Winchester Skeptics: "From Heresy to Witchcraft"

Skeptics in the Pub Winchester hosts a guest speaker on the last Thursday of every month from 7.30pm (doors open from 7.00pm). There is a £3.00 donation towards the venue hire requested on the door, which also gives a chance to win a book in the evening raffle.

Skeptics in the Pub exists to provide an opportunity for people who are interested in science, skepticism, rationalism and critical thinking to socialise and discuss matters of interest. 

The meetings are open to all regardless of beliefs and each month’s talk will be followed up with a challenging Q&A session and social. Winchester SitP is part of a national and global network of SitP events and is organised by the Hampshire Skeptics Society.

The Hampshire Skeptics Society is a non-profit organisation for the promotion of science, reason and critical thinking, humanism and a secular life.

What's the talk about?

From Heresy to Witchcraft

Politics, and the witch as an anti-social outsider in Western Europe and England 

Speaker: Deborah Hyde

Witchcraft became big news in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Torrents of learned discussion turned to action, and the corpses piled high. But where did the infrastructure - social and legal - for such a mass persecution arise? Had the political power of constraining beliefs already been tested and employed? Deborah will discuss totalitarianism, paranoia and yearnings for empire in the making of a very bloody delusion.

Deborah Hyde is editor-in-chief of The Skeptic magazine (skeptic.org.uk). She writes and appears on broadcast media discussing religion and superstition.

www.jourdemayne.com
@jourdemayne