"The Hammer Of Witches"

“The Hammer of Witches”

“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.”- 1 Peter 5:8

      A book. Leather-bound and competently written, the poetry of its text founded in the most passionate of that which inspires man. Its pages can be easily burnt, even more simply torn, yet its words truly make it what it is. History would remember this (as history tends to do); and in its remembrance it would tell the story, of Bridget Bishop. A book. Harmless in its purpose, yet the lives of many would lack need for remembrance, if it were not for the creation of but a single manuscript.

      “Are you, Bridget Bishop, in league with Satan, or those under his influence?
Are you yourself, under the influence of the prince of darkness?
Have you partaken in services of devil worship and witchcraft, as your peers have claimed to witness?
Your crimes, do they not eat away at your soul?!
You know of your guilt! Confess!
CONFESS!”
      “I am no witch.
I am innocent.
I know nothing of it”, even as I uttered the words I knew they might as well have dissipated into the air, before they reached the ears of the magistrates. Salem has gone to madness. Its people, delusional and violent, have found in the drama of senseless persecution an entertainment. I have become an entertainer, a spectacle, like a hunt or bearbait, made all the more spectacular as our mortal souls lay in the hands of the populus; awaiting trial and torture, and the ever-celebrated execution. Is there no justice?
      They strapped to my face an iron mask, on which there was a strip of barbed iron depressing my tongue, preventing my mouth from forming the words to “unholy spells”. As I was paraded around, the entertainer I was, frothy blood flowed down my throat, as the spiked depressor ground the flesh of my tongue with every twitch. My tears met with jubilous laughter. I wished I was some sort of sorceress, then I could cast the lot of them to the depths of Hades, where the devil would welcome them with reservation; it is not so often he finds men of such evil.

     

“Is she a witch? Is he? Once such questions might have seemed ridiculous, but everyone knows that Satan is loose in Salem.”-(Villager of Salem, 1692.)

      I had not confessed. They shackled me to the wood of my cell wall, they stripped me of all clothing. I heard the sizzle of hot steel, the tears would not come. They burned me. I could smell that which I heard, the violent sizzle of  flesh. I attempted tormented scream after tortured scream, but the mask encasing my tongue in an eternal embrace with the blades prevented the syllables. I sputter,  I cough up my innocent blood and it flows down an innocent chin tward an innocent breast. I am being purged. The evil inside me is being “cleansed by flame”. I search hard amid the muffled screams of my heart for this evil, but all I find is the hatred I keep for my persecutors. My flesh sizzles and blisters yet another time. Where is God? The

law now persecutes the innocent and he does nothing!

“Saint Eustachius save me!”

“I, confess.”

      “Ms. Bishop, can you affirm once again for the court your confession.”
“I can. I plead guilty,
to the crimes with which this court has charged me.”
“Very well.”

      Now I stand atop Gallows Hill, a noose around my neck. I  have never felt such a breeze in a long time, I pray it sweeps me far from this wretched place…

Bridget Bishop, Hanged June 10th, 1692.

      In the year 1435, Pope Innocent IV made a decision that made a hypocrisy of his papal name. He authorized the use of torture when dealing with heretics, and hardened the Roman Catholic Church's policy on witchcraft by helping to popularize the belief that all "magic" and miracles not of God, were the work of Satan. In 1487, he commissioned the publication of the most blood-soaked book in human history, responsible, some historians believe, for the persecution, torture, and execution of some nine-million individuals. Written entirely in Latin, the "Malleus Maleficarum" (The Hammer of Witches) provided the clergy with guidelines on how to identify, purge, try, and acquire confession from those suspected of witchcraft and other "blasphemy". During the witch-crazed 17th century, the by then translated "Hammer of Witches" outsold every book but the Bible.
      One could say the witch-hunts were merely hunts for women who acted outside the societal norm of their gender. Drawn and quartered, hung, burned alive, boiled in oil, the free-thinking women that posed such a threat to the views of Christendom were exterminated by the hundreds of thousands, one of the most disturbing and shameful acts of the church.

Do Not Fear Death

Do not fear death in earthly travels.
Do not fear enemies or friends.
Just listen to the words of prayers,
To pass the facets of the dreads.

Your death will come to you, and never
You shall be, else, a slave of life,
Just waiting for a dawn’s favor,
From nights of poverty and strife.

She’ll build with you a common law,
One will of the Eternal Reign.
And you are not condemned to slow
And everlasting deadly pain.
-Alexsandr Blok