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History of Witchcraft

First id like to clarify that no-one knows the exact history, this is just one of many versions, we have used this one as it seems the most evidential to us, but to others it may not seem so

How did the lies start? Where did the negative image of the Witch begin? And how did it become so ingrained in our culture that it's almost impossible for some people to hear the word Witch without thinking of evil?

The religion of Witchcraft dates back about 25,000 years, to the Paleolithic Age, where the God of Hunting and the Goddess of Fertility first appeared. Out of respect for the overwhelming power of Nature grew a belief in beings, gods, who controlled the winds, the seas, the earth and the fires.

Soon, the old ways of the common people came into conflict with a new religion that started with rulers and upper classes - Christianity. When the Christians decided that their new ways weren't catching on fast enough, things got a lot rougher for those who were practicing the Old Religion. Christian leaders began asserting that Witches were devil worshippers and savages.

In the year 1233, Pope Gregory IX instituted the Roman Catholic tribunal known as the Inquisition in an attempt to suppress heresy. In 1320, the church (at the request of Pope John XXII) officially declared Witchcraft and the Old Religion of the Pagans as a heretical movement and a "hostile threat" to Christianity. Witches had now become heretics and the persecution against all Pagans spread like wildfire throughout Europe. (It is interesting to note that before a person can be considered a heretic, he or she must first be a Christian, and Pagans have never been Christians. They have always been Pagans.)

The single most influential piece of propaganda in this campaign was commissioned by Pope Innocent VIII in 1484 after he declared Witchcraft to be a heresy. He instructed the Dominican monks Heinrich Kraemer and Jacob Sprenger to publish a manual for Witch-hunters. Two years later the work appeared with the title Malleus malificarum, or "The Witches' Hammer." The manual was used for the next 250 years in the church's attempt to destroy the Old Religion of Western Europe.

"He must not be too quick to subject a witch to examination,
but must pay attention to certain signs which will follow.
And he must not be too quick for this reason:
unless God, through a holy Angel, compels the devil
to withold his help from the witch,
she will be so insensible to the pains of torture that
she will sooner be torn limb from limb than confess any of the truth.
But the torture is not to be neglected for this reason,
for they are not equally endowed with this power,
and also the devil sometimes of his own will permits them
to confess their crimes without being compelled by a holy Angel."

-- Kramer and Sprenger, the Malleus Maleeeeeeeficarum

Witches... along with countless numbers of "innocent" men, women, and children who were not Witches were persecuted, brutally tortured, often sexually molested or raped, and then executed by sadistic, bloodthirsty church authorities who taught that their God was a god of love and compassion. Once denounced, a suspected Witch was arrested and then hideously tortured into a confession. Suspects were subjected to thumbscrews, the rack, boots which broke the bones of the legs; they were deprived of sleep, starved and beaten. At times, hundreds of suspected Witches were killed in a day.

Witchcraft in England was made an illegal offense in the year 1541, and in 1604 a law decreeing capital punishment for Witches and Pagans was adopted. Forty years later, the thirteen colonies in American also made death the penalty for the "crime" of Witchcraft. By the late seventeenth century, the followers who remained loyal to the Old Religion were in hiding and Witchcraft had turned into a secret underground religion after an estimated one million persons had been put to death in Europe and more than thirty condemned at Salem, Massachusetts, in the name of Christianity.
Unfortunately, when the persecutions ended in the 18th century, the stereotype of Witches as devil worshippers remained for those who were uninformed of the true nature of the Craft.