Blog Forum 2: Witches, Warlocks, and Demons

Recently, there have been witch-hunts in rural Kenya. According to the article, about 100 people, armed with torches & machetes, stormed into a village and just started killing people suspected of practicing witchcraft. The local shaman (!!!)* explained that there probably weren't witches in that town and that old vendettas were most likely to blame. Belief in witchcraft, however, is apparently widespread, even beyond Kenya's borders.

The point I want to focus on, however, is the very 1st sentence of that initial CNN article.

"It may be difficult for modern-day Western cultures to fathom, but in Western Kenya, beliefs in ghosts and witches are very real."

No. Just no. This is a convenient fable that we tell ourselves sometimes -- a fable that makes (many of) us feel safe and secure, one that makes us feel like we have nothing in common with our past. But a fable isn't true.

So, let's talk about the West and its witches, warlocks, and demons. And let me, if I may, start with the Middle Ages, or more specifically with the Christianization of Europe.

Pagan antiquity is filled with examples of discussions of the supernatural intervening directly in this world and, in this sense, little changed once we entered the Middle Ages. The supernatural, on both sides, good and evil, were constantly present in the day-to-day events of this world. God's plan, made manifest in the shape of historical events, could only be actualized with the help of men and women working both for and against that plan, guided oftentimes by angelic or demonic beings. Often, this can be best/ easiest seen in monasticism. For example, think of the trials of St. Anthony or St. Guthlac or, as Michael Moore has written about, the battles St. Odilo and those of Cluny waged against Satan and his minions. But, I would argue, in the late 10th and early 11th century, these supernatural battles moved beyond the cloister and beyond the realm of the purely spiritual. God (through the Archangel Gabriel) succored Charlemagne in the ca. 1100 Oxford Song of Roland. On the 1st Crusade (1095-99), legions of the crusading dead returned to aid their brethren retake Jerusalem from a race influenced by demons. Earlier, demons and Satan himself wandered the 11th-century countryside whispering lies in heretics' ears. They continued to work their evil through the late Middle Ages, eventually inspiring/ conspiring with witches. The witch-craze, a more early modern than medieval phenomenon, only ended around 1700. The witch trials in Salem, MA (USA) were one of the last known episodes in the West.

The traditional narrative is that Enlightenment killed this kind of superstition. And that, I think, is what the CNN reporter above was alluding to. "We, in the civilized, enlightened West don't believe in such things anymore." Indeed, it would be comforting to believe such things. The Huffington Post article on witches I cited above says as much: "Just modernize the hell outta Africa and they'll leave those superstitions behind. Just like we have." But, as I've argued elsewhere (in a slightly different context), these ideas haven't gone away. They surround us, leaving us awkward gaps in polite conversation. They leave us, I think, wanting to bury our collective heads in the sand, pretending -- hoping -- these ideas will just go away.

Remember Seung Hui-Cho. His was a life tormented by demons, both metaphorical and (to him and many in the community of his upbringing) quite real. As I said then, Cho lived in

a world populated by God and the Devil, in which they are both still active forces in the world; a world where Cho could choose sides in this struggle and think that he was doing God's work; a world where violence in the name of religion is justified because the stakes, one's immortal soul, are so high.

But was Cho just an outlier? He was, of course, also tormented by mental illness. Unfortunately, no.

Many pentecostal evangelicals believe in the real presence of demons, at work in this world. Journalist Matt Taibbi has a new book, which, in part, details his time spent at Pastor John Hagee's (recently in the news) megachurch in Texas -- home to thousands of worshippers and reaching, via various media, likely millions more. Here, Taibbi found explicit and repeated references to the role that demons actively play in today's world. (Here's a good precis of what I'm talking about, available via Rolling Stone.) And there's more.

Bobby Jindal, the current Republican governor of Louisiana, and likely on John McCain's shortlist to be VP, is a convert to Catholicism. Gov. Jindal seems to be a supremely intelligent man -- a former Rhodes Scholar, and a graduate of Brown University. Moreover, he was accepted at, but declined to attend, both Harvard & Yale's Medieval & Law Schools. But, in 1994, Gov. Jindal also says that he assisted in an exorcism. (The image at the top of this post comes from pg. 17 of Gov. Jindal's article.) In an article entitled (aptly) "Physical Dimensions of Spiritual Warfare," Jindal recounts how a good friend of his was tormented by a demon (that even caused, it seems, her skin cancer) and how he and his friends in a campus Christian fellowship aided in making the demon leave. Gov. Jindal meant this all literally. That demon was there, in that room, in his friend, tormenting her and her friends, causing her pain, forcing her into making poor decisions, ruining her life. That demon needed to be, and was, confronted both spiritually and physically.

These beliefs, shared by Kenyans and Americans, are not aberrant. A 2005 poll, taken by Harris Interactive, found that 73% of Americans believe in miracles, 68% believe in angels, 61% belive in the devil, and 28% believe in witches.

People in Kenya aren't dumb or "superstitious." Those horrific acts aren't "hard to understand." All you need to do is look in our society's mirror or, better yet, take a moment to talk to your local medievalist.

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* I recently talked about all this to a friend who's an African historian and a specialist on Kenya. He said that the "shaman" referred to above was likely a "witch-smeller," who is responsible for finding out who the witches are in the community. These guys are almost always male and are always the "good" guys. Witches can be male or female but are always evil. My friend also mentioned that this part of the country is entirely Christian and so, as I guessed above, has no problem intellectually holding modern Christianity and such "superstitions" side-by-side.

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