Yes, they are… just different
You may be thinking, the Crusades were nearly a thousand years ago, there’s no possible way those things could still be going on in this day and age. Sorry to burst your bubble, but yes sadly to this day Pagans and Witches are still dealing with hate crimes, persecution, and “crusades” here in the United States and around the world at large. People are still being killed or harmed for their beliefs. People are still being told they aren’t allowed to represent their beliefs publicly. To better understand what I mean by this, it’s best to understand where this all began.
Where it started.
One of the first documented Crusades against Pagans wasn’t in the Middle East where the Crusades are known to have “begun.” It was actually in Ireland and is the historical basis for the Catholic holiday, St. Patrick’s Day. In the early 400’s AD, a man named Maewyn Succat was born in Roman-ruled England. He was kidnapped and brought to Ireland. He eventually escaped and made his way to a monastery in France where he was converted to Christianity. He returned to Ireland and brought with him Christianity. He decided that he wanted to “rid the snakes from Ireland.” There are no snakes in Ireland, and no proof snakes ever existed in Ireland due to fossil records. The “snakes” referred to the Pagans(Druids) in Ireland, and he began his assault to convert them to Christianity. He began by destroying the sacred Druid texts by dumping one of the books into a barrel of water saying since their books sunk and his book was able to float, his book must be the truth. Afterward, his followers continued this trend across the Irish Isle destroying what Druid books they came across. Those who didn’t convert either fled or were killed. During his Crusade, it is thought that St. Patrick and his men stormed the castle of the King Lóegaire mac Néill of Ireland and buried him alive within the walls of Tara. While he was buried alive, he had to listen and cry out in horror as St. Patrick and his men brutally raped and murdered his two virgin daughters, Eithne and Feidhealm, as they screamed out for their father to make them stop. In 1631, the Catholic church wanted to honor St. Patrick and his “missionary work” ascending him to sainthood, and declared March 17th, the anniversary of his death, a holiday that is still celebrated to this day. If you celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, you are likely celebrating genocide.
Between 1096 and 1291, The Crusades, as society knows it, started in the Middle East when Christians fought Muslims over control over the Holy Sites in the area. Over time, they eventually swept through Europe where Christians and the Knights Templar pillaged, raped, and converted millions of people with the threat of death, and in many cases, they still slaughtered the villages they came across to extinguish their Pagan beliefs to prevent it from passing to younger generations. The reasoning for their Crusades? To prevent the spread of Islam, and to remove the native people from their beliefs and their land so Christianity could reign freely without barriers. By 1291, Christianity had taken most control over the Middle East and Europe, with pockets of Pagans and Muslims still amongst them.
Witch hunts began in Europe in the early 1300s and ended sometime in the 18th century with the last known execution for witchcraft occurring in Switzerland in 1782. The height of the witch hunts ran from around 1580 to around 1640, most of which happened in western Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, France, Italy, and Switzerland. Around 110,000 were tried for witchcraft in Europe and around 50,000 people were executed. The one event which could be the most prolific example of hate, persecution, and a Crusade against Pagans and Witches, as well as one of the most documented in US history as we know it, is The Salem Witch Trials. During this time in history, many factors played into the fears that ultimately caused The Salem Witch Trials. First was a strong belief amongst the villagers that when something bad happened, it was a direct result of the “devil” or someone worshipping the devil. Second, the families of the village itself split themselves up into factions of sorts, cliques if you wish to use modern terminology, and the families would quarrel against each other as well as arrange marriages between the offspring of the village’s large families to bind them into larger factions. Along that line, if you weren’t “one of them” you were an outsider and not one to be trusted. Third, there was a rivalry between Salem Village (which turned into Danvers, Mass.) and Salem Town(which turned into modern-day Salem, Mass.) In January of 1692, the daughter and niece of Reverend Samuel Parris got deathly ill. The village doctor named William Grigg made a home visit when the girls’ conditions weren’t improving. The doctor diagnosed the girls as having been bewitched, which set in motion the hanging deaths of 19 men and women and the death of a man who was crushed to death.
The hatred toward Pagans still exists to this day.
In Nigeria, the Catholic church sent their missionaries to “preach the word of…” their perceived creator, but instead, it was a means to convert the people within the Yoruban belief. They were forcibly converted or their men, women, and children were burned alive in the streets as their village was then set ablaze. In the Amazon Rainforest, the Catholic church, again, sent their missionaries to convert the indigenous tribes to Christianity and once converted would convince them to leave their sacred land and home to move to the cities. Those who refused to convert again, either fled or were killed. The land that remained was then handed over to the logging companies to strip-cut the trees, not only killing the people of the land, but also destroying the habitat for the animals who resided there and killing them as well.
In the early 1980s “Satanic Panic” swept the United States. A book published in 1980, “Michelle Remembers,” focused on a group of killer Canadian Satanists, which lit a fuse for the uneasy American neighbors to the south, creating a snowball effect leading to the Satanic Panic scare. The fear created was the ideology people who you are to trust the least was not inside the home, but instead outside. This was also a time where women were joining the workforce outside the home in droves, and childcare was needed exponentially, leaving people to worry about who they were trusting their children to be watched by. Over 12,000 cases of “Satanic Ritual Abuse” were accused against people during this time. Those who were around during that time remember when police would pass around examples of Pagan symbols so they knew who to look out for and target. News agencies across the nation would report about the dangers Pagans, Witches and Satanists were to the country and would destroy the country from the inside out. Parents who claimed to be Pagan or Witches would have Child Protective Services(CPS) or Child Welfare called on them and they would have their children removed from their care on accusations of child neglect and abuse, and many parents were subsequently jailed on those charges even if there was no definitive evidence to substantiate the claims. Even after some of these charges against these parents were dropped, hate towards Pagans and Witches continued as some of the parents were not allowed to have their children placed back with them, even with having a clean record.
On February 22, 2016, a man was fired from his job at a hospital rehabilitation center in Staten Island, due to his Pagan beliefs. His co-workers and boss often accused his beliefs to be “satanic” and a “hate crime” against Christianity. They began harassing him and calling his mother asking her if he was a “terrorist and a Satanist.” The harassment began when the man had drawn a pentagram on his locker. He was told he had to remove it, even though his co-workers were allowed to display symbols of a Christian cross and a Jewish Star of David in their lockers. The man was told to hide or take off his pendant depicting the Green Man coming out of leaves, as the head of security claimed it was “offensive”, “Satanic”, and constituted “a hate crime against Christians.” Further allegations claimed the man had posted notes on a co-worker’s locker saying that he was going to “blow it up” and another co-worker claimed he had weapons in his locker. These events obviously created a very serious hostile work environment where he was subsequently fired from his job. The man sued his place of employment for $10 million and reinstatement of his job position.
In conclusion
This is a lot of information to soak in, and may be daunting. I get it, it was pretty hard for me to type out, but this is what the world needs to know. People need to hear this. You cannot inspire change if you choose to hide away from it. Change is uncomfortable, but without that discomfort you cannot expect to grow. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905. We can make a better world where everyone feels welcome and accepted for who they are and we can leave this world a better place for our future generations.