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The witch is perhaps the most feared person around the world--not the Wiccan of today that values nature and the goodness that can be had through worship of a Goddess and God, but a person who strives to obtain power to create evil and havoc. This short article is about the historical witch and how he or she has been created with some help of the Church.

An excerpt from the new book, The Dark Wind: Witches and the Concept of Evil.

Witches have been a boon to television shows, movies and books for a number of years, appearing both as good and evil persons. There were the Wicked Witch of the East and Good Witch Glenda in The Wizard of Oz, the cute, bubbly teenage witch in Sabrina, powerful fighters of evil and demons in Charmed, the loveable but irritating wife in the guise of Samantha in Bewitched, and as the unwilling but very effective witch in Practical Magic. However, as we know, witches have also existed in the world since the dawn of time as healers, psychics, wise women and cunning men and, according to many, as companions to Satan himself. The Church and civil authorities as well, have murdered millions of women, and men and children over the years as witches because the witch connotes that which is not Christian and out of the control of those in power. In fact, “an anonymous treatise”, notes historian Richard Kieckhefer, “lamented that [a sect of witches] was an unprecedented threat to Christendom, more loathsome than all paganism.” (1) The witch is apart from “normal” society and, it is believed, must be done away with. The killings of suspected witches continues into modern times for the same reasons they did in ancient times—fear, intolerance, jealousy, greed, religious persecution and reprisal.

This article is about the universal concept of the witch rather than any particular person. What created the fear that society has about this person, what originated the attitude of hate, revenge and outright murder surrounding the wise woman or wise man?

For the most part the vast majority of books concerning witches and witchcraft are focused on a narrow period of time, the Middle Ages of Europe. Obviously, witches have been in existence since humankind began to acknowledge the powers that surrounded them. These powers that could not be explained but the witch was able to interact with them and establish relationship that could affect their world.

The witch is perhaps the most steadfast personality the world has known, existing for thousands of years in the face of constant adversity, which never wavers. This is truly a struggle between good and evil. The question is—of the two, what is the witch?

The definition of “Witchcraft,” according to most anthropologists, “is the illicit use of extra-ordinary or supernatural power to cause harm or to influence events.” (2) The underlying statement here that witchcraft is the “illicit use” of power “to cause harm” is one that, in itself, must be analyzed. Do anthropologist and ethnologist bring their own traditional ideals and religious training to the field and somehow skew the data, perhaps unintentionally, when it comes to indigenous religious systems? Unfortunately, yes. How much this bias influences scholarly research can be illustrated with the following statement written by historian Marc Simmons in his book, Witchcraft in the Southwest: Spanish & Indian Supernaturalism on the Rio Grande:

“Perhaps the intent of any thoughtful study should be the simple one of describing the nature of witchcraft belief and the social consequences that follow as men surrender their souls and powers of reason to the baleful influence of the black arts. In such a study little purpose is served by trying to show that the existence of witchcraft cannot be scientifically established.”(3)

Such a statement is certainly ethnocentrism at its worst. The existence and success of any supernatural power or any ritual cannot be proven scientifically. Nor should they be. To infer, if not outright state, that the belief in a supernatural power is only true if it mirrors the researcher’s own belief is very poor anthropology. It would seem ludicrous to say “the existence of witchcraft cannot be proven scientifically” when there is little doubt that witchcraft has existed and still does since Paleolithic times.

Other definitions of “witchcraft” and “witch” that have been offered include that by Elinor W. Gadon in her work, The Once and Future Goddess:
“The term witchcraft comes from the Old English wicce or wicca referring to male or female practitioners…and can be traced back to the Indo-European root word meaning ‘to bend or shape’.” (4) Thus the witch’s ability to bend or shape reality or future events.

Other definitions include the more traditional ones based on the Capital Code of Connecticut, dating to 1642, and the European Codes, which simply state “A witch is a person which hath confluence with the devil; to consult with him to do some act.”

In addition to the definition of the word “witch”, let us look at the various definitions of what a witch is in tribal and geographic areas around the world.

Types of Witches

Simpson and Roud wrote “The old English word ‘witch’ meant ‘one who cast a spell.’ Intrinsically neutral, it could be applied to those using magic helpfully…in most contexts, however, ‘witchcraft’ means using magic to harm humans, farm animals, or property.” (5)

Basso accounted for only two types of witches among the Western Apache. There are sorcerers and love witches. (6) Sorcerers use spell craft to enchant and to create a specially prepared poison, and to create a “sorcerers arrow” which causes the injection of a foreign object into the victim’s body. The Love Witch uses magic primarily for sexual gratification against the opposite sex. Such love magic is not included in the techniques used by sorcerers who are primarily interested in causing sickness, death and the destruction of the personal property of others.

This appears to be the typical definition of a witch, or rather of a sorcerer. However, much of the research conducted into Native American witchcraft treats witchcraft as a Christian concept with the Devil instrumental in the exchange of power and motivation of the witch. This is again an ethnocentric view. Native American witchcraft is an ancient tradition and has nothing to do with the Christian precepts of an entity similar to the “Devil”. Part of the problem is that the early Spanish priests and explorers brought with them to North America their own ideas of witchcraft and they viewed the Indian beliefs to be nothing short of idolatry and Devil worship. Christian missionaries have continued this bias which has, unfortunately, been absorbed into academia. Of course, these biases have tainted serious research by linking any horned god to the Devil and any form of sorcery to the Judeo-Christian concepts of sorcery. One cannot state that one form of witchcraft is the same as another, or that the Native American witch is identical to the European witch of the Burning Days, or that either of these is the same as the contemporary Wiccan.

Shamans are not necessarily witches although they sometimes suffer the same fate. A medicine shaman may be killed if he fails to cure an illness. There were also evil shamans who were believed to be responsible for the affliction of a whole village but these evil shamans were not necessarily witches. Witches are predominately male although a few female witches have been known.

Generally speaking, a witch is one who exhibits a form of behavior contrary to the normally accepted view of what is “normal”. Witchcraft then is one explanation for those things that happen that are unusual, unexpected and unexplainable. Normally witchcraft is an act performed by an evil individual to cause harm to another. However, there are distinctions where someone may use the same powers and rituals to perform good acts and these persons are referred to as “white witches” or cunning men and wise women. It is doubtful if such distinctions kept these people from torture and horrible deaths, however.
In Dartmoor, England witches had two specific abilities. Ruth E. St. Leger-Gordon defined these abilities as:

“1. The reputed ability to ill-wish, or curse, or over-look with the evil-eye which is Black Witchcraft.

“2. A genuine an natural gift of healing, ‘blessing’ or ‘charming’ away certain minor ailments, an ability which is the wholly beneficient ‘White Witchcraft’.” (7)

St. Leger-Gordon notes, however, “Logically, of course, the same person is able to practice both forms of the craft as occasion demands.” (8)

Witches are believed to be inherently evil in their nature, which is what separates them from shamans who may have similar powers—although some shamans do in fact, become witches. It is commonly believed among the Kawaiisu Indians of the Great Basin that witches, called pohagadi, may cause children to have dreams that may, eventually, cause the child to become a witch. If the parents suspect that their child is so influenced by these dreams, they do all in their power to disrupt the dream cycle so that the dreams are not able to take hold. Anthropologist Maurice Zigmond wrote, “an elderly informant pointed out that, once a witch reaches adulthood, there is no way of removing his evil potentialities.”(9)

The perception of witchcraft among Native American cultures is very similar to the perception of witchcraft and witches in other cultures around the world. The inherent fear of the witch and the evil that surrounds him or her usually creates its own evil. Bad things that happen in society are blamed on others. This was so bad among the Cherokee in the early 19th century that the murder of someone accused of witchcraft or the very accusation that someone was a witch resulted in severe punishments. (10)

Witchcraft may, in fact, be a natural part of social evolution. After all, witches and witchcraft have been reported from ancient Babylon to Rome and Greece, Africa, Polynesia, Asia, Europe and the Americas. How the witch and witchcraft are perceived make an interesting study, however. Vance Randolph noted “A solid citizen of Little Rock, Arkansas, contends that every good Christian must believe in witchcraft. ‘It’s just like John Wesley said,’ he told me, ‘if you give up witches you might as well throw away your Bible!’ The Bible, he went on, not only requires a belief in witches but also demands that they be persecuted.” (11) It may be that the Christian perception of the witch may have created the stereotype and profoundly altered ancient reality. Perhaps those “witches” so often described in indigenous cultures weren’t really witches but something else altogether, but the term was attached as it was convenient.

An example of a supposed “witch” that has its basis in Christianity and not in an ancient Pagan order is that recorded in Charles LeLand’s book, Aradia: Gospel of the Witches. LeLand was a 19th century folklorist who stated that he had met and befriended Madallana, a witch of the Italian strega or “old religion.” Madallana was able to obtain and present a copy of an ancient “Gospel” of the Italian witches to LeLand, which was the basis for his work. LeLand wrote “…there are few indeed who will care whether there is a veritable Gospel of the Witches, apparently of extreme antiquity, embodying the belief in a strange counter-religion which has held its own from pre-historic times to the present day.” (12) The only problem with LeLand’s premise is that the “gospel” is full of Christian/Catholic terminology. “Lucifer”, “God the Father”, as well as the “Fairy Queen”, “Red Goblin”, the “Devil”, and “Cain” are interspersed throughout the text. It is obvious that this work is that of a Neo-Pagan Revivalist, mixing Christianity and classical Mythology with a perceived idea of what ancient pagan religions were, rather than a true text of ancient witchcraft. A text, I might add, hardly from any pre-historic era. Unfortunately, many New Age witches hold LeLand’s work to be bonafide history rather than the Victorian Romanticism it is.

LeLand never produced any documentation of the Aradia text and he was known, as Rosemary Guiley wrote, ”to have embellished his other folklore accounts…” (13)

In this regard, Christianity has played a central part in the creation and perpetuation of the stereotypic image of the witch. Randolph’s account of the Christian from the Ozarks rings true. “If you give up witches you may as well throw away your Bible.”

The concept of the witch eventually “evolved” from an individual who attempted to utilize supernatural powers and contacts with the spirit world to make sense of the mysteries of the world and the universe to an individual who knowingly joined with the Devil to wield powers of evil for evils sake. This “evolution” is purely due to the importance that the Christian church placed on witchcraft as a way to force the Christian religion into the lives of the peasantry. It was also a way to prove the existence of the Judeo-Christian god for surely, if evil and the Devil existed then certainly, God did too.

NOTES

1. Kieckhefer, Richard. Magic in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1989, 196.
2. Darling, J. Andrew. “Mass Inhumation and the Execution of Witches in the American Southwest”, in American Anthropologist, Vol. 100, No. 3, 1999, 734.
3. Simmons, Marc. Witchcraft in the Southwest: Spanish & Indian Supernaturalism on the Rio Grande. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 1974, xi.
4. Gadon, Elinor W. The Once & Future Goddess. San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers 1989, 235.
5. Simpson, Jacqueline and Steve Roud. A Dictionary of English Folklore. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2001, 395.
6. Basso, Keith H. Western Apache Witchcraft. Anthropological Papers of the University of Arizona Number 15. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press 1969, 33.
7. St. Leger-Gordon, Ruth E. Witchcraft and Folklore of Dartmoor. New York: Bell Publishing Company 1972, 133.
8. Ibid.
9. Zigmond, Maurice L. “The Supernatural World of the Kawaiisu” in Thomas C. Blackburn (ed.) Flowers of the Wind: Papers on Ritual, Myth, and Symbolism in California and the Southwest. Socorro: Ballena Press 1977, 59-95.
10. Mooney, James. Myths of the Cherokee. New York: Dover Publications Inc. 1995, 138 (Originally published 1900).
11. Randolph, Vance. Ozark Magic and Folklore. New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 1964, 264. A reprint of the Columbia University Press edition published in 1947.
12. LeLand, Charles G. Aradia: Gospel of the Witches. Custer: Phoenix Publishing, Inc. 1996, x. A reprint of the 1899 edition.
13. Guiley, Rosemary Ellen. The Encyclopedia of Witches and Withcraft, 2nd Edition. New York: Checkmark Books 1999, 12








     

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