Witchcraft

The exercise or invocation of alleged supernatural powers to control people or events, practices typically involving sorcery or magic. Although defined differently in disparate historical and cultural contexts, witchcraft has often been seen, especially in the West, as the work of crones who meet secretly at night, indulge in cannibalism and orgiastic rites with the Devil, and perform black magic. Witchcraft thus defined exists more in the imagination of contemporaries than in any objective reality. Yet this stereotype has a long history and has constituted for many cultures a viable explanation of evil in the world. The intensity of these beliefs is best represented by the European witch-hunts of the 14th to 18th century, but witchcraft and its associated ideas are never far from the surface of popular consciousness and—sustained by folk tales—find explicit focus from time to time in popular television and films and in fiction

Meanings

The modern English word witchcraft has three principal connotations: the practice of magic or sorcery worldwide; the beliefs associated with the Western witch-hunts of the 14th to the 18th century; and varieties of the modern movement called Wicca, frequently mispronounced “wikka.”

The terms witchcraft and witch derive from Old English wiccecraeft: from wicca [masculine] or wicce [feminine], pronounced “witchah” and “witchuh,” respectively, denoting someone who practices sorcery; and from craeft meaning “craft” or “skill.” Roughly equivalent words in other European languages—such as sorcellerie [French], Hexerei [German], stregoneria [Italian], and brujería [Spanish]—have different connotations, and none precisely translates another. The difficulty is even greater with the relevant words in African, Asian, and other languages. The problem of defining witchcraft is made more difficult because the concepts underlying these words also change according to time and place, sometimes radically. Moreover, different cultures do not share a coherent pattern of witchcraft beliefs, which often blend other concepts such as magic, sorcery, religion, folklore, theology, technology, and diabolism. Some societies regard a witch as a person with inherent supernatural powers, but in the West witchcraft has been more commonly believed to be an ordinary person’s free choice to learn and practice magic with the help of the supernatural. [The terms West and Western in this article refer to European societies themselves and to post-Columbian societies influenced by European concepts.] The answer to the old question “Are there such things as witches?” therefore depends upon individual belief and upon definition, and no single definition exists. One thing is certain: the emphasis on the witch in art, literature, theatre, and film has little relation to external reality

False ideas about witchcraft and the witch-hunts persist today. First, the witch-hunts did not occur in the Middle Ages but in what historians call the “early modern” period [the late 14th to the early 18th century], the era of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Scientific Revolution. There was neither a witch-cult nor any cult, either organized or disorganized, of a “Horned God” or of any “Goddess”; Western “witches” were not members of an ancient pagan religion; and they were not healers or midwives. Moreover, not all persons accused of witchcraft were women, let alone old women; indeed, there were “witches” of all ages and sexes. Witches were not a persecuted minority, because witches did not exist: the people hurt or killed in the hunts were not witches but victims forced by their persecutors into a category that in reality included no one. The witch-hunts did not prosecute, let alone execute, millions; they were not a conspiracy by males, priests, judges, doctors, or inquisitors against members of an old religion or any other real group. “Black masses” are almost entirely a fantasy of modern writers. “Witch doctors,” whose job it was to release people from evil spells, seldom existed in the West, largely because even helpful magic was attributed to demons

Sorcery

A sorcerer, magician, or “witch” attempts to influence the surrounding world through occult [i.e., hidden, as opposed to open and observable] means. In Western society until the 14th century, “witchcraft” had more in common with sorcery in other cultures—such as those of India or Africa—than it did with the witchcraft of the witch-hunts. Before the 14th century, witchcraft was much alike in villages from Ireland to Russia and from Sweden to Sicily; however, the similarities derived neither from cultural diffusion nor from any secret cult but from the age-old human desire to achieve one’s purposes whether by open or occult means. In many ways, like their counterparts worldwide, early Western sorcerers and witches worked secretly for private ends, as contrasted with the public practice of religion. Witches or sorcerers were usually feared as well as respected, and they used a variety of means to attempt to achieve their goals, including incantations [formulas or chants invoking evil spirits], divination and oracles [to predict the future], amulets and charms [to ward off hostile spirits and harmful events], potions or salves, and dolls or other figures [to represent their enemies]. Witches sought to gain or preserve health, to acquire or retain property, to protect against natural disasters or evil spirits, to help friends, and to seek revenge. Sometimes this magic was believed to work through simple causation as a form of technology. For example, it was believed that a field’s fertility could be increased by ritually slaughtering an animal. Often the magic was instead an effort to construct symbolic reality. Sorcery was sometimes believed to rely on the power of gods or other spirits, leading to the belief that witches used demons in their work

Witchcraft in Africa and the World

The same dichotomy between sorcery and witchcraft exists [sometimes more ambiguously] in the beliefs of many African and indigenous peoples throughout the world. Again, witches are typically seen as particularly active after dusk when law-abiding mortals are asleep. The Navajo believe that witches meet at night, wear nothing except a mask and jewelry, sit among baskets of corpses, and have intercourse with dead women. In some African cultures witches are believed to assemble in cannibal covens, often at graveyards or around a fire, to feast on the blood, which, like vampires, they extract from their victims. If they take the soul from a victim’s body and keep it in their possession, the victim will die. Like those in Western society suspected of child abuse and satanism, in the popular imagination, African witches are believed to practice incest and other perversions. Sometimes, as in the Christian tradition, their malevolent power is believed to derive from a special relationship with an evil spirit with whom they have a “pact,” or they exercise it through “animal familiars” [assistants or agents] such as dogs, cats, hyenas, owls, or baboons

In other cases the witch’s power is thought to be based in his or her own body, and no external source is deemed necessary. Among the Zande of the Congo and some other central African peoples, the source of this evil-working capacity is believed to be located in the witch’s stomach, and its power and range increase with age. It can be activated merely by wishing someone ill and is thus a kind of unspoken, or implicit, curse. At the same time the Zande believe that evil deeds can be wrought even more effectively by the manipulation of spells and potions and the use of powerful magic. In anthropological terminology this is technically “sorcery,” and thus, like the “witches” in Shakespeare’s play Macbeth who dance around a pot stirring potions and muttering spells, the Zande practitioners may more properly be termed “sorcerers” rather than “witches.”

In many African cultures witches are believed to act unconsciously; unaware of the ill they cause, they are driven by irrepressible urges to act malevolently. It is thus easy for those accused of witchcraft, but who are not conscious of wishing anyone ill, to assume that they unknowingly did what is attributed to them. This, along with the effects of suggestion and torture, in a world where people take the reality of witchcraft for granted, goes far to explain the striking confessions of guilt that are so widely reported in Africa and elsewhere and that are otherwise hard to comprehend. It is worth noting, however, that if witches believe they are unconscious agents, this is generally not the view of those who feel victimized by them

Whatever the basis of their power and the means by which it is exercised, witches [and sorcerers] are regularly credited with causing all manner of disease and disaster. Sickness, and even death, as well as a host of lesser misfortunes, are routinely laid at their door. In many parts of Africa and Asia, epidemics and natural disasters have been interpreted as acts of witchcraft. For some unhappy candidates in many less developed countries, the same malign influence is cited to explain [at least in part] failure in examinations, elections, or difficulties in finding employment. Members of certain Afro-Brazilian cults, for example, believe that job loss is due not to economic conditions or poor performance but to witchcraft, and they participate in a ritual, the “consultation,” to counter the evil

However, like their ancient and early modern European counterparts, modern Africans and Asians who believe firmly in the reality of witchcraft do not lack the power of rational reasoning. To suppose that these are incompatible alternatives is a common mistake. In reality pragmatic and mystical explanations of events usually exist in parallel or combination but operate in different contexts and at different levels. For example, anthropological research has demonstrated that African farmers who believe in witches do not expect witchcraft to account for obvious technical failures. If one’s home collapses because it was poorly constructed, no witch is needed to explain this. If a boat sinks because it has a hole in its bottom or a car breaks down because its battery is dead, witchcraft is not responsible. Witchcraft enters the picture when rational knowledge fails. It explains the diseases whose causes are unknown, the mystery of death, and, more generally, strange and inexplicable misfortunes

There is thus no inconsistency in the actions of the sick African who consults both a medical doctor and a witch doctor. The first treats the external symptoms, while the second uncovers the hidden causes. Just as the sick African takes preventative measures prescribed by the medical doctor, he or she might also take steps against the supernatural. To protect against witchcraft, for instance, the patient might wear amulets, take “medicine” or bathe in it, or practice divination. Similarly, the Navajo protect themselves against witches with “gall medicine” or with sand or pollen paintings. If preventative measures prove ineffective for the Navajo, then the confession of a witch is thought to cure the evil magic, and torture is sometimes used to extract that confession. Moreover, like ancient and modern Westerners, people in modern Africa and other parts of the world who take the reality of witchcraft for granted usually also believe in other sources of supernatural power—e.g., divinities and spirits

Witchcraft explains the problem posed when one seeks to understand why misfortune befalls oneself rather than someone else. It makes sense of the inequalities of life: the fact that one person’s crops or herds fail while others’ prosper. Equally, witchcraft can be invoked to explain the success of others. In this “limited good” scenario—where there is implicitly a fixed stock of resources and where life is generally precarious, with little surplus to distribute in time of need—those who succeed too flagrantly are assumed to do so at the expense of others less fortunate. The “witch,” therefore, is typically someone who selfishly wants more than he or she ostensibly deserves, whose aspirations and desires are judged excessive and illegitimate

However, there is a narrow, ambiguous line between good and evil here. Among some African peoples “witchcraft” is intrinsically neither morally good nor bad, and among others the supernatural activities of “witches” are, according to their perceived effects, divided into good, or protective, and bad, or destructive, witchcraft. Traditional and modern African leaders sometimes surround themselves with protective “witch doctors,” and are themselves thought to be endowed with supernatural power. This is the positive charisma of which witchcraft is the negative counterpart. In the colonial period these ideas were extended to Europeans, who, in the Belgian Congo and British Central Africa at the time of independence, were feared as cannibalistic witches. This was somewhat ironic since colonial regimes, unlike their missionary predecessors, did not believe in witchcraft and made accusations of witchcraft illegal in most of sub-Saharan Africa—which has been largely reversed by their successor regimes

This ambiguity between good and evil can also be found among the Mapuche, an indigenous people of Chile. They believe that young women take up sorcery and as old women become powerful witches who use “bad medicine” to obtain their ends. They are aligned with evil forces and use them to harm or gain advantage over others. Their training and use of plants and animals in their medicine is similar to that of the shamans who use “good medicine” and other magic against forces of evil

The distinctions between good and bad supernatural power are relative and depend on how moral legitimacy is judged. This becomes clear when the spiritual power invoked is studied more closely. In a number of revealing African cases, the word that denotes the essence of witchcraft [e.g., tsau among the West African Tiv and itonga among the East African Safwa], the epitome of illegitimate antisocial activity, also describes the righteous wrath of established authority, employed to curse wrongdoers

This essential ambivalence is particularly evident in Haitian voodoo, where there is a sharp distinction between man-made evil magic powers, connected with zombies [beings identified as familiars of witches in the beliefs of some African cultures], and benevolent invisible spirits identified with Catholic saints. This antithesis between witchcraft and religion, however, is always problematic: after his death, the malevolent spirits or powers that an ancestor has used for his personal benefit become accrued by his descendants’ protective spirits [loas]. Magic has thus turned into religion [the converse of the more familiar process in which outmoded religions are stigmatized by their successors as magic]

So everything depends on the moral evaluation made by the community of the victims of misfortune: have they received their just deserts or is their plight unjustified? Witchcraft and sorcery are only involved in the latter case, where they provide a moral philosophy of unmerited misfortune. This is particularly important in religions that lack the concepts of heaven and hell. Where one cannot take refuge in the reassuring belief that life’s injustices will be adjusted in the hereafter, witchcraft indeed provides a way of shrugging off responsibility and of coming to terms with an unjust fate. According to these “instant” religions, the just should prosper and the unjust should suffer the consequences of their evil deeds here on earth

The psychodynamics here are equally revealing. Those who interpret their misfortunes in terms of witchcraft will often use similar means to discover the source of their woes, which is often traced to the malice and jealousy of their enemies. In Africa and elsewhere, the bewitched person seeks help from a diviner to establish the evil person responsible. The diviner, often in a trance, uses a number of different techniques to discover the witch, including throwing dice or opening a Bible or Qur’an at random. Another form of divination involves administering poison to a chicken and mentioning the name of a suspected witch. If the chicken dies, then the suspect is a witch. Whatever the process, the result is always the same, the bewitched “victim” finds the source of his woes among his rivals, typically neighbours, coworkers, or other competitors. Accusations often follow the lines of community conflict and incompatibility. In Chile, for example, the tensions between the Mapuche and neighbouring Chilean peasants are revealed in accusations that the Chileans use witchcraft to cheat the Mapuche and conversely that the Mapuche use it to harm the crops or livestock of the Chileans. Among the Navajo, competition over grazing lands and water rights or between jealous lovers is the source of witchcraft accusations. In some polygynous societies in Africa, these accusations are particularly prevalent between competing co-wives, but they are by no means always targeted at women. Ultimately, the effect of successful accusations is to call into question or to rupture an untenable relationship

The witch-hunts

Although accusations of witchcraft in contemporary cultures provide a means to express or resolve social tensions, these accusations had different consequences in premodern Western society where the mixture of irrational fear and a persecuting mentality led to the emergence of the witch-hunts. In the 11th century attitudes toward witchcraft and sorcery began to change, a process that would radically transform the Western perception of witchcraft and associate it with heresy and the Devil. By the 14th century, fear of heresy and of Satan had added charges of diabolism to the usual indictment of witches, maleficium [malevolent sorcery]. It was this combination of sorcery and its association with the Devil that made Western witchcraft unique. From the 14th through the 18th century, witches were believed to repudiate Jesus Christ, to worship the Devil and make pacts with him [selling one’s soul in exchange for Satan’s assistance], to employ demons to accomplish magical deeds, and to desecrate the crucifix and the consecrated bread and wine of the Eucharist [Holy Communion]. It was also believed that they rode through the air at night to “sabbats” [secret meetings], where they engaged in sexual orgies and even had sex with Satan; that they changed shapes [from human to animal or from one human form to another]; that they often had “familiar spirits” in the form of animals; and that they kidnapped and murdered children for the purpose of eating them or rendering their fat for magical ointments. This fabric of ideas was a fantasy. Although some people undoubtedly practiced sorcery with the intent to harm, and some may actually have worshiped the Devil, in reality no one ever fit the concept of the “witch.” Nonetheless, the witch’s crimes were defined in law. The witch-hunts varied enormously in place and in time, but they were united by a common and coherent theological and legal worldview. Local priests and judges, though seldom experts in either theology or law, were nonetheless part of a culture that believed in the reality of witches as much as modern society believes in the reality of molecules

Since 1970 careful research has elucidated law codes and theological treatises from the era of the witch-hunts and uncovered much information about how fear, accusations, and prosecutions actually occurred in villages, local law courts, and courts of appeal in Roman Catholic and Protestant cultures in western Europe. Charges of maleficium were prompted by a wide array of suspicions. It might have been as simple as one person blaming his misfortune on another. For example, if something bad happened to John that could not be readily explained, and if John felt that Richard disliked him, John may have suspected Richard of harming him by occult means. The most common suspicions concerned livestock, crops, storms, disease, property and inheritance, sexual dysfunction or rivalry, family feuds, marital discord, stepparents, sibling rivalries, and local politics. Maleficium was a threat not only to individuals but also to public order, for a community wracked by suspicions about witches could split asunder. No wonder the term witch-hunt has entered common political parlance to describe such campaigns as that of the late Senator Joseph McCarthy in his attempt to root out “communists” in the United States in the 1950s

Another accusation that often accompanied maleficium was trafficking with evil spirits. In the Near East—in ancient Mesopotamia, Syria, Canaan, and Palestine—belief in the existence of evil spirits was universal, so that both religion and magic were thought to be needed to appease, offer protection from, or manipulate these spirits. In Greco-Roman civilization, Dionysiac worship included meeting underground at night, sacrificing animals, practicing orgies, feasting, and drinking. Classical authors such as Aeschylus, Horace, and Virgil described sorceresses, ghosts, furies, and harpies with hideous pale faces and crazed hair; clothed in rotting garments, they met at night and sacrificed both animals and humans. A bizarre set of accusations, including the sacrifice of children, was made by the Syrians against the Jews in Hellenistic Syria in the 2nd century BCE. These accusations would also be made by the Romans against the Christians, by early Christians against heretics [dissenters from the core Christianity of the period] and Jews, by later Christians against witches, and, as late as the 20th century, by Protestants against Catholics

Along with this older tradition, attitudes toward witches and the witch-hunts of the 14th–18th centuries stemmed from a long history of the church’s theological and legal attacks on heretics. Accusations similar to those expressed by the ancient Syrians and early Christians appeared again in the Middle Ages. In France in 1022 a group of heretics in Orléans was accused of orgy, infanticide, invocations of demons, and use of the dead children’s ashes in a blasphemous parody of the Eucharist. These allegations would have important implications for the future because they were part of a broader pattern of hostility toward and persecution of marginalized groups. This pattern took shape in 1050–1300, which was also an era of enormous reform, reorganization, and centralization in both the ecclesiastical and secular aspects of society, an important aspect of which was suppressing dissent. The visible role played by women in some heresies during this period may have contributed to the stereotype of the witch as female

The Devil, whose central role in witchcraft beliefs made the Western tradition unique, was an absolute reality in both elite and popular culture, and failure to understand the prevailing terror of Satan has misled some modern researchers to regard witchcraft as a “cover” for political or gender conspiracies. The Devil was deeply and widely feared as the greatest enemy of Christ, keenly intent on destroying soul, life, family, community, church, and state. Witches were considered Satan’s followers, members of an antichurch and an antistate, the sworn enemies of Christian society in the Middle Ages, and a “counter-state” in the early modern period. If witchcraft existed, as people believed it did, then it was an absolute necessity to extirpate it before it destroyed the world

Because of the continuity of witch trials with those for heresy, it is impossible to say when the first witch trial occurred. Even though the clergy and judges in the Middle Ages were skeptical of accusations of witchcraft, the period 1300–30 can be seen as the beginning of witch trials. In 1374 Pope Gregory XI declared that all magic was done with the aid of demons and thus was open to prosecution for heresy. Witch trials continued through the 14th and early 15th centuries, but with great inconsistency according to time and place. By 1435–50, the number of prosecutions had begun to rise sharply, and toward the end of the 15th century, two events stimulated the hunts: Pope Innocent VIII’s publication in 1484 of the bull Summis desiderantes affectibus [“Desiring with the Greatest Ardour”] condemning witchcraft as Satanism, the worst of all possible heresies, and the publication in 1486 of Heinrich Krämer and Jacob Sprenger’s Malleus maleficarum [“The Hammer of Witches”], a learned but cruelly misogynist book blaming witchcraft chiefly on women. Widely influential, it was reprinted numerous times. The hunts were most severe from 1580 to 1630, and the last known execution for witchcraft was in Switzerland in 1782. The number of trials and executions varied widely according to time and place, but in fact no more than about 110,000 persons in all were tried for witchcraft, and no more than 40,000 to 60,000 executed. Although these figures are alarming, they do not remotely approach the feverishly exaggerated claims of some 20th-century writers

The “hunts” were not pursuits of individuals already identified as witches but efforts to identify those who were

Contemporary witchcraft

Academics tend to dismiss contemporary witchcraft [known as “Wicca”], at the heart of the modern Neo-Pagan movement, as a silly fad or an incompetent technology, but some now understand it as an emotionally consistent but deliberately anti-intellectual set of practices. Adherents to Wicca worship the Goddess, honour nature, practice ceremonial magic, invoke the aid of deities, and celebrate Halloween, the summer solstice, and the vernal equinox. At the start of the 21st century, perhaps a few hundred thousand people [mostly in North America and Britain] practiced Wicca and Neo-Paganism, a modern Western reconstruction of pre-Christian religions that draws upon the diversity of worldwide polytheistic religions to create a new and diverse religious movement. The rise of Wicca and Neo-Paganism is due in part to increasing religious tolerance and syncretism, a growing awareness of the symbolism of the unconscious, the retreat of Christianity, the popularity of fantasy and science fiction, the growth of feminism, the ascendancy of deconstructionist and relativist theory, and the emphasis upon individuality and subjectivity as opposed to intellectual coherence and societal values. Most modern Neo-Pagans, distrustful of the demands of traditional religions, eschew doctrine or creed and engage in the ritual expression of “symbolic and experiential” meanings. Although Neo-Paganism incorporates the emotional involvement and ritual practices associated with religion into its tradition, many Neo-Pagans prefer to think of themselves as practicing magic rather than religion, and although their emphasis is on opening themselves up to hidden powers through rites, chants, or charms, most do not call themselves “witches,” as Wiccans do. Both Wiccans and Neo-Pagans also have strong ecological and environmental concerns, worship the Goddess and other deities, and celebrate the change of seasons with elaborate rituals. Whether magic or religion, these groups reject intellectual coherence and objectivity in favour of personal experience and dismiss science as well as traditional religion

Although some Wiccans claim to be part of the “old ways” and “ancient tradition,” their religion is new. Wicca is creative, imaginative, and entirely a 20th-century invention, with no connection to ancient paganism or the alleged “witches” of the witch-hunts. No cult of the “Goddess” played a significant role in Western culture between late antiquity and the mid-20th century. Wicca, in fact, originated about 1939 with an Englishman, Gerald Gardner, who constructed it from the fanciful works of the self-styled magician Aleister Crowley; the fake “ancient” document Aradia [1899]; the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and other late-19th and early-20th century occult movements; and Margaret Murray’s The Witch-Cult in Western Europe [1921] and article “Witchcraft” in the 14th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica [1929], which put forth in its most popular form her theory that the witches of western Europe were the lingering adherents of a once general pagan religion that had been displaced, though not completely, by Christianity. Gardner, backed by Murray, who wrote a laudatory introduction to his book Witchcraft Today [1954], fixed this erroneous notion of an ancient witch-cult somewhere in the public consciousness, and it has been nurtured there by Robert Graves’s The White Goddess [1948] and innumerable more recent quasi-fictional and fictional accounts