School of Intuitive Herbalism
Learning from the plants directly
The Witch Wound
exploring the systemic impact and internalisation of centuries of violence
The Witch Wound, the wound I have come to believe we all carry to some degree, is the internalised imprint of centuries of persecution and the deliberate cultivation of fear. It is the echo of a long history in which those who embodied healing, intuition, ecological knowledge, or embodied feminine power were cast as dangerous and sinful. Over generations, this fear seeped into the cultural fabric and into our bodies, profoundly affecting how we relate to our own sensitivity, authority, sexuality, and expression.
Modern day healers, witches and herbalists feel this acutely. However it is important to look beyond this demographic, since to focus on this alone can create a new kind of fetishisation, the mirror image of historic demonisation. In this article I invite you to explore how this affects everyone, not just those called to particular paths. The fear of potential persecution and ostracisation by one’s own community is a powerful force – it leads us to internally subjugate and hide parts of ourselves as a form of self-protection. These can remain hidden our entire lives, and trigger significant confusion and distress as they naturally awaken. If they remain unawakened, they can leave a feeling of a void, a sense of something missing, and a dissatisfaction with life.
Clearly this violence is not over, though it may now be expressed in subtler ways. Women still struggle for equity, healers and midwives are often still marginalised within the medical system, women’s sexuality is often still suspect and controlled. Care for the family, home and community is still often undervalued and unpaid, putting immense pressure on individuals and communities alike.
This is a deep wound – a wound that touches gender, sexuality, embodiment, intuition, the ways we trust our knowing – and perhaps the most critical for these times, the way we relate to the land that holds us.
I have been exploring this within my role as course director, training herbalists, for over two decades, and am still learning more every year. The breadth of width of this history is immense. In the short sections below I’ve attempted to summarise insights I’ve gleamed from writers, historians, witches, herbalists and my students. This is merely a snapshot, I very much welcome suggestions for further persepectives on this subject.
A short history, ‘facts’, numbers and dates
The key period of Witch persecutions was 1450 to 1750, with a particularly intense time around 1560 – 1630. At least 40,000 – 60,000 were killed, though it is difficult to know these numbers for sure. At least 100,000 were formally tried for Witchcraft.
75% to 85% were women, mostly over the age of 40, with the exception of Normandy and Iceland where most were men.
The ‘Holy Roman Empire’ (Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Netherlands) led the way in the number of Witch trials with estimates of over 50,000 trials and 25,000 – 30,000 executions. Germany and Scotland favoured burning at the stake whilst England seemed to always favour hanging. In Scotland people were strangled first and then burnt, whereas in Germany strangulation appeared more to be an optional form of mercy. Almost all the ‘burnt alive’ records are from regions of Germany – I mention this because I believe the horrific torture and fear of this has left its own particular imprint on our collective psyche.
The last witchcraft trial in the UK was in 1944, of Helen Duncan, who was a spiritualist-medium imprisoned for 9 months under old anti-witchcraft laws.
There remain many places in the world where people accused of ‘witchcraft’ are still being harmed or killed. One estimate suggests that over 20,000 victims of harmful practices linked to witchcraft accusations — including attempted killings, disappearances, trafficking, and murders — were documented between 2009 and 2019 across 60 countries.
Feudalism to early capitalism, and the denigration and control of women
This understanding is explored in exceptional depth in Silvia Federici’s ‘Caliban and the Witch‘, first published in 2004. In this work, Federici brings a much needed feminist and anti-capitalist perspective to the history of the centuries that bridged the transition from feudalism to “early accumulation” to capitalism.
She shows how this transformation was intricately tied to the exclusion of women from the waged labour of emerging capitalism, while simultaneously relegating reproduction, care, and the maintenance of daily life to devalued, unpaid labour.
At the same time, profound poverty and the collusion of church and state generated a fever of scapegoating that increasingly targeted women — especially those who were unmarried, widowed, without male protection, or living on the margins of the emerging social order. These women were not merely convenient scapegoats; they were made, through the horrific force of torture and public violence, into symbolic warnings. Their suffering was used to define a simplistic duality of “righteous” versus “evil” behaviour, disciplining entire communities and, in doing so, reinforcing obedience to the church and to the emerging capitalist order through fear.
Heretics and simplistic spiritual dualism – god or the devil?
Exploring the centuries of persecution through the lens of Christian thought over these centuries gives us further insight. This was a period when the fights between different sects of Christianity grew increasingly violent, leading to the act of burning at the stake as a crime for ‘heretics’ – i.e. those who pursued a different Christian ideology to those holding the power to exert the greated violence. The entire notion of ‘Witch‘ is intricately tied to the movement against heretics.
Malleus Maleficarum – the demonisation of women’s sexuality
This is the book that became the ‘how to’ for identifying and persecuting ‘witches’. Yet its rise to influence was anything but straightforward. When Heinrich Kramer first published the Malleus Maleficarum in 1486, it was largely dismissed and even ridiculed – even the church formally condemned it. However around 1500, against a backdrop of social collapse and poverty, it gradually attracted a new level of interest. By 1550 it was the main reference text for judges and inquisitors.
Of particular relevance is its obsessive focus on female sexuality — an obsession rooted initially in Kramer’s fixation on a single woman he had failed to prosecute. The book’s profound conflation of female desire with demonic influence proved devastatingly durable, shaping legal, theological, and cultural attitudes for centuries. Its echoes linger today, in the deep and often unspoken suspicion cast on women’s autonomy, embodiment, and erotic power.
Cunning folk – are you with us or against us?
Cunning folk, healers, herbalists, midwives, charm-workers and astrologers have been part of all European countries for as long as we have records. For much of history these people were trusted and even highly respected.
However, with the emergence of violent control of ‘heresy’, along with increasing social collapse, the line between ‘healer’ and ‘witch’ became precariously thin.
A midwife who happened to be at one too many still-births would immediately become suspect. A strange illness (of humans or cattle) might engended sudden suspicion of a previously respected healer.
Their practices — rooted in embodied knowledge, oral tradition, relationship and local culture — became targets precisely because they lay outside the structures of Church, state and emerging professional medicine. In this, we see the early formation of the Witch Wound: the disciplining of those whose healing work threatened systems built on fear, obedience and control.
Fatal Ableism – the risk of being different
No discussion of witch persecutions would be complete without recognising that disability, neurodiversity and difference likely increased the risk of persecution. In my work I see that many drawn to the craft of healing and herbalist are highly sensitive and/or neurodiverse, often struggling to exist well in normative culture. This leads me to suspect that historical healers may also have percieved the world slightly differently – in a way that today might be described as neurodiversity. This is, of course, highly speculative, but I mention it here as I feel it is not something that is often considered in discussions of the Witch trials.
It is also suggested that 10-20% of ‘witches’ showed signs that may have been related to modern understandings of epilepsy, bipolar, depression, dementia, psychosis or PTSD. Albinism, stuttering, mutism, deafness, tourettes, facial differences and movement disorders have all been cause for suspicion as a witch. Some of the evidence from witch trials also suggests that gender-nonconformity was considered a suspicious trait, as was any variance from the sexual norms of the times.
Herbalism and healing today
I stepped into the world of herbalism with a certain naïveté, politically and historically unaware of the complex realm I was entering. I quickly saw how, despite an incredible field of emergent research, herbalism and herbalists were very much on the margins – healers even more so.
Now that I train herbalists, themes around the Witch Wound emerge with almost every student at some point on their journey – most notably:
(1) Fear of being seen / being visible (fear of persecution) and
(2) Fear of their own power (fear of causing harm).
There are several other themes that emerge:
(3) Confusion and guilt about historic complicitness (almost everyone within a community was co-opted into this process)
(4) Confusion about one’s own belief and value systems with regard to intuition, spiritual experiences, sexuality and power
(5) Distrust of community / sisterhood / groups / organised structures
(6) Dualistic confusion about intuition and rationality
Experience shows it can take years to recognise and unravel these complex threads within us. This is further complicated because, though much is internalised, many also experience ongoing persecution in the form of exclusion and micro-aggressions which would seem to confirms the validity of the internalised self-aggression. It can sometimes feel that tending to these wounds is like walking into a head wind – it takes choice, perseverence, resilience and support to make the journey. However – the solidarity of others on the journey is greater than ever, and the gifts of wisdom, compassion, intuition and insight we gain as we walk it are beyond valuable to both us and our communities.
Steps forward …
I believe that the more this wound is understood, the better we can extend care and compassion to both ourselves and those we see subject to the aggressions common today. This solidarity and support makes all the difference to those navigating these challenging waters.
We all have an internalised victim and an internalised persecutor. By untangling these we can move towards a place where our actions come from a place of clarity and care rather than reaction and wounding.
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Some great books and research links
Federici S. Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. New York: Autonomedia; 2004.
Exploring the witch trials from a marxist-feminist perspective. This a thorough and dense deep dive into understand the role of the witch trials within the emergence of capitalism.
Linsteadt SV. Our Lady of the Dark Country. Wild Talewort Press; 2017.
A book of short stories exploring the past and future ramifications of the subjection of women, witches and living in connection with the land. Very beautiful and poetically written. Well worth reading.
Gibson M. Witchcraft: A History in 13 Trials. London: Routledge; 2020.
A very readable, in-depth, historically accurate telling of 13 witch trials.
Merchant C. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution. New York: HarperCollins; 1980.
A portrayal of how the rise of modern science transformed nature from a living organism into a machine, enabling its exploitation, and how this shift also reinforced the oppression and devaluation of women.
K E Imm Witchcraft and deformity in early modern English literature — (2025) (Master’s thesis)