Rather this was a major patriarchal assault on women as their enemy .... which continues even today.

The Salem "Witch trials" were about the most violent persecution of women, especially women who were involved in knowledge of plants which are our natural medicines/drugs. Women at that time were also mid-wives. Nature had put her trust and everything to do with childbirth in the care of women.

The "Burning of Women at the Stake" was the result of the Catholic Church's "Hammer of Witches" which you should actually read something about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malleus_Maleficarum

This "Burning of women at the stake" denied them any rights over their own children -- barred them from the right to inherit their family or husband's property which forced them into poverty -- and was the beginning of moving women out of medicine and childbirth.

THAT was the purpose of the "Salem Witch Trials" as they are called.

WICCA simply means women's wisdom and their wisdom about plants as medicines was used to destroy them and to eventually move medicine and childbirth into the hands of males .... males who have never experienced pregnancy nor carried a pregnancy to term, nor ever experienced labor or childbirth.

Another part of the motivation for this extreme violence against women by patriarchy was the fact that so many males had died in the Crusades. Naturally their property and wealth was inherited by their wives and children which gave women increased financial independence at that time.