#witchburning

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

"It was morality that burned the books of the ancient sages, and morality that halted the free inquiry of the Golden Age and substituted for it the credulous imbecility of the Age of Faith. It was a fixed moral code and a fixed theology which robbed the human race of a thousand years by wasting them upon alchemy, heretic-burning, witchcraft and sacerdotalism.“ — H.L. Mencken

[Poetic Outlaws]

[charmwasjess]

jess make up the name of a stupid fake star wars planet you can remember how to fucking spell 2024 challenge (failure)

[leoevilbanger]

[metalcultbrigade]

Witchburner - Blood of Witches 06/06/o 007

[pissmoon]

Btw catholics who always have to point out that protestants burned ~more~ witches than they did as if that means catholics doing ~less~ of it is just fine whenever witchburnings are mentioned are such a joke

[bizarrobrain]

"Witchburner" by Witchery - From "Witchburner" EP (2019 remaster, originally released in 1999)

[antinonymous]

The song Witchburner from the album Witchburner by Witchburner

[saramackenzie1982]

At this point in her life, the character of Miranda is facing a new adventure. She's discovering who she is, and finds it goes against the law. Her loyalties are split. Get yourself wrapped up in the promises. In the heat of the moment, you'll promise anything. What will you do if it means death? Would you keep it then? #WitchBurnings #FiresBurning #WitchHunt #WitchHunters #Heresy #Blasphemy #CatholicChurch #ThePope #QueenAndCountry #GodSaveTheQueen #PinkiePromise #Promises #HistoricalDrama #HistoryInFiction #LBGTQHistory #LBGTQ #LesbianCouple #ComingOut #OutOfTheCloset #CoffeeCurrentlyReading #WinterReading https://www.instagram.com/p/Coe0AQNOCq8/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[cobragardens]

5 Good Omens Timefucks that Haunt Me

1.

Why is this here? Why is this line included? Is it just to add texture, to imply that larger world of corporate fascism of which Crowley and Aziraphale are subjects and victims and little worker bees? If so, why "They've started early" specifically? Why not "I wouldn't have expected that shrub to be the first to go" or "Aw, I liked that rock formation"?

Crawly doesn't make this comment in an offhand way: he sounds a bit taken aback and not thrilled that things have kicked off sooner than he anticipated. But it doesn't ultimately seem to make any difference to this scene, so why do we, the audience, need to know Hell started early?

2.

This one I'm not as confident will turn out to be significant, because iirc it appears in the book, which was a complete story when written, and because it serves a narrative purpose: it puts Agnes Nutter in charge of the situation, not her murderers. By backfooting Witchfinder Major Pulsifer, Agnes startles him enough she's able to walk past him without Pulsifer seizing her and discovering the extra 80 lbs of gunpowder and roofing nails in her skirts.

But. Agnes Nutter's sense of time is Nice and Accurate, and she notices the witchburning party are late and remarks on it to herself before she says anything to Pulsifer. So assuming a few minutes to position Agnes, tie her to the stake, and read the charges and conviction against her, Pulsifer and Agnes' neighbors are 12-15 minutes later than they should be. Why?

If the book answers this question, I don't recall; the show does not. And again, it seems to make no ultimate difference to this scene.

I'm not saying this was even purposely included in S1 as a timefuck. I am suggesting that as Gaiman seems to be fucking with time or timelines in this story, even if he and Pratchett didn't plan it like this when discussing the sequel, a retcon is hardly out of the question.

3.

As others have pointed out, Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5 is 45-55 minutes long. If you're listening to it on 78s instead of LPs because you are a CRAZY PERSON, it's going to take you more like 1 hour 5 minutes, because one side of a 78 holds, at most, 5 minutes of music, so every 5 minutes you have to get up and flip or switch the record.

Shostakovich wrote his 5th symphony in response to criticism in the state newspaper (possibly penned by Stalin himself) that his previous work didn't suck the Communist Party's dick hard enough--the kind of criticism that put him in danger of being sent to prison or killed. At the time it was first performed in 1937, Symphony No. 5 was considered a massive triumph, walking the line perfectly between Shostakovich's artistic standards and the Communist Party's demands of him.

The choice is symbolically significant, but it's a symphony, so whoever's censoring it isn't censoring lyrics or information. Again, why? Why is a 45-55-minute symphony only 21 minutes long? What did the time thief do with the 24-34 minutes?

4.

Here's the rug that covers the portal to Heaven in Episode 1:

Here's the rug in Ep. 2:

Aziraphale does not change this rug for the party. We know this bc we see it in Episode 5 when Mrs Sandwich enters the bookshop and the party is in full swing:

Now here's Aziraphale moving the circular rug to expose the portal to Heaven:

But here's Crowley, putting the rug back:

Why are there two different rugs?

5.

Every end credits track has the first line of "Everyday" embedded in it But after the line from "Everyday," at the end of Episode 4, the theme skips twice like a vinyl record, and then is stopped by whoever controls the turntable and restarted, with several seconds of music having been skipped over.

This is not the first time it has mattered to a character in Good Omens what we in the audience see and hear. I argue here that God asks Aziraphale what he did with the flaming sword She gave him in order to show us the audience who Aziraphale is. God also addresses us the audience directly in S1, not only narrating about characters omnisciently but speaking to us about Herself in first person.

Now we evidently have a second character who has gone meta and is changing what we the audience experience of this story, and--indications are good--the story itself.

[apas-95]

My sharpest childhood memory is going to see a witchburning.

I was young, only a handful of years old. Back then, I was still spending most evenings stomping around in the brush - or sitting in the nooks of trees, and thinking obscure, solitary thoughts. As with anything that occured outside the distance I could casually wander from the house, I was dragged there without a say in the matter.

I'd never seen such a large gathering of people at the school, other than for the fête. The treeless field extended from the schoolyard, encompassed the vegetable garden I was not yet allowed to tend, and pushed up against the tree-lined way that ran perpendicular to the lane. It was filled with people, a thrumming, loud crowd, surrounded by loose tendrils of stragglers in the dimming light.

In the centre, while the people trampled the ground on which I would sit at lunchtime, over their heads loomed a pyre.

When the time came, I was hoisted up, awkwardly held at adult height to see the stage. Kindling piled upon, and stuck out from, the hastily-woodworked rostrum - all of them, each and every one, of the most beautiful type of vines and branches that lay on the forest floor. The crowd was fixated, however, on a different fuel.

I can't say whether I understood what was happening or not. Though, even just from how she was dragged and shoved, it was obvious that her warmth was unusual. She was not detached, not above it as a martyr awaiting salvation - she was embedded firmly in this moment, and she was happy with it. She recieved the blows and scratches of the crowd like soft touches from old friends. When she was tied to the stake, she commanded the small stage, as though we had all ammassed just to listen to her.

She didn't say a word, though, and even the preacher's shouts bent past me, like arrows. I stared, a bubble of perfect silence in the noise.

She didn't fly away, didn't vanish in a flash of light. No flock of bats or brimstone smoke emanated from the schoolyard that night. I saw the flames burn linen, fine flaxseed oil bubbling out from threads, and I saw blackened leather flake off into acrid white ash. Wood and bone groaned and popped under heat, snapping suddenly to release showers of sparks. I will make no metaphor of it, I watched a women burn to death, screaming and sobbing for her mother, that night.

She was solitary, too, in her last moments, blind to the rest of us - blind to anything but the bright fire and the brighter pain. But that was out of her control. While she still had a choice, she smiled, looked upon us all as family. She did not do this out of spite, I know it. She didn't perceive the preacher at all, could not care less for his rage and passion. Her gaze swept over the chanting crowd, not with fear, not searching for a saviour, but like a violinist searching the audience. She was a witch, this I am sure of.

Just before they lit the fire, her gaze fell on me. She stopped, everything stopped. For a moment, I felt her bravery, her love. She winked at me, and then, she was gone.

[ladytabletop]

Fronds of Benevolence by Andrew Walter

This adventure for Troika! makes me want to play Troika! (which is more than I can say for the core book). It's one that, like Witchburner by Luka Rejec, has a ticking clock so that things HAVE to happen in the adventure.

[the-villian-7th]

terfs love to pretend that they would be burned at the stake if they lived in the 1800 when in fact they would be the ones reporting women to the witchburner

[haggishlyhagging]

It was clear to "everyone" during the witchcraze that the witchburners were doing god's will by slaughtering women. Even the title of the "authoritative" work of demonology, the Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches) worked as a self-fulfilling prophecy, for of course "maleficarum" is the feminine form of the word for evil-doer/witch. Since this was published in 1486, in the early period of the witchcraze, it contributed mightily to the overwhelming focus on women during the following centuries. In order to grasp how thoroughly males justified their massacre it is necessary only to look through the Malleus Maleficarum. For example, in the ninth question of Part One, the priestly authors gravely pose the pregnant question: "Whether Witches may work some Prestidigitatory Illusion so that the Male Organ appears to be entirely removed and separate from the Body?" The learned response is that they can: "But when it is performed by witches it is only a matter of glamour; although it is no illusion in the opinion of the sufferer." The term glamour, of course, means "a magic spell."

Kramer and Sprenger gave abundant reasons to justify the gynocidal maniacs who controlled society and culture. They explained that witches turn men into beasts, copulate with devils, raise and stir up hailstorms and tempests. The witch/ woman-killers appeared "perfectly" justified, since the priest professionals had posed the question: "Why is it that Women are chiefly addicted to Evil Superstitions?" The question itself set the framework for the answer. The reader was informed that women are more credulous, that they are naturally more impressionable, have slippery tongues, are feebler both in mind and body, are more carnal than men (!) to the extent of having insatiable lust, have weak memories, are liars by nature. Then—without missing a beat, after hammering home their view that women are feeble in every sense—these Sado-Sages add that "nearly all the kingdoms of the world have been overthrown by women."

Those who acted as henchmen in hunting out, torturing, and killing women as witches could argue correctly that they were serving the Higher Order of patriarchy and were acting "under orders." The papal Bull of Innocent VIII, Summis desiderantes affectibus (1484), was a document of the highest authority, giving the support of Rome to "Our dear sons," the dominican Inquisitors, Kramer and Sprenger, who were encountering opposition to the witch persecutions. This papal document had been purposefully solicited by the two dominicans to legitimate their attempt to launch the witchcraze in the Rhineland. As Trevor-Roper points out:

Having obtained it, they printed it in their book, as if the book had been written in response to the bull. The book thus advertised to all Europe both the new epidemic of witchcraft and the authority which had been given them to suppress it.

Here we see very conscious manipulation of legitimation from on high by the Inquisitors. Given the "go ahead" from Innocent, they had perfect justification for carrying out orders. More than that: Innocent had made it clear that "Our venerable Brother, the Bishop of Strasburg . . . shall threaten all who endeavor to hinder or harass the Inquisitors, all who oppose them . . . [with] terrible penalties." Thus ecclesiastical power was used to erase responsibility for opposing the witch persecutions, even for speaking against them. Although Innocent's Bull itself refers to "many persons of both sexes" as having "abandoned themselves to devils, incubi and succubi," the authors of the Malleus Maleficarum manage to totally erase this idea, while at the same time retaining the full support of "Innocent" in their war against women. Thus the "dear Sons"—the real leaders of the witch-hunting brotherhood—were the power behind the throne of the Holy Father.

In the witchcraze, then, we can see the truth of Helen Diner's insight that "in Christianity the tree becomes the torture cross of the world." Under the Sign of the Cross good and wise women were tortured and burned to death. Trees were killed and their wood used to make the fires that would devour these women. Under the reign of the Torture Cross Society, the Tree of Life—the divine Self-centering life of independent women—was cut down and consumed. The citizens of the city of god created, staged, and acted out the christian hell on earth. Their theology expressd itself as demonology; their reigning philosophy became an ontology of the damned. No one was responsible for this evil except the victims, who were perceived not as victims of their murderers, but of the devil. Innocent and his "dear Sons" were servants of god, burning with innocence.

-Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology

[leoevilbanger]

[lightsinthemist]

We don't celebrate Halloween where I live, but my kindergarten did something similar around the same time when in the evening, we would go in costumes around the whole town, holding lanterns and 'locking' all the tress so they wouldn't freeze in winter. And of course I went a witch since I was maybe three, until I went to school.

It's a running joke in my family that for the whole year, I would keep saying how I wish it was 'lampionkový průvod' already, so I could wear my witch costume which was really just some old dress or skirt and my orange witch hat with sewed on autumn leaves. I wore it religiously each year and cried when it got too ugly and my mum threw it out. I would definitely wear it every day if I could.

We also wore costumes for 'Witchburning' holiday on 30th April, but you wouldn't usually wear hat for that since most of times you ended up running in the woods with other kids and would probably lose it in some ditch. But I loved those old and ugly af dresses and scarves and those rags that my mum braided in my hair.

I flooded tags of a poll asking about the people's first halloween costumes since apparently, I'm still just as feral about 'lampionkový průvod' as back then.

I think maybe the only time I wasn't dressed as a witch for something was once for Masopust, when I went as 'Víla Amálka' and my mum was so insane for the time she spent on that wig. So envious of my younger self and still annoyed just as then, when some woman thought that I'm princess Goldilocks. What do you mean? Do you not see the dress?? THE BLUE FLOWER CROWN?!!

[pissmoon]

No, I dont think its a funny joke when some aloof ironic cool christian girlies go 'eww cringe jesus bible' whenever someone brings up a tiniest bit of interest in paganism or occultism. I am not saying these communities dont have annoying people in them. But given christianitys history with witchburnings and colonialism in the americas and attempts to wipe out any pagan religion wherever they went being justified with dehumanizing whoever they considered 'pagans' or (supposedly) involved in witchcraft its pretty damn crass and bad taste. You dont get to decide which beliefs are 'demonic' or 'evil' and they are not automatically demonic or evil because some christian said so - I dont accept it and I dont have damn spanish inquisition threatening to torture me to pretend i do