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Last night, Bill Maher aired an old TV clip from his 'Politically Incorrect' show in the 90's. Anti-masturbation crusader and born-again Christian Christine O'Donnell, who just won the GOP primary for the Senate seat in Delaware: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/18/odonnell-witchcraft-politically-incorrect_n_722035.html
(also several copies on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=christine+o%27donnell++witch&aq=f [search page])
in the clip she describes a date with a 'witch', and visiting a place with a 'satanic altar'.
this upsets wiccans, who have no belief in Satan and see the two as separate belief-systems. however, that's not the Christian worldview, especially that of the fundamentalist extremist Christian.
this has occurred at both Huffington Post and Bill Maher's page, here on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=153714874648748&comments
so i attempted to explain the dissonant concepts. . .
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you're right. . .Wicca has nothing to do with Satanism. but you don't understand Christian demonology. everything in Christianity has to fit into the mindset of 'God-Satan-Jesus'.
there were witches in the Old Testament, most notably the Witch of Endor. however, they were not wiccan witches, any more than they were Japanese witches or African witches or Indian witches or South American witches.
wiccan witches aren't the only ones in the world. that's a Mediterranean/European bias, as is most of our cultural outlook. culturally we tend to look at things from that viewpoint, and ignore the variety of the rest of the world.
for instance, in some parts of Africa every bad thing that happens is due to a witch, including a natural death. the agent of death may be explainable, but a witch is always behind it and must be sought out.
some years ago there were reports of witches being hunted, incarcerated or killed in India and Africa. the old mind-sets still rule, and they're not associated with wicca, either.
in the Bible, God had formerly been a deity dispensing good and evil equally; it's all through the Old Testament. with the Zoroastrian influence on Judaism during the Babylonian/Persian Captivity, Satan becomes for the first time a major player. evil could be passed off to him, and God would be a force for good alone.
in this respect, God became Ormuzd (light) while Satan became Ahriman (darkness). however, that wasn't quite right; it implied that Satan was as powerful as God, so something else was needed.
enter Jesus. he took over the Ormuzd role. God fades into the background, and the 'eternal struggle' is now between Jesus and Satan.
now, i've spent most of the day repeatedly explaining this at Huffington Post, although i'm an ignorant fool. still, i have some resources.
The 'Malleus Maleficarum' ('The Hammer Of God') was written in Germany to provide a guide to deal with witches. . .
(the title may have been a pagan pun, since it came from Germany. their previous religion in that area was related to that of the Scandinavian Vikings, and the 'Hammer of God' may refer to Mjolnir The Destroyer, the hammer of Thor. . .echoes of their paganistic past?)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malleus_Maleficarum
in order to fit witches into Christian dogma, it was logically necessary to make them agents of Satan. therefore the writer(s) of the 'Malleus' went to work. . .
"The Malleus Maleficarum" asserts that three elements are necessary for witchcraft: the evil-intentioned witch, the help of the Devil, and the Permission of God." (Wikipedia)
got a copy of the 'Hammer' at our university library. damned good reading.
anyway, check the history of demonology and witchcraft after Christianity has spread throughout Europe. you'll see--from their side--that Satan is behind every witch and warlock and demon and spirit and, as Saul of Tarsus put it, evil 'power and principality'.
this is the same kinda job they did on other Christian churches after the Council of Nicea. wiped 'em out. and it was another reason for wiping out the Aztec and Maya; they incorporated crosses and baptisms and confessions and even more 'Christian' elements into their religions, which of course made them Satanic.
. . .ya gotta understand the mind-set. . .anyway, from my own library. . .
"The pact with the Devil was the essence of witchcraft. The pact pinpointed sorcery as heresy, and thereby brought witchcraft under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition. But to every demonologist, Protestant as well as Catholic, the agreement to work with the Devil to deny and oppose the Christian God was the core of the crime. . . .The pact, not any acts of evil-doing, constituted the offense. And so-called white witches were just as damnable as doers of evil."
- pp 369-370, 'Pact with the Devil', from 'The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology', by Russell Hope Robbins, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Crown Publishers Inc, New York, copyright 1959, 571 pp.
now, the Inquisitions basically started out as land-grabs, both in Europe and in Massachusetts, and the victims were primarily women, as was here. also the financial wealth of the victims was poured into the coffers of the church/state. it even included victims such as highly-placed members of the priesthood. as time went on, however, like here (at Salem and after 911[read: terrorists]), they started seeing witches everywhere, and lots of poor innocents were caught up in it.
for the Catholic Church, there was the formal ecclesiastical investigation first. if witchcraft was 'confirmed' (as it usually was, not always), the victim was handed over to the secular authorities for formal execution. it should be noted that King James (of the KJV) and Isabella (who helped Columbus) were great witch-hunters in their time.
there are a very great many similarities between the inquisitorial procedures and those of the American (and other) government(s) after 911. if i could, i'd list them; but it's in the Encyclopedia i quoted.
the 'Pact with the Devil' was the 'proof'', obtained through torture. if they confessed too soon, it was believed they were trying to avoid the torture by lying, and torture was continued. if they died from the torture, they said 'the Devil broke' their backs.
(think Khalid Sheik Mohammed, waterboarded 183 times in a month. the torture 'worked', as with the Inquisitions: they got their 'confession', finally, proving that we'd gone back to the days of the Holy Inquisitions and the Star Chambers.)
once the confession was obtained, the pesky 'witch' could be disposed of, and the property/wealth stolen. but Satan was an inherent and necessary part of every Christian prosecution of witches, Catholic or Protestant.
regardless of the truth of Wicca, the Christian mind-set, specifically fundamentalist/extremist Christianity, is going to define you and any other witch in the world as an agent of Satan. moral, immoral or amoral.
for the (relatively) educated people, witchcraft trials were a way to increase wealth and property at the expense of others. for the poor, uneducated common person, he or she lived in a world in which demons and angels were literally seen and experienced on a regular basis. they lived in a world or literal fear not unlike this nation has been going through since 911, what with Islamophobia, antiimmigration and the sublimated racism and more against Obama.
but, as i say, to fit into the Christian mold, the 'witch' MUST be an agent of Satan. regardless of origin. as wiccans, you may know how the demonization by some Christians works. all or nothing.
i hope this helps explain things a bit. . .
PS: Bill says he has 22 more clips, and he's gonna keep releasing them till she comes on the show. what if each one is worse than the one before. . ?
. . .gonna be fun to watch. . .
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