"In the Congo, in June 2002, there was a 'month dedicated to getting rid of witches'. Alas, this is not a joke, these are the words of the tribal leader Owu Sudar. This highly respected man with undisguised pride declared that he had personally instructed his subjects to engage in the massacre of their fellow tribesmen. Sorcerers and witches, according to local beliefs, are old people living on the outskirts of the village, as a rule, women with red watery eyes. They were dragged out into the street, beaten to death with sticks, chopped with machetes, and stoned. They demanded to confess and name the names of "apprentices" and "accomplices". According to rough estimates, more than a thousand people died in this way, hundreds fled, fleeing from reprisals. The small town of Aru, 30 kilometers from Sudan on the border with Uganda, became the center of the witch hunt, after which a wave of aggression swept the entire northeastern part of the country. "Peasants say that some people cast a spell on others, causing them to get sick," said the commander-in-chief of the Congolese army, Henry Tumukunde. He said this to the fact that the inhabitants of the country mainly accuse "sorcerers" and "witches" of generating diseases characteristic of this region. In the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, 200 villagers were burned alive on suspicion of witchcraft, which allegedly killed two people, five of their fellow villagers - four women and a man. They were simply taken, dragged to the central square of the village, without being allowed to open their mouths, tied to a tree, doused with kerosene and set on fire. In the state of Bihar (also India), the locals, suspecting witchcraft, executed two women aged 90 and 60."[40]

"03.07.2003 In India, two women accused of witchcraft were burned alive. Two women accused of witchcraft were burned alive by fellow villagers in the state of Jharkhand in eastern India, AFP reported, citing state police. A police spokesman told the agency that the crime took place in one of the villages located 300 km north of the city of Ranchi (the state capital). In this village, he noted, the Godda tribe group is predominantly influential. A crowd of villagers grabbed 35-year-old Bahamai Kiska and 50-year-old Nanka Hambrom. Both women were then taken to a nearby field, where they were doused with gasoline and burned alive. Local residents accused them of witchcraft, because of which one of them allegedly fell ill. Human rights associations have issued statements about the brutal attacks suffered by women in remote villages in India, where witchcraft practices are widespread in tribal communities. Superstition, black magic, and belief in evil spirits form part of the tradition of tribes living in parts of eastern and southeastern India. In most cases, the victims' families and villagers do not report these attacks to the police, and tribal leaders are indifferent to them. NEWSru.com»[41].

There was no Christian Inquisition in these countries and villages. And there is faith in sorcerers, fear of them and witch hunts. According to the laws of logic, this leads to the conclusion that the Inquisition cannot be considered the cause of the "witch hunt".

No, I am not a supporter of the introduction of the Inquisition. But I do not consider it necessary to support anti-Christian myths either.

And it is these myths that are spread by Theosophists. Quoting from Helena Roerich, "The Inquisition was established not only to persecute miserable witches and sorcerers, mostly mediums, but to destroy all dissidents. And among such enemies, first of all, there were all the most enlightened minds, all the servants of the common good and true followers of Christ's behests" – the current Roerich leader L. Shaposhnikova explains: "The essence of the Inquisition is the persecution of the unusual," says one of the books of the Living Ethics. Thus, the Church needed the Inquisition in order to fight, first of all, against dissent of the most diverse kinds, in order to oppose everything new that had formed in human thought. In those terrible times, the inquisitors burned tens, and possibly hundreds of thousands of "witches". They burned "in their own name", their monopoly on the truth, their "eternally alive", their fear of those who brought new knowledge to the people, expanding their consciousness, who sought to break through the thick veil of their ignorance. Is it really possible to think, as the deacon is trying to convince us, that the Inquisition burned real witches, and not the unfortunate women and "heretics" slandered by itself, in order to deal with more serious enemies such as Joan of Arc, Giordano Bruno, Jan Hus and the like under their smokescreen? Do you feel the smell of the stinking smoke of uncleanliness and substitutions from the above-quoted lines of Kuraev?" [42].

In fact, it is "unscrupulous" to blame an entire era in the history of mankind without trying to understand the motives of those people's actions. But it is enough to ask at least the following questions to begin with: 1) Did the witches themselves believe that they were witches? 2) Did the masses of the people see witches in these women? 3) Was this belief introduced to the people by church preaching, or has it existed since pre-Christian times? [43] 4) Was there a boundary separating folk witchcraft from the magic that the learned alchemists and "theurgists" of the Renaissance and Reformation were fond of? (5) What is the percentage of those who have been accused of doctrinal transgressions and those who have been accused of direct magic among the people brought before the Inquisition? 6) Were the views of those people who were persecuted by the Inquisition for their views more "advanced" than the views of the inquisitors themselves, or were they even more archaic and represented pre-Christian layers of the worldview? [44] 7) If the latter turns out to be true, then, from the point of view of cultural and scientific progress, what objective role did the Inquisition play in the history of Europe? Will it not be similar to the role of the cruel reformer Peter (and, by the way, the founder of the Russian Inquisition[45]) in the history of Russia?

Without an evidential answer to these questions based on source studies, it is impossible to present the victims of the Inquisition as unconditionally progressive people.

For a modern secular person, witchcraft is an "imaginary crime". And therefore it is understandable that such a person will be indignant at the execution of people for those crimes that they did not actually commit. But from the point of view of Theosophists, witches were witches and magicians were magicians, devils were devils, and corruption was corruption. "And the devil can be made to dance. Devils can't stand light and noise. It is not for nothing that shamans beat tambourines to get rid of low spirits"[48]. "The ignorant laugh at the existence of Satan and thus confirm the correctness of what was said by one subtle thinker: "The victory of the devil is that he was able to convince people that he does not exist." After all, when we do not believe in something or deny it, we cease to be afraid of it and the more easily we fall into the snares set by the numerous minions of darkness"[49]. "Witchcraft is unacceptable as a crime against humanity. Witchcraft should not be understood as evil against one person. The consequence of sorcery is much more harmful—it disturbs cosmic manifestations, it brings confusion into the supermundane strata. If the sorcerer failed to defeat the enemy, this does not mean that his blow did not kill several people somewhere, perhaps in different countries. Perhaps the vibration of evil will has found affirmation in the most unexpected place. It is impossible to imagine how many deaths and illnesses have been caused by evil will. Clouds of claws are rushing across the space, no one will take into account where this poisonous pack will land. A strong spirit will protect itself from evil sendings, but somewhere a weak person will get their infection. It is impossible to take into account such cosmic harm. Even Grace will not reach the full extent if it is spent along the way to disperse evil. It is possible to warn mankind very much against any sorcery," says Roerich's treatise "Aum" (Chapter 28).

And, therefore, if the Renaissance or modern European society committed a crime by executing these sorcerers, then it must still be taken into account that it was a retaliatory measure: retribution with crime for crime, harm for harm. And, besides, it was a crime committed in a state of passion. A crime committed by frightened people who were really afraid of witches, because they believed in the reality of witchcraft...

Да, сжигать людей — мерзко. «Еретика убивать не должно» — говорит св. Иоанн Златоуст (Беседы на Евангелие от Матфея, 46,1). Но историк тем и отличается от моралиста, что он должен понимать логику событий и мотивы лиц, творивших нашу историю, а не просто выставлять им оценки за поведение…

Если же моралист осуждает одних преступников (инквизиторов) ради того, чтобы безусловно обелить другую группу преступников (колдунов), то здесь возникает вопрос — а есть ли у этого моралиста вообще нравственное право на то, чтобы считаться моралистом…

Так что вовсе не с наукой воевала инквизиция, а с магическим суеверием. Оттого и рождение науки пришлось на пору расцвета инквизиции…

Вера научных революционеров

Понимаю, что человек, воспитанный в советской школе ответит: да, толпа в ту пору была одержима религиозным мракобесием. Но те светлые гении, что создали науку, опередили свое время и уже порвали связь с оковами ортодоксии…