Related Research Articles
Witchcraft, as most commonly understood in both historical and present-day communities, is the use of alleged supernatural powers of magic. A witch is a practitioner of witchcraft. Traditionally, "witchcraft" means the use of magic or supernatural powers to inflict harm or misfortune on others, and this remains the most common and widespread meaning. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, "Witchcraft thus defined exists more in the imagination of contemporaries than in any objective reality. Yet this stereotype has a long history and has constituted for many cultures a viable explanation of evil in the world." The belief in witchcraft has been found in a great number of societies worldwide. Anthropologists have applied the English term "witchcraft" to similar beliefs in occult practices in many different cultures, and societies that have adopted the English language have often internalised the term.
The cunning folk in Britain were professional or semi-professional practitioners of magic in Britain, active from the medieval period through the early 20th century. As cunning folk, they practised folk and low magic – although often combined with elements of "high" or ceremonial magic – which they learned through the study of grimoires. Primarily using spells and charms as a part of their profession, they were most commonly employed to use their magic to combat malevolent witchcraft, to locate criminals, missing persons or stolen property, for fortune telling, for healing, for treasure hunting and to influence people to fall in love. Belonging "to the world of popular belief and custom", the cunning folk's magic has been defined as being "concerned not with the mysteries of the universe and the empowerment of the magus [as ceremonial magic usually is], so much as with practical remedies for specific problems." However, other historians have noted that in some cases, there was apparently an "experimental or 'spiritual' dimension" to their magical practices, something which was possibly shamanic in nature.
A witch bottle is a apotropaic magical item used as protection against witchcraft. They are described in historical sources from England and the United States. The earliest surviving mention is from 17th-century England.
European witchcraft is a multifaceted historical and cultural phenomenon that unfolded over centuries, leaving a mark on the continent's social, religious, and legal landscapes. The roots of European witchcraft trace back to classical antiquity when concepts of magic and religion were closely related, and society closely integrated magic and supernatural beliefs. Ancient Rome, then a pagan society, had laws against harmful magic. In the Middle Ages, accusations of heresy and devil worship grew more prevalent. By the early modern period, major witch hunts began to take place, partly fueled by religious tensions, societal anxieties, and economic upheaval. Witches were often viewed as dangerous sorceresses or sorcerers in a pact with the Devil, capable of causing harm through black magic. A feminist interpretation of the witch trials is that misogynist views of women led to the association of women and malevolent witchcraft.
Dummy, the Witch of Sible Hedingham was the pseudonym of an unidentified elderly man who was one of the last people to be accused of witchcraft in England in the 19th century. He died after being beaten and thrown into a river by witch-hunters.
The Folklore Society (FLS) is a registered charity under English law based in London, England for the study of folklore. It shares premises with the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.
Neopagan witchcraft, sometimes referred to as The Craft, is an umbrella term for some neo-pagan traditions that include the attempted practice of magic. These traditions began in the mid-20th century, and many were influenced by the witch-cult hypothesis; a now-rejected theory that persecuted witches in Europe had actually been followers of a surviving pagan religion. The largest and most influential of these movements was Wicca. Some other groups and movements describe themselves as "Traditional Witchcraft" to distinguish themselves from Wicca.
The Samlesbury witches were three women from the Lancashire village of Samlesbury – Jane Southworth, Jennet Bierley, and Ellen Bierley – accused by a 14-year-old girl, Grace Sowerbutts, of practising witchcraft. Their trial at Lancaster Assizes in England on 19 August 1612 was one in a series of witch trials held there over two days, among the most infamous in English history. The trials were unusual for England at that time in two respects: Thomas Potts, the clerk to the court, published the proceedings in his The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster; and the number of the accused found guilty and hanged was unusually high, ten at Lancaster and another at York. All three of the Samlesbury women were acquitted.
Cunning folk, also known as folk healers or wise folk, were practitioners of folk medicine, helpful folk magic and divination in Europe from the Middle Ages until the 20th century. Their practices were known as the cunning craft. Their services also included thwarting witchcraft. Although some cunning folk were denounced as witches themselves, they made up a minority of those accused, and the common people generally made a distinction between the two. The name 'cunning folk' originally referred to folk-healers and magic-workers in Britain, but the name is now applied as an umbrella term for similar people in other parts of Europe.
Anton Erkoreka is a Basque historian of medicine and an ethnographer. He is director of the Basque Museum of the History of Medicine and Science, located at the University of the Basque Country. His areas of specialization include the history of diseases, in particular the Spanish flu pandemic, folk medicine, such as the evil eye and the study of human populations.
Enchanted Feminism: The Reclaiming Witches of San Francisco is an anthropological study of the Reclaiming Wiccan community of San Francisco. It was written by the Scandinavian theologian Jone Salomonsen of the California State University, Northridge and first published in 2002 by the Routledge.
The Witchcraft Act 1735 was an Act of the Parliament of the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1735 which made it a crime for a person to claim that any human being had magical powers or was guilty of practising witchcraft. With this, the law abolished the hunting and executions of witches in Great Britain. The maximum penalty set out by the Act was a year's imprisonment.
The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic is an archaeological study of the material evidence for ritual and magical practices in Europe, containing a particular emphasis on London and South East England. It was written by the English archaeologist Ralph Merrifield, the former deputy director of the Museum of London, and first published by B.T. Batsford in 1987.
Beyond the Witch Trials: Witchcraft and Magic in Enlightenment Europe is an edited volume edited by the historians Owen Davies and Willem de Blécourt. It was first published by Manchester University Press in 2004. It consists of ten essays on the continued practice of magic and the belief in witchcraft in Europe during the European Enlightenment after the end of the witch trials in the early modern period. It was accompanied by Witchcraft Continued: Popular Magic in Modern Europe, dealing with the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, also published by Manchester University Press in 2004.
Concealed shoes hidden in the fabric of a building have been discovered in many European countries, as well as in other parts of the world, since at least the early modern period. Independent researcher Brian Hoggard has observed that the locations in which these shoes are typically found – in chimneys, under floors, above ceilings, around doors and windows, in the roof – suggest that some may have been concealed as magical charms to protect the occupants of the building against evil influences such as demons, ghosts and witches. Others may have been intended to bestow fertility on a female member of the household, or been an offering to a household deity.
In early modern Scotland, in between the early 16th century and the mid-18th century, judicial proceedings concerned with the crimes of witchcraft took place as part of a series of witch trials in Early Modern Europe. In the late middle age there were a handful of prosecutions for harm done through witchcraft, but the passing of the Witchcraft Act 1563 made witchcraft, or consulting with witches, capital crimes. The first major issue of trials under the new act were the North Berwick witch trials, beginning in 1590, in which King James VI played a major part as "victim" and investigator. He became interested in witchcraft and published a defence of witch-hunting in the Daemonologie in 1597, but he appears to have become increasingly sceptical and eventually took steps to limit prosecutions.
In Ireland, England, Wales, and the Scandinavian Peninsula, horse skulls have been found concealed in the structures of buildings, usually under the foundation or floor. Horse skulls have also been found in buildings in the United States, although in far fewer numbers. As part of the larger folk tradition of concealing objects in structures, horse skulls are related to concealed shoes, dried cats, and witch bottles.
The great Scottish witch hunt of 1649–50 was a series of witch trials in Scotland. It is one of five major hunts identified in early modern Scotland and it probably saw the most executions in a single year.
In some European cultures it was customary to place the dried or desiccated body of a cat inside the walls of a newly built home to ward off evil spirits or as a good luck charm. It was believed that the cats had a sixth sense and that putting a cat in the wall was a blood sacrifice so the animal could use psychic abilities to find and ward off unwanted spirits. Although some accounts claim the cats were walled in alive, examination of recovered specimens indicates post-mortem concealment in most cases.
Aleks Pluskowski is a Professor of Archaeology at the University of Reading. His areas of research include the environmental archaeology of medieval Europe, especially zooarchaeology, ecology, biodiversity and human-animal relations.
References
- 1 2 "Interview with Owen Davies, author of "Paganism: A Very Short Introduction" | Paganism". The Wild Hunt. 20 September 2011. Retrieved 16 April 2021.
- ↑ "Professor Owen Davies - Research Database - University of Hertfordshire". researchprofiles.herts.ac.uk. Retrieved 9 April 2021.
- ↑ "Ronald Hutton - Hocus Pocus". Literary Review. Retrieved 17 April 2021.
- ↑ "occult ebooks archive". www.occultebooks.com. Retrieved 9 April 2021.
- ↑ Davies, Owen (1995). The decline in the popular belief in witchcraft & magic (Ph.D. thesis). University of Lancaster.
- ↑ "Owen Davies - Publications - Research Database - University of Hertfordshire". researchprofiles.herts.ac.uk. Retrieved 10 April 2021.
- ↑ njc10. "Harnessing the Power of the Criminal Corpse — University of Leicester". www2.le.ac.uk. Retrieved 9 April 2021.
- ↑ "People". Inner Lives. 9 December 2015. Retrieved 9 April 2021.
- ↑ "Bottles concealed and revealed: examining the phenomena of stone and glass 'witch bottles' and their concealment in mid to late 17th-century England | Heritage 2020". www.heritage2020.net. Retrieved 9 April 2021.
- ↑ "MA Folklore Studies". www.herts.ac.uk. Retrieved 10 April 2021.
- ↑ George, Sam (4 July 2020). "The Folklore Society Announces a New President". Open Graves, Open Minds. Retrieved 9 April 2021.
