We explain what witchcraft is, the first stories that mention it, the witch hunt and its representation in current folklore.
What is witchcraft?
Witchcraft is the set of beliefs and ritual practices attributed to witches (and less frequently, to witches), that is, to individuals supposedly endowed with supernatural powers as a result of arcane or hidden knowledge, or of pacts with demonic entities.
Witchcraft is a broad and heterogeneous category, condemned by the religions traditional and linked to paganism. It has been around since Antiquity, although not necessarily with the same name, nor understood in the same way as today.
It is difficult to know when the word "witch" and its derivative "witchcraft" began to be used, since its origin is unknown and there are reasons to think that it is a word with pre-Roman etymology, perhaps Celtic or Germanic. In any case, the first documented record of the word, written as “bruxa”, Dates from Europe from the thirteenth century.
Even so, the figure of the fortune tellers, sorceresses or enchanters dates back to the Old age and appears in numerous literary texts. For example, in the Odyssey The sorceress Circe appears, an inhabitant of the island of Eea, who through potions turned her enemies into animals or made them forget their home; and in other works the sorceress Medea, Jason's wife, who had knowledge of magic.
There are similar accounts in the Biblical Old Testament, in which King Saul consults the "witch of Endor." Also records of the practice of the "evil eye" by witches and witches in Ancient Egypt and other civilizations Mediterranean and African, in which talismans were common to prevent it.
In these stories, characteristic features were already attributed to witches, such as knowledge of potions and herbs, the gift of metamorphosis into animals, necromancy, the ability to fly (on brooms or turned into vultures), ingestion of food. strangers, usually parts of lizards, bats or insects, or even cannibalism (especially the consumption of young children) or ritual sacrifice.
During the end of the Middle Ages and beginnings of Renaissance witchcraft occupied a prominent place in the imaginary of the West, since the religious institutions of the Christianity were actively engaged in the search and persecution of witches, especially through the Holy Office of the Inquisition.
Accused of heresy, demonic pacts and the practice of the dark arts (divination, necromancy, etc.), many women throughout Europe and America were subjected to torture and public executions, such as being burned alive at the stake.
Important records remain of such witch hunts, which began in the thirteenth century and their most frenzied moments in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. For example:
- Directorium inquisitorium from 1376, it is the manual of inquisitors of Nicolás Aymerich (1320-1399). In it three forms of witchcraft are distinguished, based on their supposed demonic practices.
- Malleus maleficarum dated 1487, it is an exhaustive Renaissance treatise on witchcraft.
- Demonomanie des sorciers, from 1580, by the French Jean Bodin.
The protestant reformationFar from putting an end to such practices, he fervently assumed them. It is estimated that in southern Germany alone some 3,230 "witches" were burned, between 1560 and 1670, and in Scotland only about 4400 between 1590 and 1680.
Just with the Scientific revolution and the advent of the Illustration The Christian obsession with witchcraft lost its intensity, and passed rather to the realm of folklore and traditions popular, even childish.
This is how witchcraft comes to the present day. Today witches are part of the imaginary of fairy tales and peasant folklore. However, there are still religious groups that still accuse practitioners of other cults of witchcraft, especially non-Western religions (such as the Yoruba or other African ones), or those who practice neopaganism, through cults such as Wicca or the neodruidism.
Follow with: Heresy