Why The Wise Became the Witch.
‘A witch ought never be frightened in the darkest forest because she should be sure in her soul that the most terrifying thing in the forest was her.’ - Terry Pratchett, ‘Wintersmith’
It is Halloween and everywhere we turn we are inundated with overly commercialised imagery. Devils, ghosts, vampires, you name it, the market is saturated with them and we’ve become immune to the origin of these characters. Instead, the thing we fear most about All Hallows’ Eve is that our children might ask to watch Goosebumps for the twelfth time that week. Arguably, the most quintessential image of the holiday is the witch; a black silhouette cackling overhead, terrifying the night sky. Though of course, this idea of witchcraft and what it meant to be a witch did not start out this way. For centuries ‘wise women’ (and occasionally even men) were simply healers providing much needed spiritual/medical care; they were integral parts of their communities. Even the Old English origin of the word ‘witch’ comes from ‘wit, wise, wisdom’, to mean ‘the craft of the wise’. As the likes of the Sanderson sisters and the Blair witch fill our evenings, I find myself asking when did this change? How did a ‘witch’ become the snagged- toothed, cunning old crone of our childhood nightmares?
To cover the entire history of witchcraft might be a tad much for this article. But to start, I think it’s good to know why the West has considered ‘the craft of the wise’ to be a bad thing in the first place. And, as with most things, it turns out we need to look to that old classic, the Bible, to give some background. From the Christian perspective, one of the first references we have to the practice comes from the Old Testament. King Saul sought out the female ‘Witch of Endor’ to summon Samuel back from the dead and help him defeat an attacking Philistine army. Spoiler, it goes terribly wrong and everyone dies in the end. Witchcraft pops up here and there again in Exodus and Leviticus with the famed ‘thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’ proclamation and ‘all mediums or spiritualists must be put to death’. Several other passages advise caution against rousing the dead and practising divination. Above all, the real crux of the argument seems to come from the fact that the Christians believed that turning to anyone other than God for help or guidance implied a disconnection from Christian faith. A spiritual guide or anyone performing sorcery got in the way of your relationship with your creator. And allowing this disconnect naturally formed a path to let the devil in. So where does medicine come in to all of this?
Jumping ahead to Middle Age Europe, a connection between spiritual and medical healing was well established. It was widely held that physical illness came from original sin; possession by Satan could easily be the cause of a common cold for example; because you know, #science. Before 1400 there was a delineation of white magic as good and healing; and black magic as evil. Wise women, who used white magic, were a common community feature, ubiquitous around England. As healers in a pre-industrial medical field, they performed pivotal roles in village medicine. All sorts of illnesses were cured by herbs, poultices and potions. Learned men may have been able to describe things like periods, a UTI and pregnancy, but they most certainly weren’t the ones treating them. ‘Men believed their dignity and self-esteem were diminished by the manual nature of care for the pregnant patient; for them, medicine was an intellectual exercise’. Professions such as midwife, obstetrician and paediatrician were women’s professions. ‘They offered power and independence to a respected group of women’, Professor Encarnación Juárez-Almendros tells us. But women were subtly pushed out of legitimate medicine at this time. More and more Royal and academic decrees were issued to restrict the practice of medicine to licensed physicians only. Was it simply a coincidence that women were ineligible for university training at this time? I think not. Inevitably, this legislation ensured that healing became a male- dominated profession. Before the Black Death women held a higher, more equal place in society. The Black Death and later the Renaissance changed all of that.
As the Black Death ravished Europe it brought with it a communal sense of fear and paranoia, out of which, the ties between spirituality and medicine were forever severed. Leigh Whaley says it perfectly, ‘medicine and science lost their spiritual dimensions; as healers, magicians, and witches lost their claims to manipulate the spiritual forms of the world, the ground was prepared for a mechanisation of the world picture’. During this panic, people began to believe that the devil himself was responsible for the plague. At the height of this momentum, secular and religious leaders joined forces to prosecute anyone alleged to be in league with the devil, read: peasant women. So let’s just be honest here for a moment, the term ‘witch-hunt’ is really just a euphemism for the process of removing women from the medical field entirely (and in some cases society in general). Midwives in particular, impoverished and untutored, were treated ruthlessly. If a patient gave birth to a stillborn or had a miscarriage, witchcraft was deemed the culprit. It was said in the 1500s that many midwives would offer infants to Satan as a tribute. With the idea of saving the church in mind, Henrik Kramer published the first official guide to witch-hunting, the Malleus Maleficarum. It was the first time the concept of witchcraft became officially gendered. Writing in the guide, ‘what else is a woman but a foe?… They are evil, lecherous, vein and lustful. All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is, in women, insatiable’, Kramer calls for witches to be burned at the stake along with heretics. Fun fact, Kramer wrote Malleus after being expelled from the city of Innsbruck. He was charged with illegal behaviour after the dismissal of a trial against Helena Scheuberin when it was determined Kramer was too obsessed with Scheuberin’s sexual habits for the trial to continue. I mean, need I even say the words male fragility here? Unfortunately, the guide was a hit with only the Bible selling more copies at the time. Europe became besieged with witch-hunts. Thousands were arrested. So satanic were the instruments of torture used that arrested women often chose suicide rather than attempt to clear their names by trial. Every element of their character and body was scrutinised; a birthmark or ‘suspicious’ mole could be a death sentence. By the end of the 1600s the witch-tropes we know today were solidified.
Around the world, modern-day witches are working to take the narrative back. Wicca, for example, is a modern Pagan religion to come out of a new wave of Western occultism in the 1950s. Wiccans worship both male and female gods and though some rituals revolve around magic, it is not always the case. The focus is far more on connection to the earth and natural spirits than the occult. In South Africa, Zulu people have two different categories of ‘witch doctors’/healers. Inyanga are comparable to naturopaths in Western culture and the Isangoma use trance and ritual to connect their people with ancestors. Indigenous Americans have practised a range of holistic treatments for thousands of years that are now nationally recognised by multiple official US health bodies. Ceremonies to greet the seasons and the use of native plants are used to promote living in harmony with the earth. In honour of Thanksgiving in November, we’re going to delve into much more detail on Indigenous healing practices in next month’s feature article.
Despite the sad story of witchcraft in Western Europe, don’t let that hold you back this weekend. If you want to don a pointy hat, grab your black cat, have a dance around the bonfire tonight and basically hit every trope in the book, go for it; reclaim your power, do it for your sacred ancestral sisters, I’m sure you’ll make Tituba proud. Happy Halloween everyone.
Words: Holly Westwood