Witchcraft Essay

This article is about witchcraft and its different varieties of practices in different cultures. This article explains how witchcraft exists and plays an essential part in structural and functional aspects of a society. It also sheds the light on the journey of witchcraft from being profane and wicked to acceptable part of a culture.

It is important to understand the meaning of witchcraft to be able to identify what caused the massive witch-hunt in Europe. During the medieval to the early modern period witchcraft was identified as the practice of harmful, black or maleficent magic caused by a witch (Levack, 1987, p. 4). They also describe them as evildoers that associate with the Devil, kidnap children, and murder others. These accusations were untrue rumors made by the Catholic Church to promote Christianity and punish those who did not follow the church beliefs. (Levack, 1987, p. 7)

Witchcraft is a term which sprouts many different meanings. As stated above, it is attributed to witches. But what is a witch? Probably an evil haggish-like women who has signed a pact with the devil if we think of it in the English sense. So witchcraft must be evil doings; putting curses on people to make their life miserable, using wicked spells to transform humans to frogs etc. But does this hold true to everyone's idea of what witchcraft is.People's believes on the subject of witchcraft might differ between different cultures.

Bever clarifies why he believes historians often focus only on the rise of witchcraft rather than their decline. He believes the reason this occurs is because, historians assume “their defeat seemed self-evident” (Bever, 2009, p. 264). The author explains how the rise of witches occurred, “chain-reaction trials started with a few stereotyped suspects but gradually widened to include previously unsuspected commoners and eventually friends” (Bever, 2009, p. 272). Bever also gives discusses of how witchcraft came to affect the society and how it became “an integral part of late medieval culture and society” (Bever, 2009, p. 288). The work relates more specifically to the field of the first centuries of colonization because, although some ideas presented in this article can be inferred, most are not that of the general

Witchcraft was defined for the masses by the publication of the Malleus Maleficarium also known simply as the Handbook. Written by two Dominican friars in 1486 it’s purpose was to be used as a handbook to identify, capture, torture, and execute suspected witches. Opinions stated as facts and written in the Malleus Maleficarium, “handbook”, were based their faith, church doctrine, and the Bible. No doubt a religious masterpiece in it’s time this handbook is a neatly woven together a group of beliefs, experiences, wisdom of ancient writers, religious ideas, and God inspired writings that justify it’s purpose. Written by and used by Catholics this handbook proved useful for Protestants as well. Based on biblical interpretation and ideas the handbook provided Protestant Church leaders biblical authority to prosecute witchcraft as well. Translated into today’s vernacular phrases such as, “everybody knows that women are feeble minded” or “everybody knows that women are more superstitious than men” and “all women have slippery tongues” are included in the handbook and presented to the reader as foregone conclusions. Specific

Witchcraft is the use of magical powers. Witchcraft is often regarded as “black” magic. The article called “The Salem Witch Trials: 1692-1693” states that “[s]ince the early fifteenth century, so-called witch panics had periodically swept across Europe, causing witch hunts, accusations, trials and executions” (“Salem” 1). Although some children and males were accused, the greater part of the arraigned individuals were female (“Salem” 1). A debatable amount of around forty thousand individuals were implicated and executed as witches between fourteen hundred and seventeen hundred and fifty (“Salem” 1). Although the causes of the witchcraft hysteria are debatable, there are three widespread and favored explanations for the hysteria within

In all of human history, people have written about inhuman beings, many of which include gods, demons, wizards, sorcerers, sorceresses, and witches. Nowadays mystical beings are seen everywhere in media. Most of society stopped believing in these creatures years ago, but for 17th-century Salem, witchcraft became a living nightmare (Fremon, 1999).

Were the witch-hunts in pre-modern Europe misogynistic? Anne Llewellyn Barstow seems to think so in her article, “On Studying Witchcraft as Women’s History: A Historiography of the European Witch Persecutions”. On the contrary, Robin Briggs disagrees that witch-hunts were not solely based on hatred for women as stated in his article, “Women as Victims? Witches, Judges and the Community”. The witch craze that once rapidly swept through Europe may have been because of misconstrued circumstances. The evaluation of European witch-hunts serves as an opportunity to delve deeper into the issue of misogyny.

The witch craze had widely spread through Europe from the Middle Ages up to the 1700’s. Those who were accused of being a witch were persecuted by the use of torture. The number of “witches” who were tried surpassed 100,000. Witches were not viewed too fondly, for they were assumed to associate with the Devil. The three major reasons for the persecutions of witches were economic greed, age and gender bias, and religious beliefs.

more competence as an explanation due to evidence now being needed to prove someone guilty, there was still a aspect of psychological pressure towards obeying God and putting themselves forward for punishment in order to live a better afterlife.

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

Prior to the fifteenth century, rural European women were highly revered and respected pillars of rural community life; not only considered mothers and wives, but seen as community leaders, physicians, and sources of strength and wisdom. Women had a special and imperative role in rural life, and even those that lived on the fringes of society were well respected as the village healers and wise women. These old women would possess the wisdom of the ages and pass it on to others. This respect for women quickly deteriorated, however, during the witch hunts. The belief spread that women were morally weaker than men and driven by carnal lust, therefore making them more susceptible to being tempted by the Devil, and thus practicing witchcraft. (Levack p. 126) As people took this belief to heart, it is apparent that society would be affected indefinitely by such intolerance.

For nearly two centuries, witchcraft seemed to have disappeared. Although it was driven underground for a time, it is now the fastest growing religion in the United States. There are several reasons for its disappearance and now, for its return.

The witch-hunt that blazed a trail across Europe (and indeed the world) over the 15th to 18th centuries stripped women of much of the power they had historically held. Not 100% of all accused Witches were female but 75% to 90% of accused witches in Europe were in fact women (Levack, 1987, p.124).