(409) In many respects witchcraft thinking provided intuitively attractive ways of evading logic. Precisely because it was an imaginary crime, the "hole in the middle" where unseen or impossible things were (projected) to happen could act as a focal point for many different transactions.

(409) Despite its illusory nature ... witchcraft mobilized real power to cause suffering.

When does Irreverence Rule?

(137) ... witches placed decisive emphasis on the idea of vengeance (against) ... any had angered them.

(137) ... the Devil only sent his agents into action where there was disharmony and enmity. It was these failures of charity and communal unity which caused people to apostasize and become witches in the first place, ....

(137) ... constituted another formal inversion, with the sabbat replacing reconciliation, the central meaning of communion, be vengeance ... operated where protection failed and were punishment was due (or presumed to be due).

(138) Feuds were antithetical to witchcraft in any case; they were public and predictable, between people who would avoid contact with one another. ... When hostility was already known there were no expectation of good neighbourliness to be confounded, no reason for anyone to feel guilt.

(138) ... social context, that of the early modern village ... a grouping of a few hundred people .... Houses were damp, smelly, and uncomfortable, sheltering animals alongside people ... living standards were rarely above subsistence level, were virtually forced to interact daily through small exchanges of goods and services (which was) supposed to balance out over the long term ... mutual aid was the norm ... Regular beggars and recipients of alms were a (small) recognizable group (but) .. the semi-dependent poor (were much more common and) were a periodic burden on neighbours hardly better off than themselves who were not always in a position to help.

(139) The very intensity of the charitable impulse ... helped to create serious tensions for all participants. ... Assumptions of reciprocity ... shared labour and innumerable residual feudal and seigniorial rights. ... Social relations were consequently full of ambiguities, reflecting latent conflicts which were hard to resolve (WITHOUT open, honest, respectful negotiation between persons who perceived each other to be equals).

(140) Individuals and families contended all the time for status, power and resources (yet) ... only the wealthiest were safe from the economic disaster which accident or prolonged sickness would bring. ... personal ties were constantly reaffirmed through everyday (exchange of) minor gifts and services .... Economic (commerce-business rationalized exchange ethic) and demographic (larger and more dense population groupings) change threatened the whole network of precarious balances and understandings on which it rested.

(140) ... virtually all the characteristic types of friction might be found in any agrarian society, even a fairly prosperous and stable one.

(145) The general aim behind the (assumed) destruction of animals and crops was to help the Devil attack mankind. "For when people see themselves reduced to starvation, after the Devil has removed the fruits of the earth, they commit a thousand wickednesses to live, and Satan seeing them in this desperate need, forces them to beg his help, and from beggars turns them finally into witches."

(148) ... witches quite often claimed to have acted against their victims out of anger because they had been defamed ... angry because some were calling her (disrespectful names and spreading gossip about her).

(150) ... early modern markets were very erratic, dominated by shortages and gluts; ... Market movements themselves were commonly blamed on human agency, with middlemen stigmatized as monopolists who created artificial shortages.

(152) Borrowers sometimes failed to return objects as well as money; more frequently it was the refusal to lend such things as tools which led to trouble.

[One instance of passivity in not requesting a return, or of lack of diligence in not returning, or of clarification in terms of allowable time lendable, or of lack of responsibility in caring for a lent article, or of possessiveness and envy and greed in intentionally keeping a tool --- could lead to a personal (energy block) behaviour of never lending anything to anyone again.]

(152) Tax and tithe assessment (claims of unfairness and fraud);

(152) in a society where subsistence was so precarious ... grievances could include the enforcement of regulations governing forests, animal husbandry, gleaning, selling salt and textile production. Trespass of various kinds saw fields and crops being damaged, wood and fruit stolen, straying animals injured or killed and so forth. Such conflicts reappeared endlessly ....

(153) Such professionals as millers, bakers, butchers and their like quarrelled among themselves, but also had equivocal relationships with their customers ... refusal to sell meat on credit ....

(153) Sales or mortgages of land were often tense affairs, ... ultimate fear of losing position, status and security.

(164) Particularly in situations where dependency played a strong part, it was all too possible for murderous hostility to develop.

(406) It was certainly fortunate that most European rulers and their more powerful servants took such a hesitant and ultimately skeptical line. The exceptional cases in which restraint was abandoned --Scotland and Trier in the 1590s, Denmark, Wurzburg, Bamberg and Cologne in the 1620s and 1630s, alongside numerous smaller towns and states -- provide chilling warnings of how persecution by an alliance of rulers and people could spiral out of control. ... The local balances between higher and lower authority, credulity and skepticism, restraint and ferocity, were distinctly fragile.

(408) There were many techniques for limiting one's personal exposure, and for controlling the suspect's behaviour. Negotiation rather than confrontation was the preferred mode, often used with some subtlety.

How does Projection Contribute?

(140) ... the refusal-guilt syndrome.
The original dispute --- often very muted --- occurred when the suspect asked for a small gift or service from a neighbour, who refused it. The person who failed to give, however, was well aware of the breach of neighbourly duty and convention involved, even when there were good immediate reasons for the refusal. Turning others away was implicitly an aggressive act, placing one's own needs first and making the refuser feel guilty; this aggression was then projected into the other person, who was expected to be angry and resentful after being refused ....

If some misfortune followed, suspicion would naturally fall on the person with the assumed grudge -- these intuitive suspicions were felt all the more strongly both because the grievance could so often be seen as justified and because the feelings imputed to the witch were internal to the accuser.

(147) Real aggression and projected aggression are not identical, but it would be hard to draw any clear line between the ways they are felt by participants. ... something of a vicious circle: weaker and poorer members of the community made more demands on their neighbours, risked being rejected or treated with less respect by them and could only attempt to defend themselves by displays of aggression. In the process they made themselves vulnerable to witchcraft charges, ....

(148) ... every quarrel posed a serious danger ... whenever possible witnesses picked out a temporal coincidence; the more rapid the onset of sickness or accident, the clearer the proof (of witchcraft) ... the same time of day a week later ... lengthy delays ... were no obstacle to accusations.

(148) ... ill-will was as much a creation of fantasy as of external reality.

(148) ... many charges represented the projection of inner feelings of guilt or hostility, ...;

(149) ... the bewitched may well have shown a propensity to create inner worlds peopled by powerful persecuting figures. ... the representation of God and the Devil by early modern preachers and religious writers (may) have encouraged such dangerous fantasies ...

(151) After such a violent and specific expression of ill-will, one might well feel guilty and expect vengeance to be taken. ... the appointment and support of herdsmen (suspicion of favouritism and prejudice), or the discharge of their duties (kindliness vs strictness), appear in numerous depositions. Loans to neighbours might have been expected to cement friendship, but too often became the occasion for bitter resentment when repayment was demanded.

(164) In their contacts with neighbours, individuals relived their deeply ambiguous early relationships with parents and siblings, redirecting feelings they had never recognized or worked through.

(166) ... parents feared that vulnerable infants would die, yet children themselves must have wished that younger siblings would suffer that fate. Fear and repressed guilt would then combine to direct suspicion at surrogate figures. This was achieved through the projection mechanism, which is most powerful when reinforced by external reality, in this case the aggressive behaviour of many suspects.

(168) The word "victim" has a curious double sense here ... bewitcher and bewitched alike; both might experience loss, suffering, fear and death, as projected evil reinforced belief and persecution simultaneously. ... Projection of this type might endow their neighbour the witch with precisely those traits they most despised in themselves.

(411) ... "it is putting a very high price on one's conjectures (projections) to have a man's life wrecked because of them" [or, have a man, woman, or child tortured, burned at the stake or drowned.]

How long does Anarchy Grow!

(137) Witches were essentially reactive, responding to acts of aggression or hostility from others (whether real, or projected from personal insecurity).

(154) ... fearing to give it to the poor, when evil suspicions might arise if any misfortune occurred.

(163) When groups or individuals link their inner feelings to the human society around them ... the results can be explosive ... extraordinary capacity to mobilize and express fantasy ... unconscious fears, hatreds and resentments.

(166) Witchcraft ... envy as a motive force. ... Envy can be traced back to the earliest phase of childhood, where it is part of the process which sees the infantile self detach itself from the mother. It is one reaction to the failure of the mother to be totally compliant with the narcissistic and omnipotent wishes of the infant. This leads in turn to rage, the withdrawal of love and feelings of hatred and hurt. Illness or other misfortunes in later life can reactivate such feelings, with being unwell assimilated to being unloved, unprotected, or even hated. In this scheme the mother represents the external will, an embodiment of menace and power which seems magically formidable ....

(240) Children also played a considerable part in creating or worsening disputes between neighbours. Heavy-handed intervention to break up fights and punish another child could easily cause bad feeling, or again activate witchcraft suspicions when illness or injury could be linked to it (by rationalized conjecture).

(241) ... children could transmit or enhance reputations through the familiar practice of name-calling, for one of the favourite insults was to call another child the son or daughter of a witch. This bred quarrels between parents (and) ... may also have typecast the children of suspects, encouraging them to construct the compromising stories which simultaneously won them a certain respect, if only through fear, and threatened disaster to their whole family.

Why not Reverence?

(411) No amount of rational argument will ever put a stop to such misguided and dangerous thinking; the rational study of witchcraft provides all too many reasons for believing that the irrational is here to stay.

[Only by the cultural adoption of assertiveness, self-awareness, energy block release, positive self-esteem, full development and appreciation of all emotions into institutionalised learning can patterns of imprinted spurious and projective expectations and assumptions be lessened. ]

(147) ... fear of witchcraft becomes a useful check on selfish behaviour by the rich and powerful.

(149) ... witchcraft is the obverse of the belief that the goodwill of others is essential for the achievement of survival or success.

(149) ... people display a natural preference for dealing where the ties of mutual obligation are thickest. The ideal market, ... is built around exchanges between strangers, simply determined by price and convenience. Villagers who declined to enter into collaborative ploughing arrangements, rejected offers for their hay, or refused to sell piglets to a neighbour ... were capable of being interpreted as denials of neighbourly feeling, implicitly rejecting any sense of mutual obligation.

[Witchcraft is often seen as synonymous with independence, honesty, straight-forwardness, assertiveness, self-sufficiency, truth, courage, while community is assumed by the behaviours of co-dependency, politeness, flattery, deception, manipulation, passivity, sympathy, fear of abandonment or exclusion, and, role definition.]

(164) George Gifford:
"let such men learn to know God, and to expel fantasies out of their minds that the Devil may not have such power over them; for he worketh in the fantasies of man's mind, and the more strongly where they fear him."

The above includes a selection of quotes from this recommended publication: Witches & Neighbours: The Social and Cultural Context ... Robin Briggs Penguin Books Ltd.,., London, England 1996, 457 pages, Can $24.95 (Chapters-Indigo), US $ (out-of-print) (Amazon),

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