Hypatia

I was asked by a few people to do a piece on the first Witch trail and who it was. That was easy. The first trial or official trial was in England in 1566. Before this they didn’t even have a trial, they just burned or hanged the girl. The women’s names were Agnes Waterhouse, Joan Waterhouse and Elizabeth Francis.

They had every charge the church could imagine brought against them. From causing illness, to killing livestock and causing the death of Agnes’ husband. What really pissed the church off was that she had a cat named Satan. No doubt she was using the name as a joke. Pagans laughed at how superstitious Christians were and still are. Officially Agnes Waterhouse was the first witch executed during a trial. She was hanged.

I wanted to know who the first woman was that was executed even without a trial. I searched to see how early I could find the term Witch, but it only went as early as the tenth century. Witch came from the words wicked, wicca, and wicker. To the church they all meant evil. So I decide to go after the term sorceress. My problem was that sorceress goes back as far as goddess. Even Lilith was called a sorceress. I had to narrow it down to the beginning of Christianity, but early Christianity was very pagan. I didn’t find anything until after the Council of Nicaea (325 CE) and the Council of Constantinople (385 CE). During these councils it was decided that the Temple of Serapeum be destroyed along with all of Alexandria. I realize that Christianity is like every other religion and it wants to keep its followers as illiterate as possible, but why the hell would Rome want to tear apart places in Egypt? The answer to this question is that Jesus’ real historical trial was in Alexandria, Egypt (See His Royal Jesus). This was before Islam and Rome had to do its own dirty work. In they went under the leadership of Cyril, the Patriarch of Alexandria.

This is where I introduce you to Hypatia. Hypatia was the daughter of a Greek geometrician named Theon of Alexandria. This intelligent, beautiful woman was often called Hypatia of Alexandria. She wrote a renowned work called Astronomical Canon and a commentary of The Conics of Apollonius. She was one of the best students of Euclid. Hypatia invented and perfected devices for calculating astronomical measurement, including the Planesphere and the Astrolabe— an instrument used to measure the height of stars above the horizon. Once set, Astrolabes would identify the entire sky (whether visible or not) and they became widely used for maritime navigation. She also invented the Hygroscope, which determined the specific gravity of liquids. The hatred  the church had toward her was vicious, as you will see. Almost one thousand years after her death, Italian Renaissance artist Raphael painted his master work, The School of Athens. He was instructed to remove Hypatia from the scene in order to make it acceptable to the Bishop of Rome.

After Cyril and his Christian Monk goons destroyed Alexandria, they set after the scholars who were in the Library. They had a special hate for women scholars, who were said by Christians to have no place in the academic arena! Hypatia was a professor of philosophy, a noted authority of the works of Plato and a teacher of algebraic mathematics. But in the eyes of the Church, Plato was a heretic and Hypatia was an evil sorceress(Witch) who must be dealt with accordingly. On the last day of Lent in 415 CE Hypatia was wrested from her carriage, disrobed, and dragged naked to Caesarium by the Christian thugs. As I was reading this story I didn’t think the Christians could get any lower. Then I saw how they sentenced her to death by torture. The oyster shell or sea shell, from the earliest of antiquity, has always been a symbol of the female ovum. These sick bastards took oyster shells and scrapped her flesh off her body, while she was still alive, and scattered her remains in the streets of Alexandria as a public warning. All this because she was an intelligent woman or in the eyes of the Church, a Witch.