Witchcraft-Documentary Review: Mysteries of History, History Channel International

I watched the History Channel Internationals documentary this morning on Witchcraft. Being previously encouraged from watching the main History Channel’s documentary on Halloween, I thought that the international channel viewpoint would be just as open ended. And for the majority of the hour long episode there was some educational handling of the witchcraft subject, just not through the duration of the program.

Please, keep in mind that the following information is from the review and notes taken during the documentary. I am aware that not all this information is correct historically, even though that is how all of the information was present by the History International Channel. So, let us begin on the review portion of today’s post on Simple Abnormality.

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Pagan tradition is still celebrated in Killorglin, County Kerry Ireland during Puck Fair. Officially, since 1610 there has been a goat-fawning festival where the best goat is crowned King Puck and paraded through the streets.
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In 1782, Anna Goldi was accused of bewitching the daughter of Johann Jakob Tschudi. Anna was a servant in the Tschudi home at the time and among her charges was causing the young girl to spit pins and collapse to the ground in a fit of convulsions. General knowledge provided that John and Anna were having an affair and should that information become widely known in the area it would have seriously damaged John’s reputation who was both a doctor and a magistrate. Anna, whose family and herself denied that she was ever a witch, was tried and beheaded for the crime of witchcraft. Her sentencing was done well after the witchcraft hysteria had already run its course through Europe.

Now, after almost two hundred years Anna Goldi is being touted as the “last witch to be exonerated in Europe” despite the fact that she was never a witch. Last year her case was brought before the cantonal government in Switzerland where it was reviewed in conjunction with the Protestant Church; her case was denied. The cantonal parliament worked to persuade the government to look at the case again and this year the case was brought before both the Protestant and Catholic churches in the Swiss canton of Glarus and was accepted today.

The reason that Anna’s case was first brought to the Protestant Church in the area is due to it being the same institution that condemned her for being a witch all those years ago. The Swiss government has come out to say that the church had no legal authority to decided if Anna Goldi was guilty of being a witch or not.

In spirit of calling the exoneration a rehabilitation of Anna Goldi’s name the canton government in Glarus will base a new play on Anna and in Mollis, the canton where she was beheaded they have already opened a Goldi museum in her honor on the two hundred and twenty-fiftieth anniversary of her death from last year.

It is interesting to note that even though Anna was not a witch, that because of the way she died in an condemnation of witchcraft her legacy is now that of being the “last witch to be exonerated”. Yes, Anna is one of the the last cases of women being killed for the false accusation of witchcraft but I do doubt that in the many who came before her and the many who are still coming after her that she will really be the last one to be exonerated. The title implies that there are no more accused witches to be cleared… but there are.

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Today in a long awaited installment of the What is…? series here at Simple Abnormality, we are going to take a look at a widely misunderstood faith underneath the Paganism umbrella and that faith would be Discordia. Many people know a few Discordians and upon asking what they practice will rarely get one answer; which is just an aspect of practicing Discordia.

Discordia began, as most modern religions do with an idea. A couple of men named Gregory Hill whose pseudonym was Malaclypse the Younger and Kerry Thornley whose pseudonym was Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst, wrote a book called Principia Discordia or How the West was Lost that was published in 1965. The book claimed seriousness with its humor and provided for the main tenant of the religion which is that chaos is much more important that order when it comes to the world. The first edition of the Principia only garnered five copies but the fourth edition entitled Principia Discordia or How I Found Goddess And What I Did To Her When I Found Her: The Magnum Opiate Of Malaclypse The Younger, Wherein is Explained Absolutely Everything Worth Knowing About Absolutely Anything and published in 1970 is the most well known and widely expounded upon text in the Discordian faith.

There are two main Goddesses associated with the faith and they are the Greek Eris and the Roman Discordia; both deities of chaos and discord. Now, it is worth mentioning that there are Erisians who will recognize Discordians but do not see the practice as an actual faith but more of an extension of their own faith. The symbolism of the faith is that of the Apple of Discord and the pentagon.

The main system of belief is that of chaos. Discordians embrace the ideal that there must be enough chaos to equal out the more organized structure of things. Being of discord or helping to create chaos and dissent are looked at as good things while forcing a certain view of reality to conform into order are seen as bad things. One of the most interesting precepts of Discordia is to continually question the presented world’s version of reality with the universal from of reality. This last view has many times labeled some Discordians in the media as Anarchists.

There are five commandments in Discordia which are known as the PENTABARF:

I - There is no Goddess but Goddess and She is Your Goddess. There is no Erisian Movement but The Erisian Movement and it is The Erisian Movement. And every Golden Apple Corps is the beloved home of a Golden Worm.

II - A Discordian Shall Always use the Official Discordian Document Numbering System.

III - A Discordian is Required during his early Illumination to Go Off Alone & Partake Joyously of a Hot Dog on a Friday; this Devotive Ceremony to Remonstrate against the popular Paganisms of the Day: of Catholic Christendom (no meat on Friday), of Judaism (no meat of Pork), of Hindic Peoples (no meat of Beef), of Buddhists (no meat of animal), and of Discordians (no Hot Dog Buns).

IV - A Discordian shall Partake of No Hot Dog Buns, for Such was the Solace of Our Goddess when She was Confronted with The Original Snub.

V - A Discordian is Prohibited of Believing what he reads.

Click here to read the Principia Discordia or How I Found Goddess And What I Did To Her When I Found Her: The Magnum Opiate Of Malaclypse The Younger, Wherein is Explained Absolutely Everything Worth Knowing About Absolutely Anything.

For more information you can check out the links below:
Discordian.com
Discordian Research Technology
The Eris Society
Maybe Logic Academy

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