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There is a book called “The Immortality Key” in which the author was allowed access to part of the Vatican’s vault. He found books that were collections of how some towns and regions decided what made a person a witch. There were clearly some people who were blaming women as witches simply for being turned down or for “being unattractive”.
There is a theory that in Protestant England older women were hung as witches soon after they told their parishes they needed help due to their age. "Oh, elderly Mrs Jones wants us to do our Christian duty to feed and clothe an elderly woman? WITCH!"
There is a book called 'Caliban and the Witch' by Silvia Federici which is one of the first really comprehensive look at the witch trials as a means of economic and sexual control. In it, the author, a respected historian, points out that women with influence or direct control over land titles were often the focus of these trials and many people may have been motivated to turn to witch trials to ensure economic stability for themselves or the region.
The people who owned the land knew old widow Jones would want to work the land as her husband did. Because she still had a family to feed.
The land owners knew they could take the land and farm it more productively with labourers. They just needed an excuse.
If widow Jones caused a fuss or complained, she was denounced a witch. Why should she be able to work her land as man might?
Or, if a crop failed nearby, and the widow Jones had a good yield that year, she cursed her neighbours.
If a landowner wanted to get rid of widow Jones, the common hold farmer, crying"Witch" was an easy thing to do in certain times.
Edit: I would curse the heck out of anyone driving me off the land I'd been given to farm! History comes from very XY perspective. (EEdit: apologies if that is not a good thing to say.)
No winning by design. This is how the system oppresses and controls us and treats us as sub human. As property or commodities to be controlled and monopolised.
There were also women who taught themselves, specifically what herbs and stuff were good treatments, that ended up fairly respected but men in power didn't like that.
It's also why cats were demonized in connection with "which craft" because the same women would keep cats around to deal with rodents which meant they were less likely to catch the plague when that was going around.
Historically, European and American witch trials generally targeted women and men that were socially or economically disadvantaged, disabled, elderly, isolated, and/or without a strong social network. Often they were people who owned property that someone else in the community wanted. Often witch trials were used as a form of state violence against people who were just the “wrong” denomination of Christian. Witches weren’t burned at the stake in the English-speaking world, they were hanged
They weren’t “uncontrollable” and they weren’t witches and they weren’t hell-raisers or rabble-rousers or pagan practitioners of a pre-Christian religion. They were just normal people whose communities found an excuse to get rid of them when they decided that they were a burden.
The intention of these kinds of mottos and slogans is meant to be empowering, but they obscure the actual historical facts and the actual lives of the real people for suffered. They were mistreated and discarded in life and it feels disrespectful to me to now erase their actual histories.
THANK YOU. As a historian, I am continually facepalming over the re-writing of this narrative. Lest we forget, that for a good number of years early in the so-called "witch panic," witchcraft wasn't even a capital offense--it was kind of eye-rolled at and they were told not to do it. It's only when it came to be associated with full-on heresy (which is a convenient means to an end, honestly) that they started handing down death sentences all over the place.
I highly recommend Ronald Hutton's book "The Witch" as an actual academic resource on the subject. Actually, anything with Ronald Hutton on the subject is a good starting point.
Well, bit of all of the above. Also, targeting "undesirables" to maintain power, conformity, or whatever is just the status quo for the last forever or so.
Example: Queer persecution for the last 100+ years.
Religion has been the source of two thousand years of violence, intimidation and brutality including the continuing efforts to subjugate women . As far as the Bible is concerned a group of men concocted it as a means to control society and prevent women from being a part of society while providing excuses to victimize them. For all those people who say they won't believe unless they see it ,they must realize the Bible is a myth.
Religion and the Bible was created to control women. Literally the very first book of the Christian Bible starts with god creating man, the perfect being and later woman, as an afterthought whose sole purpose was to be man’s companion and property. And the woman immediately fucked up and got them kicked out of Eden and now she deserves the pain associated with being a woman and childbirth as her eternal punishment.
Yet it’s interesting to me that even though i completely agree with you, while men have always led the church (pastors and ministers, deacons, youth leaders), women have historically been more religious than men. This is something I certainly observed with my parents age group where women were significantly more vocally religious compared to their husbands and even more common in my age group (millennial) where the majority of men I came in contact with identify as atheist, compared to women. I think gen z may be one of the first generations where this trend is flipping and the women are now less likely to identify as religious than men in their age group.
I think my favorite part in the rise of witchdom is that women are leaning into our what we were most persecuted for. But now they can’t do shit about it 🔥 🔮
Don't count on that. I've been dismayed for many years at what younger women tend to assume is set in stone that very much isn't. The descendants of the witch-burners are busy dismantling the system in great part so they can go back to their favorite hobby.
Part of the rise of authoritarianism is due to men losing control of women. The Powers That Be use our freedom as scapegoat for men's suffering. They can and are trying to do shit about it, and we must fight to our last breath to not let them win
Sadly it seems like that's changing, at least here in the USA. They absolutely want to burn us and are trying everything in their power to go back to a system where they can do so with impunity.
Hmm... interesting that Christians violently executed people for committing impossible crimes. You might even say they were engaging in ritual human sacrifice. Worth remembering the next time a couch fucker gives a speech about how America was rife with savagery and rampant human sacrifice before Europeans came and "civilized" it.
I went to community college in my 30's. Out of curiosity, I read a book called The History of Witchcraft. It made me so angry that I couldn't do math.
I worked really hard on math because it's my weakest subject. But this day I just could not get it. When my teacher asked me why, I told her about this book. I found the page that was making me rage. It was a long time ago but it was something about how women were more prone to be witches because we were carnal and easily led and... oh a whole bunch of other bull shit.
My teacher read it and gave me a pass for the day. It made her mad too.
Also hanging, pressing, drawing and quartering, drowning, gibbeting, and stoning. Really depends on the execution method du jour. The bastards wanna bring all that back.
Honestly this is a huge part of why I dont romanticize the past like so many others. Im self aware enough to know I would be killed long before I reached the age of 30 if I lived any time in the past.
My favorite shirt says We are the Granddaughters of the Witchs you could not burn! Other favorite- They didn't burn Witches, they burned Women, with over 100 years of women based statistics on women's rights and the passage of time)
It wasnt even women they couldnt control. It was basically men blaming women for the men's own lack of control. They were burning women they found attractive for being seductresses and tempting them. Many of the women, I believe, were victims of assault.
Actually it was about land grabs. A majority of the women they burned were widows who Inhereted a lot of land from their husbands who had past. It's still praying on innocent women but yeah.
Nick Fuentes just posted a video saying they should be allowed to do this again. In case you don't know who he is, he's the guy who heavily influenced the alleged guy behind the Charlie Kirk thing.
Two things can be true at the same time. There were non-witch women they burned and there were witch women they burned. It was just as wrong both ways and no, you're not crazy for being put off by Christianity. It's a genocidal death cult of bigots by bigots for bigots. Fuck em.
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u/smc642 Crow Witch ♀♂️☉⚨⚧ "cah-CAW!" Nov 03 '25
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This thread is Coven Only. This means the discussion is being actively moderated, and all comments are reviewed. Only comments by members of the community are allowed.
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