Start a pagan book club?

[Faklon]

Witch-hunt predates Christianity nor I'm aware of a grand-scale witch persecution.

Villagers always accused their neighbors (they still sue them) and Faustian scum always bakrupted idiots by pretending to be fortune tellers. Just the demonic spells of Hades (or whatever) became the spells of Satan, no big deal.

[Longbowman]

Witch-hunt predates Christianity nor I'm aware of a grand-scale witch persecution.

Villagers always accused their neighbors (they still sue them) and Faustian scum always bakrupted idiots by pretending to be fortune tellers. Just the demonic spells of Hades (or whatever) became the spells of Satan, no big deal.

And gladiatorial combat predated the Romans, what's your point? If you claim to be a civilising force and then fail to civilise people, you're not significant enough a civilising force. This is just tu quoque and not even good tu quoque.

Anyhow witch-hunts didn't really precede Christianity, at least not at scale. If you're not aware of large-scale witchhunts it's because you're an ignoramus, many trials had hundreds of victims and overall at least 50,000 people were killed in a couple of centuries in Europe alone. The phenomenon of large-scale witch-hunts started during the 15th century - before this point, witches/folk healers weren't necessarily considered to be evil, although people did believe in witches, so it is largely a Christian phenomenon within European history, just as it is largely a Muslim one within Arab (and Indo-Malay, etc) history. To dismiss it to a phenomenon that only applied to peasants is also ignorant. James I & VI of England and Scotland wrote a whole book about hunting witches (and popularised it) and important cases were tried before courts in Sweden and many German states, often under the authority of the ruling monarch.

Clearly, you know absolutely nothing about the topic, which begs the question: why are you being so mouthy? If you know nothing, shut up and learn rather than spouting nonsense.

In southern Europe it was much less common, however, although it did still occur. There are some retards who still believe in it though and they're in good company, Saudi Arabia also still officially opposes witchcraft too. Some modern-day Protestant evangelicals who venerate the KJB and its author sponsor, King James, give the notion credence because James I & VI also wrote Daemonologie, but this was a retard who could barely speak, willingly shat himself rather than dismount his horse on a regular basis, and believed in werewolves and vampires and wrote about how to tell who was one. It's risible.

[Loki]

There's no such thing as witches* and even if there were the methodology the majority of Christian societies used for determining who was a witch was at best ridiculous. The sink-or-swim test and the 'can you recite the Lord's Prayer without stammering or stuttering' tests were particularly retarded (and commonplace) but none of them were very effective. 'Birthmarks = the devil' and 'own a pet? probably a familiar' are other ridiculous 'proofs' used by uneducated vindictive peasants in Northern and Eastern Europe as an excuse to murder their fellow man or woman. At least they had the excuse of being dirt-poor uneducated savages, you have had the advantages of a modern education and should know better than to repeat this horseshit on a public forum.

I note you choose to ignore the basic premise of witchcraft being fictitious and focus on the part about burning witches but ignore the part about burning Protestants/Catholics/other dissenters because it contradicts your point and you have no real counter.

*there are people who claim to be witches or wizards and in Africa there are even those who identify as Christians but who will murder children for the purpose of magic, but I mean this in the sense of people who are actually capable of casting magic, not just people who think they can. In the witch trials of Europe, the belief of the prosecutors was not that 'we are prosecuting people for murder,' and indeed in nearly all cases no murder had occured, but rather, the prosecutors sincerely believed they were persecuting wizards for the sake of persecuting wizards, which is retarded.

You need to get out more my friend. Of course witches and witchcraft exist, even today (especially today!). Open Satanism is being practiced (and I'm not talking about the deceptive front organisation called "the Satanic temple" etc, who pretend to be no more than atheists. But true Satanists are not atheists they are very conscious about the spirit world.

[Longbowman]

You need to get out more my friend. Of course witches and witchcraft exist, even today (especially today!). Open Satanism is being practiced (and I'm not talking about the deceptive front organisation called "the Satanic temple" etc, who pretend to be no more than atheists. But true Satanists are not atheists they are very conscious about the spirit world.

Even if this were true, the vast majority of people executed for being witches were probably not even criminals. As articulated, the methods used for ascertaining who was and was not a witch were at best ridiculous.

There are people who believe they are witches, as I said, f/e in parts of Africa, particularly Christian Africa. We in the UK have had cases of ritual child sacrifice from Igbo and Yoruba groups and it's even more prevalent in places like Uganda and southern Africa. But these people's guilt can easily be determined by criminal courts, and often is. In medieval Europe, there was a paranoia and tens of thousands of innocent people were burnt at the stake, drowned, guillotined, etc, normally in the complete absence of any actual murder victims, etc.

Interesting how Rethel attacked Judaism for believing in magic, but is now openly defending the existence of magic. Curious.

[Loki]

Even if this were true, the vast majority of people executed for being witches were probably not even criminals. As articulated, the methods used for ascertaining who was and was not a witch were at best ridiculous.

There are people who believe they are witches, as I said, f/e in parts of Africa, particularly Christian Africa. We in the UK have had cases of ritual child sacrifice from Igbo and Yoruba groups and it's even more prevalent in places like Uganda and southern Africa. But these people's guilt can easily be determined by criminal courts, and often is. In medieval Europe, there was a paranoia and tens of thousands of innocent people were burnt at the stake, drowned, guillotined, etc, normally in the complete absence of any actual murder victims, etc.

Interesting how Rethel attacked Judaism for believing in magic, but is now openly defending the existence of magic. Curious.

Based on your own opinion and on that of biased writers... But you were not there and you don't know what actual evidence they had against the witches.

[Jacques de Imbelloni]

And gladiatorial combat predated the Romans, what's your point? If you claim to be a civilising force and then fail to civilise people, you're not significant enough a civilising force. This is just tu quoque and not even good tu quoque.

Anyhow witch-hunts didn't really precede Christianity, at least not at scale. If you're not aware of large-scale witchhunts it's because you're an ignoramus, many trials had hundreds of victims and overall at least 50,000 people were killed in a couple of centuries in Europe alone. The phenomenon of large-scale witch-hunts started during the 15th century - before this point, witches/folk healers weren't necessarily considered to be evil, although people did believe in witches, so it is largely a Christian phenomenon within European history, just as it is largely a Muslim one within Arab (and Indo-Malay, etc) history. To dismiss it to a phenomenon that only applied to peasants is also ignorant. James I & VI of England and Scotland wrote a whole book about hunting witches (and popularised it) and important cases were tried before courts in Sweden and many German states, often under the authority of the ruling monarch.

Clearly, you know absolutely nothing about the topic, which begs the question: why are you being so mouthy? If you know nothing, shut up and learn rather than spouting nonsense.

In southern Europe it was much less common, however, although it did still occur. There are some retards who still believe in it though and they're in good company, Saudi Arabia also still officially opposes witchcraft too. Some modern-day Protestant evangelicals who venerate the KJB and its author sponsor, King James, give the notion credence because James I & VI also wrote Daemonologie, but this was a retard who could barely speak, willingly shat himself rather than dismount his horse on a regular basis, and believed in werewolves and vampires and wrote about how to tell who was one. It's risible.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/...t-market-share

Why Europe’s wars of religion put 40,000 ‘witches’ to a terrible death


The persecution of witches came down to a battle for the ‘market share’ of post-Reformation Christians, according to a paper by two economists


It was a terrifying phenomenon that continues to cast a shadow over certain parts of Europe even today. The great age of witch trials, which ran between 1550 and 1700, fascinates and repels in equal measure. Over the course of a century and a half, 80,000 people were tried for witchcraft and half of them were executed, often burned alive.

And then trials disappeared almost completely.

Their appearance was all the more strange because between 900 and 1400 the Christian authorities had refused to acknowledge that witches existed, let alone try someone for the crime of being one. This was despite the fact that belief in witches was common in medieval Europe, and in 1258 Pope Alexander IV had to issue a canon to prevent prosecutions.

But by 1550 Christian authorities had reversed their position, leading to a witch-hunt across Christendom. Many explanations have been advanced for what drove the phenomenon. Now new research suggests there is an economic explanation, one that has relevance to the modern day.
Economists Peter Leeson and Jacob Russ of George Mason University in Virginia argue that the trials reflected “non-price competition between the Catholic and Protestant churches for religious market share”.
As competing Catholic and Protestant churches vied to win over or retain their followers, they needed to make an impact – and witch trials were the battleground they chose. Or, as the two academics put it in their paper, to be published in the new edition of the Economic Journal: “Leveraging popular belief in witchcraft, witch-prosecutors advertised their confessional brands’ commitment and power to protect citizens from worldly manifestations of Satan’s evil.”
They reach their conclusion after drawing on analyses of new data covering more than 43,000 people tried for witchcraft in 21 European countries.
The data shows that witch-hunts took off only after the Reformation in 1517, following the rapid spread of Protestantism. Leeson and Russ argue that, for the first time in history, the Reformation presented large numbers of Christians with a religious choice: stick with the old church or switch to the new one. “And when churchgoers have religious choice, churches must compete,” they say.


The phenomenon reached its zenith between 1555 and 1650, the years when there was “peak competition for Christian consumers”, evidenced by the Catholic Counter-Reformation, during which Catholic officials pushed back against Protestant successes in converting Catholics to the new ways of worshipping throughout much of Europe.

The new analysis suggests that the witch craze was most intense where Catholic-Protestant rivalry was strongest. Churches picked key regional battlegrounds, they say, much like the Democrat and Republican parties in the US now focus on key states during the presidential election.
This explains why Germany, ground zero for the Reformation, laid claim to nearly 40% of all witchcraft prosecutions in Europe. Scotland, where different strains of Protestantism were in competition, saw the second highest level of witch-hunts, with a total of 3,563 people tried.



“In contrast, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland – each of which remained a Catholic stronghold after the Reformation and never saw serious competition from Protestantism – collectively accounted for just 6% of Europeans tried for witchcraft,” Russ observes.

By around 1650, however, the witch frenzy began its precipitous decline, with prosecutions for witchcraft virtually vanishing by 1700. Leeson and Russ attribute this to the Peace of Westphalia, a series of treaties in 1648, which brought a close to the 30 years’ war and ended decades of religious warfare in Europe.
But the use of terror to impress a message on the population has not abated, they suggest. “The phenomenon we document – using public trials to advertise superior power along some dimension as a competitive strategy – is much broader than the prosecution of witches in early modern Europe,” Leeson says. “It appears in different forms elsewhere in the world at least as far back as the ninth century, all the way up to the 20th and Stalin’s show trials’ in the Soviet Union.”

[Longbowman]

Based on your own opinion and on that of biased writers... But you were not there and you don't know what actual evidence they had against the witches.

Sure, everyone who says anything that upsets your worldview is biased, and the resulting absence of evidence means you can jimmy whatever nonsense you feel like into history to make it fit your beliefset.

The people who tried the witches did not hide their motives. They wrote down how they tried them. You are, like Faklon, exhibiting ignorance on the subject matter. I am telling you, factually, they demanded suspects say the Lord's Prayer without stuttering, or attempted to see if they would float when thrown in a body of water or not, etc. You can cope however you like, that remains a fact.

[Faklon]

Sure, everyone who says anything that upsets your worldview is biased, and the resulting absence of evidence means you can jimmy whatever nonsense you feel like into history to make it fit your beliefset.

The people who tried the witches did not hide their motives. They wrote down how they tried them. You are, like Faklon, exhibiting ignorance on the subject matter.

Bwoah

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theoris_of_Lemnos

Theoris of Lemnos (died before 323 BC) was an ancient Greek woman from Lemnos who lived in Athens in the fourth century BC. She worked as a witch or folk-healer. At some point before 323, she was tried and executed along with her children, though the precise details of her offence are unclear. Three ancient accounts survive of her prosecution, which constituted the most detailed account of a witch trial to survive from Classical Greece.

People always hunted "witches" and generally anyone who didn't conform to their beliefs. In British tradition, you have an ancient wizard tradition with Merlin who is seen as a hero wizard/druid, which is normal considering the drugs ancient Brits used to consume.

So, there is some Protestant-Catholic fuckery and plebs come to denounce whoever they don't like as a Satanic witch. Does this mean that the churches stopped printing books and uniting people?

50,000 people were killed in a couple of centuries in Europe alone

As many as an average medieval battle.

This was despite the fact that belief in witches was common in medieval Europe, and in 1258 Pope Alexander IV had to issue a canon to prevent prosecutions

http://courses.washington.edu/hsteu305/305%20EMWB.htm

"If any person shall call a free woman a stria or an evil one, and shall fail to prove it, they shall themselves be
arraigned and fined 7,500 denarii, which are 187 solidi."

"Let nobody presume to kill a foreign serving maid or female slave as a striga or masca, because it is not
possible, nor ought it to be at all believed by Christian minds that a woman can eat a living man up from within.
If anyone presumes to perpetrate such an illegal and impious act, he shall pay 60 solidi as compensation
according to her status, and moreover, he shall pay 100 solidi in addition for the guilt, half to the king and
half to him those servant she was....If indeed a judge has ordered him to perpetrate this evil act, then the
judge shall pay compensation according as above."

“If anyone, deceived by the Devil, Shall believe, as is cusomary amongst pagans, that any man or woman is a
striga and eats men, and shall on that account burn that person to death or eat his or her flesh, or give it to
others to eat, he shall be executed.”

"To our well loved son Abbot Mellitus: [Pope] Gregory, servant of the servants of God. ...When by God's
help you reach our most reverend brother, Bishop Augustine,[*] we wish you to inform him that we have been
giving careful thought to the affairs of the English and have come to the conclusion that temples of idols among
that people should on no account be destroyed. The idols are to be destroyed, but the temples themselves are
to be aspersed with holy water, altars set up in them and relics deposited there. For if these temples are well
built, they must be purified from the worship of demons and dedicated to the service of the true God. In this way,
we hope that the people, seeing that their temples are not destroyed, may abandon their error and flocking more
readily to their accustomed places, may come to know and adore the true God.

Since they have a custom of sacrificing many oxen to demons, let some other solemnity be substituted in its
place, such as a day of Dedication or the Festivals of the holy martyrs whose relics are enshrined there.... They
are no longer to sacrifice beasts to the Devil, but they may kill them for food to the praise of God and give thanks
to the Giver of all gifts for the plenty they enjoy. If the people are allowed some worldly pleasures in this way,
they will more readily come to desire the joys of the spirit. For it is certainly impossible to eradicate all errors
from obstinate minds at one stroke, and whoever wishes to climb to a mountain top climbs gradually step by step
and not in one leap.... For while they offer the same beasts as before, they offer them to God instead of to idols,
so that they would no longer be offering the same sacrifices. Of your kindness you are to inform our brother
Augustine of this policy, so that he may consider how he may best implement it on the spot.

[Longbowman]

etc

Literally nothing you said here contradicts anything I wrote you semi-literate dunce.

In brief:

'One or two popes issued orders against the persecution of witches!'

-Yes, but these orders were ignored and later countermanded. This is roughly similar to pointing out that some Americans were abolitionists in the 1850s to argue that slavery wasn't a big deal/didn't have the support of the government.

'There were witches executed before the Church!'

-Yes, I said this, however the phenomenon of widespread witchhunts in Europe happened under and with the abettance of the Church

'The Church still did good things!'

-Yes, I said this too, it's irrelevant to the point.

Bonus nonsense:

'50,000 people is the death toll of the average medieval battle.'

-No, that would have been catastrophic kek. Most medieval battles had a few dozen or hundred killed and the big ones were usually 5-10k. Agincourt, f/e, was 5-6k. The bloodiest battle in English history (Towton) only had about 10,000 dead (and possibly a lot less), and that was 1% of the entire male population of England at the time. And, even if this were correct, it would be irrelevant to the point.

[Faklon]

Literally nothing you said here contradicts anything I wrote you semi-literate dunce.

In brief:

'One or two popes issued orders against the persecution of witches!'

-Yes, but these orders were ignored and later countermanded. This is roughly similar to pointing out that some Americans were abolitionists in the 1850s to argue that slavery wasn't a big deal/didn't have the support of the government.

'There were witches executed before the Church!'

-Yes, I said this, however the phenomenon of widespread witchhunts in Europe happened under and with the abettance of the Church

'The Church still did good things!'

-Yes, I said this too, it's irrelevant to the point.

Bonus nonsense:

'50,000 people is the death toll of the average medieval battle.'

-No, that would have been catastrophic kek. Most medieval battles had a few dozen or hundred killed and the big ones were usually 5-10k. Agincourt, f/e, was 5-6k. The bloodiest battle in English history (Towton) only had about 10,000 dead (and possibly a lot less), and that was 1% of the entire male population of England at the time. And, even if this were correct, it would be irrelevant to the point.

I don't understand what your point is to be honest, seems like Christianity makes you butthurt and you attack with ad-hominems.

Charlemagne himself denouncing the practise as Pagan is not "one or two Popes". Popes are not random men in that era, every little church follows what their say. You don't have Richmonbread in their own West Virginia autonomous church writting songs to their own personal jesus.

Google, first three battles:









Also lol at pre-Christian British civilization. Barely some ruins in Baath, London and a 3 meter tall wall so crackheads won't walk in.