The European Witch Hunts Were a Holocaust Against Women

reply to post by fooks


The plagues were killing more men than women. Leaving many families with women as the sole inheritors in many families - often the only time they were allowed to inherit property, estate, money, etc. and hold it.

Now, this doesn't explain everything - but it is an interesting little tidbit of motive in the cases of families headed by women who were part of the mercantile or landed class and above.

reply to post by Aeons


Jeez...calm down. We're just trying to have a civilized discussion here. You don't need to be on the attack. I do have Wicca friends as a matter of fact and we do agree on this subjects. Althouh there are many facets to this, that doesn't mean that what I stated has no foundation.

the witch hunts died off when the victims,under torture,started accusing wealthy nobels of being witches!!!! see it was ok when it was the poor that were being slaughtered but when the finger started getting pointed at the rich people the witch mania began to cease

slimdave420.blogspot.com... we have napoleon to thank, for he was the one who stripped the popes of their power!

There is more to the witch hunts ;

The midwives guild ( guilds were basically Unions) was one of the most powerful in Europe at the early middle ages. They operated universities, medical schools, orphanages and farms on a non profit basis. They became too powerful for the church and old boy mercantile system and were systematically destroyed by accusations of witchcraft. Their property and wealth confiscated by the Church, their universities by governments, tortured and burned and hanged and worse.

It took several hundred years, but the church and political system prevailed and brought down Midwives Guilds and replaced them with the more modern system of for profit University and medical systems.

This is a small part of the puzzle, but should remember the hysteria surrounding Witchcraft accusations pops up every few generations; the Genocide of Cathars, the french terror, the KKK, the hunt for communism in american government, etc, etc, etc.

When enough people lose reason and confidence in themselves, they are easily led astray by an agenda.

very well said^^^ the foundations of all countries and religions are built upon the tears and blood of the slaughtered innocents that got in the way of in- human agendas...so why is the pope still worshipped? not by me thats for sure!

The main gripe the Holy Roman Church had with the woman that they put to death was that they were healers.

Yep...that's right...most women accused of being witches were pagan as well as catholic...and they passed down their Wise Ways to their daughters from their ancestors as to what to do if someone was injured...both animal and human. The Church could not have this...they were the only power allowed in the lives of the newly won over pagans and their control would not be usurped by unclean females.

Check out the History Of Witchcraft....it will inform you quite well as to the surface issues against those sisters of the times past

www.proudtobepagan.com...

I agree that even though it is something that happened in the burning times is something everyone can learn from and not repeat the same mistakes. Then again.... one must wonder...does anyone ever learn?

Thanks for the post...ETA: Especially check out the section about the Burning Times

may we find the balance we are forever seeking

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Originally posted by blocula

but these witch hunts were started by a POPE !!!...and the accused and killed victims properties were confiscated by the church...the same popes that are worshipped by millions to this very day....we as a race have been hypnotized and blinded by evil sinister powers...no doubt about it.

Originally posted by XLR8R
reply to post by Aeons

 

Jeez...calm down. We're just trying to have a civilized discussion here. You don't need to be on the attack. I do have Wicca friends as a matter of fact and we do agree on this subjects. Althouh there are many facets to this, that doesn't mean that what I stated has no foundation.

It has no foundation. Whatsoever. The vast majority of people put to the fire were Christians.

Your Wiccan friends are misinformed, or lying, or both. Regardless, this is simply not true in any way.

While there may have been some areas with Christian/Pagan admixture still active in Europe, the people put to the fires were vastly Christian. There was no Wiccan heritage, as Wicca is a modern recreation which POSSIBLY on occasion has a few members whose families may have been some of the people who were still part of the Christian/Pagan admixture found mostly in rural areas. Maybe.

Please feel free to go find some of the people who were original members of the groups that claimed this heritage - they'll tell you so. Frankly. If you like the sort of "I heard it from a friend who was told by someone else" kinda support like you are peddling on this thread, I'll tell you. Straight up, I have spoken to several of those people, and they all know that this perversion of history you are touting is bull.

At best you might find one or two who will lighten the load of the bull by claiming that the story is an archetype story showing association. A bit of plundering the Pagan/Jung treasure box will maybe lead you into the direction of what that meant.

This version of history is a lie, and in being a lie it is an affront to what really did happen to those people.

And I will not allow you to pass this story off as real.

women who are not allowed to drive,,are persecuted,,,girls sold in India for 15 pounds,,are persecuted,,women from Somalia are disfigured,,, there is enough in today too worry about..
the dead are done,,, think of those and help those , men and women who are persecuted today.

It is true that many people in the world are being persecuted today...and yes, that is important that notice be brought to them and their pain...but the replies on this thread appear to have been structured to derail a new poster that thought information about the Burning Times and the Inquisition and how it was a kind of holocaust to women of the past would make for a decent discussion.

It also appears that anytime someone posts anything dealing with pagans, be they past or present...somehow or some way the thread is derailed. If you do not wish to participate in what is being discussed, why post? If it bothers your religious indoctrination, don't post unless you really wish to learn something that might truly be unknown to you.

please...just don't make it your mission to derail the thread.

Remember...what goes around comes around...

the preists,bishops and popes couldnt get married and they were raised to think that sex was blasphemy and a sin,so they fabricated laws in the name of god that made it okay for them to demonize,rape,torture and burn women by the hundreds of thousands !...this is unbelievable ! yet true !...we live in a fallen world that is worshipping evil, dancing with greed and sleeping with denial and about to fall into the abyss...

reply to post by Aeons


You wrote:

["It has no foundation. Whatsoever. The vast majority of people put to the fire were Christians."]

This is correct. The heresy-hunts and crusades took a higher toll than anti-paganism for the simple reason, that whatever secular authorities left had some jurisdiction outside church-matters.

On the other hand: That church-doctrines (especially the later calvinism) had a brutal impact on european history in the area of e.g. medicine etc is beyond doubt. European 'natural' medicine still suffers from centuries of suppressing medicine.

reply to post by blocula


You should read up on the requerimento.

That ought to get your blood boiling.

firstly, going to neopagans for the "accurate" version of history isn't such a good idea, as the accounts given tend to be quixotic. no doubt you've seen thea jensen's documentary recently. she claims 9 MILLION witches were killed, where liberal scholarly estimates are around 100,000, with 40-60 thousand being the average estimate. this is over 500 years mind you.

secondly, if the vast majority of people killed were christians, i don't see why neopagans use it as a rallying cry. the burning times is a cherished myth of wiccans. its something to hate christians for. "never again the burning times". every wiccan i've met denies that it is a new religion. most claim that it is the oldest religion.

in orthodox christian countries like russia, almost no people were killed for being witches. only in countries experiencing lots of turmoil did this happen.

the "2000 executed in a day" figure is a complete falsehood, and 40% of the people executed were men.

the witch hunts were about money and fear. in 1630, emperor ferdinan II made it illegal to seize the assets of an accused witch. after that, accusations dropped off dramatically.

it is a stain on europe's past, but much of what wiccans claim is wrong.

first off ,"over all" 75 to 80% killed were women as one of my above links has shown and furthermore the pope and the clergy recomended and the witchfinders and torturers followed through with tens of thousands of women and some of them little girls!!! having their teeth smashed out,hacking off their breasts and gouging out eye balls and all this was done on the way to the stake!!! after the rape and torture was completed !!! ..."satanism and witchcraft, a study in midieval superstition" 1939..."the magistracy now largely involved in the catholic bond of spain and the fiercely bigoted ligue,match the inquisition and eclipse it with their own severities.indeed they went so far that on "a single ocasion and singlehandedly " the parliment of toulouse burned 400 humans at the stake.imagine the horror of it,think of the thick black smoke from all this burning flesh,picture the masses of fat that amid the yells and howls melt in horrid deliquescence and pour boiling down the gutters,a vile and sickening sight."..

One of my great grandmothers, and her entire biological family were put to the fire. Men and women. Her husband bribed them to botch the fire to burn her. Württemberg region I believe.

If you'd like to put some more emotional emphasis behind that, it'll still be untrue. The witch burning still happened, they just didn't happen that way.

Shall I pull out my High Priestess initiation rank in several trads now, or would you like me to wait until later to continue beating you over the head about this?

upon orders of pope innocent III,in the year 1209 in the town of beziers [now located in france] between 5,000 and 20,000 cathar men women and children IN ONE DAY were beheaded,dismembered,tortured,dragged behind horses,used for target practice and burned at the stake...WAKE UP PEOPLE ...THESE TERRORS WERE CAUSED BY THE POPE !!! and today look at all the sheep worshipping the pope! are they all blind or stupid !?the pope is satan in disguise...nooooo doubt about it!!!

Originally posted by Aeons
One of my great grandmothers, and her entire biological family were put to the fire. Men and women. Her husband bribed them to botch the fire to burn her. Württemberg region I believe.

If you'd like to put some more emotional emphasis behind that, it'll still be untrue. The witch burning still happened, they just didn't happen that way.

Shall I pull out my High Priestess initiation rank in several trads now, or would you like me to wait until later to continue beating you over the head about this?

what didnt happen that way? i'm not getting your point and what does botch refer to and what does it mean here

reply to post by blocula


60,000 is on the upper tier of the estimations. i agree with you about the pope, but even more interesting is that most convictions were made in secular courts. they were more brutal, convicted more, and killed more.

the "400" in one day comes from a forgery.

The forgery was Etienne Leon de Lamothe-Langon's Histoire de l'Inquisition en France, written in 1829. Lamothe-Langon described enormous witch trials which supposedly took place in southern France in the early 14th century. Run by the Inquisition of Toulouse and Carcasonne, these trials killed hundreds upon hundreds of people. The most famous was a craze where 400 women died in one day. No other French historian had noticed these trials.

draeconin.com...

the number of people that were murdered is well documented, as courts kept records. these numbers were sensationalized in witch-hunting books of the time and by the neopagans of today.

practically all of your knowledge on the "burning times" is wrong.

there were laws instated by the church that forbade the killing of witches, and the death penalty for people who did. the inquisition rarely killed anyone. the dates for the "witch hunt" are around 1500-1800's.

When the Church was at the height of its power (11th-14th centuries) very few witches died. Persecutions did not reach epidemic levels until after the Reformation, when the Catholic Church had lost its position as Europe's indisputable moral authority. Moreover most of the killing was done by secular courts. Church courts tried many witches but they usually imposed non-lethal penalties. A witch might be excommunicated, given penance, or imprisoned, but she was rarely killed. The Inquisition almost invariably pardoned any witch who confessed and repented.

draeconin.com...

lots of info in that link that tells the story of what actually happened.