This translates from Latin to mean something like: 'Witch Hammer'. Cool sounding ain't it? In German it's 'Der Hexenhammer'. If you think 'Witch Hammer' would be a good name for a metal band, at least one band with said name exists. I haven't heard them but they prolly suck. Anyhow, back to the point. So the Malleus Maleficarum was this text written wayyy back in 1486 by the German Catholic Church Inquisitor Heinrich Kramer. The gist of it is that it's a sort of manual or treatise on witches....how they are 'real'...and how to hunt and find them and convict them. So much shit has gone down over history the wrong way. There were probably so many people not even close to being 'witches in league with the Devil' who falsely got accused for it and tortured or put to death over it. Overbearing religion is never a good thing. Yet this text is still an interesting cultural artifact, it really shows the psychology of supernatural borne paranoia and how people jump to conclusions or have a set way of thinking all too easily. It's a piece of history. Another thing is that although many witches weren't really 'evil', rather just different and persecuted for that fact, that is not to say that somewhere on this planet there were (and still are) truly evil witches. So it's always good to keep an open mind, and know how to combat evil when it gets the mafuck in your face. An online version of the Malleus Maleficarum can be found at: http://www.malleusmaleficarum.org/ Happy hunting! (Do I really mean that?)..
