Bovenschen ContemporaryWitchHistorical 1978

The Contemporary Witch, the Historical Witch and the Witch Myth: The Witch,
Subject of the Appropriation of Nature and Object of the Domination of Nature

Author(s): Silvia Bovenschen, Jeannine Blackwell, Johanna Moore and Beth Weckmueller
Source: New German Critique , Autumn, 1978, No. 15 (Autumn, 1978), pp. 82-119
Published by: Duke University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/487908
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
Duke University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
New German Critique
This content downloaded from

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
The Contemporary Witch, the Historical
Witch and the Witch Myth: The Witch,
Subject of the Appropriation of Nature
and Object of the Domination of Nature
by Silvia Bovenschen
I. The Contemporary Witch - The Witch Returns
The topic of "witches" has become fashionable, has indeed already

acquired a fatal glamour. It has even achieved scholarly legitimacy.
The fact that researchers are once again concerned with the historical
phenomenon of witch persecution is by no means the origin of the vital
interest in the subject today: that would be the vain assumption of ivory
tower scholars, researchers who, imagining their scholarship to be auton-
omous, have failed to notice that they are merely the rearguard of a movement.
In a demonstration against the Italian abortion laws in Rome, 100,000
women shouted, "La Gioia, la gioia, la si inventa, donne si nasce, le streghe
si diventa!"(*) and "Tremate. tremate, le streghe son tornate!"(**)
Is the image of the witch a wish projection resulting from unrealized
female potential? Are witches for feminism what Spartacus, the rebellious
peasants, the French revolutionaries and the Bolsheviks are for the
socialists? During the protest against a trial in Itzehoe, Germany, which was
sensationally blown up by the press because the accused women were having
a lesbian relationship - and the sentence was an unusually severe one -
women called the proceedings a witch hunt. In many feminist demonstra-
tions the participants dress up as witches. Women's bars have names such as
Blocksberg, (***) books have titles such as Hexengefliister (Witches' Whis-
pering), a women's rock band proclaims the return of the witch ... the
rumor spreads and an image crystallizes. But apparently without the explicit
intention of constructing, a posteriori, the revolutionary, historical conti-
nuity of feminism. The assimilation of the witch into feminist visual and
linguistic parlance happened spontaneously, not as the result of a plan. The
revival of the word, the image, the motif doubtless has something to do with
(*) "Joy, joy, joy, is invented, born as a woman, made into a witch!"
(**) "Tremble, tremble, the witches have returned!"
(***) site of witches' rites
83

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
10, M" mg,'mw k 79 h,'jtop-
Jim
Reproduced by kind perm

and Neue Gesellschaft
This print was supposed to ap

"Abortion and Economic Cri

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
84 Bovenschen
the new women's movement (though in the old movement it h

role), but not in the sense that learned women turned tho
scientifically to feminist historical archaeology, dug throug
of history and finally discovered in the witch pogroms of
Ages proof of the oppression of women (there is, afte
oppression in the present). It was not the flood of theore
works which initiated the frequent and exemplary use of
image, and brought about the astonishing renaissance of th
The empirical witches of today - those women who apply
themselves - have, at first glance, little in common with
witches who were burned at the stake. Until recently they did
a clear picture of witches' existence in the past (there was u
about them mentioned in school). Since it cannot be assum
100,000 women in Rome who threateningly shouted the wo
appropriated that almost inaccessible historical knowledge,
more direct preconceptual relationship - possibly in conne
diffuse historical idea - between the word on the one hand and
.experiences of today's women on the other.
The word, the image, touched a sensitive nerve, they r
moment of experience far beyond their former historical sign
The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only
which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and i
again.1
This experiential appropriation of the past differs qualitatively from that

of the scholar in the archive - at least with respect to its everyday manifesta-
tion. It deals with something other than what traditional sources, data and
commentary have to offer. In it are incorporated elements of historical and
social fantasy which are sensitive to the underground existence of forbidden
images; it is anarchical and rebellious in its rejection of chronology and
historical accuracy.
The past carries with it a temporal index by which it is referred to redemption.
There is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one.2
It is as if the empirical witches perceived this secret agreement Benjamin

describes; as if those directly affected by the present are closer to the past
than historical reflection, which can only name the desire for "redemption,"
would allow them to be. A theoretical interest in the prevalence of the witch
image today canot, of course, be accused of trying to claim for itself auton-
omous historical objectivity.
1. Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History," Illuminations (New York,

1968), p. 257.
2. Ibid., p. 256.

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
The Witch 85
To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it 'the

It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment
In the interaction of phylo- and ontogenetical constituents of

ness - in which "the individual still stands in archaic ident
species"4 - that which male historiography omitted, su
tabooed did not simply disappear; even experiential action
moments historically aware, to the extent that it elicits the col
of the repressed.' This re-recollection is neither reflective, nor
tive - it is possible given a continual and consistently unfulfille
liberation, measured in comparison to the most blatant exam
things which still cause suffering. The past can still seem
because the structures of gender-specific suppression a
remained so constant - even if for the moment we are relati
being burned at the stake.
The rediscovered past yields critical standards which are taboo
present. Moreover, the restoration of memory is accompa
restoration of the cognitive content of fantasy.5
Witch mythology mediates between the historical and t

witch, at the juncture between the femininity syndrome and ag
representation. In popular myth, witches stand side by side wit
mother goddesses. For a long time women were afraid o
witches, since this term belonged to the internalized repertoire
invective. They succumbed to the illusion of being able to escap
the witch - but those Roman demonstrators shouted "women have been
made into witches." As we learned from childhood fairy tales, anyone old
and a little bit eccentric could be called a witch. We all get old, and are all
considered eccentric if we do not voluntarily bow to our prescribed feminine
fate.
When women began to deliberately assume the witch role, they were in
no way behaving as spontaneously and arbitrarily as it may appear.
Will-Erich Peuckert (a long time witch-hunter), for example, was always
instantly reminded of witches whenever he came across any groups of rowdy
women.
My assistant returned one morning from vacation. He had so

train compartment which a women's group was using fo
excursion. Apparently they were annoyed to have a male tra
They loudly told risque jokes, obscenities flew back and fort
group sang a bawdy song and verbally abused the man, askin
possibly give a rendition of the uncut version of another
3. Ibid., p. 257.
4. cf. Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization (New York, 1962).
5. Ibid., p. 18.

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
86 Bovenschen
were . .. upstanding women of the urban upper middle class, who

group on a festive occasion got excited and whose comments
extremely daring.
And a further example:
I experienced such women on another occasion too .... It was in

and the birds were chirping - the women were out in the fields p
And they outdid themselves with obscenities. They outdid the
lewd and undisciplined actions; I only know that they undressed
girls, that they all took off their skirts and danced half-naked.6
I find it to be not so much the women's actions as the way i

are described that leaves the impression of obscenity. I
presumably eternal aspect of witchery: "I believe," says P
witches were already convening in earlier times - when they
and lusted together - as women of their era and their (pres
archal) culture used to do."7
Such a view would be no more than ideological and disgus
not simultaneously attest to the durability of the witch image,
its masculine projection. Peuckert looks for the reason for the
this image where it is usually sought, namely in female sexuali
compulsiveness" which stems from a "natural tendency,"
"innate characteristic." This reactionary antifeminist schem
supposedly extremely dangerous hypertrophy of female s
already the basic tenet of the earlier witch-hunters' writings;
being liberalized and presented in a watered down version.
Up until recently the word witch did not have a pleasan
evoked childhood fears - we often called old teachers whom we could not
stand and whom we feared by that name. The word "witch" experienced the
same transformation as the word "queer" or "proletarian": it was adopted
by the person affected and used against the enemy who had introduced it. At
this point, if not before, it became apparent to women that, by labelling
other women "witches" (the term "bluestocking" has a similar function),
they were doing the same thing as the assimilated homosexual who fingers a
"pansy" in the hope that the pressure would be on the other rather than on
himself. Thus, we wanted to use the expression to turn attention away from
ourselves, towards others. Sartre tells a story about the young Genet who
once stole something. People said, "He is a thief," and he then became a
thief. In the case of Genet it was an individual act. But to the extent that
women have appropriated the frightening apparition and collectively taken
over the myth, the individual is freed from it.
6. Will-Erich Peuckert, "Ergainzendes Kapitel fiber das deutsche Hexenwesen," in Julio

Baroja, Die Hexe und ihre Welt (Stuttgart, 1967), p. 291.
7. Ibid., p. 295.

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
The Witch 87
The fact that women are dressing up as witches for their demonstr
and festivals also points to this mimetic approach to their own p
history through the medium of mythological suggestion. They a
certain extent, practicing witchcraft. The antifeminist metaphysi
kept conjuring up the magical demonic potential of femininity un
potential finally turned against it. Magic approaches reality via i
visions; "Like science, magic pursues aims, but seeks to achieve t
mimesis - not by progressively distancing itself from the object
mimetic moment in the demonstrations exemplifies on the one
critique of and ironic approach to the male mystification of the femal
on the other, a relationship to history and nature which actually is un
the image of the witch, elements of the past and of myth oscillate, bu
with them, elements of a real and present dilemma as well. In the sur
myth, nature and fleeting history are preserved. In turning to an hist
image, women do not address the historical phenomenon but rat
symbolic potential:
Thus utopian function often has a double foundation, that of immersion i
middle of hope. That is, preliminary work has been performed on hope w
the archaic framework. More specifically: within those archetypes which
strike a chord, which are left over from the era of a mythical conscio
providing categories for fantasy, and contain an undeveloped nonmyt
surplus.9
The fantastic qualities of imagination go far beyond what theoretical

discourse, hostile towards images as it is, can transmit.
Fantasy is cognitive. . . in so far as it protects, against all reason, the aspira-
tions for the integral fulfillment of man and nature which are repressed by
reason. In the realm of fantasy, the unresonable images of freedom become
rational. 10
To elevate the historical witch post festum to an archetypcal image of

female freedom and vigor would be unimaginably cynical, considering the
magnitude of her suffering. On the other hand, the revival of the witch's
image today makes possible a resistance which was denied to historical
witches.
This moment of resistance is, however, contemporary and political. It is
not based in mythology even though it occasionally makes use of mythologi-
cal imagery. However, I find the reference to myth dangerous when it is used
as proof of the eternal recurrence of the same, thereby obscuring the differ-
ence between myth, history and reality.
8. M. Horkheimer and Th. W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (New York, 1972), p. 11.
9. Ernst Bloch, Das Prinzip Hoffnung, I (Frankfurt am Main, 1959), p. 181.
10. Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, p. 145.

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
88 Bovenschen
Of course the rediscovery of the historical existence of m

societies was first made possible by the myth and symbol r
Bachofen (later anthropologists, ethnologists and cultural his
firmed his findings), but any immediate and unreflected recollec
female power that is supposed to lead us back to our roots v
back to Gaja, Demeter, Aphrodite, etc. - ought to remain su
such attempt, in all its ambivalence, requires careful interpre
very least. This antihistorical, primeval mythological met
reactionary ideologies of the 19th and 20th centuries, contr
attempts to ontologize sexual opposites and biologize femininit
referring to here is "the geneological conjuring up of prime
which was and still is useful as a powerful political tool in pro
since it activates a primeval-mythical psychology."11 This conj
myth against history. Such theories are still attractive today
hostility to civilization operates with an uncritical concept of
Precisely in this age of ecological crisis, invocation of the ear
may seem to point to an alternative.
Sooner or later women will be accused of appropriating tha
tradition which in the history of ideas is best represented b
Klages and Jung, since they refer back to the historical and
signals of women's neglected and suppressed history. I believ
tion to be unfounded. It would apply only if we attempted t
contiguous synthesis of geneology linking primeval powers to
day fate of women, as did Esther Harding, the disciple of Jun
The myths and customs which we have observed dimly reflect the fe
reactions of men and women not only towards a woman in particula
towards women per se, towards the principle of femininity which,
the masculinations of the modern woman, remains the source of w
and dominates her physical life as wel as the essence of her soul.12
This recourse to an ontological substance of femininity init

greatness. It is based upon recourse to past significance and its st
however hidden validity.
It is, therefore, most important that we try to establish a better rela
the feminine principle, or, as the ancients expressed it, to the Grea
the Magna Dea. 13
Ignoring the social structures on which the former power

rested, she is again called upon to defend her old dominion. This
11. Klaus Heinrich, Parmenides und Jona: Vier Studien iiber das Verhiiltnis
und Mythologie (Frankfurt am Main, 1966), p. 25.
12. Esther Harding, Frauen-Mysterien einst und jetzt, with an introduction
(Zurich, 1949), p. 247.
13. Ibid., p. 248.

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
The Witch 89
is probably based upon the fabrication of an "ancient tie" to an

cause," a construction which serves as a metaphysical safet
everyday life and which is supposed to give illusory meaning t
bleakest female existence. Esther Harding is a good example of
an approach may lead. She performs a balancing act: on the one
wants to help the principle of femininity achieve recognition
effectiveness - particularly since masculine rationality ha
improve the world - but on the other hand, the feminine powers o
tion cannot be allowed to be fully unleashed.
When this feminine principle, or, expressed naively, this goddes

through nature, she reveals herself to be a blind power, cruel and
simultaneously life-giving and destructive. . . . This is the principle o
nity in its demonic form.14 . . .a woman cognizant of her own higher
development recognizes this danger and carefully refrains from actio
have such potentially disastrous consequences, because only by disc
desires can love and spiritual relationships between the sexes be ac
The politics and ideology which reduce women to this arche

gorization have turned the Great Mother into the exploited reci
fascist motherhood medal. The ideology of motherhood, specif
reference to matriarchal roots, reduces woman to her biologica
Compared to the full range of powers which women actually held i
times at the beginning of agrarian societies, only the ability to bea
survives in such projections of motherhood in the highly ind
society of the 20th century - as if this reduction did not in fact c
an older misogynous ideology of femininity. These ideas produc
results such as an escapist hostility towards civilization (flight from
sectarianism, etc.) as typified by the eco-freaks in the United S
whom only health food stores profit.
Theories like Esther Harding's will not exactly advance the
movement. Neither are such theories the source of the revival of interest in
witches today. What Ernst Bloch said of the Jungian archetypes applies to
these theories as well:
.. .everything new is eo ipso worthless, even worth-negating; for Jung and

Klages the only thing new is the present day destruction of the instincts, the
decomposition of the primeval instinctual base by the intellect. .. Psycho-
synthesis - fleeing the present, hating the future, seeking the primeval-...
then the most barren superstition ranks above Enlightenment thought; for of
course Jung's collective unconscious flows with more import in witchcraft than
in pure reason. 16
14. Ibid., p. 255.

15. Ibid., p. 290.
16. Ernst Bloch, Das Prinzip Hoffnung, I, p. 67.

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
90 Bovenschen
Of interest here, although for other reasons, is the "imp

component of these archetypes" (Ernst Bloch) which both J
Harding discovered, namely that process by which blocke
becomes animated and conscious by means of myths, image
(particularly important in this context are the works of Keren
example of the women's demonstration in Rome, this process i
resistance, of struggle, then it itself becomes history. Myth lo
form which so interests philologists. It is not simply renewed,
its characteristic as "depoliticized statement,"17 and is "rel
genealogical bonds to primeval, mythological psychology
fore not a contradiction to have even a demythologize
carried out in mythological images."18
Only the demythification within militant activity allows th
between witches and the ancient feminine myths of the
something relevant not only to the past, but primarily to t
future: liberation from enforced role behavior and diffuse anx
part also consists of dismantling the evaluation and my
femininity built up during the centuries of patriarchal domina
establish their own autonomy by invoking the feminine "witch
only looks like a new myth has been created.
Myth can always, as a last resort, signify the resistance which is bro
against it. Truth to tell, the best weapon against myth is perhaps to
its turn, and to produce an artifical myth. 19
A further investigation of the reason for the mobilization o

myths and feminine symbols within the women's movemen
unique durablity and consistency of different mytholo
throughout history. The threatening film vamp is still equ
same attributes Esther Harding ascribes to her Earth Moth
accused of crimes similar to those which made the femme
century novels and dramas such a menacing literary perso
sphinx, as demon, as unbridled sensual creature, at the ex
possession of the infamous vagina dentata, wafts through
cultural history. In reality - as the cultural historian Egon
tained - there is no great difference between the defamatio
so manifest in the Witches' Hammer, and antifeminism a
example, in Strindberg's female characters. "There is a long
direct line from the witch hunts of the reformation to Strind
Central to almost all theoretical sexual treatises since the Witches'
Hammer - both those which coerce women into the bourgeois code of
behavior and those which see woman as barely controlled sensuality per se
17. cf. Roland Barthes, Mythologies (New York, 1972).

18. Klaus Heinrich, Parmenides und Jona, p. 27.
19. Roland Barthes, Mythologies, p. 135.
20. Egon Friedell, Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit (Munich, 1931), p. 332.

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
The Witch 91
- is the implicit assumption - often an emphatic one - that t

which woman exudes and the sole power which she can in fac
rooted in her destructive sensuality. This desire to dominate, proje
women, is repeatedly conjured forth. As early as Rousseau's re
tions for Sophie's education, more distinctly in Schopenhauer or W
less speculatively and presumably more scientifically in sexol
Kraft-Ebbing, we find the scandalous image of the courtesan
political power, of the all-consuming sensual woman who thr
liberalization of sexual relationships could come to recall
potential: in essence, the fear of the return of the witch. From th
tive, there is a bit of the witch in every woman, a bit of Hetaera
most upstanding housewife. This motif can be found in transfigur
the works of various authors of the Decadence and Black Roman
authors for whom the ancient world of powerful mythological fig
sented a realm in which everything was allowed, in which sexualit
find its expression in society before the inception of Christian dog
canon of sexual sanctions. In every form - in this transfigura
this mythologizing corresponds to the wishful thinking of men. T
lines handed down from spiritual leaders to their fellow men were
as a rule (though more or less camouflaged), those of constant and
ing domestication of woman. The uniformity (or at best limite
projected by these substantializations of the feminine in the
ideology make it simple to anthropologize the phenomenon,
process it often happens that the formation of ideology is no
oughly investigated in its appropriate historical substrata, but
uniform opinions about facts concerning femininity are treate
themselves were real facts. The realms of myth, history and p
reality merge into an impressive but undifferentiated fog.
Psychological explanations seem quite plausible in that tracts
and defamation depict without exception the threat of feminin
the Witches' Hammer is an example par excellence. They are f
part rooted in the presumed masculine fear syndrome: fear of
fear of the all consuming mother. But in response to the question
fear reached such extreme proportions precisely at the time o
trials, these theories can only make vague reference to the church
towards sex (the question remains, why did this particular fear acc
the late Middle Ages?) and to an array of historical variables which
quite spelled out.
It almost appears as if that masculine primal fear, whose traces can be
throughout human history, is reactivated in some mysterious way. O
there are many historical variables, so that it can only be surmised
extent the uneasiness caused by civilization itself increasingly aff
tension of the male psyche.21
21. Hoffman R. Hays, Diimon Frau (Diisseldorf, 1969), p. 300.

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
92 Bovenschen
When the problem is viewed in this light, the only thing we w

fear for our lives can do is to bide our time and watch out for an
new increase in tension in the male psyche. We would be grateful
for any hints as to what we should be on the lookout for. E. Jone
a psycho-sexual fear syndrome not only in men, but in women as
of the opinion "that the fear which is hidden behind the be
Maleficium was the fear of inadequacy or of the failure of sex
which lies deep in the human soul. (For men, the 'castration
women, 'fear of sterility')."22
He views the "witch epidemic" (even this term suggests a
malaise) as not so much a masculine as a feminine projection
fears, dreams and desires of women which provided the basis for
The thesis presented here states that the belief in witches is es

projection of suppressed sexual wishes of the woman, particularly th
relate to the feminine counterpart of the Oedipus complex, that is t
the father and jealousy and enmity towards the mother. Just as
separates the image of the father into his benevolent and malicious
thereby makes possible the belief in God and the devil, it also sep
mother into two halves, out of which stems the belief in both godde
Dei) and female devils.23
According to this theory, women themselves provided (pro

image, upon which model their systematic elimination was then b
the fact that it was not women who tortured, inhumanely tried
murdered millions of witches cannot be retroactively reinterpret
of the executioners.
Any analysis of the inclinations towards belief in God and the devil, in
good and evil women, that does not take into account an examination of the
real conditions for the psycho-sexual development of children in the 15th
century seems to me problematic, to say the least.
The one-sided application of psychoanalytical categories to the phenom-
enon of witch-burning has had the objective function of rationalizing it and
making it appear less threatening. E. Jones, who sees the witchhunt as the
epidemic spread of a neurotic syndrome, above all among women, makes
tautological use of the equally unexplained hysterical hatred of sexuality in
medieval theology to explain this phenomenon.
An attempt to interpret an historical mass phenomenon by means of
individual psychological categories does not get beyond characterizing witch
persecution as an historical period of regression. (I am referring here only to
those psychoanalytically oriented texts which deal with witch persecution,
whereas Jones' work is earlier - and thus does not operate on the level of
22. Ernest Jones, Der Alptraum in seiner Beziehung zu gewissen Formen des mittelalterlichen
Aberglaubens (Leipzig and Wien, 1912), p. 106.
23. Ibid., p. 105.

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
The Witch 93
today's theoretical psychoanalytical discussion.) The allusion to

recurring forms of the Oedipal situation can to some extent
longevity of the mythifications of femininity, but not the differe
"normal," latent, more or less violent suppression and the mass
of women in the late Middle Ages. A suspicion which Marcuse once
expressed comes to the fore in the Jonesian hypothesis:
The patriarchal reality principle holds sway over the psychoanalytic interpreta-
tion. It is only beyond this reality principle that the "maternal images" of the
super ego convey promises rather than memory traces - images of a free future
rather than of a dark past.24
It is not to be denied that masculine sexual fantasy and fears manifest

themselves in images, myths and popular literature - that would be foolish in
face of the material proof of the last 500 years. Indeed, the contradiction
between the norm and instinctual drives was projected onto both sexes. as
Marcuse shows with the example of Prometheus.
Prometheus is the archetype-hero of the performance principle. And in the
world of Prometheus, Pandora, the female principle, sexuality and pleasure,
appear as curse - disruptive, destructive. "Why are women such a curse?"
The denunciation of the sex with which the section (on Prometheus in Hesiod)
concludes emphasizes above all else their economic unproductivity. .. The
beauty of the woman, and the happiness she promises are fatal in the work-
world of civlization.25
In literature the Pandora motif was constantly revived, leading in an

almost unbroken line to the Wedekind version. One thing is important: by
referring to the predominant social implications of the sexual division of
labor, Marcuse hints at an interpretation of the proven longevity of the
mythological schemata of femininity and of male anxiety which transcends
the psychological model. The actual basis of antifeminist sexual metaphysics
should then be sought not only in an allegedly static aspect of the human
psyche, but rather in the inherent contradiction between work norms and
expectations of happiness - in its historically specific effects on the sexes-
thus, in the forms of the domination of internal and external nature.
Woman is not a being in her own right, a subject. . . . The division of labor
imposed upon her by man brought her little that was worthwhile. She became
the embodiment of the biological function, the image of nature the subjugation
of which constituted that civilization's title to fame. For millennia men
dreamed of acquiring absolute mastery over nature, of converting the cosmos
into one immense hunting-ground.26
24. Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, p. 211.

25. Ibid., p. 146.
26. Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, p. 247f.

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
94 Bovenschen
II. The Historical Witch - The Fall of the Witch
Woman has always represented nature, and this is also tru

forms of appropriation of nature. An unholy alliance - thus
church; a regressive alliance - thus it might have seemed to the
the "demythologizers of the world."27 In later periods, when
have permanently banned the magical-divine power of wome
at the stake the chthonian Mana along with female magical p
tion and utilization of nature always implied domination of hum
human beings - that is a thesis of Critical Theory. All practical
cal effort was geared solely toward this functional relations
tion, discipline and exploitation of internal and external nature
be roughly summarized in retrospect.
Domination of nature includes domination of humans. Every subjec
only take part in the subjugation of external nature, human and n
but also must subjugate the nature in himself in order to achieve it
the subjugation of internal and external nature takes place for no
nature is not really transcended or reconciled, but is simply suppr
The new rationality established itself at the expense of

distance between humans and nature, and thereby between part
themselves. "Men pay for the increase of their power with a
that over which they exercise their power."29
This ambivalence, which lies at the heart of progress mad
domination of nature, still determines the image of woman tod
in part the fate of enslaved nature. The loss of unity of ego and
course much older than the persecution of witches, it has b
philosophical reflection for a long time, but it took a new, radi
with the rise of non-agrarian means of production and the destru
sufficient agrarian culture. This separation took place in all indi
with different results for the sexes. As early as feudal society,
had been effectively removed from relevant positions of power
ically excluded from participation in ideas in general, she w
being a representative of the diffuse, non-identical world.
The bloody annihilation of magically gifted women (and
considered by the henchmen not a profession but female potenc
all women could be accused of it) was the culmination of a l
transformation which influenced all spheres of society. This
nated in the subsumption of all work to capital, the subsu
concept of the individual to that of the general - and becau
emancipation of the species from a direct relationship to na
new quality.
27. cf. ibid., p. 3.

28. Max Horkheimer, Zur Kritik der instrumentellen Vernunft (Frankfurt am
29. Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, p. 9.

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
The Witch 95
Although woman did also not fit into the great design, with wh
scholastics wanted to once again subjugate all phenomena to eccle
power, the forms and methods with which women (allegedly, an
certain extent actually) evoked the powers of nature for the good of h
(or according to clerical interpretation, to their detriment) were
more direct conflict with the new system of appropriation of natu
the tutelage of formalized reason. Thus, witches were caught betw
two mighty power structures, the old forces and the new. "Waning fa
flourishing reason disagreed: in between these two, someone took cont
the human being."30
This "qualitative leap," which Critical Theory systematically des
and which Michelet calls ideal-typical, has as its historical counterpart
period of intense struggle, crises and contradictions (which could n
taken into account in this interpretation). Witches were only one p
non among these many crises.
When the witch pogroms began, Europe was already in tu
religious wars, Reformation and Counterreformation, peasants' rev
persecution and execution of heretics, inflation, famine, the disso
the guilds, the development of new means and techniques of produ
increasingly monetary economy, population growth, a huge surp
women, the pauperization and brutalization of large segments of s
the list could go on and on. All this resulted in the highly explosive co
tion of circumstances in which, to the amazement of many histor
campaign against the female sex became possible. This summarizin
social changes and structural alterations is not intended to intro
historical model; it merely serves to give an idea of the situation of th
dual in the late Middle Ages. (The full extent of human misery can
traced in various gloomy artistic depictions - something the mere
tion of dull facts and structural changes can hardly convey.) The refer
the subjective perception of social upheavals is significant because
of persecution planted by the papacy did in fact take root; and if corr
tendencies towards fear, panic and hatred had not already existe
populace, then such mass fury and fear could not have been mob
such a ghastly aggrandizement of the battle between the sexes. The Ch
legitimation crisis, a reflection of the threat posed to its economic and
cal power, had been theorized about much earlier: the beginning
debate about Universals in the 11th century was the first jolt to the s
metaphysical dogma. Nominalism and mysticism represented, altho
very different way, an immanent threat not only to theological prem
also, indirectly, to the religious-political power system: they consi
possible for individuals to have direct access to God without the m
of the ecclesiastical institution or its representatives, and they ant
30. Jules Michelet, Die Hexe (Munich, 1974), p. 84.

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
96 Bovenschen
the split between faith and knowledge which later found

expression in the works of the Reformers. The theologica
Nominalist critics - the negation of the ontological a priori
is indicative of a decisive historical process: the necessary de
subjective belief, of subjective forms of interpretation for over
struggle.
With Nominalism, the reduction of objectivity was limited to th

and perceptions of the subject; the old order, previously considere
had disintegrated; and thus the orientation of the individual subje
universally recognized objectivity was rendered impossible. If pr
identity of subjectivity seemed guaranteed by that of the objectiv
which individual subjects brought into direct relationship with
(since they had originally been related), then the Nominalist
Universal Realism negated, along with the hierarchy of being, the
accepted idea that subjective logical forms were valid and bindin
Following the decline of the Ordo Mundi, even objects in

to be out of place. In this respect, philosophical doubt may
ponded to everyday human existence. Of course, by this m
Mundi we are referring only to an heuristic ideal-typical const
this universe was not really all that orderly; nevertheless it wa
fied, and lacked social mobility. It is fairly typical that as a
upheavals individuals saw themselves at the mercy of the ch
tion of phenomena - a fragmentary reality with infinite
Even though the medieval social order did arbitrarily assign ind
position in this hierarchy, real life of the late 15th and 16
longer reflected this static order. The rigid religious worl
Middle Ages was no longer equal to the taks of dealing with the
situation.
No doubt the fear and horror that the program of persecution and annihi-
lation of heretics and witches unleashed in the populace served to restore the
Church's power, at a time when its internal institutional and legitimatory
core was empty and fetid. Yet the witch hunt was not simply the conse-
quence of a grand design, like the one later recommended by Machiavelli,
who advised clerical and secular authorities to consciously disseminate fear
and terror in order to insure their domination. The common root of the
demands for bloodshed and executions, of accusations and hasty denuncia-
tions may be sought in the anarchic/chaotic character of those social
structural changes which had beset humans at the beginning of civilization in
their work and life relationships. The crisis of the waning Middle Ages
forced individuals to rely on themselves once again. Their social position no
longer fit into the static, integrating scheme of the formerly divine order of
31. Peter Bulthaupt, Zur gesellschaftlichen Funktion der Naturwissenschaften (Frankfurt am

Main, 1973), p. 84.

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
The Witch 97
humans, nature and society. Spirited out of their traditional

people sought new meaning and assistance in interpreting and
their fate.
And then the old demons, only superficially exorcised by
crept back out of their hiding places. But why was their power an
crystallized in the image of the witch?
In attempting to summarize what witches were accused of and
alleged detrimental effects consisted of (including even their
tales), we tend to see as their most significant characteristic
defy the laws of nature (levitation, psychokinesis, influencing
and other natural phenomena; the hexing of illness, accident or d
morphosis into animals; exerting magical influence over the
sex, birth, etc.). Of course, there is a dilemma posed by such a
tion, namely the hermeneutic problem of retrospection. To be su
can only be unraveled by knowledge of what has historically eme
(in this case the formulation of the laws of nature), but suc
obstructs to a certain extent the ability to imagine the real st
back then, the thought and action patterns of the people of that
in the Middle Ages were no doubt incapable of differentiati
healing a disease by the laying on of hands on the one hand, and
tering a pharmaceutically effective herbal drink on the other. Th
for such a differentiation was itself merely the result of the
which freed human beings from the immediacy of the natura
which had the witch as its victim. The ruptures in the social fabr
change brought about appeared "natural" to the individu
nature appeared to be populated with (female) demonic being
ordinary abilities. The Church had of course tried to unseat t
and demons to whom people could directly turn with the assi
magician, the shaman or the witch, substituting for them their
who likewise had proven spheres of competence. But these l
rather colorless and bland in comparison. Miracles were also
them; they too "defied the laws of nature." What made the
uncomfortable was not the belief in magic and miracles per se (it
a component of any religiosity), but rather the practice of s
animistic miracles by laypeople, especially by women who, accord
tradition, seemed predestined to it ever since antiquity. The
this case healing - had to take place in the name of God.
problem at the time in which the Witches' Hammer was wrought
Church, which had for centuries defined any belief in demons as
had no choice but to make use of the surviving remnants of
beliefs to shore up its crumbling edifice. Witches were acknowled
but even in evil, masculine supremacy had to be guaranteed
enthroned.
The difference inferred above between the two methods of healing pre-
supposes - from our perspective - the separation of scientific thought

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
98 Bovenschen
from obscurantism; but the magic activities of the shaman, the

the magician were neither obscurantist nor scientific (though t
to become the basis of both):
As long as knowledge of nature was prescientific, the consist
material under investigation was not yet guaranteed through wor
only try to force the material into compliance through witchcraf
achieve the desired goal. The exhortation of the natural power in
not limited to the material itself, the process expanded to include
virtual power over the forces of nature.32
Only then did science as we know it come to the fore. N

philosophy of the Renaissance did the understanding of nat
with their own established laws, become the object of systemat
with the goal of controlling these processes by means of ra
To draw a corollary from the formulation above: it was
complicity with the secret powers of nature (which seemed
identical to those powers which were exploding society's frame
was the basis for suspecting witches. The sympathetic relations
to nature, the magic-mimetic forms of appropriating natur
(using herbal drinks), its failures (the laying on of hands), bein
secular attempts at controlling life, threatened the Chu
simultaneously stood in the way of the triumph of instrument
latter fact explains why the representatives of the new science
the protagonists of modern rationality, were of so little help t
Kepler, who barely saved his mother from suspicion of witchcr
in witches! Enlightenment, according to Adorno, is "mythi
radical"33 - and therein lay the irrationality of the new rat
over, in order to deny its origins in magic, science had to o
telltale remains.
But what was the basis of this assumption that women had an extremely
intimate and authoritative relationship to nature? "Above all it is believed
that they deal with magic, whether as a means of realizing it or as the actual
bearers of its powers. Old women are witches, virgins are considered
valuable helpers."34
Marcel Mauss, in his Theory of Magic, conclusively establishes this func-
tion of women in the magical rituals of various cultural spheres. All aspects
of hexing, which the Witches' Hammer presents in concentrated antifemale
form, are, together with the belief in the positive effects of witchcraft,
present in the heathen belief in magic. In earlier times, the Church had
repudiated such belief structures. (Thus in the 9th and 10th centuries the
Church tried to appropriate the pagan incantations for Christianity.)
32. Marcel Mauss, Soziologie und Anthropologie I. Theorie der Magie (Munich, 1974), p. 43.
34. Marcel Mauss, Theorie der Magie, p. 62.

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
The Witch 99
Despite the triumph of men over women, the acknowledgemen

special magical capabilities survived in heathen patriarchy as
patriarchal Christian times.
Thus women, whose role in magic is so significant, were considered m
bearers of powers solely because they had a special social position.
considered qualitatively different from men and were gifted wit
powers; menstruation, secret sexual processes and pregnancy were bu
the qualities attributed to them. Society - that of men - ha
pronounced social responsibility toward women. .... From this spec
resulted the legal and particularly the disparate or subordinate
position of women.35
Marcel Mauss not only sees the special status of women (for
are even a social "class") as being a result of their biological org
also investigates the importance of biological difference in the con
sexual division of labor - thus in its social manifestation and function.
The presupposition that women possess magical capabilities corresponds
to their actual social power in pre-patriarchal times, when humans had not
yet established the causal relationship between copulation and birth ...
The earth was equated to the woman in matriarchal times, since life sprang
from both bodies; through both, new generations continued. In woman, the
power to germinate seed and the fertility of nature were incarnated, and Nature
analogously gives life to the life-giving woman. Children and harvests seemed
to be supernatural gifts, products of a magical force.36
This belief in magical forces was retained in patriarchal times, above all
in connection with the agrarian struggle for existence. Masculine gods, or
goddesses who acted on behalf of masculine principles, eclipsed the old
matriarchal mother goddesses and usurped the heavens, only to later relin-
quish their hold to the one Christian God. The representatives of female
power remained behind on earth; in their representation as second class
deities, as demons of nature, they were closer to humans than the olympic
gods or the unapproachable God of the Christians. The sorceress was often
replaced by the sorcerer. Thus "there was the strange phenomenon that the
man was a magician, whereas the woman was accused of exercising
magic."37 Because the child-bearing function of women had once been
understood in the context of its social significance, after this causality was
broken down the physical characteristics of women became the basis of a
very ambivalent standard of assessment. The associative link between the
concepts woman and nature still holds today. Thus, for example, in the 19th
century the Romantic Johann Wilhelm Ritter called woman "the continua-
35. Ibid., p. 152.

36. Karl-Heinz Deschner, Das Kreuz mit der Kirche (Dilsseldorf-Vienna, 1974), p. 25.
37. Marcel Mauss, Theorie der Magie, p. 62.

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
100 Bovenschen
tion of the earth," and the philosopher Max Scheler define

beginning of this century as a quasi plant-like being: "With the
quiet reserve of a tree she stands there, at the core of being
metaphors (right down to banal lyrics of popular songs) desc
botanical terms such as "budding," "blooming," "maturing"
In all so-called primitive societies, analogous fear syndrom
relating to the sensations of the female body can be found.
very often isolated during menstruation, were not to be to
supposedly during those days secret powers emanated from
made nature capricious, so that it played dirty tricks: milk wen
turned to vinegar, people died unexpectedly, battles were lo
Middle Ages women were often forbidden to enter the church o
communion during menstruation. In the words of St. Jero
nothing more impure than a menstruating woman; everyt
touches becomes likewise impure. Even in the 19th century it w
to operate on women during those days. Similar ideas abou
natural catastrophes were often associated with the birth proces
carriages as the cause of drought, etc.). In the Old Testament
book of Moses, in which the masculine Jehovah cult finally
the female deities, we find such a list of prohibitions and purif
These cult laws applied not only to pregnant or menstruatin
the plethora of rules regarding these particular phenomena r
of this fear. The supposed relationship between the lunar m
menstrual cycle implies that the function of woman is th
between the natural elements and human beings (an associat
appeals to Michelet). Despite the fact that women were so far re
all actual and political power, they still played an important rol
intact agrarian culture within the realm of magic.
The old goddesses had of course been demoted, but they
totally expunged from the consciousness of the populace. Sel
and Hecate, the first divine triad39 - also Isis and Diana, to nam
- became interchangeable figures, although they had origin
ent cultures; and as goddesses of fertility and healing, but also
darkness, they continued to remain symbols of female powe
In the Canon episcopi of 900 A.D. (which still vehementl
actual existence of demons) the image of Diana appears, the
according to popular belief, flies through the air followed b
women. Later, during the period of witch persecution, cler
warning people about the threat of a return of matristic power
Aventin and the witch persecutor Boguet). Theologians (fo
them the Dominicans Institoris and Sprenger) had just accom
38. Max Scheler, Vom Umsturz der Werte, I (Leipzig, 1923), p. 308.
39. cf. Robert von Ranke-Graves, Griechische Mythologie, I (Reinbeck, 1

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
The Witch 101
truly tricky moralistic hairsplitting to disprove demons, when they

new problem of proving not only that demons do exist, but also
powers here on earth were constantly increasing.
This warning appears again, indirectly, in the writings of many b
theoreticians - in Schopenhauer, for example, and in Weinin
Bachofen suspects Michelet of longing for a return to the old Isis pr
The reference educated clerics made to the old female deities is not in
itself proof of the after-effect of heathen magic beliefs about women: these
clerics had of course read the writings of the "ancients." The whole arsenal
of witchcraft can already be found in the works of Horace, Ovid, Apuleius,
Seneca and Theocritus, to name a few. Even the Old Testament and the
Talmud (Lilith) make mention of this magic power. The illiterate majority,
however, knew nothing of these writings, and the number of intellectuals
who constructed the network for legitimizing power was negligible.
People in general were however, as Freud once put it, "badly christened."
Only scholars concerned themselves with the form and content of scholastic
logic. Therefore the hypothesis that there is indeed a relationship between
the heathen fertility and earth cults, and the belief in witches seems quite
plausible (Jacob Grimm had already recognized the traces of cult processes
in the witches' sabbath, even though the former existence of matristic
cultures could not have been known to him at that time).
The links between witchcraft, planting, fertility magic and the belief in the
Earth Mother become most apparent when we examine the documents of all
periods, particularly those of actual witch trials, to see how very often field and
fruit charms - love and fertility charms belong in this category too - are
mentioned; they represent a continuum between the most distant past and
today.40
More difficult to confirm is the thesis - as Margaret Murray41 states it -

that it was not merely a question of residual cult practice and rituals, but that
at this time secret female organizations and sects actually existed. It is a very
touchy question of historical interpretation because there are no primary
sources from the women in question. All the statements and descriptions are
transmitted by their judges and executioners (confessions and preprogrammed
statements obtained through torture), their persecutors (procedures for
hunting witches and legal documents) and their few defenders - with
the result that the sources reveal only the ideas and fantasies of these men.
Therefore, research in this area must resort to speculation, unfounded text
exegesis and rash cultural historical constructs. For the persecutors who had
been whipped into fanatic frenzy, however - this much can be gleaned
from the sources - every woman was a potential witch. The hypothesis of
"organized witches" is interesting, but also serves to provide a post festum
40. Anton Mayer, Erdmutter und Hexe (Munich, 1936), p. 46.

41. cf. M. A. Murray, The Witch Cult in Western Europe (Oxford, 1921).

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
102 Bovenschen
legitimation to mass annihilation. The persecution of social frin

relatively easy to explain; but the persecution of a whole sex -
were at that time quite a bit more than half the population - calls
thorough attempt at explanation.
It can be assumed that under the veneer of Christian belief,
heathen cult forms and ideas of magic lived on (Peuckert
attempted to prove that these could still be found in modern time
regions). According to Michelet, the ancient demons of nature
the heart of the oak and at the hearth of the serf. This was the hear
the tradition of healing was presumably handed down from
daughter.
The simple and touching beginnings of religion and the sciences! Later on
everything would be divided; man would become charlatan, astrologist or
prophet, black magician, priest, doctor, but in the beginning, the woman was
all of these things.42
Folk medicine, before reaching professional status and being subsumed

under the control of men, was practiced almost exclusively by women
(Ingrid Strobl calls the witches' sabbath the first convention of women
doctors.)43 Thus women with knowledge of herbs were presumably able to
offer people their favorite potions, which in the Middle Ages often served as
the daily bread of the poor. Some theoreticians attibute descriptions of the
sabbath, witches' rides through the air, etc. to hallucinatory sensations
brought about by stimulants. (E. Jones mentions the inability, which he
finds characteristic of magic thought, to distinguish between dream and
reality, so that individuals considered their nightmares to be actual events. )44
In folk medicine, both black and white magic had their place: here both
the wise and the evil woman had her social function. This polarity did not yet
correspond to the moral duality of good and evil, a duality whose function
was changed by Christianity. It corresponded to the ambivalence of nature's
effects on agrarian life: the good harvest and the destructive drought, the
healing herbs and the lethal mushroom. In going back to pagan demonology
in order to discredit women, the Church at that time made women responsi-
ble for only the evil effects of nature. In reality, their intent was to dissolve
the bond between woman and nature and to destory the aura of feminine
magic for once and for all.
In the course of the individualistic liberalization of medieval cult practice the
subjective undercurrent of witchcraft rejected by the Church surfaced between
the antinomies of Gothic piety and infiltrated the objective religious world of
the Middle Ages while its patrons theology and church stood helplessly by; as
the principles of witchcraft turned more and more from the natural demonic to
42. Jules Michelet, Die Hexe, p. 19.

43. cf. Ingrid Strobl, "Wir Hexen," Neues Forum, 269/270 (May-June, 1976).
44. cf. Ernest Jones, Der Alptraum.

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
The Witch 103
the escatological-demonic, from the secret powers of the earth and its rep
tatives to the devil and his malice, . . the ties to the old earth religion an
influence had to gradually be weakened.45
The "black" principle was from then on the witch in the service of
the apostate angel; the "white" principle was Mary, handmaiden
Lord, the denatured, desensualized woman, the woman of the imm
conception. Classical gnosticism and Manichaeism - which we
acquainted with the Mary cult - as well as the heretical sects, assig
women a position of equality (in the heretical movement this is true o
part, and only of the earliest period). The period of Mary worship
ponds to the most horrible phase of persecution and contempt for
The attempt of Christianity ideologically to compensate the oppression of
one sex by means of reverence for woman, and thus to cultivate rather th
suppress the memory of an archaic age, is redeemed by resentment of
ennobled woman. . . The emotion which corresponds to the pract
oppression is contempt, not reverence, and in the centuries of Christia
love for one's neighbor has always concealed a lurking, forbidden though
compulsive, hatred for woman - the object which served repeatedly to
the fact of futile exertion. This hatred made up for the cult of the Madonna
the persecution of witches - a form of vengeance on the memory of those
Christian prophetesses, the lasting after-image which implicitly call
question the sacrilized patriarchal order of domination. Woman arouse
primitive anger of the half-converted man. . .46
Rather grotesquely, it was precisely the madonna cult whic

generations considered proof of the glorification of woman by the Chr
Church. The ambivalence towards appraising woman's status - at a
time the evaluation fluctuated between magical awe and fear - now
ideologically displaced in the two distinct images of virgin and w
Woman was "divided": based on the dogma of the duality of body
(in which the body stands for the evil, worldly/natural principle, the
the good, spiritual principle), the witch became the incarnation of the
the flesh, of female sexual functions, of tota mulier sexus. (This d
dated a long way back. The cleric Ambrosius had initiated it: Adam
Eve = body; and for a long time the church fathers could not agree wh
woman even had a soul.) Mary, on the other hand, who did not rea
into her own theologically until the Middle Ages, was the ideal of puri
desexualized woman of the spirit (mysticism, to be sure, restored w
sensuality, but even here she was merely the object of man's adu
Since the feat of the immaculate conception could not be repeated
empirical woman, and since women nevertheless had to guaran
reproduction of the species, the ideal of Mary was utterly unobt
45. Anton Mayer, Erdmutter und Hexe, p. 62f.


204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
104 Bovenschen
whereas real women could be called witches at any time. The err
these times of animosity towards passion and sensuality, could h
deny his sexuality, the demands of his inner nature, and outwar
them.
Although the witch, the sorceress, woman per se, had o
knowing accomplice of nature, already in pre-Christian times th
principle succeeded in taking over this realm by subordinat
male magician, the conjurer; in a similar manner, the med
succeeded in subordinating her evil powers to those of Satan;
science, because it developed partially under the patronage o
had to assert its masculine authority as well.
Techniques with complex purposes and uncertain effects, such a
cology, medicine, surgery, metallurgy, .... could not have surviv
had not supported and even protected them, lending them stabilit
The emancipation of science from its magic origins also took

expense of women. The magic abilities credited to women
hand with actual skills which helped humanity (midwifery
medicine were not valued by men; medieval medicine was no
cal). Although Paracelsus, swaying precariously in the balan
magic and science, burned the ancient writings and announc
thing he knew came from witches and shepherds, most scie
science sprang from the empiricism of common people, w
witchcraft," denied this their heritage; they were, as M
"ungrateful to the witches who had trained them. "48
The changes in the conceptual horizon for which the notion o
ment serves as a global and intellectual focal point illustrate the
of the magical world view. The formal synthesis of identity and
which gives the appearance of reconciliation, explains in a un
of deduction (which culminates in the Kantian reduction
phenomenon to mere appearances) that essential dimensions
are mere accidents, hoping thereby to be able to make natur
able. In this abstract framework of ideas, magic had no place
ability of women, which approached nature via the mechan
image, empathetic assimilation and repetition, was subsum
notion of the unique, the capricious and the accidental, and
component of those natural relationships which were now
rational control. The new subject had to be constituted in contr
relationships, not in harmony with them.
Magic thinking cannot live from abstractions; ... for them (the
S.B.) nature was not a pure idea which embraced the whole spectr
47. M. Mauss, Theorie der Magie, p. 173.

48. J. Michelet, Die Hexe, p. 181.

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
The Witch 105
tions and affinities, but was a clearly outlined concept of certain characteris-
tics. ... Magic rites are less easily explained by the application of abstract laws
than as the transferral of characteristics whose effects and countereffects are
known in advance.49
When the process of metabolic exchange between humans and nature

entered its new phase (and this is precisely where the factual substratum for
the new forms and contents of philosophical reflection can be found), it
became necessary to destroy the old relationships to nature, particularly the
intimate bond between nature and woman. Individuals had to be brought
into line with the new time and work norms. If, as Mauss writes, it was a
significant characteristic of the earlier magical appropriation of nature that
there was no separation between the wish and its fulfillment, then measure-
able work output, the price of progress, now came between the need and the
goal. The magical world view, which in the final analysis has matristic origins
and which maintained an underground existence during centuries of Christiani-
zation, was eliminated at the beginning of the manufacturing era, the
triumph of modern science over theology. However, it was the Church itself
(which paid for the same process with the loss of its economic and political
power) which in reality brought about the demise of the magical world view
- and in respect to the murder of women, the Church acted as executioner
in the literal sense of the word. During the period in which women were
being driven en masse into the torture chambers, the Church was still trying
to suppress the new forces which labeled Ptolemy's geocentric world system
obsolete and which, in the wake of Copernicus, wanted to uncover "the
form of the world and the symmetry of its parts;" but indirectly (precisely in
respect to the persecution of witches) the later division of labor can already
be discerned: the Catholic Church was already clearly acting in the interest
of future secular power. At least their interests were consistent, even though
it fell to the "Protestant ethic" to create the religious superego appropriate
to the new conditions. Meanwhile of course, Protestants too viewed witches
with murder in their hearts.
Of course the powerful restructuring processes, as Marx describes them
for the economically advanced England of the 16th century in his analysis of
"The So-called Primitive Accumulation," are not universally applicable to
all of Europe. Yet similar structures for the pauperization of the lower
classes can be found in all areas where witch hysteria raged.
The proletariat created by the breaking up of the bonds of feudal retainers and
by the forcible expropriation of the people from the soil, this 'free' proletariat
could not possibly be absorbed by the nascent manufacturer as fast as it was
thrown upon the world. On the other hand, these men, suddenly dragged from
their wanted mode of life, could not as suddenly adapt themselves to the disci-
49. M. Mauss, Theorie der Magie, p. 108.

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
106 Bovenschen
pline of their new condition. They were turned en masse into beggars,
vagabonds.50
The new techniques of production in large parts of Eur

example those of manufacture, but also the incipient commerci
agriculture51 - demanded different attitudes from individual
attempt to describe this process leads unavoidably to broad gene
if only because of the unavailability of theories of socialization app
for example, 15th- or 16th-century people.
With the growing alienation from primal nature, the fear of its e
social life increased - and thereby fear of women, whose biolog
tions reminded men of their animalistic origins. In accord with
archal perspective, otherwise divergent powers mobilized bru
order to free themselves from this memory. They were unsuccessf
the deaths of millions of women.
Even though the annihilation of women was rooted in archaic and
barbaric ideas, it was at the same time a very rationally planned and
precisely executed campaign of persecution which, supported by the
gestapo-like scheming of the Dominicans, had horrifying and systematic
impact.
The witchcraft trials which the associated feudal racketeers used to terrorize
the masses when they felt themselves threatened, served at once to celebrate
and to confirm the triumph of male society over prehistoric matriarchal and
mimetic stages of development. The auto-da-f6 was the Church's heathen
bonfire, a triumph of nature in the form of self-preserving reason, to celebrate
the glory of the mastery of nature.52
Even in matristic times women had not "ruled" over men - if we give
credence here to the research of, for example, Bachofen, Morgan and, more
recently, Ernest Bornemann. Even in later times they did not use their
power and knowledge to dominate. Thus they were to a large extent
hopelessly abandoned to the demands of male domination. The witch
pogroms can be seen as the second phase of the patriarchal seizure of power at
the beginning of the bourgeois era. The "new man" of the industrial era was
indeed a man. The magical-mythical image of woman continued in the
bourgeois period, but she was no longer a subject who appropriated nature.
She was instead an object of the male domination of nature: as a component of
exploited nature, men's fear of nature's revenge was centered on her, as was
their longing for harmony and reconciliation with nature.
Women had no part in the suppression of nature: they were instead cast
into this network of oppression. The witch stands at that juncture of histori-
50. Karl Marx, Capital (New York, 1906), p. 805f.

51. cf. Barrington Moore, Soziale Urspriinge von Diktatur und Demokratie (Frankfurt am
Main, 1969).

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
The Witch 107
cal development where the exploitation of nature became s

character. She became the victim of the relentlessly advanci
of nature, and consequently the victim of the triumph of abstr
formal synthesis of identity and non-identity. She got lost in t
generalities with which modern thought organizes nature. I
development corresponded to the brutal annihilation of milli
In the course of this process the last instances of a coinciden
and nature, which had been inherent in the magical practices of
were destroyed. Rousseau's misunderstood precept of "retou
(which is constantly being revived under the guise of
expresses the impact which this separation has even today. Ever
Enlightenment since then has had difficulty coming to te
forcible subsumption of the non-identical under the con
emphasized the dialectic of historical development as opposed
tic belief in progress on the one hand, and as opposed to a cultu
hostile to civilization on the other.
Whether people could have developed into spiritual being without pitting spirit
against nature cannot be surmised retrospectively.53
Art is supposed to keep alive the memory of "paradise lost"; people

sought time and again to re-discover the old unity in the realm of the erotic.
At any rate: speculation about a possible alternative to the course of
history and about the viability of substitute worlds should not limit our
indignation at the past. The survival of the witch in myth warns women of
something more timely, namely the necessity of resistance today.
III. Witch Mythology - Metamorphoses of the Witch
"Man's expulsion from nature has a counterpart in the exile of the witch
from the inhabited world," writes Roland Barthes in the foreword to
Michelet's book The Witch.54 But where is this exile, where can the witch
survive? "Traversing time in the manner of a rather occult essence, the witch
appears only in the theophanic moments of history: in Joan of Arc (a subli-
mated form of the witch) and in the French Revolution."55
The wise and the evil woman no longer had a place in the ruling social
structure of the late Middle Ages. Fear of the return of past matristic power,
whose faint afterglow was still discernible in witches' knowledge of nature's
healing power, appeared to have been wiped out with the campaign of
annihilation directed against the female sex. Nevertheless, the dualism of
body and spirit, of witch and saint, continued to prevail in the bourgeois
world. In the typifications of mother and prostitute this dualism took its
53. Karl-Heinz Haag, Philosophischer Idealismus (Frankfurt am Main, 1967), p. 16.

54. Roland Barthes, Preface to: J. Michelet, Die Hexe, p. 7.
55. Ibid., p. 8.

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
108 Bovenschen
institutionalized form. The mother and the prostitute were em

stable social structure; external force was no longer needed to subd
Mary, the saint, was secularized into the housewife and mothe
given the duty of mastering a large repertoire of virtues), the wit
the prostitute, the assertive woman. (According to Ivan Bloch
prostitute who carried on this tradition,56 for Thomas Szasz the in
for Michelet the intellectuals.58) Both the mother and the pros
definitely of this world and under the control of men. But tow
these bourgeois typifications there hovered the ideological fem
The witch and the saint became myth. The idolatry and demon
femininity - flip sides of the same coin - were cut off and distinc
empirical woman, yet there always remained the suspicion that wo
to the old demonic powers had not yet been totally severed. Th
lurked in the background.
The description of the cosmetics and grooming of the Italian courtesa
not be complete without consideration of the real role that quackery a
craft played therein. .... It was almost exclusively former prostitute
madams who instructed the courtesans in the magic arts of the erotic
gave them medical advice of an often exotic kind.59
With the vast gulf between the witch's image and that of real w
modern myth of femininity distanced itself further and further fr
The exile of the witch that Barthes mentions-- one which she soug
mythological form - was far removed from the day-to-day m
women. The preferred realms were those of poetry, dreams, th
of forbidden eroticism and bridled fantasy. The domestication o
nature did not succeed in this realm; here, the witch and her s
survive. The awesome figures of former times which were r
bourgeois literature - Dalilah, Judith, Salome, Medea - appear
perspective, to be the avengers of the witches' bloody past. We
about figures invented by men, about production of myths in whi
took no part, though they are integral to women's own history
If women want to take it upon themselves to tell this story their own w
will replace men as myth-makers - that is how historical and cultural
ment works. If the question is one of reinterpreting these myths
example of the most 'feminine' of the men (Flaubert, Michelet), th
historical perspectives will of necessity result, a new canon of history
takes into account both the real and the imaginary . . . we feel it is a
of showing the lost history of the oral tradition, legends, myths. . .
56. cf. Iwan Bloch, Die Prostituierte, II (Berlin, 1912).

57. cf. Thomas Szasz, Die Fabrikation des Wahnsinns (Olten, 1974).
58. cf. J. Michelet, Die Hexe.
59. Iwan Bloch, Die Prostituierte, II, p. I11.
60. Catherine Cl6ment, "Hexe und Hysterikerin," Alternative, 108-109 (1976

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
The Witch 109
The witchhunt was temporarily called off; since women

bound, their sphere of influence was very limited. In liter
however, in its sublime as well as its popular forms, these
femininity became favorite themes. These archetypes appear in
the myth, the allegory, the manifold symbol. Ernst Blo
"experiential condensation categories which exist in the re
mimetic fantasy."61
Female figures repeatedly served as symbolic embodiment
power, the revolutionary as well as, later, the restorati
Germania, Britannia, etc. The contradiction between the pow
by these figures and the utterly impotent existence of wom
jarring. It should be viewed in the context of the dual man
women, in whom both rebellious and dominated nature may
feminine allegory shows itself to be just as ambivalent as
femininity: on the one hand "the fullness of poetically effectiv
appears in the allegory," on the other, they are historical relics
ward glances to the past.62 This ambivalence is reflected in t
'Natura' allegory. "From the perspective of antiquity, she re
extremely beautiful woman, seated and holding to her bre
which she showered with milk."63
Wolfgang Kemp, who investigated the pervasiveness and stab
allegory, finds that in the 15th century the mythology and alle
had become part of the popular culture.64 Some of the min
Roman de la Rose depict a Natura figure who is forging a homu
anvil. In Cesare Ripa's Iconologia, she appears with a vu
according to ancient superstition this animal exists only in fem
does not need the male for reproduction. The Natura figur
those of the Isis and the Diana Ephesia; she is often equipp
attributes of the Sphinx. Isis was considered the inventor o
medicine and writing. Natura represented the principle of
domination of nature, and appeared as the nurturer of the
often accompanied by the serpent; but in contrast to the G
scene, in which the serpent is portrayed as the accomplice of ev
the symbol of the spirit of human endeavor, reminiscent o
Virgil's Aeneis. The Sphinx symbolizes inaccessible wisdom
her the allegory of science. (Naturally, Enlightenment think
her riddles solvable, yet the figure remains a disconcerting
element and a favored theme ever since.)

62. cf. Walter Benjamin, "Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels," Gesamm
(Frankfurt am Main, 1974).
63. Wolfgang Kemp, Ikonographische Studien zur Geschichte und Verbreitun
Diss. (Tiibingen, 1973), p. 18.
64. Ibid., p. 15.

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
110 Bovenschen
Natura continued to be a thoroughly positive symbolic figu

the 19th century; during the Enlightenment however, she became
more detached from that which she had originally represented
soon stood for the many forms of (male) domination of nat
rational thought itself. The goddess of reason, who played a m
the French revolution, assumed Natura's form. She was centra
gatherings of the Revolution. In old engravings these giant st
ponded in every detail to the description of Natura given above. T
of Strassbourg even sang a hymn to her.
The figurines remained the same, but their meaning change
they had once stood for the forms of female appropriation of
fertility, for the power of the old goddess and thereby the powe
they now represented male domination. It seems that bourg
stockpiled feminine allegories as symbols for just about every
we find in the 19th century the allegory of the Machine, of Tech
Electricity alongside political allegories such as Freedom, Revo
Cecilia Rentmeister, addressing the contradiction between the
position of women and the plethora of feminine allegori
Bornemann's argument that patriarchy honors the woman a
compensation, in order to avoid having to respect her as a real hu
I find more important, however, the idea that woman appa
considered a particularly good symbol for totally different ideas
had never been fully integrated into the mode of industrial produ
upon differentiated division of labor.
Industry, bound up in the dominant ideology with the positive c
progress and wealth (also personified by woman!), can and must be
by the feminine: by woman, viewed as empty, refillable vessel, pa
malleable, as an embodying body without an existence of its own, as
form to be filled with any ideal whatsoever.65
Because the allegories of the Industrial Age, embodied by

figures, solidify the concepts they represent and lift them out of
cal context, technology can again appear as the threatening power
Eduard Fuchs writes of an allegory for the machine which pict
woman, evoking the maenadian past, straddling the giant pist
machine which is spitting out tiny, mutilated men:
Symbol of the disconcerting secret power of the machine, which devo

thing entering its gears, everything which crosses the path of its cr
and belts or foolishly dares to reach for its wheels - this is wom
conversely: The insensate and brutal machine, which incessantly
countless men as if they were nought, itself symbolizes the
Minotaurian character of woman.66
65. Cecilia Rentmeister, "Berufsverbot fiir Musen," Asthetik und Komm

(September 1976).
66. Eduard Fuchs, Die Frau in der Karikatur (Munich, 1906), p. 174 (quoted from

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
The Witch 111
When technological progress continues unbeknownst to those who

initiated it and makes itself independent of them, the threat is agai
embodied in woman, who from the beginning had no part in the process.
Destructive technology appears to be a natural catastrophe, analogous to
the supposedly tamed sensuality of woman. Allegory and myth assert nature
while history resists it. It is amazing that feminine allegories survived from
antiquity until the 19th century, and that the allegories of the Industrial Age
which were included in the canon continued to be embodied by female
figures even though these had only symbolic value and had little connection
with women's everyday lives. This fact becomes somewhat less amazing,
however, if one focuses on the form and function of allegory and myth rather
than on their content and specific meaning. It is not so much that the
allegorical content is related to the feminine syndromes, but rather that the
relatedness, as Benjamin says, is to be found in "the turning from history to
Nature which is the basis of allegory."67 Wherever history becomes
"petrified, primeval landscape" - in myth and allegory - powerful female
figures populate the cultural landscape. Although at one time meaning and
function were identical in the allegory of Natura, in the course of time the
inner connectedness between form and content was lost - the "feminine"
survived only in a formal sense.
These statements are by no means intended as a continuation of the
discussion in aesthetic theory regarding the function and value of allegory,
symbol and myth, nor is it an historical analysis of motifs in the various
female myths and allegories. It is, rather, only an attempt to explain the
historical durability of the image of the fertile fearsome woman, in which the
old Isis/Demeter myths merge with the witch myths and the modern myths
of femininity, through the medium of a nature concept applied to the
feminine.
Even during the persecution and annihilation of the witches (which was
constantly accompanied by references to the evil influence of women on
natural occurrences), the allegory of Natura/Diana/Isis/Sphinx - the
images of positive power over nature - were still widely accepted. This
ambivalence continued even when the annihilation campaign had again
been forgotten. The pedestal inscription on the Isis statue at Sais transmitted
to us from Plutarch fascinated poets and philosophers for a long time: "I am
everything that is, has been, and will be. No mortal has lifted my veil." The
youth in Schiller's poem, "Das verschleierte Bild zu Sais" (1795), meets with
trouble once he lifts her veil, thus breaking the divine commandment: he
becomes melancholy. Goethe had a slightly mocking attitude toward this
figure: "Bleibe das Geheimnis teuer!/Lass den Augen nicht geliisten/Sphinx
Natur, ein Ungeheuer,/Schreckt sie dich mit hundert Briisten."68
67. Walter Benjamin, "Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels," p. 358.

68. Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Werke, 4 (Weimar, 1910), p. 137.

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
112 Bovenschen
This monster was of course never real, and was not meant to cor
to reality: Women's equality was not even included in the bourg
of revolutionary goals. Woman continued to be the object of dom
nature by man, reduced to her biological functions - to child bearin
which was both mystified and tabooed, viewed as both animal
archaic. Rousseau described the rules for training the empirical
Simply through the law of nature, women as well as children are de

before the judgment of men. . . . Thus the total upbringing of women
take place with due consideration given to men. To please them, to be u
them, . . . to raise them while they are young, to care for them as
these have been the duties of women through the ages, that is what the
be taught from childhood on.69
The Romantics did not want to believe in this law of nature.

the woman who grows beyond the horizons of her restricting dome
closer than man to the sources of nature - and for the Roman
were also the sources of knowledge. "Nature" was for them not
but was, rather, the principle of universal divinity. Only thr
reconciliation of nature and society could the totality of the individ
established, only then could the "Golden Age" dawn. The worl
bourgeoisie, of capitalist division of labor, for them implied the de
of nature and individuality. The Romantics could not conceive of
productive domination of the world by means of calcuated expl
nature. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Romantic view of w
not follow the bourgeois tradition of defamation. In reality the wom
belonged to this cultural movement actually did have a more
position than those in other artistic circles. Schlegel maintained
women who, even in the midst of human society, have remaine
nature, still have that naive sensibility with which one can re
blessing and gifts of the gods."70 This assertion is an affr
Enlightenment, which had viewed the individual - meaning onl
- abstractly as an autonomous subject. That same Enlighten
formulated for the male the imperatives of duty and achieveme
relegated the female to the realm of nature still to be approp
Romanticism, too, the woman was a being of nature; this concept w
rected and idealized. But not only she was to be a being of nature, m
become one also. On this point, Romanticism ran counter to tra
"One man accomplished it - he raised the veil of the goddess
but what did he see? - wonder of wonders - he saw himself. A f
fortune longed to embrace unspeakable nature. He sought the se
of Isis."71 The youth in Novalis' philosophical fragment Die Le
69. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile oder iiber die Erziehung (Stuttgart, 1970),
70. Friedrich Schlegel, Lucinde (Frankfurt am Main, 1964), p. 61.
71. Novalis, "Aufzeichnungen zu den Lehrlingen zu Sais" in Werke und Br
1968), p. 139.

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
The Witch 113
Sais - who fared better than Schiller's character - can find Isis only
assistance of a "strange woman from the forest" (!) who, like
had to first bum the scholarly books before being able to help him.
instrumental, analytical reason which shows him the way, but r
reciprocal animation of inanimate nature which leads him to t
process similar to the one on which witchcraft was once based). Acco
Novalis, love and poetry are the media of this magic, and ther
primarily lovers and poets (no longer women to such a great extent)
allowed to live in harmony with the laws of nature, restore the
overcome alienation, and - like the youth who raised the v
themselves.
Long ago, instead of scientific explanations one found fairy tales and poems full
of strange images, people, gods and animals as common task masters, and one
heard the world described in the most natural way possible ... If this method
pursues the ephemeral with a frivolous mind, the newer method tries to dissect
the internal structure and elemental proportion with the surgeon's knife.
Under their hands amiable nature died and only twitching remains were left
behind; the poet, on the other hand, as if animated by the spirit of the wine,
narrates the most divine and happiest fantasies .... 72

The lamented loss of unity represented by the magical witch echoes
through love and poetry, her age old haunts. Longing leads the poet to the
mythological figures behind which she hides; to be sure, this happened
without any recognition of real life women. Novalis' lament cannot be
suspected of being an apologetic recourse to an historically fixated lost age,
as was later characteristic of the late Romantic cult of the Middle Ages.
Novalis' definition, according to which all philosophy is homesickness, holds
true only if this longing is not dissolved into the phantasm of a lost remote
antiquity, but represents the homeland, nature itself as wrested from myth.73
This homesickness - which for Novalis was still bound up with the
Goddess of Sais even though it had been disassociated from the empirical
woman - is formulated metaphorically and was conceived of teleologically.
(In Schlegel's and Schleiermacher's early works the notion of homesickness
is indeed oriented towards empirical women.) Later - in some representa-
tives of late Romanticism and the school of historical law - the Romantic
adulation of woman, in the obscure mythological interplay of the concepts
folk, earth and nature, degenerated into the ideology of motherhood.
The historical bound itself increasingly with the archaic and this with the
chthonic, so that the inside of history began to look like the interior of the
earth. This feeling of claustrophobia, this incestuous state of return to the
womb, to night and the past culminated in Bachofen, the prophet of
matriarchy; yet it culminated with necrophilia for the chthonic Demeter.74
72. Novalis, "Die Lehrlinge zu Sais," p. 110.


204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
114 Bovenschen
Romanticism's criticism of the Enlightenment in both it

regressive moments facilitates research into ancient myths (and
rediscovery of matriarchy). It simultaneously realized their uto
- a realization which partially conflicted with Romanticism's
cal aim. Benjamin describes this contradiction: "Even if
emotionally sympathetic to matriarchy, his historical interest w
toward the origins of the patriarchy, the highest form of which
Christian spirituality."75
This Christian spirituality remained surprisingly superficial
myth analysis, in contrast to, for example, the works of Josep
who can interpret witch persecution (which he addresses in
Mystik) only from the Catholic perspective. Romantic schol
its greatest influence with the publication of the Gesammelte V
of the Brothers Grimm. In these tales - Wilhelm Grimm's e
that - the witch is without exception old and evil; occasional
integrated into the bourgeois family as the stepmother. Thu
for evil is lurking in every woman. It was even made forma
when Hansel and Gretel come out of the enchanted forest
burned the witch, and find their stepmother dead.
Bachofen had already pointed out the continuity of gynocrat
images. Because they still represent a reservoir of unresolv
longings, these images and myths of past and forgotten sou
This longing is of course subject to every kind of exploitation:
needed the death cult of a distorted primeval past to distort
establish barbarism, to impede the revolution."76
Even Fascism profited from the longing for reconciliation
which is however not to say that recourse to the mytholo
necessity be negative.
If the archetypal were absolutely regressive, there would be no
which reach for utopia, nor would utopia base itself on them; there
progressive poetry searching for truth with the old symbols; fanta
nothing but regression; it would have to beware of all images, al
symbols originating in the old mythical layers of fantasy. .... Arch
their most recent existence in human history; only to that extent are
what they could be: concise ornaments of a utopian message. The ut
tion appropriates this part from the past, from the reaction, even
every time this utopian refunctioning occurs, the unfulfilled part o
emerges and becomes recognizable.77
That kind of thought which rejects the empty generality of

and the dictatorship of the general over the specific, unde
75. Walter Benjamin, "Johann Jakob Bachofen" in: Materialien zu

Mutterrecht" (Frankfurt am Main, 1975), p. 70.
77. Ibid., p. 187.

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
The Witch 115
feminine has always been subsumed, has often turned to myt

in order to lapse into irrationalism or to criticize rational en
Therefore, Ernst Bloch suggests that we use Ideologiekritik t
between progressive and reactionary recourse to myth. On
familiar with myth, allegory, symbols and ancient imagery c
these from the archaic and use them to negate our own oppr
Only such a familiarity which recognizes and actualizes not
symbolic content but rather the collective desires inherent
bring them back to life.
Despite the invariability which archetypes of femininity
Sphinx, witch, woman as dangerous sexual monster - t
tendency to ontologize and concretize the feminine should not it
part of its explanation. Because women have been under mal
ever since the destruction of matristic society, there actually
unvarying structure, namely that of their inferior social pos
structure must be analyzed separately for each historical con
The stability of this oppressive situation culminates in the ar
witch and Sphinx and in the femininity mythologies - but so do
impending revenge.
Within the sex-specific structure of domination, the posit
has continued to change steadily, though not fundamen
annihilation took place only when this structure seemed to
threatened by the witches. But not until the advent of
movement was this system of domination challenged as such. (W
have a theory of patriarchy which has systematically resea
history as the domination of one sex over the other, as class ana
for the domination of men over men.)
The fact that in the Middle Ages we find images similar to th
present in prehistoric times, images which we can still detect to
in dreams, should not lead us to asssume prematurely that m
psyche are anthropologically invariant, nor should it lead us
dichotomy of the sexes. This uniform imagery is more likely a
fact that women's liberation has never been realized; such an
is of course diametrically opposed to the intentions of those
again employed these images within the male-oriented cultur
But precisely because the daughters and granddaughters of
could not emancipate themselves and become full-fledged cit
they remained in their parlors, unproductive and with limited r
were, as wage-earners, doubly exploited by capital and husb
they did not take part "in the appropriation and domination
the resulting domination of man over man,"'78 because ideolo
into homo biologicus, their naturalness and immediacy could
78. Karin Schrader-Klebert, "Die kulturelle Revolution der Frau," Kursbu

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
116 Bovenschen
literature. By abolishing the bourgeois prejudice against women

and other cultural movements could utilize women as in all
longing for immediacy which transcended the commercializati
and atomization of individuals. This is of course a very artifici
the "natural" life prior to "original sin," which occurred as if
members of the female sex had escaped bourgeois socializat
excluded from determining the course of history, they be
passive victim.
By virtue of her distance from the process of production she (the
retains certain traits which characterize the human being who is not
in the grasp of society.79
This potential for resistance is rooted in the anachronistic f

dysfunctionality allows for utopian thinking. But the natu
woman which are often evoked are only in part utopian fiction
component of an impoverished reality. These seemingly c
images have their origin in the archetype Natura, back to w
morphoses can be traced: both that of Isis, the witch and
Medusas of the film industry, and that of the "Great Mother,
image of motherhood and the servile conforming housewife, w
to modern advertising, is eternally guilt-ridden and whose ach
never recognized.
And yet: "This anachronism has a specific power, the pow
to disturb, to change, limited of course to imaginary displa
thing happens as if the resistance of the past would surviv
symptoms. . ."80
The interpretation of these signs and symptoms has until n
affair - and that is how both idolatry and defamation
ideologies, "frameworks through which myths could still f
Clement), are indicative of men's fear of a femininity which s
be in league with nature. While some men seek in women
nature - nature as it was before turning into a junk yard -
of her as possessing the destructive powers of anarchistic E
Karin Schrader-Klebert writes in an analysis of Roman P
film Rosemary's Baby and the ritual murder of Sharon Tat
Sensuality appeared in the history of civilization only as an insta
destructiveness. Normalcy still manifests itself through the an
sensuality, through fear of and aggression towards sexuality. ..
evil. The flesh allies itself with addiction to alcohol, drugs, orgies
in short with everything evil - and evil is that which disrupts the
79. Th. W. Adorno, Prisms (London, 1967), p. 82.

80. Catherine Clment, "Hexe und Hysterikerin," p. 154.

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
The Witch 117
body to function, that which makes problematic its ability to adapt to

of the apparatus. . .81
The ideological longing for a "return to nature" is most often

into the suburban idyll and into the artificially and sensation
natural landscapes of mass tourism. Likewise tamed to conform to t
bourgeois life style, woman too becomes an ideal and loses her
idylls always reveal themselves as deceptive. The biological-natur
of human existence only appear to have been fully expunged from
everyday life: that relationship to inner nature which has no
mastered is projected onto woman, so that woman must pay for th
tionality of man's natural drives. The institutionalized repressi
"natural" processes which remind us of our animalistic origin
death, caring for the helpless, processes securely hidden behind ins
walls, rationally managed and removed from everyday life - is
threatened by woman, who is responsible for the biological and soc
duction of the species. A pregnant woman on the street looks l
from an archaic world. The midwife still serves an important func
in the supermodern, well-equipped delivery room. "The vi
appropriation of nature is dissociated from the real driving fo
appropriation. The relationship to procreation, birth and death
continued relationship to nature."82
According to ideology, this violent force is not a structural
patriarchal society, but, rather, becomes personalized. In world
appears as a tragi-comical battle. From Hans Sachs, through Str
Albee, to Bergmann's Scenes from a Marriage, it is hidden
construct of an everlasting struggle between one man and one w
violence may be depicted, but obviously only in form of isolated
more general reference to this potential of violence is dub
feminism. But it was not women who began the battle of the
public violence against women, as attested by women's con
Brussels and Munich, is not a mere thing of the past. In the tortur
still used today against women (for example in Chile),83 the sex
moment is so pronounced that these torturers could easily be m
those who took part in the witch burnings.
81. K. Schrader-Klebert, "Verbrechen und Ritual," in Aesthetik und Gewal

1970), p. 120.
82. Ibid., p. 90.
83. UN Report on the Violation of Human Rights in Chile, Documentation of the Evangelical
News Agency, Frankfurt am Main, May 1976 (one of many such horrifying statements):
"A young woman reported that she was held for 30 days, was stripped, thrown to the
floor, and beaten all over her body. Various objects were inserted into her vagina. She
was then dressed, brought together with other persecuted people and beaten further;
since she could no longer stand, they poured cold water over her and threw her down.
She was told that she would be shot. She was beaten unconscious, revived again, her eyes
were bound, they beat her and continued the questioning. Together with other women

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
118 Bovenschen
The fact that women are considered threatening natural bei

on their widespread exclusion from the sphere of production
relevant areas of public life. There have of course been some chan
last hundred years, but this has resulted in a contradiction: w
longer live up to any expectation totally; neither can she fulfi
housewife and mother, of the compliant slave, nor that of th
career woman. Still responsible for biological reproduction, for th
raising of children, as well as for nurturing of any kind, her bur
plies, and she tries to - or is in many cases forced to - do justice t
It is precisely in this ambivalence of the feminine cultur
character that the possibilities and potentials of the women's mov
For a long time women reacted to their plight, to the viole
them, to the given rules of their existence as anachronistic
nature, in an appropriately "natural" way, namely in submiss
anxiety-ridden mimicry: they reacted idiosyncratically.
In idiosyncrasy, individual organs escape from the control of the sub

independently obey fundamental biological stimuli .... For a few m
these reactions effect an adaptation to circumambient, motionless na
as the animate approaches the inanimate, and the more highly-develo
of life comes closer to nature, it is alienated from it, since inanimat
which life in its most vigorous form aspires to become, is capable only o
external, spatial relationships.84
Mimicry has always been a deceptive kind of protection, for to

women defenseless to the violence done to them. But their partial
from the civilizing process has also saved them from harm.
For centuries, the severity with which the rulers prevented their own
and the subjugated masses from reverting to mimetic modes of e
starting with the religious prohibition on images, going on to the soc
ment of actors and gypsies, and leading finally to the kind of teachi
does not allow children to behave as children, has been the condition
zation. . . . All devotion and all deflection has a touch of mimicry ab
the constitution of the ego reflective mimesis becomes controlled re
"Recognition in the concept," the absorption of the different by t
takes the place of physical adaptation to nature.85
Today women are at last rousing themselves from their torpor.

Beauty has finally awakened, the prince's kiss had only lulle
she was taken to a place, picked up again, stripped naked, electrodes were att
her breasts, her elbows, her sex organs, down to her feet. Very young gir
watch."
They were sent to a transport, again questioned about bombs and weapons, and
tortured until unconscious. This witness was brought out of the prison with a car, and
was thrown in the street. She is definitely damaged, both mentally and physically."
85. Ibid., p. 180f.

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00
The Witch 119
more modemrn, stupefying doze. Women reacted idiosyncratically onl

long as they themselves believed in the rules of existence prescribed for th
as pseudo-natural beings. Today, because they are actively taking their
into their own hands, rejecting the traditional roles assigned to them
deciphering the traces of their own history, they are finally arising from t
mimetic torpor. They will resist the temptation to nullify, simply b
recourse to nature, "the historical defeat of the female sex" (Engels), t
theoretical expression of which was precisely the subsumption of wom
under the concept of nature. Women are creatures of the 20th century, th
can repair cars, they perform (because they are forced) the hardest and mo
ill paid work in industry, they win (more or less under duress) Olym
medals for their countries. But because of their different history, th
exclusion from important sectors of domination and production, becaus
their specific social functions, women actually have not "become harde
to self-sacrifice" and have instead maintained behavioral possibili
which resist instrumental rationality. That is why women, though not
creatures of nature that men wanted to make of them, will remain wit
for as long as their oppression endures.
Translated by Jeannine Blackwell,

Johanna Moore and Beth Weckmueller
\oo & Con 1SCIo0

Autumn 1978 Number 4
Contents include:
Monique Plaza: "'Phallomorphic power" and the psychology of "woman".

Pasquale Pasquino: Theatrum Politicum. The genealogy of capital -
police and the state of prosperity.
Giovanna Procacci: Social economy and the government of poverty.
Denise Riley: Developmental psychology, biology and marxism.
Rick Anderson: Writing sociology and the politics of speech.
David Macey: Review article - Jacques Lacan's Ecrits and The Four
Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis.
The previous three issues have included papers by M. Foucault and F. Rossi-Landi,
critical analyses of the work of M. Pecheux and J. Piaget, studies of the relations of
knowledge and power in the prisons and in psychoanalytic practice, discussions of
theories of ideology, psychology, psychoanalysis, semiology and sexuality, plus
reviews, correspondence and debate.
Each issue contains 128 pages and is available from bookshops at a cover price of
?1.20/S 2.50, or by post from the address below at a cost of ?1.35/S 3.00 including
post and packing.
For subscription rates, details of back issues and other information, please contact:
I & C, 1 Woburn Mansions, Torrington Place, London WC1.

204.158.145.107 on Mon, 27 May 2024 20:14:19 +00:00

Bovenschen ContemporaryWitchHistorical 1978

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Bovenschen ContemporaryWitchHistorical 1978

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Contemporary Witch, the Historical Witch and the Witch Myth: The Witch,

Subject of the Appropriation of Nature and Object of the Domination of Nature

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/487908

This content downloaded from

I. The Contemporary Witch - The Witch Returns

The topic of "witches" has become fashionable, has indeed already

This content downloaded from

Reproduced by kind perm

This print was supposed to ap

This content downloaded from

the new women's movement (though in the old movement it h

This experiential appropriation of the past differs qualitatively from that

It is as if the empirical witches perceived this secret agreement Benjamin

1. Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History," Illuminations (New York,

This content downloaded from

To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it 'the

In the interaction of phylo- and ontogenetical constituents of

Witch mythology mediates between the historical and t

My assistant returned one morning from vacation. He had so

This content downloaded from

were . .. upstanding women of the urban upper middle class, who

And a further example:

I experienced such women on another occasion too .... It was in

I find it to be not so much the women's actions as the way i

6. Will-Erich Peuckert, "Ergainzendes Kapitel fiber das deutsche Hexenwesen," in Julio

This content downloaded from

The fantastic qualities of imagination go far beyond what theoretical

To elevate the historical witch post festum to an archetypcal image of

This content downloaded from

Of course the rediscovery of the historical existence of m

This recourse to an ontological substance of femininity init

Ignoring the social structures on which the former power

This content downloaded from

is probably based upon the fabrication of an "ancient tie" to an

When this feminine principle, or, expressed naively, this goddes

The politics and ideology which reduce women to this arche

.. .everything new is eo ipso worthless, even worth-negating; for Jung and

14. Ibid., p. 255.

This content downloaded from

Of interest here, although for other reasons, is the "imp

A further investigation of the reason for the mobilization o

17. cf. Roland Barthes, Mythologies (New York, 1972).

This content downloaded from

- is the implicit assumption - often an emphatic one - that t

21. Hoffman R. Hays, Diimon Frau (Diisseldorf, 1969), p. 300.

This content downloaded from

When the problem is viewed in this light, the only thing we w

The thesis presented here states that the belief in witches is es

According to this theory, women themselves provided (pro

This content downloaded from

today's theoretical psychoanalytical discussion.) The allusion to

It is not to be denied that masculine sexual fantasy and fears manifest

In literature the Pandora motif was constantly revived, leading in an

24. Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, p. 211.

This content downloaded from

II. The Historical Witch - The Fall of the Witch

Woman has always represented nature, and this is also tru

The new rationality established itself at the expense of

27. cf. ibid., p. 3.

This content downloaded from

30. Jules Michelet, Die Hexe (Munich, 1974), p. 84.

This content downloaded from

the split between faith and knowledge which later found