Since the beginning of time war has been waged, war that has receded to hate crimes. In the past war was waged in courtrooms, town squares, and peoples homes. The war of good versus evil, not in the biblical sense or in the sense that most would think it, but in the sense of good and evil in the human soul and heart. This evil is much less defined then any evil that first comes to mind at the mention of the word. This war surfaced many times throughout history,
but not so horribly as the Witch Craft Trials.
These trials contrary to belief did not start and end in the 1600's but rather began with time and has never ended.The 1600's and the 1700's were when it was most prevalent, however,
that does not mean that the slaying of innocent families in the recent past (1996) should go unheeded or without tears shed.It does not mean that the deaths of three women in the 1950's in Mexico should go unnoticed, 2 of these women were hung and one was burned at the stake.In the 1930's a woman was stoned to death for being a witch in France.
Stoned,is the method of throwing rocks at a person until they lay dead of internal bleeding or of massive head injuries.
The death of those innocents has been estimated at 7-12 million.
Very few of these deaths were actually recorded, in the past witches were viewed as demons not humans therefore for the most part historians have had to use personal diaries and other documents of that nature to estimate the number of deaths.
The most common methods of execution or' murder 'were burning, hanging, stoning, pressing and drowning. Burning was most common.
The condemned witch was dragged to her death sight behind a horse ,bound at her hands.Most often her condition was so weak she was actually half dead. Once she reached the sight,crowded with onlookers,she would be bound hands, feet and head to a large pole protruding from the earth, commonly known as a stake. Firewood and kindling would be placed around her and the onlookers would spit and say cruel things to her. The drywood and kindling would be set aflame, and the crowd would watch her burn to death as she screamed for mercy, if she wasn't gagged. Occasionally a sympathetic executioner would break her neck before the dry wood was set aflame, but that rarely happened as doing such a merciful thing could condemn you to the same fate.
Most hoped for a less painful death like hanging, but that was only because they didn't know what it was like. Hanging was just as horrible as burning but in different ways. When you were hung most often you did not suffer a broken neck and die almost immediately. You were suspended from your neck and suffocated to death in 2-3 minutes while suffering excruciating pain, feeling all your nerve ends slowly die.
Drowning was a common death for witches as well, however this was not an execution but a test.
You were tied at hands and feet and weighted with rocks (sometimes) and thrown into water.You were fished out minutes later and if you were alive you were innocent and god had saved you. Another variation of drowning was binding the witches hands and legs to a long wooden plank The plank is lowered so your head is under water and you are left.
If you struggle you are a witch.If you sit still and trust in god and your innocence and live ,you were innocent.
Stoning was another popular execution.
Pressing was a means of torturing names or information out of a witch Pressing, a supposed witch would be bound either to a large flat rock or several boards and then boards would be placed atop them. Onto the boards extremely large, heavy stones were placed The more you refused to cooperate, the more weight. This continued until you either did as they asked or you died.
These are not the only methods of execution, torture, and testing that were carried out,but the most commonly used .
The religion of Witchcraft dates back about 25,000 years, to the Paleolithic Age, where the God of Hunting and the Goddess of Fertility first appeared. Out of respect for the power of Nature came a belief in beings, gods... who controlled the winds, the seas, the earth and the fires.
Soon, the old ways of the common people came into conflict with a new religion that started with rulers and upper classes - Christianity.
When the Christians decided that their new ways weren't catching on fast enough, things got a lot rougher for those who were practicing the Old Religion. Christian leaders began asserting that Witches were devil worshippers and savages.
In the year 1233, Pope Gregory IX instituted the Roman Catholic tribunal known as the Inquisition, in an attempt to suppress heresy. In 1320, the church,at the request of Pope John XXII, officially declared Witchcraft and the Old Religion of the Pagans as a heretical movement and a hostile threat to Christianity. Witches had now become heretics and the persecution against all Pagans spread like wildfire throughout Europe.
'It is interesting to note that before a person can be considered a heretic, he or she must first be a Christian, and Pagans have never been Christians. They have always been Pagans.'
Pope Innocent VIII in 1484, after he declared Witchcraft to be a heresy, instructed the Dominican monks Heinrich Kraemer and Jacob Sprenger to publish a manual for Witch-hunters. Two years later the work appeared with the title Malleus malificarum, or 'The Witches' Hammer.' The manual was used for the next 250 years in the church's attempt to destroy the Old Religion of Western Europe.
Witches, along with countless numbers of innocent men, women, and children who were not Witches were persecuted, brutally tortured, often sexually molested or raped, and then executed by sadistic, bloodthirsty church authorities who taught that their God was a god of love and compassion. Once denounced, a suspected Witch was arrested and then hideously tortured into a confession.
Suspects were subjected to thumbscrews, the rack, boots which broke the bones of the legs;deprived of sleep, starved and beaten. At times, hundreds of suspected Witches were killed in a day.
Witchcraft in England was made an illegal offense in the year 1541, and in 1604 a law decreeing capital punishment for Witches and Pagans was adopted.
Forty years later, the thirteen colonies in American also made death the penalty for the crime of Witchcraft. By the late seventeenth century, the followers who remained loyal to the Old Religion were in hiding and Witchcraft had turned into a secret underground religion after an estimated one million persons had been put to death in Europe and more than thirty condemned at Salem, Massachusetts, in the name of Christianity.
When the persecutions ended in the 18th century, the stereotype of Witches as devil worshippers remained for those who were uninformed of the true nature of the Craft.
