July 9, 2025 • 41 mins
For our landmark 150th episode, we explore one of humanity's most enduring questions: What is a witch? Far from being about broomsticks and cauldrons, the witch serves as a cultural mirror, reflecting society's deepest anxieties about power, gender, and the unknown.
A witch is a designation that reveals more about the society doing the naming than about the accused. Throughout history, this label has been weaponized against the vulnerable, marginalized, and powerless as a means of social control.
Yet in contemporary Western contexts, "witch" has become a self-claimed identity representing alternative spirituality, feminist empowerment, and connection to nature. This reclamation represents a deliberate rejection of patriarchal control and embrace of personal agency.
We'll examine how the witch has served as both society's scapegoat and its rebel. What does it mean when an identity once used to destroy women becomes a source of empowerment? Join us as we explore this complex figure that continues to captivate and challenge us today.
The International Network Against Witchcraft Accusations and Ritual Attacks
Buy the book: The Ruin of All Witches
Listen to the episode: Malcolm Gaskill on the Ruin of All Witches
Listen to the episode: Francis Young on Witchcraft and The Modern Roman Catholic Church
Listen to the episode: Legal Perceptions of Witch Hunting in India with Riya A Singh and Amit Anand
Witchcraft Accusations in Listen to the episode: Nigeria with Dr. Leo Igwe
The Thing About Salem YouTube
The Thing About Salem Patreon
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Episode. 150. What is a witch?
Just that question. What is a witch?
It's such an incredibly multifaceted and mutable
concept. The question of defining
witchcraft that I think is a an almost notoriously difficult
(00:20):
question. There are some scholars today
who would almost give up when itcomes to defining witchcraft and
say that witchcraft is whatever people who consider themselves
to be witches do, or it is whatever people who are accused
by others of being witches are said to do.
There's huge semantic confusion about what's being talked about
(00:45):
when the issue of witchcraft is raised.
The bold exercise of defining witchcraft himself is so
complicated because it's not only like I said before, it's
not only a problem in India, butit's a problem everywhere.
But then every single community is viewing it differently.
It's viewing it through different classes.
(01:08):
Welcome to the Thing about witchhunts.
I'm Josh Hutchinson, and the quotes you just heard were from
doctors Malcolm Gaskell, FrancisYoung and Ahmed Anand, and they
were all said on this podcast right here in previous episodes.
And I'm Sarah Jack. We are descendants of the New
England witch trials and we're human rights advocates.
(01:30):
We created the space where all the complexities of witchcraft
and witchcraft accusations are discussed and accessible to the
public. The witch means different things
to different people. This episode will examine what a
witch has been in historical context, what a witch is
perceived to be an ongoing global crises, and how the term
(01:51):
is understood by modern self identified practitioners tracing
the evolution of this complex concept.
We acknowledge. The ambiguity of the.
Witch some. People view witchcraft
positively, while others see it as.
Something negative and some see it as both good and bad.
(02:13):
Do we still believe in witches? We.
All have magical thinking. Some of it is fantasy, some of.
It is superstitious. Some of it.
Is spiritual belief. But there's a lot of magical
thinking. But that's not exactly what
we're talking about today. Today we're talking.
About what is the witch? Do we still need witches?
(02:36):
That's a good question to be thinking about.
While we go through. Who needed witches in the past?
And what they were. Why did they need them?
What were they for? What purpose does it serve to
call somebody a witch? We'll begin this trip by looking
back at ancient times and the Middle Ages.
Witches have been in existence since the earliest writings by
(02:59):
people, and you can look back atancient Mesopotamia as far back
as the third Millennium BCE. So in the third Millennium BCE
and into the second Millennium BCE, witches were seen as normal
folk. They were traditional healers
and magical practitioners like cunning folk.
(03:21):
They became a threat as Mesopotamian.
Cities. Grew and urban life emerged,
bringing a sense of otherness tothe community.
The problem shifted from doing evil to being evil to being a
witch. The witch was primarily
understood as an illegitimate practitioner of magic, in
(03:45):
contrast to the legitimate exorcists, which is were.
Often portrayed as women. Though texts do show.
Both male and female witches. You're probably noticing a lot
of similar things to Mesopotamian, which is as to
which is later on in history andyou'll see these recurring
(04:06):
themes as we go through this. Things like witches being women.
Witches were also believed to behighly aggressive and capable of
influencing gods, demons or ghosts to harm victims.
So conjuring. Sounds so familiar they were
blamed for misfortunes. Again, something we can
completely understand by lookingat our world.
(04:28):
Today. Misfortunes such as illness were
seen as a threat to the divine order.
The Creator had made humans to work, to do physical labor
things with your hands and not take shortcuts like witches
we're doing with magic. There was significant fear that
(04:50):
a woman, which. Could take away power.
And the sense of being from men particularly.
Because personal. Gods were often deceased male
relatives and many. Faiths across all eras have.
Ancestral Saints and gods. In ancient Mesopotamia,
(05:13):
accusations and punishment were often carried out by common
vote, including river ordeals, where in this case drowning
signified guilt, not innocence, as we'll see later with the
river ordeals. Oh, that is fascinating.
So it's a different outcome to aswim test.
It's the opposite and I'd reallylike to understand what was
(05:37):
behind why drowning signified guilt and floating signified
innocence and then that got changed later on.
The. Punishment included practices of
burning the witch to. Purify the victim, indicating
the witch was an enemy of the state and an errantly evil.
(06:00):
Now moving on to Greece and Rome.
Other classical sources mention witchy figures like Searcy and
Medea and dangerous magical beings that especially those
that come out at night such as the Lamiae child eating
monsters, Lewis, a female Jewishdemon, the Gray, the Gray
(06:23):
sisters, and the gorgons like Medusa.
The early theories about. Playing witches included the
notion of dangerous beings out there in the world.
That fly. By night, often taking animal
forms like screech. Owls or bats again, here is a
(06:43):
fear. That many.
People have today about. Danger and evil flying through
the night. In the classical period, while
these figures existed, the direct attachment of this image
to actual human women as being witches was more of a literary
construct than a seriously held belief in daily life.
(07:07):
However, legal repression of magic practices dates back to
Roman law, even before Christianity, so there were
cases where humans were identified as witches and
punished for it. They weren't calling,
necessarily their neighbor a witch.
They were thinking of, oh, the gods created these witches that
(07:29):
are powerful creatures. Yeah, but there was.
Limits on magical practices on what was.
Allowed legally there was basically if you were harming
people you could get arrested for that, but if you weren't
harming people you could practice love magic, blessings,
charms, cures for diseases and good luck practices as well as
(07:52):
curses. So basically the tool kit that
cutting folk had in the early modern period and throughout the
Middle Ages. It was used by their
predecessors back in Roman and Greek times.
And those things are? Still a part of our marketplace
today, Yes, when I say. Yeah, when I say.
(08:15):
Our. I mean global market.
For. Charms and blessings and love.
So this magical marketplace has been robust since the beginning
of recorded history. And now we'll move on to the
early and middle Middle Ages. So in the early Middle Ages, as
(08:39):
we were talking about with the classical period, this kind of
carries over. Magic is viewed as practical
stuff that reflected people's need to control their world.
Sometimes this is referred to asservice magic.
We've done an episode of this podcast with Tabitha Stanmore
where she talks all about service magic in the early
(09:02):
modern period. But the things that they did,
the list of services, finding lost items, healing, counter
magic, unwitting, those are the common services that you find
around the world throughout time.
In this period. The church's view was skeptical.
(09:26):
They generally viewed witchcraftclaims in a sceptical fashion,
seeing them as imposture. The Theological.
Work Canon episcopy from Nine O 6.
CE dated the belief. In which is flying at night was
a non Christian belief, commercewith demons and night flying
(09:49):
were not permissible. The first account of a female
witch enlisting the devil appeared in the early 12th
century was the Story of the Witch of Berkeley, which you've
heard on here on episode with Doctor Richard Raiswell.
But the Witch of Berkeley was described as a solitary figure,
not part of a vast sect, and primarily harmed only herself
(10:12):
and not other people. Fun fact, Sarah Jack loves the
Witch of Berkeley story so much I love it.
Policy was more. Interested in behavior rather.
Than defining a. Person as a witch.
So what were their? Actions so.
Moving on to the late Middle Ages, beginning in the 12th
(10:34):
century and going onwards, the Church became increasingly
concerned with heresy and this marked a significant shift in
how witches were viewed. Have you noticed that we have
mentioned demons? But we have.
Not talked about the devil yet we have not used the word
diabolical so at this. Time the concept of a witch
(10:57):
transitioned from a local malefic.
Practitioner. To an.
Agent of the Devil as part of a vast secret anti Christian
conspiracy. And this is known as the
elaborated conception. Of witchcraft or the elaborated
theory. This shift was largely fueled by
the belief that witches gained their powers directly from Satan
(11:21):
through a pact, rather than having innate inborn abilities.
This demonic pact often involvedrenouncing God, taking oath to
the devil, and having sexual intercourse with demons or the
devil himself. The publication of texts like
Heinrich Kramer's Malleus Smell of a Carm.
(11:41):
The Hammer of Witches at the endof the 15th century played a
crucial role. In standardizing and
disseminating this cumulative conception.
Of witchcraft. Across Europe, witchcraft became
profoundly gendered. While earlier concepts might
have included men, the Malleus maleficarum notably focused on
(12:03):
women as evil doing women. Maleficarum is a feminine noun
for evil witch, asserting they were more susceptible to the
devil due to perceived weaknesses like lust,
foolishness, and lack of faith, according to Heinrich Kramer,
(12:25):
which is our thought. To cause harm.
Maleficium. To people, children, livestock.
And crops. They were also believed.
To cause misfortune. Disease, accidents or death.
And like we. Pointed out he standardized this
stereotype. Yes.
(12:46):
And the printing press fuelled getting that out to everybody.
That's why we point to that particular book.
And at this time, actions believed to be perpetrated by
witches included shape shifting into animals like cats or hairs
flying on brooms or other domestic objects.
(13:06):
So this was believed to be enabled by the devil or an
ointment. We have a great episode about
the theory of the witches flyingointment.
They also were believed to attend Sabbath's, these secret
anti Christian gatherings with demons or the devil and engage
in anti Christian rituals like cannibalism, eating babies in
(13:31):
New England. Later on in the early modern
period, we see the idea of flying witches attending
Sabbath's come over from Swedishwitch trials because of this
book. And the response.
To this book, accused witches were.
Seen as malicious women or the anti woman?
(13:53):
Whose very soul opposed femininity and motherhood they
were believed. To harm fertility.
They were often, though not always, marginalized
individuals. People with low social status,
poor were contrarian women. Men did face accusations, though
(14:14):
they were a notable minority. But in a major witch panic,
anyone of any gender or social status would be accused the
witch. Became a useful enemy and a
scapegoat. For societal fears.
And misfortunes, especially during times of social stress,
religious conflict and. Political upheaval.
(14:38):
Despite common stereotypes, all accused we're actually just
ordinary people unjustly accused, completely innocent of
the charges of witchcraft which were imagined.
Confessions were often coerced through torture, including witch
pricking, waking, watching thumbscrews, the boot, and more
(15:00):
of the medieval selection of tortures.
Cunning folk, cunning persons, wise women and men, who
primarily. Used magic for beneficial
purposes could still be accused of witchcraft by zealous
authorities who saw all magic asdiabolical.
Now coming to the period that wespend most of the time on this
(15:21):
podcast talking about the early modern period, let's learn about
what the perceptions were of thewitch in that context when the
witch trials took on. In the witch trial.
Era. The witch was understood as an
entirely malign concept. This perception was based.
(15:43):
On the belief. That a person could.
Covenant with the Devil to gain.Power to harm others to hurt
their. Community to go against the plan
of the. Patriarchal government.
And ministers like that's. The story.
That you see in New England, Satan.
Was believed to bestow these powers, having received limited
(16:04):
power. From God to punish the sinful or
test. The righteous I just read today.
In John Hales modest inquiry, where he.
Reflects back and says. Remember that time when?
God let the devil. Blah blah blah.
And I want to point out that in the early modern period, really
the elaborated theory of witchcraft was still in place,
(16:29):
still was the basis for the witch trials.
And works like the Malice Maleficarum were very
influential throughout the entire period of the European
witch hunt. All the witch trials were
predicated on the witch being inthis pact with the devil and
(16:50):
being part of this massive conspiracy against both church
and state. So you had both religious and
secular authorities very frightened about this.
And that's why really the witch hunts took off the way that they
did. And that's why in Salem and
(17:10):
others like it, big witch panics.
The question was always so you were a witch.
Who else was a witch with you? Because they wanted to unravel
this massive plot and had to find all the witches.
You couldn't just take the one who had harmed the neighbor.
And so the behaviors that were believed to be done by witches
(17:34):
were very much the same as thosebelieved throughout the later
part of the Middle Ages when this diabolical concept came
into play. But you'd notice that these
behaviors were also very similarto what we reported in
Mesopotamia. There were malphychium, like
(17:57):
Sarah mentioned a minute ago, making people I'll, killing
people, harming livestock, killing crops, causing various
misfortunes, bad luck, disease, accidents, death.
These were the things that witches were believed to do that
were harmed. And in some contexts.
(18:17):
There were large witch gatherings, so they would.
Supernaturally lie. The devil would.
Bring them to these gatherings or transport them.
Give them the power to transport.
Where they were believed to. Attend the Devil's Sabbath and.
So that idea was a. Continental which It became part
(18:40):
of New England's belief, but it came right.
Out of Europe contexts. Yeah, that started in the
Western Alps in the early 15th century and spread out.
And the Mali smell of the car really spread it like a
wildfire. Once that printing press,
Gutenberg, you did a great thing, but it was used for very
(19:06):
sinister purposes. So now I've got mixed emotions
about the printing press. 0 We just good thing, bad thing,
Yeah. It's like technology's going to
move forward, but. What do we do with it exactly?
People today use cell phones andYouTube and TikTok to spread
(19:29):
messages about witchcraft beliefs.
And fear. And hate, but also for good.
Yeah, you had the stereotype, but the actual?
Victims of accusations didn't necessarily always meet those
stereotypes. That's a really good point.
(19:50):
Let's talk about the appearance of witches in early modern
beliefs. Now this is of course, the
concept of a witch, what a witchis supposed to look like.
This isn't talking about what the victims of witch trials look
like or any other qualities because as we said before, they
(20:12):
were innocent people and they were diabolical, doing evil
deeds against their neighbors. They had a.
Very clear description of. Who a witch was?
But then when you. Look.
At who the victims turned out to.
Be especially. In panics where there were.
(20:32):
Multiple. Accused you find it could have
been anybody that ends up with that label.
So the image of what a witch wassupposed to look like back then,
and you can see this in early modern artworks.
You can read about this in books, especially by the
skeptics, which we're trying to show that the people that were
(20:56):
being accused of witchcraft werevictims, that they had sometimes
some mental illness or a disability, and that caused them
to behave a little bit differently, say different
things than other people, and they were misunderstood.
So that's was the skeptical argument, but the prevailing
(21:19):
stereotype was a lot like what we have in our Halloween witch
today and what you would read ina book.
Like Hansel and Gretel, they were generally women.
In the witch trials in Europe, we know 80 to 85% of the victims
were women, and a lot of them accused men were related to
(21:42):
women who were accused or were otherwise not fulfilling the
image that people had of what a man was supposed to be.
Somehow they were doing a bad job at being married or raising
their kids, something like that.Another aspect of the.
(22:04):
Description of a witch would be identifying a witch and we know
looking at so many. Stories that.
Accused were examined physicallyfor signs of being a witch and
they had physical marks of the examining team, sometimes men,
(22:24):
sometimes women, including midwives.
They were looking. For specific physical.
Marks that were believed. To be witch teats.
And. Those were spots where the devil
or. Demons.
Or the witch's evil helper was feeding.
From them suckling from them on their witch marks.
(22:46):
The witch and women during this time in general were associated
very closely with domestic items.
That's why you have a witch being so closely tied to a
broomstick and a cauldron, because those were women's tools
in the House of the early modernperiod.
(23:07):
And this became incorporated into the legends of witches,
them using broomsticks, cauldrons, other household
things. They're making ointments,
they're doing the first aid in the neighborhood, that kind of
thing that associates with womenin the early modern.
(23:31):
The witch was also. Anticipated to be a subversive
Figure 1. Who challenged societal norms?
Religious norms. Spoke their minds or?
Were different in some way, and so when you.
See these. Victims in the.
Stories those. Actions in their lives.
(23:51):
Or their behaviors that fit. Subversion are what are.
Highlighted and used to prove hey.
This might be a witch here. She's talking back, she's
arguing, she's unsatisfied, she's complaining, she's not
agreeing, she's not collaborating, and on and on.
(24:14):
Yeah, she's not being a woman aswe say that women need to be
women. We being the men of the time.
Of course, throwing this on to people believing that the witch
was this anti mother figure who worked against fertility, that's
another piece of how they were subversive.
(24:35):
They were subverting the gender roles and expectations of the
time. So when you have.
A concept that. Is diabolical, dangerous,
harmful, subversive that. Is a useful enemy.
That is the person. That is the thing that you're
(24:55):
going to blame for misfortunes, crop failure and the failure.
Of the leadership. In a community, any failure
that's happening, that's an embarrassment.
Or a devastation. You need somebody to blame that
on it's. The witch.
(25:16):
Once again, I just want to reiterate that these women who
were accused of witchcraft, these men, these children that
were accused, they were all justfolk.
They were regular people like you and me with ordinary human
abilities and not in league withthe devil.
(25:39):
In the modern context, there arebasically 2 main definitions of
the witch that we're going to discuss today.
The witch in modern context reveals ongoing crises and also
reclaimed identity. So there are the witch has the
evil figure and the witch as theneutral or positive figure.
(26:05):
In many parts. Of the world today.
Including where alleged witches are haunted in nations.
Across every permanently. Inhabited continent.
That is not an exaggeration. It's reality there in all those
places. The term which?
Still signifies an evildoer using magic.
(26:26):
Occult forces or spirits for. Personal gain.
Or to cause harm. To others and that isn't.
Always viewed as diabolical, butit is.
About causing harm to. Others.
When we say witches in Africa, we meet people who fly out at
night and glass of blood on the roadside.
That's what we mean. And when we say witches exists,
(26:47):
that what we're addressing. So for us at our organization,
it is a me nobody flies out at night while others are sleeping
to go and soak blood on the roadside.
Nobody flies out at night to go and poison people and kill them
spiritually and all that. And so people are still accused
of performing witchcraft to hurttheir neighbors.
(27:08):
And that leads to what are knownas harmful practices related to
accusations of witchcraft and ritual attacks, which are acts
of violence, usually not judicially sanctioned, carried
out against innocent people who usually have nothing to do with
(27:31):
magic, let alone evil witchcraft.
Like Josh said, it's physical violence.
It's torture. They are socially ostracized.
It devastates them economically.Psychologically, they are
traumatized. And many are dying, Thousands,
(27:53):
predominantly women and elderly individuals.
Are accused tried, attacked? Killed, imprisoned or banished
annually. We see reports of this every
single day. We get multiple reports from
multiple countries of some kind of attack or harm against
(28:14):
someone accused of witchcraft. And those reports, sadly,
frequently feature children and people with disabilities or
conditions like dementia that are misunderstood because the
conditions are misinterpreted assupernatural.
Hopefully you're recognizing from what we're telling you that
(28:37):
the witch hunt. Mentality.
Not just figuratively, but actually.
The witch hunt mentality is fully alive, and it's not merely
a. Historical reflection.
We. Reflected on the history but
everything that you've learned about.
What a witch is. That is happening.
(28:57):
There is a clear distinction between these ongoing witch
hunts, which are prosecutions ofpeople who generally don't
practice magic, or if they do, they do it for a positive
reason, but they're usually not self identified witches most of
the time. We do recognize.
That those that identify as witches.
(29:20):
And have a craft. That they practice do.
Experience persecution and are facing religious freedom
persecutions. So they're very distinct
persecutions that are happening.And a very important report just
came out a few days ago about this modern crisis.
(29:43):
We'll have a link to that in theshow notes so you can get more
in depth on what is happening. This report that Josh.
Mentioned is from the International.
Network against witchcraft accusations.
And. Ritual attacks the international
network we call. It the International.
(30:06):
Network dot. Org is where you find out about
that amazing organization, Lancaster University and the
Australian National. University looked at the
legislative approaches taken across.
The world to respond. To these ample practices related
to accusations of. Witchcraft and ritual.
Attacks and that report. That just came out.
(30:26):
It's. Called the legislative
approaches to addressing harmfulpractices related to witchcraft.
Accusations and ritual. Attacks a global review.
It sounds jargony. It sounds academic.
But don't be intimidated by how it sounds.
The report is really. Easy to read through and get a
(30:47):
perspective of the data. So please do go to our.
Show notes and. Pull up that report and look at
it. And keep your eye.
Peeled for if. And witch hunts nonprofit is
cited in there and also our colleague Mary Bingham has an.
Article that is cited. In that report.
(31:08):
The good news is that though these horrible things are
happening against innocent people, there are organizations
working to have legislation and other measures taken to protect
people from being accused of witchcraft and attacked.
There are organizations like Advocacy for Alleged Witches out
(31:31):
of Nigeria, Advocacy Against Witch Hunts out of South Africa
in Witch Hunts is our organization that raises
awareness about this. Sarah mentioned the
International Network Against Witchcraft accusations of ritual
attacks. There's also an International
Alliance to End Witch Hunts, andthere's Stop Child Witch
(31:53):
Accusations. Those are just the tip of the
iceberg as far as organizations,but we've done interviews with
representatives of all those organizations, so you can go
back to our back catalog and review what actions are actually
being taken to solve this problem.
(32:15):
So we talked about. The ongoing.
Crisis. Of women and children and
sometimes men being. Attacked as evil witches we've
talked a little bit about. Identifying as a witch as a
positive thing. But there's another.
Aspect of which in our modern culture.
Which is not acceptable. And that's the witch and slurs.
(32:36):
It's still used. To insult women every day from
podiums of leadership and the news and writings and you name
it. It's there so people, especially
men, still call women witches whenever they have any kind of
(32:56):
power, if they are in a leadership role, if they're
experts on subjects or issues, or they're in politics.
But also, every day this word gets tossed around so casually
like it means nothing. It's used against any woman who
says or does anything that's interpreted.
(33:19):
And that's the important part. That's interpreted as mean
spirited. So if you think that somebody
was rude to you, maybe your bossis being a little demanding or
micromanaging. You say, oh, my boss is such a
witch. That's wrong.
Don't say that. We've told you what the word
(33:40):
witch means. Your boss is not that it, and
that word is still being used tokill people today.
That's why we're so opposed to it.
It's also very misogynist. Do you call your male boss a
witch? Probably not.
You might have other language form, but it doesn't mean
(34:01):
somebody that we're supposed to kill, which does.
The witch has become a very important figure in feminist
theory because of the misogyny, the actions of the patriarchy
against women in the witch trials.
(34:22):
We've talked to Annes Tadeo about the woman as witch, the
belief that all women are flawed, that they've inherited
Eve's sin and therefore they areworking against men, they're
working against humanity, they're working against God,
sinful creatures by nature. And of course, rightly, women
(34:45):
have come back today and said hell no, that's not who we are.
We're women. We can be empowered, we can be
powerful, we can be everything that the patriarchy is.
Let women have a share of that and stop calling them witches
(35:05):
and relegating them to this lower position.
So the witch has become a very powerful symbol of female
empowerment. And that brings us to the
appearance of the witch in the modern era.
We've seen a lot of this move toreclaim what the witch is and
(35:28):
give it a different kind of portrayal.
I love how pop culture is portraying the witch in ways to
teach us. About our humanity and
friendships and who women are intheir relationships with women
and men and it's been a significant cultural shift and.
(35:52):
The clearest example. One that's very fun and I love
to bring up. Is L Frank.
Bombs the Wizard of. Oz.
And then what we have now from that.
Story. The Wicked franchise, the
Broadway, the movie, the books. Yeah, you see that a witch can
(36:12):
be a good figure, like Glenda. You also see that witches can be
more nuanced characters. They can be Shades of Grey, not
necessarily evil or good, just like regular folk.
We're not evil or good. We're all somewhere in between
(36:33):
with little bits and pieces fromeach of those things.
So we see this a lot in the filmand television and theater of
today. It's wonderful.
And other programs that came outin the 60s and 70s especially,
(36:53):
but also in the 90s in the, I call them the zeros, you might
call them the naughties or the ox, whatever.
The 2000s you've seen shows likeBewitched and Sabrina the
Teenage Witch, where the witch is portrayed as a good figure
that helps people and does nice things with their magic.
(37:15):
And you learn a lot of lessons in especially Sabrina the
Teenage Witch about the abuse ofpower and how witches should
have ethics. So it's a very nuanced look and
you have things like the Craft that's a bit of a darker look.
Charmed. They're all different looks, but
they're showing that witches canbe regular folk, just like the
(37:38):
people who were accused of witchcraft who were totally
innocent or regular folk. But with charmed in the.
Craft you have. Individuals making decisions for
themselves. About what kind of choices?
They're going to make and if they're.
Going to help. And harm putting the power back
in their own hands. Where with witchcraft?
(38:01):
Accusations people are being. Told that they're evil and I
look how things like wicked. They use the traditional
stereotypes. They make use of Alphaba with
the Black Hat, the green face, the pointy nose.
(38:21):
It's all part of this old stereotype.
But now they're being used to challenge the stereotypes, to
show how absurd they are. And you see Linda the good,
who's all pink and light and happy and airy.
And then you see Alphaba making decisions for herself, like
(38:41):
Sarah talked about, and being empowered and being a nuanced
person who's not totally evil. She's actually doing things for
what she believes are good reasons.
Now there is a central location where you can go to the Witch
City, Salem, MA, and you can learn about all kinds of
(39:06):
witches. You can learn about the
stereotype witches. You can learn about the people
accused of witchcraft in the witch trials who had nothing to
do with it. Salem in 1692 was a very
intolerant place, and the Salem of today goes out of the way to
(39:27):
be one of the most tolerant places around.
So you can see both the history and you can see the modern
interpretations of what witchcraft is and what a witch
is to those people who have embraced that religion.
And we talked more about Salem witch trials on our other
podcast, The Thing About Salem. Listen today.
(39:52):
Today we looked at what a witch has.
Been. And what it is?
And that is? Because understanding the.
Diverse and evolving definitions.
Of a witch is crucial for comprehending.
And combating the ongoing. Global crisis of witch hunts and
for understanding how we interact with each other.
As a family. Or as a community, as a world.
(40:14):
Community. Yeah, this crisis of these
ongoing witch hunts is driven byfear, which leads people to
disregard human dignity and persecute innocent people.
So when we're confronted with such fear that is driving us to
(40:35):
want to take extreme measures, that's the time we need to apply
critical thinking, stop and reason, really think about
things dispassionately for a moment and not rush to judgement
or to throw blame on another person for some misfortune
(40:57):
that's befallen you. It is your responsibility.
It's all of our responsibility to use our agency to end witch.
Hunts. You do.
Have a platform it may just be bringing it up in.
Conversation at your next socialgathering.
But if you write, if you. Speak if you.
(41:19):
Have a leadership role. If you're creating policy that
affects the lives of people, usethat.
Platform to promote human dignity and to stop the.
Fear of others. Thank you so much for joining us
today on this important episode discussing what a witch has been
and what a witch is today. Have a great today, had a
(41:41):
beautiful tomorrow.
Episode. 150. What is a witch?
Just that question. What is a witch?
It's such an incredibly multifaceted and mutable
concept. The question of defining
witchcraft that I think is a an almost notoriously difficult
(00:20):
question. There are some scholars today
who would almost give up when itcomes to defining witchcraft and
say that witchcraft is whatever people who consider themselves
to be witches do, or it is whatever people who are accused
by others of being witches are said to do.
There's huge semantic confusion about what's being talked about
(00:45):
when the issue of witchcraft is raised.
The bold exercise of defining witchcraft himself is so
complicated because it's not only like I said before, it's
not only a problem in India, butit's a problem everywhere.
But then every single community is viewing it differently.
It's viewing it through different classes.
(01:08):
Welcome to the Thing about witchhunts.
I'm Josh Hutchinson, and the quotes you just heard were from
doctors Malcolm Gaskell, FrancisYoung and Ahmed Anand, and they
were all said on this podcast right here in previous episodes.
And I'm Sarah Jack. We are descendants of the New
England witch trials and we're human rights advocates.
(01:30):
We created the space where all the complexities of witchcraft
and witchcraft accusations are discussed and accessible to the
public. The witch means different things
to different people. This episode will examine what a
witch has been in historical context, what a witch is
perceived to be an ongoing global crises, and how the term
(01:51):
is understood by modern self identified practitioners tracing
the evolution of this complex concept.
We acknowledge. The ambiguity of the.
Witch some. People view witchcraft
positively, while others see it as.
Something negative and some see it as both good and bad.
(02:13):
Do we still believe in witches? We.
All have magical thinking. Some of it is fantasy, some of.
It is superstitious. Some of it.
Is spiritual belief. But there's a lot of magical
thinking. But that's not exactly what
we're talking about today. Today we're talking.
About what is the witch? Do we still need witches?
(02:36):
That's a good question to be thinking about.
While we go through. Who needed witches in the past?
And what they were. Why did they need them?
What were they for? What purpose does it serve to
call somebody a witch? We'll begin this trip by looking
back at ancient times and the Middle Ages.
Witches have been in existence since the earliest writings by
(02:59):
people, and you can look back atancient Mesopotamia as far back
as the third Millennium BCE. So in the third Millennium BCE
and into the second Millennium BCE, witches were seen as normal
folk. They were traditional healers
and magical practitioners like cunning folk.
(03:21):
They became a threat as Mesopotamian.
Cities. Grew and urban life emerged,
bringing a sense of otherness tothe community.
The problem shifted from doing evil to being evil to being a
witch. The witch was primarily
understood as an illegitimate practitioner of magic, in
(03:45):
contrast to the legitimate exorcists, which is were.
Often portrayed as women. Though texts do show.
Both male and female witches. You're probably noticing a lot
of similar things to Mesopotamian, which is as to
which is later on in history andyou'll see these recurring
(04:06):
themes as we go through this. Things like witches being women.
Witches were also believed to behighly aggressive and capable of
influencing gods, demons or ghosts to harm victims.
So conjuring. Sounds so familiar they were
blamed for misfortunes. Again, something we can
completely understand by lookingat our world.
(04:28):
Today. Misfortunes such as illness were
seen as a threat to the divine order.
The Creator had made humans to work, to do physical labor
things with your hands and not take shortcuts like witches
we're doing with magic. There was significant fear that
(04:50):
a woman, which. Could take away power.
And the sense of being from men particularly.
Because personal. Gods were often deceased male
relatives and many. Faiths across all eras have.
Ancestral Saints and gods. In ancient Mesopotamia,
(05:13):
accusations and punishment were often carried out by common
vote, including river ordeals, where in this case drowning
signified guilt, not innocence, as we'll see later with the
river ordeals. Oh, that is fascinating.
So it's a different outcome to aswim test.
It's the opposite and I'd reallylike to understand what was
(05:37):
behind why drowning signified guilt and floating signified
innocence and then that got changed later on.
The. Punishment included practices of
burning the witch to. Purify the victim, indicating
the witch was an enemy of the state and an errantly evil.
(06:00):
Now moving on to Greece and Rome.
Other classical sources mention witchy figures like Searcy and
Medea and dangerous magical beings that especially those
that come out at night such as the Lamiae child eating
monsters, Lewis, a female Jewishdemon, the Gray, the Gray
(06:23):
sisters, and the gorgons like Medusa.
The early theories about. Playing witches included the
notion of dangerous beings out there in the world.
That fly. By night, often taking animal
forms like screech. Owls or bats again, here is a
(06:43):
fear. That many.
People have today about. Danger and evil flying through
the night. In the classical period, while
these figures existed, the direct attachment of this image
to actual human women as being witches was more of a literary
construct than a seriously held belief in daily life.
(07:07):
However, legal repression of magic practices dates back to
Roman law, even before Christianity, so there were
cases where humans were identified as witches and
punished for it. They weren't calling,
necessarily their neighbor a witch.
They were thinking of, oh, the gods created these witches that
(07:29):
are powerful creatures. Yeah, but there was.
Limits on magical practices on what was.
Allowed legally there was basically if you were harming
people you could get arrested for that, but if you weren't
harming people you could practice love magic, blessings,
charms, cures for diseases and good luck practices as well as
(07:52):
curses. So basically the tool kit that
cutting folk had in the early modern period and throughout the
Middle Ages. It was used by their
predecessors back in Roman and Greek times.
And those things are? Still a part of our marketplace
today, Yes, when I say. Yeah, when I say.
(08:15):
Our. I mean global market.
For. Charms and blessings and love.
So this magical marketplace has been robust since the beginning
of recorded history. And now we'll move on to the
early and middle Middle Ages. So in the early Middle Ages, as
(08:39):
we were talking about with the classical period, this kind of
carries over. Magic is viewed as practical
stuff that reflected people's need to control their world.
Sometimes this is referred to asservice magic.
We've done an episode of this podcast with Tabitha Stanmore
where she talks all about service magic in the early
(09:02):
modern period. But the things that they did,
the list of services, finding lost items, healing, counter
magic, unwitting, those are the common services that you find
around the world throughout time.
In this period. The church's view was skeptical.
(09:26):
They generally viewed witchcraftclaims in a sceptical fashion,
seeing them as imposture. The Theological.
Work Canon episcopy from Nine O 6.
CE dated the belief. In which is flying at night was
a non Christian belief, commercewith demons and night flying
(09:49):
were not permissible. The first account of a female
witch enlisting the devil appeared in the early 12th
century was the Story of the Witch of Berkeley, which you've
heard on here on episode with Doctor Richard Raiswell.
But the Witch of Berkeley was described as a solitary figure,
not part of a vast sect, and primarily harmed only herself
(10:12):
and not other people. Fun fact, Sarah Jack loves the
Witch of Berkeley story so much I love it.
Policy was more. Interested in behavior rather.
Than defining a. Person as a witch.
So what were their? Actions so.
Moving on to the late Middle Ages, beginning in the 12th
(10:34):
century and going onwards, the Church became increasingly
concerned with heresy and this marked a significant shift in
how witches were viewed. Have you noticed that we have
mentioned demons? But we have.
Not talked about the devil yet we have not used the word
diabolical so at this. Time the concept of a witch
(10:57):
transitioned from a local malefic.
Practitioner. To an.
Agent of the Devil as part of a vast secret anti Christian
conspiracy. And this is known as the
elaborated conception. Of witchcraft or the elaborated
theory. This shift was largely fueled by
the belief that witches gained their powers directly from Satan
(11:21):
through a pact, rather than having innate inborn abilities.
This demonic pact often involvedrenouncing God, taking oath to
the devil, and having sexual intercourse with demons or the
devil himself. The publication of texts like
Heinrich Kramer's Malleus Smell of a Carm.
(11:41):
The Hammer of Witches at the endof the 15th century played a
crucial role. In standardizing and
disseminating this cumulative conception.
Of witchcraft. Across Europe, witchcraft became
profoundly gendered. While earlier concepts might
have included men, the Malleus maleficarum notably focused on
(12:03):
women as evil doing women. Maleficarum is a feminine noun
for evil witch, asserting they were more susceptible to the
devil due to perceived weaknesses like lust,
foolishness, and lack of faith, according to Heinrich Kramer,
(12:25):
which is our thought. To cause harm.
Maleficium. To people, children, livestock.
And crops. They were also believed.
To cause misfortune. Disease, accidents or death.
And like we. Pointed out he standardized this
stereotype. Yes.
(12:46):
And the printing press fuelled getting that out to everybody.
That's why we point to that particular book.
And at this time, actions believed to be perpetrated by
witches included shape shifting into animals like cats or hairs
flying on brooms or other domestic objects.
(13:06):
So this was believed to be enabled by the devil or an
ointment. We have a great episode about
the theory of the witches flyingointment.
They also were believed to attend Sabbath's, these secret
anti Christian gatherings with demons or the devil and engage
in anti Christian rituals like cannibalism, eating babies in
(13:31):
New England. Later on in the early modern
period, we see the idea of flying witches attending
Sabbath's come over from Swedishwitch trials because of this
book. And the response.
To this book, accused witches were.
Seen as malicious women or the anti woman?
(13:53):
Whose very soul opposed femininity and motherhood they
were believed. To harm fertility.
They were often, though not always, marginalized
individuals. People with low social status,
poor were contrarian women. Men did face accusations, though
(14:14):
they were a notable minority. But in a major witch panic,
anyone of any gender or social status would be accused the
witch. Became a useful enemy and a
scapegoat. For societal fears.
And misfortunes, especially during times of social stress,
religious conflict and. Political upheaval.
(14:38):
Despite common stereotypes, all accused we're actually just
ordinary people unjustly accused, completely innocent of
the charges of witchcraft which were imagined.
Confessions were often coerced through torture, including witch
pricking, waking, watching thumbscrews, the boot, and more
(15:00):
of the medieval selection of tortures.
Cunning folk, cunning persons, wise women and men, who
primarily. Used magic for beneficial
purposes could still be accused of witchcraft by zealous
authorities who saw all magic asdiabolical.
Now coming to the period that wespend most of the time on this
(15:21):
podcast talking about the early modern period, let's learn about
what the perceptions were of thewitch in that context when the
witch trials took on. In the witch trial.
Era. The witch was understood as an
entirely malign concept. This perception was based.
(15:43):
On the belief. That a person could.
Covenant with the Devil to gain.Power to harm others to hurt
their. Community to go against the plan
of the. Patriarchal government.
And ministers like that's. The story.
That you see in New England, Satan.
Was believed to bestow these powers, having received limited
(16:04):
power. From God to punish the sinful or
test. The righteous I just read today.
In John Hales modest inquiry, where he.
Reflects back and says. Remember that time when?
God let the devil. Blah blah blah.
And I want to point out that in the early modern period, really
the elaborated theory of witchcraft was still in place,
(16:29):
still was the basis for the witch trials.
And works like the Malice Maleficarum were very
influential throughout the entire period of the European
witch hunt. All the witch trials were
predicated on the witch being inthis pact with the devil and
(16:50):
being part of this massive conspiracy against both church
and state. So you had both religious and
secular authorities very frightened about this.
And that's why really the witch hunts took off the way that they
did. And that's why in Salem and
(17:10):
others like it, big witch panics.
The question was always so you were a witch.
Who else was a witch with you? Because they wanted to unravel
this massive plot and had to find all the witches.
You couldn't just take the one who had harmed the neighbor.
And so the behaviors that were believed to be done by witches
(17:34):
were very much the same as thosebelieved throughout the later
part of the Middle Ages when this diabolical concept came
into play. But you'd notice that these
behaviors were also very similarto what we reported in
Mesopotamia. There were malphychium, like
(17:57):
Sarah mentioned a minute ago, making people I'll, killing
people, harming livestock, killing crops, causing various
misfortunes, bad luck, disease, accidents, death.
These were the things that witches were believed to do that
were harmed. And in some contexts.
(18:17):
There were large witch gatherings, so they would.
Supernaturally lie. The devil would.
Bring them to these gatherings or transport them.
Give them the power to transport.
Where they were believed to. Attend the Devil's Sabbath and.
So that idea was a. Continental which It became part
(18:40):
of New England's belief, but it came right.
Out of Europe contexts. Yeah, that started in the
Western Alps in the early 15th century and spread out.
And the Mali smell of the car really spread it like a
wildfire. Once that printing press,
Gutenberg, you did a great thing, but it was used for very
(19:06):
sinister purposes. So now I've got mixed emotions
about the printing press. 0 We just good thing, bad thing,
Yeah. It's like technology's going to
move forward, but. What do we do with it exactly?
People today use cell phones andYouTube and TikTok to spread
(19:29):
messages about witchcraft beliefs.
And fear. And hate, but also for good.
Yeah, you had the stereotype, but the actual?
Victims of accusations didn't necessarily always meet those
stereotypes. That's a really good point.
(19:50):
Let's talk about the appearance of witches in early modern
beliefs. Now this is of course, the
concept of a witch, what a witchis supposed to look like.
This isn't talking about what the victims of witch trials look
like or any other qualities because as we said before, they
(20:12):
were innocent people and they were diabolical, doing evil
deeds against their neighbors. They had a.
Very clear description of. Who a witch was?
But then when you. Look.
At who the victims turned out to.
Be especially. In panics where there were.
(20:32):
Multiple. Accused you find it could have
been anybody that ends up with that label.
So the image of what a witch wassupposed to look like back then,
and you can see this in early modern artworks.
You can read about this in books, especially by the
skeptics, which we're trying to show that the people that were
(20:56):
being accused of witchcraft werevictims, that they had sometimes
some mental illness or a disability, and that caused them
to behave a little bit differently, say different
things than other people, and they were misunderstood.
So that's was the skeptical argument, but the prevailing
(21:19):
stereotype was a lot like what we have in our Halloween witch
today and what you would read ina book.
Like Hansel and Gretel, they were generally women.
In the witch trials in Europe, we know 80 to 85% of the victims
were women, and a lot of them accused men were related to
(21:42):
women who were accused or were otherwise not fulfilling the
image that people had of what a man was supposed to be.
Somehow they were doing a bad job at being married or raising
their kids, something like that.Another aspect of the.
(22:04):
Description of a witch would be identifying a witch and we know
looking at so many. Stories that.
Accused were examined physicallyfor signs of being a witch and
they had physical marks of the examining team, sometimes men,
(22:24):
sometimes women, including midwives.
They were looking. For specific physical.
Marks that were believed. To be witch teats.
And. Those were spots where the devil
or. Demons.
Or the witch's evil helper was feeding.
From them suckling from them on their witch marks.
(22:46):
The witch and women during this time in general were associated
very closely with domestic items.
That's why you have a witch being so closely tied to a
broomstick and a cauldron, because those were women's tools
in the House of the early modernperiod.
(23:07):
And this became incorporated into the legends of witches,
them using broomsticks, cauldrons, other household
things. They're making ointments,
they're doing the first aid in the neighborhood, that kind of
thing that associates with womenin the early modern.
(23:31):
The witch was also. Anticipated to be a subversive
Figure 1. Who challenged societal norms?
Religious norms. Spoke their minds or?
Were different in some way, and so when you.
See these. Victims in the.
Stories those. Actions in their lives.
(23:51):
Or their behaviors that fit. Subversion are what are.
Highlighted and used to prove hey.
This might be a witch here. She's talking back, she's
arguing, she's unsatisfied, she's complaining, she's not
agreeing, she's not collaborating, and on and on.
(24:14):
Yeah, she's not being a woman aswe say that women need to be
women. We being the men of the time.
Of course, throwing this on to people believing that the witch
was this anti mother figure who worked against fertility, that's
another piece of how they were subversive.
(24:35):
They were subverting the gender roles and expectations of the
time. So when you have.
A concept that. Is diabolical, dangerous,
harmful, subversive that. Is a useful enemy.
That is the person. That is the thing that you're
(24:55):
going to blame for misfortunes, crop failure and the failure.
Of the leadership. In a community, any failure
that's happening, that's an embarrassment.
Or a devastation. You need somebody to blame that
on it's. The witch.
(25:16):
Once again, I just want to reiterate that these women who
were accused of witchcraft, these men, these children that
were accused, they were all justfolk.
They were regular people like you and me with ordinary human
abilities and not in league withthe devil.
(25:39):
In the modern context, there arebasically 2 main definitions of
the witch that we're going to discuss today.
The witch in modern context reveals ongoing crises and also
reclaimed identity. So there are the witch has the
evil figure and the witch as theneutral or positive figure.
(26:05):
In many parts. Of the world today.
Including where alleged witches are haunted in nations.
Across every permanently. Inhabited continent.
That is not an exaggeration. It's reality there in all those
places. The term which?
Still signifies an evildoer using magic.
(26:26):
Occult forces or spirits for. Personal gain.
Or to cause harm. To others and that isn't.
Always viewed as diabolical, butit is.
About causing harm to. Others.
When we say witches in Africa, we meet people who fly out at
night and glass of blood on the roadside.
That's what we mean. And when we say witches exists,
(26:47):
that what we're addressing. So for us at our organization,
it is a me nobody flies out at night while others are sleeping
to go and soak blood on the roadside.
Nobody flies out at night to go and poison people and kill them
spiritually and all that. And so people are still accused
of performing witchcraft to hurttheir neighbors.
(27:08):
And that leads to what are knownas harmful practices related to
accusations of witchcraft and ritual attacks, which are acts
of violence, usually not judicially sanctioned, carried
out against innocent people who usually have nothing to do with
(27:31):
magic, let alone evil witchcraft.
Like Josh said, it's physical violence.
It's torture. They are socially ostracized.
It devastates them economically.Psychologically, they are
traumatized. And many are dying, Thousands,
(27:53):
predominantly women and elderly individuals.
Are accused tried, attacked? Killed, imprisoned or banished
annually. We see reports of this every
single day. We get multiple reports from
multiple countries of some kind of attack or harm against
(28:14):
someone accused of witchcraft. And those reports, sadly,
frequently feature children and people with disabilities or
conditions like dementia that are misunderstood because the
conditions are misinterpreted assupernatural.
Hopefully you're recognizing from what we're telling you that
(28:37):
the witch hunt. Mentality.
Not just figuratively, but actually.
The witch hunt mentality is fully alive, and it's not merely
a. Historical reflection.
We. Reflected on the history but
everything that you've learned about.
What a witch is. That is happening.
(28:57):
There is a clear distinction between these ongoing witch
hunts, which are prosecutions ofpeople who generally don't
practice magic, or if they do, they do it for a positive
reason, but they're usually not self identified witches most of
the time. We do recognize.
That those that identify as witches.
(29:20):
And have a craft. That they practice do.
Experience persecution and are facing religious freedom
persecutions. So they're very distinct
persecutions that are happening.And a very important report just
came out a few days ago about this modern crisis.
(29:43):
We'll have a link to that in theshow notes so you can get more
in depth on what is happening. This report that Josh.
Mentioned is from the International.
Network against witchcraft accusations.
And. Ritual attacks the international
network we call. It the International.
(30:06):
Network dot. Org is where you find out about
that amazing organization, Lancaster University and the
Australian National. University looked at the
legislative approaches taken across.
The world to respond. To these ample practices related
to accusations of. Witchcraft and ritual.
Attacks and that report. That just came out.
(30:26):
It's. Called the legislative
approaches to addressing harmfulpractices related to witchcraft.
Accusations and ritual. Attacks a global review.
It sounds jargony. It sounds academic.
But don't be intimidated by how it sounds.
The report is really. Easy to read through and get a
(30:47):
perspective of the data. So please do go to our.
Show notes and. Pull up that report and look at
it. And keep your eye.
Peeled for if. And witch hunts nonprofit is
cited in there and also our colleague Mary Bingham has an.
Article that is cited. In that report.
(31:08):
The good news is that though these horrible things are
happening against innocent people, there are organizations
working to have legislation and other measures taken to protect
people from being accused of witchcraft and attacked.
There are organizations like Advocacy for Alleged Witches out
(31:31):
of Nigeria, Advocacy Against Witch Hunts out of South Africa
in Witch Hunts is our organization that raises
awareness about this. Sarah mentioned the
International Network Against Witchcraft accusations of ritual
attacks. There's also an International
Alliance to End Witch Hunts, andthere's Stop Child Witch
(31:53):
Accusations. Those are just the tip of the
iceberg as far as organizations,but we've done interviews with
representatives of all those organizations, so you can go
back to our back catalog and review what actions are actually
being taken to solve this problem.
(32:15):
So we talked about. The ongoing.
Crisis. Of women and children and
sometimes men being. Attacked as evil witches we've
talked a little bit about. Identifying as a witch as a
positive thing. But there's another.
Aspect of which in our modern culture.
Which is not acceptable. And that's the witch and slurs.
(32:36):
It's still used. To insult women every day from
podiums of leadership and the news and writings and you name
it. It's there so people, especially
men, still call women witches whenever they have any kind of
(32:56):
power, if they are in a leadership role, if they're
experts on subjects or issues, or they're in politics.
But also, every day this word gets tossed around so casually
like it means nothing. It's used against any woman who
says or does anything that's interpreted.
(33:19):
And that's the important part. That's interpreted as mean
spirited. So if you think that somebody
was rude to you, maybe your bossis being a little demanding or
micromanaging. You say, oh, my boss is such a
witch. That's wrong.
Don't say that. We've told you what the word
(33:40):
witch means. Your boss is not that it, and
that word is still being used tokill people today.
That's why we're so opposed to it.
It's also very misogynist. Do you call your male boss a
witch? Probably not.
You might have other language form, but it doesn't mean
(34:01):
somebody that we're supposed to kill, which does.
The witch has become a very important figure in feminist
theory because of the misogyny, the actions of the patriarchy
against women in the witch trials.
(34:22):
We've talked to Annes Tadeo about the woman as witch, the
belief that all women are flawed, that they've inherited
Eve's sin and therefore they areworking against men, they're
working against humanity, they're working against God,
sinful creatures by nature. And of course, rightly, women
(34:45):
have come back today and said hell no, that's not who we are.
We're women. We can be empowered, we can be
powerful, we can be everything that the patriarchy is.
Let women have a share of that and stop calling them witches
(35:05):
and relegating them to this lower position.
So the witch has become a very powerful symbol of female
empowerment. And that brings us to the
appearance of the witch in the modern era.
We've seen a lot of this move toreclaim what the witch is and
(35:28):
give it a different kind of portrayal.
I love how pop culture is portraying the witch in ways to
teach us. About our humanity and
friendships and who women are intheir relationships with women
and men and it's been a significant cultural shift and.
(35:52):
The clearest example. One that's very fun and I love
to bring up. Is L Frank.
Bombs the Wizard of. Oz.
And then what we have now from that.
Story. The Wicked franchise, the
Broadway, the movie, the books. Yeah, you see that a witch can
(36:12):
be a good figure, like Glenda. You also see that witches can be
more nuanced characters. They can be Shades of Grey, not
necessarily evil or good, just like regular folk.
We're not evil or good. We're all somewhere in between
(36:33):
with little bits and pieces fromeach of those things.
So we see this a lot in the filmand television and theater of
today. It's wonderful.
And other programs that came outin the 60s and 70s especially,
(36:53):
but also in the 90s in the, I call them the zeros, you might
call them the naughties or the ox, whatever.
The 2000s you've seen shows likeBewitched and Sabrina the
Teenage Witch, where the witch is portrayed as a good figure
that helps people and does nice things with their magic.
(37:15):
And you learn a lot of lessons in especially Sabrina the
Teenage Witch about the abuse ofpower and how witches should
have ethics. So it's a very nuanced look and
you have things like the Craft that's a bit of a darker look.
Charmed. They're all different looks, but
they're showing that witches canbe regular folk, just like the
(37:38):
people who were accused of witchcraft who were totally
innocent or regular folk. But with charmed in the.
Craft you have. Individuals making decisions for
themselves. About what kind of choices?
They're going to make and if they're.
Going to help. And harm putting the power back
in their own hands. Where with witchcraft?
(38:01):
Accusations people are being. Told that they're evil and I
look how things like wicked. They use the traditional
stereotypes. They make use of Alphaba with
the Black Hat, the green face, the pointy nose.
(38:21):
It's all part of this old stereotype.
But now they're being used to challenge the stereotypes, to
show how absurd they are. And you see Linda the good,
who's all pink and light and happy and airy.
And then you see Alphaba making decisions for herself, like
(38:41):
Sarah talked about, and being empowered and being a nuanced
person who's not totally evil. She's actually doing things for
what she believes are good reasons.
Now there is a central location where you can go to the Witch
City, Salem, MA, and you can learn about all kinds of
(39:06):
witches. You can learn about the
stereotype witches. You can learn about the people
accused of witchcraft in the witch trials who had nothing to
do with it. Salem in 1692 was a very
intolerant place, and the Salem of today goes out of the way to
(39:27):
be one of the most tolerant places around.
So you can see both the history and you can see the modern
interpretations of what witchcraft is and what a witch
is to those people who have embraced that religion.
And we talked more about Salem witch trials on our other
podcast, The Thing About Salem. Listen today.
(39:52):
Today we looked at what a witch has.
Been. And what it is?
And that is? Because understanding the.
Diverse and evolving definitions.
Of a witch is crucial for comprehending.
And combating the ongoing. Global crisis of witch hunts and
for understanding how we interact with each other.
As a family. Or as a community, as a world.
(40:14):
Community. Yeah, this crisis of these
ongoing witch hunts is driven byfear, which leads people to
disregard human dignity and persecute innocent people.
So when we're confronted with such fear that is driving us to
(40:35):
want to take extreme measures, that's the time we need to apply
critical thinking, stop and reason, really think about
things dispassionately for a moment and not rush to judgement
or to throw blame on another person for some misfortune
(40:57):
that's befallen you. It is your responsibility.
It's all of our responsibility to use our agency to end witch.
Hunts. You do.
Have a platform it may just be bringing it up in.
Conversation at your next socialgathering.
But if you write, if you. Speak if you.
(41:19):
Have a leadership role. If you're creating policy that
affects the lives of people, usethat.
Platform to promote human dignity and to stop the.
Fear of others. Thank you so much for joining us
today on this important episode discussing what a witch has been
and what a witch is today. Have a great today, had a
(41:41):
beautiful tomorrow.
Popular Podcasts
NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal
Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com