PURGE OCCULTISM

The Malleus Maleficarum (1487 CE), written by Heinrich Kramer (Institoris) with some association to Jacob Sprenger, was not simply a “general” witch-hunting manual, but rather an extension of earlier inquisitorial traditions that had long been directed against specific heretical sects in the later Middle Ages. Much of what is popularly claimed about it today is the result of modern sensationalism and projection, especially feminist reinterpretations from the late 20th century, rather than an honest reading of the text in its historical context.

Later renderings of the title — Der Hexenhammer and The Witches’ Hammer — are themselves products of modern publicity and romanticized notions of witchcraft, promoted mainly from the early 1900s onward. The original Latin title deserves closer examination. Malleus means “mallet” or “hammer,” in the sense of a judge’s gavel. Male- derives from the Latin male, “ill” or “bad,” while -ficus comes from facere (“to make” or “to do”), with plural endings forming “ones.” Thus, the more accurate translation is “The Mallet of the Evil-Doing Ones” — later often simplified into the sense of “those who commit evil deeds.”

Contrary to the modern narrative, the text does not present women as the exclusive or even primary targets of persecution. While it does describe women as “weaker vessels” more prone to deception, this is tied to their role as informants rather than prime agents. Kramer states:

This line has been exaggerated into evidence of a gender war, when in reality women were often pressured into naming others — particularly sons, brothers, and fathers — suspected of participating in heretical sects. The inquisitorial strategy was to break family bonds in order to root out heresy in its organized form.

One of the principal sects directly tied to witchcraft accusations in the Malleus were the Waldensians (Vaudois). In the Alpine regions, inquisitors frequently equated “witches” with “Vaudois.” Kramer himself makes the connection explicit:

This fusion of witchcraft imagery with the memory of Waldensian heresy made the sect a primary target. Over time, Vaudois evolved into Vaudoisime and later Vaudou in French, eventually feeding into the colonial-era word Voodoo. While Afro-Caribbean religions indeed drew on African traditions, the European term Vaudou had already circulated in a heresy/witchcraft context, long before being projected back into African origins and is in fact of the word form vodun known as a loan word adaptation!

By the mid-to-late 1400s, the groups most often linked in inquisitorial writings — and implicitly targeted in the Malleus — included:

• The Waldensians (Vaudois): Explicitly associated with nocturnal assemblies and diabolical rites. “Witches” and “Vaudois” were treated as nearly synonymous.

• The Hussites: Rooted in Jan Hus’s Bohemian reformist movement. Though not charged with witchcraft in the same sense, their sectarian defiance was folded into the larger narrative of rebellion against Church order.

• The Cathars (Albigensians): By the 15th century mostly eradicated, yet Kramer still invoked them as a prototype of organized dualist heresy.

• The Fraticelli (Spiritual Franciscans): Radical Franciscans condemned in the 14th century, often cited as examples of heretics cloaking themselves in false piety.

Thus, the Malleus Maleficarum was written not as a general charter to persecute women but as a legal-theological tool to combat heresy, framed in terms of diabolical conspiracy. The Waldensians stood foremost among its targets, while Hussites, Cathars, and radical Franciscans provided historical scaffolding. Later centuries of sensationalist rebranding have obscured this original context, leaving us with myths of “witchcraft persecution” divorced from the text’s true polemical purpose.

It must also be emphasized that the words “witch” and “witchcraft” never appear in the original Latin text of the Malleus Maleficarum. The Latin consistently uses maleficus (male-doer, evil-doer) in the masculine, and malefica in the feminine, with maleficia referring to evil deeds or harmful acts. For example, Kramer writes:

The later English and German translators, particularly in the early 20th century, retroactively imposed the terms witch and witchcraft onto the text for dramatic effect. This linguistic shift helped cement the modern idea of the Malleus as a “witch-hunting manual,” when in reality it was addressing perceived heretical sects of malefici — “evil-doers” or “sorcerous heretics” — not a folkloric class of “witches.”

The original Latin text of the Malleus Maleficarum never once uses the English words witch or witchcraft. Those are later translation choices.

Here’s the breakdown:

• The Latin terms Kramer uses are:

  • maleficus (masc.) / malefica (fem.) → literally “evil-doer” or “sorcerer/sorceress.”

  • maleficium (pl. maleficia) → “evil deed,” “harmful act,” or “sorcery.”

• Example passage:

  Et malefici plerumque sunt de femineo sexu.(“And the evil-doers [malefici] are for the most part of the female sex.” Malleus, Pt. I, Q.6)

• English translators in the early 20th century (especially Montague Summers, whose 1928 translation popularized the title The Witch Hammer) rendered these words as “witch,” “witches,” and “witchcraft”, which dramatically changed the tone for modern readers and more or less to "sell books."

Here are some of the clearest examples where maleficus was turned into witch:

Latin (1487): Et malefici plerumque sunt de femineo sexu.

Summers (1928): “And it is indeed a fact that it is those women who are chiefly addicted to Witchcraft.”(Malleus, Pt. I, Q.6)

Latin (1487): Sciendum est etiam, quod triplex est genus maleficorum.

Summers (1928): “It must also be known that there are three kinds of witches.”(Malleus, Pt. II, Q.1)

Latin (1487): Cum maleficia a maleficis perpetrantur…

Summers (1928): “Since witchcraft is done by witches…”(Malleus, Pt. II, Q.2)

You can see the shift: the neutral Latin terms (malefici = “evil-doers,” maleficia = “evil deeds, harmful acts”) are consistently rendered by Summers as witches and witchcraft. That’s where the modern image of the Malleus as a “witch-hunting manual” comes from — not from the 15th-century Latin itself.

Here are some clearest examples where it is misrepresented in the German version that Summers also drew from and the original Latin as examples, given proper direct translations into Modern English while noting the false glossed generalizing that is far too common and passed around so long most refuse to accept the facts and go with the misrepresentations which I regard as both personal and intellectual cowardice:

Latin (1487): Et malefici plerumque sunt de femineo sexu.

Literal English: “And the evil-doers are for the most part of the female sex.”(later falsely rendered as ‘witches’)

German (1906): “Und die Hexen sind meist vom weiblichen Geschlecht.”

Literal English: “And the hexers are mostly of the female sex.”(falsely given as ‘witches’ instead of hexers)

Latin (1487): Sciendum est etiam, quod triplex est genus maleficorum.

Literal English: “It must also be known, that threefold is the kind of evil-doers.”(later falsely rendered as ‘three kinds of witches’)

German (1906): “Man muß auch wissen, daß es drei Arten von Hexen gibt.”

Literal English: “One must also know, that there are three kinds of hexers.”(falsely rendered as ‘witches’)

Latin (1487): Cum maleficia a maleficis perpetrantur…

Literal English: “Since evil deeds are perpetrated by evil-doers…”(later falsely rendered as ‘witchcraft is done by witches’)

German (1906): “Da die Hexereien von den Hexen begangen werden…”

Literal English: “Since the hexings are committed by the hexers…”(falsely rendered as ‘witchcraft by witches’)

So the actual chain is:

• Latin (1487): maleficus / malefica / maleficium = evil-doer / female evil-doer / evil deed.

• German (1906): Hexer / Hexe / Hexereien = hexer / female hexer / hexings.

• English (Summers, 1928): exaggerated into witch / witches / witchcraft.

This shows clearly that “witch” is a false translation (on purpose) layered on top of two earlier languages. Its from all this nonsense we get most of the crap funneled down through what has come to be called Wicca, which was originally spun our of Occult Fraternities, Sororities and Spin off superficial New Age movements as religions but as superficial external trappings of already established older mystical occult orders and lodges.

In fact, when you strip it down to its bare bones, all it is in reality is an over simplified mix of Kabbalah with the idea of a dual gendered YHVH with three male and three female polar incarnations and four androgynous main ones with a pantheistic scope, Gnosticism with the idea of a ultimate deity that did not create the world but instead a lesser ignorant deity as the basis physical life is all bad and evil and spiritual life is all good and purely Divine, Christian Mysticism seeking to elevate individuals into god-men like status, and proto-sciences formerly known as Natural Philosophy and its many specific disciplines and far more complex philosophies such as alchemy and astrology, all rolled together with completely unrelated folk customs and traditions.

🧙‍♂️ Wica/Wicca: Origins, Pronunciation, and Historical Context

The term “Wica” was consistently used by Gerald Gardner, the so-called Father of Modern Witchcraft, throughout the 1950s and 1960s. It derives from the Scots word wice means wise.

Gardner himself explained:

“It is a curious fact that when the witches became English-speaking they adopted their Saxon name 'Wica'.”“… (He likewise confised the words with similar looking ones wicce/wicca/wiccan, etc.)

In Gardner’s published works, including Witchcraft Today (1954) and The Meaning of Witchcraft (1959), he consistently used Wica, never Wicca, except when discussing etymology. In his personal Books of Shadows and later autobiographical accounts, Wica appears 21 times, and Wicca not at all. Gardner described the Wica as “the wise people” who practiced occult teachings and age-old rites.

The modern spelling “Wicca” (pronounced wech-uh) arose later, influenced by media coverage and figures such as Charles Cardell. It deviated from Gardner’s original pronunciation, which would approximate W-ice-ae or Wican, meaning “wise one.” Scott Cunningham popularized Wicca in the late 20th century through his writings but did not clarify this original historical usage, solidifying the modern mispronunciation.

Importantly, there is no evidence of a continuous, ancient tradition of witchcraft stretching back to pre-Christian Europe. Modern Wicca/Wica is a 20th-century creation, synthesizing elements of ceremonial magic, folk practices, and occult philosophy.

1) Claim: 

“Wicca is an ancient religion passed down through generations.”

Response:

This is false. Modern Wicca/Wica was publicly introduced by Gerald Gardner in the mid-20th century. Gardner claimed initiation into a surviving witch cult in 1939, but there is no evidence of such a continuous tradition.

The religion he developed drew from ceremonial magic, folk magic, and occult philosophy. Gardner’s consistent use of Wica, rather than Wicca, emphasizes the modern origin and intent behind the term.

2) Claim: 

“The Book of Shadows is an ancient grimoire passed down through generations of witches.”

Response:

The Book of Shadows was created by Gardner in the 1950s, with later contributions from Doreen Valiente. Gardner described it as a personal collection of working processes and spells, not as an inherited ancient text.

No historical evidence supports the existence of such books in pre-modern times. In fact, he got the name from a reference to a practice of seeking opens in shadows cast on walls and what not. It was more or less a renamed term for French Grimoires, a word itself meaning Grammar and was Latin translated into such as French.

3) Claim: 

“Wicca is rooted in ancient pagan traditions of Europe.”

Response:

While modern Wicca draws inspiration from European pagan motifs, its core rituals and beliefs were formulated in the 20th century. Gardner synthesized ceremonial magic, occult texts, and folk practices, and Doreen Valiente shaped the ritual liturgy and which she reinforced and doubled down on the more excessive feminist driven, Dianic Murry style cult. These practices are modern constructions, not direct continuations of ancient paganism.

4) Claim: 

“Wicca was practiced secretly for centuries to avoid persecution.”

Response:

There is no historical evidence of secret, continuous practice. Wica emerged publicly in the 1950s. The notion of a centuries-long, hidden tradition is a modern myth intended to lend historical legitimacy.

5) Claim: 

“Wicca is a feminist religion that empowers women.”

Response:

Although Wica honors both male and female deities, it is not inherently feminist. Its gender dynamics reflect mid-20th-century social norms rather than ancient matriarchal traditions. Valiente’s contributions shaped ritual practice, but the religion’s structure was historically and culturally specific to Gardner’s time.

6) Claim: 

“Wicca was influenced by ancient mystery schools and secret societies.”

Response:

Yes, to a point but often indifferently because Gardner was involved in various occult groups,including having been an initiated member of Thelema, but Wica was not derived from ancient mystery schools or secret societies directly any more than Scientology.

Note: G. Gardner and Jack Parsons ( the very same Jack Parsons of JPL rebranded as Jet Propulsion Laboratories from the original Jack Parson Laboratories) was a roommate of L. Ron Hubbard had personally met and drew from the same well as it were.  

Aleister passed the Thelema leadership torch to Jack Parsons who was roommates with L. Ron and even shared the same lover... Sara Northrup Hollister. A woman who was involved with sex magic with Jack Parsons and later went on to marry Hubbard. Gardner had previously been given the "Book of the Law" for Thelema by Aleister which is why many elements of it became foundations of Wica, which is where much of the phrasing and concepts were pulled into and integrated within.

Its development relied on Gardner’s personal experience and readings in Western occultism. Claims of continuity with ancient orders are overstatements and as a result of drawing in members from a previous group.

The main group in question formed after 1921, heavily influenced by the New Age movement of that time and as a result of Margaret Murray's defunct work "Witch Cult of Western Europe," where she more or less invented so called "Dianic" witchcraft as fiction secret society.

The group formed in New Forest based on that who themselves were low level, nearly outsider members of a local Rosicrucian order. Gardner simply absorbed it and adapted it and its members into his self styled "coven."

This was especially after his "secret affair" with one of the members whom was veiled under the name Dorothy Clutterbuck (a cult name)  identified by Gerald Gardner as a leading member of the New Forest coven of witches into which he claimed to have been initiated in September 1939.

7) Claim: 

“Wicca is a nature-based religion that honors the Earth.”

Response:

Nature reverence in Wica/Wicca is a modern development, influenced by late 20th-century environmentalism. Early practice prioritized ritual magic and occult workings over ecological consciousness.

8) Claim: 

“Wicca is a religion of personal empowerment and self-discovery.”

Response:

While personal empowerment is part of modern Wica, the religion’s original focus was ritual magic and worship of the God and Goddess duality as expressions of the male and the female incarnations of one nebulous absolute, with self-discovery becoming more prominent later in the 20th century.

9) Claim: 

“Wicca is a religion that promotes tolerance and acceptance.”

Response:

Wica promotes tolerance to a point, though the tolerance and respect for anything and everything was more of a misplace happy ideology, but this is not unique. The emphasis reflects mid-20th-century cultural trends and the desire to distinguish the new religion from older occult traditions, not an ancient ethos.

10) Claim: 

“Wicca has always been inclusive of LGBTQ+ individuals.”

Response:

Inclusion of LGBTQ+ individuals is a modern development, emerging as societal norms shifted in the late 20th century of modern imposed culture. Early Wica practice focused on ritual magic linked directly genders as polarized conduits of fivine power of the masculine god form and the feminine goddess forms.

Upright Star Good, Inverted Start Bad, Complete BS.

The fact is there were also "Three Degrees" to so called "Wica." Also what is laughable, besides that the symbols of the pentagrams and triangles are used to represent "stages of initiation" and obscuring the alignment with the Kabbalist Tree of Life, is such statements as:

While Gardnerians do not publicly detail our entire lineages because posers might copy and use them to mislead Seekers, it's traditionally sufficient to provide details of our own initiations and highest-degree elevations. Coven Initiates can say that our Line goes to Gardner through his High Priestess Lady Olwen; back farther to Old Dorothy Clutterbuck of the New Forest Coven; and thence, to George Pickingill.

Its just more bullshit and plays into the born to be/hereditary rhetoric playing off the same concept of Papal Succession in Catholicism to Peter on the authority of Jesus and all the "posers" are like Paul that took over type mentality. Lets example the symbols provided.

1st Degree - Inverted Triangle: an initiate who has completed a formal training period within a coven or tradition, typically a year and a day, and has been formally initiated as a "priest or priestess." In simple terms a common member having revived the equivalent of a baptism and general "active" membership, more or less in the Christian concept of parishioners (members of a parish/church).

2nd Degree - Inverted Star: an initiate who has advanced beyond the fundamental training of the First Degree, demonstrating dedication and a deeper understanding of the Craft and its practices as a full member and follows the process to break and strip down the "ego" or "illusions of or about self." This is considered the priest or priestess in training, as a seminarian.

3nd Degree - Upright Star and Triangle "Crown": one who reached the level of leadership within their coven and demonstrating expertise to lead rituals, teach new initiates, answer complex questions, and potentially form their own coven or take on other significant community roles. This means after proving themselves they became a recognized priest or priestess.

4th Degree - Upright and Inverted Stars and Triangles - The Throne: a level that does not "officially" exist. In reality it represents the High Priest and High Priestess having achieved mastery within their coven, including embodiment of "divine forms" as avatars/incarnations of said God and Goddess as two distinct persons but one Deity that is the essence of all things, and where the God form and Goddess form "incarnate" in said High Priest and High Priestess, especially during the Sexual Sacrament of the "Great Rite."

When they are ready to retire "at a certain age" they choose their successors and symbolically "pass the power" of the "divine form or power" from themselves to the successors, usually in a gender reverse so a High Priest "initiates a new High Priestess" and a High Priestess "initiates" a new "High Priest." Then they step down.

All priest or priest means is elder, and many cases to obscure these facts, such will call the first degree the learning student priest/priests phase, the second the priest/priestess phase,and then the third as the "elders" and more or less the role of of high priest and priestess.

This is sometimes represented by the interwoven double helix form of serpents of the Caduceus of Hermes (Mercury) in Greek and Roman mythology, who was also later represented as a hermaphrodite to symbolize the union of male and female principles into a transcendent, androgynous form.

This idea is based on the Greek myth of Hermaphroditus, the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, but was later reinterpreted by alchemists and Hermetic philosophers which in turn associated with the Tree which in turn is organized into three pillars that represent different aspects of divine energy, with the right often being the masculine, and left feminine, with the center pillars being the androgynous reconciliation of the two.

As to the actual upright and inverted stars, the inverted originally represented incarnation through birth and the upright ascension through death. This was worked into Gnostic based concepts of later occultism to present the inverted as bad, evil, material and an illusion, with the other being good, divine, spiritual and real. Essentially a veiling of a cult of death and oblivion.

Others interwove them to represent the Union of the Mortal Flesh and Divine Nature as a diagrammed or 10 pointed star as a symbol of transcendence (freedom from life or death) and the concept of the divine human or god-man concept. Again, these come from various Christian based theology and symbolism more directly known to have come down from Coptic Christianity.

All in all, the so called "Decentralized Wicca" is a distortion of its originally centralized "Wica" and both forms are nothing more than blurred concepts trying to be and claim everything, even that which is fundamentally opposed and irreconcilable, and is predominately one of the primary foundations of what came to be called paganism and even modern Heathenry.

Every time the refrain is raised that “Christians stole our traditions,” one has to ask: whose traditions? There was no continuous witch-cult, no coherent Wiccan priesthood, no “ancient religion of the oppressed” waiting in the shadows for the Church to plunder. What gets passed off today as a sacred inheritance is, in truth, a 20th-century patchwork stitched together from folklore, ceremonial magic, Victorian occultism, and modern ideology.

The irony is staggering: those who cry “appropriation” are themselves the most blatant appropriators. They raid Christianity, classical mythology, Jewish mysticism, folk Catholic customs, and even Romantic poetry, strip them of context, and then parade them as timeless pagan wisdom. The “Triple Goddess” is a perfect case in point — not some primordial deity suppressed by the Church, but a modern poetic invention repackaged as ancient truth.

So, the accusation collapses. Christianity did not steal from Wicca — Wicca did not even exist to be stolen from. If anything, it is the neo-pagan movement that has lived off borrowed symbols, rebranded myths, and selectively rewritten history, while leveling charges of theft against everyone else.

The oft-repeated claim that “Christians were out to kill us” is pure nonsense. There was no secret, unbroken community of Wiccans or witches being hunted down through the centuries. The witch trials of early modern Europe were tragic, yes, but they were not the systematic targeting of an ancient religion.

They were driven by local fears, political tensions, social paranoia, and distorted theology — not by some organized Christian vendetta against an underground pagan faith that simply did not exist.

To frame Christianity as engaged in a perpetual war against a hidden “witch-cult,” is a modern myth, born in the 20th century to supply Wicca and neo-paganism with a narrative of persecution and victimhood.

The historical reality is far more complex — accusations of witchcraft often involved neighborly grudges, inheritance disputes, and local superstition, and men were as frequently accused as women.

The “persecution narrative” is not history; it is propaganda. And it conveniently erases the fact that the very people promoting this myth are themselves the inventors of a religion less than a century old, one which has borrowed and repurposed freely from Christianity, Judaism, folk traditions, and Romantic fantasy.

How to know you are a real whatever nonsense

When I see modern “10 ways to know you’re a witch/warlock” lists, I can’t help but shake my head. These are nothing but recycled versions of the same nonsense once used by inquisitors, zealots, and witch-hunters—the very people these modern movements claim to despise. Then, it was “She has a mark upon her skin” or “He knows too much about herbs,” and now it’s “You always felt different” or “You sense energy when you enter a room.” Both are equally absurd attempts to fabricate identity out of arbitrary signs.

The irony is staggering. Those who loudly condemn the witch-hunters for their false accusations now adopt the same logic, just repackaged in pastel fonts and New Age jargon. If “persecutors” were wrong to label people witches based on imagined traits, why is it suddenly valid when modern occultists use equally baseless checklists to “identify” themselves or others? You can’t have it both ways.

At the end of the day, it’s idiotic. These lists do not reveal some hidden mystical essence; they merely perpetuate the same patterns of superstition, paranoia, and self-delusion that once fueled real violence. If anything, this proves that modern Wiccan and neo-pagan circles have far more in common with their alleged persecutors than they’d care to admit.

BS, Burning Times

The so-called “Burning Times” narrative—that millions of innocent women were systematically hunted down and exterminated by Christians in some kind of gendered genocide—is a modern fabrication. It’s repeated endlessly in Wiccan and neo-pagan circles as though it were historical fact, but the numbers, the framing, and even the very premise collapse under real scholarship.

In reality, the witch trials of Europe spanned roughly 250 years and claimed somewhere between 40,000 and 60,000 lives—men and women. Yes, women were disproportionately accused in some regions, but in others men were the majority.

Accusations were rarely about “practicing the Old Religion” or being part of a pagan underclass. They were tied to local feuds, superstition, and political or religious instability. Entire communities suffered—not just “wise women.”

The “nine million witches burned” claim (a number still parroted) was pulled out of thin air by 19th-century polemicists and later inflated by feminist activists who wanted a martyrdom myth. It’s propaganda, not history. And it is deeply insulting to real victims of persecution—Christian, Jewish, Protestant, Catholic, male, female—who actually suffered in those centuries.

Ironically, by clinging to this false narrative, modern Wiccans and neo-pagans mirror the same fear-mongering and exaggeration they condemn in others. The difference is, instead of inquisitors seeing witches behind every misfortune, they see persecution behind every shadow.

The truth is bad enough without embellishment. But when myth becomes ideology, it’s no longer about honoring the past—it’s about manufacturing legitimacy for a modern movement by rewriting history. That isn’t empowerment; it’s deception.

Claiming to be survives of what they never experienced

Finally, claiming some kind of lineage with the actual victims of witch trials or inquisitorial violence is dishonest at best, exploitative at worst. Whether or not one acknowledges that men were just as often accused as women, this narrative completely disguises the real social, political, and religious complexities behind those events. It reduces centuries of history to a caricature designed to serve modern ideological needs.

Wicca and its offshoots did not exist during those persecutions. To pretend otherwise is to appropriate the suffering of people who lived and died in entirely different contexts. It is historical cosplay passed off as identity, and it robs the real victims of their humanity by transforming them into mascots for a 20th-century religion. I cannot and will not support such things.