Waking The Witch

Waking The Witch - How Mankind has used different scriptures to destroy both women & the men that stood with them and why certain authorities appear to be doing so again.

 

When I was 27, I went to live in the shadow of the great Pendle Hill.  I was at that time, pregnant with my first child and we had moved up to the north of England for my husband, who was looking for work.  He is originally from Manchester but I am from Dorset in the south.  I found the north a very different place to that of the south.  For a start it was very cold and damp, and in the winter, it got darker a lot earlier.  I am a woman who needs a lot of light and warmth, so I struggled with these differences.  

We moved to a little village called Grindleton, which at that time was in Lancashire.  This area is stunningly beautiful, I loved the Pendle Hill but I was finding the changes between north and south and the isolation along with the pregnancy difficult so we didn't stay there for long and we moved back south for the latter stages of my pregnancy and subsequent birth of our son.   Until now I didn't really think of the Pendle hill but after 24 years I have realised that I have somehow retained a connection to that hauntingly beautiful and eerie place.

Waking the Witch - Trac Davies©

This piece is an energy painting, it started with the hair and at first, I thought it was going to be an abstract like Freefall but as it started to take shape under my astonished eyes, I realised what and where it was.  This is where I started to panic, as we have no photographs of the Pendle Hill itself.  I do like to get things right, I could feel and see the energy within it, but was the shape right?  was everything in the right place?  Did it correspond to what it really looked like?  I started browsing through the internet but nothing really seemed to look right and then I had a brainwave, I contacted one of our old friends who used to haunt the snooker table in the pub there and of course, he had the perfect photo, one that was taken in the garden of our house at the time and kindly gave me a copy.

The Pendle Hill - Photograph credited to Mr. Brian White.

There is an echo in and around the Pendle Hill, that has been left by its past, it can be still felt by sensitives and despite its beauty, there are times when you can feel and hears the echos of yesteryear and these echos haunt and leave reverberations.  Of course, I am talking about the trials of the Pendle witches in 1612.

I feel very moved to write about Waking the Witch but have been sitting on writing this blog for quite some time.  Creative blocks come and go with many artists, I knew that I had to write this but the time wasn't right, despite the horrifying facts that in supposedly civilised societies such as our own and that of the USA, women were and still are being treated as things again, rather than human beings. I think that part of me was paralysed by horror as I watched basic human rights being overturned by an arrogant and insufferable administration that had no care for anyone but for themselves and what, they considered, as their right to take exactly they wanted from women, many who had little to begin with.  This horror becomes sheer anger where women, women like any other, support the patriarchal principles, some depraved such as rape culture and child abuse and others such as basic health rights and responsibilities that should continue to be fulfilled but are taken away. These are necessary such as terminations for pregnancies that have gone wrong, birth control pills and feminine care. Women are now having to fight battles for basic health care and gender rights that that have been hard won over the years and taken away in one foul swoop and to rub salt into the wounds there are other women that are supporting this war on themselves!

I can now hear certain people grumbling about what this has to do with me, I am English, I live in France but I can sadly say that this horror has turned to sheer terror as I am now watching these awful actions have implications elsewhere, France and the possible lowering the age of sexual consent is one of these things that I talk about.  This law if it is passed will make it easier for paedophiles to not only get out of jail, but also escape punishment. The consideration of this law being overturned was prompted by a case over here of a rape of an 11 year old girl. The courts judged this as not rape, because she was frozen in terror so did not respond or fight back, so it was considered as consent. The roar of outrage can be heard all over France but it appears to be falling on deaf ears. The girl was only 11, he was 28. There has, since then been a case of a 31 year old mathematics teacher being given a suspended sentence for sleeping with a 14 year old. 

And, the disgruntled reader might add, what has the war against the world's women (and subsequently children); got to do with the events of Pendle hill in Lancashire England, 1612, what has child abuse got to do with any of it? Consider Jennet Device, the nine year old daughter of one of the Pendle witches. There appears to be no record of where she stayed in the four months before the trial of her mother and other members of her family.  She who accused her own mother of practising witchcraft and consorting with demons, she who picked out other members of the party and appeared to have been coached on what to say. Consider her innocence, her pliable mind, her understanding of the world and her place in it and reflect on how she was the key witness, her testimony was paramount to conviction and hanging of her mother and other members of the family along with friends and enemies alike. In addition, she would have watched the hanging which in truth was slow strangulation.  Even in the seventeenth century, before this trial children were never used as key witnesses because they were not judged to be reliable enough but the law changed after this trial. Abuse can come in many forms, it doesn't have to be sexual to do an enormous amount of damage.

We women have always had these battles, we have always had a fight on our hands for not only our reproductive rights and the rights of our children, but the right to live our lives as we see fit. In Pendle 12 went on trial in, 1 was acquitted, 1 died in prison, 10 were found guilty, eight were women and two were men.

I have included the links that I have read about the Assizes trial in Lancaster. These people were most likely to be cunning women and men, which was a risky business in those days, for it was seen as witchcraft by the law at that time. In addition, often there were skirmishes for control between practicing families over any given area, which tended to bring the practice of cunning medicine to those authorities in question.  It started with a pedler, called John Law, who was approached by the teenager Alizon Device. She in the family was a begger. She asked for some pins from him, he was reluctant to hand them over to her because pins were expensive but mainly because they were used in certain spells such as healing and curing warts. He refused to open his pack and walked away from her.  

As he walked away, she cursed him as he left. He then fell to the floor suffered a stroke and was carried to an inn and at first nothing was reported. However, his son took her to see him and she, being convinced of her own abilities and being scared, begged his forgiveness.  His son subsequently reported Alizon Device for trying to kill his father by witchcraft, she and then some members of her family were arrested and taken to Lancaster castle, which served as a prison before trial.  Alizon Device was convinced of her own guilt, she was sure her curse nearly killed this man.

In addition to this situation in 1612, all justice's of peace at that time were told to compile a list of people that didn't attend church to receive communion.  On Good Friday, the 10 April 1612, there was a party at Malkin Tower held by Elisabeth Southerners, otherwise known as Old Mother Demdike, a well known cunning woman of this area and Alizon Device's grandmother.  For this event,  James Device stole a neighbour's sheep to feed everyone there.  This was reported and everyone at the party was arrested, not only because of the stolen sheep but because everyone should by law, attend church. This event led to the start of a trial many belonging to warring and competing families. This was a trial of murder, child-murder, a plot to blow up Lancaster castle, theft, extortion, enchantment and cannibalism.  This trial was set in a divided country where the Catholic church had been dissolved, where many people in Lancashire practised Catholic mass in secret because they had to for the Catholic religion is was now illegal and punishable by death.  Throw into this unwholesome mix that King James I had already had people trying to kidnap and murder him, one of these attempts being the gunpowder plot where the catholic dissenters tried to blow up both King and parliament.  At that time many of the dissenters were said to have fled to Lancashire, where the Catholic religion was not only tolerated but practised, albeit in secret.  The Protestant King James I, also feared that he was being plotted against by witches, any suspicion of witchcraft was grasped by the more political and ambitious justice's of peace such as Roger Nowell, who led the entire inquest.

I'm not going to go into depth about the trial itself but am now going to discuss the painting and how it relates to the events of the time and how everything that I have spoken about relates to this painting.  Waking the Witch is predominantly an energy painting, what I have painted is the energy of this place and the wildness of the Pendle hill is something that is included. When you stand and look upon the Pendle hill, you feel a yearning when the wind blows through your hair but I could still feel the fear in the air. For all it's haunting beauty, I was inexplicably on edge in Grindleton a lot of the time. Of course I was pregnant so hormones probably played a part but there was always a underlying unease that I could never account for.  There is both angel and a dark figure in the energy painting of the hill. All energies here are balanced, you cannot have good without bad, there is no beauty without ugliness a place holds energy and this can be felt as both good and bad.  Conscious beings already have the ability to do very good things but they can also do bad things too. Thus the painting holds the angel, who also could double as a Goddess and a man that comes from the very depths of the hills, casting his energy before him and he appears to be somewhat demonic. Energy is energy, we are the ones that have the ability to use it as such for good or bad purposes but places retain echos which reverberate long after events have been played out.  

There's also a witch that can be seen facing us, she appears to be bending over, is she praying, walking with a stick or using a wand? She appears to be looking defiantly at the viewer but paradoxically, towards the end of the hill too. The defiance of women at this time was better off if it was turned  away from the authorities, I can imagine that the anger at this time was immense but it was still safer to look ahead and play the old and unaware woman whilst defiantly keeping your true wits about you and keeping these hidden from those who watch. There's also a dragon, a protector of the hill.  These are mythical creatures that have been viewed as both good and evil, it all depends on the person that views them. The dragon is a protector of the area and the energy it holds. There is a strength around the Pendle hill that is eternal, I often used to look upon the hill and think of a sleeping dragon, there is also loftiness, it stands alone and powerful and it is timeless. The dragon might have been asleep when I first saw her, but now, just as the Witch is, she is waking up.

There are also other energy forms on the hill but I cover the main ones, let you see them for yourselves. 

The hill is attached to the floating head of the Witch. Her hair flows freely but it's ends have been blunted, as if not cut properly or hacked at the ends, as if all growth has been cut short and stunted, some of these people had their lives cut short, for the ones left, their lives were stunted and I suspect they felt under suspicion themselves for a very long time if not their lifetimes. The Witch is old and sightless, she stares into infinity with blind eyes and appears to be saying something but nobody is listening. She is warning us about history repeating itself and the tragic consequences that follow as she floats above the hill in an almost abstract sky.  Here in this sky, there are forms that are viewed in different ways on different days. One of these energy forms appears to be a young girl standing in front of the indistinct figure of a fairy, she stands before the fairy but is looking back to the sightless head of the Witch just as Jennet Device must have done, she herself was tried and found guilty herself of witchcraft and murder. The evidence was given by Edmund Robinson, who was 10. But times had changed so the case was bought before King Charles I.  Under cross-examination, Edmund admitted that he fabricated the story. Even though some of the women were acquitted, four remained incarcerated and Jennet Device died in Lancaster prison. Why is she standing before an indistinct fairy? Before as legend says, fairy gold vanishes by the morning. I wonder what she was promised to jump onto a table and testify against her mother. Whatever it was, that promise would not have been fulfilled and she would not have understood the emotional consequences of what she did, which is why she looks at the Witch for the witches fate was to be her fate also.

The evil that has been done in the name of religion needs to be addressed. Most of these people's lives were imperfect in the way that they did both good and bad but from what has been since read between the lines, they were not necessarily evil people but folk that were just getting by on the little they had at the time. These people weren't saints, they had very little and lived by begging, extortion, theft and cunning medicine but they were not evil, they were ordinary people, living in extraordinary times and who suffered the consequences of not only living as they did, by using cunning medicine and in some cases, by being catholic.  It beggars belief that we are now facing such times again where our supposed betters and usually richer manipulate both events and people to get what they want, being it promotion, as Roger Nowell did, the favour of King James I as everyone wanted, fame, as Thomas Potts, the clerk of the court wanted, he was also currying favour from the king and the report, concise as it is is now viewed as an exercise on brown-nosing.

But why must women and the men that have the strength to stand with them, suffer persecution like this? In the west, witchcraft is no longer viewed with suspicion as it was back in 1612, but it appears that the authorities do have a massive issue with women. America's women are very much persecuted and sexual abuse has become so rife but nobody seems to care anymore. This pattern is repeating elsewhere. The people in power must be scared of their women, why else would they persecute them and take away basic rights? We are seen by certain chauvinistic and odious men as the weaker sex, if this is true, why the persecution? Why the need to control our reproductive system and health, who we are and what we do? These men, who are often those in power, are the weaker ones, they have no real backbone. They hide behind their money and political power, they are not strong enough to view women as equals and this includes those that get a kick out of repression of all of the people. These weak and ineffectual men (and sometimes women who muscle in on that hellish ride); have always feared our reproductive power, after all, in certain societies we were once viewed as Goddesses. Repression of the female sex has been going on since time immemorial, the stronger men that know of our value and that of their own also tend to be truly powerful but there are very few men like this in the political arena and if they are, they are either downplayed or ridiculed.

It both saddens and infuriates me that we are facing persecution once again and it isn't just women who are suffering.  Look at the fascism that is now ongoing, the racism that goes with this is frightening indeed and this is what the Witch is warning us, about history repeating, which it has many times over and is doing so again. I think I shall leave this with two of the wisest writers I have ever read, I am talking about Sir Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. In Good Omens, they put it beautifully; 
"Nothing wrong with witchfinding. I'd like to be a witchfinder. It's just, well, you've got to take it in turns. Today we'll all go out witchfinding, an' tomorrow we could hide, an' it'd be the witches' turn to find US....". 

Remember, what goes around comes around, acceptance of other people's ways of life is the way forward, do as you will as long as you harm none. One day it could be our turn.



PostScript.

Since writing this very long blog, after the enormous and justified outcry, the age of sexual consent in France has been fixed at 15, which was what it was before.  However, in certain French cities, sexual harassment has become a huge problem.  I have included The Guardian's online article.  Harassment has always been a problem with certain types of men, they don't learn that women are not a commodity or a toy to play with and this could well be their downfall.

With many thanks to Mr. Brian White for the use of his photograph of the Pendle hill, I can almost feel the breeze through my hair again!

Suggested reading and watching.

Links regards USA, France, Legal proceedings etc:

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/09/trumps-birth-control-rule-is-discrimination-against-women-commentary.html
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/04/04/donald-trumps-presidency-is-an-assault-on-women/
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-abortion-men_us_5886369be4b0e3a7356a7910
https://www.thecut.com/2017/01/president-trump-womens-rights-abortion.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-pulls-back-obama-era-protections-women-workers-n741041
https://qz.com/1099217/the-trump-administration-isnt-just-curtailing-womens-rights-its-systematically-eroding-trust-in-women/
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/reports/2017/04/25/430969/100-days-100-ways-trump-administration-harming-women-families/
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/02/usa-trumps-seven-first-steps-to-sabotage-human-rights/

https://www.thelocal.fr/20171113/france-could-set-legal-age-of-sexual-consent-at-13-after-man-acquitted-of-raping-11-year-old
http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2017/09/26/01016-20170926ARTFIG00319-une-fillette-de-onze-ans-jugee-consentante-apres-une-relation-sexuelle-avec-un-adulte.php
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/11/27/french-teacher-handed-suspended-sentence-sleeping-14-year-old/
http://www.sudouest.fr/2017/11/27/relation-entre-un-professeur-et-une-eleve-de-14-ans-c-est-un-predateur-sexuel-3983783-4697.php

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/03/they-just-dont-see-us-as-human-women-speak-out-on-frances-harassment-problem

The first is a documentary that  found on timeline, it covers everything and for me is a must-watch for concise & fascinating information.  The others are links to reading material.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MATKIhrDZSc  

The Pendle Witch Child (Witchcraft Documentary) | Timeline 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendle_witches

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-14490790

http://www.pendlewitches.co.uk/

https://www.visitlancashire.com/inspire-me/pendle-witches/the-story-of-the-lancashire-witches

And last but not least: 

Good Omens. Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman.

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Trac Davies - Artist ©