One year after the treatise Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of Witches) was released, a teenager took refuge in a cave outside the town of Knaresborough, England, where she then birthed a baby. I don’t know if young Agatha Southheil was attended to by a friend sworn to keep her secret, or if she labored alone hoping the baby would be stillborn so that Agatha wouldn’t be shackled with taking care of an infant.

She named her Ursula. Little She Bear. Bear Cub. A reference no doubt to the cave in which Ursula was born.

Agatha refused to say if her infant daughter was the result of rape, or incest, or both. It’s unlikely that it was the result of young love gone wrong because a girl would want revenge were that the case. Even when ordered before the local magistrate, Agatha refused to identify the father of her child. Perhaps holding such a secret gave Agatha a sense of power that was denied her in most every other area of her life.

The year was 1487.

Sit on that date for a moment.

A German Catholic clergyman by the name of Heinrich Kramer came up with Malleus, basically a manual for addressing heretics, demons and witches. Kramer claimed his manual was the position of the Roman Catholic Church. Not everyone agreed with him, naturally. Theologians of the Inquisition condemned it for being inconsistent with their own tribunal procedures.

In other words, you had religious men fighting with other religious men over the correct way to identify, condemn, arrest, put on trial, and kill women for wrongs they never did – all in the name of God.

Sound familiar?

I don’t know how old Ursula was before the townspeople labeled her a witch. I suspect she was just a toddler when the rumors started flying. Perhaps it was shortly after Agatha was called before the magistrate and ordered to reveal the paternity of her child. Her refusal probably prompted some drunkard in the local pub to declare that she couldn’t say because it was the Devil’s child. A true-to-life Rosemary’s Baby. Maybe Agatha started the rumors herself so as to protect her daughter. Don’t mess with us or she’ll hex you.

Not surprisingly, as religious men like Kramer and those behind the Inquisition came up with means of identifying women as witches, the death toil for women increased exponentially. By 1660 over 80,000 people identified as witches were put to death in England, by far the bulk of those slaughtered under religious laws were women. In case you are ill-informed, in storybooks, myths retold, popular movies and tv shows, witches are always women. Centuries later, witch remains a common slur used to dismiss, demean and demonize women. Congressional leaders employ it still.

It’s exhausting when you consider how long women have fought for autonomy in nearly every country in the world. I think that’s why I admire Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo so much and the woman who should have been our president – Kamala Harris. Their unwavering persistence in light of the odds.

It occurs to me that J.D. Vance is the most current incarnation of Heinrich Kramer. Someone who manipulates religion to their own political purpose, a purpose that is primarily meant to demonize and enslave women.

I don’t know why the townspeople of Knaresborough didn’t kill baby Ursula. Perhaps they really believed she was Satan’s daughter. You would think that would have been a concern about killing any woman they labeled a witch, though, wouldn’t you? If these 80,000 people they demonized really had supernatural powers, wouldn’t they use them even after they were dead? What’s the point of being a witch or a demon if you can’t harm those who did you wrong in death?

At any rate, when Ursula was a toddler, the church intervened. It didn’t look good to have a child being raised in the forest by a teenager. The local abbot sent Agatha away to a convent and placed Ursula with a foster family. Agatha never saw her daughter again. I suspect the church paid the family to take Ursula in, otherwise how else would they convince a family to take in a child of Satan?

Legend says that Ursula was an ugly child, with a pointed chin and hooked nose, but then they always say that about any female they demonize, don’t they? Books are full of such imagery. Rarely are the demons in literature or in media depicted as men with high foreheads, comb-overs, flabby tits, and drooping scrotums tucked into ill-fitting pants and sweaty tees. I’d wager that most demons wear business suits, the better to disguise their wickedness.

For all we know, Ursula looked just like Amy Winehouse. We do know for sure that she was a bright girl with a love of nature. She knew the names of trees and which leaves of a tree or a bush could cure a cold or drive away a headache. She’d learned to pay attention to the skies, the stars, the feel of the air. They say she had the powers of a prophet. She could predict things. While the townspeople never lost their fear of her, they came to depend upon her knowledge as a herbalist. If she was a witch, at least she used her powers to help improve people’s well-being, rather than to deny them healthcare.

When she was 24, Ursula married a local town boy, Tony Shipton. Envious women swore the carpenter never would have married a girl like Ursula unless she had bewitched him. She had to have placed a spell on him. When two years into the marriage Tony fell ill and died, that too must have been the result of Ursula’s witchery. Why else would such a healthy young fella take to the sick bed?

Grief-stricken, Ursula sought refugee in the one place she knew would offer her solace – Knaresborough’s forest, and the cave where her young mother birthed her. There she would remain until her own dying day.

Mother Shipton’s Cave is England’s oldest tourist attraction. Since 1630 people have made the pilgrimage to the cave near the River Nidd and it’s nearby magical well. They say if you dip your hand in the waters of the well while making a wish, it will come true as long as you let your hand dry naturally. The minerals in the natural well water petrify everything from stuffed bears to Agatha Christie’s purse. Perhaps it petrifies our wishes, too.

I bet you can guess what I wished for.

Inside the cave is a woman carved from stone meant to imitate Mother Shipton.

I don’t know what the young girl born in a cave would think of being memorialized in such a manner. I hope, however, that she knows that when many of us visit, we think of Ursula Shipton as a bad-ass powerhouse. A woman who overcame every obstacle arrogant self-righteous men put in her way.

May we all seek to be as tuned into nature as Mother Shipton, and as willing as her to curse the wrongheaded religious dictums of men like J.D. Vance and Donald J. Trump.

May we women rise up to hex each man who seeks to demonize us.