Incredibly! The Inquisitional Cultural Mechanism Rears its Hydra Head by by Elisabeth Sikie

As a young witch hungry for feminist sisterhood and spiritual wisdom in the 90s, before the blooming of the internet, I discovered a mag called The Beltane Papers. I remember devouring an article featuring channeled material of women killed during the European witch hunts. This transmission revealed past voices of everyday people living their lives until they were snagged by the slow creep of an increasingly oppressive cultural trajectory. What struck me was the normalcy of their voices, the deceased echoes of regular women trying to make sense of events beyond their control until they were taken by a system that destroyed them. What stayed with me is the author’s observation that even at their violent end these women’s voices remained “incredulous”. 

Decades, and seemingly lifetimes later, I completed my dissertation for my PhD in Religion and Philosophy in which I excavated some of the subaltern history of my European Ancestors and their female shamanic practices. At one inevitable point in my research – kicking and screaming – I reluctantly faced the inquisitions and witch trials. After waving a sage wand and cracking a sacred beer, I cracked open the Malleus Maleficarum, the infamous “Hammer of the Witches”.[1] This notorious guidebook, a how-to for career Christian Inquisitors written by two Dominican Friars[2] during the Middle Ages, details moral arguments supporting the legalized suppression, interrogation, and eradication of women designated by the church-state as heretics.

I forced myself to overcome an innate revulsion of this resource because I was driven to understand how the hell this kind of unbelievable systematic violence could be put into motion – established as policy, perpetrated by prevailing institutions and tolerated by society. I undertook my studies with the assumption that this gruesome history was well, history and that I was on an academic path digging up fragments of our ancestral past to shine light on our origins. I had no idea this history would also portend our potential future as descendants of our European Western culture. As with all diligent research, I discovered something other than I anticipated – a mundanely horrific “truth” that we are witnessing a next wave of a historical inquisitional arc. It’s happening again.

What surprised me during my research was how often I kept writing in the margins of my books “like now!” Europe  in the Middle Ages was a cauldron of transforming political and state systems including the consolidation of royal and ecclesiastical power, and an increasing centralization of government bureaucracies solidifying an increasingly polarized class system.^[3] This was the period of the Crusades, multiple religious upheavals and economic stresses due to shifting territorial power grabs during which women’s social and religious roles declined as marriage, housekeeping, and motherhood were increasingly socially sanctioned and then enforced as the only realms open to them.^[4] There were multiple tribal wars and invasions, slavery, heavy taxation,^[5] and inflation. ^[6] Life was affected by plague,^[7] climatic pressures, competition for resources and the commercialization of agriculture. This period saw feudalism^[8] and its transition to capitalism;^[9] the implementation of enclosure that is the privatization of historic public spaces;^[10] peasant revolts;^[11] industrialization and the forced migration of people from rural villages to cities,^[12] and the erosion of rights of inheritance and control of resources that specifically affected women.^[13] Just like now.

Born in the 20^th century, I have lived long enough to witness the advancement of the rights women, people of color, and the LBGT community; the development of technologies that make possible global access to education and medical care for all, of sustainable and humane food production strategies, and scientific exploration of our sacred complex multiverse at quantum and cosmic levels. I wasn’t prepared for a renewed political and religious extremist inquisitional wave to coalesce during my lifetime. I am incredulous.

But it is staring us in the face. The ingredients that feed a resurrection of inquisitional social forces are present and churning to full boil. We are seeing the normalization of divisiveness, of censorship, of increasingly invasive laws called for by increasingly fervent, mouth-frothing authoritarian zealots that seek to restrict fundamental rights of autonomy.

Make no mistake — this governmental and religious emergent mechanistic cultural Hydra is rearing its ugly head again. Its purpose, like then, is to control the many for the benefit of the few through increasing jurisprudence that oppresses, suppresses and ultimately, annihilates those bucking the system – the non-conforming, the witches and heretics. It’s like the story of the frog in boiling water. Raise the temp slowly and she doesn’t realize she is burning alive.

Do I think this historic cultural arc is fated? Of course not. In our truly quantum reality, we truly have the power of whatever choice is in our realm of influence. But our ancestors didn’t believe it could happen to them either. The good news is that there has always been rigorous rebellion against inquisitional tyranny. In my spiritual tradition attention is intention. It is imperative that choose wisely now — that we spell well at this time, my sisters and brothers. ***

BIO: Elisabeth Sikie, PhD is a writer, shamanic practitioner and student of history and religion. Her focus of research is retrieval of subaltern female mysteries. She has been a yoga teacher, spiritual counselor and facilitator of women’s rites for decades. Currently she is involved in several writing projects, including a collaborate work with oracular art with her sister, Los Angeles-based mosaic artist Karen Sikie. Elisabeth loves dirt, plants, dogs, books, Alaska and flying in the dreamtime. She lives in California with her husband, parrot and dog, keeping the faith and keeping alive the old ways.  esikie@esikie.com

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[1] Mackay, The Hammer of the Witches, 31.

[2] Inquisitors were comprised of Dominicans, who were called domini canes, “the hounds of god,” and the Jesuits—both of whom Murphy describes as taking their jobs seriously. This applies particularly to the Dominicans whom he describes as “nothing if not thorough.” Murphy, Cullen. 2012. God’s Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 66.

[3] Wiesner, Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe, 51.

[4] Karant-Nunn, “The Reformation of Women,” 175.

[5] Ankarloo, “Witch Trials in Northern Europe: 1450 – 1700,” 63.

[6] Wiesner, Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe, 3.

[7] She comments that the Black Plague changed Europe’s political and social life in many ways including creating a labor shortage. Federici, Caliban and the Witch, 44 – 45.

[8] Dashú, “Pagans, Conversion, and Culture Wars, ” 2014.

[9] Federici, Caliban and the Witch, 7.

[10] Ibid., 123 – 24.

[11] Ibid., 174.                                                                                                   

[12] Wiesner, Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe, 3.

[13] Bridenthal, Stuard, and Wiesner, Becoming Visible, 5.