For centuries, fear wore a human face.
Heretics of the Harvest Moon
strips away the myths surrounding the witch trials to reveal the machinery of belief, power, and persecution that consumed Europe and the New World. Drawing on historical record and human testimony, Dr. W.J. Brendle exposes how superstition became policy, and how faith was weaponized in one of the longest reigns of terror in recorded history. From the shadowed temples of Babylon to the pyres of Würzburg, from Kramer and Sprenger's
Malleus Maleficarum
to Hopkins' reign as Witchfinder General, Brendle traces how ordinary people-mothers, healers, widows, and scholars-became scapegoats in a war waged not just against heresy, but against humanity itself. Each chapter unfolds the machinery of accusation: the inquisitors who claimed divine authority, the tortures that masqueraded as truth, and the courts that mistook hysteria for justice. But this is more than a chronicle of cruelty.
examines the psychology behind fear-the social fractures, political pressures, and moral panics that still echo today. Brendle moves beyond the spectacle of the stake to confront the moral cost of belief unchecked by compassion. His approach blends the scholar's precision with the storyteller's urgency, turning historical narrative into moral reckoning. In the end, this is not just the story of witches burned-it is the story of the world that built the fire.