“‘Round about the caldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.—
Toad, that under cold stone,
Days and nights has thirty-one;
Swelter’d venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot!
ALL.  Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
2 WITCH.  Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg, and owlet’s wing,—
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
ALL.  Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
3 WITCH.  Scale of dragon; tooth of wolf;
Witches’ mummy; maw and gulf
Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark;
Root of hemlock digg’d i the dark;
Liver of blaspheming Jew;
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse;
Nose of Turk, and Tartar’s lips;
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver’d by a drab,—
Make the gruel thick and slab:
Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron,
For the ingrediants of our caldron.
ALL.  Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
2 WITCH.  Cool it with a baboon’s blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.”

This passage, from “Macbeth“, by Shakespeare, is one of the most famous pieces of fiction in the world involving witches.

Witchcraft holds a lot of power over all of us. It’s all over global culture, in the East and West. Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Bewitched, Harry Potter, the witches in “The Wizard of Oz“, and countless other examples, are everywhere we look. Take, for example, classic European fairy-tales and the stock character of the evil witch, such as in ‘Hansel and Gretel’, ‘Rapunzel’ and ‘Sleeping Beauty‘.

Witchcraft, both good and bad, has been with us for centuries. But what is it and where did it come from? Where do we get these visions of cauldrons, broomsticks, pointed hats, cloaks, black cats, potions and poisons, fancy Latin verses and heavy, leatherbound spellbooks written in Gothic German-style script? This is a History of Witchcraft.

Disclaimer: Reading this posting will not result in attaining magical powers, the ability to fly, read tea-leaves, turn people into toads, turn yourself into a toad, eat toads, cackle maniacally or grow warts.  

What is Witchcraft?

Witchcraft as most people think of it, is the casting of spells and the brewing of potions and flying around on broomsticks, to save on the rising cost of petrol. But where did it all come from?

Witchcraft has of course, been around for centuries. In older times, witches were seen as part and parcel of everyday life in medieval Europe. They were at the same time feared and respected. Trusted and mistrusted. But what did they do?

A History of Witchcraft

The first witches were seen as rather harmless people. They fulfilled the role in the village community of the ‘wise woman’.

A ‘Wise Woman’ had less to do with cursing people and casting spells on them or turning children into pigs, and more with helping people. A wise woman, as the name suggests, was supposed to be an older woman full of wisdom. The wise woman carried out the duties in the village such as being the community midwife for expectant mothers, treating the sick using folk-remedies, giving advice to the worried and help to the needy, and telling fortunes and generally trying to help their neighbours. In this respect, witches or ‘wise women’ were seen kind of like community aid-workers.

Such witches or wise women had been a staple of village life…indeed, a staple of EUROPEAN life…for centuries. Ever since the Anglo-Saxons and the Dark Ages. Both men and women practiced witchcraft, which believed in ties to the land, sourcing cures and medicines from plants and animals, and harnessing the powers of nature. All in all, a pretty harmless pursuit.

Evil Witches

For most of history, witches were part of everyday life. Nobody really worried about them, minded them, or paid them that much attention at all. They were like the stock characters in any village. Priest. Blacksmith. Baker. Chandler. Witch. They came as standard fare in most communities. But how did witches turn from being benevolent and wise, helpful old ladies to the wicked, scary, evil crones that most people think of them today?

Well, it depended on where you lived. Some communities really couldn’t care less about witches. If they were there…they were there. If they weren’t…meh!

Other communities, however, were highly suspicious of witches. Many people, including a king of England (James I of England, who took the throne after Queen Elizabeth died in 1603) increasingly grew to believe that witches were not the harmless creatures that most people thought of them to be, but dangerous and satanic beings who caused bad things to happen.

You have to understand that attitudes were changing towards witchcraft. It was believed more and more that witches gained their ‘supernatural’ powers from making a deal with Satan, Head Demon of Hell. Witches were able to brew ‘potions’ (which were really just home-remedies and medicines) and cast spells…supposedly, and cause horrible things to happen. That being the case, they had to be rooted out and destroyed, to protect Godfearing, religious and Christian peoples of the world. And to help them in this, King James I wrote a book.

Don’t believe me? Here it is:

 The printing is a bit hard to read, but it says (translated to modern English spelling):

“DEMONOLOGY
In form of a Dialogue
Divided into three books
Written by the High and Mighty Prince
James, by the Grace of God,
King of England, Scotland,
France and Ireland,
Defender of the Faith, etc.” 

So yes, King James did believe in witches. And this book which he wrote, “Demonology“, was designed to help people spot witches and, to use a 21st century euphemism, ‘neutralise’ them. In fact, so much did James believe in witches that there was actually a Witchraft Act in the English Parliament. It was made law the year after James took the throne, in 1604. It named the practicing of witchcraft as a capital offense, one punishable by death…in Stuart times, that generally meant burning at the stake.

Old Jimmy’s book gives us one of our most detailed insights into witchcraft, mostly because it was written with dead seriousness.

So, to deal with witches, you first needed to know what a witch looked like!

Spotting a Witch

The Water Test

According to ‘Demonology‘, there are several ways of spotting a witch. One of the easiest ways was to chuck a witch into a pond.

Right. I’ll stop here for a bit, while all the Monty Python fans suddenly remember something of vital importance, and rush off to YouTube to relive the famous “SHE’S A WITCH!” sketch, from ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail‘. Oh hell. I’ll post it here:

Although this video is supposed to be a joke (one of the best in the history of television!), people really DID believe that you could tell if someone was a witch if you chucked her…or him! (About 20% of people suspected of being witches were actually men!) into a body of water. And just like in the Monty Python sketch, if the suspect floated on the water, he or she was automatically believed to be…A WITCH!! (Burn her! Burn her!!)

What’s the rationale behind this?

Well…Water symbolises life, purity and holiness (although any body of water in medieval Europe was likely to be heavily contaminated, so there goes the whole ‘purity’ thing).

What does this mean?

Okay. You find someone who you think is a witch. You chuck the offending person into the water. The rationale was that water, being pure and holy, would reject a work of Satan (ie: a witch), so a real witch would float on top of the water.

On the other hand, if the person was pure and untainted by witchcraft, the water would accept him or her, and pull the offending person into its grasp (ie: an innocent person sinks).

Now this might seem like a stupid, catch-22 situation of “Damned if you are, and damned if you ain’t”, but it wasn’t that stupid.

If you DID sink (and were therefore, pure and innocent), they WOULD actually fish you out of the water! The object of the test wasn’t to see if you would drown! So you weren’t going to die of innocence!

The Nipple Test

I know this sounds like some sort of schoolboy prank or something, but yes, there is a nipple-test.

And yes, I do mean nipple as in teats. As in boobs.

How does it work?

Well, everyone’s got two nipples (or if you’re a chick, two breasts with teats).

This was considered normal, healthy and holy. Just as God had intended.

A witch, on the other hand, having made a deal with Satan, would have a *gasp* THIRD NIPPLE!

For this test, the accused would have to strip naked. And then everyone would start checking them out. They were looking for third nipples. These could be anywhere on your body. Chest, abdomen, arm, leg, halfway up your ass, on your back, on your hand…anywhere!

If they found one, you were labelled a witch!

How does this work out?

Well…ordinary nipples are used for feeding babies. But a third nipple must be used to feed things which aren’t babies! Such as familiars.

“What’s a Familiar?” you ask.

A familiar is a creature of darkness which the witch keeps with her. The creature (an animal) was the manifestation of an evil spirit, a sort of servant or assistant, which the Witch used to help carry out her evil and cunning plans.

The third nipple was where the witch would nurse or feed her familiar, to keep it fed and alive. A familiar was believed to take the form of an animal. This could be an insect, a bird, like a crow, or most famously…

A black cat.

Which is why witches are seen with cats.

The Test of Prayer

Another test of witchiness was to ask the accused to recite the Lord’s Prayer. By this logic, anyone who could say the Lord’s Prayer flawlessly was deemed not to be a witch.

Pretty easy, huh?

Of course, if you made ONE mistake, you were automatically believed to be a witch, because a mistake was a sign that the Devil was fighting against you and against the holy words spouting from your chief facial orifice.

Test of Bodily Imperfections

This one is also pretty easy. You get the accused to strip naked and then check their bodies for imperfections. This ranged from extra fingers or toes, warts, and other birth-defects. These were supposed to be signs of demonic collusion.

Dealing with Witches

Okay, you have a witch, you’ve tested her, you’ve interrogated her…now what?

It’s popularly believed that witches are burned at the stake. And indeed they were, but this wasn’t the only way to dispatch witches. You could also hang them or crush them to death.

Such was the fear of witches that there were national laws regulating witchcraft all over Europe. In England alone, between the mid-1500s up to the early 1700s, there were FOUR acts. The first was in 1542, and was passed by Henry VIII. The second one was passed in 1562, by Henry’s second daughter, Queen Elizabeth I. While Henry’s law dictated that witches should be put to death, the Elizabethan Witchcraft Act allowed witches to be imprisoned. An actual penalty of death would only be handed down if it could be proven that the use of witchcraft had caused the death of another person.

The next act was the 1604 act. It went against the Elizabethan act of forty-two years earlier, stating that witchcraft was punishable by death, whether or not it was used for good, or evil purposes.

The last act came in 1736. By this time, belief in actual witchcraft was beginning to wane, but the law stated that anyone who pretended to be a witch, or have witch-like powers, and used them to con people or trick them out of say, money, land or personal properties and possessions, would be breaking the law. The Witchcraft Act of 1736 remained in the books until the 1950s! It shows you how much people still believed in witches!

Which Witch is Which?

Witch trials happened all over the world. They happened TWICE in the American…colony, as it would’ve been back then…of Massachusetts. Once in the 1650s, and again, in 1692. This last one was the famous Salem Witch Trials.

Whether or not witchcraft was something people really, really, in their heart-of-hearts believed in, we’ll probably never know. But what is true is that once witch-hunting fever took hold, we can be fairly sure that some of the people dobbed in, to stand in the dock, were sent there by people happy to be rid of them.

In other words…a witch-trial was a great way to get rid of that pesky neighbour of yours. Just scream out “SHE’S A WITCH!!!!” and the mob-justice would do the rest.

Of course, in the case of Salem, since the judges allowed what was called “spectral evidence” to be admitted into court, the chance to get rid of people you really hated suddenly shot up through the roof!

What is ‘spectral evidence’?

You stand in the dock and tell everyone that you have an invisible apparition in front of you. This ‘spectre’ was supposedly the guilty spirit of the person who was the witch that was tormenting you. It is a witness that only YOU can see, only YOU can hear, only YOU can talk to…You get the idea.

“Oh come on…that can’t be real”, you say.

Oh yes it was. You could stand in the witness box and lie your ass off, and the judges would take whatever falsehoods you spouted as gospel truth, even though NOBODY could see, or hear anything.

That said, a witch-hunt, which has entered the English language to mean a senseless and blind pursuit of someone to charge them with a crime, whether they be truly guilty of it or not, was not really a witch-hunt.

Yes, they did ask a lot of loaded questions during interrogations (Not: “Are you a witch?”, but “How long have you been a witch?” etc), yes, they allowed in goofy evidence, but to get off the hook for witchcraft, it was actually fairly easy. All you had to do was stand up and say…”Yes, I am witch!”

And just like the whole make-up-your-own-evidence thing, I didn’t pull that out of the air, either. Just like spectral evidence, that also, is 100% true. One way to get off the hook was to confess to being a witch! Whereafter, the judge would slap you on the wrist for being a naughty girl, and you had to promise never to practice witchcraft again. Admitting you were a witch was a bit like religious confession of sins. If you admitted you had a problem and would face it, then there was nothing wrong.

It was when you fought the process that you got into serious strife.

The famous 1692 witch trials took place in the community of Salem Village. There were actually TWO Salems in the colony of Massachusetts in 1692. One was Salem Town. Salem Town was a sort of middle-class, business-minded community built next to Massachusetts Bay. Its inhabitants were traders, merchants and shopkeepers. Well-to-do, educated and level-headed. This peaceful and comfortable waterside community would have nothing to do with witches! They were too smart for that…

…Salem Village, located a few miles to the north, however, was a rural place. A farming village. In this quiet, tucked-away, isolated community, generally free of outside interaction. You could say that Salem Town represented the forward-thinking, sensible people, and Salem Village the backwards, and gullible country folk. And to a certain extent this was true.

Of course, not everyone who was accused of being a witch was executed. One way to get off the hook was, as mentioned earlier, to confess to being a witch. Another way was to be acquitted for lack of evidence. At the height of the Salem hysteria, over 200 people were accused of witchcraft. Of those 200, 20 were executed. Most by hanging, or by being crushed to death by heavy stones.

In the end, it was the governor of Massachusetts Colony that put an end to the Witch Trials, believing that everything had just gotten out of hand. In retrospect, the people of Salem Village realised how crazy things had been during the trials and several people later confessed to giving false testimony during the heat of the moment.

The End of Witchcraft

Although witchcraft survives today as Wicca, and as its own religion, the days of people being burned at the stake, of black cats, familiars, water-tests, warts, pointy hats, “Demonology“, and bubbling cauldrons of ooze have long since disappeared.

The 1700s killed off the traditional dark, evil reputation of the witch, and all the things that went with it. The 18th Century was an age of change. It was the Age of Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, the Age of Colonization, the Age of Discovery…and people increasingly began to realise…the Age of giving up stupid old superstitions! By the end of the 1700s, fear of witches and spells and curses had pretty much died out. Witchcraft was no-longer a capital offense and the last witch-trials were held in Europen in the 1780s. The Witchcraft Act of 1736 in England labelled anyone pretending to be a witch, or pretending to practice witchcraft, as a con-artist. It was an offense punishable by time in prison, but you weren’t likely to be burned at the stake for it!

Want to Know More?

There’s lots of documentaries about the history of witchcraft on YouTube, some are more general, some are more specific, some concentrate just on the Salem Witch Trials of the 1690s, but they’re all detailed and fascinating watching.