Witchcraft History

Witchcraft: History Ancient

Times
 Witchcraft as sorcery has existed since
humans first banded together in groups.

Prehistoric art depicts magical rites to ensure

successful hunting.

Western beliefs about witchcraft as sorcery

grew out of the mythologies and folklore of
ancient peoples, especially the Greeks and
Romans.
When Christianity began to spread,
witchcraft came to be linked with worship
of the Devil.

In Europe, beginning about A.D. 700,

witchcraft was increasingly associated with
heresy (rejection of church teachings).
 The Christian church began a long campaign to
stamp out heresy.

Beginning in the 1000s, religious leaders

sentenced heretics to death by burning.

The Inquisition, which began about 1230, was

an effort by the church to seek out and punish
heretics and force them to change their beliefs.
 Eventually, the secular (non-religious)
courts as well as all Christian churches
were involved in the persecution of
witches.

Especially after the 1500s, most people

accused of witchcraft came to trial in
secular courts.
 The witch hunt reached its peak in Europe
during the late 1500s and early 1600s.

Many victims, who were mostly women,

were falsely accused of witchcraft.
Many accused witches were tortured until
they confessed and then faced
imprisonment, banishment, or execution.
 In American Colonies, a small number of
accused witches were persecuted in New
England from the mid 1600s to the early
1700s.

The most famous witch hunt began in

1692 in Salem, Mass., where a group of
village girls became fascinated with the
occult.
 The girls began to act strangely, uttering weird
sounds and screaming.

Suspicions that witches were responsible for the

girls behavior led to the arrest of three women,
with more arrests to follow.

Thus, mass trials were held and nearly 150

people were imprisoned on witchcraft charges.
 Nineteen men and women were convicted
and hanged as witches.

Anyone who refused to plead either

innocent or guilty to the witchcraft charge
was pressed to death with large stones!
Ten Theories of Witchcraft
 The "theories" for the causes of the Witch
Hunts listed below are drawn from what
various historians have suggested.

They are called theories, because they are

based on reasonable information (or were,
when they were first proposed), and make
some sense in explaining the phenomena.
 No one explanation or theory will suffice
to explain all Witch Hunts in Europe from
1400 to 1800.

To understand the Witch Hunts in their

totality, we must keep all of the theories in
mind, and even look for more still.
 1. Illness Theories
These are variously related to physical and
mental conditions of people involved in the
hunts.

According to one theory, peasants went a little

wacky, becoming clinically neurotic and even
psychotic, and in a group panic went after the
witches.
 According to another theory credence given to
childrens fantasies and psychosomatic illnesses are
some sources for the panic.

Yet another theory suggests suggests syphilis or

ergotism (caused by mold on rotten bread) as causes
for mental instability.

Similarly, a final theory suggests that the effects of

consuming bad mushrooms, herbs like deadly
nightshade or henbane, or bufotenine from the skin
of some toads could have affected peoples minds.
 2. The Geographic Origins Theories:
The Witch Hunts originated in specific
locations, for example first in mountainous
regions of the Alps and Pyrenees.

Economic differentiation between regions

which were normally self-sufficient suddenly
caught in new competition because of the
commercial revolution should also be
considered.
 3. The Greed Theory:
Elites initiated the hunts in order to confiscate
property of others.
 4. The Religious Rebellion Theories:
These theories are of two kinds:
A. First, the Satanic Religious Rebellion
Theory:
Devil worship actually existed, in particular as a
subversive attack on the ruling Christian order.
 B. Second, the Pagan Religious Rebellion
Theory:
Certain forms of worship from the
ancient world continued through the
Early Modern period and was
misinterpreted by the Christian
hunters as Satanic.
 5. The Confessional Conflict Theory:

Reformation and its resultant fights between

Protestants (mainly Lutherans, Calvinists and
Anabaptists, as well as Anglicans) and Roman
Catholics led each to use witchcraft to attack
one another.
 6. The Disaster Theory:

As actual misfortunes struck (plague, famine,

war, storm), people blamed supernatural
forces and found scapegoats in witches.
 7. The (Mistaken) Conspiracy
Theory:
In the Late Middle Ages, religious elites
created a new, and mistaken, intellectual
framework out of Christian heresy and
theology concerning demons.
They linked the idea of witches to an
imagined organized sect which was a danger
to the Christian commonwealth.
 Thus authorities sincerely believed in and
acted against this Satanic threat, even though
it did not really exist.
 8. The Social Control or State-building
Theory:
Early modern governments exploited the fear of
witchcraft in order to centralize authority, increase
bureaucratic jurisdiction, impose cultural uniformity,
and dominate the Church.

The Church Oppression Theory, popular in the

19th century but held by few today, according to
which the Church fraudulently invented witches so as
to crush its opponents and grow rich.
 9. The Social Functionalist or Social
Accusations Theory:
Witch accusers acted on a psychological need
to blame others for their own personal
problems.
Supporters of this theory argue that witch
hunts were therapeutically beneficial for
society, since they defined what was right and
wrong and rid society of its troublesome
marginalized folk, like the old and the poor.
 10. The Misogyny Theory:
The Witch Hunts embodied a social hostility
toward women.
Such theories are often tied with popularizing
feminist writers, who might also see in
witchcraft a source of empowerment for
women.
The majority of accused and executed were
female, yet also old, living alone (whether
widowed or spinster), and poor.
Ten Common Errors and Myths
about the Witch Hunts
Corrected and Commented
by Brian A. Pavlac,
Ph.D., Professor of History
 #1. The Witch Hunts were an
example of medieval cruelty and
barbarism.
FACT: While frequently cruel, the Witch
Hunts took place after the Middle Ages
and were conducted by civilized people.
 #2. The Church was to blame for the
Witch Hunts.
FACT: While Christianity clearly created
the framework for the Witch Hunts, no
single "Church" was to blame, and many
secular governments hunted witches for
essentially non-religious reasons.
 During the Middle Ages, the predominant
Christian view of witchcraft was that it was an
illusion.

People might think they were witches, but

they were fooling themselves, or the Devil
was fooling them.
Most authorities thought that witchcraft could
do no serious harm, because it was not real.
 Ultimately in 1484, Pope Innocent
VIII, in his Summis desiderantes,
let the Inquisition pursue witches.
 #3. The Witch Hunts specifically
targeted women.
FACT: While many witch hunters
explicitly went after women, very often
men fell victim to the witch hunts.
Men were often accused of being
witches, and executed for it.
 #4. The Witch Hunts were an attempt at
"femicide" or "gendercide," meaning the
persecution of the female sex, equivalent
to genocide.
FACT: The necessity for women to be
involved in procreation of our species
prevented any realistic approach toward
genocide.
 #5. The Witch Hunts are/were all alike.
FACT: While the Witch Hunts share some
essential similarities, they were enormously
different depending on time and place.

Most witch hunts involved government

authorities deciding that a problem with
witches existed.
 Usually the danger was seen in an organized
conspiracy led by the Devil.

The authorities then pursued an investigation

that often included secret informants and
torture to acquire information and
confessions.
Finally, convicted witches were often
executed.
 #6. Millions of people died because of the
Witch Hunts.

FACT: While millions of people might have been affected,

the best estimates of recent historians range from
50,000 to 200,000 dead.

The earlier estimates, too often the figure of 9

to 10 million dead is cited, were grossly
exaggerated
 #7. People condemned during the
Witch Hunts were burned at the
stake.

FACT: While indeed governments did

burn many witches at the stake, most
were executed by other means.
 The most common form of execution, though,
was hanging.

Admittedly, burning was important in many of

these cases also, since to further protect
against any malevolence from the dead witch,
authorities often burned the remains
afterward.
 Other popular forms of execution for witches
included beheading, drowning, and breaking
on the wheel.

Witches were rarely buried alive, boiled alive,

impaled, sawed in two, flayed, drawn and
quartered, or disemboweled, as other
contemporary criminals were.
 #8. During the time of the Witch Hunts,
witches actually existed and worked
magic.

FACT: While some people have claimed to be

able to work witchcraft, there is no scientific,
empirical, reasonable proof that any actual
witches existed or that the magic they claimed
to perform actually did what it was supposed
to do.
 Most of the crimes of witches sprung from the
imaginations of the hunters, the ravings of
the insane, and the agonies of the tortured.

Even those who confessed to witchcraft

crimes could not prove a cause and effect
relationship between their witchcraft and
actual events.
 #9. In modern usage, the term "Witch
Hunt" can be applied to any organized
persecution of a group of people.
FACT: While the term "Witch Hunt" does
involve persecution of a group, that group may
or may not exist in an organized fashion; and
the proper use of the term especially requires
that the targeted group is not a real threat to
society.
 Literally, a "witch hunt" is an organized
attempt to identify and eliminate people who
are believed to be able to use supernatural
powers to harm society.

The great tragedy of the Witch Hunts is not

only was there no conspiracy of witches, but
even if there were, they could do no serious
harm to society.
 #10. Modern
witchcraft/magick/wicca is a direct
descendent of those practices done
by people during the Witch Hunts of
1400-1800.
 FACT: While modern witches and pagans
have tried to resurrect witchcraft
activities described by witch hunters,
there exists only a very tenuous
connection between modern witches
and those before 1800.