Ten years back when I was first starting down a Pagan path, one of the more popular pieces of our history revolved around the idea that 9 million women/Witches were burned at the stake during the burning times.
Over the years this number has been refined through common sense and proper research. If I recall correctly, most estimates put the number of deaths at somewhere around 50,000 people (men, women, children - few, if any, of them witches) killed (some burned, some hanged, some beheaded) over roughly 300 years (which breaks down to about 167 some odd people each year ... this is still a lot of innocent people).
Boy, was I surprised to find out that there had apparently been some sort of disturbance in space and time, and that a large portion of the world's population at the time were actually burned at the stake. Entire countries would have been depopulated to nothing at all. Cultures and races lost forever. The Church was on a serious rampage to take out most of the people alive for hundreds of years.
"Pagans, (including Witches) *never* worshipped the Devil we were falsely accused of worshipping. It is deeply saddening that people still think -800 years after the church started burning my people (Unoficially **Twenty million** Pagans were put to death), that we are evil - when in fact Pagans honour Mother Earth, our Gods and Goddesses, Angels, other loving spirit guides and the Universe (Whom some believe is God)."
For perspective, 20,000,000 Pagans over that same time period is 66,667 every year or 183 Pagans every day. Busy busy folks, those Inquisitors. Comments are fun -
http://www.wildhunt.org/2008/01/snubbed-canadian-queen-comes-out-of.htmlOh, and a minor rant on how boycotting the city of Toronto is NOT the way to fix this problem: If Pagans boycotted US cities every time their city governance did something stupid, there would be no more Pagans in the States at all anymore. :P
--Phae
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