I'm thinking, it seems odd, that we were taught to fear witches, but not the people who burned them alive, to see if they were ...

It’s a curious thing, isn’t it? That in so many stories, classrooms and cultural references, witches are the ones to fear. Not the ones who hunted them. Not the ones who built the pyres or passed the laws.

Not the neighbours who pointed fingers, nor the authorities who made examples of them. The public feared imagined witches, not the people who lit the flames.

What is this about when the accused, frightened us more than the executioners.

The witch has long stood as a symbol of danger, deviance and darkness, when in reality, many of those accused were healers, midwives, single women or simply too different for their time.

The origins of the fear wasn’t in their perceived powers, but in their independence. Their refusal to conform. Their unsettling ability to exist outside the boundaries of what society deemed acceptable.

Anthropology and history show us time and again that "othering" is a tool of control. When we frame someone as dangerous or unclean, it becomes easier to justify their punishment, even their destruction.

What does it say about societal norms, when the real horror, I think, is the violence, the mob mentality, the erasure, that goes unexamined?

Perhaps the fear of witches was never about witches at all.