I really should stay away from Facebook. You can waste a lot of time talking about nothing. And yesterday I found myself involved in an argument, concerning the commemoration of pagan martyrs.
To be more specific, a group has been set up on Facebook, titled ‘Remembering the Wise Fallen’. The idea of the group was to establish a memorial day, ‘for those Wise Ones who were persecuted, tortured and in many cases murdered for their belief in a different Path’.
This is a reasonable idea, but we have to be careful that we don’t fall victim to a pagan-tinted view of history.
We look at the persecution of witches over the centuries with justifiable horror. We’ve probably read about the Salem witch trials in the early 1690s, which led to nineteen executions. However these trials, by Seventeenth Century standards, were pretty minor.
In Germany, at the beginning of the Seventeenth Century, there was a full-scale witch craze, which led to the execution of thousands of innocent people.
For example, in the German town of Bamberg, between 1626 and 1631, there were as many as six hundred executions. The hysteria was so great that one of the people judging the witches was himself burnt as a witch, because he was too lenient.
It’s tempting for modern-day pagans to feel that members of their religion were being martyred in these witch crazes; but just because someone is accused of being a witch, doesn’t mean that they’re guilty as charged.
In fact, in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Europe and North America just about everyone was a Christian, and that included the victims of the witch trials. Like the rest of the population, they were God-fearing Christians, who just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Of course some witches were executed for activities that might seem genuinely witch-like. For example a Scottish woman from the Orkney Islands, called Bessie Skebister, who would use her prophetic powers to tell members of a fishing community whether or not their loved ones would return safely from their fishing trips. She was accusing of making someone ill, through witchcraft, and having been found guilty she was strangled and burnt. Nonetheless, I would guess that Bessie Skebister regarded herself as a Christian, and would be horrified by modern-day paganism.
There were other people who were burnt for their gnostic beliefs, but gnosticism and paganism aren’t quite the same thing. In France, in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, there was the Cathar movement. The Cathars were Christian, but they regarded God as having a dualistic nature, one side being good, the other being evil. The Cathars also had women priests.
Not surprisingly, the Catholic Church launched a crusade against the Cathars. When the Cathars were facing defeat, they had a choice – they could accept Catholic orthodoxy and walk free, or they could be burnt as heretics. Many chose the latter.
So overall it would be wrong to commemorate the victims of the Christian establishment as pagan martyrs. At least in terms of the period from the Eleventh through to the Seventeenth Century.
If one wants genuine Pagan martyrs, one by and large has to look at an earlier period, when Christian influence was expanding across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.
An example of such a martyr was Hypathia, the female mathematician and pagan, who was killed by a Christian mob in AD 415. Or Julian the Apostate, the Roman Emperor who tried to reverse the Christian tide, and bring back paganism. However he probably wasn’t martyred, and he instead died in battle.
As far as modern martyrs are concerned, there is the moving story of a twelve years old girl from Michigan called Tempest Smith, who was a bit of a non-conformist, one of her interests being Wicca. This interest helped make her a target for bullying, and she was driven to suicide, on February 2001.
There is then the question of when one should commemorate the pagan victims of Christianity. The Facebook site is all-set on October 13. It doesn’t clash with other holidays, it’s close to the Celtic festival of Samhain, which falls at the end of October, and to cap it all, the number 13 is supposed to be powerful.
That’s very nice, but if you want to commemorate the victims of the witch trials, who were pretty much all Christian, you should choose another day. Because you don’t want to dishonour them, by linking them with paganism and Celtic festivals. And also, if something is really important, you shouldn’t worry about calendar clashes.
If I were to choose a day for commemorating the victims of the witch trials, I would go for June 13. This is the anniversary of the execution of Anna Göldi, who was beheaded for being a witch on June 13 1782. She was apparently the last person to be executed for witchcraft in Europe. Needless to say, she was innocent.
Another possible date, if you want to encompass the Cathars, is August 8, which is the feast day of Saint Dominic. He was a religious zealot, who played a big role in organising the crusade against the Cathars. By making his feast day a commemoration of Christian bigotry, one is reminding people of what Saint Dominic really stood for.
However if you want a day for commemorating the pagan victims of Christianity, then surely February 20 is the day to go for, which is the anniversary of Tempest Smith’s death. She is a contemporary martyr, who arguably died for her beliefs. February 20 is also World Day of Social Justice, which is perhaps rather fitting.
Copyright © 2010 Archie Dunlop
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