Invention of satanic witchcraft by medieval authorities was met with skepticism
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Re: Invention of satanic witchcraft by medieval authorities was met with skepticism
#2One thing that becomes immediately apparent when visiting the medieval witchcraft museum in Iceland[1] was how strategic the use of Witchcraft accusations were by the middling elite.
One cunning foreign family with ties to occupying Denmark was able to secure land hold rights for nearly an entire peninsula from local Icelanders on the northwest through the strategic use of witchcraft accusations. During this period of occupation nearly 120 trials occurred over a 60 year period[2].
The people weren’t superstitious - they were corrupt.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strandagaldur
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B3n_R%C3%B6gnvaldsson
Re: Invention of satanic witchcraft by medieval authorities was met with skepticism
#3One thing that becomes immediately apparent when visiting the medieval witchcraft museum in Iceland[1] was how strategic the use of Witchcraft accusations were by the middling elite. One cunning foreign family with ties to occupying Denmark was able to secure land hold rights for nearly an entire peninsula from local Icelanders on the northwest through the strategic use of witchcraft accusations. During this period o…
Those articles are more interesting than OP's article.
When I research a lot of wealthy families I frequently find their level of comfort not possible to replicate because it is something considered impropriety today. Taking advantage of an imbalance in the socioeconomic order that was promptly fixed as soon as anybody noticed.
Re: Invention of satanic witchcraft by medieval authorities was met with skepticism
#4One thing that becomes immediately apparent when visiting the medieval witchcraft museum in Iceland[1] was how strategic the use of Witchcraft accusations were by the middling elite. One cunning foreign family with ties to occupying Denmark was able to secure land hold rights for nearly an entire peninsula from local Icelanders on the northwest through the strategic use of witchcraft accusations. During this period o…
This is essentially the thesis of Silvia Federici’s tremendous book, “Caliban and the Witch.” Witch hunts were pursued to reorganize familial, gender, and labor relations to suit the needs of an emergent Capitalism:
>For serfs, who tilled the land in exchange for a share of its crops, home was work, and vice versa; men and women grew the potatoes together. But in capitalism, waged laborers have to work outside the home all the time, which means someone else needs to be at home all the time, doing the domestic work. Gender roles, and the subjugation of women, became newly necessary.
Early feudal elites in rural Europe enclosed public land, rendering it private and controllable, and patriarchy enclosed women in “private” marriages, imposing on them the reproductive servitude of bearing men’s children and the emotional labor of caring for men’s every need. Pregnancy and childbirth, once a natural function, became a job that women did for their male husband-bosses—that is to say, childbirth became alienated labor. “Witches,” according to witch-hunting texts like the Malleus Maleficarum, were women who kept childbirth and pregnancy in female hands: midwives, abortionists, herbalists who provided contraception. They were killed to cement patriarchal power and create the subjugated, domestic labor class necessary for capitalism.
http://inthesetimes.com/article/21592/capitalism-witches-wom...
Re: Invention of satanic witchcraft by medieval authorities was met with skepticism
#5Bailey's book he mentions here is called 'Origins of the witches sabbath'.
The idea that satanic witchcraft was invented by mediaeval authorities is preposterous IMO. Occult practices go back to ancient Egypt and have been practiced in multiple civilizations as white, grey or black magic respectively. Black magic is what everyone obsesses over (attempts to use supernatural powers or magic for evil and selfish purposes). Grey and white are 'do no harm' or curative (health etc) efforts.
Michael Aquino has just died, some may be intrigued by his standing and history as evidence of 'witch craft' being alive and well today. https://burners.me/2020/06/29/michael-aquino-dead-was-leppo-...
I think the mediaeval purges were largely political and cynical property grabs along with a desire for populations to conform to dogmatic religions and drop ancient customs and beliefs
Re: Invention of satanic witchcraft by medieval authorities was met with skepticism
#6Just like the strategic use of accusations of heresy against politically correct groupthink, fake rape and assault accusations, and fake racial discrimination claims, are being used as tactics to reshape the allocation of capital and balance of political and corporate power.
The question I have is: aside from individuals using these purges for their own gain, what new larger order is this turbulence tilling the field for?
Re: Invention of satanic witchcraft by medieval authorities was met with skepticism
#7Bailey's book he mentions here is called 'Origins of the witches sabbath'. The idea that satanic witchcraft was invented by mediaeval authorities is preposterous IMO. Occult practices go back to ancient Egypt and have been practiced in multiple civilizations as white, grey or black magic respectively. Black magic is what everyone obsesses over (attempts to use supernatural powers or magic for evil and selfish purpose…
How does an announcement of someone's death get off topic and start talking about how LaVey is a Zionist arms dealer and how frequently Ukraine comes up? What the hell is happening in that story?
Re: Invention of satanic witchcraft by medieval authorities was met with skepticism
#8Just like the strategic use of accusations of heresy against politically correct groupthink, fake rape and assault accusations, and fake racial discrimination claims, are being used as tactics to reshape the allocation of capital and balance of political and corporate power. The question I have is: aside from individuals using these purges for their own gain, what new larger order is this turbulence tilling the field…
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Re: Invention of satanic witchcraft by medieval authorities was met with skepticism
#9One thing that becomes immediately apparent when visiting the medieval witchcraft museum in Iceland[1] was how strategic the use of Witchcraft accusations were by the middling elite. One cunning foreign family with ties to occupying Denmark was able to secure land hold rights for nearly an entire peninsula from local Icelanders on the northwest through the strategic use of witchcraft accusations. During this period o…
This is essentially the thesis of Silvia Federici’s tremendous book, “Caliban and the Witch.” Witch hunts were pursued to reorganize familial, gender, and labor relations to suit the needs of an emergent Capitalism: >For serfs, who tilled the land in exchange for a share of its crops, home was work, and vice versa; men and women grew the potatoes together. But in capitalism, waged laborers have to work outside the ho…
Wouldn't it be nice if history were actually this simple?
The idea here is that Romans, with their pater familias, or the Confucian Chinese, for whom the father was a mini-emperor, were just preparing the way for capitalism, 2000+ years before the fact?
Marriage and home-bound women were not an invention of the late medival world. Women may well have been more free in the preceding period, but that was the exception, not the norm.
Re: Invention of satanic witchcraft by medieval authorities was met with skepticism
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is essentially the thesis of Silvia Federici’s tremendous book, “Caliban and the Witch.” Witch hunts were pursued to reorganize familial, gender, and labor relations to suit the needs of an emergent Capitalism: >For serfs, who tilled the land in exchange for a share of its crops, home was work, and vice versa; men and women grew the potatoes together. But in capitalism, waged laborers have to work outside the ho…
Wouldn't it be nice if history were actually this simple? The idea here is that Romans, with their pater familias, or the Confucian Chinese, for whom the father was a mini-emperor, were just preparing the way for capitalism, 2000+ years before the fact? Marriage and home-bound women were not an invention of the late medival world. Women may well have been more free in the preceding period, but that was the exception,…
This isn’t a refutation of Federici’s argument.
Her’s is specifically that the conditions of European feudalism created an emergent communalism that was then subjugated through witch trials and their mythology in service to the new, Capitalist ordering.
She doesn’t argue that gendered forms of subjugation have no prior context in history. And whether or not the changes in women’s social/economic conditions were “temporary” depends on a rationalization of the violence that was used to reorder society and a fallacious appeal to nature that makes little sense in terms of how Capitalism otherwise radically transformed societies.