A Few Things that NeoPagans Need to Understand About The “Burning Times”

Folks, even with a religious movement that’s less than a hundred years old, we already have a fair chunk of mythology. A lot of it is in regard to the witch hunts and trials of the Middle Ages and what people refer to as “The Burning Times,” which is a rather misleading name in and of itself.

The first thing that I’d like to point out is that messing someone up with magic has been around for a long time. Longer than Christianity. The idea that this is a bad thing to do has also been around for a long time. Even before Christianity became the religious superpower that folks today seem to think it was, people were punished for magic that hurt others. This was a common thing even before Christianity took control. Death was a common punishment for this as you don’t mess around with someone that’s already proven that they don’t mind cursing folks.The REALLY interesting thing is that when Christianity first came to power, the death toll went DOWN.

When people today refer to themselves as witches, they aren’t referring to how the Pagans of medieval times understood witches. After all, the witches that many pagan faiths believed in were child-eating monster women that only came out at night and were generally a lot more like vampires than what we call witches today. Christianity came along and decided that a lot of the pagan ideas of witches were a little nutty (aka superstition) and as a result, the rate of “witches” dying went down as the Christians made laws against lynching people accused of being witches.

I couldn’t believe it either, the Catholics being the voice of reason.

When the Christians DID get in on the “Charging People With Witchcraft” act, contrary to what pretty much every Pagan author will tell you, agreeing that you were a witch would have saved your butt. You get “converted”(which is BS on the grounds that most of the people were already good Christian folk), did a small penance and were then shipped back out into society. It was when people refused to admit that they were witches (because lying was a sin) that they were killed. Either that was what killed them or they kept on getting charged.

The next big thing that I’d like to address is the idea that the Inquisition were the main killers of witches. That wasn’t their job. They were there to reconcile heretics with the church, not kill them off. If a person confessed, they went easy, as I said before. The idea that the Inquisition killed people willy-nilly is another reason why Margaret Murray needs to be resurrected and then slapped repeatedly.

There were occasions when the Inquisition did indeed kill “witches” but here’s the interesting thing: These folks were usually the people that retracted their statements of being witches. If a statement was retracted, then it was obviously a sign of a “relapsed heretic” and therefore dangerous to the souls of the townspeople. Yet, many Christians recanted their statements, knowing full well that they would die as a result.

Another myth that we need to get rid of is the myth that the Malleus Malefaricum was a widely used book by the Inquisition. This just isn’t true. Once again, astounding folks with logic, the Church recognised the writer, Heirich Kramer as being a sick little puppy and pretty much told him where to stick his Witches Hammer. The really messed up thing was that it was the secular courts that used the Malleus, not the Inquisition.

Thoughts?

Southern Howler Signing Out.

~ by southernhowler on September 24, 2011.