The true and hidden history of witches

History of witches

Witches ;One of the most representative figures of Halloween is the witch, the classic stereotype of it, of course, the old woman,full of warts, gray hair, and her typical implements such as the broom and the pot of potions. However, behind this character, there is a whole amount of information that covers practically all periods of human history, from its beginnings (including prehistoric theories) to the present day.

The witch is a portent that has accompanied us practically forever, either as a horror character, as the evil character  in fairy tales or as that rare woman in our neighborhood to whom we secretly discuss aspects of our lives so that she reveal to us our future.

Basic concepts

Witches are beings or people who can use witchcraft, which is defined in turn as a set of magical abilities that are used to cause damage. This last idea; however, it is not entirely clear, because witchcraft has had different purposes beyond causing evil or at least not directly. Skills such as divination, transformation, telekinesis, among others, are considered part of witchcraft although, per se, they should not be harmful to others.

In this sense, the negative connotation of the term witchcraft comes from the relationship that was given to Satanism in the Middle Ages, which has endured and is maintained, even though many sorcerers advocate the eradication of the evil stereotype for certain considerations. religious regarding modern witchcraft that we will see later in the section related to the phenomenon in today’s world.

The term is related to magic, which is defined as the art of producing events that go against what we consider natural acts or laws.

Magic by itself has no negative or positive connotations; it all depends on the context: if you are talking about witchcraft, satanism, occultism, etc., it goes without saying that the term is negative there; While  if you talk about fairies, fantastic creatures, magicians of the courts of the ancient kings and epic in general, there the term has positive connotations.

There may even be contexts in which the term magic has both connotations at the same time, as is the case of the Harry  Potter saga, where some wizards and witches practice white or good magic, and those who practice black magic or bad.

In such contexts, these differentiating terms are usually used, generally dichotomous, such as white-black, light-dark, angelic-demonic, good-bad magic …

The word witch, besides, is not usually exclusive to a single type of character as the classic Halloween witch could be, it can also be used to refer to healers and shamans of tribes or rural towns (in this case with the word witch, in masculine), or also to refer to the practitioners of some neo-pagan religions or cults with magical overtones such as the African or Romani religions. As for what witches do, the terms used are varied, although they are usually seen as synonyms: spells, hexes, spells, enchantments …

Magical thinking has been around almost forever

Witchcraft has probably been around since humans first formed into groups. The sense of the use of magic in ordinary people, such as the belief in the power of words and sentences, can be found in all ancient societies.

Some prehistoric works of art depict magical rites for areas of life spell, love spell, such as hunting, in addition to the usual religious rites that were dedicated to primitive deities.

Shamanism, which is about communicating with the spirit world through jobs, dreams, and meditative trance, is probably the oldest religion.

There was already witchcraft in the ancient Sumerian civilization; specifically, in Babylon began the elaborate the demonological study, because its mythology was quite rich. The Sumerians believed that the world was full of spirits and that most of them were hostile.

Each person was supposed to have a spirit that would protect him from demons and enemies, plus a diverse array of magic spells and amulets that he could use in defense against them.

In ancient Egypt, witches used their wisdom about magic amulets, spells, and concoctions to twist cosmic powers in their favor or in favor of their clients, who in this case was those belonging to the political class. Since then,  witchcraft has been used for a commercial purpose, as is often done today.

For their part, the Greeks had their own form of magic whose concept revolved around a kind of religious cult known as  Theurgy, which consisted of the practice of rituals to invoke the action of the gods and other entities belonging to the plane divine.

Another inferior form of magic was Mageia (etymological origin of the word  the magic that we use in Latin languages), which was closer to hidden witchcraft and was practiced by individuals who claimed to have knowledge and powers to help certain people or to harm their enemies.

At the end of the Golden Age, during the height of the Mycenaean Civilization, the Greek pantheon adopted the Carian goddess, Hecate, and gave her the title of goddess of witchcraft and Queen of ghosts, also giving her a tripled image  (a three-headed woman) in its iconography.

According to myth, Hecate was the daughter of two-second generation titans, Asteria and Perses, and obtained her powers as a gift from Zeus.  Zeus is one of the three major Olympian gods.

In pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican civilizations, shamanism had an important weight. Religious beliefs revolved around  powerful deities who controlled natural phenomena and aspects of life itself and shamans were the people chosen  as the bridge between the supernatural and incomprehensible world and the earth plane.

One of the most widely used  practices in these civilizations was a human sacrifice as a payment for blood for the gods to provide prosperity in economic activity, although there was also a long tradition of making amulets and healing.

Some argue, however, that the real roots of witchcraft and magic as we envision them today stem from the Celts,a diverse group of Iron Age tribal societies that flourished between 700 BC and 100 AD in various areas of Europe.

Just as great metalworkers and magnificent artists themselves, some Celtic peoples were also profusely spiritual; their religion was pantheistic, which means that they related the divinity with certain phenomena of nature.

Around 350 BC, a priestly class known as the Druids had been developed who was in charge of predicting the future, healing, and some social aspects such as basic education and the law.

The Celts’ religious beliefs and practices, their love for the land, and their veneration for trees

(the oak in particular) became what was later known as paganism, although this label is also used for polytheistic  beliefs. of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. For centuries, mixes between Celtic beliefs and rituals from  other Indo-European groups gave rise to magical practices (potion making and spells) that were collectively known  as the witchcraft of the medieval period.

Magic in the Middle Ages

The earliest Christian traditions related to saints and divine relics gave rise to many forms of amulets that were allusive to magic related to early Christianity, which was used to attract and convert pagans. However, in the 5th century AD, the influential Christian theologian Saint Augustine of Hippo affirmed that everything related to magic was an invention of the devil to guide humanity away from Christian truth; He also argued that neither Satan nor the witches could have any real supernatural power or might be able to effectively invoke magic. of any kind, that it was a  “mistake of the heathen” to believe in any other supernatural power than that of God. Therefore, if witches were given as powerless, the Church saw no need to deal with their spells or bother to track them. In fact, it was like this for a long time:

Between the 8th and 9th centuries several characters dismissed their own belief in witches, such as the influential Bishop Agobardo de Lyon repudiated the belief that witches could rain, fly at night or change their shape;

There was also Saint Boniface, who said that one’s belief in witches was anti-Christian. For his part, Charlemagne, King of the Franks prohibited the burning of the supposed witches because he considered it a pagan practice.

But at the same time, the Church was beginning to influence civil law to create laws against witchcraft and to  establish the Latin word “maleficium”, which originally meant doing evil, giving derogatory and satanic connotations  to magical practices.

Magic became a crime against society and heresy against God. The Leptinnes Council of 744 drew up a list of  superstitions prohibiting sacrifices on behalf of the saints and requiring the renunciation of demon worship (referring to the ancient Norse gods’ Thor and Odin) as part of the Christian baptism ceremony (remember that there was once a relationship between Norse mythology and Christianity when the latter came to northern Europe).

In medieval tradition, the Tempestarii was a magician who dwelt among ordinary people and who had the power to create or prevent storms at will. Anyone reputed as such was the object of respect, fear, or hatred in rural areas.

Church authorities credited the belief by saying that God allowed the devil and witches to carry out these acts as a punishment for evil in the world. Still, the Church banned superstitious remedies against witchcraft such as storm-dissipating  spells and protective amulets, and brought before them prescribed prayer, the sacraments, and the invocation of the name of God.

Before the 13th and 14th centuries, witchcraft, beyond what people believed, had come to mean a set of beliefs and practices that included spell healing, ointments, and concoctions; he barely ventured into the supernatural through divination and clairvoyance.

In the 13th century, some cults related to pagan beliefs and rituals became directly satanic. Around the year 1208,  Pope Innocent III began a persecution of a group of religious heretics are known as the Cathars, who believed in a universe  where God and Satan were entities of equal power that were at odds; In that sense, God had created the essence and the heavens, while the Devil had created the Earth and the the material world, a belief similar to that of the 1st century Gnostics. The Church discredited the Cathars by spreading stories about Devil worship rituals and this gave rise to  a series of conflicts that led to a crusade against heresy.

The end of this conflict came with the extermination of practically all the Cathars in 1229. The Inquisition also originated from this, whose objective was to search for and punish the few remaining Cathar heretics and compel them through torture to change their beliefs or else murder them.

Pope Gregory IX assigned the Dominican Order the duty to lead the Inquisition, it could act on its behalf and with full authority, but it was not until 1252 when Pope  Innocent IV expressly authorized the use of torture among the accused. Over time, both Christian churches and secular (non-religious) organizations worked together to persecute witches.

Also in the 13th century, the leading Christian theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas argued that the world was full  of evil and dangerous demons who were trying to lead people down the path of temptation, and thus began to associate witchcraft with sex.

Harper Harrison

Harper Harrison is a reporter for The Hear UP. Harper got an internship at the NPR and worked as a reporter and producer. harper has also worked as a reporter for the Medium. Harper covers health and science for The Hear UP.