jerryk on Nostr: What makes a witch? Anybody know? The concept ranges widely from the benign self-help ...

What makes a witch? Anybody know? The concept ranges widely from the benign self-help psychology and healing of most contemporary Wicca spells, to poisoners, adulterers, murderers of all types, to great sorcerers and mages who can virtually accomplish the impossible -- teleportation, telekinesis, shape-shifting material transformations, etc. So what is a witch, really, then?

In the Western Judeo-Christian tradition, witches are generally seen as evil, not good. Although the concept of "good" witches seems to be present too, to some degree, particularly in non-Western cultures. I think in a very broad sense, in all cultures, witches are seen, at best, ambivalently, because they violate social norms. Witches always violate social norms. They have powers and practices that simply are not normal in the societies they titularly belong to. Witches are marginal outsiders, never to be entirely trusted, always considered to be a potential danger and a threat. In particular, they were clearly outside of the power of contemporary authorities, so, whatever the average nobody thought of them, the powers that be did not like witches one little bit!

So, we have the mass witchtrials and public executions in the late middle ages and on into the Renaissance, and even the European enlightenment. Indeed, perhaps the most famous of them all, at least in the US, occurred in Salem Massachusetts, in 1692 and 1693, when some adolescent girls decided to have some fun by getting their elders tortured, hung, and pressed to death, by accusing them of witchcraft. In other words, the concept of witchcraft can easily be generalized to apply to any form of social condemnation for any reason whatsoever, or no reason at all! Indeed, frequently, witch trials were very dangerous to everyone, because they degenerated into mutual accusations on all sides, in which anyone and everyone in the community could, and would be themselves accused of witchcraft.

The concept of the Salem witch trials was generalized by American writer Arthur Miller to the so-called communist witch hunts in the United States in the 1950's, in his superb play, "The Crucible". Now, there was nothing particularly unusual about fear and hatred of communism in the US, a very young J. Edgar Hoover had a field day deporting "reds" from the US to the USSR in 1919 and 1920, during that particular era's "red scare", following the successful Russian Revolution of 1917. However, there was something a bit different about the early 1950's, it wasn't a communist revolution people were fearing, or terrorist acts, it was nuclear war. People were, in the US, quite understandably terrified of nuclear war with the USSR, Josef Stalin was still in power, and Stalin had never shown much tendency to play by any rules set by the West. Americans had never had to fear annihilation or takeover since their very inception, they were protected by two great oceans on either side of their huge nation. However, with airplanes, missiles and nuclear weapons, these oceans ceased to be an overwhelming obstacle or defensive barrier. Indeed, in all out nuclear war, they ceased to have much significance, at all. America and Americans could be utterly annihilated, if Josef Stalin and subsequent leaders of the USSR willed it.

This resulted in a level of irrationality leading to the "duck and cover" training for schoolchildren -- as if hiding under your desk would protect you from H-bombs -- the literal "burning" of the Rosenbergs in the electric chair for supposedly giving away atomic secrets, and the systematic persecution of anyone, anywhere in the US who had left-wing leanings. Now, how this could possibly have protected Americans from nuclear bombs, is far from clear, but, that's the nature of fear of witches, isn't it? The outsider is a threat. Anything new is dangerous, and if people are nervous already, they may react violently. However, in times of danger, it may be precisely the new that is essential, to survive!

Fear of nuclear weapons has largely defined the world for over 80 years now. Yet, these "weapons" are by far the cheapest and most efficient source of raw energy and power the world possesses, or may ever possess. The whole concept of controlled nuclear fusion is an attempt to fantasize some means of producing nuclear fusion with no inconvenience or risk. This may not be entirely possible, the fusion in stars is inconvenient and risky, you see. It is there in the H-bomb. It could certainly be used for some practical applications, like space propulsion, but, it is so controlled and regulated that necessary experimentation is totally illegal. Possessing more than a few pounds of Uranium is a serious crime, everywhere.

Effectively, nuclear weapons, even working on them, even atomic energy, are the new "witchcraft". As the medieval Church outlawed all work on steam engines or explosives, and declared such work "witchcraft", so, now nuclear energy and nuclear weapons -- which may be one and the same thing -- are outlawed. There is no clear scientific method in the history of science, but, we do know for sure that outlawing the most obvious and important energy sources clearly obstructs progress. The witchcraft of nuclear weapons must be unleashed, for the future good of humanity.


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