Never Again The Burning Times
Oh, get over yourselves. Those were not even witches being burned.
It could happen again, yes, but what makes you think your little “never again” web graphics can do anything about it? (especially if you’re the Bad Guy?)
clearing things up
I’ll let other people do the talking for me.
from cog.org:
…Ever since the Great Hunt itself, we’ve relied on witch hunters’ propaganda: witch hunting manuals, sermons against witchcraft, and lurid pamphlets on the more sensational trials. Everyone knew that this evidence was lousy. It’s sort of like trying to study Satanism in America using only the Moral Majority Newsletter and the National Enquirer. The few trials cited were the larger, more infamous ones. And historians frequently used literary accounts of those cases, not the trials themselves. That’s comparable to citing a television docu-drama (“Based on a true story!”) instead of actual court proceedings….
Witch hunting propaganda talked about thousands and thousands of executions. Literature focused on crazes, the largest and most sensational trials around. But we had no idea how accurate the literary evidence was, or how common trials actually were. So early death toll estimates, which ranged from several hundred thousand up to a high of nine million, were simply people trying to guess how much “a lot” of witches was….
(This is only one facet of a very long, excellent article. There is FAR too much on cog.org‘s witch hunt page to summarize here. I highly suggest informing yourself and your friends by reading it. –4nongoths)
excerpt from an email:
….Protestant countries had paid witchfinders, Catholic countries’ specialists were Dominicans. The witchfinders was again a reason why things got out of hand very easily. They got a part of the property of every confiscated witch. And because there was no such thing as a solitary, and one of Satan’s orders was to go and convert, it simply was not possible that a town would have only one witch. The rest you can imagine.
I saw a ‘never again burning times’ sign on one of your ‘favourite’ webpages. I have seen the expression on other sites a few times, and I feel really uncomfortable with it. I would really appreciate it if you would strenthen your statement about this on your site. I think the expression is offensive to the people who died during these times. They were ordinary christians, for who every kind of pagan faith of the practise of magic would have been devil worshipping. They were innocent of everything they were accused of, and to link them to paganism or magic feels for me doing the same thing to them those witchfinders did. Concerning the heretics (the real ones, and not the ones who were falsely accused), they had a form of Christianity they felt strongly enough about to die for. It is one thing to admire their courage, another to link them to a faith they would have abhorred.
(In other words, people, you’re spitting on their graves. –4nongoths)
from the guestbook:
(This is the most common argument I get in my email. No one seems to have given this viewpoint any real thought. Perhaps posting my reply here, publicly, will save us all some trouble).
There are quite a few people out there that believe a Memorial to the victims of the last centuries witch-hysteria have no place on a Witches web page, to them I say BULLS#$%! Whether or not any *real* Witches died at Salem (or elsewhere during these dark times for that matter) is immaterial, the fact is people did die, and they died because they were accused of, and found guilty of the charge of Witchcraft.
[My memorial] page, and others like it are intended to cause pause, for us to remember those who have suffered, and died at the hands of others, for us to remember those who have fallen from hate, ignorance, intolerance, and superstition. It is simply a reminder, something to help raise the collective consciousness of our world, so that we are ever on guard against such things happening again.
It HAS happened again, people. Oh you poor, poor pagans who get funny looks for wearing jewelry — don’t you ever turn on the news? China and Arabia, now that’s persecution…. (“But my web graphics apply to those people too!”) Uh-huh. I suppose you’d do more for them if they were in your country, right? So let’s get closer to home:
Where were you at Waco?
Waco was a religion being attacked. So what if they had guns and a leader who thought he was Jesus? They could have just as easily thought they should kill themselves to board an alien spacecraft, but that’s still their religious freedom. If you think those people are in a different class than Wiccans, then consider how insane you sound — worshipping a Horned God and practicing “witchcraft,” for goodness’ sake!
Maybe you can put up some “never again” Waco graphics on your webpage and see what good that does blocking out the napalm. Face it — at the next Waco, you won’t be able to do one damned thing about it other than picket peacefully, write/speak about your [group’s] opinion, or get hauled off to jail for trying to take harsher action. All any of this does is give you a warm fuzzy feeling in your tummy for attempting to do the Right Thing.
So what’s the real reason that every fluffy has a burning times graphic on their webpage? Quite frankly, I think it’s so they’ll feel special. It proves beyond a doubt how evil those other religions can be. By golly, as if we aren’t oppressed and victimized enough as it is… we’re all sure that at any moment, the Xians will point and scream “devil-worshippers!” in our general direction, so we should hold off the furious fundies by somehow changing their brainwashed minds with our “Never Again” glitter stickers.
At the same time, the anti-Xtian “Wicca for Beginners!” pages I’ve seen are just as full of hate as the Burning Times were. Maybe we should cause pause and raise the collective consciousness of Wiccans for once. –4nongoths)
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Everything on this page is © 4nongoths originally. It is reprinted here without permission as I have no idea how to get ahold of 4nongoths. If you are 4nongoths, please feel free to email me and we can discuss taking this information down.
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