To be quite fair to Lewis, he was referring not to any modern pagans or witches, but to the anecdotal, mythical view of witches held by certain people in past centuries. Because those people believed that witches a) worshipped the Devil and b) had supernatural powers which they used to cause serious malicious harm to their neighbours, he was explaining that if we believed there really were people of that sort (call them anything you want -- he says witches, because the people of that day would have), then people of that sort would certainly qualify as traitors to humanity (thus the "quislings") and worthy of capital punishment.
To take his words as though he were speaking about modern people who follow Wicca is, I believe, a misapprehension. If Lewis had even heard of Wicca as such, I should be surprised. He certainly knew about paganism, however, and spoke kindly of it (though he did not believe that paganism was a legitimate end in itself -- he saw it rather as a stepping stone on the path to truth).
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2004-08-03 09:01 pm (UTC)To take his words as though he were speaking about modern people who follow Wicca is, I believe, a misapprehension. If Lewis had even heard of Wicca as such, I should be surprised. He certainly knew about paganism, however, and spoke kindly of it (though he did not believe that paganism was a legitimate end in itself -- he saw it rather as a stepping stone on the path to truth).