#past of witch burnings

[balkanradfem]

Okay, I'm about to step on some toes, but hear me out; I need to do it. Okay? Good.

There's a lot of funny 'Girl what were you doing at devil's sacrament' jokes and memes, and isolated from context, it's very funny, I know it's funny, it's 'telling on yourself haha' because you had to be participating in a 'bad activity' in order to catch someone else who was also there.

However I know the original context, and it's less funny if you do. Why would a woman say she saw another woman at the Devil's Sacrament, incriminating both herself and another woman, who would both then get burned alive? I know why.

I'm going to take you back to my childhood, where I was reading every book I could get my little hands on, and one of these books was called 'Grička Vještica', or 'Grič's Witch'. These were fictional books set in the age of witch burnings, and the main character gets accused of being a witch. Even if the characters are fictional, the historical places, events and laws were real. The main characters ends up locked in a tower with the other accused 'witches', and there she finds women who were horrifically, unspeakably tortured. I won't go into what happened to them, but their limbs were ripped, their bodies shutting down from pain, they were begging for death. What happened to their bodies was described in detail, and to the child me, it was traumatic to hear about it, it created a heavy fear in my heart, that something like that could even happen, to any human being.

The books gave some insight of what was happening during the torture, and the torturers were leading these women to not only confess to their own 'witchraft' under torture, but to incriminate other women. And if they wouldn't, the torture would get worse and worse. And human beings break after a certain point of torture. They'll do and say anything. They had already confessed to being witches under torture, and now they were facing more torture + death by burning, or just to die in fire without further mutilation, if they talk.

Torturers usually already had their minds set on a certain woman they wanted to incriminate; women with medical skills, money, estate, land, women who wronged them, rejected them, who had rejected or angered their friends, whose houses or land they wanted to claim, widows, unmarried women, anyone they wanted to eject from society, whose assets they wanted to harvest. All they needed to do was brutally torture (and often, sexually torture) the women in front of them, until they were willing to say 'Yes, okay, I saw her at the devil's sacrament' and they could have whatever they wanted.

It was done under the worst agony the human being could experience.

So whenever I read one of the memes, that's what I remember, because I know how it happened. For it to be used in feminist jokes... we could find another funny instance to use? What were you doing at the furry convention? Or something like that, that doesn't reference women being tortured. We could reference something silly and non-consequential. I mean, I hope we would want to.

I'm sorry to ruin your jokes! I feel like the women from the past wouldn't love us using that either, and they're not around, so I have to speak up for them.

[oobbbear]

Dolus loves baggy pants and long ass skirts because they’re comfy

[earl-grey-crow]

"and wherever she goes, I go, even to hell" just a witch and her undead idiot

[evil-wawe-form]

The Fall - Futures and Pasts (1979)

[photo-art-lady]

An Intelligent Woman Spends Her Money On Books And Art Instead Of Silicone

[azimachra]

anyone else concerned that she’s The Wizard Steal and not The Wizard Steel?

[spidernerd625]

I actually love learning history, but we barely learn any of it in school. I want to learn EVERYTHING! ESPECIALLY the crazy stuff! Teach me the things that don't make sense! Teach me the details about how people loved, what they did! What shinanigins did they get up to? Make me reenact something ridiculous and crazy!

Gods, I love history!

Got these pictures from my for you page on Tik Tok

These pictures are NOT mine.

[lctibule]

WHAT TRAGIC HORROR CHARACTER TROPE ARE YOU?

the one who opened the door

you turn the door handle. you call out, "who's there?" and the crowd has the audacity to groan, to get frustrated with you. as if the gift of hindsight was something you had. how the hell were you supposed to know you were born into a horror movie? no one bothered to tell you. say, if instead this was an action film, or a fantasy, would they still be telling you how silly of a mistake it was to press further on your quest? they would've commended you for your bravery. you thought you were going to be saving a princess in a tower, not getting stabbed in the back by a killer in the shadows. how is that fair? it isn't, and none of that was ever your fault. it is not wrong to believe things are good. your trust, your optimism, it shouldn't ever be mistaken for ignorance or stupidity. we need more people who open doors. how else are any of us gonna move forward?

the witch

people need to find blame wherever they can; it makes the bad things in their life feel just a touch more bearable. the witches are so often blamed for the curses others are under that no one even questions it anymore. you point to a supposed witch and everyone else prepares the stake, no matter their innocence. to be born and believed a witch is one of the worst curses of them all- you can have friends and family, but there's always a dread that someday, someone will point to you, and everyone you once trusted will throw you into the pyre. if you're here, reading this, you've probably been burned before. and i don't blame you for wanting to hide away, to really become the witch they all say you are, to curse them. but to be a witch is to brush your fingertips over the bark of a tree and watch it grow a touch stronger. keep that in mind.

tagged by:ㅤ@violetgleams ♡♡♡

[deusinabsentiaa]

My Christian dad prayed over me tonight after I shared some struggles I’ve been facing over the last 3 years (specifically the burnout I’ve developed after working customer services from ‘19 until now with no break) and the struggles I’ve been found since recently losing my job 😩 I know he did it purely out of kindness, he truly believes in his faith (he was a pastor for many years and is a theologian & philosopher) and cares about the issues I shared with him. While he doesn’t know I’m a Satanist, he does know that I left the church years ago. He rarely prays over me (or involves me in it while I’m present), so I was a little surprised he did it. I think for him maybe it was all he felt he could do in the moment (the issues I’m dealing with are rough and there’s no answer or fix right now, and I basically sobbed to him about everything for an hour). I don’t harbor resent towards him for doing it, I know for him it was out of concern and love for me. But at the same time I have *so* much trauma linked to Christianity, the church, and Christian prayer that it literally makes my skin crawl 😣

[wvrlock]

// I'm FINALLY getting to play pathfinder tonight again! For new mutuals, I'm playing a homebrew campaign set in Mwangi, and my PC is Tatu, who you can find in my roster! I sometimes liveblog stuff, and tag it as #;dracoplays so you can blacklist it if you want!

On that note, here's the commission I got of her <333

edit: the artist is @/jmnp7888 on Twitter!

[allthebestscreennamesaregone63]

Broke: "We are the grandaughters of the witches you couldn't burn, blah blah blah"

Woke AF: "It is our chosen heritage, for we carry the ghosts of witches past."

[jcorrachcomics]

Homecoming

Update | First

[elegyofthemoon]

simply put! the ending of fena does not exist !! whatever the heck was going on in there i didnt see it. the show ended with abel blowing up in fire and yukimaru and fena living a good life together <3

[ancestorsalive]

[taratarotgreene]

No compromise Lilith Libra Solar Eclipse

The October 2 Libra South Node Annular Supermoon Solar Eclipse at 11:49 am PDT, 2:49 pm EDT, 7:49 pm GMT will not be visible in North America but from Easter Island and over the Pacific Ocean. It’s a time to focus on releasing past karmic patterns and relationships and anything out of balance and unjust. With Lilith conjunct the Eclipsed Sun and Moon its all about not worrying about being Nice…

[kuuhaiyu]

i really can't emphasize how heartbreaking it is that the recent harassment campaign against @/90-ghost (among others; see: 1, 2, 3) has led to well-meaning people telling others not to listen to him. he is one of the most visible survivors of the genocide here on tumblr. his entire journey of escape is so well documented! and yet, it only took a few people confidently pointing fingers to create an entire witch hunt accusing him and other palestinians of being disreputable scammers and liars.

i can't help but feel like the reason why people were SO eager to believe those accusations, is because it was uncomfortable to see posts from palestinians every day asking for our time, attention, money, and support; so when someone presented the perfect excuse to ignore all those posts and asks while also taking the high ground, people just LEAPED onto it. they wanted to believe it, because it would be more comfortable.

honestly, i understand feeling overwhelmed by bad news, by the number of asks and messages in your inbox, and so on and so forth. i understand needing to set boundaries for yourself so you don't get burned out. i think this is really when you have to have a set of principles to fall back on, even when you're tired, uncomfortable, angry, and/or sad. so here's the one i suggest, which has been working for me best: don't make your discomfort with this situation into someone else's problem, and for god's sake don't make it a public problem.

if you hate seeing fundraiser posts or news about gaza, i can't emphasize this enough, JUST MOVE ON. KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT AND SCROLL PAST! all you have to do is absolutely nothing. which is what you were doing anyway, so it shouldn't be hard. if you don't have the heart to read, or reblog, or share, or donate, or support in other ways, at the very least, don't obstruct the efforts of people who ARE trying to make a difference. this is, quite literally, the least you can do.