Häxan

Next time you look around and wonder where all the sparrows have gone, just be thankful you didn't live in a time where their bodies were pulverised to make a potion to ward off evil spirits! That's just one of the examples cited in this interestingly whacky look at all things devilish and malevolent. It's not the most rational of tours of the witching sorority, but it does by the end of the sixth chapter converge on quite a potent evaluation of the absurd, the terrifying, the superstitious and the religious and quite successfully demonstrates the plethora of overlapping philosophies,…

The hysteria amongst people and the fervor they will use to explain the often unexplainable is powerful, and they don't shy away from the unpleasantness of Fear and Ignorance. It really shows the Atrocities in the name of the church the Catholics were willing to use to spread fear amongst the uneducated masses for control over even their thoughts, not just their physical bodies.