The feature image for this post is a print of a witch burning in Derenburg, Germany, c.e. 1555.

After I wrote “On Witch Trials and Mormon Feminism,” a reader recommended that I listen to BBC’s Witch podcast series, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Part of the season finale offers a fascinating story (starting around 15:00) that I’d like to share and reflect on here.

Patricia Catherine McCabe is a member of Diné nation from New Mexico. She follows the Lakota spiritual way of life, which she describes this way: “We’re a visioning culture, and that means that we have different ceremonies to ask for input from the larger community of the rest of life and also the spiritual community, and then we receive guidance and vision for how we might go about our life in a good way.”

At one point, oppressive experiences led her to have unexpected visions of what happened to women during the witch trials in early modern Europe. As she recounts:

“I had a really hard work experience in which I was feeling really persecuted by all these men who were in a position of power, and for some reason, I feel like that just triggered me starting to have a lot of very, very detailed, powerful visions about what took place during the witch hunts in Europe. And it was pretty baffling for me, because why would an Indigenous woman from what we now call the Southwest United States be contacted by that period in history?”

These visions were accompanied by an explanation. As she recounts:

“I was told that that period was an archetypal wounding of humanity, but what I make of that is that it was a place where there was a fork in the road in our travels as human beings on the earth, and we took a fork that has been playing out in creating difficulties for us for a very long time.”

She goes on to explain how this was related to her own life and family history as an indigenous North American:

“I came to realize the way of the circle that was all across Europe, which reflect[ed] a [greater] acknowledgement of everybody having purpose and [a] role, and something to contribute, was systematically dismantled in this process, and also what I saw was that the methodologies for the way of breaking up cultures–that those methodologies were developed deeply in Europe and then they were put on the ships, and that’s how they were so effective in landing in all of the other continents and the colonization that took place afterwards. Those methodologies had been honed and developed on their own people in Europe. And so, I saw they fought it just as we as indigenous people are fighting it right now.” 

Further, the visions communicated that Patricia was being called upon to help heal the wounding that had been done: 

“I was told that there was a way to retell the story in Europe of who the woman is to creation, and who creation is to the woman, and that if we were to go and tell a different story about the sacred role, the dignity and respect of the woman, that that would actually realign all that took place during the witch hunts.” Patricia went on to organize a special series of events across Europe where indigenous women and others from around the world could gather together and retell stories about womanhood to help heal wounds. As she explains, “our function wasn’t to talk necessarily about the witch hunts, but we all knew what the context was. We all knew why we were there” and “our role was just to talk about the truth that we understood of who we are as women.” 

When asked if the great wound that started with the witch trials can be healed in some way, Pat says, “It’s already healing. I believe in the ceremony. And so we did it the way that we were told to do it, and it was received. So I have to believe that it’s all in motion right now.” 

I was deeply touched by Pat’s story and how she carried out her project and resonated with her. Learning about the witch hunts was an unexpected paradigm-shifting, spiritual experience for me. I too felt like the spirit world wanted me to understand the deeper significance of what had happened and how it relates to my own experience and the problems my own circles have faced: both American society, and the Church of Jesus Chirst of Latter-day Saints.

As I’m learning about in Dominion, Jesus, his gospel brought more kindness, tolerance and compassion into the world. His life improved civilizations, providing the once brutal western world with a new framework that valued compassion for the poor, sick, and downtrodden. 

But there is no divinity in movements that persecute and oppress like the witch trials. There is no goodness in grinding on the face of the disadvantaged and powerless and murdering for the sake of seeking power and authority. There is no goodness in excusing numbness and apathy toward the suffering of others. Such things have wrongly attached themselves to Christianity throughout the centuries. Whatever oppresses women, the marginalized, or minority cultures or forms of spirituality are a different beast that is not divine. I agree with Pat that the witch trials are a quintessential example of this wicked phenomenon, and something that has continued to be repeated since the early modern era. 

Pat’s story stoked my dissatisfaction with the oppression of women’s spirituality in Mormonism. I’m not content with a tradition in which women don’t participate in or help to create inspired content for important spiritual rites of passage and other religious rituals. I dream of an LDS community in which women take up space, in which their spiritual creativity and authority matters. A version of the Church in which they are treated as full and complete equals to men, in which top down and vertical structures don’t reign, and no one’s spirituality is oppressed.

Pat’s story also gave me a sense of seeing eye to eye and speaking heart to heart as women and people who desire a better and more free world across cultures, and a calming sense that “we’re all in this together.” I’m not indigenous, most of my heritage stems from the UK, but Pat invited me to think about how my predecessors were not just colonizers, they are also among those whose folk cultures and personal spiritualities have been suppressed, controlled, and trampled on.

The most recent histories when this clearly happened are among my Mormon ancestors. In my mind, they were not given enough freedom to flourish and to develop themselves and the meanings in their lives. The ugly and oppressive things that latched onto the restored church, including a stubborn brand of patriarchy, polygamy, the unrighteous exercise of power and authority over members and their personal lives, and the prioritization to act out of institutional survival anxiety stripped our people of good things that could have been. And these ugly turns continue to lead to new chapters now when we’re seeing many of the Church’s wisest and most spiritual and healthy people losing interest. 

As Trump’s corrupt government churns out one disturbing and dissonant action after another, I see that since Pat shared her story, the world has taken another dramatic and unfortunate fork in the road that continues the struggles that started in the early modern period. The witch trials were a tactic used to grub for greater power, religious authority, and money grubbing at the cost of women’s sanity, well-being, and lives. The men involved chose to become indifferent to immense suffering in order to puff up and benefit themselves. The same thing is happening now. Trump’s recent cruelty toward migrants and Ukraine, and his treatment of queer individuals, women, and people of color is, like the witch trials, a selfish vie for yet greater power at the cost of others’ suffering and resources. Like during the witch trials, inhumane attitudes toward consequences on others and their suffering and potential deaths is the current order of things. Also like during the witch trials, this power-grubbing and moral numbness is wrongly trying to cling to the cause of Christianity. I am deeply concerned about American men resonating with Trump and the ways they are following his lead. Disenfranchised young men are one of the reasons Trump was able to be elected again. Many American men are taking a tragic path toward hatred, misogyny, violence, dehumanization, and inhumanity. 

How much absurdity and humiliation as a people will we have to suffer before the corruption ends? How much damage will be done before things can improve? Only the American people can change this course. American men need some kind of spiritual revolution to get them in touch with better meanings and purpose, love, and compassion. 

How much dysfunction will we have to face at church before the difficulties will have any kind of truly satisfactory and healthy reparations? This week Exponent bloggers discussed why so many women are leaving the Church and why their families come with them. We discussed how women are socially and spiritually oppressed at Church and the common experience of reaching a point when nothing at Church really nurtures or supports women as they graduate from young adulthood and develop greater spiritual maturity. 

We truly need both our country and our church to wake up and move down a different fork in the road if these institutions are to flourish.

How do we resist? On the national or global level, this can be by refusing to become like Trump and his followers. By refusing to be numb to suffering. By refusing to become hateful, bigoted, or egotistic. By refusing to buy into Trumpers’ Christian nationalism and their arrogant and cruel approaches to those on the margins. By refusing to let the upset we feel ruin the meaning and goodness of daily life. By cultivating joy and healing and flourishing for ourselves and the people around us in the midst of it all.

At church, we can resist oppression by refusing to let the Church’s failings and numbness to women’s needs and suffering squelch our spiritual growth or embitter us. It’s tempting to let complaints, anger and grief about Church take over the spiritual dimensions of our lives and distract us from the question of how we want to live. Resistance can look like setting boundaries and detaching from whatever level of church commitment we would resent. It looks like following where our deeper Self or soul leads us to grow, developing new spiritual gifts, exploring spiritually, and taking up new compassionate and creative projects. Resistance for me right now looks like still attending Church, but realizing that Church literally takes just two out of 112 waking hours in my week that don’t matter or nourish me nearly as much as they used to. The real spiritual work of my life is happening outside of this every day. Connection with God and spiritual values and practices matter even more than they used to. Meanwhile, the importance of the Church and its way of thinking and what it wants me to do are fading.

Exponent II and its community are also a wonderful form of resistance and healing in both arenas. Pat’s words give me hope in the power of feminist Mormon projects like Exponent II to heal wounds of misogyny, spiritual abuse, and oppressive Church policies through words that we share. There is spiritual power when women raise their voices. Healing, peace, and empowerment can come to us as we define womanhood, Mormon history and spirituality in circles here. We evoke immense growth and healing for ourselves and others through our words. Like Pat, I have faith we’re doing inspired, much needed, healing work at Exponent II and other similar communities. Our task as Mormon feminist writers and thinkers is really daunting right now. But it has never been more needed or vital.