The terrible truth about witch hunts
Today a witch is a figure of fun, someone to dress up as on Halloween or a funny character for a sitcom (Sabrina the Teenage Witch anyone?) But behind the laughs lies a terrible history of prejudice, misogyny and oppression.
In olden days between 40,000 and 60,000 people were tortured and put to death for being witches. The vast majority of them were female. This has lead some commentators to call the execution of witches the ‘women’s holocaust.’
According to folk-law a witch could cause bad weather, turn food poisonous, make people and livestock sick, cause crops to fail, fly, put curses on people, cause bad luck and make men impotent.
In reality this meant unpopular women could be blamed for just about anything that happened that was unfortunate and hard to explain. They were women it was okay to take your anger out on.
If a baby died in childbirth the midwife could be accused of being a witch and killing the child to give to the devil. Single mothers were accused of being impregnated by the devil (meaning the real dad didn’t have to take responsibility).
Poor uneducated women who didn’t have influential friends were accused as well as women who were mentally unstable. Women who might be diagnosed schizophrenic today and given help were instead persecuted as witches.
Investigations of witchcraft often meant horrific torture to get a confession. In other cases a person was proved to be a witch if they had a diabolic mark. This could be a birthmark or an ‘invisible’ mark conveniently visible to only the investigator, who was paid on commission.
Another way to detect a witch was trial by ordeal. Here they were tied up or put in a bag and thrown into water. If they floated that meant they were a witch and the devil was helping them. If they sunk they were innocent. Unfortunately this meant that they were also dead.
Other trial-by-ordeals involved a blessed ring being put in a pot of boiling water. The accused had to plunge their hand in to get the ring. Then, if after three days the burnt hand had healed, its owner was proved guilty.
The most common punishment for witchcraft was death. In Europe witches were burnt at the stake. In England they were hanged and then their bodies were burnt.
Thankfully, these days witch hunts are a thing of the past but it’s easy to get sucked into the mindset of blaming misfortunes on people who seem weird or different to you or people who seem to exist outside your group. The best way to make sure that witch hunts stay in the past is to embrace difference and think twice before being suspicious of unfamiliar people. |
