Nonsense kills.
If you can embrace claims of reincarnation, precognition and remote healing as scientific fact, why not be consistent and accept similar nonsense about witchcraft? Surely the same quantum hocus pocus that supposedly makes the clouds and cancer disappear can make the milk curdle, the cows drop dead and an enemy's hair drop out.
With apologies to exponents of quantum mysticism, there are alternate explanations. I was struck by an account of a five year old Nigerian witch - Satan is obviously an enthusiast for work integrated learning from an early age - who was denounced by his church pastor after the child's mother died. The pastor kindly told the family that
"Godwin is responsible."In the West we have fortunately moved on from the days of James I (Daemonologie, 1597) or Kramer & Sprenger (Malleus Maleficarum, 1486), recognising issues about the basis of proof derived from beating a motherless five year old into a confession and - I would hope - honouring the jurisprudence of figures such as David Hume or Friedrich von Spee, author of the 1631 Cautio criminalis, or, A book on witch trials.
From his own investigation, questioning Godwin and talking with neighbors, Sam said that when a relative asked Godwin if he was a witch, "he said no and was beaten and made the confession that he actually killed the mother."
The latter did not rely on gibberish about quantum holism and a 'transpersonal psychology' that claims reality for messages from the dead - or undead - delivered by valve radios. (Transistor radios and digital TVs, inconsistently, just don't seem to deliver, albeit such a "materialist" emphasis on consistency is entirely out of place in dealing most quantum mumbo jumble).
Instead von Spee offered observations such as -
[the accused witch] is executed even if she did not confess, for once the torture has begun, the die has been cast; she can no longer escape; she must die. So either she confesses or she does not. Whatever happens, she is done for in either case. If she confesses, the matter is clear, as I said, and she is executed. Any retraction is made completely in vain, as we showed above. If she does not confess, then the torture is repeated two, three or four times. ...The Nigerian account indicates that -
Should [the accused] in her torment roll her eyes in agony or stare, then this is new evidence. If she rolls her eyes, look! they say, she is searching for her concubine! If she stares, look! they say, she has already found him; she is looking at him. But if she does not break her silence after several rounds of torture, if her face is twisted in pain, if she sinks into unconsciousness, etc they shout that she is laughing or sleeping during the torture, that she is using the sorcery of silence, and she must be so much the guiltier. How fitting then that she be burned alive. This was recently done to several women who did not want to confess despite being tortured repeatedly.
Godwin was locked up with his mother's corpse every night for three weeks with little food or water before a neighbor contacted Sam, who was able to rescue him. ...Perhaps the Club of Budapest, World Wisdom Council and GlobalShift University could provide a few of the kids with a ticket out of the killing fields rather than burbling about the Akashic Field in World Futures and other fora. Less attention to propagating absurdities such as 'Mayan Calendar 2012' endism and the "oneness process" or repackaging Cayce and Blavatsky, please, and focus instead on substantive action regarding law reform, education and economic development.
"A child witch is said to be a witch when that child possessed with certain spiritual spells capable of making that child transform into cat, snake, vipers, insects, any other animal and that child is capable of wreaking havoc like killing of people, bringing diseases, misfortune into the family," Sam said.
"When a child is accused of being a witch -- that child is hated absolutely by everybody surrounding him so such children are sent out of the home... But unfortunately such children do not always live long. A lot of them, they're either killed, abandoned by the parents, tortured in the church or trafficked out of the city."
