Class Notes for The Crucible
Week 8
March 10, 2009
Groups (10 minutes)
As the class enters:
 Get into groups and touch base with your group members. Continue committing ideas to paper.
Housekeeping (10 minutes)
 Professor returns proposals. Discuss.
 Read Rachel for March 24.
 Individual Conferences begin March 24 and end April 7.
 Analytical review of critical sources due April 7.
 Term papers due April 14.
 Mini-conference begins April 14 and concludes April 21. Conference schedule will be determined by
DrD, based on the content of the proposals. Be prepared to read your paper either week.
 Group presentations are due April 28. Each group will have 30 minutes to present (with brief Q&A). A
reminder: We need to get through five groups in a little more than 2 ½ hours, so plan accordingly. Keep
it simple and straightforward. Remember that Q&A can be very strong in this class, so you might want
to end a little early to allow for Q&A.
Historical Perspective (40 minutes)
 Watch The Salem Witch Trials (videotape).
BREAK (10 minutes)
Discussion (60 minutes)
 Arthur Miller and The Crucible (see notes below).
The Crucible on DVD (40 minutes)
 Watch Daniel Day-Lewis and Wynona Ryder
 Teleplay was written by Miller
 We will watch the final 40 minutes
Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an
American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in
American theatre and cinema for almost 100 years, writing a wide
variety of dramas, including celebrated plays such as The Crucible,
A View from the Bridge, All My Sons, and Death of a Salesman, which are studied and performed worldwide.
Miller was often in the public eye, most famously for refusing to give evidence against others to the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, being the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama among countless other
awards, and for his marriage to Marilyn Monroe. Miller is considered by audiences and scholars as one of
America's greatest playwrights and his plays are lauded throughout the world.
The Crucible
The Crucible is based on the actual events that, in 1692, led to the Salem Witch Trials, a series of hearings
before local magistrates to prosecute over 150 people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between
February 1692 and May 1693.
The play was written in the early 1950s as a response to McCarthyism when the US government blacklisted
accused communists. Miller himself was to be questioned by the House of Representatives' Committee on UnAmerican Activities in 1956 and convicted of "contempt of Congress" for failing to identify others present at
meetings he had attended. It was first performed at the Martin Beck Theater on Broadway on January 22 1953.
The reviews of the first production, which Miller felt was stylized and too cold, were largely hostile, although
the New York Times noted "a powerful play [in a] driving performance". Nonetheless, the production won the
1953 "Best Play" Tony Award. A year later a new production succeeded and the play became a classic. Today it
is studied in high schools and universities, because of its status as a revolutionary work of theater and for its
allegorical relationship to testimony given before the House Committee On Un-American Activities during the
1950s. It is a central work in the canon of American drama.
The Dead
Nineteen accused witches were hanged on Gallows Hill in 1692:
June 10
10. George Jacobs, Sr.
1. Bridget Bishop
11. John Proctor
July 19
September 22
2. Rebecca Nurse
12. Martha Corey
3. Sarah Good
13. Mary Eastey
4. Susannah Martin
14. Ann Pudeator
5. Elizabeth Howe
15. Alice Parker
6. Sarah Wildes
16. Mary Parker
August 19
17. Wilmott Redd
7. George Burroughs
18. Margaret Scott
8. Martha Carrier
19. Samuel Wardwell
9. John Willard
One accused witch (or wizard, as male witches were often called) was pressed to death on September 19 when
he failed to plead guilty or not guilty:
20. Giles Corey
Other accused witches died in prison:
21. Sarah Osborn
22. Roger Toothaker
23. Lyndia Dustin
24. Ann Foster
Separation of Church and State
First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free
exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to
assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Thomas Jefferson was a man of deep religious conviction - his conviction was that religion was a very personal
matter, one which the government had no business getting involved in. He was vilified by his political
opponents for his role in the passage of the 1786 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom and for his criticism of
such biblical truths as the Great Flood and the theological age of the Earth. As president, he discontinued the
practice started by his predecessors George Washington and John Adams of proclaiming days of fasting and
thanksgiving. He was a staunch believer in the separation of church and state.
Jefferson wrote a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802 to answer a letter from them written in
October 1801. A copy of the Danbury letter is available here. The Danbury Baptists were a religious minority in
Connecticut, and they complained that in their state, the religious liberties they enjoyed were not seen as
immutable rights, but as privileges granted by the legislature - as "favors granted." Jefferson's reply did not
address their concerns about problems with state establishment of religion - only of establishment on the
national level. The letter contains the phrase "wall of separation between church and state," which led to the
short-hand for the Establishment Clause that we use today: "Separation of church and state."
The letter was the subject of intense scrutiny by Jefferson, and he consulted a couple of New England
politicians to assure that his words would not offend while still conveying his message: it was not the place of
the Congress or the Executive to do anything that might be misconstrued as the establishment of religion.
Zoroastrianism:
Zoroastrianism (IPA: /ˌzɔroʊˈæstriəˌnɪzəm/) is the religion and philosophy based on the teachings ascribed to
the prophet Zoroaster, after whom the religion is named. The term Zoroastrianism is in general usage,
essentially synonymous with Mazdaism, i.e., the worship of Ahura Mazda, exalted by Zoroaster as the supreme
divine authority.
"Zoroastrianism is the oldest of the revealed world-religions, and it has probably had more influence on
mankind, directly and indirectly, than any other single faith."
"Zoroaster was thus the first to teach the doctrines
of an individual judgment, Heaven and Hell, the
future resurrection of the body, the general Last
Judgment, and life everlasting for the reunited soul
and body. These doctrines were to become familiar
articles of faith to much of mankind, through
borrowings by Judaism, Christianity and Islam; yet
it is in Zoroastrianism itself that they have their
fullest logical coherence....”
Mary Boyce. Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs
and Practices (London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1979, p. 1, 29.
Joseph Campbell.
The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 156.
“Instead of clearing his own heart, the zealot tries
to clear the world, The laws of the City of God are
applied only to his in-group... while the fire of a
perpetual holy war is hurled (with good
conscience, and indeed a sense of pious service)
against whatever uncircumcised, barbarian,
heathen, 'native,' or alien people happens to
occupy the position of neighbor."
Was it the Bread?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergotism
Other Notions for Discussion:
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Satanism
Patriarchy
Ignorance
Illiteracy (spiritual and otherwise)
“The Male Gaze”
Minorities and the Poor
Spectral Evidence
The Testimony of Children
Youngest accused was 4 years
Property disputes
Black vs. white
Sport for the children
Motivations for adults staying quite
“Poppets”
Theocracy
“Reasonable Doubt”
The Bible
Hanging poor, old women in the name of
religion
Old Testament=God of War
New Testament=The Western Buddha
Litmus tests: Church attendance and 10
commandments
G. Bush: “You are either with us or against us”
The Manipulation of Fear
Noam Chomsky
Tehelka, July 16, 2005
The resort to fear by systems of power to discipline the domestic population has left a long and terrible trail of
bloodshed and suffering which we ignore at our peril. Recent history provides many shocking illustrations.
The mid-twentieth century witnessed perhaps the most awful crimes since the Mongol invasions. The most
savage were carried out where western civilisation had achieved its greatest splendours. Germany was a leading
centre of the sciences, the arts and literature, humanistic scholarship, and other memorable achievements. Prior
to World War I, before anti-German hysteria was fanned in the West, Germany had been regarded by American
political scientists as a model democracy as well, to be emulated by the West. In the mid-1930s, Germany was
driven within a few years to a level of barbarism that has few historical counterparts. That was true, most
notably, among the most educated and civilised sectors of the population.
In his remarkable diaries of his life as a Jew under Nazism — escaping the gas chambers by a near miracle —
Victor Klemperer writes these words about a German professor friend whom he had much admired, but who had
finally joined the pack: “If one day the situation were reversed and the fate of the vanquished lay in my hands,
then I would let all the ordinary folk go and even some of the leaders, who might perhaps after all have had
honourable intentions and not known what they were doing. But I would have all the intellectuals strung up, and
the professors three feet higher than the rest; they would be left hanging from the lamp posts for as long as was
compatible with hygiene.”
Klemperer’s reactions were merited, and generalised to a large part of recorded history.
Complex historical events always have many causes. One crucial factor in this case was skillful manipulation of
fear. The “ordinary folk” were driven to fear of a Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy to take over the world, placing
the very survival of the people of Germany at risk. Extreme measures were therefore necessary, in “selfdefence”. Revered intellectuals went far beyond.
As the Nazi storm clouds settled over the country in 1935, Martin Heidegger depicted Germany as the “most
endangered” nation in the world, gripped in the “great pincers” of an onslaught against civilisation itself, led in
its crudest form by Russia and America. Not only was Germany the prime victim of this awesome and barbaric
force, but it was also the responsibility of Germany, “the most metaphysical of nations,” to lead the resistance to
it. Germany stood “in the centre of the western world,” and must protect the great heritage of classical Greece
from “annihilation,” relying on the “new spiritual energies unfolding historically from out of the centre”. The
“spiritual energies” continued to unfold in ways that were evident enough when he delivered that message, to
which he and other leading intellectuals continued to adhere.
The paroxysm of slaughter and annihilation did not end with the use of weapons that may very well bring the
species to a bitter end. We should also not forget that these species-terminating weapons were created by the
most brilliant, humane, and highly educated figures of modern civilisation, working in isolation, and so
entranced by the beauty of the work in which they were engaged that they apparently paid little attention to the
consequences: significant scientific protests against nuclear weapons began in the labs in Chicago, after the
termination of their role in creation of the bomb, not in Los Alamos, where the work went on until the grim end.
Not quite the end.
The official US Air Force history relates that after the bombing of Nagasaki, when Japan’s submission to
unconditional surrender was certain, General Hap Arnold “wanted as big a finale as possible,” a 1,000-plane
daylight raid on defenceless Japanese cities. The last bomber returned to its base just as the agreement to
unconditional surrender was formally received. The Air Force chief, General Carl Spaatz, had preferred that the
grand finale be a third nuclear attack on Tokyo, but was dissuaded. Tokyo was a “poor target” having already
been incinerated in the carefully-executed firestorm in March, leaving perhaps 100,000 charred corpses in one
of history’s worst crimes.
Such matters are excluded from war crimes tribunals, and largely expunged from history. By now they are
hardly known beyond circles of activists and specialists. At the time they were publicly hailed as a legitimate
exercise of self-defence against a vicious enemy that had reached the ultimate level of infamy by bombing US
military bases in its Hawaiian and Philippine colonies.
It is perhaps worth bearing in mind that Japan’s December 1941 bombings — “the date which will live in
infamy,” in FDR’s (Franklin D. Roosevelt) ringing words — were more than justified under the doctrines of
“anticipatory self-defence” that prevail among the leaders of today’s self-designated “enlightened States,” the
US and its British client. Japanese leaders knew that B-17 Flying Fortresses were coming off the Boeing
production lines, and were surely familiar with the public discussions in the US explaining how they could be
used to incinerate Japan’s wooden cities in a war of extermination, flying from Hawaiian and Philippine bases
— “to burn out the industrial heart of the Empire with fire-bombing attacks on the teeming bamboo ant heaps,”
as retired Air Force General Chennault recommended in 1940, a proposal that “simply delighted” President
Roosevelt. Evidently, that is a far more powerful justification for bombing military bases in US colonies than
anything conjured up by Bush-Blair and their associates in their execution of “pre-emptive war” — and
accepted, with tactical reservations, throughout the mainstream of articulate opinion.
The comparison, however, is inappropriate. Those who dwell in teeming bamboo ant heaps are not entitled to
such emotions as fear. Such feelings and concerns are the prerogatives only of the “rich men dwelling at peace
within their habitations,” in Churchill’s rhetoric, the “satisfied nations, who wished nothing more for themselves
than what they had,” and to whom, therefore, “the government of the world must be entrusted” if there is to be
peace — a certain kind of peace, in which the rich men must be free from fear.
Just how secure the rich men must be from fear is revealed graphically by highly-regarded scholarship on the
new doctrines of “anticipatory self-defence” crafted by the powerful. The most important contribution with
some historical depth is by one of the leading contemporary historians, John Lewis Gaddis of Yale University.
He traces the Bush doctrine to his intellectual hero, the grand strategist John Quincy Adams. In the paraphrase
of The New York Times, Gaddis “suggests that Bush’s framework for fighting terrorism has its roots in the
lofty, idealistic tradition of John Quincy Adams and Woodrow Wilson”.
We can put aside Wilson’s shameful record, and keep to the origins of the lofty, idealistic tradition, which
Adams established in a famous State paper justifying Andrew Jackson’s conquest of Florida in the First
Seminole War in 1818. The war was justified in self-defence, Adams argued. Gaddis agrees that its motives
were legitimate security concerns. In Gaddis’s version, after Britain sacked Washington in 1814, US leaders
recognised that “expansion is the path to security” and therefore conquered Florida, a doctrine now expanded to
the whole world by Bush — properly, he argues.
Gaddis cites the right scholarly sources, primarily historian William Earl Weeks, but omits what they say. We
learn a lot about the precedents for current doctrines, and the current consensus, by looking at what Gaddis
omits. Weeks describes in lurid detail what Jackson was doing in the “exhibition of murder and plunder known
as the First Seminole War,” which was just another phase in his project of “removing or eliminating native
Americans from the southeast,” underway long before 1814. Florida was a problem both because it had not yet
been incorporated in the expanding American empire and because it was a “haven for Indians and runaway
slaves… fleeing the wrath of Jackson or slavery”.
There was in fact an Indian attack, which Jackson and Adams used as a pretext: US forces drove a band of
Seminoles off their lands, killing several of them and burning their village to the ground. The Seminoles
retaliated by attacking a supply boat under military command. Seizing the opportunity, Jackson “embarked on a
campaign of terror, devastation, and intimidation,” destroying villages and “sources of food in a calculated
effort to inflict starvation on the tribes, who sought refuge from his wrath in the swamps”. So matters continued,
leading to Adams’ highly regarded State paper, which endorsed Jackson’s unprovoked aggression to establish in
Florida “the dominion of this republic upon the odious basis of violence and bloodshed”.
These are the words of the Spanish ambassador, a “painfully precise description,” Weeks writes. Adams “had
consciously distorted, dissembled, and lied about the goals and conduct of American foreign policy to both
Congress and the public,” Weeks continues, grossly violating his proclaimed moral principles, “implicitly
defending Indian removal, and slavery”. The crimes of Jackson and Adams “proved but a prelude to a second
war of extermination against (the Seminoles),” in which the remnants either fled to the West, to enjoy the same
fate later, “or were killed or forced to take refuge in the dense swamps of Florida”. Today, Weeks concludes,
“the Seminoles survive in the national consciousness as the mascot of Florida State University” — a typical and
instructive case…
…The rhetorical framework rests on three pillars (Weeks): “the assumption of the unique moral virtue of the
United States, the assertion of its mission to redeem the world” by spreading its professed ideals and the
‘American way of life,’ and the faith in the nation’s “divinely ordained destiny”. The theological framework
undercuts reasoned debate, and reduces policy issues to a choice between Good and Evil, thus reducing the
threat of democracy. Critics can be dismissed as “anti-American,” an interesting concept borrowed from the
lexicon of totalitarianism. And the population must huddle under the umbrella of power, in fear that its way of
life and destiny are under imminent threat…
Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Witch to Live: An Enquiry into Biblical Mistranslation
"THOU SHALT NOT SUFFER A WITCH TO LIVE." This interpretation of Exodus 22:18 provided encouragement to
the witchhunters of the Renaissance, and justified their putting to death those they had identified as witches. Tens of
thousands of unfortunates who, in some way or other, had earned for themselves the title "witch" had little hope of mercy wh
with the seemingly unambiguous nature of this command.
Even today, some Christian Fundamentalist zealots invoke the same passage when denouncing what they see as the
Satanically-inspired success of the Neo-Pagan Craft. Not surprisingly, modern Witches throw the verse back at them as
proof of the extreme and intransigent hatred that monotheists have had, and will always have, for people like themselves.
The problem of Exodus 22:18 is, however, much more complex and interesting. For one thing, the associations of the
word "witch" have, as we know, changed over the centuries. To modern Neo-Pagans it has come to mean something like
benign, Goddess-worshipping, magic-using healer. But the word acquired this meaning only within the last few decades,
and was obviously not the one King James's translators attached to it in 1611. It is absurd to suggest, as some naive NeoPagan writers have, that the passage was intended to be understood as "Thou shalt not suffer a benign, Goddessworshipping, magic-using healer to live."
The use of the word "witch" in this verse is a translation: it is presented -- rightly or wrongly -- as the English-language
equivalent of a term from another language, another culture, and another time. What did the term mean in its original
context, and what shifts in meaning through both language evolution and successive translations have led to its being
understood (or misunderstood) as it is today? In this article I will attempt a concise overview of the linguistic
development of Exodus 22:18 through several Scriptural traditions, from its origins in a specific Near Eastern situation to
current attempts at applying it in non-Western settings.
In its original Hebrew text the verse reads: M'khashephah lo tichayyah. Literally this means: "May a m'khashephah not
live" or "You will not keep a m'khashephah in life." M'khashephah is the feminine form (although it also has a collective
meaning) of a term which can also be used in the masculine m'khasheph). It means someone who practices k'shaphim, a
magic characterized by spell-working that aggressively makes changes in the environment.
K'shaphim appears to be derived from a Semitic root K-Sh-P meaning "to cut off" (it may or may not be related to the
Akkadian kashshapu and its feminine kashshaptu, terms used in Babylonian culture to denote certain magic-users). Its
most important trait is the application of psychic power through directed use of specific words and sounds (i.e. spellcasting), but in a completely private manner, hidden from the rest of the community.
Although it could, in theory, be applied to beneficial as well as harmful ends, the practice of k'shaphim was usually
thought of in terms of its destructive possibilities (i.e., the power to cut off life and prosperity), since this was what
inspired the most anxiety in society at large: a m' khasheph or m'khashephah could cause illness or barrenness, or even
kill, without leaving any traces that would connect them to these actions. The only way to guard against their power was
to discover them and neutralize them(which, more often than not, meant killing them).
Paranoia about spell-casters was not confined to ancient Israel, but has been a common trait of rural societies around the
globe, including cultures untouched by Biblical monotheism. There is a large body of anthropological literature
describing the fear that African and Asian peasants have of secret practitioners of baneful magic, and the often very cruel
means that are used to hunt them down. The attitude of the ancient Israelites towards the m'khashephah is, in this regard,
completely unremarkable.
It is interesting to note that, although later usage of the term indicates that k'shaphim could be practiced by people of
either sex, Exodus 22:18 (if the -ah suffix is indeed intended as feminine) only mentions the female practitioner. Before
we rush to put the blame for this on the misogyny of patriarchal monotheists, we should recognize that this attitude, too,
is widely attested in the ancient world. We find many instances, in a great variety of cultures, of women being attributed
a greater natural aptitude to shape and direct psychic power -- accompanied, of course, by the fear that they will put that
talent to a destructive use. For example, in the famous early Irish poem called the Deer s Cry, attributed to Saint Patrick,
the speaker asks to be protected against (among a list of other magical dangers) briochta ban or "women's spells"; and
lest we assume that this is Christian-inspired misogyny, an inscription on a bronze tablet from first century Gaul uses
almost the same term, proving that the concept was well known to pre-Christian Celts. The theory that such beliefs are
rooted in patriarchy and a fear of women's rebellion is not unfounded; but the presence of such beliefs in ancient Israel is
not a Judaic innovation.
The injunction against the m'khashephah in Exodus appears in the course of a long enumeration of social transgressions
and their appropriate punishments. These include instances of kidnapping and assault; bodily harm caused to humans by
domestic animals; and the accidental destruction of property. Apart from a reminder not to worship foreign gods (a
reference to the first commandment), and a prohibition of bestiality that properly belongs to the purity code in Leviticus,
all the concepts discussed involve threats to social balance and cohesion, and are developments of the principles
contained in the Ten Commandments. The activity of the m'khashephah is a violation of the sixth commandment, and
possibly of the tenth (since it might include destruction of cattle or crops). She is condemned here not simply because she
uses magic, but because her magic jeopardizes people's lives and property, and thus imperils society as a whole. It is seen
as an act of violence, and is classified with other such acts.
This is not to imply, of course, that all non-destructive uses of magic were permitted in early Hebrew society. Other
magical traditions, common to many Near Eastern cultures, are singled out for prohibition in the Torah, but they are
interpreted as violations of the cult due to Yahweh, and do not involve the kind of disruption caused by the
m'khashephah. The practitioners of these other types of magic were seen as threats not to society in general, but to the
specific identity of Israel.
A good example is the character popularly known as the "Witch of Endor ", who appears in I Samuel 28:7-25. The King
James translators never, in fact, refer to her as a witch (a term they reserve for m'khashephah), but as a woman that hath a
familiar spirit , which is intended as the equivalent of the Hebrew esheth ba'alath 'ov. In the story she is a medium or
necromancer, and King Saul consults her (breaking his own laws) to gain contact with the spirit of the recently dead
prophet Samuel.
The term 'ov is generally used in Hebrew literature to denote illicit contacts with the dead. Its origin is obscure; the word
also means a kind of jug. Perhaps such a vessel was a necessary part of the ritual, a container for the familiar spirit with
which one contacted the Otherworld, rather like the calabashes used to house oracular spirits in many African traditions.
However, no such object appears in the story. The translators of King James evidently thought the term meant the
oracular spirit itself, and they had support for this in some other Biblical passages -- for instance, Isaiah 29:4, in the
prophet's threat to the city of Ariel: "v'shaphalt me'eretz t'daberi ume'aphar tishshach imratech v'hayah k'ov me'eretz
qolech ume'aphar imratech t'tzaphtzeph" ("and having been brought low you will speak out of the ground and your
speech will be lowly out of the dust, and your voice will be like that of an 'ov out of the ground, and your speech will
whisper out of the dust"), where the 'ov is clearly a twittering ghost from Sheol.
Apart from these meanings, the term could also be an independent derivation from an old Semitic root '-W-B which
seems to have meant something like empty or hollow. It would then refer to the emptying of one's consciousness that
characterizes mediumistic trance, which fits the description of the esheth ba'alath-'ov's practice. She sees the dead as
'elohim ("gods", i.e., luminous apparitions) rising up out of the ground (the abode of the dead is in the depths of the
earth). They are at first visible only to her, and she must describe them to those who have come to consult her. It is
evident that such consultations with dead ancestors were normal rituals in ancient Israel until they were outlawed by the
Yahwist reformation.
No effort is made in the story to portray the esheth ba'alath-'ov as a disreputable or antisocial person. On the contrary,
she comes across as a virtuous and generous woman, who goes out of her way to help Saul after he collapses from the
effect of the ghostly Samuel's words. Her magic is receptive and manifested only in rituals done for other people, unlike
the aggressive magic of the m'khashephah, which is practiced in solitary secrecy and serves her own ends. 'Ov is
unlawful not because it is socially disruptive or because it offends what we would now call morality , but because it
inappropriately mixes categories, putting the living in a polluting contact with the dead, breaking the taboo that the cult
of Yahweh has placed on all concern for the dead and the Underworld.
When she is first contacted by the emissaries of Saul, the 'esheth ba'alath-'ov says that a decree from the king has
banished not only practitioners of 'ov (whom she refers to in the feminine, 'ovoth, implying that it was principally a
female activity) but people to whom she gives the masculine name yid'onim, which literally means "knowers" (the King
James text has "wizards"). Was a yid'oni someone who, from personal experience, knew about the spirit world and the
arcane patterns that lie beneath the appearances of our everyday life, and could use that knowledge to serve his fellows
when they were faced with problems that resisted mundane solutions? Early uses of the term -- as well as cross-cultural
comparisons -- make it seem likely that it had no negative connotations until the Yahwist reformation brought the
yid'oni's methods (consultation with spirits that were not perceived to be under the direct authority of Yahweh) into
question, and made his practices illegal.
Deuteronomy 18:10-11 proclaims the ban against both the yid'oni and the sho'el 'ov ( consulter of 'ov ), and also lists the
names of a number of other types of magical practitioners about whom one would like to know more: the qosem q'samim
(according to King James, "one who useth divination" -- literally, one who casts lots, perhaps using a system similar to
geomancy or the I Ching); the m'onen ("observer of times", probably a reader of omens in the natural environment); the
m'nachesh ("enchanter"; some scholars have derived this from nachash, snake , and have interpreted it as one who
divines from the behavior of an oracular serpent -- a practice widely known in ancient times); the chover chavar
("charmer" -- literally binder of bonds, i.e., one who can suppress the flow of energy by the magical tying of knots); the
m'khasheph ("witch", listed here again because of the ritual transgression implied by such practices); and the doresh 'el
hametim, ("necromancer"; one who asks the dead , apparently by a method different from that of the sho'el 'ov).
In later Hebrew usage most of these terms came together under the single meaning "magician", but at the time of the
establishment of the Mosaic code they were obviously quite specific and separate in what they designated. The fact that
they were all declared to be to evah (what the King James Bible translates as "abomination") probably helped to blur the
distinctions between them.
It is important to note at this point that in modern speech we have given the word "abomination" a moral meaning --
shaped in part by its presence in the King James text, and the moralistic interpretation that has been put on it by countless
preachers -- which did not originally apply to the term to'evah. The Greek of the Septuagint renders it bdelygma,
"pollution", which is closer to its basic meaning: the inappropriate coming together of dissimilar categories of things that
should always be kept apart, and whose combination should inspire revulsion. Apart from the obvious mundane
applications of this (avoidance of what is classified as dirt , for instance), we find in most traditional cultures a concept of
pollution in a spiritual or magical sense, the belief that contact with certain categories of things or people can strongly
affect the inner power of a person and his/her ability to influence the world. With this in mind, we should realize that
when we discuss the origins of Judaic monotheism we must not project onto that ancient period our modern way of
thinking about politics, society and economics -- as so many writers, unfortunately, do.
The Israelites, like all other ancient peoples, believed in the power of magic. The Yahwist reformation was itself a
supremely magical act, recognizable as such to all of Israel's neighbors. Faced with threats from powerful foreign
enemies, the ruling classes of the Israelites came to feel that the best way to augment the strength of their nation
magically was to focus ever more exclusively on the worship of Yahweh, the god uniquely associated with the identity of
Israel, and to combat the influence of religious practices shared by other nations, since the magical effect of such
practices would be to dilute Israel's specificity, and therefore lower its resistance to foreign pressure. Accordingly, all
activities or objects that were related to non-Yahwist concepts were experienced as pollution, a stain on the vitality of the
Israelite spirit.
This avoidance could extend to very broad categories of experience. We have already noted, for instance, the strong
aversion in the Mosaic code for anything having to do with death -- manifesting, on one level, as an obsessive fear of
contact with corpses, but also including the spirits of the dead and their Underworld realm within the same taboo
category. This is because Yahweh was originally a sky god, and in Near Eastern religion the sky gods -- rulers of
weather, but also of social organization -- were completely cut off from the gods of the Underworld, rulers of birth and
death. Mixing the two categories would have been polluting even in pre-Judaic contexts. Thus after the Yahwist
reformation Yahweh was de facto a god of the living, not of the dead, and any ritual contact with the gods of the
Underworld, regardless of the form it took, was a pollution that diverted energy from him and threatened the power
within him -- and the power within Israel, which was the same thing.
Most of the magical practitioners listed in Deuteronomy 18:10-11 relied on forces that were associated with the rulers of
the Underworld. They were thus condemned not because they used magic but because they used the wrong magic. One
should stress, again, that the use of taboo to protect exclusive categories from pollution is a common phenomenon that
has nothing to do with monotheism. A familiar example can be found in Hinduism, where the ethos of each caste in
society is carefully guarded from pollution by other castes. Another good example is the complex taboo system that
protected Polynesian aristocrats from pollution by commoners (and vice versa). In this, as in many other aspects of their
culture that have been claimed as unique, the early Israelites were quite unexceptional. Even monotheism, which many
suppose to be an exclusively Judaic invention, was developing simultaneously in many parts of the world in Biblical
times.
The conquest of the kingdom of Israel by Assyrian armies in 722 B.C.E. and, finally, the capture of Jerusalem by
Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon in 587 forced the Israelites into much closer contact with their neighbors and completely
transformed the face of Judaism. Gradually, through cross-fertilization with the emerging monotheisms of other cultures,
the unique god of Israel merged with the concept of God. Adherence to the Mosaic code continued, but it was often
interpreted in new ways that involved more universal ethical concepts.
After 332, most of the Near East came under Greek domination, and Greek became the common language of the region,
especially in cities. Jewish communities established in urban centers outside Palestine often used Greek as their only
language, jeopardizing their ability to understand the scriptures that codified their religion. This led, c. 200 B.C.E., to a
team of seventy translators (known ever after as the Septuagint) producing a Greek version of the Hebrew Bible for use
by the Hellenized Jews of the diaspora. As might be expected, the great cultural differences between pre-Conquest Israel
and the urban Hellenistic world made for some difficulties in translation; and the Septuagint's treatment of Exodus 22:18
offers a good example of this.
Fear of hidden spell-casters tends to be a rural phenomenon: it was not a major concern of Hellenistic city dwellers.
There was thus no obvious equivalent to the m'khashephah in the translators environment. One figure in Hellenistic
society did, however, have a similar aura of secret knowledge and double-edged power: the pharmakos or herbalist. The
science of pharmakeia (whence our "pharmacy") was perceived to be extremely complex and beyond the comprehension
of ordinary people, so that one who had mastered its secrets was thought to have access to a power that was almost
magical. Herbs could heal, but they could also be used as poison, sometimes leaving no more trace than a spell would.
Pharmakoi in their city shops were usually consulted for healing, yet there was always the suspicion that they secretly
gave assistance in committing murders. Although pharmakoi could be of either sex, many of them were women, since it
was one of the few occupations open to single women at that time. Like their patroness Hekate, they seemed to defy the
authority structures on which society was based, wielding a power far beyond their station. The Septuagint thus rendered
Exodus 22:18 as: Pharmakous ou peripoiesete -- literally, "You will not keep herbalists." (The suffix -ah, although it
usually denotes a feminine singular noun, can also, as we have mentioned, be understood as a collective: "all those who
practice k'shaphim"; this is the reading the translators preferred.)
Interestingly -- and perhaps because wholesale persecution of pharmakoi in mixed urban communities was not possible -the Greek translation somewhat softens the Hebrew original. Although the primitive meaning of peripoiein is "to keep
alive", its more common idiomatic meaning is to keep for someone's use. Thus the verse could be understood as "You
will not give herbalists a livelihood", i.e., you will not seek out their services.
However, even if the condemnation was less severe, the pharmakoi and their world were, even apart from the shady
reputation they already had in society at large, identified with something sinful, against the will of God. They were linked
to the other magic-users in Deuteronomy 18:10-11, for whom the Septuagint found fascinating Greek equivalents. The
sho'el 'ov, for instance, was felt to correspond to an engastrimythos, literally one who talks in the belly i.e., a
ventriloquist, a medium who speaks in strange voices when possessed by spirits. Also mentioned are the kledonizomenos
(observer of omens), the oionizomenos (observer of birds, augur), the epaeidon (user of incantations to fascinate and bind
someone) and the teratoskopos (interpreter of "monsters" or unusual happenings; this translates yid'oni in Deuteronomy,
although elsewhere yid'oni is appropriately gnostes, "knower"). The idea was growing that magic, even beyond the
polluting properties it had in the traditional Yahwist sense of contamination, was harmful, although the theological
reasons for this were not yet completely formulated. Commentators attempted to prove that pharmakeia and k'shaphim
were the same thing (some even claiming that the "cutting off" etymology referred to the shredding of medicinal plants!).
When the Roman Empire acquired the Hellenistic world, Christianity spread an awareness of the Hebrew scriptures
through its urban network. Although Christians were theoretically freed from the strictures of the Mosaic code, they felt
the Torah was the starting point of their tradition, and encouraged study of it. The Greek-speaking East continued to use
the Septuagint text, but for the Latin West St. Jerome provided a translation at the beginning of the fifth century.
Jerome's work, despite its errors, is an impressive achievement: instead of relying solely on the Septuagint, he taught
himself Hebrew and went back to the original texts. Thus in translating Exodus 22:18 he avoided the pharmakos concept
and rendered m'khashephah as maleficus, literally "evil-doer" -- but, in common speech, a user of maleficia: destructive
spells, baneful magic. The entire verse reads: Maleficos non patieris vivere ("You will not suffer practitioners of baneful
magic to live" -- like the Septuagint, Jerome understands m'khashephah as a collective, not a feminine, noun). Jerome -who seems to have been rather a nasty man -- puts the harshest interpretation possible on the ambiguous Hebrew text.
Jerome's Latin Vulgate was the text in which most people in the West read the Bible during the Middle Ages. It provided
the base for the Church's unifying authority within society, expressed in the balanced structure of the feudal system. By
the thirteenth century, however, the revival of cities and increasing cultural pluralism began to upset that balance,
bringing about a series of political crises and a general sense of anxiety, which naturally led to a demand for scapegoats.
During the eleventh and twelfth centuries a strong Manichaean influence on Western culture sensitized people to the
concept of personalized Evil, and turned Satan -- who until then had played a relatively minor role in Judaism and
Christianity -- into a dominant figure in the Christian imagination. Eventually Satan was thought to be orchestrating a
vast conspiracy of human agents working secretly to erode the bases of Christian society. By the end of the Middle Ages
catastrophes like the Black Death and the collapse of feudalism with its attendant wars reinforced belief in Satanic
conspiracy, and encouraged persecution of those suspected of belonging to it.
There had always been a fear of secret spell-casters in rural communities; now a believable rationale was found for their
existence and purpose: they were agents of Satan, given special powers by him to harm their neighbors. A mythology
grew up describing the activities of these secret Satanists in lurid detail, and as the paranoia reached its height, an
outbreak of accusations around the German town of Mainz in 1484, the Church, in the person of Pope Innocent VIII,
gave this mythology its official approval.
The Biblical statement about malefici, as it was phrased by Jerome, justified putting suspected spell-casters to death:
during the late Renaissance tens of thousands were executed in various parts of Europe on this accusation alone.
Although, as many scholars have pointed out, there were economic and social reasons for the pattern taken by the
accusations, the paranoia was quite real. While a few of those swept up in these hunts were (as Carlo Ginzburg's
researches have shown) practitioners of genuinely Pagan magical traditions (which they invariably believed to be
Christian), it is important to realize that they were condemned not so much because of those practices as in spite of them:
the inquisitors dismissed them as an alibi covering up real Satanic involvement.
As the Bible was translated into the major European vernaculars during the Renaissance, versions of Exodus 22:18
reflected, not surprisingly, whatever terms had been in local use to designate malefici during the trials. It is interesting to
note that, despite the precedents of both the Septuagint and the Vulgate, almost all of the translations interpreted
m'khashephah as a feminine singular rather than as a collective, thus reinforcing the sense that most spell-casters were
women. Some of the terms used were completely negative in origin, like the Italian strega, which comes from Greek
strix, "vampire" -- a being that flies around at night sucking blood or life energy from people (in Latin strix came to mean
"owl", but its original meaning remained well known throughout late antiquity).
Terms in most languages, however, accurately reflected the ambiguous meaning of m'khashephah, pointing up the
continuity and universality of peasant beliefs about spell-casters. The French sorcier/sorciere, for instance, comes from
the Latin sors, "fate", which led to sort, "spell", the magical imposition of a destiny on someone. The English "witch" is
derived from a root meaning "to bend", implying the ability to bend the course of events to one's advantage (or to
someone else s disadvantage). Some terms, like the German Hexe and Swedish haxa, are obscure in origin, although they
are certainly related to the English "hag", and some linguists have suggested that they are derived from a word meaning
"heath", the world outside human culture, stressing the secrecy and separateness of such activities (the Spanish
brujo/bruja, obscure in origin but probably Celtic, may have a similar etymology). The common Russian word for
"witch", vyed ma, simply means "knower", so the Bible translators used the more sinister and archaic term vorozhe,
which is related to the Hungarian varazs, and more specifically associated with baneful magic. Czech has czarodejnice,
maker of spells.
A problem arose with the Celtic languages, which did not make clear distinctions between benign and harmful uses of
magic, but tended to see them as varieties of a single, morally neutral concept. For Exodus 22:18 the Welsh Bible came
up with hudoles, "female weaver of illusion" -- from hud, a term that originally denoted the charms of fascination but
now means "magic" in both positive and negative aspects. Irish, unfortunately, found nothing better than bandraoi
"druidess" -- draoi (from an Old Celtic construction meaning "true-seer") having come to mean "magician" in all senses.
Scots Gaelic used ban-fhiosaiche, "seeress, wisewoman" (the esheth ba'aloth-'ov in I Samuel was called bean aig a bheil
leannan-sith, "a woman who has a fairy lover"!). Manx avoids the problem altogether by borrowing the English word
"witch" as buitch.
We can thus see that, apart from the confusion in the Celtic realm, the translators of the Bible into modern tongues took
some pains to convey the original meaning of the word m'khashephah. This did not mean, of course, that the English
word "witch" (or the equivalent terms in other European languages) retained that specialized meaning. Although scholars
knew the difference, the fusion of the concepts behind the words m'khashephah and pharmakos, begun in the Septuagint,
continued in popular culture, until the bubbling cauldron of the pharmakos became, in the minds of most people, a
normal appendage of the malignant, spell-casting "witch". Since the idea that all magic was illicit had now found its
theological justification -- substituting Satan for the Semitic gods of the Underworld -- the herbalist's quasi-magical
knowledge could be attributed to Satanic influence, and (usually if she was unpopular for other reasons) she became a
legitimate target for witch-hunters.
In the last three centuries missionary efforts have spread Christianity far beyond Europe, necessitating the translation of
the Bible into the languages of non-Western cultures. As we have seen, most cultures around the globe make a distinction
between magic users who do harm (like the m'khashephah) and those whose activities are potentially beneficial to the
community (like the yid'oni). To translate Exodus 22:18 accurately, missionaries needed to know local terms for baneful
magic, not just magic in general. By way of illustration, I will draw on a very few examples from Bible translations well
known to me. The Maori Bible has wahine makutu, "woman who does baneful magic" -- makutu was " illegitimate"
magic, done in secret to harm people. The Hawaiian Bible uses the much less appropriate term kupua, which denotes
persons or objects having magical power in themselves, and often capable of shifting into other shapes (the translator
may have been thinking of European traditions associating women with shape-shifting). Malay gives orang ahii sihir
perempuan, "female adept of baneful magic", correctly distinguishing this from pawang, the general term for magician.
The Malagasy text, less correctly, has vehivavy manana ody, "woman possessing magical charms," where ody means
talismans or potions imbued with magical power, normally used to heal rather than harm, although the ability to harm is
recognized: the translator has obviously drawn on the pharmakos interpretation.
All these translations were made in the past century by people with scholarly credentials and high standards. Recent,
over-hasty translations by Evangelicals eager to convert tribes in remote parts of Africa and South America can be much
sloppier, often translating "witch" by terms that refer to magic users in general, or even to practitioners of native
religions. For example, the Bible in Warao (a language of the Orinoco delta in Venezuela) renders "witch" as wisiratu,
which actually means a native priest and story teller.
I hope this brief excursion into the world of Biblical texts will help convince modern Witches that the negative meaning
of the word witch in popular usage is not the result of a recent Christian conspiracy but the product of a very ancient
tradition of distinguishing between practitioners of harmful and useful magic, expressed in Hebrew by the contrast
between the terms m'khasheph and yid'oni. The word "witch" has always been flavored by an association with baneful
magic; the true equivalents of yid'oni in English tradition would be (as the King James translators knew) "wizard" and
"wisewoman".
In many cultures, "good" magicians are called by words that make some reference to knowledge, as is well exemplified
by Celtic terminology: Irish fear feasa and Welsh dyn hysbys (both "man of knowledge"), Scots Gaelic fiosaiche (seer,
knower), and the older Welsh gwiddon, which is usually translated as "witch" but really means "person of knowledge". It
would be useful, when we deal with cultures that have continuous magical traditions, to identify such terminology and
associate ourselves with it, rather than describing ourselves by a term translated as "witch" in the anthropological sense.
One should note, in parting, that most recent English translations of the Bible, in deference to modern Witches, have
replaced the word "witch" by "sorceress" in Exodus 22:18. A question, however, remains: do modern Witches feel
comfortable with the distinction between the m'khashephah and yid'oni concepts, and all that it implies? That, of course,
is a question no single writer can answer.
by Alexei Kondratiev