In pre-Christian Europe most people originally followed a pagan
faith quite innocently and by necessity, based upon seasons and
earthly changes. Ancient witches, or priestesses, recognised a
Goddess as well as a God. Indeed they would quite often recognise a
number of Gods and Goddesses depending upon the season or whatever
circumstances they found themselves in, again, not an unusual
trait, even in todays world. Eventually, these witches and their
alleged satanic knowledge, would be challenged by the Church as
they posed a direct threat to the very existence of such a Church
as witchcraft in its truest form was, and remained, popular among
the common people. Indeed, at first the Church denied the purported
powers of witchcraft, claiming they were superstition or delusion,
and that God alone had supernatural powers. However, as the
popularity of witchcraft did not die out the Church was forced to
revert to other, more devious methods of gaining total support and
therefore total obedience. As one can clearly see, for the Church
to become an all powerful and all knowing institution, it had to
rid itself of any competitors. And so witches and witchcraft were
easily denounced by the church and its rituals in all their finery,
pomp and ceremony. The myth of the ugly old crone was now being
pushed by the Church and in comparison to the Churchs gold and
silver and often false reverence, the witch became segregated and
marginalised, now only a useless old crone living in the woods and
posing no threat to anyone.
Later, when it was clear that witchcraft would not die out as
rapidly as expected, the Church changed tact and reversed its
original claims expressing the belief that witches were real and
were in direct conflict with the Christian God by being evil
creatures in league with the Devil, which only the Church, as the
now only representative of God, could eradicate.
Starting in the main in the late 14th century Europe, witches began
to suffer persecution, torture, and death in many cases. The
wholesale slaughter of alleged witches was to continue largely
unabated until the 1700s. Mainly it was women who were murdered,
although sometimes men were accused of witchcraft as well and
suffered the consequences. Indeed, the persecutors killed because
of their religious fanaticism, their desire to build upon their
religions power or due to totally irrational fear of what had now,
through the exhortations of the Church, had become the unknown and
therefore evil. Other times witches were simply killed for profit
as money could be made from witch hunting. In this atmosphere of
religious zealotry and male bigotry many women were killed simply
on the slightest of suspicions as their was no one to judge who was
a witch and who wasnt. After all, God was now the only authority a
person had to answer to and if a witch had been killed, who could
say whether Gods will had been done or not. In all cases,
including the celebrated Joan of Arc, no one would question the
legitimacy of the now all powerful Christian Church.
Modern society now recalls the days of the benevolent, though still
widely misunderstood, ancient witch with her earth-based, nature
worship. Indeed the 1970s and the advent of the hippie saw a number
of people turning to a type of pseudo nature worship with the next
two decades seeing the advent and subsequent promotion of such
supernatural phenomena such as crystal power, faith healing and
physic readings. However, in most cases the history and heritage of
witchcraft in its true sense is disguised or transformed to suit
modern day beliefs and the modern day penchant for instant fixes.
In ancient times, for instance, certain wells or springs with their
flowing waters were considered to have powers bordering on magical
and were used for good luck or healing. Today we see an equivalent
in Christianity and Holy Water. The black and smouldering
cauldron that is seen as a negative and infinitely evil symbol of
the witch today, was, in ancient Celtic times, considered a source
of knowledge, healing and sustenance. Rather than a negative force
it was a life giving and positive sign relating to the improvement
of ones life.
St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, with the help of other
missionaries, peacefully converted pagan Irish Celts to
Christianity in the 5th century. Not surprisingly he is revered to
this day for his great learning and kindness, traits which he most
probably possessed and yet can we be sure than any of these early
founding fathers of Christianity were in fact, saintly, or
Christian in their outlooks, considering that the Church itself
only cared for one thing, the expansion of its own power as an all
knowing and all powerful institute. It is most probable that the
early Saints were as they are remembered, kind and Godfearing men
who truly believed in Christian values and not simply in the
expansion of the Church as an institute of total authority in all
things spiritual. The Irish experience however peaceful it may have
been was most probably unlike many other conversions throughout
Europe and eventually in the New World, where conversion by the
sword was more common.