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"For My Sisters" by
Nikolai Angelus Stone
From
Witches :
For all those who died -
stripped naked, shaved, shorn.
For all those who screamed
in vain to the Great Goddess
only to have their tongues
ripped out at the root.
For all those who were pricked, racked, broken on the wheel
for the sins of their Inquisitors.
For all those whose beauty
stirred their torturers to fury;
& for all those whose ugliness did the same.
For all those who were neither ugly nor beautiful,
but only women who would not submit.
For all those quick fingers
broken in the vise.
For all those soft arms
pulled from their sockets.
For all those budding breasts
ripped with hot pincers.
For all those midwives killed merely for the sin
of delivering man
to an imperfect world.
For all those witch-women, my sisters,
who breathed freer
as the flames took them,
knowing as they shed
their female bodies,
the seared flesh falling like fruit
in the flames,
that death alone would cleanse them
of the sin for which they died
the sin of being born a woman,
who is more than the sum
of her parts.
Copyright © 1981 Erica Mann Jong, all rights
reserved.
Used by permission of the poet.
Images and artwork of the witch
trials
Murder Victims
and Murderers involved in the witch trials - A list of the people involved in the Salem Witch Trials
and a short biography of each.
Convicted - List and short
biographies of the people who were convicted of witchcraft in Salem.
Historical
Background of the Salem Witch Trials
Books about
the Salem Witch Trials
Best Link:
National Geographic's Interactive Salem Witch Hunt - this page lets you "live out" (through
story) what it would have been like to have been accused of witchcraft in
Salem, Massachusetts.
My thoughts
Ron and I visited the Witch Dungeon Museum in Salem, Mass. Below are the
pictures we took of the dungeon. Although the jail is a re-creation of the
original dungeon which is no longer standing, it was
still pretty disturbing in there. The cells are the actual size of the
real cells used in the original jail. You see the tortures that people
went through and the horrible conditions of the jail. It's really just so
sad. It's wicked that people would treat each other this way. It makes me
cry to think about what these poor women and even men and children went
through.
I'm planning to go back to New England in Autumn 2009 so I hope to see
more of Salem, maybe visit some cemeteries or other sites that I missed
last time, since I was only there for one afternoon the first time I
visited. It's a very witchy town with several pagan stores in a small
area. I even found a gold pentacle pendent in one of the jewelry stores,
which was very rare at the time (I noticed that AzureGreen is selling
gold jewelry nowadays, but they used to be hard to find. Don't worry, I
like silver best, but sometimes gold matches my outfit or mood better.)
You can either view pictures one at a time and use your Back button, or
you can click the "Next" button provided under each enlarged picture to
view them all.
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