Just a few decades later, the German Heinrich Kramer — an inquisitor for the Catholic Church and a member of the Dominican order — wrote one of the most enduring and influential diatribes about the devilry of witches. Entitled Malleus Maleficarum in Latin (The Hammer of Witches in English), it warned inquisitors about the havoc wreaked by witches. Women, he said, fell into the practice of witchcraft as a result of debased character and uncontrolled sexual desires.
In The Hammer of Witches, Kramer wrote: “. . . certain witches, against the instinct of human nature, and indeed against the nature of all beasts, with the possible exception of wolves, are in the habit of devouring and eating infant children . . . a certain man had missed his child from its cradle, and finding a congress of women in the night-time, swore that he saw them kill his child and drink its blood and devour it . . .”
The Hammer of Witches was repeatedly reprinted, and it influenced European thought about witchcraft for the better part of two centuries. Ever fearful of plagues, natural disasters, hunger, and the angry hand of God, humans imagined the devilry of witches to find a convenient scapegoat. The persecution of witches declined in the decades following the Salem witch trials. That year — 1692 — marked the last time that a witch would face execution in America. According to Russell and Alexander, no witches were executed after 1684 in England, 1745 in France, and 1775 in Germany.
Although the trials and persecution of witches diminished after the eighteenth century, the notion of the witch as a bloodsucking, cannibalistic predator lives on in our collective imagination.
In 1812, the Brothers Grimm made famous the story of Hansel and Gretel. The siblings meet a witch who abducts them and begins to try to fatten up Hansel with a view to roasting and eating the boy. She attempts to roast and eat Gretel too, but the quick-witted girl shoves “the Godless witch” into the oven, closes the door, and burns her to death.
In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, written by L. Frank Baum and first published in 1900, we come a little closer to our theme of blood. The Wicked Witch of the West, who is the most formidable enemy faced by Dorothy, the Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow, and the Lion, strikes Dorothy’s dog, Toto, with an umbrella. In return, the perky dog bites the witch’s leg. Baum writes: “The Witch did not bleed where she was bitten, for she was so wicked that the blood in her had dried up many years before.” The lack of blood in the Wicked Witch of the West indicates her lack of vitality and humanity. Several paragraphs later, Dorothy stumbles upon a method of killing the witch. Angry that the witch has stolen one of her ruby slippers, Dorothy dashes a bucket of water on the aquaphobic witch, which causes her to melt into a shapeless mass and die.
We shouldn’t be surprised to see the Wicked Witch of the West succumb so easily after being dashed by water. More than a century earlier, the celebrated Scottish poet Robert Burns plainly noted the inability of witches to handle water. In his 1790 narrative poem “Tam o’ Shanter,” Burns shows the hard-drinking Tam (or Tom) fleeing on his grey mare Maggie after spying on a group of cavorting, murderous witches. The horse saves Tam’s life, but the grey mare pays a price: a witch in hot pursuit is unable to chase Tam across the river but manages to bite off the horse’s tail. In a footnote to the poem, Burns writes: “It is a well-known fact that witches, or any evil spirits, have no power to follow a poor wight (or unfortunate soul) any further than the middle of the next running stream.” Thank you, Robbie Burns.
The process of dehumanizing people — and women in particular — enabled us to persecute them for centuries, and to convert them into witches. To safeguard society, we spilled their blood even as we accused them of doing the same.
In our minds, those accused of witchcraft suck the blood of others, but have none of their own. They are decrepit and dehydrated, and die when exposed to water, which is the ultimate cleansing, replenishing, life-sustaining fluid. Vilify a woman’s bodily fluids, declare that what cleans and hydrates the rest of us is what kills her, and behold, you have created a witch.
ALTHOUGH THE IDEA OF A WITCH as a bloodsucking female demon is a figment of human imagination, there are numerous examples in contemporary society of the violent removal of human blood. Some of the approaches are unethical and illegal, and others are sanctioned and carried out by the state.
During the Holocaust, the Nazis subjected concentration camp victims to every manner of medical experiments. In addition to conducting surgeries without anaesthetic, infecting people with germs and bacteria, exposing them to mustard gas, and injecting them lethally, they also withdrew blood forcibly. Josef Mengele, the infamous doctor of the Auschwitz death camp, transfused the blood of twins and carried out other experiments on their blood. Many of his victims were children, most of whom were killed once the experiments were over.
The forcible and blatantly criminal removal of blood does not end with the Holocaust. In his 2011 book The Red Market: On the Trail of the World’s Organ Brokers, Bone Thieves, Blood Farmers, and Child Traffickers, investigative journalist Scott Carney writes that the illegal harvesting of body tissue, organs, and blood is more pervasive and profitable now than at any other time in human history. He provides details about a farmer in India who held male captives in makeshift prisons on his property, repeatedly withdrawing their blood, which he sold to doctors, blood banks, and hospitals for fees ranging between $20 and $150 a pint. Carney says the farmer was convicted and jailed after one of his captives escaped and alerted police. When police came to the farm, in the city of Gorakhpur on the border of Nepal, they freed seventeen men. “Most were wasting away and had been confined next to hospital-issued blood-draining equipment,” Carney writes. “In their statements the prisoners said that a lab technician bled them at least two times per week. Some said that they had been held captive for two and a half years. The Blood Factory, as it was quickly known in the press, was supplying a sizable percentage of the city’s blood supply and may have been the only thing keeping Gorakhpur’s hospitals fully stocked.”
Carney provides fleeting mention of just one other underground blood farm in India — an operation in Calcutta in the 1990s — but his point is well taken. As long as hospitals are willing to buy blood from unscrupulous dealers, criminals will have an incentive to abduct and detain victims and to withdraw their blood forcibly and for profit. In some places in the world, blood means business.
But forcible blood removal is not always deemed illegal. In North America, it is common for police, or for authorities acting on their behalf, to withdraw blood without consent from people suspected or convicted of criminal offences. In Canada, authorities who obtain a judicial warrant may withdraw blood forcibly from a person suspected of having committed a serious crime such as murder, rape, or arson. In limited cases, without even having a warrant, police may ask a medical professional to forcibly withdraw blood from a person suspected of impaired driving.
In addition, Canadian judges are required to order the taking of blood, buccal or hair samples from people convicted of serious, violent crimes. Since 2000, information from these DNA tests is fed into the National DNA Data Bank used by Canadian police forces. It seems Orwellian to me, but nobody is objecting loudly. In the collective psyche of people who wish to be shielded from crime, it may be an invasive procedure but it serves a greater good. The RCMP website proudly states: “The National DNA Data Bank is a shining example of the increasing importance of science and technology in modern law enforcement . . . To stay ahead of the criminals, we must make better use of cutting edge science such as forensic DNA.”
During his trial in 1997 in Edmonton for first-degree murder, Peter John Brighteyes complained that his constitutional rights had been violated when police took his blood to gather evidence. Brighteyes’ lawyer argued in court that the involuntary blood test should be excluded from evidence because the security of the body “is perhaps the most fundamental aspect of security of the person.” The Crown argued, successfully, that it needed DNA evidence
in Brighteyes’ blood sample to prove that he had raped his victim before he killed her. The court allowed the evidence to be used, and sentenced Brighteyes to life imprisonment. Brighteyes, who had a history of violent crime, later hanged himself in prison.
In the United States, forcible blood extraction has extended to hospitals, police stations, and even roadsides, in cases where police suspect people of operating motor vehicles under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Indeed, some American police officers have even been trained in the practice of phlebotomy, or bloodletting, so that they can carry out the procedures quickly. The thinking is that they have to act quickly to gather evidence, since alcohol dissipates quickly in the bloodstream. The blood test is seen as the gold standard, offering more accuracy and more information than the standard Breathalyzer test. In some cases, police go straight for blood.
American courts have stepped in to establish certain limits, warning authorities to respect the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which aims to protect citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures. In 2008, for example, a superior court judge in Pima County, Arizona, barred the use of blood-alcohol evidence in the case of a Tucson resident whose blood had been drawn by one cop in the back seat of a police cruiser, while another cop held up a flashlight. “Romantic though it may sound, phlebotomy in the back seat by the dashboard lights is, in this humble trial judge’s opinion, unconstitutional,” Richard S. Fields wrote in his decision.
In the Missouri v. McNeely case in 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the privacy provisions of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution and ruled that law authorities may not routinely take blood from people suspected of driving impaired. However, the court said, in impaired driving cases, blood may be taken forcibly with a warrant, or when exceptional circumstances justify taking it without a warrant. American courts have also upheld the rights of prisons to withdraw blood forcibly from inmates.
Clearly, the advent of laboratory testing for alcohol, and forensic testing used for criminal investigation, is widening the avenue of state intervention in our bloodstreams. We may not like the intrusions upon our privacy, but lawmakers and courts in North America are clearly lining up on the side of what they consider to be the greater good. They believe that convicting criminals is more important than the privacy of our bloodstreams. You are almost certain to have no control over who gets to withdraw and inspect your blood, if you are reasonably suspected of having committed a violent crime. But driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol could lead to the same result. So watch out, if you are drinking and driving. While a police officer looks on, you may lose more than your driver’s licence.
WHEN WE SEEK TO UNDERSTAND why blood has come to be inextricably linked to the manifestation of power and spectacle in society, it is always revealing to look at the Bible. It teems with references to the power and centrality of blood, as an expression of humanity and a vehicle with which to respect and approach God. In the Old Testament, Leviticus contains numerous edicts about blood as it relates to animal sacrifice, food preparation, menstrual blood, and sex. It declares that one must not eat blood, one must remove it from meat that is to be cooked, and a husband must not be intimate with his menstruating wife. Blood, it tells us, is powerful.
In Leviticus 17:11, God tells Moses: “For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.”
The New Testament emphasizes the necessity of bloodshed to expiate sin: “Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” (This line comes from Hebrews 9:22, which is distinctive among the New Testament books for its obsession with sacrifice and the temple.)
Even the German philosopher and writer Friedrich Nietzsche, who challenged the very foundations of Christianity and famously declared that “God is dead,” seems to have been transported by the transcendental quality of blood. In his novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche wrote: “Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood. Write with blood, and thou wilt find that blood is spirit.” Nietzsche was not referring to bloodshed explicitly, but telling us that mimicking the rhythm and pulse of blood in the body is what makes writing sound and feel authentic. Words should flow just as naturally and undeniably as the beating heart.
Centuries before Thus Spoke Zarathustra first appeared, around 1885, the renowned seventeenth-century Mexican poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz applied the dictum literally. For any person who treasures the ascent of the intellectual and creative mind, it is painful to behold the rise and fall of Sor Juana. Her story reflects how powerfully the Catholic Church controlled women who gave their lives over to God. Despite having spent her entire adult life in a convent in Mexico City, the nun had become famous throughout the Spanish-speaking world for her poetry. Today, she is widely considered the greatest Spanish-language poet of her era. However, near the end of her life, in a complicated series of machinations described by her biographer Octavio Paz, male church leaders mounted an attack on Sor Juana’s character that eventually overwhelmed her. One year before dying of the plague, Sor Juana renounced her “humane studies” — abandoning her lifelong passion for writing, and relinquishing her personal library of some five thousand books, as well as her musical and scientific instruments — by signing an abjuration with her own blood.
In the renunciation, Sor Juana promised “to follow the road of perfection,” by which she means the worship of God to the exclusion of her more earthly passions. She states her belief in Catholicism, says that she is pained exceedingly to have offended God, and reiterates her belief in Mary’s immaculate conception. And it ends with these words: “And as a sign of how greatly I wish to spill my blood in defense of these truths, I sign with it.” Blood symbolized for Sor Juana the renunciation of intellectual and creative pursuits. And blood bound her to a promise to devote the rest of her life to God, and God only.
The illegitimate daughter of a Spanish captain and a mother who was a criolla (of European ancestry but born in the Americas), she was born near Mexico City between 1648 and 1651, and given the name Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana. Sor Juana, as she is commonly known, showed astounding intellectual ability from an early age. She was said to have been reading and writing by the age of three, crying out in verse when spanked, and teaching Latin by the age of thirteen. In her famous essay and autobiography The Answer, she wrote: “Though I was as greedy for treats as children usually are at that age, I would abstain from eating cheese, because I heard tell that it made people stupid, and the desire to learn was stronger for me than the desire to eat.”
Michael Schuessler, a professor in the Department of Humanities at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, wrote about Sor Juana in the essay “The Reply to Sor Philothea,” published in 1999 in Latin-American Literature and Its Times. “Essentially,” Schuessler wrote, “there were three ‘career possibilities’ for women of seventeenth-century New Spain. The first and most common was that of wife and mother; the second — less common, but far from disrespected — was that of the habit, life as a nun. The third was prostitution . . .”
Sor Juana chose to be a nun, entering the Convent of San Jerónimo in Mexico City in 1669. As noted by Octavio Paz, her most celebrated biographer, in the book Sor Juana; or, The Traps of Faith, “abruptly, she gives up worldly life and enters a convent — yet, far from renouncing the world entirely, she converts her cell into a study filled with books, works of art, and scientific instruments . . . She writes love poems, verses of songs and dance tunes, profane comedies, sacred poems, an essay in theology, and an autobiographical defense of the right of women to study and to cultivate their minds. She becomes famous, sees her plays performed, her poems published, and her genius applauded in all the Spanish dominions, half the Western World.”
In The Answer, Sor J
uana wrote that in the convent, when her inclination to study was “snuffed out or hindered with every (spiritual) exercise known to religion, it exploded like gunpowder; and in my case the saying ‘privation gives rise to appetite’ was proven true.”
Émile Martel is an award-winning French-Canadian poet from Montreal who has translated Sor Juana’s work into French in a book called Écrits profanes: un choix de textes. Martel told me that his favourite work by Sor Juana is a sonnet about a woman who sees a portrait of herself and then struggles to criticize, minimize, and deny her own beauty. In an English translation by Electa Arenal and Amanda Powell, the sonnet carries a rather long but intriguing title: “She endeavours to expose the praises recorded in a portrait of the Poetess by truth, which she calls passion.”
In it, Sor Juana speaks of her own portrait as a “cunning trap to ensnare your sense.” There may well be beauty amidst the “clever arguments of tone and hue.” But, ultimately, admiring attractiveness in a portrait is
a foolish, erring diligence
a palsied will to please which, clearly seen,
is a corpse, is dust, is shadow and is gone.
In forcefully denying her own beauty (Octavio Paz describes her as having been beautiful), Sor Juana imagined her own destruction. She met her downfall, and paid for it with her own books — and blood — after infuriating the men who ruled her world of Catholicism. She had already generated petty jealousies among nuns who watched her become famous throughout the Spanish empire. At least once, they succeeded in preventing her from reading for a period of months. But her undoing — one of the traps of her faith, as Paz puts it — was set in motion when she defended the right of women to study, teach, and write in The Answer, an ardent response to a bishop (posing as a nun) who had criticized her for paying too much attention to earthly matters and too little attention to her faith. Sor Juana demolished the bishop’s arguments one by one. To justify her own lifelong explorations of literature and science, she cited numerous people of faith — male figures such as Saint Augustine and Saint Jerome, and female figures such as the Queen of Sheba, the Roman goddess Minerva, and the Swedish Queen Christina Alexandra — who had done the same. But her response angered the men who ruled her world, and they saw to it that she was stripped of her earthly pleasures.
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