Heathens, Pagans and Witches discussion

A place to discuss both the European Witchcraft trials and any related books. This includes the works of the Demonologists.

Estimates vary due to inaccurate record keeping, but up to 300, 000 (mostly) women may have been killed during this time. Indeed some villages in what is now know as the country of Germany, were left without any women at all.

Lest we forget.

Was Germany the worst? For some reason I thought it was Holland.

I think the Germany regions suffered the biggest losses, and the trials were some of the most brutal. I'll see if I can find any charts with approximate figures....

I'm haunted by an image of a woman being lowered onto a pyre via a ladder in Holland. Gods knows where I'm remembering that from. Too many books.

I will have to look up Holland again. I know the ladder was a form of torture. The basic rule of thumb in the trials is that the Catholic countries burnt witches at the stake, and the Protestant countries hung them.

In Sweden they rounded them up into 'Witch Houses' and then set the houses alight. Children too, as they were tainted by their link to their mothers. France didn't really get into the swing, with more 'demonic' possessions than trials. Apparently Spain (not counting the Inquisition) and Russia weren't so bad either (sexism at play here, strangely enough).

This is my witchcraft trials shelf: http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/...

I'll try to add individual books too, as it's easier to find them then.

I didn't know about the hanging versus burning thing Catholic versus wasp traditions. Fascinating.

It is. Also the persecution was far worse in the Catholic countries. But then again in England you had people like the Witch Finder General Matthew Hopkins, who tried old women for having butterflies and cats as their familiars. An absolute bastard who made buckets in the process. What a lovely time to be living, heh?

Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts This book was particularly good and also horrifying, as you'd expect.

The Visions of Isobel Gowdie: Magic, Witchcraft and Dark Shamanism in Seventeenth-Century Scotland examines closely the interrogation, and trial of one woman from Scotland; and a summary of the Scottish Witch Trials can be found here.

Oooh that looks like a good one Ancestral!

My library doesn't have it, unfortunately. I'm going to have to seek it elsewhere...

That library of yours has a lot to answer for.

It does!

Gina, I found the paragraph from Psychic Self-Defense by Dion Fortune that I mentioned earlier on the Group Newsletter thread - here 'tis.

DF has been relating an incident of psychic attack that occurred in her twenties, and that left her ill for three years. She then writes:

"If such a transaction had taken place during the Middle Ages, the parish priest would have organised a witch-hunt. In the light of my own experiences I am not at all surprised that people who had acquired a reputation for the practice of witchcraft were lynched, the methods are so terrible and so intangible. We may think the records of the witch-trials are ridiculous, with their tales of wax images melting in front of slow fires, or the crucifying of christened toads, or the reciting of little jingles, such as 'Horse, hattock, To ride, to ride.' But if we understand the use of mind-power we soon realize that these things were simply aids to concentration.

"There is no essential difference between sticking pins into a wax image of an enemy and burning candles in front of a wax image of the Virgin. You may think that both these practices are gross superstition, but you can hardly think that one is real and potent and deny reality and potency to the other. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal may as truly be said of the practitioners of Black Magic as of the Church."

(Presumably she means 'carnal' in the sense of 'temporal or worldly'.)

Surprising...

Great Nell. :) I still doubt many witches were actually burnt or hung, but I do agree that prayers/spells and hexing are two sides of the coin, and both with the same capacity to either heal or harm.

I do remember reading about a group of real Witches in England that did practice hexing in full force (The Pendle Forest, or Lancashire witches). I wouldn't have wanted to cross them when they were in a bad mood!

Is Dion's book worth reading?

It's very revealing - I got a real sense of what she was like as a person. I hadn't realized that she practiced psychology professionally for one thing.

Whether the book could help a person under some sort of psychic attack I'm not sure - there are no actual instructions for defending oneself - and any attack could conceivably exist only in the mind of a person looking for help anyway. But awareness of such things - whether real or imagined - is a powerful ally.

It's well worth reading IMO (and out of copyright) - I added a link to the Free Books thread a while ago. It's a PDF file, but possible to read on a Kindle if you adapt it with a programme such as the free Mobi Creator or the app OB mentioned somewhere.

I'm interested in the concept. I'll add it and try and find an old second hand copy around somewhere. I have a want wall, where I write down the name of books I'm hoping to find. They usually show up sometime. :)

Belatedly, re this month's group newsletter, I wanted to add that I'm more disappointed by Murray's use of hexes, than her dodgy 'research' and fantastical theories. It marked her as petty in my mind. Would have thought she'd have understood the do no harm bit. Or at least the concept of Karma...

Changed my mind. I have found the PDF version, and will read that. :)

Re. the hexes, I believe the fact that she did them in front of colleagues means that she wanted this information to get back to the person targeted, which would make them more powerful. She must surely have known that this would be the effect, even if she didn't believe in the occult side of magic. So there's no excusing her. Pretty drastic stuff.

No, no excuse. I read of another witch who did the same thing in current day Salem. I think it was a journalist she hexed, can't remember the details but my reaction was the same. It is drastic, sad too.

Re whether many true 'witches' were hung/burnt, I doubt that the people we would now, ourselves, view as witches, would have seen themselves as such. They were folk healers and midwives for the most part.

From the accounts that I've read they were horrified to be labeled as witches, and to be accused of flying on broomsticks and kissing Satan's butt. This imagery/behaviour was created by the Dominican order of Demonologists. (See Goya's paintings for a visual example: http://www.google.com.au/search?q=goy...)

The Demonologists themselves, were continuing on with the Inquisitorial work, demonising and then purging the world of Pagan faiths.

So the witches coven was based on Pagan snippets such as Greek Bacchanalian festivals and feasts, and other preceding religious rites. The Bull Foot/Piper (Dionysus/Pan) becomes Satan himself, and a host of Pagan Gods and Goddesses become the Demons, Succubi, Princes of Hell.

Goodness me what a fantastical time (and wow--over the top sadistically, erotic) those poor deprived, and so very lonely Demonologist monks had...

... Along came people like Margaret Murray, who cemented this fabricated connection between the demonologists' imaginings and those who were hung/burnt as witches, by stating that indeed, there was an unbroken line of worship.

This of course is not true.

Folk healers and grumpy old women who liked to throw hexes, may have said prayers to Gods/Goddesses, but they would have included the Christian Mary and Jesus, as well as older regional ones.

I seriously doubt many in England, for instance, would have known of Greek Gods, other than through their Roman names (Roman occupation of England). No way they would have prayed to Pan/Dionysus.

Anyway, the Demonologists (ie Heinrich Kramer of the infamous The Malleus Maleficarum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich...) and Witch Finders (ie Mathew Hopkins: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathew_H...) gave us the framework/devils/demons/iconography/belief structures, that then in turn were incorporated into the framework for the modern day Wiccan movement, via such people as Margaret Alice MurrayandRobert Graves and the modern day Satanic movement, via authors such as Aleister Crowleyand Anton Szandor LaVey

I'm not diffusing the idea of horned Gods nor Paganism. I'm a follower of Dioynsus. Just saying it's interesting..

Indeed, it was a horrible thing the execution of so many innocent women. The religious intolerance of the time was the main problem, but we can not blame religious but people, there are no good or bad religions, only good and bad people, people who chose to live in the ignorance and the intolerance.
Remember that it was not witches who were sacrificed, but also a lot of Jews, and Muslims were killed or forced to live in the exile. Not to mention that Christians killed their fellow Christians accusing them of heresy for believing in something a little bit different since christianity exists under many branches catholics, protestants, arians, adoptionists, orthodoxes, etc.Jeanne Baptiste

Jeanne wrote: "Not to mention that Christians killed their fellow Christians accusing them of heresy for believing in something a little bit different..."

Indeed...

"Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius..."
The Abbot of Citeaux, at Béziers, 1209

Yes, and homosexuals. Hence the term faggot, as in faggot of wood. I agree Jeanne it was the intolerance of the time.

The Age of Reason was also a time of systematic 'tightening' of civil control over the individual. Births, deaths and marriages were recorded with more care. The deaths of infants were no longer overlooked. Midwives and folk healers came up against the growing orders of doctors and priests.Michel Foucault talks about this tightening of control and how the Lazar houses were transformed in insane asylums in the 1600s and previously free 'fools' were rounded up and incarcerated. No more Narrenschiffs on the horizon (Fools' Ships). Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason.

I do find it strange though, that our current visual and behavourial image of the witch comes from the Demonologists. Even the witches hat is a goodwives (Goody) hat from that period (just a bit more crooked and darker, of course...) It's a fabrication that has been embraced, even by some who now see themselves as witches. The original coven, familiars, rites and rituals all basically derived from Christian monks/witch finders. Satanism too was originally based on this.

In much the same way that the image of Druidry which we have, comes from their enemies, the Romans, primarily. Old-Barbarossa has just informed me, there's no Santa. :(

Yes! Exactly! Chinese whispers, nothing is real or fact, and no, there is no Santa. (Especially not the jolly, bearded man in the red suit, he's a Coca Cola construction :/)

Aaron wrote: "...just informed me, there's no Santa. :("

Oh, there's a Santa all right...just doesn't shill for Coke. Prefers 'shroom tainted reindeer piss.

Old-Barbarossa wrote: "Aaron wrote: "...just informed me, there's no Santa. :("

Oh, there's a Santa all right...just doesn't shill for Coke. Prefers 'shroom tainted reindeer piss."

You crack me up every time. Worth bottling. :)

What!
It's true!
Look at the shamanic origins of the archetype...I may not have put it in the most diplomatic or polite way though...

No, you mistake my meaning: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define...

:D

Ah, an antipodean colloquialism...so...not refering to bottled tincture of antlered beast urine flavoured with amanita muscaria?

Nah, it's a thumbs up to your comments and general vibe. But also agree wholeheartedly about SC and beast/amanita muscaria combo. Bacchus approved too. :)

The thing with the witchcraft trials was that it was pretty much nothing to do with what is now considered witchcraft.
A look at the records will show there was much motivated by money/property theft/"redistribution" and also the need for a scapegoat. The fact the prosecution defined the accused in the way they did seems to have little relevance to what we moderns view as "witchcraft". Also there was the sociological/psychological mass hysteria thing too.
What I mean by this is: just because Matthew Hopkins or Cotton Mather said someone was a witch doesn't mean they were. It's like the 18th cent antiquarians claiming all old stones are druidic.
Of course all the claims that some of the folk that were persecuted were what are now refered to as witches presupposes the existence of a witch cult...

Margaret bloody Murray...pah!

When we learned about the persecution of 'witches' at school - the ducking stool etc. - no one ever taught us that these women were ever anything but solitary and unprotected (by a husband or son) females living alone with a pet or two, maybe practising a little folk medicine, maybe not. They were never associated or linked with the witches in fairy tales - those were an entirely different cauldron of fish.

Re. the hats: I have an old illustration of a perfectly ordinary old woman in a pointed hat in a story book - it was a surprise to read it and find that she wasn't a witch. I'll see if I can find and post it later on.

I reserve a special spot in the depths of my ill-used liver for Hopkins and the Mathers--father and son.

Pogroms and witchcraft trials, they follow the same lines. Scapegoats prove useful. Also lucrative re the hearth tax instituted in many European countries, and the said Pogroms. Agreed on the redistribution of assets when a witch was condemned. Worked a treat for the families of the accusers in Salem.

The concept of mass hysteria/ ergot I have issues with. Seems convenient. But yes, the religious feel of the times was pretty over the top--superstition overload. There wasn't an alternative either. You had to swallow it whole.

But the current image of the witch is the work of the Demonologists. It did not exist in antiquity. They were working their Inquisitorial poison. The coven harks back to the Maenads. The familiars to the fawns/creatures of the forest that the Maenads suckled, then tore apart. The horned, seated Baphomet/Satan/Devil is Bacchus/Pan/Hermes, you name the Pagan god. They took it and twisted and tainted it, and bugger them all for doing so.

Off to drink more beer and mutter to myself.

P.S Bugger Murray too.

What galls me is the arrogance. That they actually thought a real witch would let herself be burnt, especially with the powers they accorded her. The notion that there righteousness protected them from her magic, was very thin protection, especially considering how week their faith was in the first place.

I'm inclined to agree with Old-Barbarossa, that it just became an easy way to get rid of someone when you didn't like them, or maneuver them out of your way, when you wanted to step up the ladder.

Regarding the mass hysteria aspect...I don't think drugs were necessary. Look at the current atrocities carried out and justified by ref to religious texts: beheadings, beatings, shootings etc.

Oh my friends are fully capable of a mass lemming panic without any aid from substances.

Old-Barbarossa wrote: "Regarding the mass hysteria aspect...I don't think drugs were necessary. Look at the current atrocities carried out and justified by ref to religious texts: beheadings, beatings, shootings etc."

Good point.

Nell said: "Re. the hats: I have an old illustration of a perfectly ordinary old woman in a pointed hat..."

It was the normal hat worn by goodwives, or goodys. The witches one just grew darker and pointier.

In one feminist reading the author pointed out that women were at their most liberated (pre now) in the 1400s just before the witch craze took off. The Trials changed everything including how we, as women, interact. During the Trials women named others in their attempts to stop the torture. Trust and neighbour relations died.

The accusers who were children were more worrisome than most. Some seemed to do it out of pure malice. But then again, childhood didn't exist as we know it.

Very dark years.

Also adding this book to the thread:
Encyclopedia Of Witchcraft & Demonology by Rossell Hope Robbins

And these two quotes:
“The words witch and witchcraft, in everyday usage for over a thousand years, have undergone several changes of meaning; and today witchcraft, having reverted to its original connotation of magic and sorcery, does not convey the precise and limited definition it once had during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. If witchcraft had never meant anything more than the craft of "an old, weather-beaten crone..." Europe would not have suffered, for three centuries from 1450 to 1750, the shocking nightmare, the foulest crime and the deepest shame of western civilization, the blackout of everything that homo sapiens, the reasoning man, has ever upheld. This book is about that shame...degradation stifled decency, the filthiest passions masqueraded under the cover of religion, and man's intellect was subverted to condone bestialities that even Swift's Yahoos would blush.

Never were so many wrong, so long...”

“Throughout these centuries, those who should, by their birth, training, and position, have been the conscience of the world, accepted the delusion and promoted it. Such men not only appealed to the emotions of religion, but perverted the entire structure of logic and reason. Everything was sacrificed to a preconceived prejudice. The logic of the Demonologists, all highly educated men, leaders in their own disciplines, is the most terrifying feature of witchcraft. Because of their turning rational thinking on its head--far more than the most foul act of a torturer or witch judge--the centuries of the witchcraft mania may be called the centuries of uncivilization.”

― Rossell Hope Robbins, Encyclopedia Of Witchcraft & Demonology

I've uploaded the illustration to the group photos - it's not quite as I remember it - although the hat is very witchy - perhaps I have another somewhere. She is a 'naughty old woman', but there's no mention of the witch word. It seems that as late as the first edition of Fairy Gold in 1907, these hats were still associated in a general way with old women.

Goodwife's hat.

Thank you for letting us know that you uploaded the photo. I'm sure I set my notifications to let me know when a new picture goes up, but I don't seem to be getting them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-7UFr...
Interesting but short doc on Scottish Hx and witches as portrayed in art.
And Tam's Cutty Sark get's a look in too...

A book I'm currently reading put the number of people accused of withcraft at 90,000 to 100,000 between 1400 and 1800, with roughly half of them executed. Apparently half of the trials took place in Southern Germany.

Old-Barbarossa wrote: "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-7UFr...
Interesting but short doc on Scottish Hx and witches as portrayed in art.
And Tam's Cutty Sark get's a look in too..."

That link is just brilliant. Thank you. Loved it. Inspiring in itself.

Mrs. Bunny wrote: "A book I'm currently reading put the number of people accused of withcraft at 90,000 to 100,000 between 1400 and 1800, with roughly half of them executed. Apparently half of the trials took place i..."

The Catholic countries faired worse than the Protestant. I have read some interesting feminist readings on the trials in terms of who was targeted and why. Good to remember that they weren't that long ago either...

What is the book you are reading Mrs. Bunny (love the name by the way)? Can we add it to the thread?

Thanks OB - great programme - I've added it to the group video cache.

Little wrote: "Old-Barbarossa wrote: "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-7UFr...
Interesting but short doc on Scottish Hx and witches as portrayed in art.
And Tam's Cutty Sark get's a look in too..."

That link i..."

It's called Witchcraft: A Very Short Introduction. It is mainly concerned with witchcraft trials and why people have gotten the idea of witches they have. I think there are probably better books out there, as this one is a bit poorly organized and the reading can be a bit dull, but it still has a lot of interesting information.

Is this the one Mrs Bunny? Witchcraft: A Very Short Introduction by Malcolm Gaskill

Little wrote: "Is this the one Mrs Bunny? Witchcraft: A Very Short Introduction by Malcolm Gaskill"

yes! :)