The History of Witchcraft

The History of Witchcraft

The history of witchcraft according to Montague summers is a subject as old as the world and as wide as the world as this subject deals with every kind of malign occult art (p . vii . Summers noted that sources of information of witchcraft were scarce and the only sound sources of information are the contemporary records the meticulously detailed legal reports of the actual trials the vast mass of pamphlets which gives eye witness account of the individual witches and reproduced verbatim as told in court and the

technical works of the inquisitors (Summers

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According to adherents of witchcraft practices , accurate witchcraft history is vanished in the mists of time and those surviving accounts were written by people who were either bias or dislike them and the witchcraft teachings were recycled to become the teachings of the Christian saints (Wecca , Sylvan . Wicca noted however that the practice of witchcraft goes over fifty thousand years ago as according to the article , there is evidence of Paleolithic man 's ritual of burying the dead and the evidence of goddess worship abounds during this period Denise Zimmerman and Katherine Gleason stated that witches practice magic and Wicca - an earth-based religion that honors a deity that is divided into male and female goddess . Although those practices may not be known as witchcraft during that period , but in the context of witchcraft during the middle ages , those rituals and goddess worship during the prehistoric period was a witchcraft practice

However , the history of witchcraft seemed to be complex and is clouded with uncertainty as to the beginning of the witchcraft practices as in most cases this practice has been linked to occultism astrology and pseudo spiritualist and that the history of witchcraft in Europe has been thought to have begun in the fourteenth only as witchcraft practices were believed to be only invented by the inquisition and not by the witches

Rosemary Ellen Guiley stated that witchcraft has been in existence since the ancient human civilizations , in the form of sorcery . She cited that magical rites depicted in the pre- historic arts were used to ensure successful hunting . Guiley noted that during the Roman times there was distinction between the good and the bad magic . Those considered harmful magic was liable to be punished under the law However , the distinction between the good and the harmful magic was gone during the spread of Christianity and witchcraft practices came to be associated with worship of the devil (Guiley

In A .D . 700 witchcraft was more and more associated with heresy . Thus the succeeding generations of Christianity had done a wide campaign in to trample out heretic doctrines including heretic religious leaders sentencing them to death by burning (Guiley . This witch persecution was called The Inquisition which had started in 1230 as effort to rid the society of heretics . It was during this period that witchcraft rise to its height , this was also the dark period of the witches as...