Bewhiskered and Bewarted No More: Witchcraft

Skip the B.S.

by Skip Eisiminger

“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”—Exodus 22:18

Three hundred and nine years after five Salem women were hanged for witchcraft, they were exonerated by the governor and legislature of Massachusetts.—Various news sources, 2001

CLEMSON South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—12/19/11—Kia, the on-line “psychic witch,” invites visitors to park their broomsticks, ignore the cat hair, and pull up a toadstool because she’s just put the kettle on. Sounds innocent enough if you’re not allergic to cats and a mushroom may be substituted for the toadstool. Indeed, witchcraft has come a long way since two dogs, six men, and 14 women were executed at Salem in 1692.

Gift shops in the once-notorious town now sell “Be witched in Salem” and “Drop by for a spell” bumper stickers as well as witch-on-a-broomstick weathervanes. The “Witches of Salem” telephone network features pretty blonds who will speak to lonely wizards 18 and older for $3.99 a minute. In small print, however, the ad repudiates its own legitimacy: “For entertainment only.” And Necromance, a Los Angeles jewelry store, offers “human” wrist-bone-and-crystal bracelets for $35. Purchase, however, does not guarantee contact with the original proprietor of the strung metacarpals.

But what passes for jewelry in the Blue States is an abomination in South Carolina.

Recently, some churches in and around Greenville have asked that Sylvester and the Magic Dragon, among others, be pulled from public-school library shelves because it “praises magic and encourages children to turn to inanimate objects and fantasy for assistance with their problems.”

Security blankets, the tooth fairy, and small gold crucifixes, however, still receive a tacit pass.

There are, however, signs of progress to our north. Grace Sherwood of Virginia would still be an unpardoned witch had she failed the water ordeal in the Carolinas. Sherwood’s “crimes” included wearing trousers and growing vegetables on land where male farmers had failed. But in 2006, the Virginia governor decided that seven years in jail and 300 years of shame were punishment enough, and he pardoned her.

When the first of the Harry Potter novels appeared in 1998, fundamentalists across the English-speaking world waxed apoplectic. Following Jesus’s lead, Protestants have long been rather particular about which of the Old Testament’s 613 commandments they observe, but “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” was compliance-worthy for nearly two millennia.

Had Moses written “wizards” in Exodus 22, it might have been a different story.

Apparently, however, the Potter critics had not bothered to read the books, or they would not have criticized them as “pro-Satan.” It’s true that Harry and his friends fly about on broomsticks and cast spells, but in the end, J. K. Rowling takes a Muggle-friendly stand against magical solutions to life’s problems. Who would have guessed that Harry was Jesus disguised as a nerdy kid wearing horn-rim glasses who dies to demonstrate that love is the path to redemption?

Contemporary anthropologists argue that witchcraft is a problem only when people believe in its power. When the male majority in a sexist culture blames every nocturnal emission on a dreamy incubus, witches are as real as the lie repeated ten thousand times.

So many men in the 17th century reported incubi sharing their beds that one chronicler argued, “’Tis impudence to deny it.” One of the long-standing residuals of that acceptance is the employment of 95 French-Catholic exorcists as late as 1998. But, all too often, the “work” of these churchmen has resulted in the injury or death of an autistic child or an adult with Tourette’s Syndrome.

One Missouri minister was so embarrassed by his daughter’s verbal tics that he beat “the devil out of her” with his belt.

In 2003, an eight-year-old autistic boy was wrapped in bed sheets as members of a Milwaukee church tried to suffocate the demons who’d taken up residence in his body. They succeeded only in killing him.

Typically, the abuse originates in the clergy or their devout followers. In 1986, however, the Rev. Henry L. Scott, rector of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC, abruptly announced his resignation in the middle of his sermon. That was shocking enough, but when Scott revealed that he’d been laboring under “a witch’s curse,” the congregation gasped. It seems that while he was a senior at Yale, a Vassar woman he was dating placed a spell on him and “a pattern of bondage” developed that he could not twist free of. He had preached forgiveness for 14 years, he said, but could not forgive himself. In his sermon, he spoke of a mysterious sin, but never elaborated. Many suspected that witchcraft was just a scapegoat for his tormented conscience. Shortly after the minister’s guilt was revealed, the rector left on an extended vacation, which included a few sessions with the modern exorcist, the psychotherapist.

Bible literalists argue that to deny the Witch of Endor is to deny the entire Bible. Partially as a consequence, Jerry Falwell and others of a fundamentalist stripe have championed Halloween “judgment houses” as alternatives to trick-or-treating for over 30 years. Many churches like Falwell’s have effectively co-opted witchcraft and bent it to their purpose. One advocate claims more than two million children and their parents have toured these“Hell Night” houses, with a quarter million making a “commitment to Christ.” The objective is to scare young sinners straight into the arms of the Church before they have a chance to drink a beer or steal a kiss under the grandstands.

“Hell Night’s” typical climax is an AIDS funeral with an open coffin.

Thirty years ago, a German neighbor’s child was one of those who’d made a commitment after visiting the “Halls of Hell” at a church near Clemson. She came strolling by one afternoon while our daughter, Anja, was playing in the sandbox behind our faculty duplex. “What are you doing?” the visitor inquired.

“Just digging in the sand,” Anja said.

“You better be careful,” our visitor said. “You might dig up the devil.”

As a witness to this death of innocence, I spoke up and suggested a board game at the picnic table where I’d been eavesdropping. I couldn’t help noticing that when my daughter or I came close to winning a point in the game we were playing, the neighbor would chant in German, “Hexe, hexe, hexe!” In case you don’t know, Hexe means “witch,” but the triple repetition loosely means, “I hereby invoke all the powers of hell to hasten your failure.”

Over the objections of fundamentalists, I once thought that Wicca might be a harmless alternative to witchcraft, but that was before I knew much about this New Age amalgam of white magic and animism. About 20 years ago, after the first meeting of a poetry class, I commented on the silver pentagram one of my front-row students was wearing on a black thong around her neck. “Yes,” she said, “I’m a witch, meaning I’m a healer and herbalist.”

“Don’t you have to go to medical school to be a healer?”

“No,” she replied. “With the right crystals, all impurities are cleansed.”

It was a long semester.