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Palin, Clinton and 'Wicked' Women
Halloween is upon us, the one night of the year when witches - a.k.a. women - get to rule the roost. Our proverbial wickedness is celebrated in costumes and cartoons by a society that usually buries its deep-rooted fear and mistrust of women who go their own way. Will those fears grow as women like Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin edge us closer to real power?
Of course, things have changed. Women have expanded that one night into at least, oh, twenty or thirty days, but there is still some deep-seated mistrust of us. Sarah Palin was recently exorcised by an esteemed Kenyan minister Thomas Muthee, who has had personal experience with a dangerous Kenyan witch named "Mama Jane." Fed up with Mama Jane's disruptive pranks and allegedly homicidal ways, Bishop Muthee had her expelled from Kiambu, declaring that the town wasn't big enough for both of them.
Is Bishop Muthee alone in his wariness of women? Unfortunately not.
This is an old, old story given supreme expression in one incredible book: The Malleus Maleficarum, or The Witches' Hammer. Written in 1485 by two Dominican friars, the Malleus is the law book which solidified the power of the Catholic Church and served as a basis for the Inquisition. It outlined in graphic detail procedures for identifying, prosecuting, and punishing a witch. In short order, the word witch and woman become synonymous in the text.
The book draws on the Bible as well as the writings of learned churchmen, who give magisterial expression to the deep-seated feeling that women are the root of all evil. It was accompanied by the most powerful papal bull, thus sanctifying it with supreme church authority. Language from the Malleus can be found in the Salem witch trials.
The language is vivid: According to St. John Chrysostym, for example, "It is not good to marry; What else is woman but a foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil of nature, painted with fair colors!" Also, according to the Malleus, witches are responsible for all the world's evils, most amusingly a man's impotence. "And what, then, is to be thought of those witches who ... collect male organs in great numbers, as many as twenty or thirty members together, and put them in a bird's nest, or shut them up in a box, where they move themselves like living members, and eat oats and corn, as has been seen by many and is a matter of common report?"
The mistrust of women lingers on even today, especially in countries where witchcraft is still assigned a premier role in political, agricultural, and economic fortunes. It's interesting to remember that the Inquisition was at its height, not in the superstitious Dark Ages, but in the enlightened Renaissance, when the society was rapidly evolving. People cling harder to old values in a changing world.
While watching Bishop Muthee bless Sarah Palin on the YouTube video, asking God to bring money for her gubernatorial campaign, I kind of wondered what she was doing there. I was reminded of two lines from the Malleus. One, taken from Ecclesiastics which states: "I had rather dwell with a lion and a dragon than to keep house with a wicked woman." And the other: "Let us consider another property of hers, the voice. For as she is a liar by nature, so in her speech she stings while she delights us. Let us also consider her gait, posture, and habit, in which is vanity of vanities. There is no man in the world who studies so hard to please the good God as even an ordinary woman studies by her vanities to please men... Woman is a wheedling and secret enemy."
Got that, Sarah?
Jane Stanton Hitchcock is a novelist and playwright. Her play include Vanilla, directed by Harold Pinter, and The Custom of the Country, an adaptation of Edith Wharton's great novel. She has written five books, including, Trick of the Eye, nominated for both the Edgar Allen Poe Award and the Hammett Prize for Best First Novel of the Year, The Witches Hammer, which has recently been rewritten and reissued by HarperCollins, and New York Times Bestsellers Social Crimes and One Dangerous Lady. She currently lives in Washington with her husband Jim Hoagland. Her next book, Mortal Friends, a murder mystery set in social and philanthropic Washington, D.C., will be published by HarperCollins next spring.
By Jane Stanton Hitchcock |
October 30, 2008; 4:52 PM ET
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Posted by: Palamas | November 1, 2008 6:10 PM
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I actually came across this article through a link to our "Malleus Maleficarum" web site (malleusmaleficarum.org) from a blogger who listed quotes out of context and claimed that the article was a non-sensical rant. Never one to take others' opinions at face-value, I looked up the article and read it for myself. In my opinion, however quickly some people might like to dismiss this article and its use of the "Malleus" as a literary device, the fact remains that Sarah Palin was blessed and "anointed" by a man who has conducted literal witch-hunts and is engages in "spiritual warfare" against demons and witches. Cast in that light, it's not as much of a stretch to examine the "Malleus" in connection with this article. The "Malleus" did set in place many of our common misconceptions about witches and witchcraft, and as such it has a direct connection to people such as Pastor Muthee and, by association, Sarah Palin.
- Wicasta Lovelace
Posted by: Wicasta | November 1, 2008 1:20 PM
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Reading the Bible, personally you see, that the Lord has created for the person of the assistant and the favourite person. Apostle Paul advised to address with the woman as with a fragile vessel. And that there is an opinion on the woman as center of a harm - that this private opinion which is in any way not finding the acknowledgement in the Bible... Absolutely the another matter, that as behaves the woman... But it already other story and other cases...
Posted by: shyanov | November 1, 2008 2:48 AM
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Actually, Mama Jane was not some evil woman doing bad things. She was a rival pastor in town. And she didn't leave the area, she just moved away from where Muthee was.
Posted by: Athena4 | October 31, 2008 6:20 PM
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Your comments clarify for me that Palin is simply another stereotype that Republicans have foisted on the US population in order to hoodwink them into putting another of their candidates into office. If we are still influenced by these tactics we certainly deserve what we get. It is truly 'trick or treat' because of you do not give Republicans what they want they will make sure that nasty things happen to you. This is what all their fear mongering is about, extortion.
Posted by: kengelhart | October 31, 2008 5:11 PM
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Ms. Hitchcock, you have some weird fascination with witchcraft, but I have no idea what that has to do with Sara Palin.
Strange ... even for a column written on Halloween.
Posted by: SeekTruth | October 31, 2008 3:39 PM
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The comments to this entry are closed.
Wicasta: I'm not sure what you mean by "out of context" quotes. My blog entry quoted all but two paragraphs of Hitchcock's piece. You may not like the way I divided it up in order to comment, but most of her piece was there. Nothing was taken out of context. As for it being a "rant," I didn't use that word in my post, but you did in a comment.
So that readers can compare your comment to my post, I'll leave the URL:
http://reformedpastor.wordpress.com/2008/11/01/palin-derangement-syndrome/#comments