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WITCHCRAFT + Function of the Primordial Shaman, Whose Phernalia, to Compel Occult Forces to Do Homoerotic Orientation Gave Him Special His Will

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WITCHCRAFT + Function of the Primordial Shaman, Whose Phernalia, to Compel Occult Forces to Do Homoerotic Orientation Gave Him Special His Will WITCHCRAFT + function of the primordial shaman, whose phernalia, to compel occult forces to do homoerotic orientation gave him special his will. The medieval notion of witch- insights. craft, however, was contractual: the witch More concretely Winckelmann had to elicit the patronage of a demon by called upon German philology to focus its making a pact with him. As contemporary attention on the whole spectrum of the legends and documents attest, this con- heritage of ancient Greece; his Hellenism tractual relationship parallels the feudal helped to lay the foundations for a century bond between liege and lord. of supremacy of German classical scholar- Witchcraft and Christianity. ship. He also had a salutary effect on the Christian theology, taking Old Testa- discipline of art history, which for a long ment texts and New Testament stories of time afterwards was virtually a German demonic possession as its point of depar- monopoly. He showed that the history of ture, transformed the earlier notion of art need not restrict itself to connois- the sorcerer into that of the witch or wiz- seurship or the biographical study of great ard as the agent of Satan and accomplice of masters, but could instead aspire to lay his infernal legions. It further made a logi- bare the governing laws which made art cal connection between witchcraft proper works what they were and not otherwise. and heresy, namely any belief obstinately Moreover, he held that art has a history in held contrary to the orthodox teaching of the most meaningful sense, a history that the church. only a clear concept of organic develop- The witchcraft delusion that ment could explain. Thus, while Friedrich obsessed European society from 1450 to Nietzsche and others were to show a cen- 1700-hence from the end of the Middle tury after his death that his insights into Ages until the onset of the Enlighten- the specific character of Greek art were ment-is a major problem for the historian incomplete, in that they overstated the that has not yet been fully resolved. Many elements of tranquility and equipoise, the theories have been advanced to explain the ideals of scholarly dedication for which reasons for the phenomenon and the real Winckelmann stood have remained of background, if any, of the belief system lasting significance. cherished by the witch hunters. Earlier investigators often were animated by a BIBLIOGRAPHY. Wolfgang Leppmann, Protestant or anti-clerical bias that led Winckelrnann, New York: Knopf, 1970; Denis M. Sweet, "The Personal, the them to place the blame solely on the Political, and the Aesthetic: Johann Roman Catholic church and Catholic JoachimWinckelmann's German theologians. It is true that Pope Innocent Enlightenment Life," Iournal of VIII on December 5, 1484 issued the buIl Homosexuality, 16:1/2 (19881, 147-62. Sumrnis desiderantes, confirming the Wayne R. Dynes support of the papacy for inquisitorial proceedings against presumed witches, and Witchcraft is the form of sorcery this text became a preface to the Malleus allegedly practiced in Western Europe maleficarum (Witches' Hammer] pub- between the thirteenth and eighteenth lished by two Dominican inquisitors in centuries. Sorcery itself is universal, found 1487 and reissued in 29 editions, 16 of in almost every period and every human them in German, down to 1669.The Mal- culture as, a set of magical beliefs and leus was far more influential in that it practices intended to manipulate the phe- colorfully detailed the diabolical orgies of nomena of nature for the benefit of the the witches and convinced a credulous sorcerer or his client. Most sorcery is public that a plot of cosmic dimensions operative, that is to say, the practitioner hatched by Satan himself threatened the has the capacity, through spells and para- very foundations of Christian society. 4 WITCHCRAFT Part of the problem posed by the tasy of sexual intercourse between demons witchcraft delusion is that an exotic belief and human beings was rooted in a hetero- system derived from the Bible and St. Au- sexual and demonically procreative con- gustine was superimposed upon the actual text, not a homosexual one. The second is practice of sorcery in all the variants that that over the entire span of the witchcraft the racial and ethnic diversity of late delusion women outnumbered men by at medieval Europe, and the particularism of least three to one as objects of prosecution; its folk culture, had inherited from pagan, in New England, for example, 80 percent pre-Christian times. Every province had of the accused were women. For the male its own customs and superstitions, its theologians and witch hunters who pro- enchanted springs and haunted dwellings, moted the delusion, the carnal aspect of its survivals of Celtic or Scandinavian or woman was the heterosexual one-her Slavic lore. power to entice and ensnare men. Lesbian- Sexual Aspects. Perverse sexual- ism was then, as later, invisible to the ity played a major role in the fantasies male unconscious, hence it could play no associated with the witchcraft delusion, role in the paranoid fantasies entertained but contrary to what has been alleged in by the authorities of church and state. The some recent publications, homosexual third is that the crimes blamed upon the relations between human beings and witches had no homosexual content, but demons, or simply between human par- more often took the form of causing crop ticipants in witchcraft, do not figure promi- failures or other misfortunes that pro- nently in the sources. The bisexuality and voked the wrath of peasant communities. androgyny of demons and the preoccupa- In the treatise of Jean Bodin De la tion with change of sex suggest a psycho- Dimonomanie des sorciers (1580)there is logical substratum of homoeroticism, but a comparison between witchcraft and comparatively few homosexual acts are sodomy: "If one avers that one should not reported in the literature of witchcraft. dwell upon the confession of something When sodomy does appear in the against nature, as some say, [then] the accounts of sexual unionwith theDevil, it sodomitic buggers should not be punished is heterosexual sodomy (peccatum contra who confess the sin against nature. But if naturam ratione modi) that is usually one wishes to say 'against nature' for meant, most often anal intercourse or the something impossible, that is false, for osculum infame, the kiss applied to what is impossible by nature is not [truly] Satan's posterior. One account of a witches' impossible, inasmuch as all the actions of sabbat, it is true, mentions a gathering intelligence and the workings of God that held atop Mount Tonale, in the Italian one often sees, go against the course of Tyrol, at which handsome youths were nature." In other words, the belief that provided for the sexual pleasures of the all- sodomites had been empowered by the male gathering. devil to commit "unnatural" acts matched There are several reasons for the the preposterous claim that witches could absence of homosexual relations from the ride through the air on broomsticks and dossiers of witchcraft. The first is that the perform similar "impossible" feats because startingpoint forthe belief systemwas the of their covenant with Satan. passage in Genesis 6:l-4,further devel- Modem Revivals. In the 1970s oped in I Enoch and the Testaments of the the emerging gay movement overlapped Twelve Patriarchs, according to which the with certain phases of neo-paganism, in- "sons of God," identified in later legendas cluding a revived interest in witchcraft fallen angels, took wives of the "daughters understood as part of the archaic "nature of men" and had offspring by them, the religion" that has been supplanted by "men of renown." Hence the whole fan- Christianity. Some lesbians took part in WITCHCRAFT 9 the revival of Wicca, or the Craft, which cution, not the defendants, who were emphasized the spiritual and thaumatur- mentally ill, were in the grip of paranoid gic power of the feminine as it had been beliefs grounded in a magical understand- embodied in the traditional healing art of ing of the origins of the misfortunes which the witch, and also emancipation from the had befallen the community. The analogy oppressively patriarchal aspects of the to this in the case of homosexual sodomy Judeo-Christian tradition. In like manner, is that while the acts committed by the the gay-male Radical Faeries, who held defendants were harmless and even pleas- their first gathering in 1979, stressed the urable, the prosecutors imagined them a distinctive insights of the personality that source of potential divine retribution that is neither male nor female, yet partakes of would overtake the whole of society if the both and throughout human history has "unnatural" acts were left unpunished. played a role as mediator between the A fourth issue is that in many divine and the human. The cultivation of trials for witchcraft the principal wit- a gay spirituality as a dimension of con- nesses were children who later were temporary neo-paganism has for some held proven to have made the charges without the promise of a release from the constrict- foundation or out of sheer malice. This ing taboos of Judaism and Christianity historical precedent is relevant to the and a rediscovery of the enduring values problem of the uncorroborated testimony of the homosexual experience in the of children in cases of child abuse, particu- religious sphere. larly of homosexual pedophilia. Both the Some Comparisons. The witch- prosecution and the defense in such cases craft delusion, as it has been analyzed by are often bedeviled by the suggestibility historians in modem times, does offer and unreliability of children as witnesses several lessons of paramount importance who, because lacking the adult's clear per- for the understanding of the attitude to- ception of the dividing line between truth ward homosexuality in Christian Europe- and fiction, can be manipulated in a vari- a mentality that has far outlasted the be- ety of ways scarcely conducive to ascer- lief in witches and their pact with Satan.
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