Why Did Witchcraft Become So Popular

There are countless different assumptions about witches. The majority of individuals in the sixteenth and seventeenth century presumed that God and Satan were real (Lambert 1). They also assumed that “witches” were in allegiance with Satan and made a vow to bow down and serve him (Lambert 1). Furthermore, another common belief was

Idea of witches date back to the Renaissance and the period in history known as the witch craze.

For thousands of years, Christian societies throughout Europe deemed witchcraft as a critical threat and imagined it as summoning evil powers. Witches were seen by the Christian community as “a conspiracy organized under the leadership of the devil.” There are quite a few references to witchcraft and sorcery in the Bible, the two most famous being Exodus 22:18 and Deuteronomy 18:9-14. These two verses have been used over the past centuries to solidify Christian belief that witchcraft is

Witchcraft has origins within the bible, where it states that they "shall surely be put to death."5 Those Christians involved in the witch-hunt "believed that God had an enemy called the Devil, who was very powerful. They believed that witches made a pact or agreement with the Devil and agreed to worship and serve him."4 The practices that

A woman was once looked upon as a healer, ancient persist, mid wife, therapist, cook, sever of goddess, a positive figure, etc. As time went on, women were not seen as they were originally portrayed. Women were eventually viewed as a witch. Each culture had a different perception on what a witch looked like, but each represented the same thing. In essence, the witch craze brought about the “dark side” of a female. Some causes of “witch craze” in the fifteenth century would include hallucinations, people not wanting to be tortured and people needing something to blame misfortune on.

The witchcraft phenomenon of the Renaissance period was shaped by a wide range of cultural factors; witchcraft was not necessarily subject to a single cohesive idea or concept, and it was often instead a conglomeration of many different societal concerns, concerns which spanned through all spheres of society. Textual evidence from this period provides insight into the way in which witches were conceived, and how witches were dealt with, while visual images present a companion visualisation of the tensions, which influenced created the witch, and the imagery, which came to be associated with witchcraft.

Witchcraft exists. Whether we choose to believe or not, its existence in worldwide cultures is undeniable. Its form takes many shapes that can be determined by the religion, economics, politics, and folk beliefs in each individual culture where it may take place. Its importance in our own, American, history should not go understated: Witches were a major dilemma for people who lived in 1692 Salem, Massachusetts, and as a result women (and men) were hanged due to undeniable belief in the power of Witchcraft. Today, belief in magic and witches has diminished with the increasingly secular nature of our culture, but we must accept there was a time when witches “existed”. While American culture has drifted away from ideas such as witchcraft, others have certainly not, with the primary example being Africa. Witchcraft in African culture accounts for many of the issues found within many of the continents communities. Correcting these issues, at least for a time, usually results in a community being “fixed” (examples are made in Adam Ashford’s account of witchery, Madumo, a Man Bewitched and the anthropological accounts being used for this essay). What is fascinating; however, are the parallels that can be made between witchcraft in different cultures. In a previous essay I touched on this topic by incorporating my definition of witchcraft as “a cultural means of being able to create particular moral boundaries by means of ‘magic’ thinking” (Brian Riddle, 2015). In this essay, I

The witch craze rapidly spread around Europe from 1480 to 1700, especially during the time of both the Protestant and Catholic Reformation. From accusations to trials to persecution, over a million Europeans were tried due to witchcraft suspicions. The trials were often rigged in favor of the accusers, and torture was used as a method for confession in certains areas of Europe. The witch craze had many contributing factors that allowed it to last for almost three hundred years. Three major reasons for the persecution of individual witches were influence from religious superstitions promoted by the Church, lack of advanced knowledge in science and medicine and social prejudice against the lower socioeconomic class.

Witch craft has been studied for hundreds of years and authors are still finding more and more information In Carlo Ginzburg’s work, The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century, he attempts to locate the origin of the of the benandanti and how they came to be tried in a similar fashion to witches in Friuli, Italy. The benandanti were a group that claimed that their spirits went to fight witches during certain times of the year. Ginzburg goes into great detail on the many trials associated with the benandanti during this time. In Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum’s work, Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft, the two authors give an in-depth look into the witch trials that plagued

(Roper pg. 236) This evolution of who could be a witch altered as time progressed in the 15th century it was the possibility everyone could be a witch as seen children, men, and women. (Roper pg. 6) However, as the 18th century progressed the evolution of who would fit the profile of being a witch became any women who gave herself to the devil. (Roper pg. 253) In 1854 the Grimm brothers use the story book of Hansel of Gretel to show the evolution of the world from the past of witch hunting in Germany. The story of the witch craze, focuses on the evil nature of witches, women, and children (Roper pg.

Many elements separated “elite” from “popular” witchcraft beliefs. The main factor was regarding the type of accusation of witchcraft. In general, people tended to make accusations of maleficium, which describes malevolent, dangerous, or harmful magic, "evildoing," or "malevolent sorcery" , however, the elites made accusations based on diabolism, which is action aided or caused by the devil. People believes that witches have supernatural power, or magic power that the use over others. The elites believed that witches got their power from the devil after making a pact with the devil and by paying something in order to get those powers. The elites believed that all witchcraft was because of the devil, and that witches do all acts of magic in the name of the devil.

The idea of witchcraft has been around for a long time and can track all the way back to the Old Testament. When it comes to the early modern period of European history, witchcraft began around 1450 and starts to decline around 1750. The witch-hunts and witch trials play as a major factor in European history, although at the end of it all, thousands of people were killed. Before the accusations of witchcraft, the Europeans were confused about little things that they wanted an explanation on. Because of their confusion, they began to jump to conclusions about the things they were confused about.

In current pop culture, witches can be seen in various forms. Some can be seen as “good” witches, as shown in shows like Sabrina the Teenage Witch or as “evil” witches, shown in movies like Hocus Pocus. There are even some movies or television shows that depict witches as either, seen in the television show Salem or the series of books and movies Harry Potter. Though the thought of witches could be thought to be just myth and rumor, history tells that not everyone believed them to be just myths. Various witch trials took place around the world for several years under the thoughts that witches exist.

Most historians agree that the witch craze began in the 15th century, during the early modern period. However, many factors that contributed to the witch craze had been brewing for several centuries prior, in as early as the 12th century we see the persecution of heresy by the Medieval Inquisition, which is basically a large-scale model of religious groups suppressing and killing anyone who does not agree with them, or speaks out against them. This similar type of rational is seen happening in Colonial America: men, women, and children who were educated, and spoke out against the social norms were labeled as witches and targets of hate crimes.

A witch is a woman who is believed to have magical powers, often used to harm or kill others. In myth and legend, a witch is a woman who practices sorcery and is often saw as ugly or wicked. (According to History.com)> Witch comes from the Old English word wince, meaning female magician/sorceress. Witches are in fairytales, fantasy and satire, witches appear time and again as a versatile synonym for evil and transgression. In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, men and women of both high and low status believed in witches’ ubiquity in a far more disturbing way. My goal of this paper is to inform you about witchcraft and the Salem Witchcraft trials. Between 1482 and 1782, thousands of people across Europe were accused of witchcraft and