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The Burning Times

To: alt.magick,alt.magick.ethics,alt.magick.serious,alt.religion.wicca
From: karen@snowcrest.net (Karen McFarlin)
Subject: Re: The Burning Times
Date: 18 Jun 1997 16:18:42 GMT

In article
, James
Foster  wrote:

> > > The "Burning-Times" was never the holocaust that most uninformed people
> > > make it out to be.  It's pretty much just a "persecution myth" that has
> > > gained in popularity over the past few years.
> > > 
> > > James Foster
> > > Religious Studies Dept.
> > > University of Oregon
> > 
> > Excuse me, but do you care to back that up with facts?
> > 
> Facts?  How about the fact that there is *zero* evidence for any sort of
> "Burning Times" pogrom... except for anecdotal references in cheap New Age
> fluff publications? 

It is currently a cherished religious doctrine among some extreme
wiccan/feminists that "millions" of women were tortured to death during
the Middle Ages for the crime of merely being women. (Read SheDragon's
contribution to this thread.) The self-righteousness of those who worship
a victimhood more myth than fact. 

There were indeed witches burned in the middle ages, of that there can be
no doubt. But many more people were burned, or otherwise dispatched, as
christian heretics. The numbers are a matter of some confusion. StarHawk's
9 million is a ridiculous number that no one with an ounce of intellegence
could accept as literal. 

I have never seen an accurate figure on the number of Saxon pagans
murdered by Charlemagne in his christianization of the West. Nor an
accurate number of Lithuanian pagans butchered by the Teutonic Knights.
And christians committed atrocities against pagans and vandalism of their
places of worship during the dieing days of the Roman Empire (see
references to Hypatia in Chapter 47 of Gibbon's Rise & Fall). But thses
atrocities were committed against men *and* women and the motivation was
not anti-feminism but anti-pagan hysteria whipped up by fiends like Cyril
of Alexandria. 

I have warned my fellow pagans against making a fettish out of the wildly
inflated numbers found in NewAge feminist literature on the "Burning
Times" for some time now. All it has gotten me is scorn and a new location
in the killfiles of the true believers.

So be it.

What I have learned is that people (christians and wiccans alike) will
distort and misuse the past if it means promoting the good of their cause.
In the war of competing ideologies, truth is the first casualty. 

Cairns, disgusted.

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