<story><title>The Cornell University Witchcraft Collection</title><url>https://rmc.library.cornell.edu/witchcraftcoll/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tppiotrowski</author><text>Carl Sagan did a great job describing the witch trial phenomenon in &amp;quot;The Demon Haunted World&amp;quot;. It discusses how unchecked beliefs without any evidence can wreak havoc on society. If you were accused of witchcraft your only choices were:&lt;p&gt;1. to deny it and be burned at the stake&lt;p&gt;2. admit it, implicate others and be put to death in a gentler way&lt;p&gt;I admire the ones who stood for reason and were brave enough to endure the consequences.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>somenameforme</author><text>Assuming this is about beliefs would imply the claims were made in earnest. In many (if not the vast majority?) of cases, this seems questionable. For instance during the Salem Witch Trials you even had a Minister [1] executed for witchcraft. His accusers were men who he owed debts to, and the evidence was a farce. It&amp;#x27;s not like he was executed because of a society, drowned in their own beliefs, stumbled upon passable evidence of his crimes in an otherwise objective fashion. He was executed because some people really didn&amp;#x27;t like him and simply weaponized the fears of the day, and that was more the rule than exception.&lt;p&gt;To me the risk seems to be when something becomes so popular to hate that nobody is willing to defend the accused. And this is made even worse due to an opposite bias in the other direction. Demonize and call for even more draconian treatment of the accused and you can signal your own incredible virtue. As his execution, Burroughs had turned the crowd to his side with a moving speech, as well as a recital of The Lord&amp;#x27;s Prayer, which a witch was not supposed to be able to do. But fear not, along came some power seeking pompous posturing poser who offered his own counter-speech, an event recounted in a book he&amp;#x27;d release the following year.&lt;p&gt;And this is a pattern that has repeated endlessly throughout history. All that changes is whatever one needs to label somebody.&lt;p&gt;[1] - &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;George_Burroughs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;George_Burroughs&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>The Cornell University Witchcraft Collection</title><url>https://rmc.library.cornell.edu/witchcraftcoll/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tppiotrowski</author><text>Carl Sagan did a great job describing the witch trial phenomenon in &amp;quot;The Demon Haunted World&amp;quot;. It discusses how unchecked beliefs without any evidence can wreak havoc on society. If you were accused of witchcraft your only choices were:&lt;p&gt;1. to deny it and be burned at the stake&lt;p&gt;2. admit it, implicate others and be put to death in a gentler way&lt;p&gt;I admire the ones who stood for reason and were brave enough to endure the consequences.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>x3iv130f</author><text>Carl Sagan is an excellent communicator but he relies too heavily on literary tropes and popular fiction.&lt;p&gt;The issue of witchcraft is not unchecked beliefs, but the combustible mixture of politics and economics.&lt;p&gt;Early witches weren&amp;#x27;t old women performing secret rituals in dense forests. They were the bourgeoisie, who found themselves newly rich during a time of political and economic uncertainty.&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;Malleus Maleficarum&amp;quot; never caught on among the religious elite. Why would they care about the imagined threat of witches when Protestants were out in the open and gaining ground amongst all levels of society?&lt;p&gt;Where the book did catch on was amongst secular courts. The book provided a convenient justification for condemning political and economic opponents. There it was used to great effect.</text></comment>