Wicca and Witchcraft essays

Wicca and Witchcraft essays Much of the knowledge about witchcraft is a combination of archeological data, passed down myths, and some translated historical documents. Wicca is overall a very flexible religion, representing people from many paths and backgrounds. Its not only a religion but also a way of life. At the simplest level, Wicca is a religion that embraces nature, individualism, and magic. No one can say for certain what the ancestors really did, or why (Walker 1, Kettler 1). After the Thirteenth Century, people began believing that magic was from the devil, and witches were bonded with Satan. Satan is a Christian creation of a fallen angel. Wiccans are not Christian; do not worship a Christian god, or a Christian devil. For the most part, there is no deity of ultimate evil in the Wiccan belief structure. Oppression against religious movements is as old as recorded religion. The Crusades, Christian martyrdom, the destruction of the Cathar and other "heretics", anti-Semitic actions, and the burning of African-American churches in the southern region of the United States, all reflect oppressive and sometimes genocidal acts against members of differing religious groups. Many witches, the lowest number being in the thousands, were burned at the stake, and put to death. It was not until the Eighteenth Century that the witch-hunts ended. The last big outbreak was the famous Salem Witch Trials. If one were to assume that hatred of witches is a thing of the past, one would be sadly mistaken. One has only to look as far as the media portrayal of witches and other pagans. There are those today who are convinced that the Neo-pagan movement is directed by Satan in a deliberate ploy to destroy good Christians (Baker 1-3). The Development of Wicca in the United States started in the early nineteenth century. A new natural religion gradually evolved. It gathered momentum in the mid-Twentieth Century with the Neo-Pagan movement, considered t...

Inventor of the Mechanical Television System John Baird

Inventor of the Mechanical Television System John Baird John Logie Baird was born on August 13th, 1888, in Helensburgh, Dunbarton, Scotland and died on June 14th, 1946, in Bexhill-on-Sea, Sussex, England. John Baird received a diploma course in electrical engineering at the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College (now called Strathclyde University) and studied towards his Bachelor of Science Degree in electrical engineering from the University of Glasgow, interrupted by the outbreak of W.W.1. Early Patents Baird is best remembered for inventing a mechanical television system. During the 1920s, John Baird and American Clarence W. Hansell patented the idea of using arrays of transparent rods to transmit images for television and facsimiles respectively. Bairds 30 line images were the first demonstrations of television by reflected light rather than back-lit silhouettes. John Baird based his technology on Paul Nipkows scanning disk idea and later developments in electronics. John Baird Milestones The television pioneer created the first televised pictures of objects in motion (1924), the first televised human face (1925) and a year later he televised the first moving object image at the Royal Institution in London. His 1928 trans-Atlantic transmission of the image of a human face was a broadcasting milestone. Color television (1928), stereoscopic television and television by infra-red light were all demonstrated by Baird before 1930. He successfully lobbied for broadcast time with the British Broadcasting Company, the BBC started broadcasting television on the Baird 30-line system in 1929. The first simultaneous sound and vision telecast was broadcast in 1930. In July 1930, the first British Television Play was transmitted, The Man with the Flower in his Mouth. In 1936, the British Broadcasting Corporation adopted television service using the electronic television technology of Marconi-EMI (the worlds first regular high-resolution service - 405 lines per picture), it was that technology that won out over Bairds system.