Why the Witch Trials Never Ended
When people think of witch trials, they imagine superstition, spells, and cauldrons. But history tells a far darker truth: the witch hunts of Europe were not about magic. They were about power. They were about fear. They were about men trying to snuff out women who refused to be controlled. These women were not witches — they were fierce, independent, and unbowed.
From the late Middle Ages into the 18th century, waves of witch persecutions swept across Europe, claiming the lives of an estimated 40,000 to 60,000 people. The overwhelming majority were women. In the German-speaking lands, up to 80% of the accused were female. Widows who owned property. Midwives and herbalists whose knowledge rivalled male authority. Women who resisted marriage, who spoke their minds, who lived defiantly. Their crime was not witchcraft. Their crime was independence.
The accusation of sorcery was a mask for male panic. A woman with knowledge, with property, with voice, was a threat. To brand her a witch justified violence under the guise of law and morality. Burning, hanging, drowning: these were not punishments. They were warnings. Pyres of fear, meant to scorch every woman who might dare to rise.
And the flames have not gone out. They have simply changed form. Across Europe, the fire licks the edges of society in every act of victim-blaming, every shrug at assault, every loophole that leaves women exposed. It is the woman told she should have dressed differently. It is the survivor asked why she walked alone at night. It is the harassment, the disbelief, the courts that move too slowly, the shelters that are too few. The system itself smoulders with old fear, fanned by new excuses, and women are still the fuel.
The witch hunts were deliberate, systematic campaigns of terror, sanctioned by church and state, designed to enforce male control. To call them "witch burnings" is to dilute their brutality. They were executions of women’s power. They burned women. They burned knowledge. They burned independence and defiance.
History is not past. The embers are still there, hidden in inequality, injustice, and silence. Every act of violence excused or ignored is a spark. Every demand for women to be smaller, quieter, compliant, is kindling. To confront the witch trials is not to look back — it is to look at today’s fires.
It is time to name the flames for what they are. Not superstition. Not aberration. Not history. Gendered violence. Fear of women’s strength. And until we stamp it out across Europe, until we refuse to let women be fuel for fear, the fire will continue to burn — in new forms, in new faces, but always for the same reason: because women dare to live freely, fiercely, and unafraid.