Halloween Atonement?

 

                                         Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West

Hello boys and ghouls -- yes this is Halloween, the day of reckoning when we are all realize how much the cost of treats has gone up due to inflation. This morning I heard a radio piece about a neighbourhood in Toronto where homeowners vie for the most elaborate decoration and there is now corporate sponsorship for one household. This really is spooky. 

While Halloween decoration has veered away from ghosts, bats, and witches, they are still out there. So are articles about witches, although they have taken a different turn. They now focus more on the misogyny and hysteria (ironic term) regarding the persecution of witches and witchcraft through the centuries. This is from a BBC piece on an Irish woman, one of two accused of witchcraft and put to death.  The other woman was wealthy and had the connections to survive, even though she'd gone through four husbands and may have been poisoning them. But  was her  maidservant  and took the fall. 

Think of the witch trials and you probably conjure an image of the 16th or 17th Century in Scotland, central Europe or colonial America. But this week, one town is remembering the woman believed to have been the first in Ireland to be executed for witchcraft 700 years ago. 

Kilkenny will host historians and archaeologists, run a service of atonement and an oral history project, and make sure every school gets an educational resource pack about the events of 1324. It is all to remember the “utter miscarriage of justice” and try to “make amends” - so says the dean of the cathedral where the service of atonement will take place.

The reason the dean will be involved is that Christian churches were often enthusiastic persecutors of witches, happy to see them dispatched. 

No portraits have survived of  Petronella de Meath but these actors re-enacted the events at St Canice's Cathedral

There was yet another BBC story about a woman, Alice Molland, who was presumed to be the last person executed for witchcraft in 1685. It turns out this may have been a case of mistaken identity, but presumably the other women named on the plaque assume that dubious distinction. 

I suppose it's important to atone and apologize for terrible misdeeds of the past, but we need to focus on the awful ways women are denigrated, persecuted and even killed today, simply because they want freedom and equality.