Judgment Of The Wanton Whore

"An anonymous Catholic once said: 'It would be better to be an atheist than believe in the God of the Inquisition.' Another pointed out that Jesus himself would have suffered and died at the hand's of the pope's inquisitors. He talked with heretics like the samatarian women; he dined with publicans and prostitutes; he attacked the ministers of religion, the scribes and Pharisees; he even broke the Sabbath by plucking and eating corn when he was hungry.”

The Holy Bible: Book Of Revelation The Holy Bible: Book Of Revelation 
The Holy Bible: Book Of Revelation The Holy Bible: Book Of Revelation
Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; And she shall be utterly burned with fire; For strong is the Lord God who judgeth her.
And the kings of the earth who have committed fornication, and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning,
Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, Saying, Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! For in one hour is thy judgement come.

Book of Revelation 18:8-10


Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; And she shall be utterly burned with fire; For strong is the Lord God who judgeth her.

Book of Revelation 18:8


"There was a time — and not long ago — when the clergy counselled kings and parliaments. No longer. In the West and in most of Europe the church no longer speaks with an effective voice. Lip-service is paid by most of the secular power structures and church functionaries are invited to participate on the great state occasions, but they are there on sufferance and are no longer the power behind the throne.|

The glory has departed.

As a consequence, the impress of the church on the life of the community is swiftly diminishing. One of the reasons for this declining influence is the failure of the church to speak relevantly to its adherents or to help them deal effectively with their everyday problems. Many who once turned to the local clergyman for counsel now visit a marriage counsellor, psychologist, or psychiatrist. Increasingly, public worship is seen by members of the church as being of less importance than family, friends, service clubs, and leisure. The falling away from England's official faith, Anglicanism, has reached such crisis proportions that, although the church has the nominal support of some 60 per cent of the country's population, only 4 per cent of Britons regularly attend Sunday services.

Even in Ireland, that "jewel in the papacy's crown," there is clear evidence of a major decline. Father Gabriel Daly, a lecturer in theology at Dublin's Trinity College, states it succinctly: "We are rapidly turning into a more secular society.”...

In what appears to be an accelerating and irreversible trend, Canadian churches are declining in both membership and church attendance... . Even among fundamentalists, the proportion of the members attending church on Sundays is down 50 per cent in recent decades...

Tom Harpur, the distinguished author and Toronto Star columnist on religious matters, writes: "Experienced observers of the religious life of this country know that if you were to project on even the roughest kinds of graphs the curve of where church membership is headed — and has been steadily since the late 50s — you would see that total extinction [his emphasis] is a real possibility before 2050. It doesn't matter if 78 per cent (a Maclean's poll) or 100 per cent tell the census taker-pollster that they are United, Anglican, Roman Catholic or whatever, if one day soon, only an aging few find his or her church sufficiently relevant to merit attendance and support.” "1

Soon all her sins will plague the Whore and the nations of the Earth will recoil in disgust. The beginning of this millennium have begun to expose the diseases that have infected the Church for centuries and which, like untreated cancer reaching an advanced stage, will now rapidly ravage her vital organs one after another. The end of the Church is imminent.

Her faithful will grieve on her deathbed, anguished and pained by the destruction of the Vatican City itself (seat of the beast), the famine (extreme scarcity of followers and priests), and for the engulfing darkness of the papal kingdom.

And she will be utterly destroyed in this century, for such is the wrath of God Almighty who has judged her guilty of committing the most satanic of sins carried in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”As the ground was cursed for Adam's sin, and the earth under Noah was sunk beneath the flood, and Sodom was burnt with fire, so may Rome be. But as the harlot is mystical (the whole faithless Church), the burning may be mainly mystical, symbolizing utter destruction and removal. Bengel is probably right in thinking Rome will once more rise to power. The carnal, faithless, and worldly elements in all churches, Roman, Greek, and Protestant, tend towards one common center, and prepare the way for the last form of the beast, namely, Antichrist. The Pharisees were in the main sound in creed, yet judgment fell on them as on the unsound Sadducees and half-heathenish Samaritans. So faithless and adulterous, carnal, worldly Protestant churches, will not escape for their soundness of creed.” 2

Those still allowing the fondling fingers of the priests of the Whore to baptize their innocent babies will continue receiving the Mark of the Beast. Those still seeking salvation from the Courtesan Queen will meet their spiritual demise and forgo the Resurrection. Those still selling their souls to the Vicars of Satan will be condemned to the Lake of Fire. Those still seeking enlightenment from the Antichrist — also known as"The King" (Dan. 11:36, Isa. 8:21, 30:33, 57:9), "the Man of Sin" (2 Thes. 2:3), "the Son of Perdition" (2 Thes. 2:3), "the Wicked or Lawless One" (2 Thes. 2:8 JND Trans.), "the Fallen Star" (Rev. 9:1), "the 2nd Beast" (Rev. 13:11-18), "the False Prophet" (Rev. 16:13, 19:20, 20:10), "the Foolish and Idol Shepherd" (Zec. 11:15-17, Ps. 14:1, Ps. 53:1), "the Bloody and Deceitful Man" (Ps. 5:6, etc.), "the Profane Wicked Prince of Israel" (Ezk. 21:25), and "The Prince of Tyrus" (Ezk. 28:2) — will remain self-imprisoned in their own dungeons of spiritual darkness.

And the kings of the earth who have committed fornication, and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning,

Book of Revelation 18:9


"The faithless Church, instead of reproving, connived at the self-indulgent luxury of the great men of this world, and sanctioned it by her own practice... . Men's carnal mind relishes a religion like that of the apostate Church, which gives an opiate to conscience, while leaving the sinner license to indulge his lusts.”3

"Who are the mourners, namely, those who had been bewitched by her fornication, those who had been sharers in her sensual pleasures, and those who had been gainers by her wealth and trade—the kings and the merchants of the earth: the kings of the earth, whom she had flattered into idolatry by allowing them to be arbitrary and tyrannical over their subjects, while they were obsequious to her; and the merchants, that is, those who trafficked with her for indulgences, pardons, dispensations, and preferments; these will mourn, because by this craft they got their wealth.”4

In this century the Catholic Church and thousands of her offspring tracing their roots back to the Great Schism will decay and die. All the hypocritical, corrupted, decadent Christians — presidents, prime ministers, politicians, businessmen, bankers, brokers, money-launders, Mafia bosses, popes, cardinals, archbishops, deacons, bishops and priests — who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her will bewail and lament her when they see the smoke of her destruction. All these egoistic, avaricious, gluttonous, miserly, lecherous, carnal beings of raging animal desires and insatiable materialistic greed — who depended on the Vice Vicars for their power, profit, pleasure or plots in paradise — will grieve when they see her convulsing in agony.

Friedrich Nietzsche in Twilight of the Idols/The Anti-Christ, shares the same utter disgust for so-called Christians, clergy and churches:

"With regard to the past I am, like all men of knowledge, of a large tolerance, that is to say a magnanimous self-control: I traverse the mad-house-world of entire millennia, be it called 'Christianity,' 'Christian faith,' 'Christian Church,' with a gloomy circumspection — I take care not to make mankind responsible for its insanities. But my feelings suddenly alter, burst forth, immediately I enter the modern age, our age. Our age knows ... What was formerly merely morbid has today become indecent — it is indecent to be a Christian today. And here is where my disgust commences — I look around me; there is no longer a word left of what was formerly called 'truth,' we no longer endure it when a priest so much as utters the word 'truth.' Even with the most modest claim to integrity one must know today that a theologian, a priest, a pope does not merely err in every sentence he speaks, he lies — that he is no longer free to lie 'innocently,' out of 'ignorance.' The priest knows as well as anyone that there is no longer any 'God,' and 'sinner,' and 'redeemer,' — that 'free will,' 'moral world' order are lies — intellectual seriousness, the profound self-overcoming of the intellect, no longer permits anyone not to know about these things ... All the concepts of the Church are recognized for what they are: the most malicious false-coinage there is for the purpose of disvaluing nature and natural values; the priest himself is recognized for what he is: the most dangerous kind of parasite, the actual poison-spider of life ... We know, our conscience knows today — what those sinister inventions of priest and Church are worth, what end they serve, with what that state of human self-violation has brought about which is capable of exciting disgust at the sight of mankind — the concepts 'Beyond,' 'Last Judgement,' 'immortality of the soul,' the 'soul' itself: they are instruments of torture, they are forms of systematic cruelty by virtue of which the priest becomes the master, stays master ...

Everyone knows this: and everyone none the less remains unchanged. Where have the last feelings of decency and self-respect gone when even our statesmen, in other ways very unprejudiced kind of men and practical anti-Christians through and through, still call themselves Christians today and go to Communion? ... A young prince at the head of his regiments, splendid as the expression of his people's egoism and presumption — but without any shame professing himself a Christian! ... Whom then does Christianity deny? What does it call 'world'? Being a soldier, being a judge, being a patriot; defending oneself; preserving one's honour; desiring to seek one's advantage; being proud ... The practice of every hour, every instinct, every valuation which leads to action is today anti-Christian: what a monster of falsity modern man must be that he is none the less not ashamed to be called a Christian!"5

Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, Saying, Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! For in one hour is thy judgement come.

Book of Revelation 18:10


A few, though they had been partakers with her in her sins, pleasures and profits, will not be willing to bear a share in her plagues. They will dismount the Horny Harlot in fear of Divine Retribution, as the depth of spiritual decay, material corruption and scandals of the Vatican becomes common knowledge. Some will flee in fear from the Vicars of Antichrist, fearing eternal damnation for dealing with the forces of the Devil. Others will cringe at the revealed Truth that even Lord Jesus and the Great Holy Spirit grimaced at the mention of the unholy and satanic word"pope.” The greatest deterrent preventing them from fornicating with the filth of this Earth will be the surety that their own judgment — the biblical Last Judgment — is imminent. It is now just an hour away! Be forewarned all ye who dealt with the Great Whore and now reek of wealth, power, and pleasure. Be forewarned all ye who mock, deny and defy Lord Jesus' Revelation that the papacy is Antichrist. Be forewarned that your waste is assured," for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her.”This ye must know!

"The fundamental fact is that whoever heads the Catholic Church as pope wields genuine power. No government granted it to the papacy. It took that power upon itself. The pope, ex officio, is one of the world's most powerful men. The peculiar power entrusted to him cannot be measured by the usual yardstick. There is no other religious or political figure on our earth ... as Pope John Paul II ... There is no political leader, no statesman, no philosopher who could, for instance, enter a Communist military dictatorship such as Poland and literally speak to the Communist military dictator across a carpet in full television and radio proximity to Poles and millions across the world. Pope John Paul II did. Nor could anyone else have gone to Nicaragua and lectured the Sandinistas in public on their deviations ...

For Rome and its papacy will continue ... The terrible figure of hideous strength mysteriously described as the Man, the Antichrist, may sit on the highest throne. All that is possible within the arc of Rome's span ...

Rome will keep on insisting that its laity, men and women, are essentially witnesses to the faith of Catholicism; that its priests are first and foremost officers of a sacrifice; that its bishops are the only official pastors of divine revelation's grace; and that the Bishop of Rome is the unique vicar and present representative of Jesus, thru God, true man ...

Men will understand ... that all along this Holy Spirit did inhabit that visible institution. In its worst years. In all its mad years. Even in our time when the smoke of Satan entered the Church, as Paul VI once remarked somberly, and swirled around the Altar and the Tabernacle ... And in God's good time, papal Rome and its Catholic Church will be ready for the Final Day.”6


Notes

1. Charles Templeton, Farewell to God, McClelland & Steward Inc. 1996, p. 130-31.
2. Fausset, A. R., A.M.”Commentary on Revelation 18.” "Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible.” [http://bible.crosswalk.com]
3. Gill, John.”Commentary on Revelation 18:8.” "John Gill's Exposition of the Bible.” [http://bible.crosswalk.com]
4. Henry, Matthew. "Commentary on Revelation 18.” "Matthew Henry Complete Commentary on the Whole Bible.” [http://bible.crosswalk.com]
5. Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols/The Anti-Christ, Penguin Classics, 1990, p. 161-62.
6. Malachi Martin, Rich Church, Poor Church, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1984, p. 195 & 235-37



The Great Adi Shakti Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi
Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi
"Christ has taught us that He had love for all the human beings and He wanted to prepare them for the Resurrection. He came before Sahaja Yoga (lit., 'Spontaneous Union', i.e., Baptism of the Holy Spirit) came in. If He had not done that job, it would have been difficult for Me to achieve it....

So, He had prepared the stage for Sahaja Yoga that now your Agnyas (Narrow Gate, Matt.7:13-14) are opened and through the Agnya you can take the Kundalini (power of the Holy Spirit) upward through the Sahasrara (Kingdom of God) and open the fontanel bone area (lit., area of the 'Fountain of Living Water', which Jesus had also offered to the Samaritan Woman at the Well - John 4:10).... All this He taught of was a part and parcel of His love for people and that's what He did, and He cared for so many people.”

The Messiah-Paraclete-Ruh-Devi
Easter Puja. Istanbul, Turkey—22 April 2001


“Why should we go to the Church at all if the ones preaching to us are sinners of the highest order? How can someone like me reconcile my totally disturbed vision of the Catholic Church in the wake of this controversy?”

Urgessa Bedada, Ethiopia




“Why are Cardinals and Church leaders being allowed to get away with lame excuses for the despicable behaviour of clergymen under their jurisdiction? I was under the impression that paedophilia was a criminal offence. Is the Church receiving special treatment here?”

Dharmarajan Hariharan, USA




BBC News

“Sister Dorothea Jurkowski's eyes are brimming with tears as she tries to recall her scripture precisely: "Jesus says: 'Woe to you if you shall give scandal to my little ones'... This is a scandal. It is the greatest scandal of all time.” "

BBC, Monday, April 29, 2002




Peter de Rosa, Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy

“In general, historians have not been kind to the Inquisition. Lea, a Quaker who spent many years of his life examining its operations, speaks of an 'infinite series of atrocities'. Lord Acton, a Catholic, asserts it was nothing short of 'religious assassination ... . The principle of the Inquisition was murderous.' As to the popes, they 'were not only murderous in the great style, but they made murder a legal basis of the Christian Church and the condition of salvation'.

Even after the second World War, G.G. Coulton was able to say the Inquisition was responsible for 'the most elaborate, widespread and continuous legal barbarities recorded in all civilized history'. Nothing that the Roman emperors did to Christians can compare with its systematic wickedness in extent or duration.

The Egyptian oculist, Rollo Ahmed, in The Black Art (1971), described the Inquisition as 'the most pitiless and ferocious institution the world has ever known ... The atrocities the Inquisition committed constitute the most blasphemous irony in religious history, defiling the Catholic Church with the deaths of innocent victims who were burnt to avoid breaking the maxim, Ecclesia non novit sanguinem, The Church has never shed blood.' ...

An anonymous Catholic once said: 'It would be better to be an atheist than believe in the God of the Inquisition.' Another pointed out that Jesus himself would have suffered and died at the hand's of the pope's inquisitors. He talked with heretics like the samatarian women; he dined with publicans and prostitutes; he attacked the ministers of religion, the scribes and Pharisees; he even broke the Sabbath by plucking and eating corn when he was hungry.”

Peter de Rosa, Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy
Bantam Press, 1988, p. 179-80




PBS Frontline
Authenticity and sources
By C.T. Garrett on July 23, 2000

Peter De Rosa was brought up Catholic, went through the six year seminary course prior to ordination, and graduated from a Catholic university, the Gregorianum in Rome. He dedicated eight pages of bibliography listing authors, titles, and year published. Not to mention the fact that historians such as Edward Gibbon in"The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"substantiates the demeanor, to say the least, of the Papacy.

De Rosa had done a marvelous job in exposing the "Great Lie", revealing its truths with documented sources some of which are Papal documents themselves which can be found on the Vatican website, if you have a hard time taking his word for it. And if your still not sure that what De Rosa says is true, read Revelation by John the Apostle. Surely John's vision will substantiate all that was done that De Rosa has documented, even if you read the Latin Vulgate version. There's no hiding the truth, Vicars of Christ is De Rosa's testimony of the truth, another witness, another Martin Luther another Wycliffe, another man that had the courage to speak out against the horrid evilness of the extension of the Roman Empire, and its time is short. :)

Web December 1, 2013





“A CATHOLIC VIEW OF PROPHECY

Very few books on prophecy have been published by Catholic writers over the years. However, a fascinating Catholic commentary on the Revelation was written in 1955 called The Book of Destiny. It was approved by the Catholic censors with their "Nihil Obstat" And "Imprimatur.” In this interesting book the writer, Bernard Leonard, interprets the language of prophecy in an unusual literal manner. He arrives at some startling conclusion for a Catholic religious writer about the identification of the Great Whore of Babylon. After carefully examining the issue, he reluctantly concludes that the Bible declares that Rome and the Roman Catholic Church will be taken over by Satan during the last days leading up to the return of Christ. Referring to Revelation 17, Leonard wrote: 'Hence this great harlot is a city whose apostasy from the true faith is a monstrous thing. This may point to Rome ... And the apostasy of this city, and her becoming the head of an empire that would lead all possible nations and peoples into antichrist worship would indeed merit for her the title THE GREAT HARLOT. The apostles called ancient Rome 'Babylon' (1 Peter V. 13.) So the conclusion is clear that the great harlot of the future shall be Rome.'"

Grant R. Jeffry, Apocalypse: The Coming Judgement of the Nations
Bantam Books, 1994 p. 211-12




Following is an excerpt from a statement made yesterday by Arthur Austin at a Boston news conference at which some 800 Boston archdiocese documents concerning the Rev. Paul R. Shanley, who is accused of child molestation, were released. Austin says he was sexually abused by Shanley from 1968 to 1974. (PDF text)

"Why is it, exactly, that after turning over the names of 80 priests and suspending active pastors and priests from their assignments because of sexual abuse issues, the Archdiocese of Boston suddenly found the demand for the file on Paul Shanley to be an assault on the church's constitutional protections? What is in the medical and psychological reports that they so desperately don't want revealed? Exactly how bad is the filth and corruption they are trying to hide about Shanley? How extensive?

I mean, after all, we live in a world where we know about the nightmare of sexual predation by priests in Louisiana; a world that has already seen James Porter and John Geoghan. What horrors are left to shock us? As one of Shanley's victims, I'll gladly sit down with you over a cup of tea and enlighten you about the answer to that question.

If the Catholic Church in America does not fit the definition of organized crime, then Americans seriously need to examine their concept of justice. Bernard Law and [archdiocese attorney] Wilson Rogers have behaved throughout this catastrophe with a deviousness, cunning, and lack of good intent that crossed long ago into the realm of criminality, however much the ever-elastic niceties of the law may protect them.

But in stooping now to defend, by delay and specious appeals to the court, a walking plague like Paul Shanley, they have lost forever any right to regard themselves as decent men. They are not decent men. They are merely a pride-filled prelate who lusted so shamelessly after the papal tiara that he came to see any form of unbridled and ruthless appetite as acceptable among the ordained; and his equally Machiavellian and surreptitious adviser, deftly guiding him through the spring-traps of potential legal disgrace.

Bernard Law and Wilson Rogers knew of, and countenanced, indeed abetted, the ongoing rape and sexual defilement of children and young men and women, by known sexual predators. There is not a spark of decency or goodness between the two of them. The stains they have on their hands now will never come off...

I say to them today: You and your church have taken 34 years of my life from me, my anguish does not end, ever; like an incubus, Paul Shanley still haunts my dreams. And you Bernard, my cardinal, my prince of the church, my shepherd, my father in Christ, how long have I hungered at your indifferent door for a crumb of compassion, justice, or mercy? Or even a crumb of simple honesty?

You are a liar; your own documents condemn you. You are a criminal, a murderer of children; you degrade the office you hold in the church; you are an affront to Jesus Christ; and I call on Almighty God to bear witness to the foulness and treachery of your behavior, the evil you have nurtured and condoned, and the minds, hearts, and souls you have destroyed. I call on Almighty God to bear witness for those who could no longer shoulder the unbearable cross of their crucified innocence and trust, and took their own lives, because of men like you, the power-brokers of the Roman Catholic Church.

I name you one by one - Bernard Cardinal Law, archbishop of Boston; Wilson Rogers, attorney at law; Paul Shanley, priest - for the evil you are and the evil you've done. I accuse you before God and humanity. May you never prosper from this day on; may all your hopes of peace and happiness wither and die before your eyes, until you have done right by every victim, living or dead; may every grief and terror you have unleashed upon the world come back to each of you a hundred-fold,... until the end of your lives; and may... you be very healthy and live long.”

Arthur Austin, 4/9/2002




Helen Ellerbe, The Dark Side of Christian History

The Witch Hunts: The End of Magic and Miracles

The Reformation did not convert the people of Europe to orthodox Christianity through preaching and catechisms alone. It was the 300 year period of witch-hunting from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, what R.H. Robbins called "The shocking nightmare, the foulest crime and deepest shame of western civilization," (1) that ensured the European abandonment of the belief in magic. The Church created the elaborate concept of devil worship and then, used the persecution of it to wipe out dissent, subordinate the individual to authoritarian control, and openly denigrate women.

The witch hunts were an eruption of orthodox Christianity's vilification of women, "the weaker vessel," in St. Peter's words.(2) The second century St. Clement of Alexandria wrote: "Every woman should be filled with shame by the thought that she is a woman.” (3) The Church father Tertullian explained why women deserve their status as despised and inferior human beings:(4)

And do you not know that you are an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too. You are the devil's gateway: you are the unsealer of that tree: you are the first deserter of the divine law: you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God's image, man. On account of your desert that is, death even the Son of God had to die.

Others expressed the view more bluntly. The sixth century Christian philosopher, Boethius, wrote in The Consolation of Philosophy, "Woman is a temple built upon a sewer.” (5) Bishops at the sixth century Council of Macon voted as to whether women had souls.(6) In the tenth century Odo of Cluny declared, "To embrace a woman is to embrace a sack of manure...” (7) The thirteenth century St. Thomas Aquinas suggested that God had made a mistake in creating woman: "nothing [deficient] or defective should have been produced in the first establishment of things; so woman ought not to have been produced then.” (8) And Lutherans at Wittenberg debated whether women were really human beings at all.(9) Orthodox Christians held women responsible for all sin. As the Bible's Apocrypha states, "of woman came the beginning of sin/ And thanks to her, we all must die.” (10)

Women are often understood to be impediments to spirituality in a context where God reigns strictly from heaven and demands a renunciation of physical pleasure. As I Corinthians 7:1 states, "It is a good thing for a man to have nothing to do with a woman.” The Inquisitors who wrote the Malleus Maleficarum," The Hammer of the Witches," explained that women are more likely to become witches than men:

'Because the female sex is more concerned with things of the flesh than men;' because being formed from a man's rib, they are only 'imperfect animals' and 'crooked' whereas man belongs to a privileged sex from whose midst Christ emerged.(11)

King James I estimated that the ratio of women to men who succumbed to witchcraft was twenty to one.(12) Of those formally persecuted for witchcraft, between 80 to 90 percent were women.(13)

Christians found fault with women on all sorts of counts. An historian notes that thirteenth century preachers

...denounced women on the one hand for... the lascivious and carnal provocation of their garments, and on the other hand for being over- industrious, too occupied with children and housekeeping, too earthbound to give due thought to divine things.
(14)

According to a Dominican of the same period, woman is "The confusion of man, an insatiable beast, a continuous anxiety, an incessant warfare, a daily ruin, a house of tempest ...a hindrance to devotion.” (15)

As reformational fervor spread, the feminine aspect of Christianity in the worship of Mary became suspect. Throughout the Middle Ages, Mary's powers were believed to effectively curtail those of the devil.(16) But Protestants entirely dismissed reverence for Mary while reformed Catholics diminished her importance. Devotion to Mary often became indicative of evil. In the Canary islands, Aldonca de Vargas was reported to the Inquisition after she smiled at hearing mention of the Virgin Mary.(17) Inquisitors distorted an image of the Virgin Mary into a device of torture, covering the front side of a statue of Mary with sharp knives and nails. Levers would move the arms of the statue crushing the victim against the knives and nails.(18)

The witch hunts also demonstrated great fear of female sexuality. The book that served as the manual for understanding and persecuting witchcraft, the Malleus Maleficarum, describes how witches were known to "collect male organs in great numbers, as many as twenty or thirty members together, and put them in a bird's nest...” (19) The manual recounts a story of a man who, having lost his penis, went to a witch to have it restored:

She told the afflicted man to climb a certain tree, and that he might take which he liked out of a nest in which there were several members. And when he tried to take a big one, the witch said: You must not take that one; adding, because it belonged to a parish priest.(20)

A man in 1621 lamented, "of women's unnatural, unsatiable lust... what country, what village doth not complain.” (21)

While most of what became known as witchcraft was invented by Christians, certain elements of witchcraft did represent an older pagan tradition. Witchcraft was linked and even considered to be synonymous with "divination," which means not only the art of foretelling the future, but also the discovery of knowledge by the aid of supernatural power.(22) It suggests that there is such power available- something orthodox Christians insisted could only be the power of the devil, for God was no longer to be involved with the physical world.

The word "Witch" comes from the old English wicce and wicca, meaning the male and female participants in the ancient pagan tradition which holds masculine, feminine and earthly aspects of God in great reverence. Rather than a God which stood above the world, removed from ordinary life, divinity in the Wiccan tradition was understood to imbue both heaven and earth. This tradition also recalled a period when human society functioned without hierarchy- either matriarchal or patriarchal- and without gender, racial or strict class rankings. It was a tradition that affirmed the potential for humanity to live without domination and fear, something orthodox Christians maintain is impossible.

The early Church had tried to eradicate the vestiges of this older non-hierarchical tradition by denying the existence of witches or magic outside of the Church. The Canon Episcopi, a Church law which first appeared in 906, decreed that belief in witchcraft was heretical.(23) After describing pagan rituals which involved women demonstrating extraordinary powers, it declared:

For an innumerable multitude, deceived by this false opinion, believe this to be true and, so believing, wander from the right faith and are involved in the error of the pagans when they think that there is anything of divinity or power except the one God.(24)

Nevertheless, the belief in magic was still so prevalent in the fourteenth century that the Council of Chartres ordered anathema to be pronounced against sorcerers each Sunday in every church.(25)

It took the Church a long time to persuade society that women were inclined toward evil witchcraft and devil-worship. Reversing its policy of denying the existence of witches, in the thirteenth century the Church began depicting the witch as a slave of the devil.(26) No longer was she or he to be associated with an older pagan tradition. No longer was the witch to be thought of as benevolent healer, teacher, wise woman, or one who accessed divine power. She was now to be an evil satanic agent. The Church began authorizing frightening portrayals of the devil in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.(27) Images of a witch riding a broom first appeared in 1280.(28) Thirteenth century art also depicted the devil's pact in which demons would steal children and in which parents themselves would deliver their children to the devil.(29) The Church now portrayed witches with the same images so frequently used to characterize heretics: "...a small clandestine society engaged in anti-human practices, including infanticide, incest, cannibalism, bestiality and orgiastic sex...” (30)

The Church developed the concept of devil-worship as an astoundingly simplistic reversal of Christian rites and practices. Whereas God imposed divine law, the devil demanded adherence to a pact. Where Christians showed reverence to God by kneeling, witches paid homage to the devil by standing on their heads. The sacraments in the Catholic Church became excrements in the devil's church. Communion was parodied by the Black Mass.(31) Christian prayers could be used to work evil by being recited backwards.(32) The eucharist bread or host was imitated in the devil's service by a turnip. The baptismal"character"or stigmata of the mysteries was parodied by the devil's mark impressed upon the witch's body by the claw of the devil's left hand.(33) Whereas saints had the gift of tears, witches were said to be incapable of shedding tears.(34) Devil worship was a simple parody of Christianity. Indeed, the very concept of the devil was exclusive to monotheism and had no importance within the pagan, Wiccan tradition.

The Church also projected its own hierarchical framework onto this new evil witchcraft. The devil's church was to be organized such that its dignitaries could climb the ranks to the position of bishop, just like in the Catholic Church.(35) Julio Caro Baroja explains:

...the Devil causes churches and altars to appear with music... and devils decked out as saints. The dignitaries reach rank of bishop, and sub-deacons, deacons and priests serve Mass. Candles and incense are used for the service and water is sprinkled from a thurifer. There is an offertory, a sermon, a blessing over the equivalents of bread and wine... So that nothing should be missing there are even false martyrs in the organization.(36)

Again, such hierarchy was entirely a projection of the Church that bore no resemblance to ancient paganism. By recognizing both masculine and feminine faces of God and by understanding God to be infused throughout the physical world, the Wiccan tradition had no need for strict hierarchical rankings.

Pope John XXII formalized the persecution of witchcraft in 1320 when he authorized the Inquisition to prosecute sorcery. .” (37) Thereafter papal bulls and declarations grew increasingly vehement in their condemnation of witchcraft and of all those who "made a pact with hell.” (38) In 1484 Pope Innocent VIII issued the bull Summis desiderantes authorizing two inquisitors, Kramer and Sprenger, to systematize the persecution of witches.(39) Two years later their manual, Malleus Maleficarum, was published with 14 editions following between 1487-1520 and at least 16 editions between 1574-1669.(40) A papal bull in 1488 called upon the nations of Europe to rescue the Church of Christ which was "imperiled by the arts of Satan.” (41) The papacy and the Inquisition had successfully transformed the witch from a phenomenon whose existence the Church had previously rigorously denied into a phenomenon that was deemed very real, very frightening, the antithesis of Christianity, and absolutely deserving of persecution.

It was now heresy not to believe in the existence of witches. As the authors of the Malleus Maleficarum noted, “A belief that there are such things as witches is so essential a part of Catholic faith that obstinately to maintain the opposite opinion savors of heresy.” (42) Passages in the Bible such as "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" were cited to justify the persecution of witches.(43) Both Calvin and Knox believed that to deny witchcraft was to deny the authority of the Bible.(44) The eighteenth century founder of Methodism, John Wesley, declared to those skeptical of witchcraft, "The giving up of witchcraft is in effect the giving up of the Bible.” (45) And an eminent English lawyer wrote, "To deny the possibility, nay, actual existence of witchcraft and sorcery, is at once flatly to contradict the revealed Word of God in various passages both of the Old and New Testament.” (46)

The persecution of witchcraft enabled the Church to prolong the profitability of the Inquisition. The Inquisition had left regions so economically destitute that the inquisitor Eymeric complained, "In our days there are no more rich heretics... it is a pity that so salutary an institution as ours should be so uncertain of its future.” (47) By adding witchcraft to the crimes it persecuted, however, the Inquisition exposed a whole new group of people from whom to collect money. It took every advantage of this opportunity. The author Barbara Walker notes:

Victims were charged for the very ropes that bound them and the wood that burned them. Each procedure of torture carried its fee. After the execution of a wealthy witch, officials usually treated themselves to a banquet at the expense of the victim's estate.(48)

In 1592 Father Cornelius Loos wrote:

Wretched creatures are compelled by the severity of the torture to confess things they have never done... and so by the cruel butchery innocent lives are taken; and, by a new alchemy, gold and silver are coined from human blood.(49)

In many parts of Europe trials for witchcraft began exactly as the trials for other types of heresy stopped.(50)

The process of formally persecuting witches followed the harshest inquisitional procedure. Once accused of witchcraft, it was virtually impossible to escape conviction. After cross- examination, the victim's body was examined for the witch's mark. The historian Walter Nigg described the process:

...she was stripped naked and the executioner shaved off all her body hair in order to seek in the hidden places of the body the sign which the devil imprinted on his cohorts. Warts, freckles, and birthmarks were considered certain tokens of amorous relations with Satan.(51)

Should a woman show no sign of a witch's mark, guilt could still be established by methods such as sticking needles in the accused's eyes. In such a case, guilt was confirmed if the inquisitor could find an insensitive spot during the process.(52)

Confession was then extracted by the hideous methods of torture already developed during earlier phases of the Inquisition. "Loathe they are to confess without torture," wrote King James I in his Daemonologie.(53) A physician serving in witch prisons spoke of women driven half mad:

...by frequent torture... kept in prolonged squalor and darkness of their dungeons... and constantly dragged out to undergo atrocious torment until they would gladly exchange at any moment this most bitter existence for death, are willing to confess whatever crimes are suggested to them rather than to be thrust back into their hideous dungeon amid ever recurring torture.(54)

Unless the witch died during torture, she was taken to the stake. Since many of the burnings took place in public squares, inquisitors prevented the victims from talking to the crowds by using wooden gags or cutting their tongue out.(55) Unlike a heretic or a Jew who would usually be burnt alive only after they had relapsed into their heresy or Judaism, a witch would be burnt upon the first conviction.(56)

Sexual mutilation of accused witches was not uncommon. With the orthodox understanding that divinity had little or nothing to do with the physical world, sexual desire was perceived to be ungodly. When the men persecuting the accused witches found themselves sexually aroused, they assumed that such desire emanated, not from themselves, but from the woman. They attacked breasts and genitals with pincers, pliers and red-hot irons. Some rules condoned sexual abuse by allowing men deemed"zealous Catholics"to visit female prisoners in solitary confinement while never allowing female visitors. The people of Toulouse were so convinced that the inquisitor Foulques de Saint-George arraigned women for no other reason than to sexually abuse them that they took the dangerous and unusual step of gathering evidence against him.(57)

The horror of the witch hunts knew no bounds. The Church had never treated the children of persecuted parents with compassion, but its treatment of witches' children was particularly brutal. Children were liable to be prosecuted and tortured for witchcraft: girls, once they were nine and a half, and boys, once they were ten and a half.(58) Younger children were tortured in order to elicit testimony that could be used against their parents.(59) Even the testimony of two-year-old children was considered valid in cases of witchcraft though such testimony was never admissible in other types of trials.(60) A famous French magistrate was known to have regretted his leniency when, instead of having young children accused of witchcraft burned, he had only sentenced them to be flogged while they watched their parents burn.(61)

Witches were held accountable for nearly every problem. Any threat to social uniformity, any questioning of authority, and any act of rebellion could now be attributed to and prosecuted as witchcraft. Not surprisingly, areas of political turmoil and religious strife experienced the most intense witch hunts. Witch-hunting tended to be much more severe in Germany, Switzerland, France, Poland and Scotland than in more homogeneously Catholic countries such as Italy and Spain.(62) Witch-hunters declared that "rebellion is as the sin of Witchcraft.” (63) In 1661 Scottish royalists proclaimed that "rebellion is the Mother of witchcraft.” (64) And in England the Puritan William Perkins called the witch "the most notorious traitor and rebel that can be...” (65)

The Reformation played a critical role in convincing people to blame witches for their problems. Protestants and reformed Catholics taught that any magic was sinful since it indicated a belief in divine assistance in the physical world. The only supernatural energy in the physical world was to be of the devil. Without magic to counter evil or misfortune, people were left with no form of protection other than to kill the devil's agent, the witch. Particularly in Protestant countries, where protective rituals such as crossing oneself, sprinkling holy water or calling on saints or guardian angels were no longer allowed, people felt defenseless.(66) As Shakespeare's character, Prospero, says in The Tempest:

Now my charms are all o'erthrown,
And what strength I have's mine own,
which is most faint...
(67)

It was most often the sermons of both Catholic and Protestant preachers that would instigate a witch hunt. The terrible Basque witch hunt of 1610 began after Fray Domingo de Sardo came to preach about witchcraft. "[T]here were neither witches nor bewitched until they were talked and written about," remarked a contemporary named Salazar.(68) The witch hunts in Salem, Massachusetts, were similarly preceded by the fearful sermons and preaching of Samuel Parris in 1692.(69)

The climate of fear created by churchmen of the Reformation led to countless deaths of accused witches quite independently of inquisitional courts or procedure. For example, in England where there were no inquisitional courts and where witch-hunting offered little or no financial reward, many women were killed for witchcraft by mobs. Instead of following any judicial procedure, these mobs used methods to ascertain guilt of witchcraft such as"swimming a witch," where a woman would be bound and thrown into water to see if she floated. The water, as the medium of baptism, would either reject her and prove her guilty of witchcraft, or the woman would sink and be proven innocent, albeit also dead from drowning.(70)

As people adopted the new belief that the world was the terrifying realm of the devil, they blamed witches for every misfortune. Since the devil created all the ills of the world, his agents- witches- could be blamed for them. Witches were thought by some to have as much if not more power than Christ: they could raise the dead, turn water into wine or milk, control the weather and know the past and future.(71) Witches were held accountable for everything from a failed business venture to a poor emotional state. A Scottish woman, for instance, was accused of witchcraft and burned to death because she was seen stroking a cat at the same time as a nearby batch of beer turned sour.(72) Witches now took the role of scapegoats that had been held by Jews. Any personal misfortune, bad harvest, famine, or plague was seen as their fault.

The social turmoil created by the Reformation intensified witch-hunting. The Reformation diminished the important role of community and placed a greater demand for personal moral perfection. As the communal tradition of mutual help broke down and the manorial system which had provided more generously for widows disappeared, many people were left in need of charity.(73) The guilt one felt after refusing to help a needy person could be easily transferred onto that needy person by accusing her of witchcraft. A contemporary writer named Thomas Ady described a likely situation resulting from a failure to perform some hitherto customary social obligation:

Presently [a householder] cryeth out of some poor innocent neighbour that he or she hath bewitched him. For, saith he, such an old man or woman came lately to my door and desired some relief, and I denied it, and God forgive me, my heart did rise against her... and presently my child, my wife, myself, my horse, my cow, my sheep, my sow, my hog, my dog, my cat, or somewhat, was thus and thus handled in such a strange manner, as I dare swear she is a witch, or else how should these things be?(74)

The most common victims of witchcraft accusations were those women who resembled the image of the Crone. As the embodiment of mature feminine power, the old wise woman threatens a structure which acknowledges only force and domination as avenues of power. The Church never tolerated the image of the Crone, even in the first centuries when it assimilated the prevalent images of maiden and mother in the figure of Mary. Although any woman who attracted attention was likely to be suspected of witchcraft, either on account of her beauty or because of a noticeable oddness or deformity, the most common victim was the old woman. Poor, older women tended to be the first accused even where witch hunts were driven by inquisitional procedure that profited by targeting wealthier individuals.

Old, wise healing women were particular targets for witch-hunters. "At this day," wrote Reginald Scot in 1584, "it is indifferent to say in the English tongue, 'she is a witch' or 'she is a wise woman.'" (75) Common people of pre-reformational Europe relied upon wise women and men for the treatment of illness rather than upon churchmen, monks or physicians. Robert Burton wrote in 1621:

Sorcerers are too common; cunning men, wizards and white witches, as they call them, in every village, which, if they be sought unto, will help almost all infirmities of body and mind.(76)

By combining their knowledge of medicinal herbs with an entreaty for divine assistance, these healers provided both more affordable and most often more effective medicine than was available elsewhere. Churchmen of the Reformation objected to the magical nature of this sort of healing, to the preference people had for it over the healing that the Church or Church- licensed physicians offered, and to the power that it gave women.

Until the terror of the witch hunts, most people did not understand why successful healers should be considered evil. "Men rather uphold them," wrote John Stearne," and say why should any man be questioned for doing good.” (77) As a Bridgettine monk of the early sixteenth century recounted of"The simple people"," I have heard them say full often myself... 'Sir, we mean well and do believe well and we think it a good and charitable deed to heal a sick person or a sick beast'...” (78) And in 1555 Joan Tyrry asserted that"her doings in healing of man and beast, by the power of God taught to her by the... fairies, be both godly and good...” (79)

Indeed, the very invocations used by wise women sound quite Christian. For example, a 1610 poem recited when picking the herb vervain, also known as St. Johnswort, reads,

Hallowed be thou Vervain, as thou growest on the ground / For in the mount of Calvary there thou was first found / Thou healest our Saviour, Jesus Christ, and staunchest his bleeding wound / In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost / I take thee from the ground.(80)

But in the eyes of orthodox Christians, such healing empowered people to determine the course of their lives instead of submitting helplessly to the will of God. According to churchmen, health should come from God, not from the efforts of human beings. Bishop Hall said, "we that have no power to bid must pray...” (81) Ecclesiastical courts made the customers of witches publicly confess to being"heartily sorry for seeking man's help, and refusing the help of God...” (82) An Elizabethan preacher explained that any healing "is not done by conjuration or divination, as Popish priests profess and practice, but by entreating the Lord humbly in fasting and prayer...” (83) And according to Calvin, no medicine could change the course of events which had already been determined by the Almighty.(84)

Preachers and Church-licensed male physicians tried to fill the function of healer. Yet, their ministrations were often considered ineffective compared to those of a wise woman. The keeper of the Canterbury gaol admitted to freeing an imprisoned wise woman in 1570 because "the witch did more good by her physic than Mr. Pudall and Mr. Wood, being preachers of God's word...” (85) A character in the 1593 Dialogue concerning Witches said of a local wise woman that, "she doeth more good in one year than all these scripture men will do so long as they live...” (86)

Even the Church-licensed male physicians, who relied upon purgings, bleedings, fumigations, leeches, lancets and toxic chemicals such as mercury were little match for an experienced wise woman's knowledge of herbs.(87) As the well-known physician, Paracelsus, asked, "...does not the old nurse very often beat the doctor?” (88) Even Francis Bacon, who demonstrated very little respect for women, thought that "empirics and old women" were "more happy many times in their cures than learned physicians...” (89)

Physicians often attributed their own incompetence to witchcraft. As Thomas Ady wrote:

The reason is ignorantiae pallium maleficium et incantatio- a cloak for a physician's ignorance. When he cannot find the nature of the disease, he saith the party is bewitched. (90)

When an illness could not be understood, even the highest body of England, the Royal College of Physicians of London, was known to accept the explanation of witchcraft.(91)

Not surprisingly, churchmen portrayed the healing woman as the most evil of all witches. William Perkins declared, The most horrible and detestable monster... is the good witch.(92) The Church included in its definition of witchcraft anyone with knowledge of herbs for "those who used herbs for cures did so only through a pact with the Devil, either explicit or implicit.” (93) Medicine had long been associated with herbs and magic. The Greek and Latin words for medicine, "pharmakeia" and "veneficium," meant both "magic" and "drugs.” (94) Mere possession of herbal oils or ointments became grounds for accusation of witchcraft.(95)

A person's healing ability easily led to conviction of witchcraft. In 1590 a woman in North Berwick was suspected of witchcraft because she was curing "All such as were troubled or grieved with any kind of sickness or infirmity.” (96) The ailing archbishop of St. Andrews called upon Alison Peirsoun of Byrehill and then, after she had successfully cured him, not only refused to pay her but had her arrested for witchcraft and burned to death.(97) Simply treating unhealthy children by washing them was cause for convicting a Scottish woman of witchcraft.(98)

Witch-hunters also targeted midwives. Orthodox Christians believed the act of giving birth defiled both mother and child. In order to be readmitted to the Church, The Mother should be purified through the custom of "churching," which consisted of a quarantine period of forty days if her baby was a boy and eighty days if her baby was a girl, during which both she and her baby were considered heathen. Some thought that a woman who died during this period should be refused a Christian burial. Until the Reformation, midwives were deemed necessary to take care of what was regarded as the nasty business of giving birth, a dishonorable profession best left in the hands of women. But with the Reformation came an increased awareness of the power of midwives. Midwives were now suspected of possessing the skill to abort a fetus, to educate women about techniques of birth control, and to mitigate a woman's labor pains.(99)

A midwife's likely knowledge of herbs to relieve labor pains was seen as a direct affront to the divinely ordained pain of childbirth. In the eyes of churchmen, God's sentence upon Eve should apply to all women. As stated in Genesis:

Unto the woman [God] said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.(100)

To relieve labor pains, as Scottish clergymen put it, would be "vitiating the primal curse of woman...” (101) The introduction of chloroform to help a woman through the pain of labor brought forth the same opposition. According to a New England minister:

Chloroform is a decoy of Satan, apparently offering itself to bless women; but in the end it will harden society and rob God of the deep earnest cries which arise in time of trouble, for help.(102)

Martin Luther wrote, "If [women] become tired or even die, that does not matter. Let them die in childbirth that is why they are there.” (103) It is hardly surprising that women who not only possessed medicinal knowledge but who used that knowledge to comfort and care for other women would become prime suspects of witchcraft.

How many lives were lost during the centuries of witch-hunting will never be known. Some members of the clergy proudly reported the number of witches they condemned, such as the bishop of Wurtzburg who claimed 1900 lives in five years, or the Lutheran prelate Benedict Carpzov who claimed to have sentenced 20,000 devil worshipers.(104) But the vast majority of records have been lost and it is doubtful that such documents would have recorded those killed outside of the courts.

Contemporary accounts hint at the extent of the holocaust. Barbara Walker writes that "the chronicler of Treves reported that in the year 1586, the entire female population of two villages was wiped out by the inquisitors, except for only two women left alive.” (105) Around 1600 a man wrote:

Germany is almost entirely occupied with building fires for the witches... Switzerland has been compelled to wipe out many of her villages on their account. Travelers in Lorraine may see thousands and thousands of the stakes to which witches are bound.(106)

While the formal persecution of witches raged from about 1450 to 1750, sporadic killing of women on the account of suspected witchcraft has continued into recent times. In 1928 a family of Hungarian peasants was acquitted of beating an old woman to death whom they claimed was a witch. The court based its decision on the ground that the family had acted out of "Irresistible compulsion.” (107) In 1976 a poor spinster, Elizabeth Hahn, was suspected of witchcraft and of keeping familiars, or devil's agents, in the form of dogs. The neighbors in her small German village ostracized her, threw rocks at her, and threatened to beat her to death before burning her house, badly burning her and killing her animals.(108) A year later in France, an old man was killed for ostensible sorcery.(109) And in 1981, a mob in Mexico stoned a woman to death for her apparent witchcraft which they believed had incited the attack upon Pope John Paul II.(110)

Witch hunts were neither small in scope nor implemented by a few aberrant individuals; the persecution of witches was the official policy of both the Catholic and Protestant Churches.(111) The Church invented the crime of witchcraft, established the process by which to prosecute it, and then insisted that witches be prosecuted. After much of society had rejected witchcraft as a delusion, some of the last to insist upon the validity of witchcraft were among the clergy.(112) Under the pretext of first heresy and then witchcraft, anyone could be disposed of who questioned authority or the Christian view of the world.

Witch-hunting secured the conversion of Europe to orthodox Christianity. Through the terror of the witch hunts, reformational Christians convinced common people to believe that a singular male God reigned from above, that he was separate from the earth, that magic was evil, that there was a powerful devil, and that women were most likely to be his agents. As a by-product of the witch hunts, the field of medicine transferred to exclusively male hands and the Western herbal tradition was largely destroyed. The vast numbers of people brutalized and killed, as well as the impact upon the common perception of God, make the witch hunts one of the darkest chapters of human history.

Helen Ellerbe, The Dark Side of Christian History
Chapter Eight, The Witch Hunts: The End of Magic and Miracles, 1-30, Aura HD

Endnotes to The Witch Hunts: The End of Magic and Miracles
1. Rossell Hope Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology (New York: Bonanza Books, 1981) 3.
2. I Peter 3:7.
3. Clement of Alexandria from The Tutor as quoted in The"Natural Inferiority"of Women compiled by Tama Starr (New York: Poseidon Press, 1991) 45.
4. Joan Smith, Misogynies: Reflections on Myths and Malice (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1989) 66.
5. Boethius from The Consolation of Philosophy as quoted in The"Natural Inferiority"of Women compiled by Tama Starr, 45.
6. Karen Armstrong, The Gospel According to Woman: Christianity's Creation of the Sex War in the West (New York: Doubleday, 1986) 71.
7. Joan Smith, Misogynies (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1989) 61.
8. Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (New York &London: Blackfriars, McGraw-Hill, Eyre &Spottiswoode) Question 92, 35.
9. Karen Armstrong, The Gospel According to Women: Christianity's Creation of the Sex War in the West (New York: Doubleday,1986), 69.
10. Apocrypha, Ecclesiasticus 25:13-26.
11. Walter Nigg, The Heretics (New York: Dorset Press, 1962) 277.
12. Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1974) 520.
13. Carol F. Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman (Vintage Books: New York, 1987) 266.
14. Barbara W. Tuchman, A Distant Mirror (New York: Ballantine Books, 1978) 211.
15. Ibid., 211.
16. Joan O'Grady, The Prince of Darkness (Longmead: Element Books, 1989) 84.
17. Henry Kamen, Inquisition and Society in Spain (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985) 163.
18. Jean Plaidy, The Spanish Inquisition (New York: Citadel Press, 1967) 143.
19. Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, The Malice Maleficarum (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1971) Part II. Qn I. Ch. 7, page 121.
20. Ibid., 121.
21. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 568-569.
22. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary (New York: Pocket Books, 1974) 215.
23. Julio Caro Baroja, The World of Witches (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961) 60-61 and Brian P. Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe (London: Longman, 1987) 45.
24. Jeffrey Burton Russell, Witchcraft in the Middle Ages (Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 1972) 76-77.
25. O'Grady, The Prince of Darkness, 62.
26. Baroja, The World of Witches, 81.
27. Bengt Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen, Early Modern European Witchcraft Centres and Peripheries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990) 25.
28. Russell, Witchcraft in the Middle Ages, 164.
29. Ibid., 134.
30. Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon (New York: Beacon Press, 1979) 49.
31. Baroja, The Vforld of Witches, 149-150.
32. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 43.
33. Nigg, The Heretics, 280 and Jean Delumeau, Catholicism Between Luther and Voltaire (London: Burns and Oats, 1977) 174.
34. Delumeau, Catholicism Between Luther and Voltaire, 174.
35. Baroja, The World of Witches, 165.
36. Ibid., 165.
37. Jeffrey Burton Russell, A History of Medieval Christianity (New York: Thomas Y. Cromwell, 1968) 173.
38. Ibid., 173.
39. Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, 49.
40. Smith, Misogynies, 68.
41. Montague Summers, The History of Witchcraft and Demonology (New York: New Hyde Park, 1956) 12.
42. Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology, 9.
43. Exodus 22:18.
44. Barbara G. Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983) 1088.
45. Ibid., 1088.
46. Summers, The History of Witchcraft and Demonology, 63.
47. Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology, 271.
48. Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 1086.
49. Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology, 16.
50. Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, 110.
51. Nigg, The Heretics, 281.
52. Baroja, The Vforld of Witches, 168-169.
53. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 502.
54. Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 1004.
55. Ibid., 445.
56. Russell, Witchcraft in the Middle Ages, 151.
57. Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 445-446.
58. Ibid., 445.
59. Ibid., 1004.
60. Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology, 229.
61. Ibid., 4.
62. Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, 105.
63. Ibid., 59.
64. Ibid., 59.
65. Ibid., 59.
66. Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, 102, and Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 493-495.
67. Shakespeare, The Tempest, epilogue, written in 1610-1611.
68. Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, 149-150.
69. Ibid., 150.
70. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 551, and Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 1008.
71. Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 1083.
72. Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology, 4.
73. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 555.
74. Ibid., 554.
75. Ibid., 436.
76. Ibid., 177.
77. Ibid., 265-266.
78. Ibid., 266.
79. Ibid., 266.
80. Ibid., 178.
81. Ibid., 479.
82. Ibid., 265.
83. Ibid., 479.
84. Ibid., 85.
85. Ibid., 264.
86. Ibid., 264.
87. Jeanne Achterberg, Woman As Healer (Boston: Shambala, 1991) 105.
88. Ibid., 106.
89. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 14.
90. Ibid., 537.
91. Ibid., 537.
92. Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology, 540.
93. Ibid., 540.
94. John T. Noonan, Jr., Contraception (New York and Toronto: The New American Library, 1965) 42.
95. Achterberg, Woman As Healer, 92.
96. Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology, 540.
97. Baroja, The World of Witches, 125.
98. Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology, 4.
99. Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 655.
100. Genesis 3:16.
101. Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 656.
102. Ibid., 656.
103. Armstrong, The Gospel According to Woman, 69.
104. Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 444.
105. Ibid., 444.
106. Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology, 4-5.
107. Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, 1087.
108. Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, 229.
109. Ibid., 229.
110. Ibid., 229.
111. Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology, 17.
112. Ibid., 17.





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—  BOOK OF REVELATION AND LAST DAYS
—  REV. 17.1-2: JUDGMENT OF THE GREAT CITY
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—  REV. 18.7: "BUT I WILL NEVER BE A WIDOW"
REV. 18.8-10: JUDGMENT OF THE WANTON WHORE
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—  REV. 18.14-18: VATICAN, YOU END IS NEAR
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—  REV. 18.23-24: AND DARKNESS WILL DESCEND
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REV. 19.6-8: HEAVEN AND EARTH REJOICED
REV. 19.9-10: THE SPIRIT OF PROPHECY
REV. 19.11-16: AND THE SECOND COMING
REV. 19.17-21: THOSE MARKED BY THE BEAST
REV. 20.1-3: DEFEAT OF SATAN
REV. 20.4-10: THE FIRST RESURRECTION
REV. 20.11-15: THIS MILLENNIUM OF LIGHT
REV. 21.1-5: "GOD SHALL WIPE AWAY TEARS"
REV. 21.6: "I AM ALPHA AND OMEGA"
REV. 21.7: "BLESSED ARE THE BELIEVERS"
REV. 21.8: "BUT THE FEARFUL AND UNBELIEVING"
REV. 21.9-21: CITIVAS DEI, CITY OF GOD
REV. 21.22-27: HIS ETERNAL LIGHT WITHIN
REV. 22.1-5: THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS
REV. 22.6-12: "AND HE WHICH IS FILTHY"
REV. 22.13-15: ENTER THE KINGDOM OF GOD WITHIN
REV. 22.16-22: AND DRINK WATER OF ETERNAL LIFE
His Human Adversary
Kitab Al Munir
Al-Qiyamah (The Resurrection)
His Light Within
His Universe Within
His Beings Within
Subtle System
Lectures To Earth
Shri Mataji
Frequently Asked Questions
Self-Realization
Drumbeat Of death
Table Of Contents
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