Witchcraft
|
Witchcraft is the use of alleged supernatural powers of magic. A witch is a practitioner of witchcraft. Traditionally, "witchcraft" means the use of magic or supernatural powers to inflict harm or misfortune on others, and this remains the most common and widespread meaning. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, "Witchcraft thus defined exists more in the imagination", but it "has constituted for many cultures a viable explanation of evil in the world". The belief in witchcraft has been found throughout history in a great number of societies worldwide. Most of these societies have used protective magic or counter-magic against witchcraft, and have shunned, banished, imprisoned, physically punished or killed alleged witches. Anthropologists use the term "witchcraft" for similar beliefs about harmful occult practices in different cultures, and these societies often use the term when speaking in English.
Belief in witchcraft as malevolent magic is attested from ancient Mesopotamia, and in Europe, belief in witches traces back to classical antiquity. In medieval and early modern Europe, accused witches were usually women who were believed to have secretly used black magic (maleficium) against their own community. Usually, accusations of witchcraft were made by neighbors of accused witches, and followed from social tensions. Witches were sometimes said to have communed with demons or with the Devil, though anthropologist Jean La Fontaine notes that such accusations were mainly made against perceived "enemies of the Church". It was thought witchcraft could be thwarted by white magic, provided by 'cunning folk' or 'wise people'. Suspected witches were often prosecuted and punished, if found guilty or simply believed to be guilty. European witch-hunts and witch trials in the early modern period led to tens of thousands of executions. While magical healers and midwives were sometimes accused of witchcraft themselves, they made up a minority of those accused. European belief in witchcraft gradually dwindled during and after the Age of Enlightenment.
Many indigenous belief systems that include the concept of witchcraft likewise define witches as malevolent, and seek healers (such as medicine people and witch doctors) to ward-off and undo bewitchment. Some African and Melanesian peoples believe witches are driven by an evil spirit or substance inside them. Modern witch-hunting takes place in parts of Africa and Asia.
Today, followers of certain types of modern paganism identify as witches and use the term "witchcraft" or "pagan witchcraft" for their beliefs and practices. Other neo-pagans avoid the term due to its negative connotations.
Concept
The Witches by Hans Baldung (woodcut), 1508 The most common meaning of "witchcraft" worldwide is the use of harmful magic. Belief in malevolent magic and the concept of witchcraft has lasted throughout recorded history and has been found in cultures worldwide, regardless of development. Most societies have feared the ability of some individuals to cause supernatural harm and misfortune to others. This may come from mankind's tendency "to want to assign occurrences of remarkable good or bad luck to agency, either human or superhuman". Historians and anthropologists see the concept of "witchcraft" as one of the ways humans have tried to explain strange misfortune. Some cultures have feared witchcraft much less than others, because they tend to have other explanations for peculiar misfortune. For example, the Gaels of Ireland and the Scottish Highlands historically held a strong belief in fairy folk, who could cause supernatural harm, and witch-hunting was very rare in these regions compared to other areas in the British Isles.
Historian Ronald Hutton outlined five key characteristics ascribed to witches and witchcraft by most cultures that believe in this concept: the use of magic to cause harm or misfortune to others; the witch used it against their community; powers of witchcraft were thought to have been acquired through inheritance or initiation; it was seen as immoral and often thought to involve communion with evil beings; and witchcraft could be thwarted by defensive magic, persuasion, intimidation or physical punishment of the alleged witch.
A common belief worldwide is that witches use objects, words, and gestures to cause supernatural harm or that they have an innate power to do so. Hutton notes that both kinds of practitioners are often believed to exist in the same culture and that the two frequently overlap, in that someone with an inborn power could wield that power through material objects.
One of the most influential works on witchcraft and concepts of magic was E. E. Evans-Pritchard's Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande, a study of Azande witchcraft beliefs published in 1937. This provided definitions for witchcraft which became a convention in anthropology. However, some researchers argue that the general adoption of Evans-Pritchard's definitions constrained discussion of witchcraft beliefs, and even broader discussion of magic and religion, in ways that his work does not support. Evans-Pritchard reserved the term "witchcraft" for the actions of those who inflict harm by their inborn power and used "sorcery" for those who needed tools to do so. Historians found these definitions difficult to apply to European witchcraft, where witches were believed to use physical techniques, as well as some who were believed to cause harm by thought alone. The distinction "has now largely been abandoned, although some anthropologists still sometimes find it relevant to the particular societies with which they are concerned".
While most cultures believe witchcraft to be something willful, some Indigenous peoples in Africa and Melanesia believe witches have a substance or an evil spirit in their bodies that drives them to do harm. Such substances may be believed to act on their own while the witch is sleeping or unaware. The Dobu people believe women work harmful magic in their sleep while men work it while awake. Further, in cultures where substances within the body are believed to grant supernatural powers, the substance may be good, bad, or morally neutral. Hutton draws a distinction between those who unwittingly cast the evil eye and those who deliberately do so, describing only the latter as witches.
The universal or cross-cultural validity of the terms "witch" and "witchcraft" are debated. Hutton states:
[Malevolent magic] is, however, only one current usage of the word. In fact, Anglo-American senses of it now take at least four different forms, although the one discussed above seems still to be the most widespread and frequent. The others define the witch figure as any person who uses magic ... or as the practitioner of nature-based Pagan religion; or as a symbol of independent female authority and resistance to male domination. All have validity in the present.
According to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions there is "difficulty of defining 'witches' and 'witchcraft' across cultures—terms that, quite apart from their connotations in popular culture, may include an array of traditional or faith healing practices".
Anthropologist Fiona Bowie notes that the terms "witchcraft" and "witch" are used differently by scholars and the general public in at least four ways. Neopagan writer Isaac Bonewits proposed dividing witches into even more distinct types including, but not limited to: Neopagan, Feminist, Neogothic, Neoclassical, Classical, Family Traditions, Immigrant Traditions, and Ethnic.
Etymology
The word is over a thousand years old: Old English formed the compound wiccecræft from wicce ('witch') and cræft ('craft'). The masculine form was wicca ('male sorcerer').
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, wicce and wicca were probably derived from the Old English verb wiccian, meaning 'to practice witchcraft'. Wiccian has a cognate in Middle Low German wicken (attested from the 13th century). The further etymology of this word is problematic. It has no clear cognates in other Germanic languages outside of English and Low German, and there are numerous possibilities for the Indo-European root from which it may have derived.
Another Old English word for 'witch' was hægtes or hægtesse, which became the modern English word "hag" and is linked to the word "hex". In most other Germanic languages, their word for 'witch' comes from the same root as these; for example German Hexe and Dutch heks.
In colloquial modern English, the word witch is particularly used for women. A male practitioner of magic or witchcraft is more commonly called a 'wizard', or sometimes, 'warlock'. When the word witch is used to refer to a member of a neo-pagan tradition or religion (such as Wicca), it can refer to a person of any gender.[citation needed]
Beliefs about practices
Preparation for the Witches' Sabbath by David Teniers the Younger. It shows a witch brewing a potion overlooked by her familiar spirit or a demon; items on the floor for casting a spell; and another witch reading from a grimoire while anointing the buttocks of a young witch about to fly upon an inverted besom. Witches are commonly believed to cast curses; a spell or set of magical words and gestures intended to inflict supernatural harm. Cursing could also involve inscribing runes or sigils on an object to give that object magical powers; burning or binding a wax or clay image (a poppet) of a person to affect them magically; or using herbs, animal parts and other substances to make potions or poisons. Witchcraft has been blamed for many kinds of misfortune. In Europe, by far the most common kind of harm attributed to witchcraft was illness or death suffered by adults, their children, or their animals. "Certain ailments, like impotence in men, infertility in women, and lack of milk in cows, were particularly associated with witchcraft". Illnesses that were poorly understood were more likely to be blamed on witchcraft. Edward Bever writes: "Witchcraft was particularly likely to be suspected when a disease came on unusually swiftly, lingered unusually long, could not be diagnosed clearly, or presented some other unusual symptoms".
A common belief in cultures worldwide is that witches tend to use something from their target's body to work magic against them; for example hair, nail clippings, clothing, or bodily waste. Such beliefs are found in Europe, Africa, South Asia, Polynesia, Melanesia, and North America. Another widespread belief among Indigenous peoples in Africa and North America is that witches cause harm by introducing cursed magical objects into their victim's body; such as small bones or ashes. James George Frazer described this kind of magic as imitative.
In some cultures, witches are believed to use human body parts in magic, and they are commonly believed to murder children for this purpose. In Europe, "cases in which women did undoubtedly kill their children, because of what today would be called postpartum psychosis, were often interpreted as yielding to diabolical temptation".
Witches are believed to work in secret, sometimes alone and sometimes with other witches. Hutton writes: "Across most of the world, witches have been thought to gather at night, when normal humans are inactive, and also at their most vulnerable in sleep". In most cultures, witches at these gatherings are thought to transgress social norms by engaging in cannibalism, incest and open nudity.
Witches around the world commonly have associations with animals. Rodney Needham identified this as a defining feature of the witch archetype. In some parts of the world, it is believed witches can shapeshift into animals, or that the witch's spirit travels apart from their body and takes an animal form, an activity often associated with shamanism. Another widespread belief is that witches have an animal helper. In English these are often called "familiars", and meant an evil spirit or demon that had taken an animal form. As researchers examined traditions in other regions, they widened the term to servant spirit-animals which are described as a part of the witch's own soul.
Necromancy is the practice of conjuring the spirits of the dead for divination or prophecy, although the term has also been applied to raising the dead for other purposes. The biblical Witch of Endor performed it (1 Samuel 28th chapter), and it is among the witchcraft practices condemned by Ælfric of Eynsham: "Witches still go to cross-roads and to heathen burials with their delusive magic and call to the devil; and he comes to them in the likeness of the man that is buried there, as if he arises from death."Witchcraft is the use of alleged supernatural powers of magic. A witch is a practitioner of witchcraft. Traditionally, "witchcraft" means the use of magic or supernatural powers to inflict harm or misfortune on others, and this remains the most common and widespread meaning. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, "Witchcraft thus defined exists more in the imagination", but it "has constituted for many cultures a viable explanation of evil in the world". The belief in witchcraft has been found throughout history in a great number of societies worldwide. Most of these societies have used protective magic or counter-magic against witchcraft, and have shunned, banished, imprisoned, physically punished or killed alleged witches. Anthropologists use the term "witchcraft" for similar beliefs about harmful occult practices in different cultures, and these societies often use the term when speaking in English.
Belief in witchcraft as malevolent magic is attested from ancient Mesopotamia, and in Europe, belief in witches traces back to classical antiquity. In medieval and early modern Europe, accused witches were usually women who were believed to have secretly used black magic (maleficium) against their own community. Usually, accusations of witchcraft were made by neighbors of accused witches, and followed from social tensions. Witches were sometimes said to have communed with demons or with the Devil, though anthropologist Jean La Fontaine notes that such accusations were mainly made against perceived "enemies of the Church". It was thought witchcraft could be thwarted by white magic, provided by 'cunning folk' or 'wise people'. Suspected witches were often prosecuted and punished, if found guilty or simply believed to be guilty. European witch-hunts and witch trials in the early modern period led to tens of thousands of executions. While magical healers and midwives were sometimes accused of witchcraft themselves, they made up a minority of those accused. European belief in witchcraft gradually dwindled during and after the Age of Enlightenment.
Many indigenous belief systems that include the concept of witchcraft likewise define witches as malevolent, and seek healers (such as medicine people and witch doctors) to ward-off and undo bewitchment. Some African and Melanesian peoples believe witches are driven by an evil spirit or substance inside them. Modern witch-hunting takes place in parts of Africa and Asia.
Today, followers of certain types of modern paganism identify as witches and use the term "witchcraft" or "pagan witchcraft" for their beliefs and practices. Other neo-pagans avoid the term due to its negative connotations.
- More information is available at [ Wikipedia:Witchcraft ]
External links
Chat rooms • What links here • Copyright info • Contact information • Category:Root