So did pagans actually hold rituals of witchcraft in the way Christians claim [e.g. dancing with goat dude, kissing anuse]?
Was there really a cult that practiced this way and if they were, were they linked to any certain ethnicities?
Where our idea of "witches" come from? What made them different from the pagan/animistic/shamanistic practices of a mainstream Europe of only 100-400[?] years before?
Wasn't there a time when Christianity and non-Christian cults lived peacefully side-by-side as Buddhists with Taoists?
So did pagans actually hold rituals of witchcraft in the way Christians claim [e.g. dancing with goat dude...
Carson Perry
Christian Adams
Christianity, like Islam, is a religion seeking universal recognition (worship by all humans on the planet) - when the religion isn't accepted peacefully then of course you need some kind of coercion. I'm sure you can figure out the rest.
Robert Sanders
Since nearly all the literature on the subject is written by churchmen, you're not going to get much in the way of objective hard information.
It can be very hard to distinguish among three things:
(1) worship of pagan gods
(2) folk magic and medecine independent of religion
(3) Turning Christianity on its head and worshiping the Devil (saying the Lord's Prayer backwards, for instance.)
#3 would have come about much later, whe Christianity was the established thing that people wanted to rebel against.
Eli Jackson
Witchcraft is different from paganism. In a rough summery, witchcraft is calling upon dark supernatural sources to do your bidding. Despite popular memes propagated by the ignorant, Abrahamic religions aren't the only theologies which oppose witchcraft. Practicing dark arts was considered immoral and illegal in pagan Greece and Rome, as well as pretty much anywhere you had high civilization.
Hudson Howard
Those "dark supernatural sources" are of course competing religions. Praying and scrificing to the RIGHT gods to do your bidding is mainstream religion.
"Dark arts" might include things like poisoning, which was just a bit of medicine used for evil.
Christian Watson
>Those "dark supernatural sources" are of course competing religions
No...not at all. Societies from across the world/history have bans on witchcraft. Caesar Augustus issued a strong edict against witchcraft. I remember reading Shinto Japan had a similar one. The reasons should be obvious. No one wants a spell cast on them.
Colton Carter
>actually hold rituals of witchcraft
Yes.
>in the way Christians claim
Sometimes? Depends on the claim. Not all texts on witchfinding were as goofy as Malleus.
>[e.g. dancing with goat dude, kissing anuse]?
Nah.
>were they linked to any certain ethnicities?
Often, though that would depend on where you were and the sociopolitical climate. Basques got targeted for deportation and exile in the new world for Witchcraft-like practices via the Books of St. Cyprian which would be a contributing stream to latter day Voodoo and/or Afro-Carib religions. You can read more in the Devil in the Land of the Holy Cross
>the idea of "witches" come from
Depends?
The modern idea of female ugly witches dates back to the Formicarius, written 1436-1438 by Johannes Nider during the Council of Basel and first printed in 1475.
>differences
Many "witches" were cunning men and women, and were often practicing materials that in one way or another end up deriving through things like the Greek Magickal Papyri. In terms of the "objects" of practice, such as talismans, witch-jugs, etc., you wouldn't see much difference between 1400's witchcraft and 200CE witchcraft. That said the methods and mechanisms often changed. Evokations in half remembered languages get replaced by Psalms, etc.
>peaceful cohabitation
Maybe in the earliest of times but by the time Christianity seized state power consulting with the Pagan methods of old was punishable by death on Imperial decree, multiple times over. Or, Churchmen? Carlo Ginzburg wasn't a churchman. Nor Andrew Chumbley, nor Emma Willby or Ron Hutton and other scholars of historical witchcraft. That said the blurry lines you see in the first two is a legit problem. The third part is more questionable, as it's clear when something like Grimorium Verum goes full Luciferian.
Matthew Hernandez
Is it? Where's the point at which we can say that witchcraft "for sure" breaks with Paganism in the form of the GMP? How about the Galdrabok? What about the Svartkonstböcker?
Witchcraft is not all "dark forces", though it's often used as such by anthropologists, and a good example of this would be the Grimorie of Arthur Gauntlet, the records of a London cunningman who more or less outright refused to traffic with "dark forces" but still practices a form of folk magick.
Use of the GMP and the Goes in Greece was considered distasteful at worst, and you surely weren't going to get cast into the fire for making talismans.
Well I mean yes but I would never say that the "dark forces" are always alien religion. Sometimes it's just literally the devil and not code for anything.
Anthropologists have a hard time trying to categorize this stuff. I've seen sorcery and witchcraft used interchangeably to refer to malefic forces, but it's clear from our own Western sources that witchcraft was not always used for "harm" purposes.
Nathaniel Morgan
>So did pagans actually hold rituals of witchcraft in the way Christians claim
"Witchcraft" was a convenient way for the clergy to eliminate the members of Christian cults that opposed the prevailing dogma of the time. Read Europe's Inner Demons for more on this, it's a very fascinating study.
This changed in around the 14th Century with the release of treatises on witchcraft that stressed the idea of covens and made an even greater emphasis on devil worship. From then on people were looking for witches because they were witches, not because they were heretics.
Justin Murphy
>Where's the point at which we can say that witchcraft "for sure" breaks with Paganism in the form of the GMP?
Paganism just isn't witchcraft. "paganism" means rustic, rural and implies a large quantities of diverse beliefs. Were certain pagan practices confused by Christians as being witchcraft when they really weren't? It's possible, and i'd believe a source which stated as much. But to claim " paganism is witchcraft" is just nonsense. May I divert your attention again to the multiple edicts in pre-Christian Europe which targeted witchcraft specifically as being something deviant and contrary mainstream religious practices?
> How about the Galdrabok? What about the Svartkonstböcker? Witchcraft is not all "dark forces", though it's often used as such by anthropologists, and a good example of this would be the Grimorie of Arthur Gauntlet, the records of a London cunningman who more or less outright refused to traffic with "dark forces" but still practices a form of folk magick.
Things such as Charivari existed well into Christian Europe and even thrived. But "Folk Magic" isn't witchcraft.
But things such as the Charivari existed continuously in Europe throughout it's Christian era.
Hunter Myers
>Carlo Ginzburg wasn't a churchman. Nor Andrew Chumbley, nor Emma Willby or Ron Hutton and other scholars of historical witchcraft.
I was talking about primary sources, not recent historians.
Wyatt Lee
>Wasn't there a time when Christianity and non-Christian cults lived peacefully side-by-side as Buddhists with Taoists?
Not really.
Zachary Jackson
The fact that ancient Romans and Japanese issued edicts against it does not mean it wasn't a competing religion.
You seem to be defining "witchcraft" as "magic used for evil", which means committing a crime with magic as the tool (poisoning, curses).
Magic used for good, if it were peceived as working, would be incorporated into the mainstream culture. Technology is magic that works.
Jaxon Fisher
>Magic used for good
That's called White Magic and it's separate from witchcraft.
>Technology is magic that works.
Magic is the manipulation of spiritual/astral planes. Technology is essentially material tools. You can use technology to aid in magical practices, but technology is not magic
Joshua Jones
>The fact that ancient Romans and Japanese issued edicts against it does not mean it wasn't a competing religion.
I disagree. Witchcraft is a craft. It's in the very name. The craft in this case is the manipulation of dark forces.
Owen Myers
>Magic is the manipulation of spiritual/astral planes.
You sound like a believer. I don't think we're going to find common ground on that.
Landon Lopez
>I don't think we're going to find common ground on that.
At any rate, it isn't technology.
Sebastian Hernandez
From a scientific point of view, magic is anything people do in an attempt to affect something. Attaching a stone to a stick to make an idol to pray to is magic, until it gets used as a hammer. Then it's technology.
Austin Lewis
>From a scientific point of view, magic is anything people do in an attempt to affect something.
You just made up that up.
Austin Nelson
*just made that up.
Juan Cook
>"Witchcraft" was a convenient way for the clergy to eliminate the members of Christian cults
Really it was a convenient cover for a LOT various forms of sociopolitical repression. Doesn't change some folks were actually doing the deed.
>paganism" means rustic, rural and implies a large quantities of diverse beliefs
Most of which aren't exactly mutually exclusive with the idea of folk magics for weal or woe. Plenty of African and South American tribes practice what could be easily termed "witchcraft", like the Warao Hobeo and their undead parrot-god.
>But "Folk Magic" isn't witchcraft.
Then what exactly is, because frankly I think leaning on the 1st C. usage of "pagan" as opposed to the modern colloquial is a tad pedantic for my tastes.
Even then there are some GOOD primary sources from clergy like Saducismus triumphatus which is where we see the first examples of witch-bottles and how they were used.
>White Magic and it's separate from witchcraft
Mate, white magick and black magick are INCREDIBLY modern distinctions. It arose sometime between Waite and Levi.
That's sorta close to a definition Crowley fielded (Induction of change via will) but to be honest that was applied to a fairly narrow set of practices.
Bentley Edwards
>Most of which aren't exactly mutually exclusive
But in this case it clearly did. Otherwise various governments from multiple diverse traditions wouldn't have condemned it while being "pagan".
>Then what exactly is,
Trafficking in dark forces to put spells on people/achieve your desires. This is folk magic atlasobscura.com
and it ain't witchcraft.
>Mate, white magick and black magick are INCREDIBLY modern distinctions.
That doesn't mean it's not of value if you are going to categorize every ritual with supernatural results as magic. Which you are doing, sense you are claiming folk magic IS witchcraft
>That's sorta close to a definition Crowley fielded
Somebody I don't look up to nor see as an authority. That definition is to me, silly. You can use technology to perform magic, but the actual magic is not technology.
Eli Lopez
You sound like someone talking about "dark forces" and "manipulation of spiritual/astral planes" as if you think such things actually exist.
If that's the case, don't expect to be taken seriously at all.
Blake Reed
>Witchcraft or witchery broadly means the practice of and belief in magical skills and abilities exercised by solitary practitioners and groups. Witchcraft is a broad term that varies culturally and societally, and thus can be difficult to define with precision, therefore cross-cultural assumptions about the meaning or significance of the term should be applied with caution.
>In anthropological terminology, witches differ from sorcerers in that they don't use physical tools or actions to curse; their maleficium is perceived as extending from some intangible inner quality, and one may be unaware of being a witch, or may have been convinced of his/her nature by the suggestion of others. This definition was pioneered in a study of central African magical beliefs by E. E. Evans-Pritchard, who cautioned that it might not correspond with normal English usage.
>Historians of European witchcraft have found the anthropological definition difficult to apply to European and British witchcraft, where witches could equally use (or be accused of using) physical techniques, as well as some who really had attempted to cause harm by thought alone. European witchcraft is seen by historians and anthropologists as an ideology for explaining misfortune; however, this ideology has manifested in diverse ways...
en.wikipedia.org
But I mean even if we're using the early and strict anthropological intention of "harm and harm alone", even Crick argues that anthropologists should abandon the term because its associations are determined by the history of Europe.
Jack Edwards
Hell, I believe they exist but this sort of harsh compartmentalization of these spheres and non-flexible definitions sorta flies in the face of global historical and contemporary emergences of practice.
Really it comes down to the definitions we agree on and as it stands not even historians and anthropologists can really agree to standard between disciplines.
Leo Diaz
The problem is that you think European paganism was witchcraft because you are partial to witchcraft, partial to neopaganism and opposed to "Abrahamism". I'm only explaining that European paganism wasn't witchcraft and that multiple pagan traditions throughout the world were/are opposed to witchcraft (not just "Abrahamism") so obviously there is something about witchcraft that makes people uneasy that simply isn't rooted in "Abrahamic" theology. I think it should it obvious why, but you're trying to shoehorn any form of magic as being witchcraft.
Oliver Hall
>you think European paganism was witchcraft
What?
No, I'm saying that they aren't inherently mutually exclusive as evidenced by syncretic materials like the Greek Magickal Papyri.
>partial to neopaganism
I am?
>and opposed to "Abrahamism"
Huh, I didn't know that about myself, I guess I made a mistake studying Kabbalah for almost two decades, I'm glad I had you to show me.
>that multiple pagan traditions throughout the world were/are opposed to witchcraft
I don't, inherently, disagree with this. I was trying to add some nuance to the conversation by citing materials that straddle borders between the old State religion and Neoplatonism, between Hermetica and folk practices, that include charms and methods for harm and health.
Bentley Anderson
It's roughly Frazer's attitude, and I agree. When people want to accomplish something, they might try anything: talk to the wind to make it stop, hit something with a rock to break it. One works, the other doesn't. The one that works is technology. The one that doesn't is magic. Once in a while, the wind stops soon after, so he thinks it might work again, and might try it again. So he's a witch.
Nathan Sanders
>I'm saying that they aren't inherently mutually exclusive as evidenced by syncretic materials like the Greek Magickal Papyri.
et's say I went though with a spell. Made the offerings, said the words, fasted for 3 days and an angel appears. How exactly is the witchcraft? Especially when many traditions including Christian involve the evocation of angels? We need to narrow the definition of witchcraft if it's to have meaning. Otherwise you get brainlets like and who uniroincally think any form of European paganism was witchcraft. I can't speak for Germanic or Celtic, but I understand Greek, Roman and Slavic paganism to have been weary of witchcraft. So obviously to them witchcraft wasn't merely divining or astrology. Something else had to be to it that made people adverse to it.
Joshua Stewart
>et's say I went though with a spell. Made the offerings, said the words, fasted for 3 days and an angel appears. How exactly is the witchcraft?
I dunno how many animals did you kill?
Which godforms did you contact?
What poisons did you consume?
Did you drink blood until you puke?
Which entities are you trying to contact?
How many tongues did you impale with a rail spike?
Why were you doing any of this to begin with?
Depending on how you answer these tells me if your spell was a form of Martinistic angel theurgy or Amazonian witchcraft. Or in between.
Cooper Thomas
I've read parts of the Papyri a long time ago. I remember some of the rituals were how I described the process. It was
>Sacrfice
>saying the correct words
>Fasting/waiting a couple of days
>Someone should appear.
Easton Davis
>Where our idea of "witches" come from?
Jews just murdered all true prophets of God for their false prophets. As it says in their "holy book" if there's a true prophet that disagrees with Moses, it should be murdered.
That's why monotheists go to hell where they belong.
Wyatt Perry
I'm the 4054465 "brainlet".
I think any form of paganism, and folk magic, might have been called "witchcraft" by Christians. When I'm talking about "magic", that's a form of nonsense that exists in all cultures, including every religion.
Robert Davis
>I think any form of paganism, and folk magic, might have been called "witchcraft" by Christians.
Do you have proof of this?
Ayden Thomas
So like run with me here.
The GMP contains material for contacting the "Goes". These were some of the entities that sometimes found their was into prohibition.
Plato, the hugely influential philosopher who lived from approximately 428 to 348 BCE, mentioned ‘goes’ in company with ‘pharmaceus – an enchanter with drugs – and sophists, used in the derogatory sense of ‘cheats’.
Aeschines, an Athenian orator who flourished about 342 BCE, in his speech impeaching Ctesiphon he linked the terms ‘goes’ and ‘magos’ in a derogatory sense.
Josephus Flavius, a famous Jewish historian who died in 93 CE, mentions ‘a certain goes’, whose name was Theudas, who persuaded a great part of the people to take their effects with them and follow him to the river Jordan, for he was a prophet, and would by his command divide the river and afford them passage over it’. He also uses the term of a Jewish magician called Simon. He uses similar terms to describe numerous unnamed ‘false prophets’. This term is often translated ‘imposters’, but at the same time the Jewish nationalist ‘zealots’ are described as ‘robbers’; Josephus is, after all, writing for a Roman audience. The term ‘false prophet’, even though used in a derogatory sense, is nonetheless significant; the ability to prophecy, often through ecstatic states, is indeed indicative of the earlier ‘goetes’.
>con't
Eli Ross
Lucian (died 180 CE) and Plutarch (died 140 CE) linked the term goetes with apatonas, meaning ‘cheats’.
Celsus, an Epicurean philosopher of the second century CE, wrote a polemical treatise ‘Against the Christians’: ‘these are obviously the teachings of a man [Jesus] who is a ‘goes’, a trickster trying to discredit in advance his rival claimants and rival beggars’.
Origen, a Christian theologian born at Alexandria who lived from 185 to 254 CE. Wrote ‘Contra Celsus’, complaining that Celsus put the miracles of Jesus ‘on a level with the works of the goetes’. He enumerates these as driving out demons, curing diseases, raising the dead, producing miraculous feasts, etc. All of which were performed by magicians as well as Jesus.
ANYWAY these "Goes" eventually go on to become the "Goetia" of the grimoire tradition.
Urban Grandier was put to death, for witchcraft, for having a document, purportedly a demonic contract, with a sigil at the top which is VERY close to that of a demon named Silcharde in Grimorium Verum. So yes, people that appear to have association with the Lemegeton tradition were being put down for witchcraft historically.
Yes, the exile of partially Christianized saint venerators working the St. Cyprian materials in and around the Basque region exiled in the new world as referenced by that academic text "Devil in the Land of the Holy Cross" earlier in the thread.
Jose Watson
>Urban Grandier was put to death, for witchcraft, for having a document, purportedly a demonic contract, with a sigil at the top which is VERY close to that of a demon named Silcharde in Grimorium Verum. So yes, people that appear to have association with the Lemegeton tradition were being put down for witchcraft historically.
Or, perhaps, framed by those with a knowledge of Lemegeton traditions as an excuse, but the point remains that the coupling of that strain of grimoire tradition and the European witch trials is completely warranted and historical.
Jaxon Adams
>Yes, the exile of partially Christianized saint venerators working the St. Cyprian materials in and around the Basque region exiled in the new world as referenced by that academic text "Devil in the Land of the Holy Cross" earlier in the thread.
So no Christian ever made a distinction between any form of paganism, witchcraft and folk magic (even though Christians practiced folk magic themselves) because of those guys in basque region during one specific period of time? It was all the same to them. Gotcha. I'm being sarcastic if you can't tell.
Daniel Scott
>European witch trials
Not all of Christendom is Protestantism.
Zachary Allen
>So no Christian ever made a distinction between any form of paganism, witchcraft and folk magic
Wait, what?
Why does everything have to immediately jump to such extremes. How did I even imply that? I was talking between a particular group using a particular tradition that had a particular punishment in a particular time, and place.
>Christians practiced folk magic themselves
Yeah, that's sorta my point, hence the term "Partially Christianized" and why so many Afro-Carib forms OF WITCHCRAFT are so Saint-centric.
C'mon mate, not everything I say has to be extrapolated into absurdity.
Henry Parker
Sorry, it's been a long time since I read what Christians wrote about witchcraft, but it seemed to include all kinds of folksy spells, astrology & such that people might have done for millenia before the Christians came along.
There's no doubt that Christians persecuted anything that might look like a competing religion.
Do you have reason to doubt what I'm saying?
Jordan Davis
Where did I imply this?
I mean, at minimum it sure wasn't the Iberian protestant authorities shipping out light heretics to Brazil. In fact they got caught in the suppression themselves sometimes. You can check back on that, again, in "Devil in the Land of.." from University of Texas Press from de Mello e Souza's original Portuguese.
This shit wasn't exclusively confined to the Protestants, though I will totally admit it was FAR more pervasive in Protestant lands.
Ryder Ward
>So no Christian ever made a distinction between any form of paganism, witchcraft and folk magic (even though Christians practiced folk magic themselves)
It's in the Bible, even true prophets of God are to be put to death for Moses' phony burning bush story. That's why Jesus is so enraged at the Jews for murdering God's prophets.
Jayden Parker
>I was talking between a particular group using a particular tradition that had a particular punishment in a particular time, and place.
ok. So I was responding to . He claimed
>I think any form of paganism, and folk magic, might have been called "witchcraft" by Christians.
I see the "might" in there but he is implying it consistently would have been the case when taken as an answer to OP's original question.
>So did pagans actually hold rituals of witchcraft in the way Christians claim [e.g. dancing with goat dude, kissing anuse]?
This type of thing went on well into Christian era of Europe. I mentioned Charivari as an example of that. No Christian would have called Worship of Zeus "witchcraft." That'd just be dumb.
>Where our idea of "witches" come from?
I maintain it goes back far further than the Christian era and feel justified based upon the evidence.
Joseph Diaz
>I maintain it goes back far further than the Christian era and feel justified based upon the evidence.
And I repeat that our modern notion of ugly female witches with broomsticks and the like has origins in Formicarius.
Protection against witchcraft (so-called) charms go back to Sumerian and Akkadian records, so yes, the butthurt is ancient.
Lincoln Clark
>Do you have reason to doubt what I'm saying?
Yes. As I said earlier, as far back as pagan Greece and Emperor Augustus you have edicts forbidding witchcraft. Obviously to them, Witchcraft was seen as something separate from the astrology or folksy spells that would have been acceptable. You see similar attitudes towards witchcraft in non-Abrhamaic societies like the sinosphere. Essentially my doubt extends to the notion that
> worship of pagan gods
>folk magic and medecine independent of religion
Would have qualified as witchcraft for most of Christian history, or should qualify as witchcraft now.
Angel Green
>ok. So I was responding to . He claimed
>>I think any form of paganism, and folk magic, might have been called "witchcraft" by Christians.
>I see the "might" in there but he is implying it consistently would have been the case when taken as an answer to OP's original question.
>>So did pagans actually hold rituals of witchcraft in the way Christians claim [e.g. dancing with goat dude, kissing anuse]?
>This type of thing went on well into Christian era of Europe. I mentioned Charivari as an example of that. No Christian would have called Worship of Zeus "witchcraft." That'd just be dumb.
>>Where our idea of "witches" come from?
>I maintain it goes back far further than the Christian era and feel justified based upon the evidence.
Fuck your "he is implying". We're talking about centuries of activity. Nothing ever happened "consistently".
I don't know whether anyone every called worship of Zeus "witchcraft", but the oracle at Delphi probably would have qualified, as a form of divination.
> where did our idea of witches come from?
Of course competing magical and religious practices (They overlap a lot.) called each other bad names, going back forever. Thank you, Captain Obvious.
But OP is obviously asking about the "witches" that European Christians persecuted in the last thousand years or so. That's what I'm talking about.
Kevin Morris
>Of course competing magical and religious practices (They overlap a lot.) called each other bad names, going back forever. Thank you, Captain Obvious.
Witchcraft isn't a "competing magical and religious practice." People opposed it because it was summoning dark powers for selfish ends.
>But OP is obviously asking about the "witches" that European Christians persecuted in the last thousand years or so. That's what I'm talking about.
And you were pretty much wrong, so....
Nathan Perry
>People opposed it because it was summoning dark powers for selfish ends.
See, here's where you seem to be talking about it as if it were something real, and that's when you sound like you're full of shit.
Justin Hill
If you're talking about being wrong the worst I could find to say about it was that point three was a bit dodgy but otherwise, yeah, he ain't particularly wrong, at least according to the vast majority of sources I've looked at, either primary or academic.
Camden Cox
>People opposed it because it was summoning dark powers for selfish ends.
>See, here's where you seem to be talking about it as if it were something real, and that's when you sound like you're full of shit.
^^^ Second. If is attempting to speak from a historical perspective then please provide examples or citations to support that.
As it stands, it looks like nothing more than injection of personal views.