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Originally Posted by DMcCunney
I'd be curious to know what prompted that switch of allegiance.
Once the accusation is made, hysteria sets in, and the facts get lost. This sort of thing operates on a gut level, and is based in emotions, not reason. Reason has all it can do to make itself heard.
Again, the terms are slippery. I know people who consider themselves "witches" and "warlocks", but they are coming from pagan traditions where Satan isn't even recognized as an entity. They use the terms to refer to people who practice ceremonial magick which is also rooted in pagan tradition, and has no Christian frame of reference involved. Some of the pagan traditions may well have been adopted by and carried over into Christianity - early Christianity was adept at that, to make it easier to convert unbelievers - but this tends to be lost in the noise when the topic arises.
Some Christians would lump them all in the evil category, largely because of the lack of Christianity, but the witches don't fit the standard Christian definition. From their viewpoint, anyone using magic is evil, period. (I recall at least one fantasy story that had fun with the concept, postulating that if you could sell your soul to Satan for power/money/advantage, God might offer a better deal, and the protagonist had taken God's offer. The Satan minion got a rude surprise when God's guy out-magicked him.)
Satan is a bad place to start from. But the folks I've encountered who started there had issues to begin with, and their bad experiences were rooted in what they brought to the table.
Quite so. I know folks from several different strains of paganism. Paganism may often include the occult (and it's difficult for it not to). Satanic imagery and rituals are another matter. The pagans I know avoid such things and look down on the practitioners. People into Satanism tend to be motivated by quests for power and personal advantage. Folks from the various pagan traditions see that sort of thing as rebounding on the practitioner, and missing the point of the practices.
I've seen similar issues among the fundamentalists opposed to evolution. Er, read Darwin, and refute what he said, not what someone says he said...
Anton LaVey's tome? Personally, I though he was a poser, interested in notoriety, and the book was unintentionally hilarious.
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Dennis
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Pre-Christian Roman law considered witchcraft real. It wasn't illegal to practice sorcery, but it was illegal to use sorcery to accomplish malicious goals.