Version User Scope of changes
Aug 2 2007, 1:29 AM EDT sexywiccangoddess 4 words added
Jul 25 2007, 8:44 AM EDT sexywiccangoddess 3 words added, 253 words deleted

Changes

Key:  Additions   Deletions

The History Of Wicca

The fundamental roots of Wicca lie in the very beginning of spiritual seeking on this planet. Although there are no written records to confirm this, statues and wall paintings portray scenes of ceremonies that are very similar to the ceremonies used by later Pagan cultures and by Witches today.
The earliest deity sculptures are from the Stone Ages. Of the sixty sculptures uncovered by archaeologists, only five are male. These five are very small and poorly executed. The remaining fifty-five are larger and female; they have great detail, in comparison to the male figures. They represent the Goddess or great Mother and Her consort.
Most of these first cultures were matriarchal, in that they primarily worshipped the Goddess and the women in these cultures were free of male domination. Many of their religious ceremonies were attended by women only with a priestess officiating.
Matriarchies, however, held that men and women were equal. Creative endeavors held a high priority, while war was practically unknown. Archaeologists, digging in the matriarchal ruins of Catal Huyuk in Turkey, found no evidence of defensive walls for at least one thousand years. Women owned the property, and children took their mother’s name. Marriage was based on mother right. The man moved to his wife’s family, not vice versa, when he married. After all, he and the other men hunted, and came and went in these societies. The only stable figure was the woman.
When patriarchal societies began to encroach on these peaceful matriarchies, the evidence of defensive walls, weapons, and war arises. Men took control of the government and religion of the culture. The importance of deities changed from the Great Mother and Goddesses to the War God or All-Powerful God and gods in general. Traces of the Goddess religions were cloaked in the Mystery Religions and sacred oracle sites, until these, too, were taken over and converted to the worship of male deities.
Many of the ancient Goddesses become connected with black magic under the patriarchies. Male rulers condemned Goddess worship by women as Witchcraft and evil, against the declared natural order of spirituality. Patriarhcy began to rewrite spiritual history, connecting a great many Goddesses with dark magic. Some of these were Isis, Neith, Nephtys, Cerridwen, Anat, Ashtart, Ereshkigal, Lilith, Nanshe, Circe, Cybele, Gaea, Hectate, the Morrigan, Freyja, Holda, Ilmatar, Rauni, Diana/Artemis, Diiwica, Kali, Ch’ang-o, and Inari.
As the Mysteries were forbidden, destroyed, or rewritten for male deities, some women privately rebelled. They established secret groups for only women. They met at night in out-of-the-way places where men seldom came. They celebrated the old holy days. They embraced the term “Witchcraft” as a badge of honor, and successfully hid their religious rites from men for centuries. Later, when the men who were dissatisfied with patriarchy sought out these groups, the Witches allowed selected ones to join them.
In the very beginning of Christianity, this new religion gave Witches little trouble. In fact, Christianity taught that Witches and Witchcraft did not exist. By the thirteenth century, however, Christianity was in trouble. The number of wars was increasing, due in most part to Christian rulers Conquering new areas and forcing their religion on the inhabitants. A number of things were going wrong, from famines and disease to crop loss and poverty. The Church began to look for a scapegoat and settled on Witchcraft. At the time, the word “Witch” was used by the Church to describe any believer in a Pagan faith, especially women.
There was another reason for this persecution. Since the best healers were the Witches and wise women of any area, the male doctors backed this Christian-inspired idea that Witches were evil. After all, a good Witch healer with a high success rate in her profession as a healer could successfully put male doctors out of business in her community.
Also, during the thirteenth century, Pope Gregory IX issued edicts that marked the beginning of the infamous Witch hunts. He attacked both the Cathars (break-away) Christians and the Knights Templar. Both of these groups had great wealth and property that was confiscated by the Church and their followers were tortured and killed. Both Cathars and Knights Templar were Christians. The Cathars refused to acknowledge the Pope as ultimate authority while the Templars, who fought holy wars for the Pope, had vast wealth which the Church wanted.
Seeing the possibility to gain further wealth and control over people’s minds, the Church created an office of Inquisition, which still exists today. This action also gave the Church greater leverage to extend its field of domination over spiritual matters. During this period, Witches still had not been targeted.
The gates of terror swung wide when, in 1489, Pope Innocent VIII issued an order to rid the lands of all Witches and to kill all cats; cats were said by the Church to be minions of the devil and the companions of Witches. This was a declaration of open warfare against Witches or any Pagan followers. Pope Innocent VIII commissioned the writing of the Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer for Witches). Two German Dominican priests, Jakob Sprenger and Prior Heinrich Kramer, did the actual writing. This became the “bible” for all Witch Hunters, describing in detail how to torture people to obtain confessions. The expense for every form of torture was billed directly to the victim, a way for the Church to justify stealing the victim’s property.
The Church immediately appointed Inquisitors (all men)) who had total authority over which accused person to convict, torture, murder, or set free. It was rare that a person accused of Witchcraft was ever freed, and even those who were freed had to endure the most horrendous tortures. All property was confiscated immediately upon accusation and never returned, even in the rare cases when people were found innocent. After all, the Inquisitors of each region and all his helpers were paid out of the property and belongings of anyone upon accusation of Witchcraft. Being an Inquisitor and Witch hunter was big business and made many men very wealthy. Of course, the Church got its cut also. After all, the Church had invented this murder/extortion racket.
The male doctors heartily approved of all this, as it removed their female competition. Any female healer who attended a childbirth was automatically branded as a Witch, for she knew which herbs to use to kill pain, and, worse yet, which ones could be used as contraceptives. This attitude that women should suffer during child birth continued into the mid-1900’s. long after anesthetics were available. If a woman miscarried for any reason, including a beating from her husband, the Church considered her guilty of deliberate murder, which carried a death penalty. In the clergy’s mind, all women were guilty of some thing evil until there were dead.
Using fear as a major weapon, the Witch hunters coerced many good church-goers and priests to take an active part un the accusations, tortures, and murders of their fellow countrymen. However, some people spoke up against this injustice and were murdered along with the others. In 1126, a man named Pierre de Bruys was burned for saying that God no longer was in the Church. Frere Raymond Jean preached against the Church’s abuses of power and was executed. When a Franciscan splinter group preached that the Pope and priests abused God’s laws, the entire group plus every person in the village of Magnalata was murdered, all for the sake of keeping their profitable racket of Witch hunting going.
Children as young as three years old were tortured until they gave evidence against their own mothers. The Church gave its blessing and absolution of sin to all who helped. As a consequence, accused women were frequently raped by their torturers and their assistants; all women were gagged on their way to execution to keep them from revealing this crime.
For the next three centuries, the European Christian churches hunted and murdered so-called Witches from the Scandinavian countries in the north to Spain in the south. All the women and girls in entire villages were wiped out. Strasbourg, Germany, burned five thousand victims in twenty years. A thousand so-called Witches were killed at Como in 1524. Some historians estimate that as many as nine million died during the cruel Witch hunts in Europe. Eventually, the paranoid practice spread even to the Americas. Countries outside the influence of the Christians Church did not participate.
Because cats suffered the same fate as Witches during this time, there was no protection against rats that carried the black plague into Europe. At first, the Church did not care about the growing problem of the rat population, as they considered it part of the torture for packs of rats to attack prisoners. By the time anyone paused long enough to consider the connection between the plague and the lack of cats, it was too late.
The terrible Witch hunts continued into the seventeenth century, until King Louis XIII ordered the persecutions stopped in France. However, both the Catholic and Protestant Church officials of England and Scotland were making far too much money and widening their control to stop. One of the most enthusiastic and fanatical of the English Witch hunters was Matthew Hopkins, the Witch Finder General (1644-1646), who was responsible for more executions that anyone else; he did it all for money, which was true for a few of the Witch hunters, while others believed that what they were doing was Gods work.
The last so-called Witch was hanged in Scotland in 1727. The last Scottish law against Witchcraft was repealed in 1736, but the last of the Witchcraft Acts in Britain wasn’t moved from the books until 1951.
Because of the millions of people slain, true Witches went underground, revealing themselves and their groups to no one. Few groups had contacts with other similar groups. Nothing was written down for fear of being discovered. The Old Ways became garbled and distorted over the centuries, until most of what survived was thought of as superstition and folklore.
It was not until World War II was on the horizon that Gerald Gardner, a retired British civil servant, discovered that little pockets of Witchcraft did survive. He wrote that he contacted the remains of a Witch group in New Forest and was initiated into the Craft. However, Gardner’s and the groups fear of persecution kept him from writing about Witchcraft until after 1951. Even then, the group did not agree with Gardner about making public the practices of Witches.
After Gardner’s books reached the public, hundreds, then thousands, of people began to consider Witchcraft as a viable, fulfilling spiritual path. They walked away from orthodox religions without a backward glance, feeling as if they had come home when they stepped inside a consecrated circle. They based their new groups on Gardner’s works for the most part, but departed from the rest of his ideas to conceive and write their own rituals. Slowly but surely, Witchcraft began to spread. Today many thousands of followers of this ancient path stretch around the globe.
Yet most Witches still must face periodic, if not daily, persecution by members of orthodox churches, whether these persecutors are family, neighbors, or members of the United States Congress. Lest Witches become to complacent, please remember that the Office of Inquisition was still active in Central and South America as late as 1834, and that the Church has always maintained that its reign of terror and murder was fully justified. In fact, the Office of Inquisition is still an active part of the Catholic Church, and was used to justify certain negative actions as last as 1969. As one can plainly see from recent attempts to make Wiccan and Paganism illegal by Christian influenced Congressman, and by the harassment and menacing of Wiccan/Pagan folk while the law looks the other way, the Burning Times could happen once more if all those who believe in religious freedom are not vigilant.
Witches, however, are resilient people who believe firmly and steadfastly in their religion. They will continue to survive, whatever comes.

See Burning Times

**Page Added By Sexywiccangoddess**