-Christian goddesses such as Minerva (Roman) and Athena (Greek). Snakes symbolize healing, childbirth, protection, wisdom and cunning. There is also the Rod of Asclepius, the modern symbol of medicine, which shows a snake twined around a rod.

In ancient Egypt women used crocodile dung as suppositories to end a pregnancy and Silphium, an extinct plant, was used as an abortifacient, and as a birth control method. Native Americans such as the Shoshone and Navajo people used stoneseed as a form of birth control and used medicinal plants and ritual practices for reproductive health and abortion. Bodily autonomy was considered part of their relationship with the sacred realm.

When men gained economic power over women, with the rise of private over communal property. The witches also lost their status. The communal and egalitarian society of the matriarchy was replaced by a new system which produced wealth through the exploitation of women and men. Under the patriarchy women became slaves. To ensure the profits of women’s work and that men knew who their offspring were, strict monogamy was forced on women and homosexuality was outlawed. Christianity decreed that snakes were the symbol of evil, who caused women to seduce men into the knowledge and good and evil, and were driven from the Garden of Eden. There is the myth of St. Patrick driving snakes out of Ireland, which represents the victory of the Christian male force destroying women’s authority and religion.

The benevolent goddesses of the matriarchy were replaced by harsh and vindictive male gods to enforce the subjugation of women and gays. Rebellion and witchcraft became synonymous. The bible states: “Rebellion is the sin of witchcraft.” And “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Peasants began to rebel against their poverty and exploitation and witchcraft gained a wide appeal as a religion of the oppressed. Their medical skill based on a sure knowledge of nature, threatened the Church’s credibility and won the support of the peasants. There is evidence in many areas that witchcraft represented female-led peasant rebellion. Peasant witches were the most dangerous enemies of feudalism. Peasant women and social outcasts were the first victims.

Women faced systemic extermination under feudalism. A war on witches flourished between the 1400s and 1700s, from feudalism to the Age of Enlightenment. While Sir Isaac Newton was publishing his works on gravity and the motions of the planets, people in England were being hanged for witchcraft. The witch hunts which swept Europe and America for over four centuries were carefully planned and directed. The witch hysteria was a calculated ruling class campaign of terrorization. It was a battle by the patriarchy against pre-Christian, communal traditions in which women were leaders and carriers of culture. They centered· on the peasant women who embodied the most serious danger to feudal society. Sexually active or independent women, homosexuals, religious dissenters and political rebels were fair game for the witch hunters. When the accused had healing abilities, it was a double loss. Peasants, almost universally illiterate, passed down their knowledge by word of mouth. So, burning healers was akin to burning a human library. By the end of the terror, most of Western herbal medicine was destroyed.

Women were 85% of those killed. At the same time accusations of witchcraft provided the means of gett ing at all opposition to the system. One only needed to be accused of witch- craft to be convicted. It took 400 years of systemic slaughter for feudalism to win its battle against the matriarchy.

As time passed the iron-grip of the nobility and the Church was replaced by the rising capitalist class. There were only limited benefits to women. Both old bosses and new bosses agreed on the need to keep females oppressed. And one of the best ways to do this was to control their sexuality and reproduction.

The murder of midwives and healers in Europe helped the rise of professional physicians. Over the centuries, the status of doctors grew in Europe. The American Medical Association (AMA) rose in the 1850s and set out to systematically destroy the competition, and almost succeeded.

In the early 1900s, the vast majority of births in the U.S. were at home, many with a midwife in attendance. In state after state, the AMA, aided and abetted by politicians, conducted a smear campaign and lobbied for heavy restrictions on midwives. They were labeled as ignorant, untrained and incompetent. Shockingly reminiscent of earlier times, Black midwives in the South were sometimes accused of witchcraft. By the 1950s, over 95 percent of all births were in hospitals with doctors in attendance. An industry was born. Today, hospitals advertise special birthing wings. Babies are big business!

The 1970s feminist movement fought to change that. Feminists organized against rape, demanded safe, legal abortion, birth control and an end to forced sterilization. Radicals called for broad, inclusive reproductive freedoms. Midwives, while small in numbers, pushed for women to be able to give birth naturally and for fathers to be let into delivery rooms. They held birthing classes and revived breastfeeding for the health of the newborn and mother. Doulas today are a growing movement that help with home births and protect Black women against virulent systemic racism that endangers their health and life during childbirth.

A recent author links the antiabortion movement of the 1980s with the paranoia over Satanism during that time. The New Apostolic Reformation, which characterizes LGBTQI and reproductive rights leaders as demonic, was primarily “influenced and driven by North American evangelicals.”[10] Today it is connected to Trump, and the pro-fascist Christian Right.

Today we face the reality that Roe vs. Wade, has been overturned. Abortion rights were won (1973) and overturned (2022) in my lifetime. This shows the inability of capitalism to deliver human rights, including bodily autonomy, to women and all people. We can choose between two presidents – both support genocide in Palestine. One is openly pro-fascist and boasts of overturning Roe vs. Wade and they both represent the same ruling class.

Radical Women calls for unrestricted abortion and birth control on demand. We call for free, quality prenatal care, and birth choices including midwives and doulas. How about paid parental leave for at least six months and job-site childcare paid by the employer? Practically speaking, it would cost less and benefit society more than what has already been spent on wars for control of the oil-rich Middle East, and tax breaks for billionaires.

Halloween is the witches’ New Year. Let’s resolve to rededicate ourselves to the fight for reproductive justice and the liberation of all parents, all genders and all children. Society has designated those who pose the most severe threat to the system as “witches.” Today independent women, LGBTQI and political radicals pose this threat. We are the modern witches. We are carrying on the witches’ struggle against sexual capitalist class oppression.· And we are proud to be commemorating our heroic ancestors tonight.

This poem is by Radical Women’s treasured comrade-poet Merle Woo, and dedicated to our also treasured poet-comrade Nellie Wong.

The Subversive
For Nellie Wong

She rides a broom and curses God –
She gets burned at the stake if
  she isn’t run through with it;
Her name is spoken in whispers because
  she has killed her children rather than
  let them starve –

She has no grace and swaggers;
picks her teeth with a dirty fingernail.
She’s pushy and loud—
a voice like shirt buttons on a washboard.
How we hate her style—

We forget that she’s helping us
  get what we want!
We forget because we’re so busy
  being embarrassed and downright ashamed—
because she criticizes and yells,
  pointing a red stubby finger—

How gross! Send her back!
Let’s just send her back right where she came from!

By Merle Woo