[log in to unmask] wrote:
> This discussion on witchcraft has got me thinking; do you think it was
> easier for contemporaries, intellectual and non - intellectual, to believe in
> the existence of witchraft than to disbelieve it" ?
Quite a tricky question! I think it was easier for them to believe than to disbelieve it.
It must be stressed tough that the concrete and personel ideas of a peasant about witches
were probaly quite different from the ideas an inquisitor had - here a rather primitive form of
folkloristic magic involving even christian elements, there a highly elaborated System with a
Sabbat and the presence of Lucifer.
But after all: On the occasion of a live-production on Swiss Television last november
about "modern witchcraft", the spectators were asked if they believed in the existence
of witches (however without giving any definition or even specification of what may be
meant by this rather ephemere expression). Anyway, can you imagine that 78% of the
ones who called in voted for their existence?
Although you might say that it is not without reason that witch-persecution started in the
Alps, I must say that I was rather perplexe....
|