The hate for witches goes back millennia and is still present in our time now, worse than it has been in centuries. Why are people so afraid of witches? Read to find out!

Is It The Fear Of The Unknown Or Something Else?

While I would like to believe it is only the fear of the unknown that drives people to hate witches, it’s more complicated than that. People who hate witches often are also religious. 

It’s part of those people’s education growing up to fear and hate witches. Some religious people find witches silly because they don’t know what it is to be a witch. However, others believe they know what a witch is and hate us for it.

Religious people, specifically people of the Christian faith, can be nocuous to witches. Despite the history of witchcraft being horrifying due to the burning at the stake and hanging in the public squares, religious people believe themselves to be the heroes.

Nobody really talks about the ‘witchphobia’ going on leading to an absolute ‘witchism.’ It is a particular and oddly precise hatred. We should talk about it, but witches aren’t worth people’s time because we are one of the smallest minorities. So, here we go!

How Did Witches Become Such A Target?

Throughout history, after Catholicism reached out and expanded, witches became easy targets. They were terrible omens and the reason for bad crops or storms. More often than not, they were women, widows, childless, older, sick or immigrants. That was the witch’s bingo card! 

Before the conversion period from Paganism to Catholicism, witches were healers, ‘scientists,’ astronomers, and midwives and had their homemade apothecary. Their accumulated knowledge would often be passed down from mothers to daughters or women who showed interest in their way of life.

I put scientists in quotes because witches studied many different fields. Nobody credited them for mapping anything or noting which herb did what because they were women. But witches were among the most critical people in a community because they knew how to heal people and livestock.

Knowledge is power, but it also scares ignorant people. When religion reached the shores of Pagan lands, witches became targets like druids were. Anyone with knowledge of how to heal, poison, read the skies, the moon, and more was seen working with the devil.

The Bible mentioned men in power and women to be tools in bringing the next prophets to life at most. witches became a threat and needed to be exterminated. Being a witch isn’t a religion but a life choice people choose or were born as. 

What Kind Of People Hate Witches?

While the most tremendous hatred of witches goes back to the early medieval period for unfounded reasons given by religious belief, it didn’t go away. In fact, the hostility toward witches never stopped but dissipated. 

However, it resurfaced in recent years with social media such as TikTok and interest in conspiracy theories. Younger generations like to associate what Hollywood teaches them through entertainment with reality. They are a very impressive generation.

But the most dangerous people who hate witches remain as a whole, including the younger generations, those who are religious or from a religious background. The main reason they are so dangerous is their unwillingness to understand what a witch is.

 Note here that not all religious people are dangerous to witches, and many seek to know what it means to be a witch. Many are open-minded and see the difference between entertainment and reality. Those I’m mentioning are on the extremist side of the spectrum.

What Do Intense Religious People Do To Hurt Witches?

The more extreme religious people tend to share a wrong image of witches. They often distribute the misrepresentations of symbols and practices. The most common one is that a pentagram or pentacle is a synonym for evil. 

The pentacle or pentagram, much like a triquetra, is an ancient symbol of protection, health, love and union. In the meantime, the five-pointed star overall is a symbol of earth and all four elements with a spirit at its head. Witches use the symbol as a powerful way to ground themselves and use the four elements, including the spirit.

Another common mistake is that witches worship the devil and make sacrifices. Witches do not worship the devil. Devil Worshippers worship the devil. Not witches, not Satanists, not druids or spiritualists. 

Witches are often Pagans, not all of us, but a portion. Most of us believe in science, Mother Earth, and the cosmos. We do not make sacrifices. That is a Hollywood myth they created for entertainment. There is no blood sacrifice of any kind, animal or human alike.

Stop the spread of misinformation about witches. We are not living in a movie. 

What Does The Spread Of Misinformation Do To Witches?

The spread of misinformation through social media is vast and hurts many of us. There are people with families who had to move to town because religious people do not want the ‘devil’ in their community.

But single people are just as important as families. One person who is a witch having to move from her home and change town because of religious people is too much. But it happens today in 2024. 

Witches don’t carry neon signs above their heads to signal what they are, but they can share posts on social media, and a local sees it, and it goes downhill from there. Social media is the perfect tool to bring hell to someone. We are bullied easily because we are people, not a religion and don’t have churches and communities.

Witchists and those living with witchphobia make fun of us, thinking we’re playing pretend. We believe we have magical powers and fly on a broom. We don’t. We use our gifts and practice to make incense, beauty products, teas, and charms to help people. We use nature to bring happiness to people.

Yet, we are targeted by people who think we call upon the devil to do our evil deeds. We don’t. To call upon the devil, one would have to believe in it.

That Was Only The Tip Of The Witchy Iceberg

Because witches are not talked about in the news or in social media as the target that we are, we lose good witches along the way. Some moved, some left too soon, and some abandoned their craft.

We are an extreme minority and often not even thought about when other injustices arise. But we exist, and we, too, deserve the time of day. Our image was destroyed first due to religion and now due to Hollywood. 

Until someone helps us, I will try my best to share my knowledge the best I can to undo the false image that society gave witches. Our history and journey are worth telling, and I’m ready to share them.

Until then, share this article with those you believe might benefit from the knowledge. Witches are people just like you with an extra broom!

The OCD Vampire