Why It Sucks To Be A Medieval Witch...

[Please not that I'm discussing witchcraft as actually practiced in the Middle Ages, and not modern Wicca. Any modern witch that thinks that he or she is practicing it as it actually was seriously needs to open up a history book. And don't get me going on druids...]

Witchcraft was not always the great thing that we think of today. Rather than rituals meant to pull a group together and harness the power of the group for beneficial reasons, witchcraft was usually practiced for the benefit of one. There was no price to casting curses, or doing evil; it was just a person using knowledge that was passed down from person to person, and then they could use that knowledge as desired. Although I will readily admit most of what we know about medieval witchcraft is rubbish at best and spin at worst, there was some truth to problem.

It needs to be noted that witches came in two stripes: The wise woman who did what she could because she was essentially a nice person, and the more ambitious version, who did what she did in order to gain power. In places that were far from big cities, and away from places where medicine ruled, it was not that uncommon for a witch to be the main medical practitioner. Generally speaking, the Church left them alone, as long as they behaved responsibly and didn't call attention to themselves; there was just no profit ticking off a village by removing its doctor.

This does not necessarily mean that the witches of yore were practitioners of some form of paganism. Usually they were just women, usually who were not married or whose husband died young, who picked up a few more tricks than the average person did, and became valued for that skill. They knew which herbs and minerals worked, and were able to remember how much it took to make the difference between healing and killing. In the countryside, this made them valuable those skills made the difference between life and death. An important skill, yes, but hardly magic, and definitely not the same as today's wicca, which are related more to druidism and its rites than actual witchcraft.

However, when the witch did bring attention to herself, the Church would have to investigate. If the witch had a reputation for using her "powers" for political power or for killing animals or people, then she would most likely end up being tortured; a witch that just cured people would usually escape punishment. Until the Spanish Inquisition, this was pretty much how the Church dealt with witches.

The Spanish Inquisition was a problem. They began punishing people for all manner of ecclesiastical crimes, ranging from adultery to witchcraft, and everything in between. Although blame on the Inquisition has focused on their persecution of witches, it needs to be realized that they went EVERYBODY, adulterers, homosexuals, witches, and anyone else that they could; they were enforcing biblical law. This is not to whitewash the crime against humanity by the Inquisition, but rather to widen it, and point out that this was actually worse than thought. Eventually Rome would deal with the problem with help from the rulers, as it took some time for them to find out what was going on, but by then the damage was done. It did not help that some of the inquisitors fought back even as they continued their "good work", making life horrible for everyone.

After that, witches melted into the woodwork. There were intermittent problems, such as Salem, that did not help their reputation, but by the end of the Inquisition there was simply no good reason for witches to even exist, as their role was taken over by actual doctors, and so they became the bogeymen that they did. Sometimes the victors really do write the histories...

The Dark Ages and the Light of Science

So, we've discussed the infrastructure and societal changes that would have made the Dark Ages not so dark by themselves. However, there were also scientific developments that need to be allowed for, and some of them are virtually vital to science today.

[A quick note on the Greeks: It needs to be realized at some point that, although the Greeks had made major discoveries, these discoveries were usually hidden away by the discoverer; rather than dispersing the information as scientists do today, it would most likely have been seen as hubris to do so back then, and as hubris was something to be avoided, the information would have disappeared with maybe a shrug of the shoulders and a "that's cool." As far as I can tell, it wasn't until the Middle Ages that this attitude changed, as monks and nobles started compiling information at the orders of the local rulers, possibly to avoid the waste caused by replication of efforts, noting that a discovery here helped one there, or just to compile the information. This formal order eventually changed to an informal one, creating the scientific sharing we know now.]

In medicine, the biggest limitation was not the Catholic Church, but disease. As disease was usually fatal and germ theory was centuries in the future, even doctors died from infections. As even bathing was suspect, making washing up the exception, and that meant that disease had a very nice vector. This is why there was a moratorium on dealing with dead bodies; it had died from something, and so staying away from it was probably a good idea. This was formalized when most of the dead bodies were available due to some very nasty diseases. Nonetheless, doctors did perform autopsies, and mapped out the various systems of the bodies, even if they had to be very sneaky about it. These anatomical charts would eventually be released; however, because they lacked knowledge of how they worked, and some systems were invisible to the naked eye, they wouldn't lead to any major advances for a few centuries.

However, what advances did happen in medicine came from chemistry. As chemists figured out why certain plants cured the way they did, they able to create more effective ways of dealing with diseases and other ailments. Also, there were a number of advances in how to distill, extract, and test the chemicals to determine what the chemist was dealing with.

There were also advances in surgery, childbirthing, and veterinary sciences, partially because of the forbidden autopsies, but also because people started realizing that those areas had actual import. Although most of this was still relatively simple compared to what we have and do today, they were still major advances over what was going on. Astronomy slowly became an actual science, but otherwise slowed up, and physics was just getting off the ground.

In technology, there were still trying to figure out how things worked. Most of the obvious changes came in engineering as weapon designs became more complicated and weapons themselves increased in quality; note the evolution of the crossbow and its deadliness. Building also became a little more advanced, as did carpentry in general; compare the thatched huts of the farmer to the towns. Admittedly all of this was comparative baby steps, but you need a firm grasp of the basics before you can really start having fun. More to the point, it was all of this experimenting in the so-called Dark Ages; you can argue that advancement was slow-paced, but the point is that there was advancement, and without the basics established in the Dark Ages, we would not have been able to advance as far as we have today.

In short, a quip meant by Voltaire to be insulting was taken far too seriously.

The Dark Ages: Not so Dark...

For someone known only for his snarky tongue, Voltaire has had a lasting effect on civilization. One of those is one small thing he said, but that has reverberated throughout history; in essence, he called the period lasting from roughly the fall of Rome to the Renaissance (roughly the fifth through fourteenth centuries) as the "Dark Ages", as he believed that no advances occurred during that time. As any decent historian will tell you, Voltaire was wrong.

There are basically three ways to look at this. The first is that the medieval era was full of infrastructure building. Although there was little in the way of exploration, as Europeans stayed close to home, Europe in general was building up. Understand one thing about Europe that is different than other areas; there is a lack of arable land compared to other areas, mostly due to the mountains that virtually cover the continent, and also because of, ironically, the water. All of that coastline makes farming difficult due to the presence of windborne salt, and swamps slow progress down. In essence, you had to find and exploit land in order to survive.

With a growing population, every acre of land had to be exploited, and that encourages building towns every few miles in order to better be able farm the area. You will also have roads between those towns to better facilitate shipping grain long distances. As the roads and rivers become more important for trade, you need to protect them, requiring standard armies. You also need the administration and skilled smiths to support the armies, farmers, and other niceties of building up a society. In short, as any decent gamer will tell you, that's a lot of infrastructure to build, especially when you realize that almost none of it has really changed; we've paved over the roads and computerized it, but I think a valid argument can be made that a bureaucrat from the Eighth Century would be at home in the Twelfth and in the Twenty-First.

The second is that there was a lot of societal change. Again, more of a firming up, but there were a lot of wars fought for honor and resources. As these wars were fought, nobles started realizing that alliances were good things, as were rules in combat; after all, if both sides were aware that there were limits, and that as long as those limits were worked within, the odds of you surviving that battle increased. Thus generals that killed everyone were looked down on, and those that could win a battle without shedding blood were considered more heroic. There was still bloodshed, but if you gained a reputation for slaughter odds are good that people would gang up on you.

You also had a lot of different schools of thought, developing into the schisms and what not of Christianity. The Catholic put some of these schools down, but at the same time they let most survive, even adopting some of them into the fold. In essence, as long as the school of thought played within the rules, odds are it would be adopted rather than killed.

You also had people start realizing that they had a lot more power than they thought they did. Not only did nobles start asking for more responsibility and therefore power, but so did merchants and guilds. Even the peasants started stretching their muscles; a number of rules and regs regarding peasants started going by the historical wayside, such as the right of the first night and being able to move freely from town to town. In essence, people were moving more and more towards more democratic forms.

So far, we have a lot of infrastructure building as well as advancements in the way people are thinking. All of this required a lot fundamental changes in society over a relatively short period. But, there is one area I'm leaving alone for its own entry...

Science vs. Religion: Astronomy

It's been oft said that religion and science have little to do with each other, and that religion inhibits science. Nothing could be further from the truth, as religion has actually helped science along. Some of these connections should be explored. The best place to start is astronomy.

Once people began to farm, knowing when to lay crops down was extremely important. This need started to lay down a basic paradigm: almost everyone farmed, there were a few nobles, and the small remainder took up learning about the universe. Getting food was pretty much a full-time job, as was ruling; the original nobles were busy adjudicating disagreements, deciding what to do with neighboring tribes, which came down to fighting or marrying, and other like things.

This meant that the you had a very small number of people dealing with the gods. When people were more nomadic, the shamans had little time to really explore the universe, and so they noticed little more than constellations and correlated that to the behaviors of animals, plants, and weather, allowing the tribe to make plans more than a few days in advance. This was a serious advantage and allowed for regular religious rituals, as well as tracking time. Eventually they were able to stretch schedules into years. They also linked the times of the year to personality types, making astrology somewhat important.

When the tribes settled down and started farming, they were able to start doing more, and so started making calendars, with some of these being quite immense. After all, because of farming people started having more free time; they didn't need to gather food all of the time, and so were able to do some of the first public works projects. This explains a lot of the truly large buildings; the people would farm in spring, harvest in fall, and do maintenance chores during the winter. There was some weeding and brewing during the summer, and maybe some art, but it was mostly a very boring season, making it ideal for war and building. So they did.

Because watching the stars was so important, these first projects tended to be calendars. Big calendars. Some have noted how coincidentally major structures are lined up with specific constellations and directions; if your life depended on the appearance of a specific star, you would probably line up your biggest building to that star. Astronomy was actually pretty sophisticated when you realize that they were not doing it with computers and telescopes.

Oh, and another cool about the early astrologers: They kept records. Because tracking the stars was so important, they kept track of them and recorded their findings, and modern-day astronomers have been able to use these recorded numbers to determine a lot about the skies back then.

But the lesson to take away here is that even as they were doing what amounted to a lot of scientific inquiry, and that there was definitely a practical edge to that inquiry, the reason was fundamentally religious. By knowing the skies you could know your future and, in times of crisis, know the will of the gods. It's worth noting that the book religions each have a proscription against divination, possibly because God talk to His flock directly, and also as a way to make them different from the surrounding tribes. Nonetheless astrology lasted as a science until the 12^th century or so, when it started to be replace by astronomy, which stripped out the supernatural underpinnings and made it mere divination. Astronomy has become important to almost every branch of civilization, as its discoveries have led to advances in almost every area. Not bad for something started by some superstitious savages...

How Important is a Name?

Here's a weird case from a morals perspective: To what degree should we be able to define our own identity?

Here's the story: Judge Rules On Name Change

The problem is that the judge's ruling, from a strictly legal perspective, is fine. That is, from the perspective of the law as defined by the State of Oklahoma Judge Graves is in the right here. There are a number of people who would prefer not have sex or enter marriage with someone who has had transgender surgery even as they otherwise accept that it is a person's right to do so. There is also the legitimate issue of whether or not the person is legally male even after the surgery has been completed; the judge's point that person remains male at the cellular level and then using that for his standard is legitimate. There are a number of other standards that he could have used, such as Ingram's ability or inability to become pregnant or if musculature or skeleton had changed, but that's at the discretion of the judge; nonetheless, in all of those cases Ingram would have been still male. The last point is iffy, about the gender change being an effective disguise, but that one could have gone either way.

Ultimately, from a legal perspective, I can understand the judge's ruling.

However, it doesn't work out from a morals level. The judge errs by bringing the biblical quote into the situation. The problem is twofold: The first is that he may have erred by adding a religious element, especially when rendering a judgment such as this given the current atmosphere; the summoning of the biblical spirit when so many transgendered have reason to hate the religious was a serious error in judgment.

At the same time, he may have erred when he decided against the name change. If Ingram really wanted to demonstrate his change, his name is a vital step. Names have power; changing his name to represent her new status (pronouns work here, I believe) is a powerful first step towards solidifying that new identity. She was attempting to make a point by changing her name to fit her new persona, demonstrating to her community as a whole that she had a fundamental change in who she is.

She, through the free will that we were given by God, was acting to make a change in her life that she felt was necessary. She did not feel that she was a man, and was taking steps to change that. This was not a simply or easy solution, and it was no doubt reached only by seriously considering all of the different factors involved. She decided that the identity she was given at birth did not fit her, and so decided to change that. It was her choice, and, as long as she was willing to accept the ramifications of that decision, she should have been allowed to make whatever changes she felt as necessary.

In that regard, the judge erred. If he is arguing that she could commit fraud by using the female name, then an equal argument could be made that she was committing fraud by using the male name. The name no longer reflects who she is and, if expectations are based on her name, she is not going to get the behaviors towards her that she is expecting. Worse, as she if for all intents and purposes a man, she is going to mess with those expecting a man rather than a woman. The judge is messing with those expectations on a number of levels, and I'm not sure how correct that is. Let's just hope Ingram appeals and gets the name she deserves...

The Biblical Genesis

So, how closely does Genesis 1:1 through 1: get it right? Let's take a quick look...

1: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Okay, so far so good. After the Big Bang, matter coalesced into pools of matter. These pools eventually formed into nebulae, and those nebulae into stars. This process would repeat a few times, and eventually our sun and solar system would form. Eventually Earth would cool, and separate into the solid part and the gases surrounding it.



2: Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
Oh, forgot about the water. Oops. So, after a while the Earth really cools down and the water vapor in the clouds starts raining down. This takes a few centuries, but eventually the clouds open up. Oh. Just a sec, getting ahead of ourselves.



3: And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4: God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5: God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.
Okay, so let's back up just a little. The Earth needed to cool a little before you could see any sign of the Sun. Until that point, light from volcanoes and lightning, diffused and reflected by clouds, would have ensured that the globe was lit day and night. When the Earth cooled to the point where it could rain, that light was dimmed and sunlight, such as it was, took over. However, because of the cloud cover, all you could see if it was day or night based on how light the clouds were. When the rains were over----



6: And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” 7: So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. 8: God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.
So now we have the clouds and seas. Sweet.



9: And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. 10: God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.
You have all of that water going everywhere, effectively flooding the world. For a little while the Earth was covered by water, but eventually, due to a combination of tectonic action and water evaporating, the land masses started popping up.



11: Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. 12: The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13: And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.
Okay, so now we have a problem. Sort of. About now a number of chemicals would combined with all of that rampant electricity to form amino acids. These amino acids would form eventually into blue-green algae, the first cellular life form on the planet, and also the first plant. So we have plants, just not in the variety we originally wanted.



14: And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, 15: and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. 16: God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17: God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, 18: to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19: And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.
Oh, we still have those frigging clouds. All that carbon dioxide isn't exactly making for starry nights; think Los Angeles, but on a global scale. But we now have photosynthesizing plants on the scene, and they start taking in the carbon dioxide and converting it to oxygen. This deals with the clouds once and for all, allowing the stars to finally be seen from the surface of the planet. This of course also means that we could finally see the Moon and Sun, you know, if we were alive back then.



20: And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” 21: So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

So let's do some serious time condensation. The Sun is shining, and evolution happens. The algae evolves, and plants and animals swarm the oceans. Fish start swimming, and they lead to amphibians, who lead to reptiles. Reptiles lead to birds and mammals. So now we have fish in the oceans and birds in the skies. Man evolves, and finally invents television. God is finally able to watch a decent football game.

Overall, not bad. Too many plants on one stage, but otherwise I think there is a nice correlation. Feel free to comment below.

Obvious Caveats

I guess some obvious caveats are in order before I really get going. The first is that I am not going to be basing my biblical interpretation on a literal reading of The Bible. I am going to be taking the position that The Bible is an allegorical construct; it is a great book to go to for advice, but it is not to be read literally. This is not to disrespect it by any stretch; the problem is that there are a number of historical events and personages mentioned in The Bible, but they are mentioned in terms of what they stood for. A good example is the destruction of Jericho through sound; although there is some evidence of Jericho being destroyed by earthquake at the same time as the Israelites coming through, it is unlikely that the town was destroyed by the power of trumpets, unless they were a lot bigger than we have been led to believe. It makes a great story and warns of God's power, but is not likely to have happened as reported.

The second is to keep in mind that most of my academic training is science. I'm not going to try and justify the difference; it is my personal belief that there is no need for a reconciliation between the two; science explains the what, when, where and how of existence, religion grabs the who and why. As humans we need all of those questions answered, and sometimes we need some sort of higher power. This is not to weaken the case of science, but rather to simply say we don't know. There are also those really weird coincidences that no one can explain, ranging from something as simple as a candy bar being sold long after no one even makes it all the way to the orderliness of a particular organism. There just sometimes hits a point where something is so well ordered that it has to be an artificial construct even when we know it's 100% natural. We need someone to blame, and we know it's not us this time.

The last is that you need to keep in mind that the biggest problem with studying The Bible is that it's hard to do with the original language. Hebrew has a number of limitations when it comes to expressing thoughts, as does even Greek; the languages are old enough that there just simply are not the words to express certain concepts. There are also some concepts that the ancients had to deal with on a daily basis that we simply don't. We have no problems with the concept of an atheist in this day and age; the idea of someone who did not believe in some sort of a god would have been completely foreign to our ancestors. Because of this there will always be translation issues as translators need to not only know the language but the nuances of the culture, and that's not always easy. So be prepared for some weird translation issues...

With that said, I guess I can start having some fun.

Foregoing Modern Thought

Before we get going, we need to eliminate one of the bigger fallacies about previous eras: One cannot apply modern thinking to non-modern settings. It can get sort of interesting when one attempts to impose modern thinking on, say, medieval settings without understanding that it just doesn’t apply.

This is important to understand when we are dealing with a number of social mores. Slavery is the obvious example, as the modern concept is rather limited. This should obviously not be seen as an endorsement of slavery, as we have moved on and it simply no longer applies to our way of life; even prisoners used to do work that others would not, such as cleaning highways, should be compensated for their work. However, in the ancient world it did have a number of advantages, such as allowing a way to preserve cultures when the culture was threatened by conquerors (the culture would be enslaved rather than exterminated), a way to provide for services that few wanted to perform, and spreading of genetic traits (a major bonus when inbreeding was all too frequent).

Another is too assume that cultures were more simple simply because they do not need to deal with today’s politics. It can be argued that the extreme reactions of the time (easily taking offense for even pretend offenses and acting on them) made local politics more interesting, and required a far more delicate touch than they did today. Just the issue that someone could be accused of something and that the accusation needed to be taken seriously no matter how ridiculous the charge could easily make life interesting for the accused. Without today’s necessity for proof courts could get interesting.

It also needs to be noted that a number of assumptions we have about other eras need to be noted every so often. It is almost amusing how many people assume that the Victorian Age is without love or even sex beyond the need to procreate despite the mountains of evidence we have that prostitution flourished, that erotica took on new forms (some that could not even be imagined before its beginning), and that romance was definitely on the wax. We need to look at our own assumptions and investigate whether or not they are worthy of maintaining.

The point here is that our assumptions about how life worked in prior ages is all too often based on invalid information, and sometimes satire or parody took on a life all of its own (such as the apocryphal stories of table legs covered to avoid amorous attentions of young men). We need to allow that not all of the stories are true, and that sometimes are ancestors did what was appropriate for their lives then, and without our current knowledge. It may not work today, but that does not mean that it did not work for them; it was a simpler time, and that applies to technology as well as it did to the people. This is a necessary first step.