Page:The Myth of the Burning Times and the Politics of Resistance in Contemporary American Wicca.pdf/3

 practices are inherently “contrary to nature.” Through the exploration of the early-modern period, Wiccans also seek to explore the possibility that individuals, or subjectivities, might once again carve out alternative spaces within society where they might practice self-transformation unmolested by authorities. Whether resistance is indeed possible, however, remains a difficult question, as does the larger issue of Wiccan community. These two issues will receive more extensive treatment below.

Toward a Wiccan Ficción: The Burning Times

[5] Whether or not Wiccan accounts of the Burning Times are historically accurate is of little concern to this study. What matters is that Wiccans themselves value the account of these events, a narrative that reflects rather than directs their contemporary resistance. Many critics of Wicca miss precisely this point (Starhawk 1997: xxix). They question a movement that allows itself to be crippled by an historical narrative, especially a false one that can only support a permanent status of victimhood. This is the position of historian Diane Purkiss. Purkiss not only misinterprets the nature of the mythology, but also narrows the story itself. She writes:


 * Once upon a time there was a woman who lived on the edge of a village. She lived alone, in her house surrounded by her garden, in which she grew all manner of herbs and other healing plants. Though she was alone, she was never lonely; she had her garden and her animals for company, she took lovers when she wished, and she was always busy. . . . Even though this woman was harmless, she posed a threat to the fearful. Her medical knowledge threatened the doctor. Her simple, true spiritual values threatened the superstitious nonsense of the Catholic church, as did her affirmation of the sensuous body. . . . She was burned alive by men who hated women, along with millions of others just like her (7).

[6] Purkiss’ reading is not necessarily incorrect, at least in its scope, but it does reduce Wicca to only one of its aspects, what she calls the radical feminist one. While the feminist aspect looms large in contemporary readings of the Burning Times, it is related to a larger phenomenon. “Witches” were not only healing women, they also included the elderly, infirm, widowed, mysterious, or the politically and geographically unfortunate, if one uses Boyer and Nissenbaum’s research on Salem Village as a guide. Many more women than men were victimized in the majority of territories involved, but an obvious, primary relationship to matriarchal values was part of a larger issue. Wiccan scholar Loretta Orion traces the Burning Times not to a victory of patriarchy, but to the larger issue of what patriarchy has stood for in the popular imagination. Orion claims that the medieval alchemist-magician Giordano Bruno was executed for the paradigmatic sin of witches: he encouraged spiritual and intellectual growth. Orion writes:


 * Bruno was burned as a witch in the burning times for urging learned gentlemen to hope for more than the constant conflict among contending reformers and to acquire the powers that Starhawk and Hussey encourage witches to reclaim - the creative, visionary capacities - so that they might bring the vision into being (230).

Journal of Religion & Society