Recognizing Pseudohistory

It’s important to be aware of pseudohistory regardless of what level of study you’re at as a practitioner- but learning to recognize it is especially important as a beginner; there’s an immense amount of fake history out there, particularly as it pertains to Witchcraft and the “Witch religions” of the past. Here are some simplistic tips for recognizing the differences.

Real history is incredibly complex. Cultures are internally diverse, and are constantly (sometimes rapidly, even) evolving. Not all of those evolutions are internally consistent, either.

⇝ Pseudohistory tends to paint cultures as monolithic and internally consistent, and often acts as if changes to these systems are the exception rather than the rule.

Real history Real history is full of complicated people with complex and multifaceted- yet always very human- motivations.

⇝ Pseudohistory often polarizes major figures into binary dualistic systems, and often tries to paint the “villains” as knowingly and willfully evil.

Real history is full of people who did unforgivable things, but when one examines the socio-political context it’s rarely difficult to pin down exactly why they did them. And in many cases, their motivations were seen (by them) as genuinely good.

⇝ Pseudohistory tends to polarize major figures into binary dualistic systems, and often tries to paint the “villains” as knowingly and willfully evil.

Real history is full of autonomous people who act on their own impulses, morals, ethics, values, and sensibilities- whether those actions are for good or ill.

⇝ Pseudohistory acts as if everything is being orchestrated at “higher levels” by “higher powers” to the point it’s impossible to tell what isn’t orchestrated, because everything can be rationalized as "part of the plan".

⇝ Pseudohistory also tends to act as if the average person is simply a mindless sheep being led around by the nose by someone more powerful or intelligent.

Real history is multifaceted, and historical events do not unfold according to any singular or specific narrative structure.

⇝ Pseudohistory tries to shoehorn real history into a singular narrative structure of some kind. An example where this is most obvious, is in the case of “The Burning Times”, where the dominant narrative is a Feminist one of misogyny and female-specific persecution by the church (often of "healers"), despite clear evidence to the contrary.

Real history is full of accidents and unforeseen consequences.

⇝ Pseudohistory ofrequently blames any misfortune, accidents, and other incidents of history not behaving “logically” on evil conspiracies.

Real history was often bad in a variety of ways; there was never a place or period in real history when everything was perfect.

⇝ Pseudohistory often tries to claim that there was a perfect period of Human history, and that we basically fell from some sort of utopia due to human moralistic, ethical, or other error (and frequently supposits that this error needs to be rectified, and that our goal should be to “return” to such a utopian state of humanity).

Real history is often illogical; history is not “supposed” to go any specific way.

⇝ Anything that claims history went “off-course”, “deviated”, or went “too fast”, or some other such nonsense is usually pseudohistory.

Real history leaves behind real evidence. Big cities that actually existed, for instance, leave behind things like ruins and trash pits- though these things may not have been found yet for a variety of technological and other reasons.

⇝ Pseudohistory however, frequently makes a variety of ridiculous excuses for a blatant lack of evidence. For example: Claiming all the evidence was buried too deep to find (never mind that’s not how geology works) by some sort of conspiracy- or makes claims that past life regressions, astral time travel, and so on are clear evidence.

Real history often follows the same or very similar social patterns based on specific contributing socio-political and economic factors, because basic human nature has never actually changed throughout history.

⇝ If something claims that people are being “dumbed down”, or have suddenly become demanding and lazy comparative to earlier times, or that we have recently become extraordinarily immoral, or anything like that, it’s pseudohistory.