"Other ways of knowing," aka Different Cognitive Styles

[tama]

82. There were three stages

1) legal procedures only against using witchcraft to harm others - which go way back. And have been as misused as all other legal procedures.
2) the period of hystery, criminalizing all witchcraft, at the dawn of "New Age" and during the bloodiest period of religious wars in Europe - including most if not all traditional herbal etc. healing methods, all kinds of shamanistic (/religious/spiritual) experiences etc. as Satanic.
3) denial of reality of the phenomena in question and medicalization of them as mental diseases instead of criminal matters, that occurred at the beginning of 18th century, the Age of Enlightenment.

Being constantly water boarded, electrocuted etc. tortured with "psychiatric" methodologies of those (and also latter) days did not necessarily mean improvement to being jailed, beheaded or burned alive.

Of course the hay day of European colonialist expansion, ethnocides of indigenous peoples and banning and destruction of their shamanistic traditions was big part of the whole picture.