The Modern Guide to Witchcraft Read Online Free PDF Page B

seventeenth century.” —Starhawk,
The Spiral Dance
    Accusing someone of witchcraft also became a bureaucratic convenience. Not only those who actually practiced the Craft were tortured, imprisoned, and killed—anyone whom the authorities disliked or feared was accused of being a witch. Conviction rates soared as many “undesirables” fell prey to the inquisitors.
    The atmosphere in England was less radical than on the continent. Because Henry VIII had separated from the Catholic Church, practicing witchcraft in Britain was regarded as a civil violation, and courts handed down fewer death sentences. In part, this may have been due to the influence of John Dee, a well-known wizard who served as an advisor to Queen Elizabeth I.
THE BURNING TIMES
    The witch-hunt craze picked up speed in the sixteenth century, during the Reformation period. The public, confused by the religious changes going on, was only too willing to blame anyone whose ideas seemed “different.” If someone had a grudge against a neighbor, he could denounce her as a witch. It was the perfect environment for mass persecution.
    The legal sanctions against witches became even harsher than before, and the tortures inflicted grew crueler. To force people to confess to witchcraft, inquisitors strapped them to the “rack” and pulled them apart limb by limb, crushed their hands and feet with thumbscrews and “boots,” and placed hot coals on their bare skin. If found guilty, the alleged “witches” were burned at the stake.
    During the so-called “Burning Times” in Europe, which lasted from the fourteenth until the eighteenth centuries, tens of thousands and possibly millions of people (depending on which source you choose to believe) were executed as witches—most of them women and girls. So thorough were the exterminations that after Germany’s witch trials of 1585 two villages in the Bishopric of Trier were left with only one woman surviving in each.
    Cats and Rats
    During the Burning Times, cats were thought to be witches’ familiars and zealots destroyed them by the thousands. It’s theorized by some that the Black Plague, which devastated Europe’s human population in the fourteenth century, resulted in part because the rat population increased and spread disease once their natural predators were eliminated.
    As occurs in all tragedies, some individuals profited from the witch hunts. Payments were given to informants and witch hunters who produced victims. In some instances, male doctors benefited financially when their competitors—female midwives and herbalists—were condemned as witches. Powerful authorities confiscated the property of the victims.
    It’s hard to know for certain why the witch hysteria finally subsided. Perhaps people grew weary of the violence. In England, the hunts declined after the early 1700s, when the witch statute was finally repealed. The last recorded execution occurred in Germany in 1775.
WITCHCRAFT IN THE NEW WORLD
    In the New World, witchcraft evolved as a patchwork quilt of beliefs and practices. Many different concepts, cultures, and customs existed side by side, sometimes overlapping and influencing one another. Each new group of immigrants brought with them their individual views and traditions. Over time, they produced a rich body of magickal thought.
    Medicine men and women of the native tribes in North, Central, and South America had engaged in various forms of witchcraft and shamanism for centuries. They tapped the plant kingdom for healing purposes and to see the future. They communed with spirits, ancestors, and other nonphysical beings, seeking supernatural aid in crop growing and hunting. Like witches in other lands, these indigenous people honored Mother Earth and all her creatures. And, like magicians everywhere, they worked with the forces of nature to produce results.
    When European settlers migrated to the New World, they brought their customs with them. Not all of these early immigrants