That wonderful old matriarch of Jungian psychotherapy, Marie-Louise von Franz, used to say that Western civilization puts a little gnome on every woman’s shoulder to tell her that she is wrong, that her work is no good, and that she is worthless.

The nature of women is always at odds with the male-oriented world. The naturalness of the woman is in the expression of her true nature in an environment where this is considered threatening and heretical to conventional values.

In recent decades, various currents of thought have emerged that comprise the women’s movement. Different feminisms range from the radical philosophies of separatist feminists to the watered-down feminism popularized by the mainstream media, which has done everything possible to weaken the revolutionary voice of true feminism.

True feminism confronts the hideous and horrific history of the repression and persecution of women for the last two or three thousand years. The legacy of shameful events, such as the systematic persecution and genocide of women healers and herbalists as witches for hundreds of years, remains with us today in the continued treatment of women, and by association, children, as inferior beings.

There are no complete records of the number of women who were killed by witchcraft. However, in Matilda Joslyn Gage’s book, Women, Church and State (2nd ed; New York: Arno Press 1972, p.247, edition first published 1893) we have this initial estimate: “It is estimated from historical records that nine million people were put to death for witchcraft after 1484 , or over a period of 300 years, and this estimate does not include the large number that were sacrificed in preceding centuries under the same charge.

Felix Morrow, in the foreword by Montague Summers. The history of witchcraft and demonology (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1971, p. viii.), tells us that, “The figures of scholars who estimate the number of witches sentenced to death vary enormously, from 30,000 to several million, and it is really impossible to know, given than the records of the time, but it is clear that a substantial number were executed”.

Here is one of the most recent statements that I could find about the persecution of witches during the most intense period, that is, the 16th to 18th centuries: “During the entire duration of the phenomenon of about three centuries, an estimated total of 40,000 to 60,000 people were executed.”

It is as if some reduction in the estimate has been agreed upon, and over time the figures previously claimed to be comparable to the Jewish Holocaust have been reduced to a figure comparable to annual car crash deaths (in the US). or deaths associated with junk food (in the UK).

Is this a conspiracy, the result of misguided cynicism, or just a case of time heals all wounds?

Interestingly, the World War II Holocaust has a second parallel with the persecution of witches. The commonly given figure is eleven million, but that figure is considered too low.

Despite the supposed progress towards equality of the sexes, women continue to be insidiously denied a place in society. In concept and treatment, women still suffer from a lack of credit and recognition, and continue to experience subjugation and violence around the world in a variety of forms and in different cultures.

These cultural mores are reflected in the lives of individual women in the total separation of themselves from virtually all that is natural, intrinsic, and innately feminine. For a woman to discover her true self, she must step outside the normal parameters of everything she has learned to accept and be defined by.

The patriarchal society needs to open up to new paradigms and give as much leadership as humanly possible to women. The entire conceptual structure of our lives must be transformed and delivered to the feminine principle in both women and men. We finally need to give back the power that the patriarchy stole from women, as Mary Daly said –the power to name