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- Date: Thu 07 Jan 88 15:43:34
- From: L.a. Hussey (on 161/93)
- To: All
- Subj: Song
-
- Lately I've been seeing an outrageous escalation of figures from the
- burning times, now we're up to 9.5 million! And there seems to be some
- sort of perverse "we're more persecuted than the Jews" mentality behind it.
- Completely ignoring the fact that the burning times killed some large
- number of people over 4 centuries, where the Nazi Holocaust killed its
- millions in a matter of 5 YEARS. Also, I've been pissed off lately by
- Charlie Murphey's "Burning Times" song, which has propagated the 9 million
- figure and has in it lines like "The Earth is a Witch/ and the Men still
- burn Her". So, in the good old-fashioned tradition of lectures set to
- music, I offer the following verses. I need to see how many people they
- offend before I sing them at Esotericon.
-
- BURNING TIMES
-
- The songs are sung to rouse our anger
- Of martyred witches gone to the fire
- But what is served by righteous singing
- When all we do is stew in our ire?
- Nine million dead in four hundred years
- More in that time simply died of disease.
- Why do we dwell on long-passed dead
- When we are alive in times like these?
-
- cho1: Rise up, Witches, throw off your masks
- And cease crying guilt for ancient crimes;
- Earth and all her children need us,
- For all face now the Burning Times.
-
- In the face of that hostile power,
- How did the old knowledge stay alive?
- How do we have a Craft to practise?
- Our ancestors knew how to fight and survive!
- How do we honour our blessed dead?
- Slavery threatens all but the few!
- We must teach their cunning ways;
- Everyone needs the skills they knew.
-
- cho: Rise up, Witches, gather your strength,
- And let your power spread and climb;
- Earth and all her children need us,
- For all face now the Burning Times.
-
- I'll not cast off science's works
- Witches all forces to Will can bend.
- I'll not accuse, for war and waste,
- Some patriarchy of faceless Men.
- Men do not cast the only votes;
- Women alone do not demonstrate.
- Rather than shut out half the race,
- Who, if not we, will change that state?
-
- (cho)
-
- I will not blame a Father's Church --
- Blame and guilt are Their tools, not mine.
- And even in the shuls and churches
- Allies there will I seek and find!
- I will not answer hate with fear;
- Nor with a smug, cheek-turning love;
- I will not answer hate with rage;
- By strength alone will I not be moved!
-
- (cho)
-
- I will not hide in my sacred grove --
- The factories and cities yet ring me about.
- I will not climb my ivory tower --
- The real world exists though I shut it out.
- I will not work for Church nor State
- Who serve themselves while they serve us lies.
- Nor only for my Witchen kin
- But for the family of all alive!
-
- (cho)
-
- So if rebellion means to fight
- A State lost sight of why it was built,
- If heresy's to reject a Church
- That rules with force or fear or guilt,
- Then let us all be rebels proud,
- And shameless heretics by creed!
- A tyrant's hand subjects the Earth
- More heretic rebels are what She needs!
-
- (cho)
-
- copyright 1988, Leigh Ann Hussey
-
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-