It is the season of witches - cute little costumed ones crying
"trick or treat" and full-grown adult ones laying claim to
Halloween and recounting tales of medieval and early modern
persecution. In a search for historical roots and moral
legitimacy, some feminists and many adherents of neopagan or
goddess-centered religious movements like Wicca have elaborated
a founding mythology in which witches and witch hunts have a
central role. Witches, they claim, were folk healers, spiritual
guides and the underground survivors of a pre-Christian
matriarchal cult. By the hundreds of thousands, even the
millions, they were the victims of a ruthless campaign that
church authorities waged throughout the Middle Ages and early
modern centuries to stamp out this rival, pagan religion. Robin
Briggs, an Oxford historian, is only one of many contemporary
scholars rejecting this account. What unites most "common
assumptions" about witches, witchcraft and witch hunts, Mr.
Briggs writes in "Witches & Neighbors: The Social and Cul