It might be added that it's a
liberal myth that witch-hunting amounted to an act of
genocide against
pagans by the church.
Wicca as a religion did not exist in those days, and the estimates of millions of pagans killed in witchhunts that are occasionally given are gross exaggeration. This does not, of course, excuse anybody. The
church has plenty of
blood on its hands. Let's not add any more. The European Witch-hunts
were brutal acts of cultural and, it might be argued, religious supression, not to mention ignorance,
mob rule, and stupidity. But attempts by persons such as
Silver RavenWolf to portray the
Middle Ages as the
Dark Ages because of alleged genocide of
wiccans is to set the understanding of history back two hundred years, and to erect barriers between
Christianity and
Paganism that should be torn down if either faith is to have a chance in the future.
Addendum: I thought Aero's write-up smacks of
revisionist history. I already said it once:
The church has plenty of blood on its hands. Let's not add any more. Wicca as a religion in its own right, as opposed to the multifarious pagan cults of varying attractiveness which flourished in
Europe up until about 1000 CE, is a relatively new phenomenon. And religious cultural imperialism, of the 'assimilate first, burn later' variety, was something Christianity learned from
Roman paganism. Christians were slaughtered in their thousands in astonishingly brutal ways, and in some parts of the world, they still are today. Why do some pagan cults (such as the
Celtic) get preferred status from pagans, and others (such as the Roman culti, and the
Gallic death-cults) not?
This is
not an attack on Wicca. Rather the reverse. I admire Wicca greatly. (
Ducks the stream of abuse and accusations of being patronising which are the lot of anyone who respects a religion not their own) But there is a difference between a religion uniting the strands of earlier traditions in the quest for truth, and claiming to be the true inheritor of such a tradition. I do not claim to be Jewish. Wicca is not the faith of my ancestors.
Further addendum: Re-reading Aero's write-up, and my own addendum, I note that this could be misconstrued as an attack on Aero. It is not. Aero's write-up is largely well-informed. I have simply extended my own account.
Aero has agreed with me that the above should stand. People need to hear all sides, and I have to confess to being somewhat biased, and I certainly do not have perfect information on this or any other subject.