The Cornell University Witchcraft Collection

I guess it's no surprise that his source material was directly at hand, as he was a Cornellian

There is an interesting history thesis that the Inquisition and the Renaissance are actually two faces of the same phenomena: the rise of the idea of nation-states and institutions. That is, power and authority sourced in something impersonal that survives the person vested with it. It's one of the pillars of modernity, and we take it for granted enough that we erroneously view the Medieval period and feudal structures in that way. By the early Renaissance, Inquisition courts became meticulous about following court procedures, evidentiary processes (such as they were), and documenting decisions.

That's not to justify the Inquisition, but rather, it isn't as if how we do things now is all that much better.

Currently we have a pervasive purity culture. It seems every group of any sort has its purity tests. And I am appalled by the number of times I witness accusers asking yes or no questions, not allowing for anything but a simple demon-haunted binary answer.

We humans are not currently punishing the wrong answers with death (most of the time). But we have not progressed much beyond that.

Carl Sagan is an excellent communicator but he relies too heavily on literary tropes and popular fiction.

The issue of witchcraft is not unchecked beliefs, but the combustible mixture of politics and economics.

Early witches weren'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.

The "Malleus Maleficarum" 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?

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.

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'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't like him and simply weaponized the fears of the day, and that was more the rule than exception.

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'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'd release the following year.

And this is a pattern that has repeated endlessly throughout history. All that changes is whatever one needs to label somebody.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Burroughs

> If you were accused of witchcraft your only choices were:

3. Ask to see if you weighed the same as a duck

// disrupted social relations, high levels of anxiety, pessimistic worldview, lack of entrepreneurial culture and innovative activity.

Perhaps this was your point anyway but this sounds like a very modern set of problems. Perhaps religious history of "battling" witchcraft and demonism can be understood as societies having witnessed a similar set of social issues brewing and looking for the root cause.

An interesting connection that popped in my mind is women I've met in life who called themselves witches, or were interested in the concept, or even just dressed every day like it's Halloween - these aren't people you easily picture being close to their family, being married with children, being optimistic and entrepreneurial, etc. You kinda picture them at least absent from those things but perhaps more actively seeking to subvert them (eg: r/WitchesVsPatriarchy - by "patriarchy" they basically mean "everything")

So perhaps the religious history of battling witches is just a limited/filtered understanding of the larger (and necessary) social theme of trying to preserve virtuous, energetic, spiritual, values-driven society, during times they were under attack.

The number of "perhapses" in this comment should make it clear that I am just riffing here, but this is what your post inspired.

I don't think this is true. A lot of people in the witchcraft scene are entrepreneurs due to persecution. What is likely more correct is that "fantastic beliefs" are associated with bad economic conditions (looking for fantastic solutions to modern problems).

The institution is insulting the members of this religion(again....) by saying they 'lack entrepreneurial culture' and are 'not innovative'. One walk into a witchcraft circle , community gathering, or event will show you that this is plainly and obviously false.

Faust is a memorable read for me.

* https://archive.org/details/Faust00goet_201303

I see nothing wrong with that. I'm a software developer but the first section of the library I tended to visit as a kid was the Paranormal section (this was shortly before personal computers were a thing!). I probably know as much about it as I do about software, and I'm still largely skeptical.

If you aren't already, you may be interested in the Esoterica channel on Youtube which discusses old occult texts and beliefs[0].

[0]https://www.youtube.com/@TheEsotericaChannel

> when an academic person dismisses this type of devilry as fiction

Are you implying that instead all people should align on witchcraft being legitimate? And that if all people align on it being legitimate that it should be viewed as devilry?