I apologise for being like a dog with a bone with my witches analogy everyone, but so far folou has refused to acknowledge it, nor explain to me why it isn’t valid.
Fugol, you continue to make the error of assuming that just because someone records something – even with the best intentions of getting that record correct to the best of his/her ability and taking into account his/her cultural background and the zeitgeist of the day – that record can still be total bunkum. Even if we have thousands of records alluding to the same phenomenon, they can still all be total bunkum. Indeed, once the ball is rolling on something and it is made popular through the media or – back in the past – word of mouth and the Church, then copycat sightings are all the more likely.
Here’s a treatise written in 1486 by the most learned scholars of the day and respected members of society. People who were trained in spotting witches, you might say. The Malleus Maleficarum is a guide book on how to spot witches and what to do with them once you do. It includes a whole section on
actual cases. Just like UFOlogy books of today.
In the same way that tens of thousands of people once witnessed witches at work in their towns and villages, and yet we now know that witches don’t exist, it follows that just because lots of people say that they have seen Alien Space Ships and write about them,
no matter who those people are, it doesn’t mean that some of them really did see ASSes.
Uf, people used to judge the ‘performance characteristics’ of witches with the same rigour as ufologists today judge the ‘performance characteristics’ of alleged non-mundane objects (aka ASSes). e.g.
Alien Space Ship:
“It was easily as large as a football field and travelled at well beyond the speed of light because it was many miles away”.
“Really?”
“Yes, but it left no trace that it was ever here.”
Or:
Witch:
“She turned me into a newt”.
“Really?”
“I got better.”
See how my analogy still stands, folo? If you disagree, and think there are no parallels between belief in witches and belief in alien visitation, then I’m all ears.
Put 'im on the ducking stool! Buuuuuuuuuuurn 'im!