#1: Just learned about Valasca of Bohemia. U should too :-)

While reading this amazing essay, "Jacobean Witchcraft and Feminine Power," I came across the figure Valasca, a woman said to have led a female rebellion, seized power, and created a state ruled by women. In other words, a matriarchy. 

One of the rules of the state was to maim the right thumb and eye of young boys so they could not wield a weapon properly or fight once they were of age so the women of Bohemia would be protected. This was said to have been done through the use of magic. She is said to have ruled for seven years before being killed, resulting in her power falling back into the hands of men.

I wonder what her vision looked like and how things could have been. Though this quotation comes earlier in the essay, I find it further contextualizes Valesca as a feminine figure in opposition to patriarchy. 

When briefly writing on the differences in social responses to "witches" versus sorcerers, warlocks, wizards, etc., Spoto writes: "It seems then that the male version of magical practitioner was often more tolerated because it was practiced within the realm of the established order, either in the university or the government. Many were suspected and even investigated for black magic that would lead to harm, but in many cases the charges were dropped. The difference between the transmission of knowledge seems to be a key difference between "witchcraft" and "sorcery;" the sorcerer's or magician's knowledge was passed through an acceptably and more easily controllable form of textual transmission; meanwhile, the witch's knowledge was communicated orally, in a non-literate form, making it less tangible and perhaps more threatening" (60).

It got me thinking again about Science as a language.