dancing. That figure is to be found in a cavern in Ar-
riege. Early religions actively worshiped animals, and
in particular animals which symbolized male fertility—the bull, goat, or stag. Ecstatic dancing, feasts, sacrifice o f the god or his representative (human or animal) were parts o f the rites. T h e magician-priest-shaman became the earthly incarnation o f the god-animal and
apparently dressed in the skins o f the sacred animal
(even the Pharaoh o f Egypt had an animal tail attached
to his girdle). T here he stood, replete with horns and
hooves—the primitive deity, attributes o f him echoing
in the later deities Osiris, Isis, Hathor, Pan, and Janus.
His worship was assimilated into the phallic worship o f
the northern sky-thunder-warrior gods (the influence
o f which can be seen in Druidic practices). These pagan
rites and deities maintained their divinity in the mass
psyche despite all o f the Church’s attempts to blacklist
them. Some kings o f England were converted by the
missionaries, only to revert to the old faith when the
missionaries left. Others maintained two altars, one
devoted to Christ, one to the horned god. The peasants
never played politics—they clung to the fertility-magic
beliefs. Until the 10th century, the Church protested
this willful “devil worship” but could do nothing but
issue proclamations, impose penances and fasts, and, o f
course, carry on the unending struggle against nature
and the flesh.
This was a serious business, for the end o f the world
was believed to be imminent. For good Christians, prep
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arations to depart this earthly abode included renunciation of all hedonistic activities (eating, dancing, fucking, etc. ). St. Simon Stylites, in his attempt to avoid the crime of being human, fled to the desert where he
erected a pillar on which he mortified his flesh for most
of his 72 years. He was tempted throughout by visions
of lascivious women. Indeed, it required starvation,
incessant prayer, and flagellation to be visited by lascivious women in those days and still lead the perfect Christian life.
The extremeness of the Church's ascetic imperatives
invited a reciprocal debauchery. The nobility, when
not out butchering, enforced that most curious of
customs, the jus primae noctis, which legitimated the rape
of newly wed peasant women. The Crusaders brought
back spices and syphilis from the East —that summing
up their knowledge of Arab culture. The clergy was
so openly corrupt and sensual that successive popes
were forced to acknowledge it. “By 1102 a church council had to state specifically that priests should be degraded for sodomy and anathematized for 'obstinate sodomy. ' ” 2 Bishops and cardinals were also known to
fuck around: “A typical example is that Bishop o f Toul
. . . whose favorite concubine was his own daughter
by a nun o f Epinal. " 3 The monasteries and cloisters
were rampant with homosexuality, but nuns and monks
did occasionally get together for heterosexual fucking.
Until the 12th century, there were basically three
kinds of relationship to the Church. There were the
ascetics who fled the cities to roam like beasts in the
wilderness and emulated St. Simon, who made a pig-sty
his home when not on the pillar. The ascetics mortified
Gynocide: The Witches
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the flesh while awaiting cataclysmic destruction and
eternal resurrection. There were the nobility, the
clergy, and the soldiers, who delighted in carnal excesses o f every sort, and the serfs who went on breeding because it was their only outlet and because the nobles
encouraged increases in the number o f tenants. T h e
last group, crucial to this period, were the heretics.
In the 12th century various groups, viewing the abominations o f Christianity with increasing horror, began to voice openly and even loudly their skepticism. These
sects played a prominent role in shaping the Church’s
idea o f the Devil.
T h e Waldenses, Manicheans, and Cathari were the
principal heretical sects. It is said that “the Waldenses
were burnt for the practices for which the Franciscans
were later canonized. ” 4 T heir crime was to expose and
to mock the clergy as frauds. For their piety they
suffered the fate o f all heretics, which was burning.
More influential and more dangerous were the Manicheans, who traced their origins to the Persian Mani who had been crucified in a . d. 276. T h e Manicheans
worshiped one God, who incorporated both good and
evil, the ancient Zoroastrian idea. T h e Cathari, who
were equally maligned by the Christians, also worshiped
the dual principle:
. . . the chief outstanding quality of the Cathari was
their piety and charity. They were divided into two
sections: the ordinary lay believers and the Perfecti,
who believed in complete abstinence and even the
logical end of all asceticism — the Endura —a passionate
disavowal of physical humanity which led them to
starvation and even apparently to mass suicide. They
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adopted most of the Christian teaching and dogma of
the New Testament, mixed with Gnostic ritual, using
asceticism as an end to visions and other-consciousness.
They were so loyal to their beliefs that a John of Toulouse was able to plead before his judges in 1230 ...
“Lords: hear me. I am no heretic; for I have a wife and
lie with her, and have children; and I eat flesh and lie
and swear, and am a faithful Christian. ” Many of them
seem, indeed, to have lived with the barren piety of
the saints. They were accordingly accused of sexual
orgies and sacrilege, and burned, and scourged, and
harried. Nevertheless the heresy flourished, and
Cathari were able to hold conferences on equal terms
with orthodox bishops. 5
The Holy Inquisition, in its infancy, exterminated the
Cathari, tried to exterminate the Jews, and then went
on to exterminate the Knights Templars, the Christian
organization of knighthood and conquest which had
become too powerful and wealthy. It had become independent of clergy and kings, and had thereby incurred the wrath of both. With these experiences under its expanding belt, the Inquisition in the 15th century
turned to the persecution o f those most heinous o f all
heretics, the witches, that is, to all of those who still clung
to the old cult beliefs of pagan Europe.
The Manicheans and Cathari had, in order to account for the existence of good and evil (the thorniest of theological problems), worshiped good and evil both.