The witch-hunt of the 16th and 17th centuries was an organized effort by authorities in many countries to destroy a supposed conspiracy of witches thought to pose a deadly threat to Christendom. According to these authorities, witches were numerous, and in conscious alliance with Satan, forming a sort of Satanic counter-religion. Witch-hunts in this sense must be separated from the belief in witches, the evil eye, and other such phenomena, which are common features of folk belief worldwide. The belief that witches are not just individual villains but conspirators organized in a powerful but well-hidden cult is a distinguishing feature of the early modern witch-hunt.

This concern is also the one that formed around the Satanic Panic, the cultural milieu that produced yours truly. Satan has always been here; evil people, too; the occasional combination, too. But when the evil agents of High Evil assemble—suddenly there’s a panic. Why? Why just this element?

I mean, what was Satanism before assemblies, just an idea? That’s right.

It’s telling about power that the focus of these two panics is on assembly. Then the counter-force to the cultural dominant is suddenly alarming. It means this: that power—real power—has nothing but identification of self-with-group as its essence. With this, the counter-idea becomes real counter-force. There is power in numbers and in unity, and there is power in police with better weapons. But the the former is large enough, even better weapons will lose. This is the axiom at work in the witch-hunts.