WITCH PRICKERS
Fundamentalist Christianity at its worst
The early Church used natural Pagan myths in the most obscene and vile manner. Sadistically notorious witch-finders like Matthew Hopkins (who committed his reign of terror during the English civil war) were to use methods of interrogation conjoined to church related concepts of evil being linked to native Pagan faiths.
Any old person particularly a solitary female was viewed with suspicion, especially if they showed too much affection to a pet. Such a creature could be regarded as a familiar thus rendering the owner vulnerable to possible vilification, arrest and summary interrogation by witch-finders acting under the moral auspice of church authority. Cats dogs and many other creatures were believed by the church authorities to actually suckle the breasts of witches. It was thought that the devil would transform himself into a given animal then the witch was believed to let the beast drink her milk from a secret third nipple. Because of this sort of ecclesiastically inspired superstition and ignorance thousands of innocent men and woman were subjected to the most horribly humiliating tortures.
Witch-finders became Witch-Prickers. Suspects would often be displayed chained and naked in public areas like the market place. The pricker would then delight in seeking out the victim's additional nipple with a sharp bodkin. Incidentally, contemporary medical observations have proved that additional breasts (Polymastia) or extra nipples (Polythelia) are quite common so Hopkins and his colleagues probably had no shortage of impoverished targets on which to perform their gruesome, self-righteous metier.
Sometimes the Sign of the Devil was believed to take the shape of a birthmark which was frequently located near the anus, vagina, tongue, eye or other sensitive private part of the hapless defendant. According to leading demonologists of the day this Satan's-seal (Sigillum-diaboli) occasionally took the likeness of an animal such as a dog, hare, toad, frog, bat, or mouse. Often the MARK was thought to be an invisible lesion insensitive to pain. This ludicrous state of affairs gave the enthusiastic prickers even greater opportunities to gain power (doing the LORD'S WORK) and torment their wretched victims further. Usually if a sharp instrument like a needle or bodkin is thrust into tender human flesh then naturally severe pain is to be felt.
The pricker, eager to prove his prisoner's guilt would at times after hours of horrible torture suddenly declare that he had found the DEVIL'S MARK. This he often did by using a false bodkin with a retractable point similar to a modern stage actor's fake knife. "Look the evil old hag feels no pain", the inquisitor would gleefully shout to the baying crowd. "‘Tis the mark of Satan for sure, the witch is found amongst God's good people!"
Yes, the ramifications for being different, non-conformist, solitary, too wise or simply the owner of a friendly cat could be very nasty indeed during merciless burning times.
(The above extracts are from 'THE PAGAN HANDBOOK' by P. Regan.)
Figures of Church-based ritual murder relating to witchcraft victims during the 'Burning Times'.
The following information was accessed from the
SAFF INFORMATION OFFICE
Number of
people executed for witchcraft.
Figures are difficult. The Jews themselves reckon that nine million people
(Jews, mentally insane, homosexuals, cripples, gypsies etc.,) perished
during the Nazi Holocaust but historians have since estimated six million.
That's still an awful lot of people but a three million discrepancy during a
period when every person had a birth certificate and was tracked by the various
states is quite a difference and shows the difficulty of estimating the effects
of mass murder. How much more difficult therefore is it to estimate
executions in the 15th and
16th centuries when there was hardly any statistical bureaucracy available to
confirm numbers killed and most documents which did have long-since rotted away,
been mislaid or destroyed?
In the first world war the British lost approximately 4 million combatants
whilst the Germans lost about 3 Million - that's in direct hand-to-hand combat
spanning four years with weapons of mass destruction (machine guns, mustard gas,
tanks, mines, submarines, bombers, high explosives etc) . In
the Second World war the combined deaths on both sides has been
estimated at 5 million people, that's in six years. You have to keep in mind
that the Burning Times occurred in batches lasting decades at a time and
spanning nearly two hundred years,
beginning with the Inquisition and upsurging again when the inventors of
demonology made it a 'science' in the 16th century. Of course plenty of
people were killed randomly by ecclesiastical courts from 1254 onwards when Pope
'innocent' IV made it legal to accept allegations of witchcraft without
corroborative evidence.
It is impossible to get a final figure whichever way you look at it.
In his excellent Encyclopaedia of Witchcraft, Russel Hope Robbins gives very
quick comparative examples of executions for witchcraft. For example, Just
one Inquisitor at one place, Como in Italy, executed 1,000 'witches' in
one year. As the craze spread like a disease from village to village the
witchunters would set up shop and burn as many from that village as possible. In
three small villages situated near Cologne which had a combined population
of 300 people, between 125 and 150 people were executed for 'witchcraft'
in a five year period. That's nearly 50% of the population in a five
year period and it wasn't unusual in Germany and France and Italy for the same
to occur. Obviously the main promoter of this constant long-term homicide
were the parish priests whose loyalty to Mother Church was rated on how many
'witches' they rid the locality of. A month without any burnings could be
seen as suspicious and cause the priest himself to be accused!
Accurate statistics based on documentary evidence are rare but Remy alone
boasted that he had burned 900 people in a ten year period. Because
the church required witch burnings to be an aversion entertainment the victims
were not, unlike in the gas chambers, killed quickly en-mass.
Every few days four or five victims would be publicly burned or hanged.
Remember also that everyone who was executed went through the torture process
first and this could take several days or more; so the 'ritual killing of
witches' was a progressive event.
Consider also that, even in pitched battles between armies, there was no
effective means of mass-destruction of human life at the time so wars were
fought with considerably less dead resulting than would happen today, which
makes the number of innocent victims in the Witch Hunts even more pertinent.
The witch-hunters could not speed up the process much, but imagine every
small village burning six or so women every week for a decade and you begin to
see how the big figures can build up. Some CONSERVATIVE authorities
claim that over 100,000 people were executed for witchcraft in Germany alone in
one of the gluts of witch-mania which lasted perhaps 30 years. There
is a distinct possibility therefore that that figure could be multiplied by a
factor of four and
duplicated in all European countries to cover the two hundred years span of the
burning times. Additionally, many Witch-hunters were in it
purely for the cash and a large percentage of those accused and maimed in
torture, gave up all they had in order to be released. The collateral
damage of people who were completely broken in health and spirit and who died
shortly afterwards but not included in the estimate of the number of those
executed, is completely ignored by the 'academic historians'.
As is the many impromptu lynch-law executions of witches which occurred without
any official church involvement as the craze took hold. As we have
seen repeated today in the media's war against paedophiles, accusations of
witchcraft by gossips often lead to vigilantes burning their houses down with
the owners inside.
Therefore a
maximum estimate of 13
million dead and a minimum estimate of 4 million dead
are probably as good as we are going to get.
However, in order to make sense of the killings and get a reliable idea of the
social EFFECTS of the burning times we need to make a comparison not only with
numbers but also with the size of the general population of the time and the
logistical difficulty in killing so many people when methods of mass destruction
were not available. When you look at it this way, as a percentage of the
general European population, FEWER people were killed in the world wars than
were executed for witchcraft. Therefore, in order to convey the
impact and the meaning of those Burning Times a claim of 13 million is a
perfectly acceptable figure for us to use today in order to get people to
understand the ramifications.
Any person who tries to nullify or ameliorate those despicable acts of sectarian murder is not worthy to title themselves Pagan.
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Disclaimer:
PAN realises that the vast majority of Christians are not fundamentalist or evangelical in make up and we only criticise religious extremists who seek to disenfranchise other faiths whilst bolstering their own. PAN does not in any way condone violence against any persons or property and we must state that we have always worked towards a more tolerant and equal society.