A Witch – Wise Woman
“In the Middle Ages, Christianity came to face a danger. There were thousands
of women who were far wiser than the bishops and the cardinals and the pope.
They knew the art of transforming people’s lives.
The word `witch‘; was one of the most respected words, as respected as
`mystic’ a wise man. It simply meant a wise woman, the parallel to a wise
man.
Their whole philosophy was based on love and transformation of sexual
energy, and a woman can do that more easily than a man. After all, she is a
mother and she is always a mother.
The quality of motherliness is not something connected with age, it is part
of womanhood. And the transformation needs a very loving atmosphere, a very
motherly transfer of energies. To Christianity, it was a competitor.
Christianity has nothing to offer in comparison to it, but Christianity was
in power.
It was a man’s world up to then; and they decided to destroy all witches.
But how to destroy them? It was not a question of killing one woman but
thousands of women. So a special court was created for enquiry, to find out
who was a witch.
Any woman said by Christians to have had an influence on people and who
people respected was caught and tortured, so much so, that she had to
confess. They wouldn’t stop torturing her until she confessed that she was a
witch. And according to the Christian mind, to Christian theology, the
meaning of witch was changed: a witch is one who is having a sexual
relationship with the devil.
You don’t hear any more of any devil having a relationship with any woman.
Either the devil has become a Christian monk, a celibate, or… what has
happened to the devil? Who was it that was having sexual relationships with
thousands of women? And these women were mostly old women. It doesn’t seem
to be rational. When young and beautiful women were available, why should
the devil go to the old, the very old women?
But to become a witch, it was a long training, a long discipline, a long
experience. So by the time a woman was a witch – a wise woman – she was old;
she had sacrificed everything to attain that wisdom, that alchemy.
They forced these poor old women into saying that they were having sexual
intercourse with the devil. Many of them tried hard… but the torture was
too much.
They tortured these women in many ugly ways, just for one thing: they should
confess. The women continued to try to say that they had nothing to do with
the devil, that there was nothing to confess. But nobody listened to them;
they went on torturing them.
You can make anybody confess anything if you go on torturing her. A point
comes when she feels it is better to confess rather than to unnecessarily
suffer the same torture every day. And it would have continued for her whole
life. Once a woman confessed that she was a witch and was having a sexual
relationship with the devil, her torture was stopped and then she was
presented before a court, a special court made by the pope, and before the
court she was to now confess. And once she confessed before the court, the
court was able to punish her, because it is the greatest crime in the eyes
of Christianity.
The only punishment was to be burned alive so that no other woman dared to
be a witch again. On what authority was Christianity burning these women?
They destroyed thousands of women and completely removed a very significant
part of humanity. And all the wisdom that those women contained – their
books, their methods, their techniques of transforming man, transforming
man’s energy….
They were carrying the older and more ancient tradition of the days when the
world was pagan. They were nature worshippers.
And for Catholicism that is the worst crime, because that means there is no
need of a God, nature is enough. There is no need of a Jesus Christ as a
savior, because nobody is drowning. And there is no need for the Catholic
priests and their confessionals, because nature knows nothing as sin.
It is strange how blind humanity is. And yet these people go on speaking
beautiful words.
But this is not new. This has been going on since the crucifixion of Jesus.
If that poor carpenter’s son had known that this is what was going to be the
ultimate result of his teachings, Jews would not have been needed to crucify
him; he would have committed suicide himself!.
For two thousand years Christianity has been killing people in the name of
religion, in the name of God, in the name of Christ.”
Osho: Transmission of the lamp
