The Romans accused the Christians of practising orgies and child sacrifice. The Christians, once established in power, made similar accusations against the Jews and many sects they deemed heretical. Heretics and Jews were regularly accused of infanticide, unnatural sexual practices and devil-worship in the Middle Ages, but in the 15th century, the pattern changed: instead of accusing existing dissident groups, the Inquisitors asserted that there was a new heretical group operating covertly within the population. These were the witches.
Before the Great Witchhunt, witches were not thought to be part of any organised group or conspiracy. The local witch, who was usually but not invariably a woman, was supposed to possess maleficium, an evil power that enabled her to raise storms and thereby wreck ships and crops; to destroy cattle, spoil butter and beer; and to bring about sudden and inexplicable illness and death, especially among young children and babies.
Her victims sometimes turned to the village cunning person or witchdoctor for help; the tougher course of action was to take the witch to the religious or civil authorities and have her tried. (After prosecutions for witchcraft came to a halt in the late 17th century, communities sometimes lynched their witches themselves.) But from the 15th century onwards, a woman who was accused of witchcraft by her neighbours would find that the judges had a new agenda: they wanted to ascertain, not whether she had harmed her neighbours, but whether she had dedicated herself to Satan.
The best-known episode, and one of the last, occurred at Salem in Massachusetts Bay Colony – it was the subject of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. It began when the minister’s nine-year-old daughter, Betty Parris, and her cousin, Abigail Williams, complained that they were being tormented by invisible beings. Three local women, convicted of bewitching them, named other witches; then more girls – as well as adults of both sexes – accused their neighbours of conspiring with the Devil to afflict them. The witch-hunt spread out into the colony when the accusers were taken to other towns to identify witches. Nineteen people were hanged at Salem, and, because the judges decided to spare the lives of ‘confessours’, many more were imprisoned for life. The concept of the sabbat was crucial to the panic: Abigail Williams asserted that ‘the Witches had a Sacrament ... at a house in the Village, and that they had Red Bread and Red Drink.’ Another accuser, Mercy Lewis, said: ‘they did eat Red Bread like Mans Flesh, and would have her eat some: but she would not.’ Like Psellos, the Salem authorities believed that they had stumbled on a diabolic conspiracy: ‘These witches, whereof above a score have now confessed,’ Cotton Mather wrote in Wonders of the Invisible World, ‘have met in hellish rendezvous, wherein the confessours do say they have had their diabolical sacraments, imitating the baptism and the supper of our Lord. In these hellish meetings these monsters have associated themselves to do no less a thing than to destroy the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ in these parts of the world.’
The fire that roared acrosss medieval Europe killed many thousands and thousands of women
in a mass auto da fe now the fire splutters and its embers can be seen in innocent teenage goths seeking attention.
But I am afraid there is still a fundamentalist belief that
an international network of secretive ‘hard-core’ satanic cults are linked together to infiltrate the higher levels of societal power structures in all societies, enabling the destruction of that society by undermining its moral standards by making snuff movies and trading in narcotics. They gain their members by a hierarchical structure of recruitment, first catching teens through their dabblings in rock music and games, and selecting the best for initiation into witchcraft cults, from which the ‘hard-core’ are chosen. The ultimate aim is to induce world chaos which will encourage the populace to accept Satan – in personified form – as the earth’s ruler.
Help!!
Before the Great Witchhunt, witches were not thought to be part of any organised group or conspiracy. The local witch, who was usually but not invariably a woman, was supposed to possess maleficium, an evil power that enabled her to raise storms and thereby wreck ships and crops; to destroy cattle, spoil butter and beer; and to bring about sudden and inexplicable illness and death, especially among young children and babies.
Her victims sometimes turned to the village cunning person or witchdoctor for help; the tougher course of action was to take the witch to the religious or civil authorities and have her tried. (After prosecutions for witchcraft came to a halt in the late 17th century, communities sometimes lynched their witches themselves.) But from the 15th century onwards, a woman who was accused of witchcraft by her neighbours would find that the judges had a new agenda: they wanted to ascertain, not whether she had harmed her neighbours, but whether she had dedicated herself to Satan.
The best-known episode, and one of the last, occurred at Salem in Massachusetts Bay Colony – it was the subject of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. It began when the minister’s nine-year-old daughter, Betty Parris, and her cousin, Abigail Williams, complained that they were being tormented by invisible beings. Three local women, convicted of bewitching them, named other witches; then more girls – as well as adults of both sexes – accused their neighbours of conspiring with the Devil to afflict them. The witch-hunt spread out into the colony when the accusers were taken to other towns to identify witches. Nineteen people were hanged at Salem, and, because the judges decided to spare the lives of ‘confessours’, many more were imprisoned for life. The concept of the sabbat was crucial to the panic: Abigail Williams asserted that ‘the Witches had a Sacrament ... at a house in the Village, and that they had Red Bread and Red Drink.’ Another accuser, Mercy Lewis, said: ‘they did eat Red Bread like Mans Flesh, and would have her eat some: but she would not.’ Like Psellos, the Salem authorities believed that they had stumbled on a diabolic conspiracy: ‘These witches, whereof above a score have now confessed,’ Cotton Mather wrote in Wonders of the Invisible World, ‘have met in hellish rendezvous, wherein the confessours do say they have had their diabolical sacraments, imitating the baptism and the supper of our Lord. In these hellish meetings these monsters have associated themselves to do no less a thing than to destroy the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ in these parts of the world.’
The fire that roared acrosss medieval Europe killed many thousands and thousands of women
in a mass auto da fe now the fire splutters and its embers can be seen in innocent teenage goths seeking attention.
But I am afraid there is still a fundamentalist belief that
an international network of secretive ‘hard-core’ satanic cults are linked together to infiltrate the higher levels of societal power structures in all societies, enabling the destruction of that society by undermining its moral standards by making snuff movies and trading in narcotics. They gain their members by a hierarchical structure of recruitment, first catching teens through their dabblings in rock music and games, and selecting the best for initiation into witchcraft cults, from which the ‘hard-core’ are chosen. The ultimate aim is to induce world chaos which will encourage the populace to accept Satan – in personified form – as the earth’s ruler.
Help!!
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