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October 22, 2005
Scholars Produce New Picture of Witches
Scholars Produce New Picture of Witches: "By Peter Steinfels It is the season of witches - cute little costumed ones crying 'trick or treat' and full-grown adult ones laying claim to Halloween and recounting tales of medieval and early modern persecution. In a search for historical roots and moral legitimacy, some feminists and many adherents of neopagan or goddess-centered religious movements like Wicca have elaborated a founding mythology in which witches and witch hunts have a central role. Witches, they claim, were folk healers, spiritual guides and the underground survivors of a pre-Christian matriarchal cult. By the hundreds of thousands, even the millions, they were the victims of a ruthless campaign that church authorities waged throughout the Middle Ages and early modern centuries to stamp out this rival, pagan religion. Robin Briggs, an Oxford historian, is only one of many contemporary scholars rejecting this account. What unites most 'common assumptions' about witches, witchcraft and witch hunts, Mr. Briggs writes in Witches & Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft (Viking Penguin, 1996), is 'one very marked feature,' namely 'that they are hopelessly wrong.'"
(Via WiccanWeb.ca.)
Posted by mikki at October 22, 2005 07:19 PM