posted on Feb, 28 2006 @ 05:52 AM
Back then, as you say, people lived a lot differently to us. A hell of a lot differently. While we take instant communications with the far side of
the earth for granted, they had to trek just to swap gossip with the next village.
Most of these stories are from Europe, a divided continent, with many peoples, usually most at each others necks. Like the Communists during the Cold
War, these other people had bad, horible stories made up about them, and, like in the Cold War, there was just about no way of disproving these.
So, over time, stories grew to legends, and legends grew to big-ugly-horrible-hairy-beasts-that-eat-children's-hearts.
I could not imagine living isolated from teh rest of the world, scared to put my toe outside at night for fear of a story my parents had offhandedly
told me, told me to keep me a good and proper boy. You get my point?
Witches were the same. So isolated from the world, always present in nature, they would have come to see magic everywhere. They would also see how
this 'force' could harm and kill people. An explanation was needed. Dunno how women got pegged wtih this, but they did.
I very seriously doubt that they knew something about all this that we did not; but you can never rule that out, I suppose, can you, through?