Paganism dates back about 25,000 years, When the God of Hunting and the Goddess of Fertility where living on this earth and of respect for the overwhelming power of Nature grew all over and the God and Goddess controlled the winds, the seas, the earth and the fire.

Soon the old ways of the common people came into conflict with the new ways and religions that started with rulers and upper classes-Christianity. When the Christians decided that their new ways weren't catching on quick enough, things got a lot rougher for those who were practicing witchcraft and the old religion, Christian leaders began asserting that Witches were devils and savages.

In the year 1233, Pop Gregory IX instituted the Roman something or other known as the Inquisition. He soon declared Witchcraft Religion of the Pagans as a heretical movement and that it was totally against Christianity. Witches had now become heretics and the hatred against Pagans spread like wildfire throughout Europe.

Witches......along with countless numbers of "innocent" members of the Christian family who were not Witches were persecuted, brutally tortured, molested or raped, and then executed by sadistic bloody hatred acts. This all came from the authorities who taught that their God was a god of love and trust. A suspected witch was arrested and then hideously tortured to confession. Subjects were subjected to thumb screws, the rack and the boot which broke the bones in their legs; they were deprived of sleep and food. At times hundreds of suspected Witches were killed in a day!

Witchcraft in England was made an illegal offense in the 1600's and there was a law decreeing capital punishment for Witches and Pagans alike. Years later the 13 colonies in America also made it a crime to be a Witch. By the late 1700's every witch was denounced to having to hide what they really were, and at night witches would
go under ground and perform an underground religion. There was an estimated 1 million witches put to death in Europe and more than 30 thousand in Massachusetts, in the name of Christianity.

Special Note: I recieved an E-mail correcting this article, that I would like to post here-

Hi,

My problem was with your section on the burning times. You estimate that "nine million Witches were killed by their Christian brothers, sisters, and neighbors". The nine million figure is actually a *huge* exaggeration. It was first suggested by a radical feminist from the 1890's named Matilda Joslyn Gage in a work called Women, Church and State. At the time it was written it would have been impossible to accurately assess the number of victims of the Inquisition and witch hunts, and it was anybody's guess, but even then her number was a stretch of epic proportions.

A (much) more probable number comes from Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts by Anne Llewellyn Barstow, written in 1995. (http://www.vix.com/pub/men/falsereport/satanic/witch-hunt-original.html This site has the part of it I'm referring to if you want to check it out.) It shows a table of countries and then numbers of accused witches in those countries, with the number of witches actually executed last. Adding together all the countries' accused "witch" totals, you get 162,980. The total number of "witches" actually executed comes to 74,744. Of course those are still only estimates, and a totally accurate assement of total "witches" executed in history is virtually impossible but... 75,000 is a far cry from 9 million.

I also had a problem with another comment made in the same article. "Even now you can't publically announce the fact that you are a witch without painful and often brutal repercussions, depending on where you live." Obviously I can't say that this is a lie, and it is true that in many areas of the world a person stating themselves to be witches or Wiccan will face persecution. I will say that I think it's a dangerously misleading sentence. The fact is that over the past 10 years or so, the "dangers" of being out of the closet have been greatly reduced. Legal protection against losing your job, home, kids, etc. is avaliable. Public understanding is on the rise. It's been my experience that you would probably be no more persecuted for being a Wiccan than you would for being Christian in 90% of at least America.

To state that you can't openly be Wiccan without facing outrageous consequences is dangerous because it turns people away from being open with their religion, and there is no way to dispel that negative aura around Witchcraft and Wicca without witches and Wiccans being open about what they do.

One last, quick note before I'm off to bed. Most of the suspected "witches" that were executed during the Inquisition, the Salem witch trials, etc, were God-fearing Christian types. They would have most likely been appalled at the concept of witchcraft or Wicca, as are many Christians today. To lump them in with modern Witchcraft just because that's what they were accused of is not only a little silly, it does an enormous disservice to their memory.

Take care,

~Holly~
http://www.geocities.com/soul_catharsis