The Modern Guide to Witchcraft (4 page)

Witches have a rich cultural heritage that they continue celebrating today. Although witchcraft’s origins are hidden in antiquity, most likely, people around the world have practiced magick and witchcraft in some form since the beginning of time. Anthropologists speculate that Stonehenge may have been a sacred site where magick rituals were performed thousands of years ago. The famous paintings on the Trois Frères cave walls in Montesquieu-Avantès, France, which date back 15,000 years, may have been put there by Paleolithic peoples as a form of sympathetic magick—by painting these images, cave dwellers sought the aid of spirit animals to help them succeed at hunting.

Today contemporary witches are reviving interest in the Craft. As you join their leagues, you’ll become part of the new wave of magicians who are putting a modern spin on an ancient worldview. How exciting is that?

Magick and witchcraft go hand in hand. Although not all magick falls under the broad heading of witchcraft, all witches practice magick in one form or another. At the dawn of the human race, when people first came to understand cause and effect, they began trying to explain the mysteries of earth and the heavens. If a wind blew down a tree and hurt someone, the wind might be thought of as “angry” or considered to be a spirit that needed appeasement. In this manner, people began to anthropomorphize aspects of nature. They imagined that gods and goddesses, spirits and demons, and all sorts of fantastic creatures lived in the unseen realms, where they governed everything that happened on earth. Magickal thinking was born.

As civilizations developed, each brought a new flavor and tone to magickal ideas. One of these ideas was that the universe is a huge web made up of all kinds of invisible interlocking strands. Everything is connected to everything else. If humans could learn to influence one of these connections, they could affect the whole web.

At first, these attempts to influence the world were very simple: one action to produce one result. The action usually corresponded symbolically to the desired result. For example, let’s say someone wanted to bind an angry spirit and limit its power. He might tie a knot in a piece of rope and imagine that he’d caught the spirit in that knot. If the action worked, or seemed to work, it was used again. Eventually a tradition developed.

Over time, attempts at guiding “fate” became more elaborate. Our ancestors delegated the tasks of influencing the universe to a few wise individuals, and elevated them to positions of authority in their community. They called these wise men and women shamans, priests and priestesses, magi, or witches. Their job included performing spells and rituals to coerce the ancestors, powerful spirits, or deities into doing their bidding. Although these witches all performed essentially the same basic functions—healing the sick, encouraging crops to grow, predicting the future—how they went about it depended on the culture and era in which they lived.

In early Celtic communities, for example, the Druids served as seers, healers, advisors, astrologers, and spiritual leaders. Their power was second only to the clan’s chieftain. An ancient Norse text called the
Poetic Edda
, written in the tenth century, uses the term
völva
to describe a wise woman who did prophecies, cast spells, and performed healing for the community.

Modern witches no longer hand over magickal authority to a select few. Today, everyone is welcome to explore these paths and practices, not just an elite group. Using your personal power is encouraged. Each one of us has a special talent or skill, and ultimately that gift can benefit everyone. Every individual brings something unique to the Craft, which has caused the field of magick to evolve and expand greatly.

It’s been said that history is written by the victors. History is imperfect and is often clouded by societal, personal, or political agendas; therefore, the study of magickal history is no easy task. To trace the course of events from ancient times to the modern day, let’s begin by examining the early practice of witchcraft in Europe.

Not everyone agrees about the evolution of witchcraft in Europe. Some historians believe it developed out of the old fertility cults that worshipped a mother goddess. Others think that the idea of witchcraft was all superstition—when people could not explain an unpleasant event, they blamed it on someone whom they labeled a witch. Still other researchers say witchcraft stemmed from a wide variety of practices and customs including Paganism, Hebrew mysticism, Celtic tradition, and ancient Greek folklore.

As people traveled from one country to another, they influenced the beliefs and practices of the native culture. When the Vikings and the Romans invaded the British Isles, for example, their legends, gods, and goddesses mixed with those of the indigenous people. Traders and travelers, too, brought stories and ideas to the lands they visited. All this cross-pollination had an impact on the way witchcraft evolved.

Additionally, because most people in earlier centuries couldn’t read or write, magickal traditions were handed down through generations by oral teaching. The few literate individuals probably recorded information according to their own views. Therefore, it’s difficult to figure out what’s true and what’s fantasy regarding long-ago witchcraft.

During the eighth and ninth centuries, the powers-that-be started laying down laws against witchcraft and linking age-old practices with evil doing. As the Christian Church gained power, it attacked the “old religion,” which was based in nature and folk traditions. For example, the common people had a custom of leaving offerings for spirits—until 743, when the Synod of Rome declared it a crime. In 829, the Synod of Paris passed a decree against reciting incantations (simple verbal spells for good luck) and idolatry (worshipping the old gods and goddesses). By 900, Christian scholars were promoting the idea that the devil was leading women astray. These events helped prepare the scene for the fury of the Inquisition.

Between the 1100s and 1300s, the Church continued to hammer away at witches. Christian zealots presented a picture of witches as evil creatures who cavorted with the devil, ate children, and held wild orgies to seduce innocents. Witchcraft became a crime against God and the Church. In 1317, Pope John XXII authorized a religious court, known as the Inquisition, to go after anyone who was believed to have made a pact with the devil.

Thousands of trials proceeded. Punishments included burning, hanging, and excommunication. The interrogation process involved torturing people to get them to confess the “truth”—that is, to force them to admit to whatever the inquisitor wished—and to point a finger at other witches.

Accusing someone of witchcraft also became a bureaucratic convenience. Not only those who actually practiced the Craft were tortured, imprisoned, and killed—anyone whom the authorities disliked or feared was accused of being a witch. Conviction rates soared as many “undesirables” fell prey to the inquisitors.

The atmosphere in England was less radical than on the continent. Because Henry VIII had separated from the Catholic Church, practicing witchcraft in Britain was regarded as a civil violation, and courts handed down fewer death sentences. In part, this may have been due to the influence of John Dee, a well-known wizard who served as an advisor to Queen Elizabeth I.

The witch-hunt craze picked up speed in the sixteenth century, during the Reformation period. The public, confused by the religious changes going on, was only too willing to blame anyone whose ideas seemed “different.” If someone had a grudge against a neighbor, he could denounce her as a witch. It was the perfect environment for mass persecution.

The legal sanctions against witches became even harsher than before, and the tortures inflicted grew crueler. To force people to confess to witchcraft, inquisitors strapped them to the “rack” and pulled them apart limb by limb, crushed their hands and feet with thumbscrews and “boots,” and placed hot coals on their bare skin. If found guilty, the alleged “witches” were burned at the stake.

During the so-called “Burning Times” in Europe, which lasted from the fourteenth until the eighteenth centuries, tens of thousands and possibly millions of people (depending on which source you choose to believe) were executed as witches—most of them women and girls. So thorough were the exterminations that after Germany’s witch trials of 1585 two villages in the Bishopric of Trier were left with only one woman surviving in each.

As occurs in all tragedies, some individuals profited from the witch hunts. Payments were given to informants and witch hunters who produced victims. In some instances, male doctors benefited financially when their competitors—female midwives and herbalists—were condemned as witches. Powerful authorities confiscated the property of the victims.

It’s hard to know for certain why the witch hysteria finally subsided. Perhaps people grew weary of the violence. In England, the hunts declined after the early 1700s, when the witch statute was finally repealed. The last recorded execution occurred in Germany in 1775.

In the New World, witchcraft evolved as a patchwork quilt of beliefs and practices. Many different concepts, cultures, and customs existed side by side, sometimes overlapping and influencing one another. Each new group of immigrants brought with them their individual views and traditions. Over time, they produced a rich body of magickal thought.

Medicine men and women of the native tribes in North, Central, and South America had engaged in various forms of witchcraft and shamanism for centuries. They tapped the plant kingdom for healing purposes and to see the future. They communed with spirits, ancestors, and other nonphysical beings, seeking supernatural aid in crop growing and hunting. Like witches in other lands, these indigenous people honored Mother Earth and all her creatures. And, like magicians everywhere, they worked with the forces of nature to produce results.

When European settlers migrated to the New World, they brought their customs with them. Not all of these early immigrants were Christians. Some followed the Old Religion and sought freedom to practice their beliefs in a new land. Evidence suggests that some of these people joined Indian tribes whose ideas were compatible with their own.

The slave trade introduced the traditions of African witches to the Americas. Followers of voudon (voodoo), Santería, macumba, and other faiths carried their beliefs and rituals with them to the Caribbean and the southern states of the United States, where they continue to flourish today.

When William Griggs, the village doctor in colonial Salem Village (now Salem), Massachusetts, couldn’t heal the ailing daughter and niece of Reverend Samuel Parris, he claimed the girls had been bewitched. Thus began the infamous Salem witch hunt, which remains one of America’s great tragedies. Soon girls in Salem and surrounding communities were “crying out” the names of “witches” who had supposedly caused their illnesses.

Between June and October 1692, nineteen men and women were hung and another man was crushed to death for the crime of witchcraft. Authorities threw more than 150 other victims into prison, where several died, on charges of being in league with the devil.

Religious and political factors combined to create the witch craze in Salem. A recent smallpox epidemic and attacks by Indian tribes had left the community deeply fearful. Competition between rivals Rev. James Bayley of neighboring Salem Town (now Danvers) and Rev. Parris exacerbated the tension as both ministers capitalized on their Puritan parishioners’ fear of Satan to boost their own popularity.

The hysteria also enabled local authorities to rid the community of undesirables and dissidents. Economic interests, too, played a role in the condemnation of Salem’s “witches”—those convicted had their assets confiscated and their property was added to the town’s coffers. A number of the executed and accused women owned property and were not governed by either husbands or male relatives, which didn’t sit well with the male-dominated society of the time. Putting these independent women in their place may have been part of the motive behind the Salem witch trials.

Today, Salem commemorates the victims of the Salem Witch Trials with engraved stones nestled in a small, tree-shaded park off Derby Street, near the city’s waterfront and tourist district. Visitors can walk through the memorial and remember Salem’s darkest hour.