WitchCraft

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WitchCraft
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Witchcraft

• Defined as the use of magical powers to influence
  people and events.
• Since the mid 1900s has been consider a
  religion.
• A.K.A. Wicca, The Craft, the Old Religion
• Emphasis of the famine side of the deity (goddess)

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Witchcraft as a Religion

• Developed in Britain in the mid 1900s
• Flourished in English speaking countries
• Gerald B. Gardner
• British civil servant
• Life long interest in the occult
• Witchcraft is Paganism
• Worship of the earth and nature

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Witchcraft as Sorcery

• Masters of the supernatural world
• Conjure and command spirits
• Helping spirits called Familiars take the form
  of animals esp.
• Cats, Owls, Snakes, Dogs
• Shape shift into animals
• Allows for secret travel
• Ability to fly
• Under their own power
• Brooms, rakes or magical animals

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Witchcraft as Sorcery

• Control weather
• Blamed for storms that damaged dwellings or crops
• Knowledge of
• Potion a drink that causes desired effect in a
  persons behavior
• Charm a magical incantation (word or phrase)
  that helps to bring about a spell
• Able to see into the future and to posses the
  evil eye.
• Ability to kill by looking

• White witches
• Love
• Health
• Wealth
• Black witches
• Causing accidents
• Illness
• Bad luck
• Even death

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Organization Practices

• No central authority
• Loosely organized in to groups called covens
• Followers known as witches
• Sabbats
• Imbolc (2/1)
• Beltani (4/30)
• Lugnasadh or Lammas (7/31)
• Samhain (10/31)

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History

• Ancient Times
• Middle Ages to the 1700s
• Europe
• The inquisition
• American Colonies
• Witchcraft in modern times

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Ancient Times

• Sorcery has existed since humans banded together
• Magical rites to ensure successful hunting
• Western beliefs that sorcery grew out of
  mythology and folklore of ancient people esp.
  Greek and Roman
• With the spread of Christianity distinctions
  between good and bad magic vanished
• Known as the worship of the devil.

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Middle Ages

• Europe
• Began about 700 AD
• Associated with heresy
• Church leaders began to stamp out heresy,
  sentencing heretics to death by burning
• The Inquisition
• Began 1230
• Effort of the church to punish heretics
• Charged with human sacrifice and worshipping the
  devil
• Mostly women charged and falsely accused
• Tortured until confessed

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American Colonies

• New England from 1600s to 1700s
• Some banished, others executed
• Most famous witch hunt began in 1692 in Salem,
  Mass.
• Lasted about a year
• 150 people imprisoned
• 19 men and women convicted and hanged

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Witchcraft in Modern Times

• 1939 Gardner became initiated into a coven of
  people who called themselves hereditary witches
• 1950 Gardner published a book about the ancient
  rituals
• He feared it of dying out