A dominant impression in popular American culture is that witch-hunting and witch burning were a medieval artifact of Western Christianity. Some even speak of paganism as a more humane system on that account, especially as it has become voguish (and inaccurate) to claim that paganism is an ancient form of proto-feminism. Most of our contemporaries – at least those who think about this at all – carry with them the idea that witch-hunting and witch burning were products of superstition that were swept aside by the post-Enlightenment certainties of science. In fact, the subject of witch persecutions is far more complex; and the history of witch persecutions turns out to be illuminative of each historical epoch of which it is a part. This is true, however, only when witch persecutions as a whole – across place, time, and culture – are studied and understood as a phenomenon of gendered power.