The Supernatural and Satan

Whenever I try and come up with a topic for these posts I always get stumped between magic and supernatural (don't worry I'm not going to talk about the TV show). So I figured I’d write a post about my thoughts on the differences so far.

Whenever I think of the supernatural I think of vampires and werewolves. From that assumption I had figured we weren’t going to encounter any people with shape-shifting abilities…and then I read Bernardino’s sermon (I seem to really like talking about this guy, I apologize for bringing him up yet again). In Bernardino’s speech he talks about how they found potions and pastes that smelt horrible and made the witches turn into cats (or thought that they had turned into cats, that part confused me just a tad). This would suggest that people thought other witches also had the ability to turn into different things. This is idea was solidified in my mind as at the end of this chapter there is a picture of people like animals riding on broomsticks and doing other “witchy” things. I think another thing that Bernardino was talking about was either a hallucinogenic or possibly a mental illness. Though it hasn't come up a lot in our readings I'm curious to know how many of these witches ended up having some type of mental illness that would explain the cities rejection of them.  

After realizing this I remembered that we had discussed how some thought that all magic was just an illusion created by magicians or Satan. This brought me to the conclusion that maybe all things in the realm of supernatural beings were just an illusion created by Satan. We discussed this in class and how it would probably not have been very well received by the public and by many of those that dealt out the punishments. If all the supernatural beings and all those that practiced magic were just creations and illusions from Satan then they had done some pretty horrific stuff to many innocent people. I wouldn’t want that on my conscience either. In a way I understand their dismissal of the idea because it would mean that they had killed innocent people and sinned and were therefore not going to heaven.

I think that if I had been living in this time where everyone was scared of witches I would probably have believed that this was all committed by the devil more easily. Just the belief that people are in the image of God would make me believe that this is all Satan's work. I think this because I think it might have been difficult to believe that the people that live around you and that you’ve known your entire life were actually buddies with Satan and like going around eating babies.

I now realize that this post jumped off topic from the original statement…Oh well I like where it ended anyway.