Theosophical Correspondence.

Translation from German by Robert Hutwohl^[1]

Question: — Why were witches burned alive in the Middle Ages?

          Answer: — In the Middle Ages, both Protestants and Catholics burned alive alleged witches, and the reason why a less cruel method of execution was not used was supposedly that the Church was forbidden to shed blood, which is avoided by burning.

            But this institution may have had another, occult reason that is not known or understood by everyone. It was not only a matter of destroying the material body of the witches and sorcerers, but also of preventing the formation of the body of desire [the kāma-rūpa] so that the witch could not cause harm after death; for according to the teachings of a certain school of mystics, the body of desire requires certain elements contained in the bones of the corpse for its formation and resurrection, and by burning alive the condemned person was not given time to organize the astral body. This theory also provides an objection to the immediate burning or cremation of corpses. Furthermore, for similar reasons, in India only the bodies of secular people are burned, while the bodies of sannyasins (saints) [R.H.—saṃnyāsin-s] are buried or preserved like the relics of Christian martyrs. But the fact that hundreds of thousands of people were executed on charges of witchcraft, like the burning of widows in India, was mostly due to the fact that the church could confiscate the property of the dead and enrich itself in this way.

Note

^[1] Hartmann, F. (1907). “Theosophical Correspondence. Why were witches burned alive in the Middle Ages? Hutwohl, R. (trans.), Theosophischer Wegweiser 8, no. 12 (September), 359-360 {This article was reformatted from the original, but with the content unchanged other than minor typos, translation from German by Robert Hutwohl, ©2025}