Invention of satanic witchcraft by medieval authorities was met with skepticism

https://theconversation.com/the-invention-of-satanic-witchcraft-by-medieval-authorities-was-initially-met-with-skepticism-140809

by Thevet • 6 years ago

179 202 6 years ago

theconversation.com

paulgerhardt• 6 years ago

One thing that becomes immediately apparent when visiting the medieval witchcraft museum in Iceland[1] was how strategic the use of Witchcraft accusations were by the middling elite.

One cunning foreign family with ties to occupying Denmark was able to secure land hold rights for nearly an entire peninsula from local Icelanders on the northwest through the strategic use of witchcraft accusations. During this period of occupation nearly 120 trials occurred over a 60 year period[2].

The people weren’t superstitious - they were corrupt.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strandagaldur

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B3n_R%C3%B6gnvaldsson

vmception4• 6 years ago

Those articles are more interesting than OP's article.

When I research a lot of wealthy families I frequently find their level of comfort not possible to replicate because it is something considered impropriety today. Taking advantage of an imbalance in the socioeconomic order that was promptly fixed as soon as anybody noticed.

ipsum2• 6 years ago

Could you give an example of that level of comfort? Servants were more common back then, but not sure what else.

TheSpiceIsLife• 6 years ago

not possible to replicate because it is something considered impropriety today

At first glance, but then we're forced to recall the entire Epstein shenanigans.

And that's only bits of insight in to that level of indulgent debauchery.

0823498723498722• 6 years ago

India is supposed to be an example. Families with extensive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagir holdings under the Mughals were apparently relatively easily convinced that their possibly de facto but definitely not de jure hereditary estates would be better protected under John Company, whose officers had grown up assuming de jure hereditary estate transmission.

arvinsim• 6 years ago

I believe that they exist today.

They leverage their power and connections to remain anonymous and away from public scrutiny.

fuzzfactor5• 6 years ago

The rich are different:

https://www.amazon.com/Rich-Are-Different-Priceless-Quotatio...

claudeganon3• 6 years ago

This is essentially the thesis of Silvia Federici’s tremendous book, “Caliban and the Witch.” Witch hunts were pursued to reorganize familial, gender, and labor relations to suit the needs of an emergent Capitalism:

For serfs, who tilled the land in exchange for a share of its crops, home was work, and vice versa; men and women grew the potatoes together. But in capitalism, waged laborers have to work outside the home all the time, which means someone else needs to be at home all the time, doing the domestic work. Gender roles, and the subjugation of women, became newly necessary.

Early feudal elites in rural Europe enclosed public land, rendering it private and controllable, and patriarchy enclosed women in “private” marriages, imposing on them the reproductive servitude of bearing men’s children and the emotional labor of caring for men’s every need. Pregnancy and childbirth, once a natural function, became a job that women did for their male husband-bosses—that is to say, childbirth became alienated labor. “Witches,” according to witch-hunting texts like the Malleus Maleficarum, were women who kept childbirth and pregnancy in female hands: midwives, abortionists, herbalists who provided contraception. They were killed to cement patriarchal power and create the subjugated, domestic labor class necessary for capitalism.

http://inthesetimes.com/article/21592/capitalism-witches-wom...

ertian• 6 years ago

Wouldn't it be nice if history were actually this simple?

The idea here is that Romans, with their pater familias, or the Confucian Chinese, for whom the father was a mini-emperor, were just preparing the way for capitalism, 2000+ years before the fact?

Marriage and home-bound women were not an invention of the late medival world. Women may well have been more free in the preceding period, but that was the exception, not the norm.

kimi2• 6 years ago

Frankly, seems rather far off. This is looking at the past through modern (or better, current news) eyes. The peaks of witch-hunting and capitalism are rather well spaced. And there was no need for patriarchy to do anything - they were firmly in control with zero contestants.

scarecrowbob• 6 years ago

You're going to have a tough sell with that for folks who haven't read her work. I have, and it was more or less the first thing I thought of when I read the title of the article.

I mean, if "primitive accumulation" isn't a thing you're curious about, then her work is just gonna not make a lot of sense... but I personally find her ideas quite convincing. So I am not surprised when folks who aren't in that political discussion reject theses like those out of hand.

So, yeah, I think it's relevant. Sorry you got folks who don't seem familiar with the material responding as if they were.

jonfw2• 6 years ago

Women and men have significant biological differences, and from my understanding of our evolution, they've had these significant differences for a much longer time that capitalism has existed. Evolution suggests that these biological differences result from differences in selection criteria, which supports the idea that men and women have served different roles over the majority of human existence.

Very high mortality rates associated with child birth meant that ability to birth and care for children used to be a highly selective trait. It's modern medicine that has made child birth and caring for children a much easier and safer endeavor, and allowed women to prioritize other roles in their life.

haukur• 6 years ago

Do you have any sources relating to the foreign family you mention, and of them securing landholding rights? Based on what I've found, the man that was burned wasn't rich (his family does appear to have become moderately well off by the time's standards at a later date, however).

I haven't found any mention of foreigners. The lawyer in the matter was Icelandic.

wutbrodo• 6 years ago

The _elites_ weren't superstitious, but that doesn't mean noone was. Evil always needs useful idiots to grab power, a dynamic that's only accelerated with the move to democracies (though to be clear, this isn't a knock on a democracy: I'm with Churchill when he says democracy is the least bad of all the forms we've tried).

olivermarks2• 6 years ago

Bailey's book he mentions here is called 'Origins of the witches sabbath'. The idea that satanic witchcraft was invented by mediaeval authorities is preposterous IMO. Occult practices go back to ancient Egypt and have been practiced in multiple civilizations as white, grey or black magic respectively. Black magic is what everyone obsesses over (attempts to use supernatural powers or magic for evil and selfish purposes). Grey and white are 'do no harm' or curative (health etc) efforts.

Michael Aquino has just died, some may be intrigued by his standing and history as evidence of 'witch craft' being alive and well today. https://burners.me/2020/06/29/michael-aquino-dead-was-leppo-...

I think the mediaeval purges were largely political and cynical property grabs along with a desire for populations to conform to dogmatic religions and drop ancient customs and beliefs

boomboomsubban• 6 years ago

How does an announcement of someone's death get off topic and start talking about how LaVey is a Zionist arms dealer and how frequently Ukraine comes up? What the hell is happening in that story?

olivermarks2• 6 years ago

It's definitely not just an announcement of someone's death...or the death of their 'Khat'... Steve Outtrim will provide you with the deepest rabbit holes, there are hours of video at the end of that post

cat199• 6 years ago

The idea that satanic witchcraft was invented by mediaeval authorities is preposterous IMO.

spot on

with a desire for populations to conform to dogmatic religions and drop ancient customs and beliefs

or, to stop manipulative and cultic human trafficking / extortion / blackmail rings dressed up as 'religion' because 'my culture'

kimi2• 6 years ago

I have been reading a bit of local history, and I came across an interesting mail exchange in 1500-1600 between the church of Como (far north, large mountain territory, witch trials) and the central authorities of Rome. Basically Como was going "Please help! witches are taking over." and Rome was trying to do damage control by replying "You bunch of clowns cannot possibly believe that.". Of course in very polite and legalistic church Latin, but this was the gist of it.

ithkuil2• 6 years ago

Reference please, I'd love to read!

ogurechny4• 6 years ago

There's a stereotype that witch hunts were “mass hysteria” (as Wikipedia calls them) affecting stupid backwards people (another common stereotype) or stupid believers (a stereotype with a militant atheism flavour). In these cases, we would see more witch hunts the earlier the age is or the stronger the church is. People weren't much more stupid than people today are. Moreover, it's a fairly recent era, I'd even say that the amount of significant differences between city dweller of that time and traditional peasant of that time might be bigger that between city dweller of that time and city dweller of today.

Witch hunts were guided by individuals feeling the opportunity, and, like in more recent purges, bureaucratic and societal structures were abused for some ends. Similarly, there was little resistance to the runaway machine because of the lack of alternative structures and ideas. In a way, they are early examples of dystopian stories realized.

Believing that nowadays we live in a different time and witch hunts are impossible is an extreme shortsightedness.

Taek• 6 years ago

I mean we only need to look back as far as the red scare to find a modern example of witch-hunting being used for political gain.

bryanrasmussen• 6 years ago

Or the 80's and the U.S Satanism scare to find actual witch-hunting.

ogurechny4• 6 years ago

Do you mean the ongoing or the previous one?

klyrs• 6 years ago

Communism and socialism are still curse words among the right to this very day. The authoritarian left is a boogeyman; the libertarian left want nothing to do with that shit either but good luck convincing somebody that you're not a tankie.

Mirioron2• 6 years ago

I think the "stupid backwards people" refers to the people that went along with it. There might be people guiding others, but if nobody believed that witches exist then this wouldn't work. It's more a case of blind belief in authority figures.

For this same reason witch-hunts can easily happen today. The conservative kid that was smeared as a racist while standing around smiling, despite there being no proof, is an example of very similar behavior by people.

catalogia• 6 years ago

but if nobody believed that witches exist then this wouldn't work.

I don't think that's right, you have to consider the possibility of widespread preference falsification. Namely people who do not believe in witches but do believe all their neighbors believe in witches.

PeterStuer• 6 years ago

And many of the ordinary people didn't go along because they were stupid. They knew full wel that not going along upped the risk of being accused of being a witch significantly.

KKKKkkkk1• 6 years ago

Why can't witch hunts be mass hysteria affecting stupid backwards people and be instigated by manipulative elites at the same time? Even mask wearing during a pandemic can be turned into a culture war.

ogurechny4• 6 years ago

That would boil everything down to pure power and fear of that power, which is an explanation a bit too simple. In countless other villages across the globe, an attempt of some official to try someone for being a witch would result in a good beating of that idiot (even if villagers did believe in witches in general). No, they went along that what was existing to be went along. People do generally stop on red light even if there is no policeman around, everyone expects a shop to sell goods instead of having a swimming pool and a giraffe inside (there is no one to force that), and witch trials were trials, not mere accusations.

kstenerud8• 6 years ago

The modern word is "moral panic", and it's used just as effectively to destroy rivals as it was in times of old. The only difference is that we don't kill the losers anymore, but rather imprison, harass, fire, and bankrupt them. Anytime there's a moral shift (good or bad), there's an opportunity to co-opt it in order to remove rivals, and it works very nicely because all you need to do is sow seeds of doubt about someone if they happen to be in a vulnerable group, and then let the mob do the rest:

- Witch trials

- Reign of Terror

- Utah

- Lynch Mobs

- Prohibition

- Kristallnacht

- Wartime relocations

- The red scare

- The Dungeons & Dragons scare

- The war on drugs

- The war on terror

- The pedophile scare

- #metoo

- BLM

It's unfortunate about the last two because a lot of good came of them, but one must not let a moral shift go to waste.

runawaybottle5• 6 years ago

A more understated one was the lead up to the Iraq war where people were labeled “unpatriotic” for opposing the war (or scared of being labeled unpatriotic). For example, Dixie Chicks were blacklisted for being outspoken against the war. This would almost qualify as a “soft” witch hunt, but essentially the same strategy, a Scarlett letter of sorts.

The list is exhaustive (as you enumerated), and quite the recurring pattern. Unfortunately, at scale, it’s a super effective strategy with consequences only being realized way after the fact, by which point there is another wave already forming in another direction.

pjc507• 6 years ago

You were going so well until the last two, where you've ignored the very real problems that gave rise to them. There are very few examples of overreach compared to "underreach" there?

danieltillett• 6 years ago

The thing about the last two is we are in the middle of them rather than being history. Every moral panic that descended into darkness started out in the light.

riffraff2• 6 years ago

Utah? I am not a US person, how is a whole state a moral panic?

drdeadringer• 6 years ago

The Dungeons & Dragons scare

Do you mean Dungeons & Dragons specifically or are you including the Satanic Panic in that phrasing?

netcan• 6 years ago

Assuming, as a starting point, that religious people believe what they say they believe is reasonable, and respectful.

The blending of what you belive and beliefs that benefit you is always relevant. It doesn't mean that no one believes.

There's a reason why we use the term "witch hunt" idiomatically. The way they happen almost always involves a belief system at a nexus with interests.

amelius• 6 years ago

Believing that nowadays we live in a different time and witch hunts are impossible is an extreme shortsightedness.

The main difference between now and then is the way information spreads.

KingOfCoders• 6 years ago

What is often missed, the mix of sexes of murdered "witches" depends on the country. 20% of murdered victims were male, in some countries way above 50% (not to belittle female victims in any way).

aaron6952• 6 years ago

This still happens, a recent case of satanic witchcraft trials (2020 Australia) -

At the time it was called as what it was by logical people, the exact same pattern of hysteria has been seen before, but they still had their lives ruined.

https://www.dailymercury.com.au/news/circus-abuse-case-was-t...

ficklepickle• 6 years ago

That has really piqued my interest. How did this happen? The article says charges were dropped, but does not explain the wider context or how these very serious charges got so far with no evidence.

I found some more information from an article[0] from 2018. The only evidence appears to have been the testimony of a young child. The disturbing allegations, like a needle in the eye and multiple rapes, would have presumably left physical evidence of injury.

That article I linked makes no update about the charges being dropped. That falsely accused family has been split up for two years because of this, yet their exoneration didn't seem to get much coverage at all.

I would really like to understand the sequence of events that initiated this. I find it unlikely that the kid came home one day and came up with this completely unprompted.

Do you know of any resources for gaining a better contextual understanding of this bizarre incident?

Surely somebody has written about this case, but I haven't found it yet. I'm torn between thanking you for pointing this out and cursing you because I'm not going to be able to think about anything else until I figure out how this went on for so long.

[0] https://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/courts-law/bail-gra...

aaron6952• 6 years ago

For specifics just keep Googling. But no media wants to pick the real story up. You will just have to piece it all together.

In general try watching "Capturing the Friedmans" for how this happens.

Satanic rituals hysteria was big in the 80s but no docos stand out. Try youtube.

Else it's familiar patterns meshed together.

It happened in a "small town" which seems to still matter.

This was a circus which has a story book gypsies feel even though that's stupid, since it wasn't even a traditional circus. But it kinda shows the medias roll since it's a good headline not good reality.

blackrock• 6 years ago

Fun thought. What if in the future, witchcraft and sorcery and magic, is rediscovered. And it comes to rule the land, and the people.

But in actuality, sorcery is really just applied computer science.

Like, in the future, some engineer manages to tap into the quantum realm, which allows for all kinds of mystical apparitions to manifest, but instead, it’s really just another quantum artifact. But our limited understanding of the quantum probability reality, makes it seem like magic.

And all the hocus pocus incantations, are simply voice recognized commands, that triggers a quantum computer system, to activate some quantum subsystem functionality.

snovv_crash• 6 years ago

Have you read The Laundry Files? It's a Lovecraftian / James Bond mashup on exactly this idea.

Thorrez3• 6 years ago

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws

amlozano• 6 years ago

If you discard any quantum computing, this is similar to the plot to the series of novels starting with "Off to Be the Wizard" by Scott Meyer. A fun, quick little read about a person who discovers the source database of reality, and then promptly starts messing with it.

samuel• 6 years ago

I'm reading "Rise and fall of the dodo" and the plot is mostly what you described.

Mirioron2• 6 years ago

Or in 2020: "China created the virus and must be held responsible!"

Except that viruses jump from other animals to humans all the time. It can happen in any country.

throwaway_pdp094• 6 years ago

Can and did. I think china are getting it in the neck not so much for its origins but the way they mishandled it early on.

riffraff2• 6 years ago

China is criticized for its handling of the epidemic, but the "it was made in a lab in China" conspiracy theories are very very common.

sudosysgen4• 6 years ago

Which is not an evidence based criticism nor reasonable. The virus was already in Europe by December, maybe even November.

ekianjo3• 6 years ago

How strange that most recent pandemics mainly come from the same place. Surely that's only pure coincidence.

RobertKerans2• 6 years ago

It's definitely not coincidence, because they don't come from the same place. Unless you're classifying Mexico (swine flu), China (SARS & Covid), DR Congo (Ebola) and Saudi Arabia (MERS) as the same place

dang• 6 years ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23730288.

0823498723498722• 6 years ago

A parallel european change between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries was the nature of mounted tournaments. In the thirteenth century, tournaments were not far removed from wargames, occurred over the entire terrain between two villages, and were generally open to anyone who had the panoply and training. By the fifteenth century, tournaments were more of a spectacle, occurred in special jousting lists, and didn't admit participants outside a hereditary aristocracy.

lostgame• 6 years ago

AFAIK truly organized witchcraft, in the form of the Magickal Orders and Secret Societies that make up the majority of the study of Western Ceremonial Magick, is a fairly recent phenomenon, based on my (fairly thorough) research.

I love the study of modern occultism; and Ceremonial Magick, in particular.

Synaesthesia• 6 years ago

I read a recent article about witchcraft and it said that women were also persecuted for being independent and to resist Alisa the traditional patriachy.

aritmo2• 6 years ago

As ironic as it may be, there are cases of "witchcraft" now in India. Just like in the Middle Ages, even now it is being used as an excuse to rob the land of the poor.

There are many videos and documentaries on YT on this.

chairmanwow1• 6 years ago

What is the premise? There are accusations of witches and then what is the outcome?

aritmo2• 6 years ago

"Witchcraft" is an excuse to socially isolate people, and in some cases arrest or kill them.

drno123• 6 years ago

I don’t know how much the numbers we have today are accurate, but I would like to see the following stats: 1. Ratio between men and women executed for witchcraft. 2. Number of people executed for witchcraft by century. 3. Number of people executed for witchcraft by denomination (catholic, lutheran, calvinist, etc)

bobthechef• 6 years ago

Witch hunts were largely a Northern European/Protestant phenomenon. The article doesn't say this explicitly, but in a roundabout way acknowledges this citing examples of how the Church largely saw witchcraft as superstition (which itself is a grave sin if done with full knowledge):

"Superstition of any description is a transgression of the First Commandment: "I am the Lord thy God,-- thou shalt not have strange gods before me. Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, nor the likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath . . . thou shalt not adore them nor serve them" (Exodus 20:2-5). It is also against the positive law of the Church, which visits the worst kinds of superstitions with severe punishments, and against the natural law inasmuch as it runs counter to the dictates of reason in the matter of man's relations to God. Such objective sinfulness is inherent in all superstitious practices from idolatry down to the vainest of vain observances, of course in very different degrees of gravity. With regard to the subjective guilt attaching to them it must be borne in mind that no sin is mortal unless committed with full knowledge of its grievous wickedness and with full deliberation and consent. Of these essential factors the first is often wanting entirely, and the second is only imperfectly present. The numerous cases in which the event seemed to justify the superstitious practice, and the universality of such incongruous beliefs and performances, though they may not always induce inculpable ignorance, may possibly obscure the knowledge and weaken the will to a point incompatible with mortal sin. As a matter of fact, many superstitions of our own day have been acts of genuine piety at other times, and may be so still in the hearts of simple folk." [1]

Aquinas also devotes question 92 of the Second Part of the Second Part of the Summa to supersition [0]. However, none of this denies the reality of the demonic.

[0] https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3092.htm

[1] https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14339a.htm

[2] http://jimmyakin.com/2020/06/thomas-aquinas-on-the-occult.ht...

Jorge1o1• 6 years ago

Grg

praveen9920• 6 years ago

Don't want to be political on HN but I see lot of parallels between now and then.

A plague effected region, ruled by conservative parties, opposing science and logic in the name of religion or freedom. persecution of people who either look or do something different from their own.

Printing press helped in spreading both lies and truth. Now a days, mainstream media and social media is being used to spread all kinds of gibberish.

I won't be surprised if our own version of witch hunts starts soon, either in the name of nationalism or something else.

Sorry about the rant

ascotan2• 6 years ago

Witch hunts have never actually gone away they just changed form.

fuzzfactor5• 6 years ago

Well you still can't fix stupid, and superstition has always been an indicator of stupid.

But a little superstition can be fun, after all my own grandmother was a fortune teller herself.

As a historian who studies medieval magic, I’m fascinated by how a coterie of church and state authorities conspired to develop and promote this new concept of witchcraft for their own purposes.

The rest of us should pay more attention to other ways the church and state authorities still develop and promote other unsuitable concepts to the disadvantage of their subjects.

Authoritarianism can put a disadvantageous twist on just about anything it comes into contact with.

Blindly following authority for conformity's sake tends to perpetuate and amplify an authority's residual unresolved stupidity, which we all have at least a bit of even when it started out to be just a little fun or tradition in some way.

It's difficult enough to pass worthwhile findings of the millennia from one generation to the next, and one reason things should be continuously questioned is to focus on the difference between unsubstantiated superstition and merely outdated or historical concepts as the bulk of mankind's knowledge is stewarded into the future.

There's a lot of needles in that haystack.

The university is supposed to be the meeting place between the bulk of the traditional knowledge being passed on, and many new findings being validated and developed.

Other institutions do this too, sometimes on a larger scale with narrower focus. Some of these are more academically oriented and intersect with academia more than others.

Traditional knowledge should be (re)validated as you go along too.

It takes a lot of questioning to accurately identify the stupid stuff that should no longer be passed on as acceptable.

During those times when questioning is supressed, or development laboratories not available, it would seem the most risky for human progress to be stalled or reversed.

Some people are anti-progress anyway, for both real and superstitious reasons.

In the painting of the 14th Century lecture hall at the University of Bologna, this does not look like the kind of environment where questions over unvalidatable teachings could be enthusiastically entertained.

Likely somewhat familiar with those who attend university far from Italy half a millennium later.

But at this time isn't this virtually indistinguishable from a religious teaching session where the intention was mastery of texts and concepts intended to never be questioned except under severe penalty?

Today's institutions, universities, and corporations are often still striving to be as legendary in the same traditional way, when they focus on eminence & authoritarianism over skepticism, with each elevation moving an individual one step further beyond doubts which could challenge the eminence hierarchy.

These are the ones more subject to actions or inactions based on unfounded superstition to some extent, and can not be easily corrected from one generation to the next.

And one of the reasons people still say you can't fix stupid.

If you don't constantly scrutinize authorities for harmful superstitions, you could eventually end up with a real witch hunt where some kind of heads do roll in some way.

dennis_jeeves5• 6 years ago

Witch hunts have never actually gone away they just changed form.

You are bang on. Anybody who has observed/read past occurrences of similar phenomenon will tell you that this is a modern version of the witch hunt.

CryptoPunk4• 6 years ago

>persecution of people who either look or do something different from their own.

Who is being persecuted now?

The Cancel Culture is much more a modern corollary to witch hunts than anything conservatives are doing.

Conservatives exhibit witch-hunting tendencies to some extent, in relation to liberals, where they promote unhinged conspiracy theories about them trying to subjucate the masses.

But these conservatism inspired forms of persecution are much less pronounced than something like Cancel Culture, as they are not being perpetrated by people who control the commanding heights of the cultural landscape.

krustyburger3• 6 years ago

Ascribing the status of a capital noun to “cancel culture” is something reactionaries have been doing to try to paint all of their (many) ideological foes into the same category. The use of this term is an effort to distract from the fact that the vast majority of the celebrities who have been “cancelled” have actually victimized others or in other ways taken actions that were offensive or worse. In short, the only people who believe in a monolithic “Cancel Culture” are those who have spent too much time absorbing right wing talking points.

ithkuil2• 6 years ago

Is "cancel culture" new? What happened in the past to people who would say inconvenient things (swear words or blasfemies in TV, being homosexual, ...)?

Bigotry was always there. It's just that nowadays we have a different cultural majority.

What's irritating about the present situation is that nominally the current cultural majority was against the bigots of the past and yet is applying pressure against who thinks differently and thus becoming bigot themselves (bigotry: "intolerance towards those who hold different opinions from oneself."). I'm sure people have opinions about whether the reasons to apply the corrective pressures are well founded or at least in good faith ( also have personal opinions about that) but that's not so important IMHO; people can be wrong: dogmas are dangerous; we should be able to have candid conversations about things.

That's said, I have the feeling that the critiques of "cancel culture" coming from the right are not based on the desire for an open dialogue but more a combination of whataboutism and playing victims to strengthen in-group bonds.

This is driving us apart even more. I want to know how do people who think differently than I do think.

dennis_jeeves5• 6 years ago

Don't want to be political on HN but I see lot of parallels between now and then.

The things is that (unfortunately) even heath/medicine is very political, so it is fair to bring it up.

spiritplumber• 6 years ago

Satanic witchcraft considered harmful.

fuzzfactor5• 6 years ago

It still lives and popped up in the 21st century.

Different curses can have different effects in different situations.

Even computers or equipment can seem possessed sometimes.

In the 90's all we had were IDE hard disk drives with their parallel connections made using ribbon cables. Floppies for backup booting were parallel too.

Over ten years ago the serial connections started to show up on HDDs which otherwise appeared no differently. USB flash drives for backup booting have always been serial as the name implies, besides being _universal_ (to boot :) years earlier.

Prayers failed to be answered when today it's more rare for average users to have removable backup boot media standing by, or easily and quickly whipped up when needed. Plus USB drives are less _universal_ than floppies and can not yet be expected to reliably even fundamentally boot on every PC as widely. Without warning they can easily give you the feeling they switch over to the dark side simply as a visible manifestation of evil that can remain lurking.

One day my buddy gets a new PC and wants to put his previous HDD in there as secondary storage.

So he opens it up and does not find the correct parallel connectors available, calls me up and says "Why is there SATA printed on the plugs of the power supply connectors?"

We could only both agree it was because there was not enough room for Satan's full name.

Numerous curses were employed afterward, all to no avail.

And don't get me started on ghost data, after all there's nothing to be afraid of.

Edit: An effective ritual is to actually zero your drive space appropriately, every time you get the chance as long as it makes sense. It's actually superstitious to think you never need to do this. Timely meditation, and prayer for a fortunate outcome during this period would not seem to be inappropriate, or even blessing of the device. Not a waste of time going back to the garden. It does seem to result in less chance of having it run completely astray and acting absolutely haunted.

dukoid• 6 years ago

Some time ago, I read an article that the inquisition only really stopped when the economic incentive structure for the ones driving it was dismantled (funerals and fees paid by relatives of the accused). Unfortunately, I can't find it now...

p.s. if somebody is aware of the exact source, would appreciate it very much...

fallingfrog• 6 years ago

Much like cash bail and civil asset forfeiture..

ascotan2• 6 years ago

Witches real => true. Earth orbits the sun => false.

aronpye• 6 years ago

Witch burning, guilty until proven innocent, accuser always believed, now why does all that sound so familiar?

dreen• 6 years ago

Universities were being founded, and scholars in Western Europe began to pore over ancient texts as well as learned writings from the Muslim world. Some of these presented complex systems of magic that claimed to draw on astral forces or conjure powerful spirits. Gradually, these ideas began to gain intellectual clout.

So could we say in other words, all that happened as a side effect of Education? Greater exposure of ideological minefields to people highly susceptible?

Reminds me of all the conspiracy videos on the internet you know. And people who spend an insane amount of hours pouring over those.

empath752• 6 years ago

Information without wisdom is a dangerous thing. Merely reading books isn’t an education.

bediger4000• 6 years ago

I'm struck by how the description of witch conventions matches the description of "elite pedovores" that the Qanon conspiracy people promote:

"horrific assemblies where witches gathered and worshiped demons, had orgies, ate murdered babies and performed other abominable acts"

The Qanon people are laughably inept, gullible and the thought leaders are probably grifters, but still, remarkable convergence between the witch cons described above and "hollywood elite" that keep children in tunnels underneath central park, killing these "tunnel tots" in horrible ways to harvest adrenochrome for use as youth potionsl

krustyburger3• 6 years ago

I don’t think this is coincidence. Even without invoking Jung, it’s easy to observe that the spiritual beliefs and cultural prejudices we have now are of one continuous piece with the notions people had centuries ago. This makes the QAnon promulgators even more sinister, because they are tapping into fables and dark legends in order to further a specific political agenda, and a destructive one at that.

krapp2• 6 years ago

I'm struck by how the description of witch conventions matches the description of "elite pedovores" that the Qanon conspiracy people promote:

Both the medieval fear of witches and the modern fear of "Hollywood elites" have their roots in anti-semitism. There's a reason witches were often portrayed with giant hook noses, after all. Judaism has often been negatively correlated with occult elitism, academia (see the actual origins of the term "cultural marxism"), Hollywood and left-wing politics. Hillary Clinton drinking the blood of babies is just a modern retelling of the ancient belief that Jews secretly did the same.

flowport• 6 years ago

By calling people suspicious of powerful individuals anti-semitic you are protecting those powerful individuals in a shroud of identity politics despite evidence and survivor testimony - while simultaneously lowering the reputation of an entire religion. Also the Hillary Clinton conspiracy theory [0][1] is not a modern retelling - she's not even Jewish. I'm not sure what your point is...

[0] https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/15893 [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EsJLNGVJ7E

rxsel• 6 years ago

Same power game/struggle, different time.

dennis_jeeves5• 6 years ago

The current corona virus scare mongering can be considered to be in the same league of witch hunt. It may not be identical but it has similar underpinnings:

-A seeming know demon: the virus,

- Somebody's rights are taken away: in this case it's the laymen, and small business owners etc.

- It keeps the peasants (the laymen) too engaged with the fear, and sufficiently distracted to not start revolting against their rulers.

Invention of satanic witchcraft by medieval authorities was met with skepticism

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