Each year they parade her about . . . the traditional witch......

Misshapen green face, stringy scraps of hair, and a toothless mouth
beneath her disfigured nose. Gnarled, knobby fingers twisted into a
claw, protracting from a bent and twisted torso that lurches about
on wobbly legs.

Most think this abject image to be the creation of a predjudiced
mind, or merely a Halloween caricature. I disagree. I believe this
is how witches were really seen. Consider most witches were women,
were abducted in the night, and smuggled into dungeons or prisons
under secrecy of darkness, to be presented by the light of the day
as a confessed witch.

Few, if any saw a frightened, normal looking woman being dragged
into a secret room filled with instruments of torture....to be
questioned until she confessed to anything that was suggested to
her, and to give names or whatever would stop the questions. Crowds
saw the aberration denounced to the world as a self-proclaimed witch.

As the witch was paraded through the town, en route to be burned,
hanged, drowned, stoned, or disposed of in variuos other forms of
Christian love . . . all created to free and save her soul from her
depraved body, crowds viewed the results of hours of torture.
The face, bruised and broken, by countless blows, bore a hue of
sickly green. The once warm and loving smile gone, replaced by a
grimace of broken teeth and torn gums that leers beneath a battered,
disfigured nose. The disheveled hair conceals bleeding gaps of torn
scalp from whence cruel hands had torn away lovely tresses. Broken,
twisted hands clutched the wagon for support. Fractured fingers
locked like groping claws to steady her broken body. All
resemblances of humanity were gone. This was truly a demon, a satan, a
witch.

I revere this Halloween crone and hold her sacred above all. I
honor her courage and listen to her warnings of the dark side of
humanity. Each year I shed tears of respect and remember her
involuntary sacrifice in the name of religion.

May this remind us of those who were persecuted as witches,
though many were healers and midwives, women who owned land, and
those who spoke out against the rulers of the time.
Remember the "Halloween Witch", along with all the others who have gone before you.