The History of Witches and Witchcraft: What You Never Knew about the Witch

Are there any particular wizards or witches you want to know more about?

No surprises that Ronald Hutton appears in the sources list.

Thank you for this video! Very educational video of interesting and important topic.....Witch hunt is one of the biggest crimes that Chruch ever did...

It’s happening again.

There is the verse in the Old Testament that say in the King James translation, "Suffer not a witch to live." But when you look at the Greek text it was translated from the word for "witch" is "poisoner". But this was used as a basis for condemning many woman to death.

I would love an episode on the Merseburger Zaubersprüche

Or if a man got tired if his wife or if a man wanted the land next door belonging to a widow.

Let me put this way that a woman with working knowledge of herbalism or being a midwife is considered a witch. Witch Hunters were often motivated by greed to make land grabs. My feeling that the Abrahamic religions were very anti women blame ills on the gender.

How can someone sleep with the devil if the devil never sleeps?

Women can be pretty annoying...

I think there is and was people that didn’t need to control others and need to be power mongers, people that understood healing ! People that did good ! Then you got a person that wanted to have the control and wanted wealth, control and power over people by killing others if they didn’t follow their beliefs! So any group that threatens to kill others that don’t follow them are the true bad people . If the group was a pure of love and heart there wouldn’t be no bloodshed and followers would follow happiness , content, learning , all make a civilization grow and to scare and threaten or hold back knowledge will come to its destruction

We actually do have a definition of what a Witch is. Johann Weyer in De Praestigiis Daemonum (1563) stated Witchcraft was a mental illness. This was agreed by Reginald Scot in his 1584 book The Discoverie of Witchcraft. It's generally accepted Weyer's definition of Witchcraft as a mental illness created the academic discipline of Psychology. There're also 1000's of Psychology and Psychiatric scientific papers; including case studies on Demonology and Witchcraft, dating from the aforementioned to the current day. It looks like you've over focused on the fairy tale side and in doing so totally missed the scientific side.

The Witch of Newbury was simply a woman who has figured out how to get around on water by standing on a plank of wood. She was murdered for being a witch in 1642 because she had discovered surfing.

You said that men wasnt witches in the start of the video but in norway 250 women and 50 men was burned as witches. 91 of them was burned in vardø. We even have a monument there with all the names and why they burned them

"Which witch Bitches?" ....
That's what Jesus said she said.

I find it fascinating that "Witch" in Slavic languages means more or less "(the one that) has knowledge".

Hecate = "heh-kah-tay"

"And it helps keep witches safe" 😆I love your content. Thumbs up for Crecganford and for the safety of witches! This could make a great bumper sticker: "Honk to help Crecganford keep witches safe!"

Not too bad a brief history of European witchcraft. I take issue with your last comment made in the video. Self identifying as a witch does not make you a witch (woke thinking does not apply here). You are only a witch if you have been initiated into a lineage of witchcraft. What kind of witch you are depends on what tradition you were initiated into, the teachings that you were given and the direction of your mastery of said mysteries (in my humble opinion!).

The passage from Exodus "thou shall not suffer a witch to live" may also be translated as "thou shall not suffer the assassin to live" or "thou shall not suffer the poisoner to live". Most likely, the last possible translation is the correct one, since the act of poisoning would not be limited to poisoning of the body but also to the mind and/or spirit.

The passage "rhou shalt no suffer a witch to live" is a purposeful mistranslation from the KJV to fit Jame's phobia of witchrs. The Hebrew word references an apothacarist that makes poisons...not a witch.

Thank you for all of your videos! They are so informative and interesting, you are a great story teller! One thing you mentioned in the beginning of this video I'm unsure of. I don't believe that Bridget Bishop was the first American convicted of Witchcraft. Alse Young was executed on May 26th 1647 in Hartford, Connecticut.

Baba Yaga, if you would. I came across this Eastern European witch as I read up on the 9th movement of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, the movement known as "The hut of Baba-Yaga on hen's legs."

I really enjoyed that. I tend to believe in paganism more than other religions.

Very well paid by whom?

If you look at the Regino of Prums Canon Episcopi in the context of women being attacked or molested by "holy men" or men in power, it may have been written as a way to explain how they saw "personages" of people they knew. It would be a perfect defense of the men who were doing what some men do.

Yeah, they're still eating babies in Haiti. If you want to know why people don't like witches!

All power and all energy only comes from one source it is up to the individual what they decide and perceive it to be but it is of the same source.

When it comes to the Catholic Church this organisation was the replacement for the Roman Empire the fall of the Roman Empire was replaced with Catholicism.

All of the Scrolls translated Bible scripts in the Roman order put together as a book it is up to that individual what they perceive to be the truth or not
Because the Roman Catholic Church says under our authority!
As much as they had said under their authority what is supposed to be perceived as a witch quite rightly this was a big money-making scheme people will pay double the money to seek out and find perpetrators to the cause of being an alchemist or a witch .
But we are in unprecedented times those that say they are a witch are not. and those that do not say are true.. it is better to do good work in secret do your best for others with the powers that you have because they were given freely and should be given to other people freely.
I believe these gifts must not be asked for alms in return ..

If the Catholic Church started apologizing for everything terrible it has done collectively ... it would take two thousand years.

Was it not a translation choice in the passage not to suffer a witch to live? I've been told, though I don't know enough to prove it, that originally the passage was 'Thou shalt not suffer a POISONER to live'.

"Wander around on it's own, eating oats and corn..." Is that why it's called a pecker?

the likes and subscribes keep witches safe? SOLD. DONE! haha

I think it might be curious to look into the Navajo concept of witches. I am not learned enough nor do I have the resources, but there is something called The Witchery way and it's considered evil and Navajo people who practice witchcraft are not considered human. I am wondering if this is something that came later after the Spanish invasion and occupation, thus influenced by Euro-Christian beliefs. Does anyone have any real understanding of this (and not the cultural misappropriation of skinwalkers)

In many cultures its the woman from the beginning , who were more aware of nurture skils and healing. They are the ones that knew you had to deliver a baby with clean hands and hygiene, while the first male doctors came with dirty hands , sometimes after they had investigated death corpses and never washed their hands, causing millions of death mothers at childbirth. I always believed these wise woman , they were experienced as competition to early medicine of pharma and the establishment of their doctors. They would be loosing money, power and stutus , if woman kept to pratice true healing . Also these established males knew that many man were afraid of the strenght of woman and their fertility. Woman were seen as powerfull for their power to create from just one visit of a man, one seed was enough. Also this was a competion (Marilyn French's Beyond Power) because man could not create life.
The establsiment could easily use this and install fear into common communities, and tell them woman were dangerous and need to be kept down. So they teached them how to trace woman down, if they knew they where healers and intelligent.
This way the establishment and church would kill many birds with one stone, create fear in woman , create fear in man for woman, and become all powerfull in medicine, we have seen where it all lead to. They used pseudo science and the law to complete the killings of millions . Hopefully the wise woman will return with their healing knowledge of herbs and ways .

I would like to know more about prophets like Joanne DÁrc as well, because i believe theer must have been many woman prophets as well as healers

Thank you very much for this interesting topic!

Although this video touched on it I don't think it was stressed strongly enough that "witch" was 1.) did not refer to any specific actual group and instead basically lumped together various unrelated pagans, people who were perceived to be eccentric (and in practice, people who had been deliberately framed by the accuser) 2.) in relation to with a particular conspiracy theory that said satan was secretly running all these different groups. And that that THEREFORE there never were any "witches" as such because the various people accused had absolutely nothing in common and because the conspiracy theory was the completely groundless and the delusion of the medieval equivalent of QAnon. But half the time the video talks as if there really were witches, which to me seems as ridiculous as (to use the QAnon analogy again) talking like like there really were lizard aliens

I'd heard they made a device with a retractable blade that wouldn't pierce the skin, or a mole (the mark of the devil) and therefore the woman (or man) was declared a witch

Did you really need to blank out the genitals on the sketches of the witches? What has this world come to? If that picture is a problem, then the real problem is that some no-one somewhere actually cares about it enough to influence you to take such a ridiculous action.

I think the label of witchcraft is very strongly based in a bipolar mindset of Christianity. I am an atheist yet almost every time I tell a Christian of my lack of belief in their god they immediately ask me why I worship Satan. While my absence of belief in their god also means that I don’t believe in the existence of their devil they cannot accept that and believe that since from their perspective there is only god and the devil anyone who doesn’t believe in their god is automatically a devil worshipper. Otherwise known as a Witch.

Sooo many died because others wanted their stuff or because a man didn’t want to admit they dug a chick. It’s gross

Asking a Pope in 21st century to apologise for witch trials the last of which happened hundreds of years ago, long before any of the now living catholics were born and for which they bear no responsibility, is the stupidest thing i've heard in a while. Especially since current pagans hardly bear any relation or resemblance to the pagans of the middle ages. The whole thing is a farce and a publicity stunt by petty grievance mongers. But as they say, what else is new.

You forgot to mention that Diane was part of a Triple Deity and this could mean that there might be correlations with other moon Goddesses.

IMHO the key to understand witches is through some rational social practical lenses. It's foolish to believe that witches were women who simply performed finger elongation tricks in front of the village and the village "cruelly and savagely" tortured and killed them while they were innocent. These witches were an institution, were an ideological movement (same as communism or feminism today), they were saboteurs or agent provocateurs with many cases where the witch, who was called as a doctor, would poison/kill a local leader or would bamboozle the women of the village to abort babies or never to get married, which obviously threatened the very own survival of the village. They were probably prosecuted by the whole village, including women, contrary to the naive feminist misconception that "men were afraid of women and that's why they falsely accused them and killed them". Another example is the stereotypical cat that a witch had: cats carry a virus called taxoplasmosis - if pregnant women get in contact with the cats, they would either spontaneous abort or have born a child with congenital handicaps, such as blindness.

I rebuke the primitive naive feminist conception: "men are evil and falsely killed innocent poor women" and also the modern internet atheist misconception: "the Catholic church was evil and killed people because God is evil", but it was much more to it, very much more to it, something very pragmatical with the village social structure and the threats of its own survival, and we have abundant examples today that explain very well the history behind witch hunting. We have women who advocate to remain single for the rest of the life (and get cats instead of children - ring a bell?), indulge in miscegenation with other races, disturb the peace with protests against the power, curse Christianity, the Church and God and Jesus, attack and harass men and try to get them fired by contacting the HR of their company where they work etc - these are not that potent in complex societies where there's a lot of people and a lot of different cultures and ideas and a lot of jobs and welfare - thus survival is easier, but try to pull that one in a medieval village where refusing to have children might threaten its future survival since there wouldn't be enough arms to sow and reap the fields. Or "bewitch" (poison or seduce) the only wood cutter of the village - that will result in the village not having firewood for the incoming harsh winter. Telling to a village elder "f your God" like feminists do today it is the equivalent of a black man resisting police in US, both have tragic results, however, the logic of playing with fire stands true - everybody would see them coming, and none of them are truly innocent to begin with.

Is there a link between the Reformation and the escalation of witch hunts? Ie once western christianity fractured tensions led to internal repression. When societies are involved in wars especially very brutal ones repression becomes the norm internally to ensure that externally the war effort is not harmed. I don't think its an accident that the peak of witch persecution was between 1500 and 1680.

Could you please make a video on origion of Satan ? I bet there is a story .

Very good video people always fear what they dont understand the agenda the church used to control the population you only need to look at history its estimated that around 9 million men and women were killed in the most horrible of ways the inquisition and catholic church set a very high bar of torture and corruption not our species high point with the new age of enlightenment i cant help but believe we. Are in the best of times to be alive thru past lives regression we have all lived many lives we are akll divine if we can learn to look within ourselves eastern religions are far more enlightened and ues i am a practictipner of many years now and the god or universal consciousness and many other names or titles if you please just make your own xhoice but again your spirit is the connection tremendous ly accurate if any moderrn info wanted pull up on the internet the complete book of shadows its about 3000 pages long and downloadable tremendously modern and far teaching blessing to all

Did not state the answer he started the show with questions. Very interesting which (pardon the pun)is why I clicked on. The first not the middle ages and beliefs. Or types, stick to subject please.

"Děkuji" se zdá být stěží dostačující. To, co nám dáte, je k nezaplacení. ^^ ❤

I think a lot of it, especially in the American Salem Witch Trials was about widows and other independent women that owned property not controlled by men, and the men who wanted the property.

My 10th great Auntie Mary Easty was murdered in Salem MA.

The Irish Church is still refusing to properly acknowledge or apologise for the Magdalene Laundries. They aren't going to apologise for their past wrongs such as persecuting or murdering heretics and pagans. Most people today who call themselves pagans or witches are no such thing and hav3 absolutely no idea whatsoever what a witch or a pagan is. It is just fashionable especially amongst people calling themselves goths to claim to be witches. Such people do a grear deal of harm to real wiccans, witches and neo-pagans not to mention people like me. I am labelled as a witch when I am no such thing precisely because of idiots who think it is cool to call themselves a witch so to say that they do no harm to others is not a true statement at all. They do a great deal of harm to others through their stupidity. I like hebal medicine which I have studied and I read tarot cards. I also like to read occult books and history, folklore and mythology books. My maternal granddad's surname Peart is an Anglo-Saxon surname and I live in an area where the Anglo-Saxons lived historically. You can hear what the Anglo-Saxon language must have sounded like in my geordie accent which is one of the only English dialects to have retained some of the olde English Anglo-Saxon speech thus I am interested in them and in their divination and magical practices as well as them as a people. A historian once told me I owe my very blond hair and grey eyes to my Anglo-Saxon ancestors. These were characteristics of that people allegedly. And I am falsely called a witch by idiots claiming to be witches. Those idiot's would have caused my death in the past. And the modern pagan groups have spoken out against idiots calling themselves witches and have given a list of practices and beliefs that witches and wiccans should know before they claim to be such. It is not about a feeling just like being transgender is not a feeling.