Historian Answers Witchcraft Questions | Tech Support | WIRED
I'm historian Mickey Brock let's answer your questions from the internet this is witchcraft support it's too [Music] silly at Lea Likes music can men be witches or is it # just for the girls yes men can be witches anywhere between 75 and 80% of those accused of Witchcraft were women there were a few places where the majority of of people accused of Witchcraft were men Russia Estonia Normandy Iceland but these were also places where the witch trials never boiled into a full-blown panic a lot of the men who are accused of Witchcraft are accused in moments where they are related to or in proximity to a woman who is accused of Witchcraft so their mother might have been accused their sister their aunt their their wife even and that could bring them in the minds of authorities closer to the crime and could make them vulnerable to that allegation there were also some men who ran a foul of traditional Norms of masculinity they might have used their power in a way that was deemed irrational men were supposed to be rational the opposite of women who were irrational and emotional these sorts of deviations from the Norms of masculinity could make potentially someone more vulnerable you may remember the case of Giles Corey Giles Corey was made famous by Arthur Miller's play The Crucible and he is the man in that story and in the actual history who was was pressed to death after he was accused of Witchcraft that is to say a slab of wood was laid on top of them and then Rock was placed and rock was placed and rock was placed until he was pressed to death into the Earth he had been accused of Witchcraft after his wife Martha Cory had been accused and the reason he was pressed to death like this is because he refused to enter a plea and in English law you had to enter a plea are you guilty or not guilty right this this system lives on but he wouldn't say anything he held fast and of course Very famously and this may be apocryphal we don't know for sure if he said this but Arthur Miller said he did Giles Cory's last words were defiantly more weight our next question is from Adam mline what better way is there to spend a Thursday morning than learning about methods of torture used on accused witches in Scotland I too enjoy thinking about torture methods we're talking about 990,000 people accused and about 50% of them executed and torture was really key in order to get people convicted for witchcraft and that's because when you think about witchcraft it's a crime that's kind of unseen it's secret it's hidden it's concealed if you don't have eyewitnesses to the crime then what you need is a confession you need an individual to confess to meeting with the devil under the cover of night using harmful magic to kill babies and harm crops and render men impotent so the question might be what sorts of torture methods did they use if you're interested in Scotland they really enjoyed the thumb screws these little screws that tightened and tightened and tightened on your thumb in some some places they were a little bit less gruesome like the use of sleep deprivation which was common in England in the 1640s other places more gruesome still like the rack a medieval torture device that was used into the early modern period that could either stretch or compress limbs the stado which is used to tie arms behind one's back and hoist you up over a pulley sometimes with weights attached to your legs so that your shoulders become dislocated so really horrific stuff and of course we know torture gives us terrible information it's not good judicial practice but it was useful for authorities who felt that witchcraft was such an exceptional crime they would use torture in ways they typically wouldn't people were allowed to flout the typical legal norms and practices and what that meant is you could get people to confess to all sorts of Fantastical things next question is from ask historians great website on Reddit and it is asked by Sir drunken the tall sir drunken 10 out of 10 name I feel like you're a Monty Python character how did the Salem Witch Trials become the face of the historical witch hunts when European Witch Trials took place much earlier and were more numerous number one America right um the dominance kind of the cultural imperialism of America has really brought the witch trials Salem Witch Trials to front of mind and of course Arthur Miller's play The Crucible which was performed on both sides of the Atlantic is going to be part of that I think Salem too is kind of shocking it's late right it's in the early 1690s happens in this Puritan colony that's often held up as this great example of the American experiment and I think because it's so late people think surely this is a time period when they've stopped hunting Witches by the end of the 17th century right the 17th century is the Heyday of the Scientific Revolution we're talking about you know Galileo and Isaac Newton and all of these things so people see Salem as sort of a shock to the system whereas potentially a 16th century witch trial seems more understandable but I also want to say that this idea that the witch hunts happened in the Middle Ages they didn't if you ever hear someone say witch hunting was a medieval phenomenon it was not the bulk of the witch hunts happened in the early modern period that is to say the 16th and 17th century Kora asks were witches ever burned at the stake in the USA like they were in Britain actually I'm going to go with no and no they were hung in New England and in and in the colonies and they were also hung in England um English common law treated witchcraft as a crime of sort of treason and act against the state an act against the church and it wasn't treated as a heresy so they weren't burned they were just hung in England and the English colonies in Scotland they were strangled and then burned and then in many places in Continental Europe they were straight up burned so a a nice range of of execution methods we have there now we have a question from Phil aray why were the witch tests so deadly and dumb almost all the tests required the person to die even if there was no proof that they were or not so the Witchcraft tests these are very ations on what people called in earlier periods the trial by ordeal the idea that you could do a certain test the most famous one that we tend to think of is the swim test the dunking of witches the throwing the women into water and seeing if they floated or not people really thought Divine Providence was critical it was crucial so there was a lot of confidence that God would not let an innocent person die and that belief was really strong it underpinned the faith in these tests now let me say actually the swim test the thrower into a pond you know as they do in in Monty Python there are ways of telling whether she is a witch that isn't actually used as often as we're led to think by its prominence and popular culture but it did happen and it is an example again of that belief that humans were not alone in the world and there were a lot of other forces that governed the application of justice and the rooting out of evildoers another excellent question from reddit's history Forum uh asked by six horig goth how is it that there were Witch Trials happening in different parts of the world around the same time it's the printing press you have the Advent of the printing press in the 15th century or at least the use of it and development of it in Europe and that leads to the printing of these demonological texts that are being spread around so the printing press allows stories of say witches in Scandinavia to be printed and read about in London or in in Boston and that's going to help create this sort of consistency in the the Western notion of the witch at Mike Queener do witches really cast spells or are their abilities limited to potions and stuff well people believed that witches had a wide range of powers they believed witches certainly could use potions Double Double Toil and Trouble right Shakespeare's famous line probably the most gruesome thing that people imagined witches to do is people imagined that some witches might grind up or use parts of humans especially parts of unbaptized infants to make them into a past to make them into a potion and anoint themselves in order to fly if you've seen the witch from 2015 you'll remember the scenes of the witch in the woods grinding something on the stone block and then sort of flying out and turning younger that was envisioned to be parts of a baby but it draws on older stereotypes about blood liable Heretics doing these sorts of horrible practices to children and by labeling accused witches as killers of babies and even as cannibals using the pestil and mortar to grind up some bones of babies whatever is a very shorefire quick way to dehumanize them and to demonize them Scott daily 26 asks has anyone watched the witch what an absolute shite horror film that is Scott Scott my man no the witch is a brilliant film I think you just may be conditioned to people jumping out of corners and going and there's none of that in the witch Robert Edgar's the witch which came out in 2015 is to my mind and I'm just saying this I'm just the expert the best film about witchcraft ever made it looks at a family in the 17th century in New England grappling with fears of Witchcraft and it is the perfect encapsulation I think of Puritan anxieties of Theology of fears the Puritans had about whether or not they were elect and of this sort of fever dream about which witchcraft that so took hold of people's minds when you watch the film The Witch you get a real window into why the witch was so scary to people it really helps us understand why people thought witches were were deadly and a threat to their families to their livelihoods and to their community so I know Scott says it was shite I don't think it was shite I think it was great five stars how many stars are there a lot of stars all the stars I have two scenes from the witch that I really love um they also happen to be quite gruesome one is of course the scenes involving black philli who is the goat that belongs to the family the goat is really sort of emblematic of many depictions that we have in popular culture and historically of the devil as this goat figure which of course is again an inversion of the idea of the Lamb right the Lamb of God the black goat is an inversion of that of course also a demonization of certain Pagan rituals ideas about pan whatnot that's why the goat's often associated with Satan but Black Phillip is a perfect devil the other scene that I really love there is a scene where a child in the film is sort of having this experience of bewitchment and is kind of having these almost possessed convulsions and in that process spits up an apple and there's your clue to the role of the eve narrative he's been in the woods with a witch and he comes back possessed and chokes up an apple and that's straight to that stereotype that we see in a lot of depictions of witches next question is from at Jasmine ammani who came up with the idea that witches could fly on brooms and why this is a great question the broom is one of those iconic images that we associate with the witch number one the broom is a totally domestic object and so much of what we think of when we think of Witchcraft is associated with the domestic sphere right you have The Cauldron right the mortar and pestle these things that you would find in the home and that's because when you think of the crimes that Witch is supposedly committed many of them were about harm to the domestic sphere children food crops and so forth now during the early modern period people did wonder about whether witches could fly authorities really thought about this how did it happen how did it work and the idea fundamentally was that with the aid of the devil witches could fly to undisclosed locations maybe a mountain under cover of Darkness maybe a forest far away on a hill and there they could meet under cover of night and engage in the witch's Sabbath which was invisioned believed fantasized to involve all sorts of demonic acts orgies cannibalistic and fanticide singing and feasting and things that were in some ways inversions of appropriate Christian practice another note about the broomstick is it was sort of envisioned to be a fairly phallic object now looking at this make your own judgment if you believed that witches were engaging in sex with the devil then having these sort of phallic objects could reemphasize that aspect of witches being carnal and being in sort of lustful service of Satan I love modern takes on some of this I love how in Hocus Pocus when you're looking for a domestic object that's like more or less phallic adjacent uh you have one of the witches grabbing a vacuum now they weren't grabbing Vacuums in the 16th century but in our modern retelling they serve that same purpose as the broom next question is from at Wicked Walnut I didn't know walnuts could be Wicked but now I do um I guess anything can anyhow is the malas malarum worth reading at this late date well for those of you who don't know the malas malarum is the hammer of witches is what it literally translates to and it's a work that's published in the late 1480s by a very nasty piece of work a Dominican Inquisitor called Hinrich Kramer who basically was pissed off that he wasn't being trusted to run these witch trials in insbrook and writes this screed that's meant to be used as a guide to identifying and hunting witches and should you read it is it worth reading well how much do you enjoy misogyny and Demon sex if you enjoy both of those things then that is the book for you but in all seriousness it's a book that is really important for sort of promoting some of those misogynistic tropes that are part of the witch trials certainly one of the things that Hinrich Kramer in the Mal malr was obsessed with was this idea of witches as being carnal in witches as being lustful and witches as having uncontrollable tongues that couldn't be trusted he really thought mouy women tended to be witches so I can only imagine what he would have made of me and many of the the women in my life sometimes my students ask me why the malus malarum was so popular why was it translated so quickly into English why did it become so prevalent and why today do we still think about it right if anybody knows a witchcraft book that's what they know and part of it is I think because the malice mifram is at times quite illicit it's quite pornographic one of the most salacious interesting folkloric stories in the Mal malarum is this story of this group of witches who were widely known as he says to be stealing men's members and taking them up to a tree and putting them in the branches and feeding them corn it gets a bit weird and a man came to the tree and said I've lost my member I need my member and the witches say okay you can choose yours from this tree but do not take the biggest one for that belongs to the Village priest I love that story because in some ways it it combines folklore but also with actual witch belief people were really worried about witches causing impotency there really was a case of witch CFT in the 17th century where a man supposedly lost his penis to a witch and I tell this story to my students and we actually read parts of the malas I have to say though I teach my witch hunts class at 8: a.m. and a lot of them say that's too early for demon sex and penis trees but you know next question is from at sundered Seas who is going to tell these people that the Salem Witch Trials were the result of mass hysteria from false accusations and not actual witches like the European witch hunts so I don't think we should call this a mass Hysteria I think there are moments where we can think about it as Panic where things really go off the rails accusations get made willy-nilly but it wasn't a panic this was a group of people who truly and genuinely feared witches the sort of authorities that they looked to clerics and judges and of course the Bible provided fodder for this it says in scripture Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live it's scriptural so the sources of authority suggested that witches had to be eradicated and the worldview at the time the belief system meant that it was very rational to believe in witches think about it early modern life is hard right we all live by comparison in homes with thousands of candles and we have thousands of horses at our disposal if you have a car and we never worry about what we're going to eat and we have vaccines and all of those things we don't have to work in the same way to find explanation for Misfortune and I think if you understand that then you can't quite as easily dismiss the fears of Witchcraft that were going on at the time period at Dr Sandman 11 asks why is witch hunting considered to be bad they tried to eat some children in a gingerbread house that one time H Dr Sandman I love this question because it brings in one of the most prominent stereotypes that occurs not just actually in witch hunts but in moral panics in general and this is the fear of the Spectre of harm to children the Hansel and grutle story fundamentally is about these two innocent kids who just love candy following the trail into a g bread house and then becoming a nice midnight snack popping in the oven whatnot what's the inversion of The Good Mother someone who harms children women are meant to give life to children to nourish them so the inversion of that the inverse of that the opposite of it is this witch who harms them who eats them even and that's why you see harm to children in so many of these witchcraft cases and that's not unusual to Witch Trials right much of the stereotypes about Jewish communities early on are related to harm to children to blood liable you see it certainly in the Communist scare actually this fear that communism could be spread to Children what about the children you see it in the satanic panics of the 1980s this fear of what's going on at prek and and daycares and whatnot so harm to children I think is one of those useful movable fictions that people use as a way to articulate to justify and to demonize over the course of repeated moral panics that are still very much with us I think at wisem 40718 why do witches always have such a nose in cartoon movies in Disney well you see in some of these visual depictions of witches including from the late 15th 16th and 17th centuries of these sort of large appendages large noses things that Mark them out from other members of the community and of course the large nose Trope which is actually more prominent in some later depictions than in the early modern period itself comes from anti-semitic stereotypes there's very little new that's under the Sun so much about the witch trials is pulling from stereotypes from other moments of panic in European history so if we watch this little clip about Snow White and the Seven Dwarves of that famous scene of the witch holding out the poisoned apple and offering it to Snow White this is no ordinary Apple it's a magic wishing apple and take a bite ah I think we see some really prominent stereotypes that you can find in a number of the witch trials first of all the Apple if you see a woman with an apple your brain should immediately go to Eve here is someone offering Temptation offering something that they shouldn't have access to and of course you have the witch in the scene she's kind of an eve figure right she's evil she's been tempted by the devil and then you have snow white who is of course virginal pure a very merry figure right we are always sort of skirting within this Madonna Mary Eve complex and how people Envision the roles of women and it was very hard if you were a woman in any period to be a Mary so people were more likely especially authorities to think of you like an eve you also have in this this scene this famous scene of the witch holding the Apple to Snow White her wearing a dark cloak that is kind of reminiscent of the way people invisioned Heretics to meet under the cover of the night and that large cartoonishly anti-Semitic knows that you see in some of these depictions at bunson burner bmd asks why do we associate cats with witches this idea of cats being associated with witches comes actually very specifically from the English Witch Trials where witches were believed to have demonic familiars so local domestic animals a cat a toad a bunny whatever that was believed to be a little demon or a little creature doing the devil's bidding that was feeding off the Witch and this really becomes prominent in particular in some major witch hunts in the 1640s in East Anglia where you have Matthew Hopkins and John Stern style themselves as self-appointed witch finders and go out and basically use sleep deprivation to get people to confess to Witchcraft any of you who have ever owned a cat will know they are finicky creatures they have a mind of their own they do their own thing also cats have always been sexualized will all know the slang that is associated with cats and that's another thing that gets them kept up to the Forefront of being associated with witchcraft probably the most recognizable object associated with a witch is of course the witch's hat but I have to say historians aren't entirely sure where this comes from some people have posited that it's related to kind of a exaggeration of the types of caps people would have worn during the time period maybe it has some anti-semitic Roots maybe it's just frankly a really good way to Mark someone as different than others in society but they do show up only rarely in pamphlets from and woodcuts from the time period but they have certainly become dominant Norms in today's society so happy Halloween this question is from at Holy schnit Googling how to spot a witch let's imagine I am a minister and it is 1630s in a small town just outside of Edinburgh Scotland and I advising my parishioners on how to spot a witch and it's very important they do so we want to avoid Divine wrath what I might tell them is if you hear a woman who on the margins of society in some way maybe she's widowed maybe she's poor maybe she's just contener maybe you're skipping out on the church maybe you're Sabbath breaking but if you're an ordinary person you're really only looking for a witch if something bad happens if your cow dies if your child dies if your husband goes impotent you might think back to yourself and think did someone do me wrong did something happen that could have been perceived to be an act of harmful magic and you might think did you have a neighbor who you quarreled with and did that neighbor fit the bill of someone who could be a witch and that would help you identify who the witch was at Carolyn Calo asks why did the Salem Witch Trials start at all Caroline great question and how much time do you have the long-term causes are that we should understand Salem as coming at the tail end of a much larger chapter of European witch hunting that is to say the Salem witch hunts are in the early 1690s by this point most places in Europe have already hit their Peak Witchcraft and Witch Trials are starting to decline but Salem is very much part of this story part of the circulation of all these demonological ideas about witches about the devil and the ways that they might interact in the world and of course when people come from England to the so-called new world to these colonized lands in New England and elsewhere they are bringing with them those ideas the other sort of long-term causes are this intense Puritan desire to build a city upon a hill when you have the major wave of Puritan immigration in the 1630s you have people coming who want to build a truly pure truly Godly society and that takes Zeal they see themselves as fleeing persecution back in England and coming to the New World in order to build something better and more Godly and if you want to build something better and more Godly you have to be on the lookout for any threats from the devil and for the Puritans who settled in Boston and Beyond they really saw themselves as under threat from a range of actors they were colonizers of course so they were coming into conflict with with local indigenous groups and they are going in some ways to perceive indigenous peoples as being potential Servants of the devil and especially they think this after waves of Frontier Wars that took place in the middle and latter part of the 17th century short-term causes are there's so much communal feuding there are debates among community members there's a general sense of unrest and distrust of one's neighbors a new Minister has come to Salem a couple of years before the Salem Witch Trials a guy called Samuel Paris a real and he is certainly at the center of a lot of these Witch Trials it's really in his home he's the minister of the newly appointed Salem Village where the Witchcraft symptoms start so Samuel Paris this diard Puritan Minister he has a daughter Betty Paris and a niece Abigail Williams they're in his home they're young 9 and 11 and they start to experience symptoms of bewitchment and affliction and that is what gets the witch trials going they are the first of The Afflicted girls and it sort of spread like wildfire from that and that's partially because it serves the purpose of Samuel Paris if this minister is trying to make his way in the world if he is trying to sort of show himself as The Godly Emissary on Earth then of course the devil's going after him right this legitimizes his position and I think we also have to ask the question of why did these young girls perform bewitchment why did they think they were in Afflicted or at least why did they manifest the symptoms of Affliction odd contortions of the body the speak speaking in strange voices the writhing about signs that we would typically associate with demonic possession why did they do this well few people in puritan society had less power less of a say less of a voice than young girls they were told to be quiet they were told to sit back they were told to ask permission before speaking they were told to obey their mother and father at all cost and here is this moment where they take Center Stage the spotlight is on them and then you have the adults interpreting that for their own purposes in ways that spiral into the trials next question and this is a good one from at dream of delie do we believe that witch hunting was a result of actual witches or arot poisoning I think in some ways people want to believe that these girls were just low-key tripping right his little light LSD action and that maybe explains it because that's easier to understand than thinking that people really believed in witches and were really fearful of them when we read about people believing that witches were going to the Sabbath and having sex with the devil and committing cannibalistic and fanticide and so on we just find that beyond belief we think how did people actually think this was true surely The Witch Trials must have been about something else social control air got poisoning these sorts of things but in reality this was a serious belief in the time period people genuinely believed in witches and they genuinely believed that people who were guilty of Witchcraft needed to be eradicated from the earth and there's also no evidence that they were tripping on poison dry that might have been a more exciting explanation but the reason we know that's not true is because that would have been a lot a lot of poisoned dry of argot poisoning going around and The Witch Trials were not just in Salem they took place from the late 15th century through to the early 18th century that's tens of thousands of people accused tens of thousands of people executed and there's just not that much LSD bread Claire asks a really common question Amin did actually have six fingers did she and I think what Claire in some ways is sort of asking is was Anne Blen believed to be a witch did she have these signs of Witchcraft or physical difference like six fingers that could Mark her out well Claire she didn't actually have six fingers there's no contemporary evidence of that and actually anbin was never accused of Witchcraft During the period of her life she was not accused of Witchcraft at the time of her downfall she was accused of adultery she was accused of incest but she was never formally accused or tried as a witch that stuff comes later when she was demonized by later writers in various ways I will say you know what caused ambulance's downfall is frankly that Henry VII was a megalomaniac with authoritarian Tendencies who used women abused women and wanted to get his rocks off with Jane Seymour one of Amin's ladies in waiting and Amin had not given him a male child hence that's really what causes her downfall but it was not an accusation of Witchcraft it's not really until the latter part of the 16th century where certain people start to think about anbin to think about her Legacy and in some cases to try to tarnish it Elizabeth the first is in power 1558 to 16003 first female Queen of England in this way has a tremendous amount of influence and anbin was her mother so if you're an enemy then trumping up charges or rumors really against anbin is a way to do it at one with the funk a good name how do you avoid being a accused of Witchcraft well number one have a penis no um in all seriousness there were about 20% of those accused of Witchcraft who were men but typically the probability was that most witches would be women because a lot of the things that happened that were attributed to Witchcraft children dying crops dying someone getting poisoned a husband getting impotent a lot of those things happened in a really domestic space right happened in the home happened at the farm and if you to be born a woman you might want to really perform your good and godly Behavior make sure you're going to church on time don't yell at any of your neighbors certainly don't curse out the minister or anybody in a position of authority if you are engaged in any sort of neighborhood dispute try to remove yourself from that because it's really often these neighborhood quarrels that lead eventually to Witchcraft allegations when something goes wrong if you're in the midst of a witch Panic even if you do everything right even if you're a man potentially you could be accused we often have this assumption that if you were accused of Witchcraft in this period in as I say the 16th 17th century you would go from zero to being a witch to being executed but in fact there were judicial processes in place that were meant to try to sort the wheat from the chaff the witches from the good Christians as it were and some people in England for example a lot of people were afforded lawyers there were jury trials and you had to have a unanimous jury conviction according to England law in order to be convicted of Witchcraft and that of course meant rates of conviction in a place like England were lower but typically the way people were acquitted was that juries just did not find there to be enough substantive evidence that that person was truly guilty or the judge in charge of a trial decided that in fact the evidence was not there on the table to suggest that this witch had done all of these dastardly Deeds Harry asks why would you be convicted as a witch in The Witch Trials let me give you a sense of how the legal process of this works if you're accused of Witchcraft typically it goes like this you're accused you're brought to some initial questioning if there's enough material to go on you're then brought to the trial and over the course of both that initial questioning and the trial itself there are depositions given by witnesses there are questions being asked by authorities and often some of those questions relate to crimes that you purportedly committed 10 years ago 12 years ago so you might have a neighbor who tells the courts you know I heard so and so was accused of Witchcraft and I remember 10 years ago we were having a argument about the boundary of our property line and she gave me the stink eye and then I came home later that night and my child got sicker there was a strange swelling in my belly and I survived or they survived but I think that was a sign she might be a witch those sorts of allegations that could date back a really long time surface in the trials another reason you might be convicted is if you confess now Salem let me add is weird Salem is strange because most people who confess live Salem is unusual in this way but in most places in Europe if you confess you're executed and those confessions are often elicited through the use of torture and the use of very leading questions on the part of authorities so you could be asked by authorities didn't you go into the woods and meet with goodie Proctor at night and didn't you see this go down and this intimidated person who's come from a small town and is now in this court with magistrates and ministers and so forth might just say okay yes I guess and If eventually this leads to a confession that could be enough to get you executed next question is from at Whiskey 456 whiskey I also love whiskey why do witches always get such a bad rap they were midwives herbalist and oh powerful women because there is this sort of idea that we have in popular culture that midwives are likely to be accused of Witchcraft and that does show up in some of the demonological literature right it does show up in the malas malfara right watch out for midwives watch out for how they might harm children in practice midwives were very rarely accused of Witchcraft because they were trusted members of the community because you wouldn't have that position of helping deliver children into the world unless you were in fact I would say on average they were less likely than your average woman because their position in society meant often that they had a good reputation and a certain level of trustworthiness and it's only when things go really wrong that they might find the finger pointed at them another great question from reddits asked historians by cheese and onion crisps did witch finders ever find anyone innocent great question and yes they did authorities were really Keen with convicting and eradicating the actual witches and it hurt their cause to convict someone who might not in their eyes be actually guilty so there was a motivation for authorities to be somewhat judicious in this process and if you happen to be accused in a country with more robust judicial processes like England for example that gave most witches lawyers and that had unanimous jury verdicts for example you would be more likely to be acquitted at dawn law 98346 851 where did the idea of witches come from in the first place once it's available I can see that sadly it's often used maliciously by women against women but who started the whole idea Don there's a lot here I think the best way to understand the stereotype of the witch the idea of the witch as conceived by Elites at the height of the witch trials was to see it as a sort of mixed bag of other groups and tropes that had long been objects of Fear and Loathing by authorities and by that I mean if you look at this witch stereotype in it you see ideas that were anti-semitic in origin ideas about blood liable harm to children you see ideas about heresy people certainly believed witches were Heretics if you serve the devil if you worship the devil what could be more heretical than that you have the idea of ritual magic as being demonic one of the things that happens over the course of the medieval period is that the church increasingly tries to control how people interact with the supernatural world and to deem all magic as being involving packs with the devil and what really you also have happened at the start of the witch trials is the development of a court system in early modern Europe that can put laws on the book books laws in place through which to prosecute witches judicially so all of those things are part of this very complicated stew that eventually leads to the witch trials now really interesting point that you make here about women accusing other women some Scholars I think wrongly have used the fact that this happened women were often accusing other women to say you know the trials weren't really about gender they didn't really have anything to do with this when in fact of course it makes sense that women would accuse other women right most most of these things these initial allegations of Witchcraft start in the home she poisoned my baby she did something to my husband she made it impossible for me to churn my butter I also want to say that if you're in the midst of a very intense Witch Hunt it is safer if you're a woman to be on the side of helping identify who the accused witches were now this is not to say that that was being done cynically women also believed most witches were women this is the way these ideas work when something becomes a norm everybody buys into it to a large extent might start with one woman accusing another woman of using various household objects to poison a child but then when it gets to the authorities who are really interested in what the devil's up to on Earth they might ask the accused witch where did you meet Satan in the woods you had this ability to poison how did you get it did you enter into PCT with the devil and it is I think that Elite male interest in the devil and in sex with the devil and these sorts of questions where you really start to see things shift in the trials at Simon antihero witch hunting never ends it doesn't so if we're looking at the timeline of witch hunting the last witches are formally tried in England in the 1680s the last Witch is formerly tried in Scotland in the 1720s and even in Central Europe as late as the 1780s people had questions about the the realism and efficacy of the crime of Witchcraft particularly authorities became skeptical of that and laws were taken off the books in the 18th century so witchcraft laws so witchcraft as we think it historically ended but witch hunting hasn't ended this ended this tendency to demonize and dehumanize others and sort of associate them with very old and dangerous tropes persist in really profound ways at Meg D West asks apparently I've never seen Hocus Pocus why did I not know that witches were the bad guys number one Hocus Pocus 10 out of 10 I love that movie it's kitchy as hell what a delight I watch it every year I've seen it like 30 times but why did I not know witches were the bad guys well that's you know a really interesting point it sort of raises the question for us of if in the premodern period people were scared of witches they thought they were evil servants Satan deadly why now do we have these kind of cudly witches in Hocus Pocus or in the series Bewitched or in lots of other sorts of venues Charmed Practical Magic why do we have cute little toddlers wearing witches hats at Halloween why the reason is because there's been as we become more skeptical as we've decided that in fact maybe the devil's not that active in the world and maybe that there are different modes of spirituality that are appropriate maybe there are different ways that women are allowed to be in the world there's been almost a witch Renaissance a sort of reclaiming of that label and a real interest actually in ideas about magic among the populist so I think it really is our modern depictions that that do in some ways come out of the the 1970s and this sort of feminist rethinking of how we ought to conceive of and perceive witches thank you everyone for these fantastic questions clearly there is so much to say about witches but that's all we have time for today thank you for watching witchcraft support [Music]
2024-11-02 20:14
