Right, so it’s a battle you want, eh?
It’s difficult to quote you, after you’ve already quoted me, but I’ll try and cover all the bases.
This is what you initially requested of me:
“please differentiate the rather bizarre and paranoid claims made by religious groups against people they did not like and what really happened.”
You also stressed the fact that witchcraft was mono-causally driven by “fantasy-prone individuals who had ulterior motives for making people insanely scared of otherwise harmless people.”
I initially argued against the second part of your statement, basically saying that many early modern Europeans did actually believe in witchcraft and were not just acting on ulterior motives.
After a post by gamerunknown, I clarified that to call such claims bizarre and paranoid was to overlook the social and intellectual framework in which these claims were being made and to phrase witchcraft as a cultural practice or simply due to some sort of blanket “ignorance” was condescending and missed the point entirely. I even looked through the site that gamerunknown linked me too, and found that “ignorance” was only one among a host of other socio-economic causes identified as contributing to modern witchcraft beliefs.
Hence, my argument was that witchcraft did and does play a social role/function/whatever you want to call it (in explaining misfortune, particular environmental phenomenon etc.), and the fact that for us the function it plays has been overridden by modern science/religion does not make it ignorant or irrational. You had a go at me for using what you called conclusions based on flawed and out of date books. This would probably have more impact if the argument you are proposing was not one that in itself has long been gotten rid of by both historians and social anthropologists.
(Note: I want to stress that I was not advocating Margaret Murray’s idea of a pagan witchcraft cult, which I acknowledge is definitely historically outdated, but simply the fact that a number of people did obviously engage in maleficia throughout the early modern period, people made livings off of implementing such curses for their patrons, which implies a genuine market must have existed).
I even conceded that ignorance was part of the issue, I simply stressed that this had to be understood as part and parcel with these other contributing factors.
Essentially, from what I can see, you responded with this: “what’s condescending is getting all bent out of shape when ignorance is pointed out and demand that said ignorance be respected as somehow superior to what happened in the real world.”
Now, I don’t see how that response adds up with my statement. You completely ignored my argument, and even twisted what I said. I never said witchcraft practices should be respected as superior to what happens in the “real world.” In fact I think I made that quite clear that I found the practice abhorrent.
Finally, I concede that most witches were not old women in the early modern period (although they definitely learnt towards that pursuasion). Either I was simply wrong, or I meant to say many witches. (I admit it was probably the former).
Finally, finally, my statement on the relationship between torture and witchcraft accusations was not tautology. The links between torture and witchcraft EXECUTIONS, did not necessarily correspond to witchcraft accusations. Torture propelled the witch-hunts, it did not create them.
P.s. I hope you are not American (or English), calling torture insane may reflect badly on your nation (which, interestingly, last time I checked doesn’t execute witches anymore).