For all those who died - stripped naked, shaved, and shorn.

For all those who screamed in vain to the great Goddess, only to have their tongues ripped out by the root.

For those who were pricked, racked, broken on the wheel for the sins of their inquisitors.

For those whose beauty stirred their torturers to fury; and for those whose ugliness did the same.

For all those who were neither ugly nor beautiful, but only women who would not submit.

For all those 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 bringing man to an imperfect world.

For all those witch-women, my sisters, who breathed free 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 for which they died -- the sin of being born a woman who is more than the
sum of her parts.

-Anonymous, 16th century-


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