A (very) Brief History of Witchcraft

The word “Witch” is derived from Old English masculine wicca, feminine wicce. The term was applied to both male and female members of the ancient traditions of the Pagans. The Old English plural form for both the masculine and feminine nouns was wiccan ("witches") and wiccecraft ("witchcraft"). The earliest recorded use of the word is in the Laws of Alfred the Great, which date to circa 890. 

In current colloquial English "witch" is almost exclusively applied to women, and the Old English Dictionary has "now only dialectal" for the masculine noun, although some Wiccans and other Neopagans apply it equally to men and women. Contrary to “popular belief”, the modern spelling of witch with the medial 't' didn’t appear until the 16th century. 

Because the actual practice of “Witchcraft” is misunderstood, individuals who practice forms of alchemy, herbalism and natural healing are also considered to be a “Witch”.

A common misconception today is that a “Witch” is a “Wiccan”. This is not necessarily so, and modern debates surround this link. A Wiccan most certainly can be a witch, but one who is a Witch is not a Wiccan. Both practices share very similar belief structures, but the two are truly not, one in the same. 

Witches are considered a sect of Pagan Tradition, which in fact, involves a Heaven and Earth, this world and the next. However, this belief and tradition historically undermined the authoritative control of the Christian Church – and because of the Church’s lust for power, Witches and Pagans posed a great challenge, and indeed a threat to their reign.

As a result of this threat, the Christian Church created, and defended its position that “Witches” consorted with demons and the connotation and depiction of evil was cast upon them. Thus began the era of “The Witch Hunts”. 

The Christian church violently attempted to coerce confessions from alleged witches; they flew through the skies, morphed into animals and engaged in sexual relations with demonic spirits, etc… The “authorities” of the Church sent forth what would best be known today as “lynch mobs”.  

Brutal techniques were routinely used to extract the admission of guilt. They included hot pincers, the thumbscrew, and the 'swimming' of suspects (an old superstition whereby innocence was established by immersing the accused in water for a sufficiently long period of time). 

The sentence for a “guilty witch”, in most cases, was death. There were other sentences, and one of the most common was to be chained to the oars of a ship for countless years, or excommunicated then imprisoned. 

The most common methods of execution of alleged witches were burning and hanging. The most notable historic death sentence was to be burnt alive at the stake. A common method in England was to hang the person first, then burn the corpse, which was a technique adopted in other countries (in many cases the hanging was replaced by strangling). Drowning was sometimes used as a means of execution. England was also the only country in which the accused had the right to appeal the sentence. 

The use of the 'swimming' was to test innocence or guilt. This means that an unknown number of people were senselessly drowned accidentally prior to conviction. Burning at the stake was common on the Continent as a penalty for heresy, but the common-law jurisdictions of England and colonial America sent convicted witches to the gallows. In very few exceptional cases, such as that of Giles Corey at Salem, alleged witches who refused to plead were pressed to death without trial. 

More generally, the majority of trials have always occurred within Christian/European/American cultures; they were most often justified there with reference to the Bible's prescriptions: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." (Exodus 22:18) and "A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones" (Leviticus 20:27). 

The violent acts against alleged witches were some of the worst ever recorded as legally sanctioned in the Western world. Author George Ryley Scott wrote in his book, In A History of Torture,  "The peculiar beliefs and superstitions attached to or associated with witchcraft caused those who were suspected of practicing the craft to be extremely likely to be subjected to tortures of greater degree than any ordinary heretic or criminal. More, certain specific torments were invented for use against them." 

It has been suggested that the execution of persons associated with witchcraft resulted in the loss of much traditional knowledge and folklore, which was often regarded with suspicion and tainted by association. An incredible insight to the common misconceptions of today was published by Keith Thomas, “Religion and the Decline of Magic”, first published in 1973.Many cultures throughout the world, both ancient and modern, have reacted to allegations of witchcraft with either superstitious fear or awe, and killed tens of thousands alleged practitioners of witchcraft. 

Witch-hunts still occur in the modern era, in many communities where religious values condemn the practice of witchcraft and the occult.