Witches and Wizards in Past and Present Consciousness

A simple refined Google News search for witches and wizards will thrown up a number of stories from around this teeming globe. Witches are mentioned in these old-skool places: The Bible; Isis and Circe, as well as other Egyptian and Greek goddesses were believed to cast spells; Shakespeare writes the 3 witches into the opening scene of his MacBeth.

You see, whilst over time we in the West have slowly gravitated away from genuine belief in the occult to an active interest in its fictional representations, many places still take witches and witchcraft seriously, unless you’re Lady Gaga:

How seriously? Well people deemed to practice witchcraft in many places worldwide may still end up in prison or die at the hands of an angry, avenging mob for their beliefs. This very thing has happened on 3 continents at least in the past 2 years alone:

The Americas: Haiti – December 3, 2010 – “at least a dozen people” were murdered by a lynch mob in Haiti following the harrowing cholera epidemic which has claimed the lives of thousands of people. they were accused of using witchcraft to kill off rivals during the epidemic. Article in The Telegraph.

Asia: India – Schools in India were forced to include witchcraft into their syllabus in an attempt to debunk the myths and misinformation after more than 750 people accused of being witches were killed in Assam and West Bengal, just a small area of the country, between 2003 and 2008. Article on timesonline.

Africa: Mozambique – A 68 year old woman was arrested for trafficking human body parts, on suspicion of using them for witchcraft. Article on Daily Nation.

Looking back at our own histories, there are a number of different instances when women and men, accused of being witches and wizards were put to death. The most infamous being the Salem witch trials.

Many decades prior to this however, across the Atlantic near Preston, Lancashire, England, the little known Pendle witches were hung at the gallows. 10 men and women were the accused of witchcraft. In 1612 they were hung at the gallows for the alleged murder by witchcraft of seventeen people in and around the Forest of Pendle. My childhood home overlooked Pendle Hill, where the reputed witches were said to live in solitude, undertaking questionable practices mainly at night. The bare hill, that changes colour depending on the time of day was always a bleak place that inflamed my imagination as a young boy.

It’s an unusual thing to be raised in an area where the witch symbol (below) is seen daily; it seems to reinforce the absurdity of the belief in witchcraft. Among other things, the witch on a broomstick image is used in Clitheroe by many local businesses and as the badge for a primary school.

Once the “witches” had been made an example of things calmed down in the region. Salem on the other hand saw quite the opposite reaction. From June-September 1962, 19 men and women were hung in god-fearing, Puritan Salem after being convicted of witchcraft and one elderly man was pressed to death for refusing to submit to the trials. During the furore, dozens more were imprisoned as rampant accusations were flung around like platitudes. Little to no evidence supported any of the death sentences.

The idea of a witch-hunt is now commonplace in our societies as a synonym for an intensive search for people believe to have been disloyal or broken the law, without any real corroborating evidence. In the 1950’s Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible, which was an indirect critique of McCarthyism which was rife in the early part of the decade, whereby many people in government, the entertainment industry and elsewhere were accused of being Communist, again without any evidence to back it up. One case in particular, that of Alger Hiss, highlighted how this mentality was further motivated by personal grievance, greed and poor evidence.

Linked often to religion, “witches” have always been pariahs for tough times. Even today, as seen in Haiti, where religion is a strong presence entwined with society, when something happens to shake the faith, then a scapegoat must quickly be found to prevent people from questioning their faith, thinking outside of the box, or God-forbid, losing their subservience. In Haiti, such a disaster was two-fold. First came the earthquake that shook the country, then the Cholera epidemic that compounded the situation. It is only natural that people would ask why? What did we do to deserve this? Voodoo and witchcraft are inextricably linked in Haiti. Click here to read my previous post on zombies of Haiti.

Esentially what happens is what I like to call the witch conspiracy – a convenient solution for a governing authority (political or religious), to divert people’s attention away from them and pass the blame to somebody else. The fact that governments can still get away with this is beyond belief. Monty Python, as always, put it best: “How do you know she’s a witch?” – “She looks like one”

Let this be a warning to any of you who read this and enjoy going to caves, abandoned buildings or spinster’s houses to talk nonsense during the night. You are not safe. You may be accused, imprisoned, or worse still, forced to take the “leap off a cliff to see if you can fly” test. Also, Harry Potter isn’t real. Seriously!