Witchcraft-and-the-Gay-Counterculture-1

THE SACRED ORGIESOF WITCHCRAFT“Diana is the Devil.”– Tomas de Torquemada, Grand Inquisitor of Spain(Russell, 235, note).While some so-called “heretics” tried to combine paganismwith Christianity, others (especially lower-class country people)retained pagan rites in their old pre-Christian form. In the earlymiddle ages, church synods repeatedly condemned surviving paganrites, including the ceremonial use of sex images (Russell, 55 & 58,notes; Cohn, Demons, 157; Summers, History, 99). Christians werealso troubled by the surviving worship of the Great Mother, whowas most often honored under the name of “Diana, the goddess ofthe pagans.” Condemnations of her worship persisted from the earlymiddle ages until the 16th century. The earliest accounts tell of sexrites, describe surviving statues of the goddess, and report strongpopular resistance to Christianity, even to the point of killing missionaries(Russell, 57; 58, n. 21; 61, n. 25; Cohn, Demons, 212;Grimm, 237). In the late 9th century, one hostile writer gave thisdescription:“It is also not to be omitted that some wicked women pervertedby the devil, seduced by illusions and phantoms of demons,believe and profess themselves, in the hours of the night to ride uponcertain beasts with Diana, the goddess of the pagans, and an innumerablemultitude of women, and in the silence of the dead of nightto traverse great spaces of earth, and to obey her commands as oftheir mistress, and to be summoned to her services on certain nights.But I wish it were they alone who perished in their faithlessness andinfidelity. For an innumerable multitude, deceived by this false opinion,believe this to be true, and so believing, wander from the rightfaith” (Russell, 76).Due to the widespread and ancient nature of her worship,the goddess had many other names beside Diana. In Germany andshe was called Holda or Holle. In Norwegian and Danish lands, shewas Hulla, Huldra, or Huldre. In Switzerland and Austria, she appearedas Berchta, Bertha, or Perchtha. Elsewhere, she was knownas Faste, Selga, Selda, Abundia, Satia, Befana, and Befania (Grimm,221-225; Russell, 49, note). Whatever her name, she was usuallyregarded as a powerful deity, ruling over the weather, animals, sexuality,spinning, weaving, plant life, and the abode of the dead.Hundreds of years before the Inquisition’s great witch hunts,some Christians already viewed worshippers of the Great Mother as72should combine for their destruction and sweep them from theface of the earth, without sparing age or sex, so that they shouldbe an eternal opprobium to the nations (Lea, 1:202).Six years before, Gregory had issued another Bull, Extravagantes,which condemned sodomy (Bailey, 98). Condemnations ofhomosexuality among the clergy also appeared in the decrees of theThird Lateran Council in 1179, the Council of Paris in 1212, andthe Council of Rouen in 1214 (Bailey, 127).Because of the identification of homosexuality with heresy,the creation of the Inquisition seems to have spurred secular authoritiesto start harassing Lesbians and Gay men. In 1260, the legal codeof the city of Orleans outlawed lesbianism and male homosexuality,calling for mutilations for the first and second offenses, and burningfor the third (Bailey, 142). In 1261, the parlement of Amiens had todecide a dispute between the bishop and the city government as towho had the authority to try sodomites, finally deciding on behalfof the city (Bailey, 143). The fact that homosexuality came to beviewed as a form of heresy is clearly shown in the 1290 law passedby King Edward I of England. The law called for death by burningin the case of sodomites – but did so in the context of condemningreligious criminals: “The same sentence shall be passed upon sorcerers,sorceresses, renegades [meaning apostates], sodomites, and hereticspublicly convicted” (Bailey, 145-146).The Holy Inquisition turned homosexuality into heresy.“Heresy became a sexual rather than a doctrinal concept; to say aman was a heretic was to say that he was a homosexual. and viceversa” (Taylor, 131). Because of the methods of the Inquisition –with hearsay and the forced confession of accomplices – great numbersof Lesbians and Gay men must have lost their lives. But straighthistorians have not documented this aspect of the Inquisition, just asthey have not documented the mass murder of Gay people in Hitler’sconcentration camps.The Inquisition inevitably lead to political abuse. The mostfamous of this abuse involved the charge of homosexuality againstthe Order of the Knights Templars, a monastic military order. OnFriday, October 13, 1307, Philippe the Fair, King of France, stunnedEurope by having 5,000 members of the Order arrested throughoutFrance (Legman, 3ff). The Templars were brought before the Inquisitionand charged with five counts of heresy: (1) that incoming membersto the order were required to spit on the cross and reject theChristian religion; (2) that during his initiation the initiate kissedthe initiator on his mouth, cock, and ass hole; (3) that sodomy wasthe lawful and expected practice of all Templars; and (4) that theTemplars held secret religious rites where they worshipped a non-Christian deity (Lea, in Legman).At first, Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master of the Order,and the other arrested members denied the charges. But when they101