ooo, this is a good one

i was lucky enough to have a witch for a mother in law and while i don't believe in the spiritual aspect, i much preferred her religion to the people who would have burned her.

The witch-burning religion has caused untold misery down the centuries

Nimil : right? Any practice is better than the practice of intolerance

Prue : it always amazes me when people go on about Islam and its evils but somehow conveniently forget all the horrible things done in the name of Christianity and some of it pretty damn recently too

...and indeed currently

Considering most 'witches' were women of means with no man to 'keep them in line' ie protect them from greedy assholes, yeah....

Fearyfox(Reyn) : yes! For me, the progression went: witches are scary! witches weren't real and the salem witch trials were based on hallucinations caused by ergot poison, then eventually, in my late 30sish, I learned the real history.

women of means, women who were "uppity", women who were knowledgeable in medicine and competition for doctors and so on.

Being a witch is feminist af

Yep. Abdullah Öcalan talks about women being the first colonised people, and I think it's a good take. For capitalism to work, women's craft economy had to be taken over and 'crafty' women demonised.

Oh, I like that!

It's why, for example, the British Empire/East India Company was brutal about demolishing the centuries old women's textile industry in India.

There are now fabrics that our (rich) ancestors wore that we no longer know how to make because that knowledge was lost.

I didn't know anything about that!

I mean, I knew somewhat about certain crafts being lost by colonized countries, but I always thought it was part of hegemony but purely for power/cultural stuff, I didn't know there was a financial component to it

But then again, duh, money and power do go together all the time, don't they?

Truth

thanks so much for sharing <3 I love learning stuff like this

OhCecilia : Yup. I never got to explain to my mom -why- the roe decision freaked me out so much, but I am worried about her. Shes pretty well off, a widow, and isn't afraid to voice her opinions.