For all those who died stripped naked, shaved, shorn
For all those who screamed in vain to the Great Goddess only to have tongues ripped out by the root..

For all those who were pricked, racked, broken on the wheel for the sins of their inquisitors
For all whose beauty stirred their torturers to fury and for those who ugliness did the same
For all those neither ugly nor beautiful, but only women who would not submit..

For all those whose quick fingers broken in the vice
For all those soft arms pulled from their sockets
For all those budding breasts ripped with hot pincers
For all those midwives killed merely for the sin of delivering man to an imperfect world..

For all those witch women, my sisters who breathed freer as the flames took them
Knowing as they shed their female bodies, the seared flesh falling like fruit in the flames
That death alone would cleanse them of the sin which they died
The sin of being born a woman who is more than the sum of her parts..

Anonymous 16th century


Lamp Reference