What actually make severe PREJUDICE towards Witches and Wizards everywhere? Is it because of...?

Question

...dark past? ...stereotype from Hollywood? ...misinterpretation of the Bible? ...fear of the unknown truth? ...some weirdos from Witches or Wizards themselves? WHAT?!?

Answer 1

The prejudice towards us witches is based in christianity (*sigh*again). Christians believed that only god can heal and possess knowledge of life and death. Most of those accused of witchcraft were either village healers that used herbs and oils to heal, old women that had no means of support but somehow managed to live with out help from family, beggars or strangers that "just didn't look right". The bible in the OT has the command from solomon "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" but yet he consulted one before a battle. They believe as many still wrongly do, that we worship the devil. But true witches do not worship a christian diety. The devil is from the bible and has no place in witchcraft. They instead villified our horned god, the bringer of life and deliverer of our souls at death.

It is ignorance and mountains of misinformation that lead to the misconseptions, and hollywood doesn't help any either. There are also the "wanna be's" that do damage to us as well. They come off spouting that they can cast curses and such, when in fact we rarely will ever do such a thing, because of the karmic backlash. We believe in the 3 fold rule: What ever you do be it for good or ill will come back to you 3 time stronger. Any true and initiated witch into an established tradition will 99.999% of the time refuse to perform curses, bindings, love spells, or any other harmful majik. We only heal and cast spells and incantations to help or better a situation, and only after much thought and consideration to the effects.

There are those we call "IRABS" or "I read a book" witches, they go to a book store read one book and proclaim that they are a witch, they too hurt the image. They don't have the proper formal training in understanding the correlations of the elements their colors, which works with what, what diety aspects work with others ect. They are totally clueless.

I have gone through formal year and a day training and have been initiated for over 6 years now. I am a priestess in the NROOGD tradition, I have knowledge and more importantly the wisdom on how to use my energies, these so-called self initiated witches do not have the training from an elder on how to use and control them.

Also the term wizard is from fantasy, males in a coven are also called witches, but never ever call one a warlock. Warlock in gealic (I think) means speaker of untruths, it is an insult.

If people would only take the time to learn the history and truth behind witchcraft and wicca they would not be so malicious towards us. Unfortunately the "fundies" will never open their eyes and will continue to spout their scripture without reading the bible in full.

We have been here long before Christianity, judaism, or any other male oriented religion. People worshiped the woman and female spirit for ages and the mother of all creation and we will continue to do so till the end of time.We were persecuted through out the ages and still continue to be but we have survived and will continue to survive, you cannot destroy our beliefs or our goddess. We believe in perfect love and perfect trust.

Answer 2

The old scapegoat is the answer I suppose, among the misinterpretations.
Wiccans, pagans, yes, even satanists, among evey other religious group that is not in the majority at any given time period become the scapegoats for "evil" occurences.
Plagues? Witch did it.
Still born child? Witch did it.
Mind you, "witches" may actually be involved in islam or buddhism. As long as its different, and there by misunderstood by those who don't endeavor to research the root ideals of a religious group that is different from them, then it must be evil and they must be he reason that bad things happen.
There are very few groups of witches who practice black or dark magick. Many Wiccans would tell you that TRUE WICCANS do not practice dark arts, or what they do has more to do with energies, not black or white magicks.
The old cliche ultimately rings the truest. People fear and hate what they do not understand, and in the end, they will blame the misfits, and persecute them, socially, physically...anyway that makes them feel better. ( and no, I'm not just talking about christians persecuting others, it DOES happen all over the world. The most pronounced historical references however, are those inflicted by various christian groups.)

Answer 3

All of the above really. Hollywood has done witches no favours. The King James version of the Bible and the Witch's Hammer was catestrophic for witches, herbalists, midwives and simply women in general. Fear of the unknown and power in the hands of a woman is always a strong consideration in male dominated society.

Answer 4

Christians. Period. You see, most if not all Christian rituals and holidays are taken from the Wiccans and pagans. The Bible itself admits in Jeremiah (Chap. 10:2-5) that Christmas trees are a pagan symbol. The pagan celebration of Oestara (celebrating the springtime renewal of Earth) was "Christainized" into "Easter". Haven't you ever wondered why the day of easter is calculated by the full moon (sacred to the goddess Diana)?

Now, to hide the truth about their origins, Christains had to make us "the Bad Guys", spreading lies about human sacrifice, orgies, etc. You may have noticed that the mideval depiction of "Satan" is in reality the nature god Pan; you didn't think that was just a coincidence, did you?

Answer 5

I would say all of the above. Now my understanding is that witches/wizards/warlocks perform magic tricks based on nature, but their main rule is 'Harm none'. Apparently the Catholics went out of their way to make anything un-Catholic evil way back when they were in power-when there was no seperation of state and religion; they even claimed that Protestants were evil at some point in the past.

Answer 6

well, we know history and skeletons in the closet isn't a shame that we want to hide, like Xians. Hollywood can be a prick in the hat, but it sometimes amused us with good stuff (Da Vinci Code!). misinterpretation of the bible or even the considering of it "the hole truth" (for me is the whore truth) is also something that will pass. witches and wizards (or alleged to) with no sense of timing and relevance soon finish when they grown up. the unknown truth is in our path, y'a know...

Answer 7

I would say it would be: ...stereotype from Hollywood? ...misinterpretation of the Bible? ...fear of the unknown truth? from your choices. Its also the reason some Christians hate Jews and Arabs: They're not CHRISTIAN. I'm not saying that all Christians hate Wiccans, but many do.

I am sorry that *♥£öVe§♥* is so possessed by old stereotypes but they are sadly mistaken.

Answer 8

because they are capable of destroying or taking a life by their witch spells/curse...at least thats what I believed. My grandfather died of witch spell/curse long time ago and a neighbor who leave behind him a wife and 3 children. I don't know if witches has other practices in different countries but thats what I can tell you from experiences.

I'm not posessed by stereotypes at all...thats why I said...witches had different practices in different countries. Read well before you conclude.

Answer 9

I never heard of that prejudice, I had a great school teacher that was a wizard and my step-sister was a real witch.

Answer 10

Long long ago, the Catholic Church who wanted to spread it's tentacles into every continent preached that only Catholicism was the 'right' religion and deemed everything but that as horrid, unjust, demon-like, witchcraft, paganism, etc. in order to convert more people and become more powerful. Today, the Catholic Church is more powerful than most countries' governments.