How did the lies start? Where did the negative image of the Witch begin? And how did it become so ingrained in our culture that it's almost impossible for some people to hear the word Witch without thinking of evil?
The religion of Witchcraft dates back about 25,000 years, to the Paleolithic Age, where the God of Hunting and the Goddess of Fertility first appeared. Out of respect for the overwhelming power of Nature grew a belief in beings, gods, who controlled the winds, the seas, the earth and the fires.
Soon, the old ways of the common
people came into conflict with a new religion that started with rulers
and upper classes - Christianity. When the Christians decided that their
new ways weren't catching on fast enough, things got a lot rougher for
those who were practicing the Old Religion. Christian leaders began asserting
that Witches were devil worshippers and savages.
In the year 1233, Pope Gregory
IX instituted the Roman Catholic tribunal known as the Inquisition in an
attempt to suppress heresy. In 1320, the church (at the request of Pope
John XXII) officially declared Witchcraft and the Old Religion of the Pagans
as a heretical movement and a "hostile threat" to Christianity. Witches
had now become heretics and the persecution against all Pagans spread like
wildfire throughout Europe. (It is interesting to note that before a person
can be considered a heretic, he or she must first be a Christian, and Pagans
have never been Christians. They have always been Pagans.)
The single most influential piece of propaganda in this campaign was commissioned by Pope Innocent VIII in 1484 after he declared Witchcraft to be a heresy. He instructed the Dominican monks Heinrich Kraemer and Jacob Sprenger to publish a manual for Witch-hunters. Two years later the work appeared with the title Malleus malificarum, or "The Witches' Hammer." The manual was used for the next 250 years in the church's attempt to destroy the Old Religion of Western Europe.
"He must not be too quick to
subject a witch to examination,
but must pay attention to
certain signs which will follow.
And he must not be too quick
for this reason:
unless God, through a holy
Angel, compels the devil
to withold his help from the
witch,
she will be so insensible
to the pains of torture that
she will sooner be torn limb
from limb than confess any of the truth.
But the torture is not to
be neglected for this reason,
for they are not equally endowed
with this power,
and also the devil sometimes
of his own will permits them
to confess their crimes without
being compelled by a holy Angel."
-- Kramer and Sprenger, the
Malleus Maleficarum
Witches... along with countless
numbers of "innocent" men, women, and children who were not Witches were
persecuted, brutally tortured, often sexually molested or raped, and then
executed by sadistic, bloodthirsty church authorities who taught that their
God was a god of love and compassion. Once denounced, a suspected Witch
was arrested and then hideously tortured into a confession. Suspects were
subjected to thumbscrews, the rack, boots which broke the bones of the
legs; they were deprived of sleep, starved and beaten. At times, hundreds
of suspected Witches were killed in a day.
Witchcraft in England was made
an illegal offense in the year 1541, and in 1604 a law decreeing capital
punishment for Witches and Pagans was adopted. Forty years later, the thirteen
colonies in American also made death the penalty for the "crime" of Witchcraft.
By the late seventeenth century, the followers who remained loyal to the
Old Religion were in hiding and Witchcraft had turned into a secret underground
religion after an estimated one million persons had been put to death in
Europe and more than thirty condemned at Salem, Massachusetts, in the name
of Christianity. Unfortunately, when the persecutions ended in the 18th
century, the stereotype of Witches as devil worshippers remained for those
who were uninformed of the true nature of the Craft.
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