Witches Through the Centuries

Hi, I’m back! I’ve missed this wicked little niche but I busied myself doing some witch hunting. I don’t pretend to be a scholar about witchcraft and its allied arts but my interest can be traced to the witch stories of childhoods past and the actual encounters with the supernatural.

There will always be something chillingly thrilling about witches of yore; there was something darkly mysterious about them. Excuse me if I err, but todays witches seem bland beside their diabolical predecessors. Well, witches like fashion and politics, have evolved.

The Witches of Biblical Times

The sorcerers of the pre-biblical era were esteemed members of society and were greatly feared. They possessed knowledge beyond the comprehension of the ordinary person, and enjoyed royal patronage. They influenced important decision-making with their interpretation of the signs from the heavens and from the things around them. Such was their sway on the socio-political drama of those times.

Man’s interest with the supernatural is recorded in the Old Testament. The sorcerers or the kashaphs of that time used incantations and mutterings, animal sacrifices, and magical formulas to deal with or control the unseen world.

Even then the sorcerers had their specialized fields - necromancy (communicating with the dead), fortune-telling (by interpreting the position of the stars in the heavens and the behavior of animals and the condition of the liver of dead animals), summoning the intervention of spirits .

The Bible strongly abhors the following - one who induces her son or daughter to pass through the fire, one who uses divination, an observer of times, an enchanter or a witch, a charmer, a consulter of mediums, a wizard, and a necromancer.

The Bible makes it clear that the power of sorcerers come from an evil source and they were an abomination to the sight of the Lord. This explains the rabid and cruel extermination of women suspected of witchcraft even on the flimsiest of evidence. Unfortunately, this fervor was a blot in the church’s history. Millions of those persecuted had no supernatural powers and most were ignorant and poor women.

The Witches of Medieval History

During the medieval period, people believed that the witches sold their souls to the devil and had sex with demons to obtain supernatural powers. They used these powers to cast spells on people and animals, but most of the witches burned at stake or tortured were innocent and “confessed” under duress to escape a painful death.

The earliest witch trial was starred by Dame Alice Kyteler (1280-1325?) who according to her accusers was instrumental in the deaths of her four husbands, by resorting to poison and witchcraft. Dame Alice escaped to England but her friends were persecuted, and her maidservant was burned at stake after suffering servere flogging. The witch hunt pread and escalated in Europe. In the US (then a colony of England), the infamous Salem Witch Trials continue to haunt the country.

The New Age Witches

The witches of the New Age are into earth-centered religion, are not into satanic mischief, and they profess to be ordinary people with jobs and families and saddled with the usual problems. They believe in a deity who has both male and female aspects.

The modern day witches are not deeply religious and they do not claim that their powers come from the evil one although they are able to contact supernatural powers. They have organized themselves into covens, composed of six males and six female witches led by a high priest and a high priestess during secret ceremonies that hark back to the pre-Christian era.

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