<DIV><P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">Witchcraft has been undergoing a huge popular revival, but does modern pagan witchcraft really bear any resemblance to its historical antecedents? This guide explores the historical background to the European witchcraft phenomenon.</B> For both Medieval and Reformation scholars alike the Devil and all his works were a very real threat. Their conviction that witches were the servants of Satan led to the formation of perhaps one of the greatest conspiracy theories of all time: a belief that witches were working in league with the Devil in a diabolical plot against all Christendom. Witches were transformed from poor deluded old women who rode out at night with the pagan goddess Diana into devil-worshipping heretics who became the focus of a centuries-long, Europe-wide campaign determined to seek out and destroy this evil wherever it was to be found, regardless of whether any of its victims were actually guilty or not.</P></DIV>