Pardon the Witches, OK, They're Pardoned

Friday, February 29. 2008

Have you heard about an organization called Full Moon Investigations? They've recently come my attention because of a petition they've presented to the parliament at Holyrood, which for those who don't know, is the Parliament of Scotland, one of the currently constituent parts of the UK.

The story goes like this, way back in 1735 George II, agreed to repeal the previous witchcraft act and replace it with this one which no longer made it an offense to practice witchcraft, oh no this was a more enlightened act that charged people with pretending to be witches; Huh? OK, here's how it worked, after 1735 anyone could run seances, dance naked under a full moon, all of that was OK, but actually communicating with the devil, spirits, ghosts, whatever, was considered to be impossible so anyone who claimed to be a medium was automatically charged with pretending to be in touch with spirits and this offense incurred the death penalty or lengthy stays in prison.
If that makes sense you'll understand why this group of witches wants to have all former witches pardoned. In fact they have two petitions going, the first is to pardon all witches found guilty under this act, the second is to pardon a single individual, a lady by the name of Helen Duncan who in 1944 was convicted of fraudulently conjuring spirits and sentenced to nine months imprisonment.

Since we're dealing with stuff that happened well before my lifetime you might wonder about my interest. Actually I'm not all that interested in witchcraft, I consider most people who describe themselves as witches to be fairly idiotic, mixing any number of ancient tribal beliefs and customs with modern rubbish like crystal therapy, color therapy, stuff like that.

I do believe in the body's ability to heal itself if the mind is motivated to make it happen, and I do believe that certain herbs and other plants have healing properties, I just don't think holding an inanimate piece of crystal in your hand is going to do anything to help. Similarly, I don't believe that spirits manifest themselves through mediums. To me this is mumbo jumbo that some people use as a crutch to deal with their inability to deal with with the challenges they face in life. OK, I said it!

So, with all that said, why the hell am I writing this entry? I've forgotten, oh no, I know... because I thought it was really unusual that a bunch of people would go to the effort of trying to pardon witches from a couple hundred years ago, and I wondered what practical effect it would have in this day. Well here's where it gets interesting. In 1951 the aforementioned act was repealed, replaced with a Fraudulent Mediums Act and not long after, in 1954, Spritualism was formally recognized as a religion in the UK.

And now we come to the main point of the petition to pardon. It seems to me that spiritualists want people pardoned as part of their efforts to bring spiritualism into the mainstream and improve the standing of mediums in the UK and possibly globally. Dare I say it, quack quack. And don't get me started on homeopathy.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed.
in Carl's Journal   Comment (1)

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments

  1. Jillian said,

    Sunday, March 2. 2008 at 14:25 (Reply)

    Well, why don't you tell us how you really feel :-P

Add Comment

Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

 
 
 
 

Friends