Witches: who were they?

We can all immediately recognize a witch, right? The nasty, ugly stepmother in Snow White, the green face of the East Witch in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. They are evil, feared, hideous and have a special place in our pop culture. However, the first witches were above all real-life women, independent and free, but persecuted women.

Let's start with some etymology. The word witch comes from the old english wicca and wicce, which means warlock and sorceress. However, if we focus now on sorceress we can relate the word to its latin roots: sors, which means fate, or sort in french. Therefore we can presume that witches are people with the capacity to modify somebody's fate.

During the Middle Ages and with christianization, it became more and more difficult to have a polytheistic religion. Pagan rites were note a thing to be done, even if the main religion went back over them. The herbel knowledge and the connection with the Moon were despised and relegated to superstition, to magic. Often, the knowledge was owned by women, and at that time magic was known to be taught by demons to humans. And morevover: evil magic was women's work.

In the 13th century, magic became an official practice and the association with the Devil was made clearer: no matter what your religion was, it was necessarily evil. Let's remember that the sciences were not really developed at that time: Good and Evil were fighting to declare which one performed this or that miracle.

During the following century, everyone suspected of practicing magic could be condemned by the Inquisition, the tribunal in charge of judging heresy. Thus, magic was forbidden, like all knowledge which was associated with it.

The witch-hunts started in the Renaissance, a time when witchcraft was officially punishable by death. In 1486, the german Heinrich Kramer published Malleus Maleficarum. This book is knownto be a guide on how to arrest suspects and to stop witched, and unfortunately many other books will follow.

To bring suspected women to justice simple testimonies were enough. Children were even encouraged to denounce their own mother. Everything was an excuse for witchcraft. Therfore it was easier to get rid of an annoying neighbor.

The trial process followed frequently the same steps: women were imprisoned during it, stripped and shaved to let the judges be able to see the Devil's mark, which could take any forms: birthmark, beauty spots, scratches, warts... The judges then used a silver needle to jab it. The suspects shouldn't feel anything, neither should they bleed to be cleared. They were also tortured, even after confessing to make them give other names. After that came the condemnation: life sentence, banishment, or death by being hanged or most of the time burnt at the stake. But why so much violence against witches, and especially women?

While the population was divided between Catholicism and Protestantism, the State was also evolving. Indeed, only one person was at the head of the country with all the power, even in the countryside, where the population started to rise up against its condition. Therfore, Church and State became allies to establish their authority.

To do so they designated one common enemy, source of all people's misfortunes: the Devil, and his servants: the witches. But the dangerous nature of these women was more in the way they challenged the established order. In fact, magic and witchcraft were linked to this desire to discover all the secrets of the Universe. At that time, knowledge came with experiments, which the Church was scared of. Besides, potions, or cures, created by these discoveries bothered, because they were created with products from nature at a time where most of the scientists agreed on the fact that nature should be controlled, just like women.

However, with scientific progress and the advent of the Enlightenment, the witch-hunts came to an end little by little. The accusations of the elite also helped these hunts to end. In France for instance, an edict forced the Inquisition to collect more evidence to condemn the suspects.

Witches were independent women, often old widow living appart from society and free from a male care. They had knowledge of plants, and knew how to use them as a cure at a time where official medicine was nonexitent in the countryside and only taught and practiced by men. It should be noted that almost everywhere and for a long time, healers were women, especially because they took care fo pregnancy and childbirth. This knowledge was often regarded as female business and most of the time based upon the experiment and oral transmission. This closeness with the body and childbirth made womend an ideal target for the Inquisition.

For a long time the character of the witch spread through time and space, in both tales and folklore. We can quote Baba Yaga in Russia, who rules over the elements and guards the realm of the deads; Befana in Italy, a nice witch who brings presents and charcoal to children for example. Most of the time, they are described as ugly and wrinkled and with a broom. Fortunately, there as been a shift inside the usual fairytale structure and the horror movie, where female characters were no more than passive victims. The witch is no longer a monsteror an absurd character. Nowadays, they have a complex identity, they support each other and they have in common a deep empathy which leads them to fight against injustices. Many character have marked our pop culture if you listened to our podcast.

Thanks to TV shows and cinema, witches have made a strong comeback. Noawedays witches are not just on TV, some people practice witchcraft for themselves. This practice has found itself a place in the West, where people are more and more at ease to share about it. However, it appears that being part of this community is a privilege. In a few places on Earth, being a witch is still considered as a crime like in Ghana, India or Saudi Arabia.

By Charline GAUTIER

To go further

Silvia Federici, Une guerre mondiale contre les femmes
Odile Chabrilac, Âme de sorcière, ou la magie du féminin
Mona Chollet, Sorcières

Images & Resources

Julie Legere, Elsa Whyte and Laura Pérez, Secret de sorcières
Wellcome Library London