In pre-Christian Europe most people originally followed a pagan faith quite innocently and by necessity, based upon seasons and earthly changes. Ancient witches, or priestesses, recognised a Goddess as well as a God. Indeed they would quite often recognise a number of Gods and Goddesses depending upon the season or whatever circumstances they found themselves in, again, not an unusual trait, even in today’s world. Eventually, these witches and their alleged satanic knowledge, would be challenged by the Church as they posed a direct threat to the very existence of such a Church as witchcraft in its truest form was, and remained, popular among the common people. Indeed, at first the Church denied the purported powers of witchcraft, claiming they were superstition or delusion, and that God alone had supernatural powers. However, as the popularity of witchcraft did not die out the Church was forced to revert to other, more devious methods of gaining total support and therefore total obedience. As one can clearly see, for the Church to become an all powerful and all knowing institution, it had to rid itself of any competitors. And so witches and witchcraft were easily denounced by the church and its rituals in all their finery, pomp and ceremony. The myth of the ugly old crone was now being pushed by the Church and in comparison to the Church’s gold and silver and often false reverence, the ‘witch’ became segregated and marginalised, now only a useless old crone living in the woods and posing no threat to anyone.
Later, when it was clear that witchcraft would not die out as rapidly as expected, the Church changed tact and reversed its original claims expressing the belief that witches were real and were in direct conflict with the Christian God by being evil creatures in league with the Devil, which only the Church, as the now only representative of God, could eradicate.
Starting in the main in the late 14th century Europe, witches began to suffer persecution, torture, and death in many cases. The wholesale slaughter of alleged witches was to continue largely unabated until the 1700s. Mainly it was women who were murdered, although sometimes men were accused of witchcraft as well and suffered the consequences. Indeed, the persecutors killed because of their religious fanaticism, their desire to build upon their religions power or due to totally irrational fear of what had now, through the exhortations of the Church, had become the unknown and therefore evil. Other times witches were simply killed for profit as money could be made from witch hunting. In this atmosphere of religious zealotry and male bigotry many women were killed simply on the slightest of suspicions as their was no one to judge who was a witch and who wasnÂ’t. After all, God was now the only authority a person had to answer to and if a witch had been killed, who could say whether GodÂ’s will had been done or not. In all cases, including the celebrated Joan of Arc, no one would question the legitimacy of the now all powerful Christian Church.
Modern society now recalls the days of the benevolent, though still widely misunderstood, ancient witch with her earth-based, nature worship. Indeed the 1970s and the advent of the hippie saw a number of people turning to a type of pseudo nature worship with the next two decades seeing the advent and subsequent promotion of such ‘supernatural’ phenomena such as crystal power, faith healing and physic readings. However, in most cases the history and heritage of witchcraft in its true sense is disguised or transformed to suit modern day beliefs and the modern day penchant for ‘instant fixes’. In ancient times, for instance, certain wells or springs with their flowing waters were considered to have powers bordering on magical and were used for good luck or healing. Today we see an equivalent in Christianity and ‘Holy Water.’ The black and smouldering cauldron that is seen as a negative and infinitely evil symbol of the witch today, was, in ancient Celtic times, considered a source of knowledge, healing and sustenance. Rather than a negative force it was a life giving and positive sign relating to the improvement of one’s life.
St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, with the help of other missionaries, peacefully converted pagan Irish Celts to Christianity in the 5th century. Not surprisingly he is revered to this day for his great learning and kindness, traits which he most probably possessed and yet can we be sure than any of these early founding fathers of Christianity were in fact, saintly, or Christian in their outlooks, considering that the Church itself only cared for one thing, the expansion of its own power as an all knowing and all powerful institute. It is most probable that the early Saints were as they are remembered, kind and Godfearing men who truly believed in Christian values and not simply in the expansion of the Church as an institute of total authority in all things spiritual. The Irish experience however peaceful it may have been was most probably unlike many other conversions throughout Europe and eventually in the New World, where conversion by the sword was more common.