Witchcraft is traditionally defined as the use of magic to inflict supernatural harm or misfortune on others. This remains the most common and widespread understanding of the term. Though the idea of witchcraft is largely imaginary, it has nevertheless served in many cultures as a way to explain the presence of evil.
Preparation for the Witches' Sabbath by David Teniers the Younger.
Historical Context
Belief in malevolent magic and the concept of witchcraft has lasted throughout recorded history and has been found in cultures worldwide, regardless of development. The belief in witches has been found throughout history in a great number of societies worldwide. Most societies have feared an ability by some individuals to cause supernatural harm and misfortune to others. Most of these societies have used protective magic or counter-magic against witchcraft, and have shunned, banished, imprisoned, physically punished or killed alleged witches.
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.
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, they made up a minority of those accused.
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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.
Common Beliefs and Practices
A common belief worldwide is that witches use objects, words, and gestures to cause supernatural harm, or that they simply have an innate power to do so. 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.
In some cultures, witches are believed to use human body parts in magic, and they are commonly believed to murder children for this purpose. Witches are believed to work in secret, sometimes alone and sometimes with other witches. 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.
Functions of Witchcraft Beliefs
J.D. Krige argues that belief in witchcraft also serves various functions. One such function, he notes, is psychological: it enables people to account for failures not as a result of any fault of their own but due to the doings of others or other external malevolent forces. Such helpful magic-workers "were normally contrasted with the witch who practiced maleficium-that is, magic used for harmful ends".
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In the early years of the European witch hunts "the cunning folk were widely tolerated by church, state and general populace". Some of the more hostile churchmen and secular authorities tried to smear folk-healers and magic-workers by falsely branding them 'witches' and associating them with harmful 'witchcraft', but generally the masses did not accept this and continued to make use of their services. The English MP and skeptic Reginald Scot sought to disprove magic and witchcraft altogether, writing in The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), "At this day, it is indifferent to say in the English tongue, 'she is a witch' or 'she is a wise woman'".
Historian Keith Thomas adds "Nevertheless, it is possible to isolate that kind of 'witchcraft' which involved the employment (or presumed employment) of some occult means of doing harm to other people in a way which was generally disapproved of. Emma Wilby says folk magicians in Europe were viewed ambivalently by communities, and were considered as capable of harming as of healing, which could lead to their being accused as malevolent witches. Hutton says that magical healers "were sometimes denounced as witches, but seem to have made up a minority of the accused in any area studied". Likewise, Davies says "relatively few cunning-folk were prosecuted under secular statutes for witchcraft" and were dealt with more leniently than alleged witches.
Counteracting Witchcraft
Societies that believe (or believed) in witchcraft may also believe that it can be thwarted in various ways. One common way is to use protective magic or counter-magic, often with the help of magical healers such as cunning folk or witch-doctors. This includes performing rituals, reciting charms, or the use of talismans, amulets, anti-witch marks, witch bottles, witch balls, and burying objects such as horse skulls inside the walls of buildings. Another believed cure for bewitchment is to persuade or force the alleged witch to lift their spell.
Often, people have attempted to thwart the witchcraft by physically punishing the alleged witch, such as by banishing, wounding, torturing or killing them. Throughout the world, accusations of witchcraft are often linked to social and economic tensions. Éva Pócs writes that reasons for accusations of witchcraft fall into four general categories. Apart from extrajudicial violence, state-sanctioned execution also occurs in some jurisdictions.
Cultural and Religious Perspectives
In ancient Mesopotamia, a witch (m. kaššāpu, f. kaššāptu, from kašāpu ['to bewitch']) was "usually regarded as an anti-social and illegitimate practitioner of destructive magic ... The Code of Hammurabi (18th century BCE) allowed someone accused of harmful magic-practice to undergo trial by ordeal-by jumping into a holy river. If they drowned, they were deemed guilty, and the accuser inherited the guilty person's estate.
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The historical development of witchcraft in the Middle East shows a multi-stage process shaped by culture, spirituality, and societal norms. Ancient witchcraft in the Middle East intertwined mysticism with nature through rituals and incantations aligned with local beliefs. Jewish attitudes toward witchcraft were rooted in its association with idolatry and necromancy, and some rabbis even practiced forms of magic themselves. References to witchcraft in the Hebrew Bible highlighted strong condemnations rooted in the "abomination" of magical practices.
Historically, the Christian concept of witchcraft derives from Old Testament laws against it. In medieval and early-modern Europe, many Christians believed in magic. As opposed to the helpful magic of the cunning folk, witchcraft was seen as evil and associated with Satan and devil worship. This often resulted in deaths, torture and scapegoating (casting blame for misfortune), and many years of large-scale witch trials and witch hunts, especially in Protestant Europe, before largely ending during the Age of Enlightenment. Christian views are diverse, ranging from intense belief and opposition (especially by Christian fundamentalists) to non-belief.
During the Age of Colonialism, many cultures were exposed to the Western world via colonialism, usually accompanied by intensive Christian missionary activity (see Christianization). In Christianity, sorcery came to be associated with heresy and apostasy and was viewed as evil. Among Catholics, Protestants, and the secular leadership of late-medieval/early-modern Europe, fears about witchcraft rose to a fever pitch and sometimes led to large-scale witch hunts.
The fifteenth century saw a dramatic rise in awareness and terror of witchcraft. Tens of thousands of people were executed, and others were imprisoned, tortured, banished, and had lands and possessions confiscated. The Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of the Witches) was a witch-hunting manual written in 1486 by German monk-inquisitors Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger. It was used by both Catholics and Protestants for several hundred years, outlining how to identify a witch, what makes a woman more likely than a man to be a witch, how to put a witch on trial, and how to punish a witch. The book defines a witch as evil and typically female.
Islamic perspectives on magic encompass a wide range of practices, with belief in black magic and the evil eye coexisting alongside strict prohibitions against its practice. The Quran acknowledges the existence of magic and seeks protection from its harm.
Modern Interpretations and Beliefs
During the 20th century, interest in witchcraft rose in English-speaking and European countries. From the 1920s, Margaret Murray popularized the 'witch-cult hypothesis': the idea that those persecuted as 'witches' in early modern Europe were followers of a benevolent pagan religion that had survived the Christianization of Europe. From the 1930s, occult neopagan groups began to emerge who called their religion a kind of 'witchcraft'. They were initiatory secret societies inspired by Murray's 'witch cult' theory, ceremonial magic, Aleister Crowley's Thelema, and historical paganism. The biggest religious movement to emerge from this is Wicca.
A 2022 study found that belief in witchcraft, as in the use of malevolent magic or powers, is still widespread in some parts of the world. It found that belief in witchcraft varied from 9% of people in some countries to 90% in others, and was linked to cultural and socioeconomic factors.
African witchcraft encompasses various beliefs and practices. These beliefs often play a significant role in shaping social dynamics and can influence how communities address challenges and seek spiritual assistance. Much of what "witchcraft" represents in Africa has been susceptible to misunderstandings and confusion, due to a tendency among western scholars to approach the subject through a comparative lens vis-a-vis European witchcraft. For example, the Maka people of Cameroon believe in an occult force known as djambe, that dwells inside a person.
While some 19th-20th century European colonialists tried to stamp out witch-hunting in Africa by introducing laws banning accusations of witchcraft, some former African colonies introduced laws banning witchcraft after they gained independence. In parts of Africa, beliefs about illness being caused by witchcraft continue to fuel suspicion of modern medicine, with serious healthcare consequences. HIV/AIDS and Ebola are two examples of often-lethal infectious disease epidemics whose medical care and containment has been severely hampered by regional beliefs in witchcraft.
The term "witchcraft" arrived with European colonists, along with European views on witchcraft. This term would be adopted by many Indigenous communities for their own beliefs about harmful magic and harmful supernatural powers. Witch hunts took place among Christian European settlers in colonial America and the United States, most infamously the Salem witch trials in Massachusetts. These trials led to the execution of numerous individuals accused of practicing witchcraft. Despite changes in laws and perspectives over time, accusations of witchcraft persisted into the 19th century in some regions, such as Tennessee, where prosecutions occurred as late as 1833.
Witchcraft beliefs in Latin America are influenced by Spanish Catholic, Indigenous, and African beliefs. In Colonial Mexico, the Mexican Inquisition showed little concern for witchcraft; the Spanish Inquisitors treated witchcraft accusations as a "religious problem that could be resolved through confession and absolution". Brujería, often called a Latin American form of witchcraft, is a syncretic Afro-Caribbean tradition that combines Indigenous religious and magical practices from the Caribbean, together with Catholicism, and European witchcraft. The tradition and terminology is considered to encompass both helpful and harmful practices. A male practitioner is called a brujo, a female practitioner, a bruja. Healers may be further distinguished by the terms kurioso or kuradó, a man or woman who performs trabou chikí ("little works") and trabou grandi ("large treatments") to promote or restore health, bring fortune or misfortune, deal with unrequited love, and more serious concerns.
Modern Perspectives on Witchcraft
Some say you have to put a pointy black hat on a witch so that she can be recognized as such," Justin said. "I personally like to surprise people by not draping myself with charms and talismans. In no way, however, does he want to harm anyone, he says. Justin warns against getting involved with witchcraft if you don't have your feet on the ground: "People who are mentally unstable should stay away from magic and sorcery. If they can't get their lives under control, they won't find a way to balance themselves through witchcraft or Wicca.
As humans, we seem to desire to understand our world. Magic provides us some reasons for why things happen. At the same time, magic suggests that we might somehow influence forces that initially seem out of our control. I think these characteristics are especially prominent in childhood, when we lack control and begin to understand our world: hence the number of children’s media featuring witches. The presence of children in almost every society makes magic appear in a wide variety of contexts.
The enduring fascination with witchcraft, magic and the occult reflects the extent to which we feel we have answers for so many of our questions. Even if the answers are right, they may not be emotionally satisfying. Or maybe we wanted uncertainty and mystery rather than answers in the first place. Witchcraft symbolizes a world once more subject to mystical rules and its dangers and promises.
Witchcraft lets us articulate our fantasies. In a world seemingly ruled by logic, a possibility to realize one’s fantasies takes on added meaning and social significance.
Belief in Witchcraft by Country
Belief in witchcraft varies significantly across the globe. The following table illustrates the percentage of people in different countries who believe in witchcraft:
Belief in witchcraft around the world.
| Country | Percentage of Believers |
|---|---|
| Tunisia | 90% |
| Germany | 13% |