Since we went deep into the subject I am going to make these quotations too:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witchcraft_Act_1735
“The Witchcraft Act 1735 (9 Geo. 2 c. 5) was an Act of the Parliament of the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1735 which made it a crime for a person to claim that any human being had magical powers or was guilty of practising witchcraft. With this, the law abolished the hunting and executions of witches in Great Britain. The maximum penalty set out by the Act was a year's imprisonment.”
(…)
“In September 1943, Helen Duncan was jailed under the Witchcraft Act 1735 on the grounds that she had claimed to summon spirits. Her followers often contend that her imprisonment was in fact at the behest of superstitious military intelligence officers, who feared that she would reveal the secret plans for D-Day. She came to the attention of the authorities after supposedly contacting the spirit of a sailor of HMS Barham, whose sinking was hidden from the general public at the time.”
(…)
“In 1951, the Witchcraft Act 1735 was repealed with the enactment of the Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951”
- I quoted this just to show you that what we call “modern societies, can sometimes not be so modern after all.
Having gone through some sociology books I know that what we call “masses” may have far less intelligence than human beings as individuals. Some primal tendencies tend to take over the capacities of reasoning and intelligent thinking when individuals are in group. A good read on this is Gustave LeBon’s “Psychology of the Masses”. So what I am saying is that in such events (modern or past events) there needs not be a “logical” explanation for anything. Some sort of emotional speech with some religious elements in it was all it took in the middle ages. You didn’t even need for it to be institutionalized. All you had to do was a “someone” to agitate the group, and voila, the job was done.
So this makes it even sadder to see “governments” resorting to similar methods just to be able to reassert their own political power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witchcraft_Act_1735
“The Witchcraft Act 1735 (9 Geo. 2 c. 5) was an Act of the Parliament of the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1735 which made it a crime for a person to claim that any human being had magical powers or was guilty of practising witchcraft. With this, the law abolished the hunting and executions of witches in Great Britain. The maximum penalty set out by the Act was a year's imprisonment.”
(…)
“In September 1943, Helen Duncan was jailed under the Witchcraft Act 1735 on the grounds that she had claimed to summon spirits. Her followers often contend that her imprisonment was in fact at the behest of superstitious military intelligence officers, who feared that she would reveal the secret plans for D-Day. She came to the attention of the authorities after supposedly contacting the spirit of a sailor of HMS Barham, whose sinking was hidden from the general public at the time.”
(…)
“In 1951, the Witchcraft Act 1735 was repealed with the enactment of the Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951”
- I quoted this just to show you that what we call “modern societies, can sometimes not be so modern after all.
Having gone through some sociology books I know that what we call “masses” may have far less intelligence than human beings as individuals. Some primal tendencies tend to take over the capacities of reasoning and intelligent thinking when individuals are in group. A good read on this is Gustave LeBon’s “Psychology of the Masses”. So what I am saying is that in such events (modern or past events) there needs not be a “logical” explanation for anything. Some sort of emotional speech with some religious elements in it was all it took in the middle ages. You didn’t even need for it to be institutionalized. All you had to do was a “someone” to agitate the group, and voila, the job was done.
So this makes it even sadder to see “governments” resorting to similar methods just to be able to reassert their own political power.
