The Witch

The following is an outline for an upcoming Adult Educational Form at St Peter’s Lutheran, tracing the chapters of Ronald Hutton’s latest work, The Witch. As you can see, it is rather bare-bones, meant simply to accompany a fuller oral presentation. If you’d like to know more, by all means, buy the book. It is superlative.

THE WITCH: A HISTORY OF FEAR

from Ancient Times to the Present

by Ronald Hutton

1. The Global Context

Characteristics of the Witch:

(1.) The Witch causes harm by uncanny means: black magic.
(2.) The Witch harms neighbors and kin: an internal threat.
(3.) The Witch is not unique; he or she works within a tradition.
(4.) The Witch is evil, and thus accorded strong social hostility.
(5.) The Witch can and should be resisted: prosecution, persecution.

While this pattern is not universal, it is global. Witches are found around the world. Some societies don’t believe in magic; some believe in it but aren’t concerned.

2. The Ancient Context

Ancient Egyptians believed in heka, the animating and controlling force of the universe. Anyone could use heka, gods or mortals. Magic in itself was morally neutral. Mesopotamians had greater respect for gods, fear of demons, and interest in astrology. Demons caused all hardships, and ritual action was necessary for protection. Zoroastrians of Iran developed this into a strong dualism of good and evil, light and dark. Hittite government had a monopoly on magic. Israel developed monotheism.

Fifth-century BC Greece distinguished magic from religion, with hostility to the former. The lines between medicine, drugs, poison, and magic were always blurry. Rome followed Grecian attitudes, with an added political dimension: black magic and poison were feared as weapons of assassination. Also: the “evil eye.”

The Night-Demonesses!

Lilim, lamia, striges, owl-witches: inhuman, nocturnal, cross-cultural, predatory women. Romans were the first to think these might be transformed witches. This belief migrated northward into Germany: nocturnal, cannibalistic witches. Here we see the blending of many traditions, and of human with nonhuman monsters.

3. The Shamanic Context

“Shamanism” is a term invented by Western scholars, from northern Eurasian tradition. A shaman enters a trance to send his or her spirit out of body into the heavens. This usually involves a public performance, costume, music, &c. We read a lot about this in the Norse Sagas, as Vikings encounter Finns and Lapps and the like.

4. Ceremonial Magic—The Egyptian Legacy?

Egyptians had no taboo against magic, nor fear of witches. The Romans had both. When Rome took over Egypt, theurgy and magical papyri became counterculture. Graeco-Egyptian ceremonial magic entered Jewish, Christian, and Arabian practice. Romans viewed magic as foreign and impious. Christians set miracles apart. Ceremonial magicians defended themselves as educated, pious, and male: not witches. The “major circle” protected them: remember The Testament of Solomon.

5. The Hosts of the Night

The Wild Hunt is a band of night-roving ghosts or spirits led by a pagan god or goddess. But the Wild Hunt was invented by Jacob Grimm, pasting a folklore composite. The “Furious Army” originates in 13th-century Christian speculation about purgatory: wandering ghosts who roam the night, encountering the living.

The “Followers of the Lady” originated in the 10th century, possibly a pagan holdover. A Good Lady or ladies visits houses, where food has been left out for her. When asleep, women’s spirits could leave their bodies to join the Good Lady in fighting evil. Who was she—Diana, Herodias, the Fates, Holda, Perchta, Epona? Holda just means “good,” and Perchta is a literal embodiment of the Epiphany holiday. We have no evidence of a surviving pagan goddess cult. (Livonian Wolf-Walkers!)

6. What the Middle Ages Made of the Witch

Witchcraft was a capital crime under the pagan Roman Empire (and many others). Christian attitudes toward magic and witchcraft were hostile yet typical. Belief in striges or the Good Lady was dismissed as fantasy or delusion.

Things change around AD 1300, when ceremonial magic comes back from the Crusades. After a century of wrestling with the incorporation of magic into orthodoxy, complex ceremonial magic was finally denounced as demonic. This was also an age when heresies arose and were denounced as satanic by the Church. Large-scale heresy and ceremonial magic were conflated with serving the devil.

1424: The Birth of the Satanic Witch

Aneu Valley, Catalonia: local count rallied men against those who accompanied bruxas (striges) at night to steal and eat children, worship Satan, and poison adults. This idea—or confluence of ideas—spread like wildfire throughout Europe. It was all the monsters feared in one: Lilith, cannibal, heretic, Satanist, evil magician!

7. The Early Modern Patchwork

The witch-hunt is an early modern invention, with most executions from 1560 to 1640: a “scientific experiment” to purify society in a time of deep religious division. Witch-hunting was weakest wherever the Inquisition was strongest: Spain and Italy. Under torture, witches confessed to flying on beasts or via baby-fat ointments. There probably were at least some actual Satanists, as there are today.

Celtic areas were less worried about witches, as magic came from faeries, not devils. Witches could control animals, become animals, or have spirit-animals. But the English alone appear to have associated each witch with an animal familiar.