Witchcraft History

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Witchcraft History

• Witchcraft History Ancient Times

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• 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.

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• 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).

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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!

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Ten Theories of Witchcraft
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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 3. The Greed Theory
• Elites initiated the hunts in order to confiscate
  property of others.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 6. The Disaster Theory
• As actual misfortunes struck (plague, famine,
  war, storm), people blamed supernatural forces
  and found scapegoats in witches.

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• 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.

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• Thus authorities sincerely believed in and acted
  against this Satanic threat, even though it did
  not really exist.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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. 

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Ten Common Errors and Myths about the Witch Hunts

• Corrected and Commentedby Brian A.
  Pavlac, Ph.D., Professor of History

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• Ultimately in 1484, Pope Innocent VIII, in his
  Summis desiderantes, let the Inquisition pursue
  witches.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 10. Modern witchcraft/magick/wicca is a direct
  descendent of those practices done by people
  during the Witch Hunts of 1400-1800.

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• 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.