Professor talks in Tamworth on Halloween about history of witches

Someone who knows all about the history of witches is University of New England (UNE) medieval expert Professor Thomas Fudge, who spent many years researching the topic deep in the monastic libraries of Europe.

"Halloween witches are completely benign," Professor Fudge said.

"They're just kind of cute little kids dressing up as witches and running around. Because behind that, is the really troubling phenomenon, that people were persecuted and prosecuted, and executed for an imaginary crime."

Professor Fudge said unlike the modern wiccas of today, the witches of medieval Europe were said to be devil worshippers, which was against the religious dogma of Christianity at the time.

"It's not just some woman out there mixing up some potion to perform a magic ritual," Professor Fudge said.

"[They thought] she was actually controlled by the devil, which in a Christian civilisation is the antithesis of God, it's good versus evil.

"And that's why they were so keen to prosecute and eliminate these [so-called] servants of Satan."

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Professor Fudge said there were about 100,000 witch trials in Europe during the medieval years; of which 50 per cent resulted in capital punishment.

The infamous Salem Witch Trials of the 1690s in the US, arrived a couple of hundred years later, with more than 200 being arrested, including 14 women and five men executed by the hangman's noose.

"There were women and men who were put on trial accused of having made a conspiracy with the devil to do something nasty," Professor Fudge said.

"But the accused had to prove this was false. I mean, how do you do that?"

Overall, looking at Europe broadly, about 75 per cent of witches were women; however, in some regions, like Iceland, up to 90pc of the accused were men, also known as sorcerers, warlocks or wizards, he said.

Professor Fudge will be holding a TamTalks session on Tuesday, October 31, at the UNE Peel House on Fitzroy Street from 12noon to 1pm, where he will also link medieval witch-hunting to the modern day.

"It's like cancel culture, which is; if somebody doesn't like what you say, then they can file an accusation, they don't have to give any proof, they can just say I'm offended by this, and you can get cancelled," Professor Fudge said.

"These are the seeds of witch hunts that go right back to the later Medieval Period.

"That's the problem when authorities, whether it's church, state or university, decide to play ball with this kind of nonsense, and to deprive people of the right of free speech and free expression because somebody doesn't like it."

This year, it is estimated that 5.3 million people in Australia will spend a whopping $490 million on Halloween, which is up 14 per cent, or $60 million on 2022, with each person spending an average of $97, according to Roy Morgan research.

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