Witch burning

by **Dreams End** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 11:49 am

I've started reading a little more about the history of "magick" and I say that from all sides there is some confusion that I'm trying to get sorted out, particularly about the "burning times." Here's what I'm curious about. Who, exactly, was being burned (or hanged, etc.)? Here are some scenarios. Well, first, who did the Christians THINK they were burning? I think this is clear. Their definition of witch was specifically someone who trafficked with devils and demons. Often, the "confessions" obtained under torture, mention Sabbat meetings with devils, etc. I don't know enough yet to say that you NEEDED that element to get someone executed, but it seems that this is the sort of things the torturers and inquisitors were trained to get. So here are the possibilities. Mix and match as you like and I'm mainly soliciting good sources of info. 1. These women were, in fact, devil worshippers. They met together with demons in orgiastic rites that involved many of the things we see in RA today, including "eating babies." The confessions were elicited under torture but had enough consistency that some of the facts must be true. Full disclosure: I don't actually buy this. There was consistency of stories under torture, but this can easily be explained by expectations of those doing the torturing. However, it's one of the scenarios. Note that you could believe this scenario and still not approve of torturing and burning of people. I find this scenario also underlies some modern conspiracists. McGowan's book, Programmed to Kill, suggests a longrunning "Satanic" conspiracy (I don't think he's actually religious, so he looks at it more sociologically.) However, he tends to compare modern accounts to these confessions and sees a long history of this sort of activity. Naturally, this implies that he accepts that these confessions under torture (or potential for torture) actually have some value as historical records. 2. The women who were tortured and burned were NOT devil worshippers but were country people participating in old pagan rites (with some evidence that upper class folks came to watch or participate as well). Some of these rites might very much look like "devil worship" to an outsider. Someone might assume the role of and dress as "Pan" for example. I think modern wiccans, etc, take this view. I would be interested to know if there is any factual support of this view other than speculation based on the material in the various confessions. 3. For the most part, none of this was even really happening at all. The modern day idea of a "witch hunt" applies exactly and anyone who some neighbor got mad at could be turned in and made to confess to whatever sorts of things the inquisitors expected to find. Note that, there are occasions, including Salem I think, where judges, juries and "witch mongers" actually came out later and said they had put innocent women to death and apologized. 4. Mixed in with this is the idea that some women had access to substances absorbed through the skin that was hallucinogenic in nature. Their stories then, were about Sabbat's they did not attend physically but they were "tripping." There are writers contemporaneous to these times who express such a view. And I have another theory which just hit me last night. I was reading about these witch burnings. Horrific affairs. All the townspeople would gather...it was a big event. Children, too. They might sing hymns or have some other Christian ritual. The condemned were often given special costumes...sometimes including a crown. And then they were burned. I simply can't imagine this sort of event. Even children could be burned in this way. Does this sound at all familiar to you? Yep, I have decided that the witchburnings were, in and of themselves, a type of human sacrifice. I don't maintain that this was a conscious motivation, but perhaps whatever impulse it is that has led so many cultures to engage in this was in operation here. Surely I'm not the first to come up with this idea, but I haven't really seen it put that way before. In any event, who were the victims. What were they ACTUALLY up to? What writers have scrutinized the historical record and are persuasive on this topic?

by **chiggerbit** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 12:35 pm

I've read some on the subject as one of my ancesstresses was accused of being a witch, about 20 years before the Salem trials. Fortunately for her, she was able to successfully defend herself. You're assuming the accused were the ones up to something. From what I've read, in the Salem witch trials, which were a tiny portion of witch accusations around the world, it looks to me more likely that the ones who were "up to something" were the accusers. clips <a href="http://www.coryfamsoc.com/resources/articles/witch.htm">www.coryfamsoc.com/resour.../witch.htm</a> <blockquote>Quote:<hr>"In the long and bitter winter of 1691-92, some young women and girls at Salem Village had some meetings to learn palmistry and fortune-telling from Tituba. She was skilled in necromancy and various magic arts---perhaps African in origin, perhaps practiced by Indians---and found apt pupils in the children, who soon acquired proficiency in their use. Tituba claimed to know how to discover witches and the children may have read about evidences of witchcraft, but at any rate those impressionable young people soon began to act queerly and have spasms and fits. These sessions apparently fired the imaginations of the girls, several of whom later started performing nightmarish fits and telling tales of witchcraft and of being possessed of evil spirits amongst them in Salem. On 20-Jan-1692, nine-year-old Elizabeth Parris and eleven-year-old Abigail Willams began to exhibit strange behavior, such as blasphemous screaming, convulsive seizures, trance-line states and mysterious spells. Within a short time, several other Salem Girls began to demonstrate similar behavior. Doubtless at the outset, all this was innocent enough, until it attracted the attention of the elders who were at first mystified and then alarmed. Instead of keeping the children quietly at home and breaking up the meetings, their parents called in the local physician, Dr. Griggs. The doctor, who knew nothing about nerves and believed in witchcraft, finally decided, as was usual when the diagnosis was in doubt, that the actions of the girls in their fits and contortions could only be explained on the basis of witchcraft....." "....These ten, with the occasional help of three married women, Mrs. Ann Putnam, mother of one of the girls, a Mrs. Pope, and Goody Bibber from Wenham, provided all the initial testimony on which nineteen persons were hanged, and well over a hundred more were cast into prison. During the early spring of 1692 these children continued to have fits and convulsions at their meetings and attracted considerable attention to their antics and actions. They were all attributed by the people to witchcraft, and presently the children under this favorable notice began to extend their activities to the meeting-house on Sundays, crying out that they saw yellow birds sitting on the minister's hat, and other similar nonsense. It is not on record that Mr. Parris tried to suppress his niece and her friends and some of the parish grew annoyed and stayed at home. In late February Mr. Parris sent for the neighboring ministers to come to his house to conduct solemn services to try to rescue the children from the clutches of the Evil One. Prayer services and community fasting were conducted by Reverend Samuel Parris in hopes of relieving the evil forces that plagued them. They corroborated the opinion of Dr. Griggs that the children's actions were the work of witches. In an effort to expose the "witches", Indian John baked a witch cake made with rye meal and the afflicted girl's urine. This counter-magic was meant to reveal the identities of the "witches" to the afflicted girls. Pressure was put on the children to tell who afflicted them an they began to name various people: Goody Good, Goody Osburn, and the old Indian woman Tituba, and warrants were obtained for their arrest. They were arrested on February 28, 1692...."<hr></blockquote> So, tell me, who were the ones using the black arts?

by **Dreams End** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 12:47 pm

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>You're assuming the accused were the ones up to something.<hr></blockquote> You might want to read my post more carefully. Thanks for the link though.

by **ZeroHaven** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 1:16 pm

Ah, Salem. Nice town, lotsa pentacles. What little formal writing I have seen from the Salem trials doesn't mention what the tour guides do: Epilepsy, mental instability, and drugs. There are still 'alchemists' in those parts that use herbal potions and balms containing some exciting plants - like belladonna! I hear it's "better than dropping acid". Between drug induced seizures, epileptics, and the mentally ill that would speak in tongues.. there were plenty of witches to sacrifice. There may have been an original ulterior motive to begin the movement.. but after the first few, individual townspeople submitted to mob rule for fear of being labelled as conspiring with the witches and meeting the same fate. <img src="http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a239/ZeroHaven/tinhat.gif"/>

by **chiggerbit** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 1:26 pm

Sorry, DE, I locked on #2.

by **chiggerbit** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 1:40 pm

Personally, I think Salem ( where most of the convicted were hanged, not burned) was the result of a bunch of girls who got a lot of attention for what they were perpetrating, followed by the community jumping in with all their old, individual grievances to pile on the accused, and all this stew seasoned with a little hysteria. It's interesting that the accused could have saved their lives and been released by "confessing", but most went to the gallows professing their innocence. I don't buy the ergot theory. Here's another interesting site, but turn down the sound. <a href="http://www.controverscial.com/Marks%20of%20a%20Witch.htm">www.controverscial.com/Ma...0Witch.htm</a>

by **lilorphant** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 2:21 pm

The Catholic Church could associate many common feminine practices and so-called pagan (essentially meaning a "hick", or a country person, given to superstition, rather than theChurches reasononing.) (read "Red Haired Girl from the Bog, Monahan) Belladona was often used to alleviate labor suffering, coincidentally the most cited of witchcraft herbs. An herb closely related to Rosemary, was culled to extinction because its tea would prevent ovulation. Various forms of natural birth control, from using the calendar, to home-made suppositories, sea sponges, or other home methods would be passed on from woman to woman, midwives and herbalists being the most profficient in their dispensation. Women are the carriers of culture, and the Church would have been most threatened by local practices and customs that were passed on from mother to daughter. Those families that held dear the old ways, would have been held as an example to discourage practices that gave women autonomy or a source of economic power. Spices became sinful, and favorite family dishes were to become bland to not excite the pallet. In Ireland, the famous clog stepping dance we are familiar with is the product of church leaders actually binding the upper torso of women, forbidding any dance moves above the knees. Aside from feminine threats, doctrines which challenged the economic basis of the church would be cut down. The Cathars of the Languedoc region of France believe that the Church was sinful, the material world was sinful, and would eschew all material goods and wealth as they became "perfect". Their beliefs, gnostic, however, in practice, they were socialists who shared their goods, grew their own food, lived equally with women, and often lived on the charity of others. The biggest threat was of course monetary, they refused to pay tithe to the church, and their beliefs were spreading across the countryside. (The Perfect Heresy) Local customs would often seem foreign to traveling missionaries, with no apparent basis, could easily be labelled witchcraft. The inner schism between the Franciscans and the Church, is telling in that the Franciscans believed in the poverty of Jesus, and the poverty of the church. They upheld a conservationist approach that directly challenged the Church's approach to wealth accumulation. Another schism that is more relevant, more telling, is the history of the Jesuits, who often come down on the antagonistic side of the Church for drawing parallels between common local beliefs and Christianity (similarly to Joseph Campbells ideals), promoting self-sustaining communities for conquered subjects (as in Latin America) and to this day draw the ire of current Pope Benedict.

by **Dreams End** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 3:08 pm

Thanks for all the replies. Let me first say that Salem is but a blip. The witch burnings in Europe were far more widespread...and were, indeed, burnings as opposed to hangings. The fact that it became such a spectator production is really what caught my attention. So I'm interested in Salem, but it doesn't help develop a theory as to what was going on in Europe. And while I can accept the arguments of lilorphant, I am looking for some documentation...well, I don't have time for that kind of research...so I'm looking for some good books or websites that use documentation to establish that it was these particular women who got accused, as opposed to random women caught up in paranoia by the church or else women who had more fully developed pagan practices (rather than simply medicinal herbs) who may have been engaged in actual pagan ceremonies but with no conception of these ceremonies as Satanic. I can accept any of these answers (or combinations of all three) but I'm looking for some evidence rather than theory. There simply may not be any definitive proof, for example, that women were handing down these practices and what those practices might be. I was simply hoping there might be some evidence of it. You know...an account preserved somewhere where a woman is accused of witchcraft and her recounting of the sorts of things she was actually up to that was labelled witchcraft. I should say that, an older book I have, the Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology, really makes it look like most of the women were just caught up in the paranoia. One might look at a cow and then the cow dies or something. Interestingly, there was one case in the whole book that really fit our ideas of "Satan worship" which involved upper class citizens and in which physical evidence was found....candles and other paraphernalia and in which there were rumors of human sacrifice (I think...I'll dig it up later.) That's the only case that seems to actually fit what the Church accused just about everyone of doing. The church itself, as far as I know, never burned someone for "using Belladonna." That may have been the reason, but I think by the time the torture was done, they had full length narratives of pacts with the devil. Sometimes they even had documents signed by demons! (I don't imply that means these things happened, only that this was the official reason given by the church for the executions.) So, again, while I can accept lilorphants ideas, I'm curious to know how those ideas are supported by evidence. I realize we are talking about country folk who probably couldn't read and write much of the time, so evidence may be hard to come by. Also, has anyone ever seen this idea of witchburnings themselves fitting the category of human sacrifice? I simply hadn't thought of it before, but in reading the accounts of these things...I mean, burning children alive in front of a thousand spectators singing hymns...I don't know...it really affected me.

by **enkidu** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 4:11 pm

That's what I "locked" on, DE, from your first post--some kind of collective-unconscious imprint at work, whether they were consciously aware of it or not, feeling the need for a perhaps cathartic blood-letting in the form of ritual sacrifice. Let us know if you find anything that nails that down a little better . . .

by **ZeroHaven** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 4:30 pm

If you just want the hard data, start here. <a href="http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/salem/SAL_ACCT.HTM">www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/...L_ACCT.HTM</a> They have HTML versions of the trial testimonies, witness accounts, and so on. <img src="http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a239/ZeroHaven/tinhat.gif"/>

by **chiggerbit** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 5:05 pm

Not what you are looking for, but interesting nonetheless. <a href="http://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/twp/twp04.htm">www.sacred-texts.com/pag/twp/twp04.htm</a>

by **Dreams End** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 6:07 pm

Thanks, ZH. I'm interested in Salem, but more interested in Europe where this was far more systematic and widespread. Similar links to European trials would be of great interest. For starters, we have Margaret Murray, who in the twenties released "The Witch Cult in Western Europe." Her starting point was that the testimony actually indicated practices happening at the time, but it was not Satanic, but a leftover neolithic cult which had gone underground. So for example, the pact with the devil is actually a communion with the local leader who would assume the garb of the "horned god." She maintained that, despite the torture, the testimony of the "witches" was consistent and could not be explained by "leading questions" of the tortureres. I haven't read it yet (whole text is here: <a href="http://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/wcwe/index.htm")">www.sacred-texts.com/pag/...ndex.htm")</a> but I don't know how she can make this claim. And, although many neopagan and modern witchcraft groups (such as Gardner's Wicca) drew on Murray to "recreate" this ancient religion, they are made uneasy by the fact that Murray suggests that human sacrifice and cannibalism were sometimes part of these rites. Well, I'll BET they were uneasy! Personally, I can't see using any testimony under torture or threat of torture (murray suggests that some testimony was not induced by torture, but surely the common knowledge was that such torture awaited if confession was not made) can have much value at all. Even if the torturers did not ask leading questions, I'm sure that enough of this had gone before that most people would know what these guys were looking for. A note here: technically the church did not do the witch hunting, primarily. It was secular authorities who did so...often using freelance "witch hunters." Still, Church teaching and encouragement was behind the practice and torture was specificallly called for by such Church documents as the Malleus Malleficarum. Also, I'm having to be careful to separate out the general hunt and persecution of heretics from the more specific hunts for witches, which were more vicious and less prone to anything resembling "due process" than even heretics faced. More as I learn more!

by **lantern** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 7:37 pm

I covered the topic of witchcraft very briefly in a MA class a couple of years ago and there is a section in the textbook (small) on this very topic with lots of references for further reading/scholarly works. Kieckhefer, in particular seem to be a scholar in European medieval witchcraft. Here is a link to one of his books on Amazon. Lots of citations of other texts/authors talking on the same subject on this Amazon page too. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0520029674/qid=1123538793/sr=1-9/ref=sr_1_9/103-3753997-3489462?v=glance&s=books">www.amazon.com/exec/obido...ce&s=books</a> Here are also other scholars quoted in my text. I have not read any of them but they might be useful to your research: Kieckhefer. 1976. European witch trials. Berckeley. University of California Press. Summers 1965. The Geography of Witchcraft. New York: University Books. Kramer & Sprenger .1971. The Malleus Maleficarum. New York: Dover. Original work published in 1948. Summers(1971). The Malleus Maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger. New York: Dover Publications. Russell. 1980. A history of witchcraft. London: Thames and Hudson. Harris M. 1974. Cows, pigs and witches: the riddles of culture. New York: Random House. Kirsch. 1978. Demonology and the rise of science. Journal of the History of Behavioral Sciences. Each one of these books will also have a references to other books/papers. Following the reference trail you might get to what you are looking for. Searching these titles/authors on Amazon and links to similar works is also a possible way to go. Wishing you good luck with your reasearch :-)

by **ZeroHaven** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 7:50 pm

aha.. for that type of digging the Cornell University's Witchcraft collection might help. Here's <a href="http://racerel.library.cornell.edu:8090/cgi-bin/cul.witch/docviewer?did=166&seq=14&frames=0&view=text" target="top">a direct link</a> to to page 14 of a book "The History of the Inquisition". There's navigation at the top, and in the intro they do apologize for not having a lot of works transcribed. It's at the very least a good starter for finding titles, and has a search feature to help. Everything else online leads to the 1944 trial of Helen Duncan at earliest. I did NOT know that they're still burning witches to this day in some places. DAMN! (now you got me started and I'm reading "The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft... ") <img src="http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a239/ZeroHaven/tinhat.gif"/>

by **Dreams End** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 8:49 pm

Here's an interesting link: <a href="http://chass.colostate-pueblo.edu/natrel/pom/old/POM5a1.html">chass.colostate-pueblo.ed...OM5a1.html</a> It's posted on a neopagan (actually pretty much Wiccan in orientation) site. This is important because this article is not flattering to traditional views of the witch hunts and does a lot of mythbusting. Among other things: The witch craze was at its height as the Catholic Church was LOSING power. The worst excesses were in local courts (implying that it wasn't, for the most part, engineered by a central authority. It wasn't "women healers" who were killed and in fact, some of these midwives and healers contributed to the witch hunts...blaming rivals for their own healing failures. The people tried and convicted were rather regular folks and probably not representative of any vestigial pagan cults. (i.e. Murray has been discredited...which I think is the consensus view.) She says that all of this is a result of cross-discipline studies of the last 25 years, the results of which haven't filtered into the popular press, neopagan or otherwise. The number of "witches" killed is probably around 60,000 over a few centuries. Most of the killing happened from the 15th century onwards...reaching a peak AFTER the middle ages came to an end. In other words, as "rationality and reason" were taking center stage. It was interesting to find this on a wiccan site, which lends it credibility to me, since it contradicts so much Wiccan lore. Still, I am haunted by the descriptions of these executions and what twisted need they met in the collective minds of the villagers. And the article does not analyze why these panics happened in the first place.

Witch burning

Witch burning

Re: Witch burning

Re: Witch burning

Re: Witch burning

Re: Witch burning

Re: Witch burning

Fear of Witches = Power of the Church

Re: Fear of Witches = Power of the Church

yeah yeah

actual verbiage

Re: actual verbiage

Re: actual verbiage

A book list for Dreams End

Re: actual verbiage

witchcraft myths

Who is online