The Hammer of Witches

A best-selling book authorised by the Vatican incited the capture, torture and burning of some 50,000 innocent women. I dedicate this essay to their memory.

This is Who made our minds?, my Thursday essay probing the greatest, cruellest and most beautiful minds of the past 5,000 years, inspired by my book, The Soul: A History of the Human Mind (Penguin 2024). Coming up: Socrates and the first ‘self’; Digiselves versus Bioselves; Theocracy versus Democracy

ONE MORNING, while out for a walk, Helena Scheuberin p…