The Rescue of the Witches

Image: Cottombro
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By IRIS BOFF*

Educated more by conscious and liberated women, today's children are starting to rescue another awareness of this formerly execrated figure.

Loaded with wisdom, the old witches are alive inside the modern woman, in this new millennium that advances more and more. Buried in the depths of the patriarchal cathedrals, places of water fountains where the goddesses were worshipped, they reemerge.

In the same way, how they resurface, from the bottom of the temple of our bodies, when the mother, the daughter, the sister, the grandmother, the friend or the lover get together and lend them their voice in the sound of the songs and charms of our dances, speeches , gestures and rituals.

They walk with us, they give us encouragement and inspiration, in the insane and groping search for our still nascent feminine identity. We were what man wanted, as Simone de Beauovoir showed.

From now on, the old witches, like eternal goddesses, in bodies young, old or children, men or women, coming from our most ancestral dreams, inspire us to be what our most genuine and honest desire wants: to be fully ourselves as women.

At hard pains, assuming mistakes and being responsible for our own mistakes, we will no longer tolerate that someone will not watch over, direct, choose or dictate our lives as women. We will take our history into our own hands.

Black magic, spells, bad omens, the tenebrous ugly figure of fairy tales, written from the patriarchy, will disappear along with it. In the name of these figures, thousands of women, believed to be witches, were killed or burned by the Inquisition.

The witch of our children's imagination, invented by our macho culture, constitutes a great fallacy. It was an instrument of patriarchal domination over women.

Man did not have access, control and knowledge of the power to create and recreate his own life, the handling of herbs, the gift of healing, blessing, care and protection, which the woman of wisdom, the essence of being a witch was invested.

With the rise of patriarchy, it denied all women's power. imposed a distorted image on her and well at her convenience Out of fear and envy of her power, the witch was seen as bad, disgusting, dangerous, who, having a pact with the Devil, needed to be banished, punished, denied, forgotten. Her rebelliousness deserved to be execrated and burned alive in a public square, as happened to Joan of Arc, in 1431, burned alive at just 19 years old after having victoriously commanded part of the French army against the English occupation. Interestingly, in 1920 she was proclaimed a saint and made patroness of France.

What was a blessing became a curse. Educated more by conscious and liberated women, today's children are starting to rescue another awareness of this formerly execrated figure.

Cradling the cradle or with her breasts exposed, to breastfeed this new generation, the woman of the 1st century reinvents life, assumes the chair, researches and writes, uses the telephone, WhatsApp, social media and the computer to -write your story, not to destroy or deny it, but to remake and complete it.

Here is a small critical observation: reproductive not only of the species, unfortunately, not a few women have also reproduced false standards of behavior, still dictated by a sexist culture or by values ​​of a misogynistic religion and by the supremacy of the Masculine over the Feminine .

But assuming our status as good witches, let's ride the broom of our conscience, sweep and banish this hoax once and for all for our good and our children, finally also for the human family as a whole.

It's good to re-write children's stories, learning to deal with and integrate evil instead of projecting it onto a being like a scapegoat that would be the witch.

Humanity was born and grew up around the female and matriarchal power, the most primordial phase of our history. Then, in mysterious ways, the male reaffirmed himself with his patriarchal power and clouded the ancestral heritage of the female.

We are now living in a privileged moment. For the first time in human history both the feminine and the masculine, the man and the woman as equal partners, are reconciling and creating a blissful alliance.

The woman, guardian of the soul, at great speed, is leaving the cave. And the tired and disenchanted man wants to go home, but it doesn't exist like before. Both man and woman will clean and rearrange their own house. They will understand the new task, that of taking care of the Common Home, of Mother Earth, inhabited by the new human family, neither matriarchal nor patriarchal, but androgynous for the health and good of humanizing and beneficial relationships for all humanity.

*Iris Boff, is a writer, feminist and eco-pedagogue.

 

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