Case Study:
The European Witch-Hunts, c. 1450-1750
and Witch-Hunts Today

[snip]

How many died?

“The most dramatic [recent] changes in our vision of the Great Hunt [have] centered on the death toll,” notes Jenny Gibbons. She points out that estimates made prior to the mid-1970s, when detailed research into trial records began, “were almost 100% pure speculation.” (Gibbons, Recent Developments.) “On the wilder shores of the feminist and witch-cult movements,” writes Robin Briggs, “a potent myth has become established, to the effect that 9 million women were burned as witches in Europe; gendercide rather than genocide. [See, e.g., the witch-hunt documentary "The Burning Times".] This is an overestimate by a factor of up to 200, for the most reasonable modern estimates suggest perhaps 100,000 trials between 1450 and 1750, with something between 40,000 and 50,000 executions, of which 20 to 25 per cent were men.”

[snip]

Who was responsible?

The medieval witch-hunts have long been depicted as part of a “war against women” conducted exclusively or overwhelmingly by men, especially those in positions of central authority. Deborah Willis notes that “more polemical” feminist accounts “are likely to portray the witch as a heroic protofeminist resisting patriarchal oppression and a wholly innocent victim of a male-authored reign of terror designed to keep women in their place.” (Willis, Malevolent Nurture, p. 12.)

In fact, the stigmatizing, victimizing, and murdering of accused “witches” is more accurately seen as a collaborative enterprise between men and women at the local level. “The historical record suggests that both men and women found it easiest to fix these fantasies [of witchcraft], and turn them into horrible reality, when they were attached to women. It is really crucial to understand that misogyny in this sense was not reserved to men alone, but could be just as intense among women.” Most of the accusations originated in “conflicts [that] normally opposed one woman to another, with men liable to become involved only at a later stage as ancillaries to the original dispute.” Briggs adds that “most informal accusations were made by women against other women, … [and only] leaked slowly across to the men who controlled the political structures of local society.” At the trial level, his research on the French province of Lorraine found that

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I learned so much from this.

I was declared a witch myself in ireland in a secret court- for being too powerful for a woman- and ordered to walk the streets by a male judge.

Yes, we have secret courts still- called family courts, and women- powerful ones- who want to escape violence are demonised to bring them back under the control of the Roman Catholic Cult.

What lectures I got about leaving a marriage- How dare I do such a thing.!!

I was gagged from telling anyone until my children were all 18.

Now I can speak. Now I understand more and more.

Witch trials were not something I have heard of in school- as her- story is not wriiten about much.

In 2007 I met 2 mothers in liverpool UK- also labelled witches in court- this time the judge was a woman- but a patriarchal one who knowingly ordered 6 children to be raped, tortured, sold for sex etc in the care of a foster carer.

I noticed the spirits of the old witches still there at the Royal Courts of Justice waiting for justice.

I am honoured to know a strong male who helped reempower me.

I am honoured to know Leslie from Holy Hormones Honey who also helped me understand why the male medical mafia wanted control over our sexuality, reproduction.

But this review put all the pieces of the jigsaw together.

Thank you so much.