http://www.nzgirl.co.nz/articles/2810
This stuff about how the witch craze was some sort of assault on women because of their unique knowledge of contraception and their general grasp of folk medicine is a silly myth. Your stuff about the ideology of it is to to the point because you'd think that if witch burning were mainly an attack on female medical practice that somehow would play a role in the story the witch hunters told. Obviously the witch craze had a sexual element, but that's a different matter. Also, the theory doesn't explain the timing of the witch craze. Why did the witchburners wait till the mid 16r=th century to notice that women had knowledge that requiredtheir alleged mass extermination, or why would pressuresd for this mass extermination due to thsi knowledge break through jus then?
--- Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I just don't see it. Innocent doesn't say that
> witches
> are, say, "appealing to naive or sinful women to
> commit the blasphemy of killing their babies in the
> womb." He refers to them blasting said children in
> the
> womb in a hostile fashion, just like he accuses them
> of sicing spells on livestock and grown men and
> women.
> He's thinking of a group of people in a circle in
> the
> wood kissing the butt (literally) of the Black Man,
> saying moogly-moogly words to curse the local
> village
> and then flying off on their brooms. That's quite
> far
> away from someone giving somebody else
> contraceptives.
> (Was contraception really so hard to get in this
> era?
> A condom is not exactly high-tech.)
>
> Maybe this is one of those things like everybody and
> his mother interpreting Red Cavalry as a meditation
> on
> the Jewish Condition, which I just did not get from
> the book at all. Maybe I'm being obtuse.
>
> --- JBrown72073 at cs.com wrote:
> Making women sterile. Temporary sterility is the
> result of taking
> various of
> the herbs which are recorded as used for
> contraception
> and abortion.
> (In
> other words, these abortifacients also have the
> property of making you
> sterile.)
> And, there's a fine line between an early
> miscarriage
> and a late
> menstrual
> cycle. Might all look like sterility.
>
>
> Nu, zayats, pogodi!
>
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