why do we portray witches as being evil?

Question

I every fairytale there is a wicked witch. In the past we burnt men and women at the stake because we believed them to be evil witches. Most of them were just trying to help people and when it didnt work we persicuted them.
how do you feel about this subject?

I know there are some people out there today that still take witchcraft and magic to extremes and that is a shame cause it gives any one who is doing it for good a bad name but mostly they are just using the natural powers of the earth and positive thinking to achieve better spiritual awareness and understanding. not all magic is bad not all witches are evil. It is that sort of thinking that started the witch hunts.

Answer 1

I think you can look to the Catholic church for that.

Which was later turned into a money grab by the local community power brokers who would claim that widows (who had a lot of wealth) were witches- so that they could throw them in jail or kill them and take their property. If they didn't have a husband, there was nobody their to protect them.

Answer 2

Because we thought, back then, that healing was a form of magic. Then some of started to believe, that since it worked so fast, that it was Black Magic. They started calling the healers "witches," which they disliked. Some started hating people for calling them a "witch," and went bad. Very bad. That's why there is always a bad witch, though I'm trying to think of a story with a good witch ^^

Answer 3

It was the Church that made the ordeal into history ... they believed that any kind of magick was considered evil. This was because they wanted power over the masses. They made examples of people to instill fear so that everyone would follow the Church. Sad, but true. One thing that you will notice is that the Church has their own magick, but they call it with another name .... thus Rituals are actually Mass, and Incantations are called Prayers.

My opinion is, when people look elsewhere for guidance you lose money, support, and control .... thus the church wanted to keep their believers and did what they did to keep them any way they could. There are many religious orginizations still doing this today, just in different ways.

Answer 4

The church needed to villefy the Goddess and other pagan religions to keep their control over their worshippers. I think this says it all:

The Halloween Witch

Each year they parade her about, the traditional
Halloween Witch. Misshapen green face, stringy scraps
of hair, a toothless mouth beneath her deformed nose.
Gnarled knobby fingers twisted into a claw,
protracting from a bent and twisted torso that lurches
about on wobbly legs.

Most think this abject image to be the creation of a
prejudiced mind or merely a Halloween caricature.

I disagree; I believe this to be how Witches were
really seen.

Consider that most Witches: were women, were abducted
in the night, and smuggled into dungeons or prisons
under the secrecy of darkness to be presented by light
of day as a confessed Witch.

Few if any saw a frightened normal looking woman being
dragged into a secret room filled with instruments of
torture, to be questioned until she confessed to
anything suggested to her and to give names or what
ever would stop the questions.

Crowds saw the aberration denounced to the world as a
self-proclaimed Witch.

As the Witch was paraded through town en route to be
burned, hanged, drowned, stoned or disposed of in
various other forms of Christian love, all created to
free and save her soul from her depraved body the
jeering crowds viewed the results of hours of torture.

The face bruised and broken by countless blows bore a
hue of sickly green. The once warm and loving smile
gone, replaced by a grimace of broken teeth and torn
gums that leers beneath a battered disfigured nose.
The disheveled hair conceals bleeding gaps of torn
scalp from whence cruel hands had torn away the lovely
tresses. Broken twisted hands clutched the wagon for
support, fractured fingers with nails torn away locked
like groping claws to steady her broken body.

All semblance of humanity gone this was truly a demon,
a bride of Satan, a Witch.

I revere this Halloween Crone and hold her sacred
above all. I honor her courage and listen to her
warnings of the dark side of man. Each year I shed
tears of respect when the mundane exhibit their symbol
of Christian love.

Answer 5

Mainstream religions started the rumors many, many years ago to discredit Pagan belief systems, by calling them evil and from the devil.
The woodsy Green Man became a form of Satan.
The female deities were transformed into harlots of the devil.
And so on and so on.
This was done to make Pagans see "the evils" of their religions (including Witchcraft), so that they could be converted to Christianity. Thus, providing the church with more supporters.
By the way, if people decided to keep their own Pagan religion, they were tortured and killed by the church.

Answer 6

In the 1500's Christianity gave witches a bad rap - talk about mud sticking! Nowadays Wicca is widely accepted as an ancient and natural belief system that works in harmony with mother nature.

Answer 7

Under the monotheistic religions of the Levant (primarily Christianity, and Islam), witchcraft came to be associated with heresy, rising to a fever pitch among the Catholics, Protestants, and secular leadership of the European Late Medieval/Early Modern period and sometimes leading to witch hunts. Throughout this time, the concept of witchcraft came increasingly to be interpreted as a form of Devil worship. Accusations of witchcraft were frequently combined with other charges of heresy against such groups as the Cathars and Waldensians.

The Malleus Maleficarum, a witch-hunting manual used by both Roman Catholics and Protestants, outlines how to identify a witch, what makes a woman more likely to be a witch, how to put a witch to trial and how to punish a witch. The book defines a witch as evil and typically female.

The Protestant Christian explanation for witchcraft, such as those typified in the confessions of the Pendle Witches, commonly involve a diabolical pact or at least an appeal to the intervention of the spirits of evil. The witches or wizards addicted to such practices were alleged to reject Jesus and the sacraments, observe "the witches' sabbath" (performing infernal rites which often parodied the Mass or other sacraments of the Church), pay Divine honour to the Prince of Darkness, and, in return, receive from him preternatural powers. Witches were most often characterized as women. Witches disrupted the societal institutions, and more specifically, marriage. It was believed that a witch often joined a pact with the devil to gain powers to deal with infertility, immense fear for her children's well-being, or revenge against a lover.

Answer 8

Bad guys are just more sensational. There was a Good Witch in the Wizard of Oz too.

Answer 9

you didn't need to be a pagan to be burnt as a witch, midwives and healers fell nicely into the frame. Anyone could accuse their neighbour of witchcraft it was that easy.
Though out history people have condemned what they don't understand, its still true today

Answer 10

we portrey to thinking them as evil because usually people want the negativity and since the witch trials they have put a big affect on witches who are good and bad