| The Appendix ends with one more interesting section, where the “sacrifice” again is described but also with the words “elves flesh.” “Nineteenth century. It was the common rumour that Elphin Irving came not into the world like the other sinful creatures of the earth, but was one of the Kane-bairns of the fairies, whilk they had to pay to the enemy of man's salvation every seventh year. The poor lady-fairy,--a mother's aye a mother, be she Elve's flesh or Eve's flesh,--hid her Elf son beside the christened flesh in Marion Irving's cradle, and the auld enemy lost his prey for a time . . . And touching this lad, ye all ken his mother was a hawk of an uncannie nest, a second cousin of Kate Kimmer, of Barfloshan, as rank a witch as ever rode on ragwort.” What I find most interesting here is the mixing of “Eve” with “Elve” and the mixing of ideas of “elves flesh” with the “seventh year sacrifice” of the “elve’s son.” It appears to me that the common folk were using the word “fairy” to describe their mushroom use among themselves to avoid authorities. The authorities had picked up on this simple trick. Today, among hippies the commonly used term is “boomers” when discussing “shrooms.” The underground always has their endearing terms for their favorite medications. Doses, molly, boomers, dabs, tabs, kind buds and shwag. That’s just culture and it appears to me that this was what people were doing. Why was the church so concerned about “fairies,” we should ask ourselves? We know they were concerned about mushroom use and peyote use among the natives in Mexico and the Indians in America. We know the Church considered that to be the “work of the devil.” Now, in the medieval times, we see the association of the devil with fairies. And everyone knows about the association of fairies to mushrooms, right? The last quote we read, dealt directly with “fairy circles” which do not imply datura or mandrake, they imply mushrooms. Let us not deal yet with the question of whether or not fairies are real, and if so, what are they exactly. We will put that off for the time being and return to the question later. The witch trials didn’t end in Holland until 1610 and in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1632. On February 16, 1649, Christina, Queen of Sweden, as the first act after her accession to the throne, issued a proclamation which ordered that all witch prosecutions on Swedish possessions in German lands be abolished. By the late 1600’s a sort of enlightenment was sweeping Europe and the idea of witchcraft existing at all was losing steam, not just in the beliefs of the people, but their tolerance for the punishments that were not befitting the crime were waning. Louis XIV of France decreed in 1672 that all cases of witchcraft being prosecuted be dismissed. For a brief time, capital punishment was once again brought back, for crimes of witches but Louis XIV limited the power of the judges. (39) |
Christian Thomasius (1 January 1655 – 23 September 1728) was a German jurist and philosopher who was in many ways partially responsible at least for ending the witch trials in England. The following quotes given are from Witchcraft in Europe 1400-1700: “In 1687 he made the daring innovation of lecturing in German instead of Latin and gave a lecture on the topic “How One Should Emulate the French Way of Life,” referring to the French use of their native language not only in everyday life but in scholarship as well; according to scholar Klaus Luig, this event marks the real beginning of the Enlightenment in Germany.” In one comment made by him in reference to the woman of Endor (1 Samuel 28) was that she was simply a ventriloquist and asked “What judge would be so foolish as to believe a thousand women, if they unanimously confessed that they had been to heaven and danced with St. Peter and slept with his hunting dogs, and yet the witches’ confessions are more absurd than this?” Thomasius translated English works of John Webster, written in 1673, which were critical of witchcraft, into the German language so Germans could be able to consider the possibility that witches were not real magicians able to do the ridiculous things the church was insisting they were responsible for. (40) On May 10, 1690, Thomasius was denounced by the church and his arrest ordered which led him to flee to Berlin where he was offered refuge and a salaried job. He then founded the University of Halle in 1694. He died in 1728, the same year the last woman was burned for witchcraft in Prussia. Witch prosecution in England was finally abolished in 1682. Five centuries of the religious persecution of the church during the Holy Inquisition ravaged the whole of Europe in ways that Rome as a conquering imperialist force could only partially control and dismantle. Since all property from the condemned passed into church hands, land, property and gold or physical wealth rapidly accumulated in the hands of the Catholic Church, thereby centralizing power considerably. Over so many centuries, this allowed the church, along with Rome itself, to rule the world via stealth through religious persecution. Tens of thousands of children became orphaned and disenfranchised from their hereditary estates. Rome, and their church, having no heritage or culture other than the ones it stole and consolidated into their cosmopolitan world system, acted like a virus upon the world infecting every culture it encountered and depleting the quality of life of most of its citizens. (41) (39) History of the Devil, p. 377 (40) Witchcraft in Europe 1400-1700, A documentary history 2nd Ed. 2001, University of Pennsylvania Press, Page 445 (41) Great Cosmic Mother, p. 302 |