Do our parents and grandparents hate Pagans because Hitler loved them??
You bet, says historian Malcolm Gaskill:
"…the Nazis … endorsed Pagan ideals to highlight the church’s oppression of authentic volkish [folk] culture.”
All of which, says Malcolm, soured the postwar generation on all things Pagan -- including the notion that witches might have been benign people smacked with a smear campaign.
The idea that witches might have been cool dudettes and dudes was actually popular in the 19th century. For example, the French historian Jules Michelet (1798-1874) “repackaged” witches “as protorevolutionary heroines battling feudal oppression.”
However, warns Gaskill, scholars who think everyone tried for witchcraft was innocent of wrongdoing, are currently way out of style.
(from Witchcraft: A Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gaskill, Malcolm. 2010, pp. 101; 116).
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This radically fab image was done by Susan Sedon Boulet. Bless you for all you've done for us, Susan.
You bet, says historian Malcolm Gaskill:
"…the Nazis … endorsed Pagan ideals to highlight the church’s oppression of authentic volkish [folk] culture.”
All of which, says Malcolm, soured the postwar generation on all things Pagan -- including the notion that witches might have been benign people smacked with a smear campaign.
The idea that witches might have been cool dudettes and dudes was actually popular in the 19th century. For example, the French historian Jules Michelet (1798-1874) “repackaged” witches “as protorevolutionary heroines battling feudal oppression.”
However, warns Gaskill, scholars who think everyone tried for witchcraft was innocent of wrongdoing, are currently way out of style.
(from Witchcraft: A Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gaskill, Malcolm. 2010, pp. 101; 116).
__________
This radically fab image was done by Susan Sedon Boulet. Bless you for all you've done for us, Susan.
