Witch Hunt

This is a documentary catalog — an alphabetically organized list of individuals killed or executed under witchcraft accusations across Europe, the Americas, Africa, and beyond, spanning roughly from the 13th century through the 20th. The work's central analytical claim, made in the introduction, is that the so-called "Burning Times" were not a persecution of practicing pagans: documentary evidence shows that pre-1400 trials targeted harmful magic and treasonous divination, while the bulk of 1400–1700 trials concerned diabolism and Satanism, with only a single documented case (1390 Milan) involving women tried for practicing rites tied to the pagan goddess Diana. The author argues most victims were probably ordinary, innocent Christians rather than any kind of occult practitioners — some were simply elderly, unattractive, attractive, or unlucky. This directly challenges a popular neo-pagan and Wiccan historical narrative that frames the witch trials as a systematic campaign against pre-Christian goddess religion. The list itself is vast and explicitly described as incomplete, drawing entries from Scotland, England, Germany, Croatia, Iceland, France, colonial America, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere, with dates ranging from 1275 to 1999, underscoring that witch-accusation killings are not purely a medieval or early modern phenomenon.

Witch Hunt

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