[stylist] {Disarmed} The Green Witch

[Eve Sanchez]

Friends, This is an essay that was shared with me. The author is unknown,
but it is a great example of a well written essay and holds a very
important message that is timely. I just wanted to share with you. Eve

Each year they parade her about ... the traditional Halloween witch.
Misshapen green face, stringy scraps of hair and a toothless mouth beneath
her disfigured nose. Gnarled, knobby fingers twisted into a claw,
protracting from a bent and twisted torso that lurches about on wobbly legs.

Most think this abject image to be the creation of a prejudiced mind or
merely a Halloween caricature. I disagree. I believe this to be how witches
were really seen.

Consider that most witches: were women, were abducted in the night and
smuggled into dungeons or prisons under the secrecy of darkness, to be
presented by the light of day as a confessed witch.

Few, if any, saw a frightened, normal looking woman being dragged into a
secret room filled with instruments of torture. To be questioned until she
confessed to anything that was suggested to her and to give names or
whatever would stop the questions. Crowds saw the aberration denounced to
the world as a self-proclaimed witch.

As the witch was paraded through the town, en route to be burned, hanged,
drowned, stoned, or disposed of in various other forms of Christian love
... all created to free and save her soul from her depraved body. The
jeering crowds viewed the results of hours of torture. The face, bruised
and broken by countless blows, bore a hue of sickly green. The once warm
and loving smile gone. Replaced by a grimace of broken teeth and torn gums
that leers beneath a battered, disfigured nose. The disheveled hair
conceals bleeding gaps of torn scalp from whence cruel hands had torn away
the lovely tresses. Broken, twisted hands clutched the wagon for support.
Fractured fingers locked like groping claws to steady her broken body. All
semblance of humanity gone. This was truly a demon, a bride of Satan, a
witch.

I revere this Halloween crone and hold her sacred above all. I honor her
courage and listen to her warnings of the dark side of humanity. Each year
I shed tears of respect and remember her involuntary sacrifice in the name
of religion.
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