The Female Trinity (Part 1)
On the Demonization of Witches by the Early Church
TL;DR This mini-essay is the first in a two part series about feminine archetypes, Christianity, paganism, magic, and ancient biotechnology. This first part covers the origins of witches in the mystery religion of classical Greece and Rome, their use of psychoactive plants, and their suppression by early Christian church.
The traditional Catholic trinity used to have an all-female reflection. We’ve all heard, of course, about the father, the son, and the holy spirit endorsed by the Catholic church. But few are familiar with the old feminine trinity of the virgin, the mother, and the crone. The virgin and the mother are still recognizable within the single person of Mary, and live on to this day within Christian lore. But the fathers of the early Christian church had a real problem with the crone…
The crone is at least as old as the mystery rites at Eleusis. There, for over a thousand years, the crème de la crème of Greek and Roman society fasted and marched the fourteen miles from Athens. They observed ceremonies dedicated to the trinity of the virgin Persephone, the mother Demeter, and the crone Hecate. They drank from a cup during these ceremonies, and death was the punishment for talking about the mysterious potion in the cup. But advances in archaeobotany are finally, in our own time, revealing the psychoactive plants that gave those mystery rites their kick. Echoes of all these religious elements, including the magical cup, made their way into Christianity. But not the crone, Hecate…Â
The crone was banished because of her association with psychoactive plants. In the days when Christianity was becoming the state religion of the Roman Empire, the early church fathers sought a monopoly on holy sacraments. It wouldn’t do to have people finding god by ingesting plants any fool can find in the woods. The church wanted to be the only game in town. And so, just as the trident of Poseidon became of the pitchfork of the devil, Hecate was demonized. The old woman, with her accumulated knowledge of plants and their magical properties, became the evil witch who eats children. The priestesses at Eleusis knew how to dose their initiates with ergot without killing them; they were the female keepers of ancient folk knowledge passed down over many generations. Folk knowledge that early church fathers were in direct spiritual competition with. They banished poor Hecate from the feminine trinity so that people would fear the magic of the old mystery religions, and accept Christianity instead.
