In today's society most of the information that the average person has about Wiccans are lies and distortions. These lies and distortions go back to the beginning of Christianity it self, most of the Christian leaders would not accept, or recognize any other religion beyond there own. The church began to spread propaganda about followers of different religions. They scoured and deceived their own people to make them hate every group except there own. Campaigns against non-Christians continued through wide spread propaganda.

The Christians accused followers of the old religion of making men and women sterile and blighting the crops through their magick. Because the Christian concept and vision of Satan was based upon the very same horned God that the Pagans followed, the Christians then reasoned that the God of the pagans must be Satan himself. The church began to link Witches with all that is demonic. This is a purely ludicrous idea, considering Pagan ideals are much older than the conception of Satan, also Satan is a purely Christian theological concept with no bearing on any religion but Christianity. An old ritual act of fertility was for the villagers to go to the fields in the light of the full moon and to dance around the field astride pitchforks, poles and broomsticks; riding them like hobby-horses. They would leap in the air as they danced, to show the crops how high to grow. A harmless form of sympathetic magick.

But the church claimed that not only that they where working against the crops, but that they actually flew through the air on the poles, it said to be the work of the devil. In the eyes of the Christians the Pagan people must have seemed like foodless and childless people. How the Christians ever thought they survived with out food or children is beyond me. The witch and pagan persecutions continued into the second common millennium, when in 1484 Pope Innocent VIII began to spread even more propaganda against the scattered witches. Two years later, two infamous German monks named Heinrich Istitoris Kramer and Jakob Sprenger would produce one of the most disturbing and absurd books of the millennium the "Malleus Maleficarum" or the "Witch Hammer". This book was a instruction manual on how to find, and prosecute the witch. Not only did it spread lies like never before, but it dehumanized women, saying they are prone to evil, mentally and physical inferior and should be ever obedient to their husbands.

The book detailed how witchcraft was demonic in every way, and was against the bible. Witches it said, killed children and drank their blood as they danced around their fires on the full moon Sabbats worshiping their lord Satan. According to the church, all one had to do to become a witch was make a pack with the Devil. From this book the Witch hysteria grew like wild fire all over Europe, thousands maybe even millions of innocent Christians and practitioners of the old ways were killed. Accusations of possession and affliction became a common thing.

In early colonial New England, taking the European witch craze as a model, accusations of witchcraft spread all over the colonies, reaching its height in Salem, Ma. in the year of 1692. The persecutions finally died down when people in power could no longer find any reason to the madness. They also came to the conclusion, that if so many people were being accused of witchcraft it would seem that God and Church were losing control. Many Christians today can still not accept witchcraft because the King James Bible strictly forbids witches and all practitioners of sorcery in every shape and form.

The old ideas of demonic worshipers are still very present in the minds of today's society. Since most western societies are built upon Christian values and thoughts, the long time propaganda and stereotype of the evil witch lingers on. The repeal of the Witchcraft act in the 1950's by England, and the ruling of the United States Federal Court that Wicca and or Witchcraft is a legally recognized religion has only eased the stereotype minimally. Physical persecution might be a thing of the distance past, but mental persecution still goes on. A bulk of society still thinks that Witches are demonic in nature, this can be no further from the truth. They have an inaccurate portrayal of witches as people who commit crimes or acts of violence or are practitioners of black magick.

Wicca and Witchcraft have long been paired with Satanism. Although Satanists can be practitioners of some form of magick, Wicca itself has nothing what so ever to do with Satanism. They are two inherently different theological systems. Some Satanists follow a form of pagan worship, but their theological system is loosely based on a Christian model. In some cases, Satanists are social deviants and this persona is tacked onto the conception of the witch, because they are wrongly classified as demonic.

For the past thirty years witches have been trying to dismiss the inaccurate portrayal of themselves. But, because of intentional and unintentional propaganda it has not been a easy fight. One of the major forms of propaganda itself comes from Hollywood in the form of entertainment. Hollywood has taken the misconception of the witch, sometimes called the Halloween witch, and turned it into economic gain. Hollywood has used two different personifications of the witch in its many feature films. The first is of the old crone witch, with her wrinkled skin and pointy nose. This witch is always dressed in long black robes and the traditional sharply pointed hat. She walks with her long staff, or is seen flying on her broomstick. Hollywood has also portrayed the witch as the young lusty seductress who is trying to capture and trick men and children. In either case witches are always portrayed as haters of children, and evil doers who famine and misfortune to the land. This type of propaganda is very damaging because it starts at a very early age. It exists in many children's stories and Disney movies. In Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Snow White is put under a spell by a evil witch. In a more recent Disney production "Hocus Pocus", three witches are brought back from the dead. As the story goes they are trying to find a child whom they can use to create new bodies so that they can live again. This movie is even more damaging because it connects witches with Demonic activities, as the Devil was their lord. It also reinforces the idea that witches are haters of children.

Even with all this propaganda surrounding Wiccans today some portrayals have been made that, while not accurate, do not show this connection with everything that is evil and nasty. In a even more recent movie "The Craft" four girls are portrayed as innocent practitioners of witchcraft. The stereotypical Halloween witch is not present in this movie. The girls are shown to corrupt and use the craft to their own means, instead of it being the force that manipulates them. Even though the portrayal of witches in this movie is different from the stereotypical Halloween witch, the pairing of witchcraft with evil actions only continues to reinforce a untrue personification of the witch. Improvements in the reputation of the witch have been made in the last 20 years, but the Hollywood witch still "haunts" all practitioners of the old religion in everyday entertainment. These movies and shows could be seen as harmless entertainment and funny, but people take these portrayals of evil doers to be accurate descriptions of witches because they have been socialized to believe them from the beginning of their lives.