For all those
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 by 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;
and for 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 whose quick fingers, broken in the vice.
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 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.
~ Anonymous, 16th Century
(published in E Jong. Witches, New York 1981 and Sue Bowes. Woman's Magic, London 1999)