The Black Plague & the Witches’ Cats: A SciWoo Reflection

The Beginning of Fear

When the Black Plague swept through Europe in the 1300s, fear and superstition spread even faster than the disease itself. Without an understanding of germs, bacteria, or hygiene, people grasped for someone, or something, to blame.

Enter the witches. Not broom-riding villains, but the village healers. The women and men who understood herbs, listened to the body, and spoke softly with the unseen.

The Healers, Not the Heretics

These “witches” were simply people like me; those who listened to energy, worked with nature, and spoke gently with the unseen. They weren’t performing dark magic; they were tending wounds, calming fevers, easing births, and helping souls transition through life and loss.

They never called themselves witches. They were healers, midwives, and wise folk; the quiet ones who knew which herb soothed pain, which root strengthened the lungs, and how to bring calm to a frightened spirit. Their cats, loyal companions and natural pest controllers, were woven into that circle of care, guarding homes, keeping vermin at bay, and grounding their human’s energy.

But as fear took hold, superstition twisted what it couldn’t explain.

The cats were branded as demonic familiars, said to be extensions of a witch’s power. Villagers turned on them, priests preached against them, and soon entire towns rid themselves of the very creatures protecting them.

And so the rats came.They scurried through streets, grain stores, and bedrooms, spreading fleas and plague in their wake. Ironically, the so-called evil ones were gone; and death arrived in their absence.

It wasn’t witchcraft that cursed the towns.

It was ignorance; fuelled by fear and enforced by authority.

When the Balance Broke

The world began to shift as the Church and royalty tightened their grip on both body and spirit. The rise of religious dominance and patriarchal control turned natural wisdom into heresy.

Royal decrees and sermons declared that a woman with knowledge of herbs was dangerous. A healer became a threat. A birth assistant became a blasphemer.

The era of “white man puffs his chest” had begun; where dominance replaced balance, and science was torn away from spirit.

In their attempt to control fear, society silenced its wisest voices.

The intuitive, the empathic, the ones who understood energy and emotion, all labelled as wicked. The healers who lived in harmony with the earth were now hunted by those who misunderstood it.

The Forgotten Wisdom

What people didn’t realise was that the witches, the healers, were likely healthier, calmer, and more spiritually balanced than most. They lived by candlelight, close to the land, eating herbs and plants now proven to boost immunity and soothe the nervous system. Their connection to energy and intuition helped them navigate life with calm awareness, something science is only just beginning to measure through frequencies, resonance, and quantum thought.

They didn’t fear death, they understood it. Families often gathered for séances, openly chatting to their departed loved ones, treating death as another form of life.

From Fear to Fluorescence

Back then, doctors didn’t understand germs.

They worked with bloodletting, leeches, and prayer, convinced that illness came from curses or sin rather than microbes and hygiene. The concept of bacteria was centuries away, and sterilisation was unheard of. Superstition ruled where science hadn’t yet found language, and those who felt energy were mocked by those who feared it.

But over time, light crept in.

We began to discover the invisible, the world of cells, frequencies, and atoms, proof that unseen forces do, in fact, exist. What was once dismissed as “witchcraft” became “chemistry.” What was called “intuition” became “instinct.”

Today, we’ve come full circle; not back to superstition, but forward into integration.

Modern healers blend intuition with investigation, herbs with hypothesis, and energy with evidence. The pendulum swings in rhythm with the microscope now, and both have their place.

That’s SciWoo; the marriage of the lab and the lantern, the petri dish and the pendulum, the logic of science meeting the language of spirit.

We no longer need to choose between one or the other.

We thrive when they work together, when we allow intuition to inspire discovery, and science to illuminate the unseen.

The Legacy Lives On

The witches’ cats were never evil; they were the emotional support crew before anyone coined the term. The witches themselves weren’t dangerous; they were the bridge between human fear and divine knowing, tuning into energy long before anyone started calling it “frequency.”

Centuries later, their spirit still runs through people like us, the ones who honour both the measurable and the mystical. We question everything, explore what others overlook, and remember what the world forgot. We’re not trying to prove magic exists, we’re proving it was always science, just not explained yet.

Because true healing has never been about potions, spells, or dogma.

It’s about balance- between logic and love, data and intuition, science and soul.

That’s the real witchcraft; the kind that heals, harmonises, and helps humanity evolve. - Ang x