WITCHCRAFT

WITCHERY HERE AND EVERYWHERE

In the 1650s one of thousands of witches was said to be operating around Shepton Mallet, England. Jane Brooks once called on the young boy Richard Jones. Giving him a bewitched apple, the boy began suffering fits, including flying over walls. Soon reported for witchcraft, Jane was hanged in March 1658 after being found guilty at Chard assizes.
The above is a classic example of witchcraft, one of the darkest of supposed supernatural dark forces. However, not all witches were said to be this malevolent. For instance, John Tatterson went to the Yorkshire witch Ann Greene to be cured of pains in the ear. The year was 1654, and Ann took off her garter and passed it three times over John’s ear. The pains immediately disappeared, and so happy was John that he immediately went to the authorities concerning Ann’s witchcraft.
Cases of witchcraft were still going strong well into the l9th century. For instance, during a case for assault in Norwich in 1843, a Mr and Mrs Curtis testified that a Mrs Bell had lit a candle, stuck in pins and uttered a curse, following which Mrs Curtis suffered paralysis.
Witches often had helpers in the form of animal familiars. During the famed Chelmsford Witch Trial of 1566, Elizabeth Francis spoke of her familiar - a cat called Sathan. To do a deed for her the cat required a drop of blood from her pricked finger. Also among their arsenal of malevolence was the flying broomstick, upon which they would ride off to Sabbats where they would kiss the Devil’s anus and indulge in devil worship.
The broomstick angle almost certainly comes from the practice of women leaving their broom outside the front door when they went out. Such stereotypes of the witch were validated by the likes of Shakespeare and the Brothers Grimm, offering the idea of a witch as an old crone with pointy hat and evil laugh. When infact, witchcraft. or wicca as it is known today, had nothing to do with the Devil. The Devil was a Christian creation.

EVERY WITCH WAY YOU CAN

Witchcraft seems to have been a remembrance of the old pagan ways, often practiced by village wise women. In 1921 the anthropologist Margaret Murray attempted a theory to argue witchcraft was a survival of the old fertility cults. This may well be true. But the hint of organisations suggested by Murray is incorrect. The passing down the generations of old knowledge may have been on-going, but there is no suggestion of an actual formal religion involved. As to the validity of this knowledge, one old idea was to chew willow bark to relieve pain. Willow bark contains the main ingredient of aspirin.
Today, witchcraft has an equally powerful stereotype as the old crone. This is of naked women dancing around in circles in forests. Known as going ’skyclad’, this is, in fact, just one tradition, created in the 1960s by witch, Gerald Gardner, emphasising the sexual element of paganism and allying with the 6Os free love, hippy movement.
With such a powerful tradition of witchcraft existing throughout the world we must ask an obvious question. Did witchcraft exist? To the l4th century Bishop of Ossory from Kilkenny, Ireland, there was no doubt it did. His investigations of Dame Alice Kyteler had forced her to flee, leaving her maid, Petronilla, to be burned at the stake. Alice’s crimes were that she did witchcraft on three previous husbands, all of whom died, and a fourth had become ill.
Was Dame Alice a witch? Almost certainly not. Rather, she was a social climber through poisoning, similar to some women convicted of murder today. Indeed, many supposed cases of witchcraft can today be seen as cases of crime. But in the days of witchcraft, Godly people could not commit crimes without the aid of the Devil. Further, an inbred misogyny can account for many cases of witchcraft with jumped up charges involved.

WITCHHUNT - THE BURNING TIMES

Accusations could also be made in order to increase the power and respectability of certain landowners. In addition, simple feuds could often end in accusations of witchcraft; to say nothing of bad harvests and livestock infections, all of which had to have a supernatural cause, with the local mad woman being the usual suspect.
Many were the reasons for the witchhunts which erupted in Europe during the Middle Ages - witchhunts which became epidemics after the issuing of a papal Bull against witchcraft by Pope Innocent VIII in 1484. This led the theologians Jacob Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer to write their infamous ‘Malleus Maleficarum’ known as the hammer of witches, giving guidelines for witch persecutions.
Estimates of the number of witches burned at the stake or hanged during this period vary between a quarter of a million and nine million. In Britain, Matthew Hopkins gained notoriety in 17th century East Anglia. Known as the Witchfinder General, he dispatched at least a hundred suspected witches following the trial by water. Tied, a suspect was thrown into a river. If they floated, they were witches, if they sank, they were innocent.
Hopkins’ motive was obvious. Local leaders paid him to find witches. Other witchhunters did it on theological grounds, and were much more sadistic. The Jesuit, Peter Binsfeld, sent nearly seven thousand to the stake, his method of torture extracting confessions in no time, especially if the suspect named plenty more witches - if so, their dispatch would be more humane; they would be strangled before burned.
We can see here how a culture of confession and accusation would arise, with torture ceasing once confession was made. And the vast majority of witches were found in this way.
Typical was the famed Salem witch trial of May to October 1692 in Massachusetts. Beginning with a number of children going hysterical after hearing Voodoo tales by the slave, Tituba, the girls went on to name people they didn’t like as witches.Taken into custody, these people accused others to save themselves, and before the madness was stopped, hundreds had been arrested and nineteen executed.
This says it all. A culture of hysteria and superstition, combined with a religious fervor which says witchcraft is evil are all you need for ‘evil’ witches to arise. Whereas in reality, most real witches are normal people like you and me, whose only crime is to practice a way of life that is different. However, this said, could there be a reality to the supposed dark talents of the witch?

UNDERSTANDING THE WITCH

Take the curse. does it work? If a supposed witch makes a wax effigy and sticks pins in it can it really needle you? Or is the whole subject of curse, malediction or hex simply a load of bunkum? Even if we accept curses can occur, are we dealing with supernatural forces, or can psychology be a better guide to what is going on? After all, most researchers accept that a curse, if it works, can only do so if the person knows, or at least suspects, a curse has been put on them.
A form of curse happened to me. I remember one period when I was down and I received one of those silly letters threatening bad luck if I didn’t pass it on. Over the following days I experienced a catalogue of disasters. Only when I pulled myself out of my mood did I realise that these disasters were the normal inconveniences of life.
What had happened is that I had surrounded myself with a culture of pessimism, triggered by the letter. People can be pessimistic or optimistic in life, and research has shown that your attitude can have a marked effect on the reality around you. It begins by only remembering the good things or the bad things, but in no time at all, life does seem to conspire to reflect your attitude. Psychoanalyst Carl Jung would blame synchronicty - the ability of life to throw up coincidences of a meaningful kind.
Whilst there is no proof that such an influence can occur, there is no doubt that we can create good or bad luck depending upon our ability to calculate odds. This seems to be the process behind luck - a kind of foreknowledge from reason that we are about to come a cropper. From the calculation, we optimistically move out of the way, or pessimistically go straight on to the banana skin.
The processes of a curse can be found in such a frame of mind. If you know you are being cursed, this process becomes obvious. But even if you don’t, intuition can often give you the feeling you are -especially if you live in a superstitious culture. But can a curse kill you?
Possibly. There is a phenomenon called ‘vegal inhibition’. Although we don’t know how it works, there are cases of people dying out of sheer hopelessness. Their body begins to shut down, eventually to the point of death. And what causes more hopelessness than a curse you believe will work?
Curses seem to have real power. But rather than being supernatural, the power is psychological. Which offers a perfect self-defence mechanism against a curse. Don’t believe it. For it only works if you do.

© Anthony North, November 2002

RT One