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“Who knows why we were taught to Fear the Witches
And not those that burned them
Or those who stood by, watching.”
― Affinity Soul

“...if you come across someone sad and you do not try to make them smile, then you have disgraced your own humanity.”
― Adriana Mather, Haunting the Deep

“Fear and superstition were not the tools of witches but rather the tools of those who persecuted them.”
― Israel Morrow, Gods of the Flesh: A Skeptic's Journey Through Sex, Politics and Religion

“If they don't see it's wrong, if they don't say it's wrong, it can happen again. It could happen to you; it could happen to me.”
― Elle McNicoll, A Kind of Spark

“Who knows why we were taught to Fear the Witches
And not those that burned them
Or those who stood by watching.”
― Affinity Soul

“This mundus tenebrosus, this shaddowy world of Mankind, is sunk into Night; there is not a Field without its Spirits, nor a City without its Daemons, and the Lunaticks speak Prophesies while the Wise men fall into the Pitte. We are all in the Dark, one with another. And, as the Inke stains the Paper on which it is spilt and slowly spreads to Blot out the Characters, so the Contagion of darkness and malefaction grows apace until all becomes unrecognizable. Thus it was with the Witches who were tryed by Swimming not long before, since once the Prosecution had commenced no Stop could be put to the raving Women who came forward: the number of Afflicted and Accused began to encrease and, upon Examination, more confess'd themselves guilty of Crimes than were suspected of. And so it went, till the Evil revealed was so great that it threatened to bring all into Confusion.

And yet in the way of that Philosophie much cryed up in London and elsewhere, there are those like Sir Chris. who speak only of what is Rational and what is Demonstrated, of Propriety and Plainness. Religion Not Mysterious is their Motto, but if they would wish the Godhead to be Reasonable why was it that when Adam heard that Voice in the Garden he was afraid unto Death? The Mysteries must become easy and familiar, it is said, and it has now reached such a Pitch that there are those who wish to bring their mathematicall Calculations into Morality, viz. the Quantity of Publick Good produced by any Agent is a compound Ratio of his Benevolence and Abilities, and such like Excrement. They build Edifices which they call Systems by laying their Foundacions in the Air and, when they think they are come to sollid Ground, the Building disappears and the Architects tumble down from the Clowds. Men that are fixed upon matter, experiment, secondary causes and the like have forgot there is such a thing in the World which they cannot see nor touch nor measure: it is the Praecipice into which they will surely fall.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor

“The most powerful men of the kingdom have dragged a duchess down and sent her out to be a marvel to the common people of London. They are so deeply afraid of her that they took the risk to dishonor their own. They are so anxious to save themselves that they thought they should throw her aside.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Lady of the Rivers

“When the hysteria of a witch-hunt is granted supremacy over the logic, values and spirit of the law, justice can only become a warped, alien concept in that society.”
― Stewart Stafford

“The local political and religious officials
were more than ready to take action and
began rounding up suspects at once. Anyone
who was accused of witchcraft by at least three witnesses was arrested. Those who confessed were burned at the stake; those who refused to confess were tortured until they said what their accusers wanted to hear and then were burned. Clerk of the court Johannes Fründ, the author of the most detailed record of the Valais witch trials, noted with amazement that some of the accused kept insisting on their innocence until they died under torture; like most of the officials involved in the trials, he assumed that every person accused of witchcraft must be guilty.”
― John Michael Greer

“Two days after Christmas I stood in the shower thinking about the Salem witch trials.”
― Shaun David Hutchinson, At the Edge of the Universe

“the Jews should stay away from this trial -- for their own sake. For -- mark this well -- the charge "a war for the Jews" is still being made, and in the post-war years it will be made again and again. The too-large percentage of Jewish men and women here will be cited as proof of this charge. Sometimes it seems that the Jews will never learn about these things. They seem intent on bringing new difficulties down on their own heads. I do not like to write about this matter... but I am disturbed about it. They are pushing and crowding and competing with each other, and with everyone else. They will try the case I guess...

--Letters from Nuremberg, page 135”
― Christopher J. Dodd, Letters from Nuremberg: My Father's Narrative of a Quest for Justice

“Similarly unsubstantiated upon close examination is the claim that there is somehow a parallel between current concern over child sexual abuse and witch hunts of previous historical eras. The only similarity is the presence of children making accusations against protesting adults; and even here the parallel is limited, since most child sexual abuse victims do not eagerly disclose their plights. The witch-hunt analogy does not work for several reasons. In the past people became hysterial about witches because ignorance and lack of education led them to believe in a nonexistent evil, whereas current concern about child sexual abuse results from increased education and sophisticated research, and a growing body of medical and psychological proofs that validate the existance of a very real evil. Witch hunts flourished because the authoritative force of society, the Church, encouraged them and supported accusers. In our society, however, validation of child sexual abuse victims has occurred despite the failure of our authoritative force, the legal system, to encourage the abusers. Witches were tortured, hanged, and burned. Child abusers are rarely reported to authorities, and those who are seldom see the inside of a jail or even a psychiatrist's office. National statistics on child sexual abuse indicate, for example, that judges only see 15.4 percent of sexual abuse cases.(39)”
― Billie Wright Dziech, On Trial: America's Courts and Their Treatment of Sexually Abused Children

“Noah presses upon my back to bend me double in preparation for the order. He tosses aside my clogs in order to bind left thumb to right toe, then right thumb to left toe in the form of the holy cross. It has always seemed to me a forgiving God would not condone such abuse of the crucifix.”
― Janet Graber, The White Witch

“We proved there is no match in this world for fear and superstition. No match for the power of a word.”
― Jakob Crane, Lies in the Dust: A Tale of Remorse from the Salem Witch Trials

“During the Burning Times, standing out and speaking up meant risking literal persecution: imprisonment, torture, sexual assault, and murder. The scars of this trauma run deep in our collective unconscious; they remind us that in the not-so-distant past, being marked as different ran the risk of physical harm and death. Even today, being too much or not enough for modern society can mean being ostracized, judged, and shamed. In this way, the witch wound is your psyche’s way of trying to keep you safe. Your consciousness holds this warning because your ancestorsâ€� bodies carried it over the span of generations, passing it down to you.”
― Celeste Larsen, Heal the Witch Wound: Reclaim Your Magic and Step Into Your Power

“My wife," he said eventually, slowly, as if it pained him to speak the words. "She nearly died in childbed, delivering our son. A wise woman in our village saved both their lives. Beatrice, she was called. I said nothing, when they accused her. She was hanged."
He took a velvet pouch from his breeches and pressed it into my hands, before melting away into the throng.
I looked inside the pouch and saw gold coins. I understood, then, that I had this man---or the woman who saved his family---to thank for my life.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“My imps need no doors, sir. They go where I tell them. Through any crack, be it as narrow as a nun's or wide as your wife's.”
― A.K. Blakemore, The Manningtree Witches

“One does not need to look too deeply into the transcripts of witch trials before uncovering tortured women speaking of cavorting with everyday animals. (There does seem to be a size limit; one can converse with a devil in the form of a dog, but not a moose and surely not an elephant.)”
― Thomm Quackenbush, The Curious Case of the Talking Mongoose

“As with later witch trials, like the ones in Salem, flexing normal court processes in response to a powerful authority can lead to mass injustice...”
― Marion Gibson, Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials

“Witch trials were not just misogynist festivals of torture and hatred; they also directly facilitated the building of empire.”
― Marion Gibson, Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials

“A witch-pricker's finger can be pointed at any one of us. It chose me.”
― Jenni Fagan, Hex

“Matthew Hopkins: Witchfinder General (1645 â€� 1647) by Stewart Stafford

‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live� � Exodus,
Nor allow legalised killing too cheaply,
Twenty shillings of blood money per witch,
A charlatan’s extortion for ‘cleansing.�

Witchcraft, the capital crime of the age,
Lawyer Hopkins, parasitising laws,
Self-appointed Witchfinder General,
A reign of terror brought to God-fearing doors.

Evildoing’s hunter was its embodiment;
A Judas purse wed brutality’s handmaiden,
With Stearne, stoked Essex witch hunt mania,
Puritanical zeal’s sadistic cruelty.

His victims were cast into dungeon pits;
Bloodied and broken in outcast desperation;
Disease helped some cheat the hangman;
The only fortune anyone deemed fair.

Extracting confessions through torture’s pain;
Their skin pricked to find Satan’s mark,
Victims, forced to run until collapse,
Sleepless starvation hastened their bleak end.

Then to the wicked ducking stool gauntlet,
Lowered into muddy ditches or icy water,
A survivor’s noose or drowned exoneration?
None met the Witchfinder’s imperious eyes.

“I, John Lowes, a minister of God,
Was martyred so. Hopkins, thou pestilent knave!
Bade me to run, held aloft by mocking hands,
Funeral rites as I dug mine own grave.�

Sensing his gaslit flames turn back on him,
Hopkins went to ground with his ill-gotten gains,
Slowly he faded, from infamous to obscure,
Scars linger on 300 unmarked graves.

Some say that Hopkins was executed as a witch,
Or faced a tubercular end in his village,
Where he is buried, no one knows or cares,
Hexed in a barren field for karmic tillage.

Rat-catcher to an imagined pestilence,
Communities, not covens, he did churn,
A toxic chalice for New World lips,
Fanning Salem’s pernicious turn.

© 2024, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford