Niklaus Michael Schatzmann wrote:
>
> [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" ?
>
> 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.
A belief that some or all individuals had the power to inflict harm on
others through the control of outside forces (gods, demons, the weather,
diseases, whatever) seems to be extremely widespread (ubiquitous?)
amongst all societies for which we have ethnographic or historic data.
Ron R
--
Dr. Ronald A. Ross
School of History and Welsh History
University of Wales (Bangor)
Siliwen Road
Bangor, Gwynedd, Wales. LL57 2DG
Telephone 01248-382154
E-mail [log in to unmask]
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