This week’s A Sense of Place post is up: Disenchantment, Enclosure, and ‘The Burning Times’
That is to say, the burnings of witches in the middle part of the previous millennium was not just an attack by religious authorities against Pagan beliefs, it was an attack against a way of relating to the world which made us bad workers, which kept us from submitting to the new economic and political order, and it was focused primarily on women.
This essay is unfortunately the briefest of glosses over one of the most significant books I’ve ever read, Silvia Federici’s Caliban and The Witch. I hope to write a review of it sometime, but suffice it to say, you’ll be seeing it quoted a lot in my writing, as how could I possibly resist an Italian Marxist Feminist who explains Pagan and magical beliefs made for bad workers?
The book is glorious, and you can find free copies of it online (and really cheap copies elsewhere).
Rhyd Wildermuth 