What are the differences between Chinese witches and Western witches?

The following is what I found, Lou Lou please read patiently

Tibetan Witches Editor

The Tibetan ancestors under the domination of the primitive religious concepts believe that: Whether it is in the sky, underground or in the water, there are gods and spirits, and everything in the world is at the behest of these gods and spirits. Underground or in the water, there are gods and spirits, and all things in the world are subject to these gods and spirits. For example, in the Tibetan plateau on the common earthquake fire, wind, snow, thunder and lightning, floods, hail and other natural phenomena and natural disasters, are attributed to these gods show the magical power. At the same time, in accordance with the laws of survival and competition in the natural world, the Tibetan forefathers in life, production practices, and found some objective things and natural phenomena, as long as people in the living habits, labor methods can be adapted to a slight change, and some can even be for the people around, and to make it for their own use. In other words, it is possible to influence certain objective things and natural phenomena through man-made methods, or to avoid their harm, or to turn harm into benefit. For example, when it rains, people can use leaves to cover their bodies; when it is windy, people can hide in caves; when they cross a river, they can use driftwood. At the same time. Hunting, one can obtain birds and animals, picking can obtain fruits, and so on and so forth. As human society continues to move forward, people through practice, and then proceeded to only cover the rain of the leaves, and gradually expanded to both rain and can keep out the cold of the animal skins, and even later weaving; picking wild fruits gradually evolved to planting and regular harvesting; hiding in the wind to avoid the rain of the caves, and gradually evolved to the building of the house and living; hunting has gradually developed into the domestication of birds and animals ... ...

For the same reason, the spiritual world of the Tibetan forefathers moved forward, as in life. Labor is not satisfied with the leaves to cover the body, caves to hide, picking wild fruits and hunting birds and beasts in order to fruit, etc., they are no longer satisfied with passively listening to the gods to give and punish, and produced want to use a certain method or tool to influence and control these gods, in order to change the "magical power" that they have. This is the background of the primitive witchcraft of the Tibetan ancestors. In fact, this is another aspect of mankind's quest to overcome nature, only that the former should belong to the practice of "labor to create man," while the latter belongs to the spiritual side.

Despite the good intentions of the Tibetan ancestors, this was not always possible. Because the productivity of the time was still very low, for the objective things and some natural phenomena, people are not able to control and influence them, and purely use the "spiritual" method, of course, it is more difficult to get what you want. Although this is common knowledge today, it is not possible for the Tibetan ancestors to understand it as we do in those ancient times. When they this kind of "spiritual" requirements can not be realized and satisfied, so very naturally this beautiful fantasy, put in "can have a kind of can contact ghosts and gods of the people" on the body. Then through this kind of people who can "reach the public opinion and transmit the will of the gods" to influence and control the objective things and certain natural phenomena. This is the Tibetan Plateau sorcerer came into being the objective background.

Just as the Tibetan ancestors fantasized about controlling and influencing objective things and some natural phenomena, the sorcerer's emergence, or after a fairly long process. When people are performing rituals and practicing certain witchcraft, often in the vast majority of the time this subjective requirements are not realized. However, there were always some coincidences that were fulfilled and some desired effects were achieved. The person who performs the rituals and witchcraft activities is then considered to have special witchcraft skills. In this way, the sorcerer, a special figure of the primitive religion, came into being in response to the demands of the times.

As the Tibetan primitive religious ritual host of the sorcerer, in the primitive tribal and clan era, mostly by the clan elders and tribal chiefs to serve. Mastery of divine power is the key condition for their ability to firmly grasp and control the power of the clan and tribe. It is said that these sorcerers in the ancient times were able to communicate with the gods and spirits, and could reach up to the public opinion and transmit the will of the gods; they could foretell good and bad luck, get rid of calamities and diseases; they could also engage in omens, divination, and practise sorcery such as summoning souls and exorcising ghosts. They are the bridge and medium between man and God, and on some occasions they are also regarded as the spokesmen of God. In short, the sorcerer in the minds of the Tibetan ancestors, enjoy a very high prestige.

Though today we can't find any information about these primitive Tibetan sorcerers from the Tibetan and Chinese texts, the influence of these sorcerers on the Tubo dynasty can be seen from the fact that the sorcerers from the Elephant and Castle were introduced into the Tibetan region later on.

The book The Origin and Flow of the True Religion says: "The one who was the king's teacher was called Laxing, and the one who served the king was called Guxing." It also says: "The king highly valued the words of Ben Sim, and before Sim spoke, the king could not issue a decree." The "Xin" here is the sorcerer of the religion. Because of this religious say their ancestor (founder) is Xin around Miwo, so later Tibetan history books that often to "Xin" as the Church's pronouns, or "Xin" as the Church's sorcerer's pronouns. From this record, we can see that at that time the power of this religion sorcerer is quite big. And they had been influencing the Tubo Dynasty for 26 generations. Until around the 6th century AD, Indian Buddhism was introduced to the Tubo, and was accepted by the Tubo royal family, this religion gradually lost its power, and later finally withdrew from the political arena, and was replaced by Buddhism.

These Tibetan shamans of the primitive religious period are no longer found in Tibetan and Chinese historical documents. As a result, we know almost nothing about their names, inheritance, costumes, magic weapons, altars, incantations, sorcery, divination and so on. That is, those who have participated in the Tubo dynasty twenty-six generations of the regime of the sorcerer, can find the information, is also very little, not to mention those far away from the inaccessible age of the sorcerer. It is in that has "the Tibetan plateau primitive tribal society of the encyclopedia" called (King Gesar biography), we can only find some "Ani", "Yagi", "Mo Ma" and other ancient sorcerer's title. Fortunately, due to our country's Tibetan area, the transportation is closed, many remote areas of Tibetan Buddhism's influence is correspondingly weak, but also for us more or less retained some more or less close to the primitive religious sorcerer's face. This is a blessing in disguise.

7Shamanic Shaman Edit

The first magician in history was probably a shamanic shaman, or tribal warlock, a witch doctor. He was a medium who communicated with the gods and spirits, and could travel to the world of the gods and spirits.

We are familiar with those characteristics about traditional witches and need not repeat them. Apothecary or shamanic witches usually carry a wooden staff or rod in their hands and wear robes made of animal fur or bird feathers. Shamanism originated in northern Asia, Siberia and the Eskimo region. As a form of mystical witchcraft, the apothecaries of North America and the witch doctors of Africa can be categorized as shamans. The tribal shamans of the far north, who were distinctly nomadic, also gathered animals by praying to the spirits in order to be able to help the tribe when they hunted. Their nomadic lifestyle is similar to that depicted in frescoes in French or Spanish caves.

Shamanism's teachings of salvation are filled with the idea that everything has a spirit. They believe that animals, plants, and even all the "stuff" around us, like men and women, have lives and souls, and that we can communicate with them. But not everyone can do this, only those with special abilities. (This kind of special ability has different names in different places, such as the Melanesian tribes in the South Pacific called "Mana" - supernatural ability; the Sioux tribes in the American Indians called "Wakan Spirit Power" - come to the Wakan Spirit Power! "

Those tribes are the most powerful in the world, and they are the most powerful in the world, and they are the most powerful in the world.)

Those who possess this magical power can enter the world of the spirits in a manner similar to the Buddhist practice of "jing" (a state of meditative detachment from one's physical surroundings). There, he can not only communicate with the gods and goddesses in a spiritual way, but also with God or gods and goddesses. He can receive information from the spirits and use their power to heal the patient's mental or physical wounds. The sorcerer's power is often closely related to his clothing, which is often made of animal fur or feathers from nature, signifying an alliance with the natural world. At some point in his magical journey, this alliance can assist him. In the United States, shamans' cloaks are made of North American bison hides; in Polynesia, a magician's cloak is sewn from a type of bark cloth, beautifully embroidered; the cloaks of Tahitian and Hawaiian shamans are far more ornate than these, and are carefully sewn from the feathers of a rare bird. Shamans, witchdoctors and magical apothecaries all have the ability to communicate with the spirits of the dead, which is often referred to as "channeling". The skills of Brazilian shamans are usually inherited, passed on from father to son - with the occasional exception that if a member of the tribe has not inherited this extraordinary ability, he or she may be eligible to learn the art of "channeling. A spirit (the most prestigious of which is that of the jaguar) can possess him and make him a true shaman.

8 Eskimo Witches Edit

The people who are in charge of religious affairs in Eskimo society are witches, and there are witches in every village, who are the most important people in the village, and both male and female witches exist. An Eskimo sees a shaman as a person who has the special ability to communicate with or influence the gods. Shamans are believed to be able to make their souls temporarily leave their bodies and communicate with the gods of the spirit world and make contact with minor spirits, who then become the servants of the shaman, giving him advice and ideas and providing him with help. The sorcerer exercises witchcraft through hypnosis, chanting spells, ventriloquism and conjuring. The important role of the sorcerer is to discover the causes of disasters, such as illnesses and injuries, and to find solutions to them. The Eskimos believe that the cause of a disaster is that someone has offended a deity, so the sorcerer generally finds out which deity has been offended and why. Most findings were that someone had broken a taboo. So people pleased the spirits by performing religious ceremonies to soothe the spirits, or added regulations to the original taboo, in order to eliminate the disaster and take refuge. Witches were believed to be able to exorcise ghosts that possessed people, to forecast weather conditions and even change them, to predict and divine the future, and to communicate with the spirits of the dead. Witches not only make amulets to sell to others, but also prepare incantations to sell.

Because they can breathe and have their own names, every Eskimo theoretically has the ability to communicate directly with the spirit world. But what kind of person becomes a shaman? How does one become a shaman? How does a shaman acquire these superhuman abilities? Eskimos everywhere say different things. Some believe that it is a person's natural ability; in most regions, to become a sorcerer, a person must go through a period of cultivation, or learn from other sorcerers, or fast for a period of time on a mountaintop or in a cave, and then suddenly come to a realization, and ultimately gain the ability to disembodied souls. A sorcerer not only establishes a direct connection with the world of spirits, but also puts some of them at his service.

Let's look at a specific example of how Eskimo shamans cast spells. These are two stories that took place in the late 1800s. At that time there lived the Kvarina family in a village in Northwest Alaska, where the family lived most of the time, but went whaling at Cape Hope every spring. That year, because of an epidemic of disease at Cape Hope, many people contracted the disease and died, and the family was hesitant to set out on the whaling trip, so a shaman was called in to divine, and tell them what to do. The shaman gathered all the people together in a dark room. When the people were seated, the shaman took out of his bag a small tent made of seal intestines, a puppet and a small lamp. He placed the puppet and the lamp inside the small tent, and after closing the tent, the sorcerer began to beat the drum and sing. After a while, the sorcerer lit the lamp inside the tent, and the puppet inside stood up and walked around. Through the small translucent tent, everyone could see the walking puppets. The sorcerer began to talk to the puppets, which of course no one else could understand. After a few minutes of conversation, the puppet lies down, the lights go out, and the shaman once again beats the drum and sings. After the song, it is considered the end of the ceremony. While putting the paraphernalia in the man's bag, the wizard announced that he could go to Cape Hope, that no one would get sick, and that he would catch three whales. This was exciting news, so the whole Kvarina family went to Cape Hope, and was more than fortunate that all was safe.

Despite their magical powers, a sorcerer is still an ordinary human being who is unable to escape the various desires of man and resist outside influences. Some sorcerers abuse their power and get caught up in power struggles, always attempting to cause disaster or death to their opponents or to their opponents' families, or even entire villages to defeat them. It is known from survivors that the greatest disaster caused to the people by the fights between witches is famine. Most sorcerers used their specialties to benefit from the community to which he belonged, and therefore the Eskimos were in great need of a good sorcerer. They believed that an incapable, braggadocious sorcerer would turn into a rat. When a qualified shaman could not determine the cause of a famine, it was a sign of disaster for the Eskimos. But without the soothsaying of the shaman, the Eskimos would have had a much harder time, not knowing what was going to happen to the world. Throughout the history of the Eskimo people, shamans have played a major role in various festivals. The Eskimos of the eastern region could celebrate festivals whenever they were happy, and on crowded occasions the sorcerers, without fail, always demonstrated their spells. Witches ruled the Eskimo religion until the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when various Christian denominations entered the Eskimo villages with the arrival of the white man. Almost all Eskimos today have converted to Christianity.

The Witch Disaster Editor

The persecution of "witches", which lasted from 1480 to 1780, swept through Europe for 300 years. Once a good woman was falsely accused of being a "witch", she was immediately beheaded and her body burned, and the number of ghosts under the knife was too many to count. This was a dark chapter in the history of medieval Europe and in the history of human civilization.

The annual carnival has passed again. Every year, in late winter, early spring, the climax of the carnival, Rose Monday, is the day of the "fools, witches," the marketplace, the group "devil" dance. And when people are shouting, dancing and having fun, who will think of the tragic stories of the "witches" hundreds of years ago?

Looking south from the crossroads in the center of Freiburg's old town, the quaint Martin Gate stands a hundred meters away. Nailed to the solid stone wall is a metal plaque with a description in German that reads, "On March 24, 1599, Margaretha M., Katharina S., and Anna W. were beheaded, burned, and made victims of the witch witch-hunt. They were but representatives of the many innocents of Freiburg, and it is with this plaque that I wish to honor the memory of the wronged souls." A few words, but people think a lot, cause my heart a desire to unveil the hidden behind that long and dark horror of history, that is the history of the European Middle Ages and the history of human civilization, a bloodstained page chapter.

The Ghost of the Castle

The story takes place more than 400 years ago.

Then there was a tailor in Freiburg named Jacques, who was skillful, loyal and hard-working, and was known far and wide as the president of the General Council of Tailors. From 1562, he was also a member of the city council, one of the 30 city leaders. Jacques had a couple of daughters, and after his wife's death, Jacques soon remarried. His second wife, Margareta, gave him a son and a daughter, a boy named Philippe and a girl named Suzanne.

Eighteen years have passed in a flash, and his children are now adults. The daughter, Suzanne, was still involved with other men after her marriage, a "misdemeanor" that was contrary to the regulations of the time. However, as long as Jacques remained in government service, the family's reputation was more or less intact. It was only when he retired in 1583, feeling old and infirm, that rumors about his wife Margareta and daughter Suzanne became the talk of the townspeople once again.

One day in 1587, Susanna's husband was imprisoned for several days for debt. Taking advantage of this, Susanna and her lover, Marcus, a university student, were frequent visitors, and their indecent behavior in broad daylight invited Marcus to be detained several times. Once released, he repeats his behavior, and the police have no choice but to put them in jail together. However, Marcus was still in prison, and made a lot of noise every day. In the end, the city government had to order Marcus out of the Freiburg district and forbid him to enter the city gates again.

Poor Jacques was already seriously ill and could no longer find old colleagues and friends to intercede on behalf of his daughter in prison. Margareta had to take matters into her own hands and pay to ransom her daughter. But the story doesn't end there. One day, a butcher's store boy with nothing better to do, in a casual conversation, refers to Margareta as a "witch", and although he immediately retracts the remark, admitting that it was "hasty, irresponsible, and revealing" nonsense, it spreads like wings. Although he immediately retracted it and admitted that it was just a "rash, irresponsible and revealing" nonsense, the words spread like wings through the streets of the city. In those days, witches were synonymous with "infidels", and to be labeled a witch was to receive a death sentence.

Jacques initially tried to defend his wife, but he was unable to do so and soon passed away. When Jacques' two sons-in-law started a battle with Margareta over her inheritance, Suzanne's unloved husband took the opportunity to grab most of the money and leave. From then on, poor Margareta began her long and difficult life: constant internal strife in the family, being a widow, being criticized at every turn, and being jealous of her family's fortune, she was finally denounced as a "witch" by four citizens of Freiburg on February 19, 1599, and was arrested and imprisoned on the same day. The same day she was arrested and imprisoned, along with Katharina and Anna. Before them, six other women were in prison as "suspected witches".

At first, Margareta did not recognize that she was a "witch" and guilty of rebellion against God. However, under escalating torture, Margareta was forced to confess to all the crimes that had been imposed on her. Her confessions were as follows:

1. One night ten years ago, a man with a black face appeared in her garden, a man who flirted with her and whose wishes she fulfilled, a man of cold temperament. 2. he convinces her not to believe in God, which she does, but she immediately feels guilty.

3. The man said that his name was Blackbrow Woods, and gave her a Wiccan broom, and some witch ointment (for witchcraft - author's note).

4. She had been flying in her garden at night for some time.

5. She had used this broom to fly to Geog's house, and had also been to Katarina's house and Anna's house.

6. And many other women, whom she did not know, had come to her house, and they had eaten and drunk together. In response to this confession, which seems absurd today, the court was quick to pass judgment: it sentenced Margareta M. to death, to be executed on March 24, 1599, to be beheaded by a sharp sword and to have her body burned on a woodpile, with the trial speech ending with the words, "God forgive this poor soul."

It would have been routine for the witch to be burned alive, like the pagans. But on Feb. 13, before her death, the city council voted by an overwhelming majority to "behead and burn" three other witches. Thus, she and the other two witches were not burned alive, but after they were decapitated, their bodies were thrown onto a woodpile and burned to ensure that the "witch body" was completely eliminated.

Freiburg March 24, 1599, that cold, early spring day, not far from the Martin Gate, on the embankment of the river, Margareta and three other accused witches will be beheaded. Down the embankment and across the river stood a crowd of citizens who had come to watch. They watched the blood splash from their heads in the light of the knives and followed the carts loaded with the bodies to the incinerator, two kilometers south of the city. It was an important trade route, and more people had gathered around the pre-prepared stacks of firewood, making it the perfect place to make an example out of the people who would be burned.

Margareta, Katharina and Anna were martyred by the evil forces of religion at the height of the "witch witch-hunt" in late medieval Europe (1590-1630). This wave of persecution, which began around 1480 and lasted until 1780, swept through Europe for almost 300 years, and it is difficult to count the number of innocent women like Margareta who were killed in the fire. Expert estimates of the number of victims vary widely, from 100,000 to several million. The reason for this lack of information is partly due to the fact that court records have been lost over the years, and partly because in many cases it has become difficult to determine whether the victims were convicted on the basis of witchcraft or of heretical beliefs. In Germany, however, there are two more plausible figures that illustrate the rampant persecution of the time. One is that in the small Bavarian town of Bamberg, an old castle with a population of 6,000, 600 people were condemned to die as witches in five years: in Würzburg (also with a population of about 6,000), nearly 900 people died during the same period, which is equivalent to the execution of a "witch" every two days.

The origin of the evil

The origin of the word "witch" cannot be explained without going back to the early history of human civilization. In fact, human society has a long history of imagining the existence of supernatural powers of sorcery, witchcraft and the devil. In ancient times, productivity was very low and life was mostly determined by natural factors. When existential dilemmas such as famine, poverty, epidemics and natural and man-made disasters arose and people needed to explain them, it was easy to blame everything on the action of an unnatural or supernatural force - demons, witches, gods and monsters then came into being. Even in today's highly technologically advanced world, belief in witchcraft and magic still exists in less enlightened societies.

In ancient Greek and Roman literature, which had a great influence on early European culture, one can find many descriptions of witchcraft and demons. The ancient Greek Hecate (Hekate) was a powerful demoness who wanted people to sacrifice dogs to her. Whenever night falls, she will be accompanied by the dogs of hell to the earth, to drive away such as Medea (Medea), a kind of witch. They would be considered the oldest of the witches.

In ancient Rome in 450 B.C., there was also a legend that witches could destroy the harvest. In the Latin texts of the time, witches were portrayed in a variety of ways. Some of them could turn into owls at night, some could suck human blood, some could abduct children, some could make poisons, and some could call the wind and make waves.

Can be read in about 100 A.D. Ancient Roman writers wrote about the prototype of witches, is abandoned by the emperor god of the women, they are bowed down to the gods, whispering, the tombs of the dead is their residence, they know all the secrets of the hell, will be used in the dead and feces to make witch ointment. They are all demons who have been transformed from human beings, and they are cruel, vicious, shrewish and crazy, and they can also divine their future.

In ancient Europe, where wars, plagues and famines often led to sudden population declines, the precariousness of life intensified people's fears and they had to find some scapegoats to vent their anger and hatred. The Jews, for example, were among the first to be accused of poisoning wells and accelerating the spread of disease by anointing door handles and walls.

Additionally, the Bible's description of Satan's demonic kingdom is the root cause of people's "concoctions" of witches and demons. God's enemy, Satan, is the devil and king of hell, and is God's main competitor and slanderer. Satan is also said to be a ferocious fighter who was relegated by God to the earthly realm because of his vile character of envy and arrogance.

Despite this, claims of the existence of witchcraft remained unclimatized until the middle of the Middle Ages, although claims that witches should be put to death were also made. During the Carolingian dynasty (751-987) in Germany, those who believed in demonic witchcraft were instead charged. A special textbook for bishops published at that time (900 AD) described various imaginings of witches and demons, but they were all categorized as superstitious doctrines, and those who spread them were punished.

But by the end of the 12th and beginning of the 13th centuries, the Catholic Church in Western Europe had taken a major turn for the worse, with the reign of Pope Innezenz III (1198-1216), when papal power was at its height. Innezenz established a strict ecclesiastical hierarchy, in which the pope was the supreme head of the Catholic Church, with archbishops, bishops, etc. below him. The bishops each had their own jurisdictions to manage the affairs of the Church in their own dioceses. The Pope has all the power in one place, and the bishops of all countries are fully subject to the Pope. Innocent famously said, "The pope is the sun and the emperor is the moon, and just as the moon has to get its light from the sun, the emperor has to get his power from the pope." At that time, the kings under the feudal monarchies of England, Sweden and Denmark all bowed down to the Pope, and the German Emperor was naturally no exception.

One of the important results of the absolute concentration of papal power was the monopoly on faith and cultural education. They established a theoretical program against heresy, and brutally persecuted and suppressed those they considered to doubt or oppose Catholic doctrine. Thousands of Frenchmen were looted and killed in their bloody repression of opposition in the Albi region of southern France.

Beginning in 1232, the Church of Rome authorized the preachers of the Dominican Order to preside over crusades, trials, and persecutions against the "vile practices" of heretics. Anyone who was deemed to have disrespected the authority of the Catholic Pope and openly evaded the teachings of the Church was condemned as a heretic and was tried and persecuted by the infamous "Inquisition" (also known as the Inquisition, established in 1231). Dominican (1170-1221) was a Spaniard and the founder of the Dominican Order of Preachers in 1216. The highest magistrates of the Inquisition were mostly members of the Dominican Order. Their methods of dealing with "heretics" were secret interrogation, torture, and burning at the stake, and in 1252 the Pope publicly endorsed torture as a legitimate means of interrogation. This rendered worthless the previously accepted methods of confession, such as self-representation and swearing innocence to God, and broke with the old ecclesiastical court practice of "where there is an accuser, there is a judge".

In 1233, Pope Gregory IX, in his bull on the punishment of heresy, first equated heresy with witchcraft.

The first German to carry out this papal bull was Marburg, who was then president of the Inquisition of Heresy for all of Germany. The magistrate was entitled to half of all the property of the "heretics", so he specialized in arresting the nobility and the rich, interrogating them for confessions, and condemning them to death as heretics. I am afraid that it was because of his evil deeds that he caused so much public anger that he was soon killed. Next, at the German Church Council in Mainz, the church unanimously passed a resolution to purge the preachers and to reorganize the heretical inquisition. This resolution saved Germany from the scourge of the Inquisition for the next 250 years, before the Pope's bull against witches and the publication of the book "Hammering the Witches". However, in Spain, France and Italy, which were the hardest hit by the Inquisition, countless innocents were persecuted by the Inquisition. The famous astronomer Bruno was one of them. He was burned to death in the Piazza delle Flore in Rome, Italy, in February 1600, for having violated the teachings of the Inquisition by proposing the doctrine that "the universe is infinite, and that the sun is not the center of the universe and is not stationary".

In 1479, in response to resistance to the Inquisition by local authorities in Germany, Pope Ingerson VIII named two Dominican preachers, Instidorius and Spencer, heretical magistrates for Germany and the Rhine. Instidoris had hunted down heretics and witches in many areas, and Spenge was a great scholar who served as a professor at the Cologne seminary.

Both were ruthless and extremist clerics. It was they who traveled south to Rome in 1484 to see Pope Ingerson VIII, and by telling him of the reality and danger of the Satanic kingdom in Germany and the need to suppress it resolutely, persuaded the Pope to issue a scourgeous bull against witches, and three years later, the two theologians' infamous Hexenhammer, the most important of all witch-persecutions in the centuries that followed, was published. The Hexenhammer was an important program of violence and a legal instrument in the witch persecution of the next few centuries. As a result, Germany became a major Western European center for the killing of witches.

In 1452, 400 years after the Chinese invented movable type, Gutenberg invented printing with 26 Latin letters. The popularization of this new printing technique led to the rapid spread of the book throughout Europe. People who were initially skeptical about the existence of witches slowly became convinced. Immediately after, the indictment is like a snowflake to fly. Fuel fires blazed, smoke covered the sky, and murderous voices were heard in every direction. The people's life under the threat of the plague, and added a spiritual noose, can be said to be in deep water, hardship and difficulties. The book eventually led to a long and widespread campaign to punish witchcraft, and was reprinted nearly 30 times in the 200 years between 1487 and 1669.

What a load of nonsense

The book Hammering the Witch has three main sections. The first part details the true existence of the demonic kingdom in the Kingdom of God. The book clearly states at the beginning, "He who denies the existence of demonic witchcraft is a heretic." The book also explains the fact that most of the possessors of witchcraft are women as a result of women's endless demand for pleasure and their insatiable carnal desires, which dictate that they have to commit adultery with demons in order to achieve fulfillment. In addition, women's weak will is also highly susceptible to the devil's temptation. Importantly, they cite the Bible to show that since women are made by God from a rib at the bottom of Adam's chest, women themselves cannot be perfect and are destined to be inferior to men. Coupled with the fact that sin on earth came into being only after Eve, women must be the root of all evil. Under this theory, nearly 90% of those accused of witchcraft were women. The second part of the book systematically describes the behavioral characteristics of witches and demons: they fly through the air, commit adultery with demons, and cause famine and pestilence. ...... The third part of the book describes the specific interrogation procedures for witches and the effective ways to ensure the success of an interrogation. There is no prosecution, no defense, and in addition to torture as a means of extracting a confession, there is the witch test. In particular, the author of this book emphasizes that because of the devil's magic on the witch, the witch will no longer be sensitive to pain, which should be used as a basis for the judgement of cruel torture.

It is absurd that the religious courts of the time referred to these regulations in the book. In addition to corporal punishment, they used witch-screening methods that were even more mind-boggling. For example:

Burning Iron: A red-hot iron was used to scald the accused's hands, and if the hands had burns, they were guilty.

The Needle Prick Method: the accused is made to remove all his clothes and pricked all over his body with a needle, and if there is no feeling in a certain part of his body, he is convicted of being a witch.

Water immersion: the accused was bound hand and foot and thrown into a lake. If she floats on the surface of the water, she is blessed by the devil and must be sent to the stake.

The result of these grotesque trials was that whether or not the accused were "guilty", they had to die: either by drowning in the water or by being burned at the stake.

Margaretta's confession, described earlier in this article, as well as the confessions of all the "witches" who were tortured at the time, were similar in that they all met the criteria for convicting witches set forth in this witch-hunting guidebook, "Hammering the Witch," in that they were guilty of four major offenses: entering into a covenant with the Devil (obsession), fornicating with the Devil (membership in Satan's kingdom), and participating in a conspiracy with the Devil. member of Satan's kingdom), participating in a coven of witches (they are in cahoots and make a mockery of church rituals), and causing plagues.