Holocaust Memorial Day is observed each year on 27 January.  The focus of this day is often on Nazi Germany during WWII, but it is important to remember that there have been other holocausts throughout history, including the slaying of the First Nation Native people of North America.

This year, I want to hold a candle for an older European story that is often overlooked or downplayed: the Inquisition and witch hunts.

The Catholic Inquisition gave rise to the medieval and early modern witch trials, which surged between the 15th and 18th centuries.  Over a period of 350 to 400 years, mass hysteria, religious persecution, fear, and scapegoating fuelled waves of violence against women across communities in Europe and its colonies.

Following torture and coerced confession, innocent women’s lives were ended publicly and violently, usually through burning, but also beheading, drowning, or hanging.  The religious leaders successfully eliminated the healers and keepers of natural wisdom, paving the way for the profitable pharmaceutical industry based on patented chemical formulas.

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The “witch hunts” were real — and they were lethal

This was the biggest, deliberate extermination of people across Europe, but the true death toll remains contested. Mainstream estimates are often far lower than the figures cited by some writers, who argue the numbers have been radically undercounted.  Some claim there were as many as nine million victims across Europe.

Whatever the exact number, the persecutions represent an often forgotten mass atrocity that is truly horrifying.  Families and friends were forced to testfy against one another when their babies were held under ice.  Children were tortured to force confessions from their mothers.  Women were subjected to “ordeals” that inverted justice: if a woman floated, she was deemed guilty and executed; if she sank and drowned, she was declared innocent – too late.  Women were thrown off cliffs and forced into deep holes in the ground, their deaths framed as proof.

All of this unfolded within a wider environment of patriarchal power and religious oppression, where fear, control, and scapegoating were weaponised against the vulnerable.

The Witch Hunts: Who Was Targeted and Why

Across Europe and North America, the witch hunts of the 15th to 18th centuries targeted both male and female healers, but disproportionately targeted women, often estimated at around 80–85% of the accused. As time went on, the label of “witchcraft” became a brutal tool for punishing any women who wouldn’t conform to societal norms and those living beyond the rigid expectations of patriarchal and religious control.

Some of the reasons why women were targeted include:

SCAPEGOATING – Women who were considered unusual in any way were easy targets and were blamed for issues that had nothing to do with them. Healers, midwives, herbalists, widows, and unmarried women were especially vulnerable.

CONTROL – Accusations became a tool for controlling women’s independence, influence, and sexuality.  Female autonomy was perceived as a threat and framed as dangerous.  Witchcraft provided a socially sanctioned way suppress their autonomy and subdue feminine power.

MISOGYNY & FEAR – Women who defied traditional roles or possessed feminine wisdom and healing knowledge were often met with suspicion and hostility.  The widespread fear of women’s perceived spiritual or social power fuelled hysteria, and the trials became a mechanism for enforcing obedience.

The Silencing of Wise Women

The so-called “witches” of old Europe were often nothing more than the village healers who held centuries of ancient knowledge passed down through generations.  They were the ones who understood the cycles of nature and used their wisdom to protect and nurture their communities.

In Old English “Wicce” meant Wise Woman and included Healers, Herbalists, Midwives, Mystics and those whose rituals and knowledge were dismissed as “magic.” 

They knew which herbs could soothe fevers, which roots might ease childbirth, and which leaves could prevent infection or even help a woman control her fertility in an age when few choices existed. To their neighbours, they had been trusted guides in times of sickness and uncertainty.

But as power in England shifted away from Celtic tribal culture, where Mother Earth and the feminine were revered, towards patriarchal rule by men and clergy, their independence became deeply unsettling.  These women operated outside the sanctioned authority of the church and the male-dominated field of early allopathic medicine. They were answerable to no one, and that autonomy made them dangerous.

Over time, the church planted fear and superstition into communities.  Their wisdom and knowledge were weaponised against them and twisted into accusations of witchcraft, with their healing herbs branded as instruments of the devil.

Countless women paid with their lives for daring to hold knowledge that couldn’t be controlled, but in the end, it wasn’t only the healers. 

Some defied societal norms and refused to conform, but many were persecuted simply for having a voice in the community.  Being outspoken and independent was seen as a “threat”, so the witch trials were a systematic way to suppress feminine power.  

Who were they?

When you strip away the fear and propaganda, the so-called witches weren’t the villains of history — they were the first doctors and keepers of the forgotten science of nature.

Healers and herbalists: Women (and some men) who practised folk medicine, used herbs for healing, or provided remedies for common ailments were often suspected of witchcraft.

Midwives and wise women: Those who helped with childbirth or reproductive health were sometimes accused, especially if a birth went wrong or a baby was stillborn.

Non-conforming individuals: Those who were socially outcast, widows, unmarried women, or men who didn’t fit the expected roles could be labelled as witches.

Religious dissenters: Those of Celtic origin who followed non-Christian or unorthodox spiritual practices could be targeted.

Scapegoats: People blamed for natural disasters, plagues, crop failures, and livestock deaths were often accused of using magic to cause these misfortunes.

People with mental illness or neurological disorders: Strange behaviours, hallucinations, seizures, or anything that seemed unusual could be interpreted as signs of demonic possession or witchcraft.

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The Inquisition

After the Roman army left England, the Catholic and Christian religious leaders were left in control, destroying our cultural heritage.  Witch hunt history started with the Inquisition across multiple Christian contexts, both Catholic and Protestant.  St Teresa of Avila was even harassed for meditating.  Religious persecution and state power paved the way for allopathic drugs and the control of the pharmaceutical industry, responsible for poisoning billions of people with untested vaccines.  

Witchcraft originally meant the skill of a wise person, someone connected to nature and spirit.  But as Christianity spread, church leaders began associating it with heresy, devil-worship, and harmful magic. This shift fueled centuries of persecution, especially during the European witch hunts. The idea that witches were evil was a later invention rooted more in fear and control than truth.

Accusers typically believed witchcraft involved pacts with the Devil, harmful magic (maleficium), and supernatural powers used to harm others.

It was likely the employment of plant medicines that posed the biggest issue for the Catholic Church during this time. In Western Europe, midwives often used belladonna, deadly nightshade, and ergot, a fungus which grows on rye, during the labour process. These remedies seemed to be generally effective in easing some of the suffering of childbirth, but the church perceived any attempt to assuage this pain as a violation of God’s wishes.  Major European churches enforced the belief that pain during childbirth was punishment for Eve’s Original Sin. Therefore, ameliorating the pain of delivery could have been equated with witchcraft.

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When did the pharmaceutical industry “as we know it today” begin?

The witch trials peaked during the 15th and 18th centuries, stripping communities of their trusted wisdom keepers.  This paved the way for the later growth of the modern pharmaceutical industry as medicine shifted from small-scale apothecaries and compounded remedies to industrial manufacturing and patented, standardised products made for profit. 

In the early nineteenth century, apothecaries moved into wholesale production of purified plant compounds such as morphine, quinine.  In the mid-19th century, dye and chemical companies started building research labs and finding medical uses for their chemicals.  

Morphine was isolated from opium by Friedrich Sertürner in the early 1800s and is often described as the first isolation of a plant alkaloid and a landmark in moving from crude plant mixtures to purified chemicals. The first industrial branded and chemically synthesised pharmaceutical product was Aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid), which was synthesised in 1897 at Bayer.

From “Witch Hunts” to Petro-Medicine: How the Suppression Evolved

The pharmaceutical industry was built on oil money, but the attack on natural healing started centuries before.

1400s–1700s: Witch trials of Europe,
 when herbalists, midwives, and natural healers were hunted and executed as “witches.” Healing wisdom was demonized, silenced, and burned.

1486: The Malleus Maleficarum (“Hammer of Witches”) was published and became the manual for persecuting healers, especially women who worked with herbs and nature.

1782: The last recorded witch execution in Europe took place in Switzerland.


Mid 1800s: Rockefeller built his empire on petroleum (Standard Oil).
 Chemists soon refined oil + coal tar into dyes, then into synthetic drugs like aspirin.

Early 1900s: Rockefeller and Carnegie poured millions into reshaping medicine to replace natural healing with petroleum-based drugs that could be patented for profit.

1910 Flexner Report: Funded by Rockefeller and Carnegie it labelled herbalism, homoeopathy, and naturopathy as “unscientific.”  Hundreds of natural schools were shut down.  Only drug-based medicine survived.

1920s–40s: Pharma exploded — antibiotics, vaccines, synthetic drugs.
  WWII sped it up.

By the 1950s: Petro-medicine had near total dominance.
 Natural healing was suppressed and forgotten by design.

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Why remember the witch-trial victims on Holocaust Memorial Day?

Holocaust Memorial Day is not only about the past; it is about recognising how ordinary societies can slide into organised cruelty.

The witch-hunt era shows recurring dynamics that feel uncomfortably familiar:

• Scapegoating during crisis (disease, harvest failure, war, economic stress)

• Rumour as “evidence”

• Dehumanising labels (“witch,” “heretic,” “enemy within”)

• Gendered violence (most of those executed for witchcraft were women) 

• Punishing difference, especially when someone sits outside approved institutions of “authority”

The story of the “witch” is not only a story about superstition.  It is a story about women’s knowledge, women’s bodies, women’s voices — and what happens when those things threaten systems built on control.

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A candle for the accused

On 27 January 2026, I’ll remember the millions of men and women who were victims of earlier European persecution — including the healers and Shamen who were swept into witch trials, accused, tortured, and executed.

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Generational Trauma

The horrors inflicted upon women and their families during the witch trials will likely have created trauma that many of us are still carrying today.  Past life trauma and generational trauma can be released by Shamanic Healing.