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Alas, it started long before the Roman Catholic Church, Blade. The biblical old testament demonized the Gods of other religions by turning them into devils, and wrote books in their bible that were little more than endless boasts about taking over the cities of heathens and putting all their men to the sword. The early Christians took over this deicentric viewpoint (and eventually applied it, irony of ironies, to the Jews, as well). So the Christians similarly demonize the Gods of others.
And it happened in Christianity long before they were elevated to the state religion of the Roman Empire. One reads in Gibbon, for example, that the Christians drew much hatred and scorn upon themselves by their active bigotry: they would regularly go to nearby "pagan" temples on a rampage, and destroy them. It was the size and popularity of the cult (especially its cultivation of the poor) that prevented the application of much restraint on the Christian cult, at least, after Nero's reign.
As for Hollywood witchcraft, I'm less annoyed at the hack studio writers than I am at those pagans who flaunt technicolor versions of the religion to get publicity for themselves and make things a little hot for everybody else. Just my POV.
[ 01-18-2002: Message edited by: fable ]
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