Woman Hating: A Radical Look at Sexuality

for using them. T he women who were faithful to the

pagan cults developed the science o f organic medicine,

using vegetation, before there was any notion o f the

profession o f medicine. Paracelsus, the most famous

physician o f the Middle Ages, claimed that everything

he knew he had learned from “the good women. ” 26

Experimenting with herbs, women learned that those

which would kill when administered in large doses

had curative powers when administered in smaller

amounts. Unfortunately, it is as poisoners that the

witches are remembered. The witches used drugs like

belladonna and aconite, organic amphetamines, and

hallucinogenics. They also pioneered the development

o f analgesics. They performed abortions, provided all

medical help for births, were consulted in cases o f impotence which they treated with herbs and hypnotism, and were the first practitioners o f euthanasia. Since the

Church enforced the curse o f Eve by refusing to permit

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any alleviation of the pain of childbirth, it was left to

the witches to lessen pain and mortality as best they

could. It was especially as midwives that these learned

women offended the Church, for, as Sprenger and

Kramer wrote, “No one does more harm to the Catholic

Faith than mid wives. ” 27 The Catholic objection to abortion centered specifically on the biblical curse which made childbearing a painful punishment —it did not

have to do with the “right to life” of the unborn fetus.

It was also said that midwives were able to remove labor

pains from the woman and transfer those pains to her

husband—clearly in violation of divine injunction and

intention both.

The origins of the magical content of the pagan cults

can be traced back to the fairies, who were a real, neolithic people, smaller in stature than the natives of northern Europe or England. They were a pastoral

people who had no knowledge of agriculture. They

fled before stronger, technologically more advanced

murderers and missionaries who had contempt for

their culture. They set up communities in the inlands and concealed their dwellings in mounds half hidden in the ground. The fairies developed those

magical skills for which the witches, centuries later,

were burned.

The socioreligious organization of the fairy culture

was matriarchal and probably polyandrous. The fairy

culture was still extant in England as late as the 17th

century when even the pagan beliefs of the early witches

had degenerated into the Christian parody which we

associate with Satanism. The Christians rightly recognized the fairies as ancient, original sorcerers, but