13 days ago20 points(+0/-0/+20Score on mirror)3 children
The Salem ''Witch Trials'' is an interesting case of what happens when you Listen and Believe bored women who make shit up for attention and try to one-up the previous false-accuser.
Because yes, it was started by women, and mostly done by women. Not ''patriarchy killing wimminz they didn't like''.
There were no ''witches'' among the victims, no matter how many false claims neo-pagans make about the trials. All the victims were White Christians.
Yep, Salem was just Puritan Me-Too, with a lot more murder. The lesson learned from Salem should have been "dont believe women unless a trustworthy man will also vouch for them". Clearly, that lesson was never learned, and the actual Witches got away with it.
13 days ago11 points(+0/-0/+11Score on mirror)3 children
Witchcraft is very real.
The Greeks wrote extensively about witches and what they did. There's plenty of first-hand accounts in Medieval times as well.
In short, they were people doing involuntary drug experiments on others. In medieval times, groups of them would get together and experiment with various narcotics. Witches and witchcraft was also heavily involved in necrophilia and cannibalism. Of course today, we know what "bath salts" can do to a man.
In the Bible, the word "sorcery" comes from the Greek word we now call "Pharmacy."
Witchcraft is technically utilizing demons to perform sleight of hand (or tentacle, or claw, or whatever it is the demon feels like having that day), which is why actual witches (which were rare) were punished so harshly. Of course, after the Reformation, the Inquisition, who had the only good track record for rooting out actual witches and sparing poor schizos from the pyre, lost the ability to do this in many countries. What resulted is people randomly accusing anyone who was a bit weird of being a witch, and then subsequently igniting them without any inquisitional oversight (which usually involved actually checking if any demonic activity was taking place).
12 days ago1 point(+0/-0/+1Score on mirror)1 child
There is a guy on youtube reading old alchemy books and trying their recipes and explaining what's really going on.
Alchemy was actually fairly advanced chemistry. A lot of the concepts translate almost 1-1 with modern chemistry.
The thing is, though, most people in the ancient and medieval world had no access to good information on alchemy. And the texts we do have are obviously not giving the truth in straight terms. They were trying to obscure certain things from the general public and other alchemists.
There was also a whole lot of actual witchcraft going on among the Alchemists, considering their end goal was attaining eternal life without consulting God about it first (or considering that eternal life on planet where its very easy to get sick and feel miserable for years at a time might not be the most enjoyable past-time). Alchemy was heavily tied up with (((Gnosticism))), the pre-cursor to (((Kabbala))).
13 days ago10 points(+0/-0/+10Score on mirror)1 child
Or: The witches were village whores, ugly skunks, prehistoric feminists, childless, rootless, jews, who dabbled in bullshit like astrology and crystals.
They are portrayed as the oh-so smart, educated alchemists who got shunned because smart wahmen bad and Christians stupid and bigots. Yeah no, don't believe it.
13 days ago5 points(+0/-0/+5Score on mirror)2 children
I’ve heard conspiracies that the witch trials were motivated to go after women with property some rich people wanted to steal. Like widows and such. “Hey she’s crazy we need to kill her, oh my what do we do with her estate?”
It's an EXTREMELY kiked profession, especially the closer you get to the current era. That's why I took classes mostly focused on ancient and medieval stuff when I was getting my degree.
I've seen that claim before too. I got into it in college with a history professor over a book review I wrote for a book making that claim where I critiqued the thesis and he got all pissy about it in the margins of my paper.
13 days ago5 points(+0/-0/+5Score on mirror)1 child
Unfortunately they didn't and not even a full century later (((Freemasons))) Washington and Jefferson gave the synagogue of satan free rein to "practice" in the new world.
Because yes, it was started by women, and mostly done by women. Not ''patriarchy killing wimminz they didn't like''.
There were no ''witches'' among the victims, no matter how many false claims neo-pagans make about the trials. All the victims were White Christians.
Witch was not a gendered term at the time.
ie Witches