Oh, Yeah, like Namaste

Being a witch today is much cooler now that it's much less likely you will be burned at the stake or dunked until you drown.  So, yah, Namaste.

Things were a little different when the Malleus Maleficarum was written as this was a specific rulebook on first confirming that witches exist and secondly how to find them.  It was written in 1486 by James Sprenger, a German Catholic priest.  It's known in German as "Der Hexenhammer" and in English as "The Hammer of the Witches."  (WIKI:  Malleus Maleficarum)

Witches frequently served as midwives in those times and the good ones knew which herbal remedies were good for the pain of childbirth.  There was a problem with that as only witches could have that knowledge so that was clear proof of witchcraft.  Burn her.

Dunking is the favorite for tests of witchcraft.  If the woman being dunked drowns then it was the Lord's will and he sure does work in mysterious ways, doesn't he.  If she doesn't drown then that's proof she is a witch and you can have some more fun killing her in some other way.

Such was the way in Salem, Massachusetts, where they killed quite a few witches.  I'm not an apologist for Catholicism but it's interesting to me that Catholics were not involved as they have quite a reputation for this sort of thing.  However, early America was extremely anti-Catholic and it was some years before that changed.

I've been to Salem and I have pictures but I don't recommend going as seeing the horror of what was done to those 'witches' is really not something I needed to know.  I visited because I was curious but it was a stupid curiosity not much different or or any more productive than looking at a car crash.  (I looked for the pictures just now and discovered I've thrown them away some time ago.  That pleases me in some twisted way.)

I feel a responsibility to visit a Nazi death camp but it wasn't out of any sense of responsibility that I went to visit Salem, perhaps because I have never been involved with religion so I couldn't have been responsible.  However, I feel I could have been responsible if I were in Germany during Hitler's rise.  I like to think I would have had the courage to protest but I don't know that so I must accept responsibility.  (Yah, I know I would have been religious if I were in Salem as you were ... or they burned you.  This, in my view, is not the same as the rise of Nazism so I feel responsible for one and not the other.)

The surprise in this to me in the Malleus Maleficarum is that you cannot pin it on Catholics.  A Catholic priest wrote it but he was dumped pretty quickly.  The Vatican condemned the work only three years after it was written.  Later in the Inquisition they were cautioned not to accept what was written in it as part of their trials.  The Inquisitors more than made up for it in other horrors they committed but that wasn't based on the Malleus Maleficarum.