The Burning Times

 

A propos of Hallowe’en, the following appeared yesterday in my Facebook feed, titled “Let’s have fun, but not forget about history”:

“Annual reminder about where the ‘ugliness’ of witches comes from. That ugliness was the result of beatings and torture by animals. This is why I deplore the green face witch caricatures. 

Each year they parade her about, The traditional Halloween witch. Misshapen green face, stringy scraps of hair, A toothless mouth beneath her disfigured nose. Gnarled knobby fingers twisted into a claw protracting form. A bent and twisted torso that lurches about on wobbly legs.

Most think this is abject image to be the creation of a prejudiced mind or merely a Halloween caricature, I disagree, I believe this to be how witches were really seen.

Consider that most witches were women, were abducted in the night and smuggled into dungeons or prisons under secrecy of darkness and presented by the light of day as a confessed witch.

Few, if any saw a frightened normal looking woman being dragged into a secret room filled with instruments of torture, to be questioned until she confessed to anything that was suggested to her, and to give names or say whatever would stop the questions.

Crowds saw the aberration denounced to the world as a self-proclaimed witch. As the witch was paraded through the town, in route to be burned, hanged, drowned, stoned, or disposed of in various, horrible ways, all created to free and save her soul from her depraved body.

The jeering crowds viewed the result of hours of torture. The face, bruised and broken by countless blows, bore a hue of sickly green. The once warm and loving smile gone, replaced by a grimace of broken teeth, and torn gums that leer beneath a battered disfigured nose.

The disheveled hair conceals bleeding gaps of torn scalp from whence cruel hands had torn away the lovely tresses. Broken, twisted hands clutched the wagon for support. Fractured fingers locked like cropping claws to steady her broken body.

All semblance of humanity gone. This was truly a demon, a bride of Satan, a witch.

I revere this Halloween Witch and hold her sacred. I honor her courage and listen to her warnings of the dark side of humanity.

Each year I shed tears of respect.”

Author unknown

This post illustrates the general point that most people seem unable to distinguish fantasy from reality. Both the poster and comments on the post take this as “history,” while it is clearly speculation. “I believe this…” There is one fact in the entire piece: “most witches were women.” The rest is imagined.

There is not a great deal of documentation, but witches were safer in Medieval Europe than in pagan societies. For the Catholic Church did not believe in witchcraft. Pagan societies, on the other hand, like Canadian “First Nations” before Christian conversion, or pre-Christian sub-Saharan Africa, believed in witchcraft. Sorcerers were commonly tortured to death for cursing. If you believe in witchcraft it follows, just as you must prosecute someone for stabbing another to death with a knife. If cursing works, it is the most serious crime imaginable.

Witchhunting in Europe, a pagan practice, revived with the Reformation, and was more common in Protestant lands. This because, the authority of the Church having been thrown in doubt, folk beliefs resurfaced. In this “anything might be true” atmosphere, the witches of fairy tales, who were imaginary supernatural creatures like trolls or fairies, were taken by many to be real, and possibly in the neighbourhood.

I suspect we are currently at a similar point.

The Truth about Paganism

A "pagan" wedding ceremony.

Here's a nice article from The Atlantic debunking modern “paganism” and “goddess worship.” A few choice quotes:

“The evidence is overwhelming that Wicca is a distinctly new religion, a 1950s concoction.”

 Contrary to the common claim, it bears no relation to any religion that preceded Christianity.

“…[S]cholars generally agree that there is no indication, either archaeological or in the written record, that any ancient people ever worshipped a single, archetypal goddess.” 

Wiccan altar.

Feminists, of course, believe that all pre-literate societies worshipped “The Goddess.” Conveniently, these are also all the societies for which we have no written records.

“Hutton effectively demolished the notion, held by Wiccans and others, that fundamentally pagan ancient customs existed beneath medieval Christian practices. His research reveals that outside of a handful of traditions, such as decorating with greenery at Yuletide and celebrating May Day with flowers, no pagan practices—much less the veneration of pagan gods—have survived from antiquity. Hutton found that nearly all the rural seasonal pastimes that folklorists once viewed as ‘timeless’ fertility rituals, including the Maypole dance, actually date from the Middle Ages or even the eighteenth century. There is now widespread consensus among historians that Catholicism thoroughly permeated the mental world of medieval Europe, introducing a robust popular culture of saints' shrines, devotions, and even charms and spells. The idea that medieval revels were pagan in origin is a legacy of the Protestant Reformation.”

Hear that? No, Hallowe’en, for example, is not a pagan festival. It is All Soul’s Night. It is purely Catholic, as are Mardi Gras and St. Valentine’s Day. I used to buy all that stuff about pagan survivals myself, only a few years ago. I think most people still do.

Witch burning; from The Hammer of Witches.

Witch trials were not a feature of medieval Europe, or of Catholicism, but appeared with Protestantism, and only in parts of Europe affected by it. It was also a fairly rare phenomenon.

“…[M]ost of them took place during a relatively short period, 1550 to 1630, and were largely confined to parts of present-day France, Switzerland, and Germany that were already racked by the religious and political turmoil of the Reformation.”

The Salem witch trials.

Total casualties were something like 40,000, no more.

“…[N]one of the accused witches who were found guilty and put to death had been charged specifically with practicing a pagan religion”

In other words, this was not a persecution of pagans. It was a trial for the crime of sorcery, as still occurs in non-Christian parts of Africa or in the Muslim world today. If you believe that sorcery works, you logically must prosecute it as a crime.