Art of Witch When Was in the Harlem Renissance

Witchcraft

Main
the do or invocation of alleged supernatural powers to control people or events, practices typically involving sorcery or magic. Although defined differently in disparate historical and cultural contexts, witchcraft has often been seen, especially in the W, as the piece of work of crones who see secretly at dark, indulge in cannibalism and orgiastic rites with the Devil, and perform blackness magic. Witchcraft thus defined exists more than in the imagination of contemporaries than in any objective reality. Even so this stereotype has a long history and has constituted for many cultures a viable caption of evil in the globe. The intensity of these beliefs is best represented past the European witch-hunts of the 14th to 18th century, but witchcraft and its associated ideas are never far from the surface of popular consciousness and—sustained past folk tales—observe explicit focus from fourth dimension to time in pop television set and films and in fiction.

Meanings
The modern English word witchcraft has three principal connotations: the practice of magic or sorcery worldwide; the beliefs associated with the Western witch-hunts of the 14th to the 18th century; and varieties of the modern movement called Wicca, frequently mispronounced "wikka."

The terms witchcraft and witch derive from Erstwhile English wiccecraeft: from wicca (masculine) or wicce (feminine), pronounced "witchah" and "witchuh," respectively, cogent someone who practices sorcery; and from craeft pregnant "arts and crafts" or "skill." Roughly equivalent words in other European languages—such as sorcellerie (French), Hexerei (German), stregoneria (Italian), and brujería (Spanish)—have unlike connotations, and none precisely translates another. The difficulty is fifty-fifty greater with the relevant words in African, Asian, and other languages. The problem of defining witchcraft is made more difficult because the concepts underlying these words also change according to time and identify, sometimes radically. Moreover, different cultures do not share a coherent blueprint of witchcraft behavior, which often blend other concepts such as magic, sorcery, faith, folklore, theology, engineering science, and diabolism. Some societies regard a witch as a person with inherent supernatural powers, only in the Due west witchcraft has been more commonly believed to exist an ordinary person's free choice to learn and practice magic with the help of the supernatural. (The terms Westward and Western in this article refer to European societies themselves and to post-Columbian societies influenced by European concepts.) The answer to the old question "Are in that location such things every bit witches?" therefore depends upon individual belief and upon definition, and no unmarried definition exists. One matter is certain: the emphasis on the witch in art, literature, theatre, and film has little relation to external reality.

False ideas nearly witchcraft and the witch-hunts persist today. Beginning, the witch-hunts did not occur in the Middle Ages but in what historians call the "early on modernistic" period (the late 14th to the early 18th century), the era of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Scientific Revolution. There was neither a witch-cult nor any cult, either organized or disorganized, of a "Horned God" or of any "Goddess"; Western "witches" were non members of an ancient pagan religion; and they were not healers or midwives. Moreover, not all persons accused of witchcraft were women, let lone old women; indeed, at that place were "witches" of all ages and sexes. Witches were not a persecuted minority, because witches did not be: the people hurt or killed in the hunts were not witches but victims forced by their persecutors into a category that in reality included no i. The witch-hunts did not prosecute, allow lone execute, millions; they were non a conspiracy by males, priests, judges, doctors, or inquisitors against members of an old religion or whatever other real group. "Black masses" are almost entirely a fantasy of modern writers. "Witch doctors," whose job it was to release people from evil spells, seldom existed in the West, largely considering even helpful magic was attributed to demons.

Painting on the outer wall of Rila Monastery church, Bulgaria

Witchcraft The witch-hunts

Master
the exercise or invocation of alleged supernatural powers to control people or events, practices typically involving sorcery or magic. Although defined differently in disparate historical and cultural contexts, witchcraft has often been seen, specially in the West, as the work of crones who encounter secretly at night, indulge in cannibalism and orgiastic rites with the Devil, and perform black magic. Witchcraft thus divers exists more in the imagination of contemporaries than in any objective reality. However this stereotype has a long history and has constituted for many cultures a viable caption of evil in the world. The intensity of these beliefs is best represented past the European witch-hunts of the 14th to 18th century, simply witchcraft and its associated ideas are never far from the surface of popular consciousness and—sustained by folk tales—find explicit focus from time to time in pop television and films and in fiction.

Witches and Monsters

Meanings
The modern English discussion witchcraft has three principal connotations: the do of magic or sorcery worldwide; the beliefs associated with the Western witch-hunts of the 14th to the 18th century; and varieties of the modern movement called Wicca, oftentimes mispronounced "wikka."

The terms witchcraft and witch derive from Old English language wiccecraeft: from wicca (masculine) or wicce (feminine), pronounced "witchah" and "witchuh," respectively, denoting someone who practices sorcery; and from craeft meaning "craft" or "skill." Roughly equivalent words in other European languages—such as sorcellerie (French), Hexerei (German), stregoneria (Italian), and brujería (Spanish)—take different connotations, and none precisely translates some other. The difficulty is fifty-fifty greater with the relevant words in African, Asian, and other languages. The problem of defining witchcraft is made more difficult because the concepts underlying these words as well change according to fourth dimension and place, sometimes radically. Moreover, different cultures practice not share a coherent pattern of witchcraft beliefs, which often alloy other concepts such equally magic, sorcery, religion, folklore, theology, applied science, and diabolism. Some societies regard a witch as a person with inherent supernatural powers, merely in the West witchcraft has been more commonly believed to exist an ordinary person'due south gratuitous option to learn and exercise magic with the help of the supernatural. (The terms West and Western in this commodity refer to European societies themselves and to mail-Columbian societies influenced by European concepts.) The answer to the old question "Are there such things as witches?" therefore depends upon individual belief and upon definition, and no single definition exists. One thing is certain: the accent on the witch in art, literature, theatre, and moving picture has little relation to external reality.

Fake ideas most witchcraft and the witch-hunts persist today. First, the witch-hunts did not occur in the Eye Ages but in what historians telephone call the "early modern" period (the late 14th to the early 18th century), the era of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Scientific Revolution. There was neither a witch-cult nor whatsoever cult, either organized or disorganized, of a "Horned God" or of any "Goddess"; Western "witches" were not members of an ancient pagan religion; and they were not healers or midwives. Moreover, not all persons defendant of witchcraft were women, allow solitary old women; indeed, at that place were "witches" of all ages and sexes. Witches were not a persecuted minority, because witches did not be: the people hurt or killed in the hunts were non witches merely victims forced by their persecutors into a category that in reality included no one. The witch-hunts did not prosecute, let solitary execute, millions; they were not a conspiracy by males, priests, judges, doctors, or inquisitors confronting members of an old faith or whatever other existent group. "Black masses" are almost entirely a fantasy of modern writers. "Witch doctors," whose job it was to release people from evil spells, seldom existed in the Westward, largely because even helpful magic was attributed to demons.

Sorcery
A magician, wizard, or "witch" attempts to influence the surrounding world through occult (i.east., hidden, as opposed to open and observable) means. In Western society until the 14th century, "witchcraft" had more in common with sorcery in other cultures—such equally those of Republic of india or Africa—than information technology did with the witchcraft of the witch-hunts. Before the 14th century, witchcraft was much alike in villages from Ireland to Russia and from Sweden to Sicily; however, the similarities derived neither from cultural improvidence nor from any secret cult but from the age-erstwhile human being desire to achieve i'due south purposes whether by open or occult ways. In many ways, like their counterparts worldwide, early Western sorcerers and witches worked secretly for private ends, as contrasted with the public exercise of faith. Witches or sorcerers were unremarkably feared besides as respected, and they used a variety of means to attempt to reach their goals, including incantations (formulas or chants invoking evil spirits), divination and oracles (to predict the future), amulets and charms (to ward off hostile spirits and harmful events), potions or salves, and dolls or other figures (to stand for their enemies). Witches sought to gain or preserve wellness, to learn or retain property, to protect against natural disasters or evil spirits, to help friends, and to seek revenge. Sometimes this magic was believed to work through simple causation as a form of technology. For case, it was believed that a field'due south fertility could be increased past ritually slaughtering an animal. Oft the magic was instead an effort to construct symbolic reality. Sorcery was sometimes believed to rely on the ability of gods or other spirits, leading to the belief that witches used demons in their work.

Jeffrey Burton Russell

Medical handling at the witch

Witchcraft in Africa and the worldThe aforementioned dichotomy between sorcery and witchcraft exists (sometimes more ambiguously) in the beliefs of many African and indigenous peoples throughout the world. Again, witches are typically seen equally particularly active after dusk when law-abiding mortals are asleep. The Navajo believe that witches meet at night, clothing cypher except a mask and jewelry, sit among baskets of corpses, and have intercourse with dead women. In some African cultures witches are believed to assemble in carnivorous covens, ofttimes at graveyards or around a fire, to feast on the claret, which, similar vampires, they excerpt from their victims. If they take the soul from a victim's body and proceed it in their possession, the victim will die. Like those in Western lodge suspected of child abuse and satanism, in the pop imagination, African witches are believed to practice incest and other perversions. Sometimes, as in the Christian tradition, their malevolent power is believed to derive from a special relationship with an evil spirit with whom they accept a "pact," or they do it through "animate being familiars" (assistants or agents) such as dogs, cats, hyenas, owls, or baboons.

In other cases the witch's ability is thought to exist based in his or her own body, and no external source is deemed necessary. Among the Zande of the Congo and some other key African peoples, the source of this evil-working chapters is believed to be located in the witch's tummy, and its power and range increase with age. Information technology tin can be activated but by wishing someone sick and is thus a kind of unspoken, or implicit, curse. At the aforementioned fourth dimension the Zande believe that evil deeds can be wrought even more than effectively by the manipulation of spells and potions and the use of powerful magic. In anthropological terminology this is technically "sorcery," and thus, like the "witches" in Shakespeare'south play Macbeth who dance around a pot stirring potions and muttering spells, the Zande practitioners may more properly be termed "sorcerers" rather than "witches."

Witch Hang

In many African cultures witches are believed to act unconsciously; unaware of the sick they crusade, they are driven past irrepressible urges to act malevolently. It is thus easy for those accused of witchcraft, but who are not conscious of wishing anyone sick, to presume that they unknowingly did what is attributed to them. This, along with the effects of suggestion and torture, in a world where people take the reality of witchcraft for granted, goes far to explicate the striking confessions of guilt that are and so widely reported in Africa and elsewhere and that are otherwise hard to embrace. It is worth noting, all the same, that if witches believe they are unconscious agents, this is generally not the view of those who experience victimized by them.

Whatever the basis of their power and the ways past which it is exercised, witches (and sorcerers) are regularly credited with causing all mode of disease and disaster. Sickness, and fifty-fifty expiry, too as a host of bottom misfortunes, are routinely laid at their door. In many parts of Africa and Asia, epidemics and natural disasters have been interpreted as acts of witchcraft. For some unhappy candidates in many less developed countries, the same malign influence is cited to explicate (at least in office) failure in examinations, elections, or difficulties in finding employment. Members of certain Afro-Brazilian cults, for example, believe that job loss is due non to economic conditions or poor functioning but to witchcraft, and they participate in a ritual, the "consultation," to counter the evil.

However, like their ancient and early modern European counterparts, modern Africans and Asians who believe firmly in the reality of witchcraft do not lack the power of rational reasoning. To suppose that these are incompatible alternatives is a common mistake. In reality businesslike and mystical explanations of events commonly exist in parallel or combination simply operate in unlike contexts and at different levels. For instance, anthropological research has demonstrated that African farmers who believe in witches exercise not expect witchcraft to account for obvious technical failures. If i's home collapses because it was poorly constructed, no witch is needed to explicate this. If a boat sinks because it has a hole in its bottom or a car breaks downwards because its battery is dead, witchcraft is not responsible. Witchcraft enters the picture when rational knowledge fails. It explains the diseases whose causes are unknown, the mystery of expiry, and, more than generally, strange and inexplicable misfortunes.

In that location is thus no inconsistency in the actions of the sick African who consults both a medical doctor and a witch physician. The outset treats the external symptoms, while the 2d uncovers the hidden causes. Just as the sick African takes preventative measures prescribed past the medical doctor, he or she might besides accept steps against the supernatural. To protect against witchcraft, for instance, the patient might article of clothing amulets, take "medicine" or bathe in it, or practise divination. Similarly, the Navajo protect themselves against witches with "gall medicine" or with sand or pollen paintings. If preventative measures testify ineffective for the Navajo, then the confession of a witch is thought to cure the evil magic, and torture is sometimes used to extract that confession. Moreover, like aboriginal and modern Westerners, people in modern Africa and other parts of the world who have the reality of witchcraft for granted usually as well believe in other sources of supernatural power—e.g., divinities and spirits.

Witchcraft explains the problem posed when one seeks to understand why misfortune befalls oneself rather than someone else. It makes sense of the inequalities of life: the fact that one person'southward crops or herds fail while others' prosper. Equally, witchcraft tin can exist invoked to explicate the success of others. In this "limited skillful" scenario—where in that location is implicitly a stock-still stock of resource and where life is generally precarious, with little surplus to distribute in fourth dimension of need—those who succeed too flagrantly are causeless to do so at the expense of others less fortunate. The "witch," therefore, is typically someone who selfishly wants more than he or she ostensibly deserves, whose aspirations and desires are judged excessive and illegitimate.

However, there is a narrow, ambiguous line between skilful and evil hither. Amidst some African peoples "witchcraft" is intrinsically neither morally good nor bad, and among others the supernatural activities of "witches" are, according to their perceived effects, divided into proficient, or protective, and bad, or destructive, witchcraft. Traditional and modernistic African leaders sometimes surround themselves with protective "witch doctors," and are themselves thought to be endowed with supernatural power. This is the positive charisma of which witchcraft is the negative counterpart. In the colonial menstruation these ideas were extended to Europeans, who, in the Belgian Congo and British Central Africa at the time of independence, were feared as cannibalistic witches. This was somewhat ironic since colonial regimes, unlike their missionary predecessors, did not believe in witchcraft and made accusations of witchcraft illegal in about of sub-Saharan Africa—which has been largely reversed by their successor regimes.

This ambivalence between good and evil can also exist found among the Mapuche, an indigenous people of Republic of chile. They believe that young women accept up sorcery and as quondam women become powerful witches who utilise "bad medicine" to obtain their ends. They are aligned with evil forces and utilise them to harm or gain advantage over others. Their training and use of plants and animals in their medicine is similar to that of the shamans who utilise "good medicine" and other magic against forces of evil.

The distinctions between skillful and bad supernatural power are relative and depend on how moral legitimacy is judged. This becomes clear when the spiritual power invoked is studied more closely. In a number of revealing African cases, the word that denotes the essence of witchcraft (e.g., tsau among the West African Tiv and itonga among the East African Safwa), the prototype of illegitimate antisocial activeness, also describes the righteous wrath of established authority, employed to curse wrongdoers.

This essential ambivalence is particularly axiomatic in Haitian voodoo, where in that location is a sharp distinction betwixt human being-made evil magic powers, connected with zombies (beings identified every bit familiars of witches in the beliefs of some African cultures), and benevolent invisible spirits identified with Cosmic saints. This antonym between witchcraft and religion, however, is always problematic: subsequently his death, the malevolent spirits or powers that an ancestor has used for his personal benefit become accrued by his descendants' protective spirits (loas). Magic has thus turned into religion (the converse of the more familiar process in which outmoded religions are stigmatized by their successors equally magic).

Then everything depends on the moral evaluation made by the customs of the victims of misfortune: have they received their just deserts or is their plight unjustified? Witchcraft and sorcery are but involved in the latter case, where they provide a moral philosophy of unmerited misfortune. This is especially important in religions that lack the concepts of heaven and hell. Where i cannot take refuge in the reassuring belief that life's injustices will exist adjusted in the hereafter, witchcraft indeed provides a way of shrugging off responsibleness and of coming to terms with an unjust fate. Co-ordinate to these "instant" religions, the only should prosper and the unjust should suffer the consequences of their evil deeds here on globe.

The psychodynamics here are every bit revealing. Those who interpret their misfortunes in terms of witchcraft will often use similar ways to discover the source of their woes, which is frequently traced to the malice and jealousy of their enemies. In Africa and elsewhere, the bewitched person seeks help from a augur to institute the evil person responsible. The augur, often in a trance, uses a number of unlike techniques to detect the witch, including throwing dice or opening a Bible or Qur'ān at random. Another form of divination involves administering poison to a chicken and mentioning the proper noun of a suspected witch. If the chicken dies, then the suspect is a witch. Whatsoever the process, the result is ever the aforementioned, the bewitched "victim" finds the source of his woes amongst his rivals, typically neighbours, coworkers, or other competitors. Accusations oftentimes follow the lines of community conflict and incompatibility. In Chile, for example, the tensions between the Mapuche and neighbouring Chilean peasants are revealed in accusations that the Chileans utilize witchcraft to crook the Mapuche and conversely that the Mapuche use it to harm the crops or livestock of the Chileans. Amidst the Navajo, contest over grazing lands and water rights or between jealous lovers is the source of witchcraft accusations. In some polygynous societies in Africa, these accusations are especially prevalent between competing co-wives, but they are by no means ever targeted at women. Ultimately, the event of successful accusations is to call into question or to rupture an untenable relationship.

Ioan G. Lewis
Mikael Herr. Les sabbats des sorcières

The witch-hunts Although accusations of witchcraft in contemporary cultures provide a ways to limited or resolve social tensions, these accusations had unlike consequences in premodern Western order where the mixture of irrational fear and a persecuting mentality led to the emergence of the witch-hunts. In the 11th century attitudes toward witchcraft and sorcery began to modify, a process that would radically transform the Western perception of witchcraft and associate it with heresy and the Devil. By the 14th century, fearfulness of heresy and of Satan had added charges of diabolism to the usual indictment of witches, maleficium (malevolent sorcery). It was this combination of sorcery and its association with the Devil that made Western witchcraft unique. From the 14th through the 18th century, witches were believed to repudiate Jesus Christ, to worship the Devil and brand pacts with him (selling one'southward soul in exchange for Satan'due south assist), to employ demons to accomplish magical deeds, and to desecrate the crucifix and the consecrated breadstuff and wine of the Eucharist (Holy Communion). It was besides believed that they rode through the air at night to "sabbats" (hole-and-corner meetings), where they engaged in sexual orgies and even had sexual practice with Satan; that they inverse shapes (from human to animal or from 1 human grade to some other); that they oft had "familiar spirits" in the class of animals; and that they kidnapped and murdered children for the purpose of eating them or rendering their fat for magical ointments. This textile of ideas was a fantasy. Although some people undoubtedly practiced sorcery with the intent to harm, and some may actually accept worshiped the Devil, in reality no one ever fit the concept of the "witch." Nonetheless, the witch'south crimes were divers in law. The witch-hunts varied enormously in place and in time, but they were united past a common and coherent theological and legal worldview. Local priests and judges, though seldom experts in either theology or law, were nonetheless part of a civilisation that believed in the reality of witches as much as modern society believes in the reality of molecules.

Since 1970 conscientious research has elucidated law codes and theological treatises from the era of the witch-hunts and uncovered much data nearly how fear, accusations, and prosecutions actually occurred in villages, local law courts, and courts of appeal in Roman Catholic and Protestant cultures in western Europe. Charges of maleficium were prompted by a wide array of suspicions. Information technology might take been every bit simple every bit 1 person blaming his misfortune on some other. For case, if something bad happened to John that could non be readily explained, and if John felt that Richard disliked him, John may take suspected Richard of harming him by occult means. The nigh common suspicions concerned livestock, crops, storms, disease, property and inheritance, sexual dysfunction or rivalry, family feuds, marital discord, stepparents, sibling rivalries, and local politics. Maleficium was a threat non but to individuals but also to public guild, for a community wracked by suspicions about witches could split asunder. No wonder the term witch-hunt has entered common political parlance to draw such campaigns as that of the belatedly Senator Joseph McCarthy in his attempt to root out "communists" in the U.s.a. in the 1950s.

Another accusation that ofttimes accompanied maleficium was trafficking with evil spirits. In the Most E—in ancient Mesopotamia, Syria, Canaan, and Palestine—conventionalities in the existence of evil spirits was universal, so that both organized religion and magic were thought to be needed to gratify, offer protection from, or dispense these spirits. In Greco-Roman civilisation, Dionysiac worship included coming together hole-and-corner at night, sacrificing animals, practicing orgies, feasting, and drinking. Classical authors such as Aeschylus, Horace, and Virgil described sorceresses, ghosts, furies, and harpies with hideous pale faces and crazed hair; clothed in rotting garments, they met at nighttime and sacrificed both animals and humans. A bizarre set of accusations, including the cede of children, was made by the Syrians against the Jews in Hellenistic Syria in the 2nd century bce. These accusations would also be fabricated past the Romans against the Christians, by early Christians against heretics (dissenters from the core Christianity of the period) and Jews, by subsequently Christians against witches, and, equally belatedly as the 20th century, past Protestants against Catholics.

Called-for

Forth with this older tradition, attitudes toward witches and the witch-hunts of the 14th–18th centuries stemmed from a long history of the church'south theological and legal attacks on heretics. Accusations like to those expressed past the ancient Syrians and early Christians appeared once again in the Center Ages. In France in 1022 a group of heretics in Orléans was accused of orgy, infanticide, invocations of demons, and apply of the dead children's ashes in a blasphemous parody of the Eucharist. These allegations would take important implications for the future because they were part of a broader pattern of hostility toward and persecution of marginalized groups. This pattern took shape in 1050–1300, which was also an era of enormous reform, reorganization, and centralization in both the ecclesiastical and secular aspects of lodge, an important aspect of which was suppressing dissent. The visible role played by women in some heresies during this catamenia may have contributed to the stereotype of the witch equally female.

The Devil, whose central role in witchcraft beliefs fabricated the Western tradition unique, was an absolute reality in both elite and pop culture, and failure to understand the prevailing terror of Satan has misled some modern researchers to regard witchcraft as a "embrace" for political or gender conspiracies. The Devil was deeply and widely feared as the greatest enemy of Christ, keenly intent on destroying soul, life, family, customs, church, and state. Witches were considered Satan'due south followers, members of an antichurch and an antistate, the sworn enemies of Christian guild in the Center Ages, and a "counter-country" in the early modernistic menses. If witchcraft existed, equally people believed information technology did, then it was an accented necessity to extirpate it before it destroyed the world.

Because of the continuity of witch trials with those for heresy, it is impossible to say when the first witch trial occurred. Even though the clergy and judges in the Middle Ages were skeptical of accusations of witchcraft, the period 1300–xxx can be seen as the get-go of witch trials. In 1374 Pope Gregory Eleven declared that all magic was done with the aid of demons and thus was open to prosecution for heresy. Witch trials connected through the 14th and early 15th centuries, but with smashing inconsistency according to time and place. Past 1435–fifty, the number of prosecutions had begun to rise sharply, and toward the end of the 15th century, ii events stimulated the hunts: Pope Innocent VIII'southward publication in 1484 of the bull Summis desiderantes affectibus ("Desiring with the Greatest Ardour") condemning witchcraft as Satanism, the worst of all possible heresies, and the publication in 1486 of Heinrich Krämer and Jacob Sprenger's Malleus maleficarum ("The Hammer of Witches"), a learned simply cruelly misogynist book blaming witchcraft chiefly on women. Widely influential, information technology was reprinted numerous times. The hunts were most severe from 1580 to 1630, and the last known execution for witchcraft was in Switzerland in 1782. The number of trials and executions varied widely co-ordinate to time and identify, but in fact no more than about 110,000 persons in all were tried for witchcraft, and no more twoscore,000 to 60,000 executed. Although these figures are alarming, they do not remotely approach the feverishly exaggerated claims of some 20th-century writers.

Witch Finder Generall

The "hunts" were non pursuits of individuals already identified equally witches just efforts to place those who were witches. The procedure began with suspicions and, occasionally, continued through rumours and accusations to convictions. The overwhelming majority of processes, nonetheless, went no farther than the rumour stage, for actually accusing someone of witchcraft was a unsafe and expensive business. Accusations originated with the sick-will of the accuser, or, more oft, the accuser's fear of someone having sick-will toward him. The accusations were usually made by the declared victims themselves, rather than by priests, lords, judges, or other "elites." Successful prosecution of one witch sometimes led to a local hunt for others, just larger hunts and regional panics were bars (with some exceptions) to the years from the 1590s to 1640s. Very few accusations went across the village level.

Iii-fourths of European witch-hunts occurred in western Germany, the Low Countries, France, northern Italia, and Switzerland, areas where prosecutions for heresy had been plentiful and charges of diabolism were prominent. In Espana, Portugal, and southern Italy, witch prosecutions seldom occurred, and executions were very rare. At that place were additional hunts in Spanish America, where the European pattern of accusations continued fifty-fifty though the differences between the folklore of the Europeans and Native Americans introduced some modest variations into the accusations. In United mexican states the Franciscan friars linked indigenous religion and magic with the Devil; prosecutions for witchcraft in United mexican states began in the 1530s, and by the 1600s indigenous peasants were reporting stereotypical pacts with the Devil. Like the Spanish colonies, the English colonies repeated the European stereotype with a few pocket-size differences. The first hanging for witchcraft in New England was in 1647, afterwards the witch-hunts had already abated in Europe, though a peculiar outbreak in Sweden in 1668–76 diameter some similarity to that in New England. Although the lurid trials at Salem (at present in Massachusetts) go along to depict much attending from American authors, they were merely a swirl in the backwater of the witch-hunts. The outbreak at Salem, where xix people were executed, was the result of a combination of church building politics, family feuds, and hysterical children, all in a vacuum of political authority. Prosecutions of witches in Republic of austria, Poland, and Hungary took place as late as the 18th century.

Soul-killing witches that deform the body

The responsibility for the witch-hunts can exist distributed amidst theologians, legal theorists, and the practices of secular and ecclesiastical courts. The theological worldview—derived from the early Christian fearfulness of Satan and reinforced past the not bad endeavor to reform and arrange that began in 1050—was intensified again by the fears and animosities engendered by the Reformation of the 16th century. The Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation heightened the fear of witchcraft by promoting the idea of personal piety (the individual solitary with his or her Bible and God), which enhanced individualism while downplaying customs. The emphasis on personal piety exacerbated the rigid characterization of people as either "good" or "bad." It also aggravated feelings of guilt and the psychological tendency to projection negative intentions onto others. Moreover, just equally the growth of literacy and of reading the Bible helped spread dissent, so did they provoke resistance and fear. Sermons and didactic treatises, including "devil books" warning of Satan's power, spread both the terror of Satan and the corresponding frantic demand to purge society of him. Both Protestants and Catholics were involved in the prosecutions, as the theology of the Protestant Reformers on the Devil and witchcraft was virtually indistinguishable from that of the Catholics. More than differences existed amid Protestants and among Catholics than between the 2 religious groups, and regions in which Protestant-Catholic tensions were loftier did not produce significantly more than trials than other regions.

Because accusations and trials of witches took identify in both ecclesiastical and secular courts, the constabulary played at to the lowest degree equally important a function as organized religion in the witch-hunts. Local courts were more credulous and therefore more likely to be strict and even tearing in their handling of supposed witches than were regional or superior courts. Crude practices such as pricking witches to see whether the Devil had desensitized them to pain; searching for the "devil's marker," an oddly-shaped mole or wart; or "swimming" (throwing the accused into a pond; if she sank, she was innocent because the h2o accepted her) occurred on the local level. Where central authority—i.e., bishops, kings, or the Inquisition—was strong, convictions were fewer and sentences milder. Ecclesiastical and civil regime normally tried to restrain witch trials and rarely manipulated witch-hunts to obtain coin or power.

The witch executions occurred in the early modern period, the fourth dimension in Western history when capital punishment and torture were well-nigh widespread. Judicial torture, happily in cessation since the end of the Roman menstruum, was revived in the 12th and 13th centuries; other brutal and sadistic tortures occurred but were usually against the law. Torture was non immune in witch cases in Italy or Spain, just where used it ofttimes led to convictions and the identification of supposed accomplices. The latter was the greatest evil of the arrangement, for a victim might be forced to proper noun acquaintances, who were in plough coerced into naming others, creating a long chain of accusations. Witch trials were equally common in ecclesiastical and secular courts before 1550, and so, as the power of the state increased, they took place more often in secular ones.

Amidst the primary effects of the papal judicial institution known as the Inquisition was in fact the restraint and reduction of witch trials that resulted from the strictness of its rules. It investigated whether the charges resulted from personal animosity toward the accused; information technology obtained physicians' statements; it did not allow the naming of accomplices either with or without torture; information technology required the review of every sentence; and information technology provided for whipping, banishment, or fifty-fifty business firm arrest instead of death for beginning offenders. Like the Inquisition, the Parlement of Paris (the supreme court of northern France) severely restrained the witch-hunts. After an outbreak of hunts in France in 1587–88, increasingly skeptical judges began a serial of restraining reforms marked by the requirement of "obligatory appeal" to the Parlement in cases of witchcraft, making accusations even more expensive and dangerous.

The decline of witch-hunts, like their origins, was gradual. By the late 16th century, many prosperous and professional person people in western Europe were accused, so that the leaders of society began to accept a personal involvement in checking the hunts. The legal use of torture declined in the 17th and 18th centuries, and there was a general retreat from religious intensity post-obit the wars of faith (from the 1560s to 1640s). The gradual demise during the late 17th and early 18th century of the previous religious, philosophical, and legal worldview encouraged the ascendancy of an existent but oftentimes suppressed skepticism; increasing literacy, mobility, and means of communication set the stage for social credence of this changing outlook.

All the same, the reasons for the pass up in the witch-hunts are every bit difficult to discern as the reasons for their origins. The theory all-time supported by the evidence is that the increasing power of the centralized courts such as the Inquisition and the Parlement acted to brainstorm a procedure of "decriminalization" of witchcraft. These courts reduced the number of witch trials significantly by 1600, half a century before legal theory, legislation, and theology began to dismiss the notion of witchcraft in France and other countries.

Burning

Explanations of the witch-hunts go on to vary, but recent research has shown some of these theories to be improbable or of negligible value. Most scholars agree that the prosecutions were not driven by political or gender concerns; they were not attacks on astern, or rural, societies; they did not function to limited or salvage local tensions; they were not a outcome of the rise of capitalism or other macroeconomic changes; they were not the effect of changes in family unit structure or in the role of women in society; and they were not an effort by cultural elites to impose their views on the populace. Moreover, the evidence does not indicate a close correlation between socioeconomic tension and witchcraft, though agrarian crises seem to have had some effect.

1 of the well-nigh important aspects of the hunts remains unexplained. No satisfactory caption for the preponderance of women among the accused has appeared. Although the proportions varied according to region and fourth dimension, on the whole about three-fourths of bedevilled witches were female. Women were certainly more likely than men to be economically and politically powerless, but that generalization is too broad to be helpful, for it holds true for societies in periods where witchcraft is absent. The malevolent sorcery more frequently associated with men, such every bit harming crops and livestock, was rarer than that ascribed to women. Young women were sometimes accused of infanticide, but midwives and nurses were not particularly at hazard. Older women were more frequently accused of casting malicious spells than were younger women, considering they had had more time to establish a bad reputation, and the procedure from suspicion to conviction often took so long that a woman might take anile considerably before charges were actually advanced. Although many witchcraft theorists were not deeply misogynist, many others were, notably the authors of the infamous Malleus maleficarum. Resentment and fear of the power of the "hag," a woman released from the constraints of virginity and then of maternal duties, has been frequently described in Mediterranean cultures. Folklore and accounts of trials point that a woman who was not protected by a male person family member might have been the most likely candidate for an accusation, but the testify is inconclusive. Children were oftentimes accusers (as they were at Salem), but they were sometimes also among the accused. Most accused children had parents who had been accused of witchcraft.

In the long run it may exist better simply to describe the witch-hunts than to try to explicate them, since the explanations are so diverse and complicated. Notwithstanding ane general explanation is valid: the unique character of the witch-hunts was consistent with the prevailing worldview of intelligent, educated, experienced people for more than three centuries.

The Ride Through the Murky Air

Contemporary witchcraft
Academics tend to dismiss contemporary witchcraft (known as "Wicca"), at the centre of the modern Neo-Pagan movement, as a silly fad or an incompetent technology, but some now understand information technology every bit an emotionally consistent simply deliberately anti-intellectual set of practices. Adherents to Wicca worship the Goddess, honour nature, practise ceremonial magic, invoke the aid of deities, and celebrate Halloween, the summer solstice, and the vernal equinox. At the start of the 21st century, perhaps a few hundred thousand people (mostly in North America and United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland) proficient Wicca and Neo-Paganism, a modern Western reconstruction of pre-Christian religions that draws upon the diversity of worldwide polytheistic religions to create a new and diverse religious motion. The rising of Wicca and Neo-Paganism is due in role to increasing religious tolerance and syncretism, a growing awareness of the symbolism of the unconscious, the retreat of Christianity, the popularity of fantasy and science fiction, the growth of feminism, the clout of deconstructionist and relativist theory, and the emphasis upon individuality and subjectivity every bit opposed to intellectual coherence and societal values. Most modern Neo-Pagans, distrustful of the demands of traditional religions, eschew doctrine or creed and appoint in the ritual expression of "symbolic and experiential" meanings. Although Neo-Paganism incorporates the emotional interest and ritual practices associated with organized religion into its tradition, many Neo-Pagans prefer to call up of themselves as practicing magic rather than organized religion, and although their emphasis is on opening themselves upwardly to hidden powers through rites, chants, or charms, almost do not call themselves "witches," as Wiccans practise. Both Wiccans and Neo-Pagans also accept potent ecological and ecology concerns, worship the Goddess and other deities, and celebrate the change of seasons with elaborate rituals. Whether magic or faith, these groups refuse intellectual coherence and objectivity in favour of personal experience and dismiss science as well equally traditional religion.

Although some Wiccans claim to be role of the "quondam means" and "ancient tradition," their religion is new. Wicca is creative, imaginative, and entirely a 20th-century invention, with no connection to ancient paganism or the alleged "witches" of the witch-hunts. No cult of the "Goddess" played a significant function in Western civilization between late antiquity and the mid-20th century. Wicca, in fact, originated about 1939 with an Englishman, Gerald Gardner, who constructed information technology from the fanciful works of the self-styled magician Aleister Crowley; the faux "aboriginal" certificate Aradia (1899); the Hermetic Order of the Aureate Dawn and other tardily-19th and early on-20th century occult movements; and Margaret Murray'southward The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921) and article "Witchcraft" in the 14th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1929), which put forth in its nigh pop form her theory that the witches of western Europe were the lingering adherents of a once general pagan faith that had been displaced, though not completely, by Christianity. Gardner, backed by Murray, who wrote a laudatory introduction to his book Witchcraft Today (1954), fixed this erroneous notion of an ancient witch-cult somewhere in the public consciousness, and it has been nurtured in that location past Robert Graves's The White Goddess (1948) and innumerable more recent quasi-fictional and fictional accounts.

Jeffrey Burton Russell