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THE EVOLUTION OF WITCHCRAFT
I only want to say that this is not my work, but was taken from the book "The Salem Witch Trials" by Lori Lee Wilson.
The word witch comes from the Celtic word wicca, meaning "wise one" or "magician." A witch is a person believed to have received special powers. From earliest times, people in all parts of the world have believed in witches. According to some scholars, more than half the people in the world think witches can influence their lives.
Witchcraft is the use of supposedly magical powers, generally to harm people or damage their property. Witchcraft as practiced in European countries has differed from witchcraft elsewhere. European witchcraft is anti-Christian and involves an association with the devil. A witch might sell his or her soul to the devil in exchange for magic powers. Witchcraft in Africa and the West Indies and among the Indians of North America does not involve the devil. Such non-European witchcraft usually is used to harm people, but it can also help people. For example, someone in love might want a love potion to give to the loved one. Drinking the potion will supposedly make the loved one return the giver’s love.
To find out about witches and witchcraft, historians have dug up answers older than written history. At Lascaux, France, archeologists found a cave with charcoal drawings dating back to 35, 000 BC. They also found amber amulets at burial sites in the cave. AN amulet is a necklace bearing the image or symbol of a spirit. The person wearing the amulet may have believed it would shield him or her from harm. Archaeologists also found copses bound with cords. The skulls from the corpses look like they might have been used as receptacles for drinking.
These clues strongly suggest that Stone Age people believed that spirits of the dead lingered on earth and were capable of hurting or helping the living. Perhaps the dead were bound so they could do no harm. Perhaps the skulls were used as vessels so the living could drink the spirit’ wisdom. Some archaeologists think the paintings on the walls at Lascaux may even have been a form of witchcraft. By creating images of wild beasts, the cave dwellers may have hoped to give their hunters powers over the spirits of animals. There are also paintings of a pregnant, large-breasted woman, possibly representing the nurturing goddess of fertility. Images of fertility goddess have been found at excavation sites all over the world. The idea of a fertility goddess had been and continues to be intertwined with that of the witch.
Anthropologists studying primitive cultures have found many similarities between tribal and prehistoric beliefs. In some places, witch doctors still perform spirit-binding burial rites and prescribe amulets as protection against harm. When there is a drought, sickness, or some other misfortune, people in primitive societies often blame evil spirits or the local witch. Witchcraft exists among the Hopi and Navajo Indians of the southwestern United States, the Maori of New Zealand, and many peoples in southern Africa. In the West Indies, the beliefs and practices of voodoo are very similar to those of witchcraft. A witch, in some societies, is an old woman – often a widow – who lives alone, usually outside the village. She is believed to have inherited her magic powers from a parent – unlike a witch doctor, who must go through an apprenticeship to learn his or her craft.
People who believed in witches think a witch can harm people in various ways. Witches may use ceremonial music, dancing, and incantations. Sometimes a witch casts a spell by reciting a magical formula. The spell makes the victim suffer. Witches also use masks or dolls to create the likeness of spirits and people. For example, a witch might make a small wax or wooden image of the victim. She might put something from the victim’s body, such as fingernail clippings or hair, into the image. Then the witch destroys the image by cutting it, burning it, or sticking pins into it. The victim supposedly suffers severe pain or death.
Witches are said to mark the movement of the sun, moon, and stars and relate that movement to life and events on earth. They might also make animal sacrifices and concoct medicines, poisons, or hallucinogens from minerals, herbs, fungi, roots, insects, and small reptiles.
WITCHES IN FAIRY TALES
Witches are often found in fairy tales. Although these stories take place in an unreal world inhabited by imaginary characters, many people still criticize the tales for being frightening, violent, and immoral.
In Hansel and Gretel, by the German writers Jakob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm, the witch is a wicked old woman who built a house of bread, cake, and sugar candy to lure children inside. When a child came into her power, she would kill it, cook it, and eat it. According to the story, “witches have red eyes and can’t see far, but they have a keen sense of smell, like animals, so that they can’t tell whenever humans beings get near.” Gretel outsmarts the witch and pushes her into the oven, where she burns to death. After the witch has been killed, the children find pearls and precious stones. They return to their father’s house and live in “perfect happiness.”
In the story of Rapunzel, also by the brothers Grimm, there is “a witch of great might, and of whom the whole world was afraid.” She kept the beautiful, young Rapunzel in a tower without stairs or a door. When the witch, called Mother Gothel, learned about Rapunzel’s visits from the king’s son, she banished Rapunzel and put a curse on her lover. “Aha!” cried the witch. “You came for your darling, but the sweet bird sits no longer in the nest, and sings no more; the cat has got her, and will scratch out your eyes as well! Rapunzel is lost to you; you will see her no more.” The king’s son jumps from the tower but is blinded by thorns when he lands. Good overcomes evil, however. After searching in blindness for years, his sight is restores when he finds Rapunzel and her tears fall on his eyes.
In the Russian tale Vasilissa the Fair, Baba Yaga is a witch who eats people. The fence around her house is made of dead people’s bones. Human skulls with glowing eyes in them sit on top of the fence. Baba Yaga rides “in a mortar, urging it on with the pestle, sweeping away her traces with a broom.” She has special powers that can part walls and open gates. The glowing eyes in the skull that she sends home with Vasilissa, the fair young maiden, burn the wicked stepmother and her stepsisters. Rather than eat Vasilissa, the witch releases her because the girl had been blessed by her mother years before, when the mother lay dying. Baba Yaga says, “Get along out of my house, you bless’d daughter. I don’t want bless’d people.”
In all these fairy tales, good wins out over evil, but all the witches have supernatural powers and are associated with evil.
WITCHES AND THE DEVIL
Fairy-tale witches may be associated with evil, but how did the devil become associated with witches and witchcraft? The answer has proved elusive. In trying to find the link, historians have had to trace the history of the devil. Where did the idea of a devil come from? The history of the devil does not reach back as far as the concept of witchcraft, although fear of evil spirits is at least as old. In some cultures, including that of the Algonquian and Iroquois, two Native American tribes, creation myths tell of an evil twin of the Good Spirit. But the concept of the devil came out of ancient Jewish tradition, dating roughly to 1500 BC. The word satan comes from the Hebrew word adversary. When Hebrew scriptures were translated into Greek, the word diablos, meaning slanderer, was used to indicate Satan. The English word devil was derived from diablos. The word Satan originally meant any sort of adversary, whether human, beast, or angel. Later, it came to mean adversary of God, the fallen angel named Lucifer, who – with his followers – was hurled from heaven to hell because of his revolt against God. Lucifer also became known as Satan and the devil.
In Hebrew and Christian scriptures, Satan’s name began to be used interchangeably with that of the Babylonian god, Beelzebub. Literally, Beelzebub means “lord of the flies.” In ancient Babylon (2200 BC – 200 BC), Beelzebub was a horned god, master of the plagues and ruler of the dead city. His priests were wizards and necromancers -–people who claimed they could communicate with the spirits of the dead to reveal the future or influence the course of events.
The image of the devil also merged with that of Pan, the god of pastures in Greek mythology. The ancient Greeks believed Pan had a wild, unpredictable nature. They also thought he had the power to fill human beings and animals with sudden, unreasoning terror. Pan is often depicted as a grimacing goat-man with horns, cloven hooves, and a tail. Satan is also portrayed that way in both early and medieval Christian art. The Greek word demon was also applied to the devil and his followers. Demons, in Greek mythology, were evil spirits who could take possession of a person’s mind and body, causing him or her to rave, foam at the mouth, fall into fits, blurt prophecies and hidden truths, or fall madly in love. Many religious groups had exorcists, people who used prayers and incantations to cast out demons.
The most famous enchantress in ancient Greek mythology is Medea. Like the primitive witch, Medea is said to have inherited her magical powers. Unlike the witch, Medea was young, beautiful, and the daughter of a king. According to the myth, Medea helped the hero Jason capture the Golden Fleece, the famous golden wool of a flying ram. Jason and Medea had two sons and lived happily for 10 years. Then Jason fell in love with Glauke, the daughter of another king. He abandoned Medea to marry Glauke. Medea took revenge by using magic to burn the bride. Medea then murdered her sons with a knife, so Jason would have no heirs.
Medea served the sorceress Circe, who could turn men into beasts, and the goddess Hecate, who was usually associated with the underworld and witchcraft. Hecate was the goddess of the night and was associated with the moon. People believed she appeared at crossroads where the spirits of those about to be born would enter the world and the spirits of those about to die would depart from the world. The Greek goddess Artemis and the Roman goddess Diana were related to the nurturing goddess of fertility. Hecate, Artemis, and Diana are all associated with witches and witchcraft.
Some scholars. Think witchcraft is an extremely old system of organized religious worship. In many parts of Europe, peasants engaged in secret rituals associated with Hecate and Diana. According to historian Montague Summers, people sometimes sacrificed small animals, taking the creatures to crossroads at night and tearing them to pieces. Those who were caught by church officials were charged with witchcraft and told that they served the devil in performing such rites. The same thing was said to those who were caught worshipping Diana. Her worshippers gathered in wooded glens on moonlit nights. They feasted on cakes and wine, then stripped naked and engaged in wild singing and dancing that generally ended in a drunken orgy. By doing this, they were giving their bodies to the devil, church leaders warned. To discourage such behavior, those who were caught were imprisoned or burned at the stake. Hecate, Diana, witchcraft, and the devil had become inseparable.
From the 1400s to the 1700s, church authorities in Europe tried to eliminate witchcraft. Church persecution of witches took place in England, France, Germany, Italy, Scotland, and Spain. In 1431 the English accused the French national heroine Joan of Arc of being a witch. She was condemned to death and burned at the stake. According to some historians, the Christian church put to death about 300, 000 women for practicing witchcraft between 1484 and 1782. Many women were so severely tortured that they confessed to being witches to avoid further torment.
Bishops, ministers, and courtroom justices were the authors of virtually all books and articles about witchcraft written between 1400 and 1700. Drawing on their own witch-hunting experiences, these writers offered definitions of witchcraft, methods of discovering whether a suspect was a witch, ways to get a witch to confess, and methods to punish the guilty. People who practiced “white magic” – the use of good luck charms or love ointments – were mildly punished, if they were punished at all. Those who practiced “black magic” with the intent to hurt or kill, whether successful or not, were executed. And those who were considered most dangerous – those who sold their souls to the devil, worshipped him, and had from him the power to cause storms, plague, war, and famine – were burned at the stake.
During the 1600s and 1700s,an almost hysterical fear of witchcraft swept through most of Europe. During this time, the courts allowed gossip and rumor to be used as evidence, and many children testified against their own parents. The American colonists brought their belief in witchcraft from England to the New World.
