tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/salem-witch-trials-25793/articlesSalem witch trials – The Conversation2023-05-11T16:14:30Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2050782023-05-11T16:14:30Z2023-05-11T16:14:30ZSleep paralysis: why modern horror is fascinated by old superstitions of troubled slumbers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524490/original/file-20230504-25-zxnqo8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C0%2C1230%2C971&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Nightmare by John Henry Fuselli, 1781.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nightmare#/media/File:John_Henry_Fuseli_-_The_NightmareFXD.jpg">Wikepedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>You wake up in the middle of the night. The room is dark except for the faint glow of the moon through your window. But something’s wrong. A weight presses down on your limbs, digs deep into the flesh of your stomach, and squeezes the air from your lungs. You try to move, but you can’t – all you can do is tentatively open your eyes.</p>
<p>A shadow of twisted, gangly limbs writhes above you. A looming head moves closer to your face. And just as your paralysing terror threatens to burst you open, the monster retreats and you regain control over your limbs. You wake up. It was just a dream. Hopefully.</p>
<p>This is what it feels like to suffer from sleep paralysis, which is termed a <a href="https://royalpapworth.nhs.uk/our-services/respiratory-services/rssc/patient-information/symptoms/odd-behaviour-night">parasomnia</a>, and characterised by the sensation of a crushing weight accompanied by hallucinations of a malevolent presence. We now know that it has a scientific explanation: paralysis is a natural part of sleeping that wears off before morning, but some of us wake up while it’s still in effect.</p>
<p>The history of the phenomenon, however, is one of suspicion and witchcraft. While our modern superstitions have dwindled, <a href="https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/sleep-paralysis/#:%7E:text=Sleep%20paralysis%20happens%20when%20you,insomnia">sleep paralysis</a> is having a renewed grip on our imagination through a trend in recent horror movies.</p>
<h2>Hag-ridden</h2>
<p>Until <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/renaissance/renaissance">the Renaissance</a> promoted scientific evidence over religious superstition, it was commonly believed that troubled sleep was caused by malevolent witches. Many of the old names for sleep paralysis align with this idea: being “hag-ridden”, for instance, or of being attacked by a bewitched horse known as the “<a href="https://www.scarystudies.com/mare-demon-mythology/">mara</a>”, from which we get the term “nightmare”.</p>
<p>As such, bedroom rituals were as much about defending against witches as they were about winding down for sleep. People would wear necklaces of coral, or hang a fossil known as a <a href="https://www.bgs.ac.uk/discovering-geology/fossils-and-geological-time/belemnites/">belemnite</a> over their beds, to protect them from being crushed by witches in their sleep. Stables, too, were adorned with talismans to guard horses from being possessed by witches intent on using them to trample sleeping victims.</p>
<p>It has been 330 years since the infamous <a href="https://salem.lib.virginia.edu/home.html">Salem witch trials</a>, where 19 people were hanged on suspicion of being in league with the Devil. More than 200 accusations were made, and the court records are now digitised and held with the Virginia library.</p>
<p>When writing my book, <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Night-Terrors-Troubled-Sleep-Stories/dp/1785787934/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=">Night Terrors</a>, I accessed these papers, and recognised that many of the accusations described encounters with “witches” aligned to prevalent ideas of the cause of sleep paralysis. In the <a href="https://salem.lib.virginia.edu/n13.html#n13.13">testimony of Richard Coman</a> against Bridget Bishop on 2 June 1692 , he describes Bishop opening the curtains at the foot of the bed, and lying upon his body and crushing him so that he could not speak or move. Bishop was the first to be executed.</p>
<p>During the time of the Salem witch trials, however, a more rational explanation was being discussed in terms of scientific discovery that situated sleep paralysis firmly within the body of the sufferer. Belief in witchcraft, at least in terms of troubled sleep, started to dwindle.</p>
<h2>Sleep paralysis in film</h2>
<p>There seems to be renewed interest in witch-trial superstitions in modern horror films. Recently, a variety of protagonists face monsters and demons while in that most vulnerable of spaces: the bed. In the 2014 film <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/oct/23/the-babadook-review-chilling-freudian-thriller">The Babadook</a>, directed by Jennifer Kent, Amelia (Essie Davis) watches in paralysed horror as the film’s titular monster skitters across her bedroom ceiling. Her mouth is agape in a silent scream as the Babadook drops like a spider on top of her.</p>
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<p>Similarly, in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/oct/31/last-night-in-soho-edgar-wright-review">Last Night in Soho</a>, Thomasin McKenzie’s protagonist, Eloise, becomes pinned to her bed by the ghostly hands of murdered men. Other films are even using sleep paralysis as the monster, such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/oct/08/the-nightmare-review-sleep-paralysis">The Nightmare</a>, a horror documentary depicting the parasomnia, and Andy James Taylor’s short film, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h4fKtEQ8K0">The Nocnitsa</a> in which a young woman is haunted by a shadowy presence creeping up her bed while unable to move.</p>
<p>It’s becoming increasingly noticeable – and there are a few reasons to explain the trend. Each presentation of sleep paralysis in film confuses the boundary between the hero and the “hag”, with the latter often being a product of the imagination and representing psychological turmoil.</p>
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<p>In other words, the protagonist’s emotional troubles are made manifest through their sleep paralysis demons. Another factor is that it brings the monster of classic horror films into a much more personal and domestic space. It presents the idea that the villains we face in our sleep are of our own making.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most prevalent reason, though, is that sleep is now over-analysed and too firmly rooted in neuroscience and discussions of sleep “habits” and “hygiene”. Cultural discussions of sleep have moved so far away from the creepy and the mysterious that it is now the role of horror films to remind us of the grip that troubled sleep used to have on our imaginations.</p>
<p>Sleep is now scrutinised under a harsh clinical light – but horror stories are increasingly restoring a more historic sense of darkness.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205078/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alice Vernon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A raft of horror films remind us of the grip troubled sleep once had on our imaginations.Alice Vernon, Lecturer in Creative Writing and 19th-Century Literature, Aberystwyth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1936962022-11-15T13:20:45Z2022-11-15T13:20:45ZWhat Greek myth tells us about modern witchcraft<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494727/original/file-20221110-21-v7dffc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C53%2C5982%2C3916&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Fear about women's power was an essential part of ancient anxiety about witchcraft.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/women-practicing-witchcraft-by-burning-candle-in-royalty-free-image/720119557?phrase=witches&adppopup=true">Vinicius Rafael / EyeEm via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Living on the North Shore in Boston in the fall brings the gorgeous turning of the leaves and pumpkin patches. It is also a time for people to <a href="https://www.boston.com/news/travel/2022/10/19/heres-what-its-like-to-live-in-salem-in-october/">head to</a> nearby Salem, Massachusetts, home of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/most-witches-are-women-because-witch-hunts-were-all-about-persecuting-the-powerless-125427">17th century infamous witch trials</a>, and visit <a href="https://salemwitchmuseum.com/">its popular museum</a>. </p>
<p>Despite a troubled history, there are people today who consider themselves witches. Often, modern witches share their lore, craft and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-63403467?utm_source=Pew+Research+Center&utm_campaign=5069cbb55d-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2022_10_31_01_45&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_3e953b9b70-5069cbb55d-400094317">stories on TikTok</a> and other social media platforms. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.brandeis.edu/facultyguide/person.html?emplid=1be7ee967d45605afddf7da9ad4ca2c049a26c0b">scholar who works on myth and poetry</a> from ancient Greece – and as a native of New England – I have long been fascinated by the cultural conversations about witches. Witch trials in the Americas and Europe were in part about <a href="https://theconversation.com/most-witches-are-women-because-witch-hunts-were-all-about-persecuting-the-powerless-125427">enforcing power structures</a> and persecuting the weak. From ancient Greece through Puritan New England, witches functioned as easy targets for cultural anxieties about gender, power and mortality. </p>
<h2>Ancient witches: gender and power</h2>
<p>While modern witchcraft is inclusive of many different genders and identities, witches in ancient myth and literature were almost exclusively women. Their stories were in part about navigating gender roles and power in a patriarchal system.</p>
<p>Fear about women’s power was an essential part of ancient anxiety about witchcraft. This fear, moreover, relied on traditional expectations about the abilities innate to a person’s gender. As early as the creation narrative in Hesiod’s “Theogony” – a poem hailing from a poetic tradition between the eighth and fifth centuries B.C. – male gods like Cronus and Zeus were depicted with physical strength, while <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781400849086-012/pdf">female figures were endowed with intelligence</a>. In particular, women knew about the mysteries of childbirth and how to raise children. </p>
<p>In the basic framework of Greek myth, then, men were strong and women used intelligence and tricks to cope with their violence. This gendered difference in traits combined with ancient Greek views of bodies and aging. While women were seen to move through stages of life based on biology – childhood, adolescence via menstruation, childbearing and old age – the aging of men was connected to their relationship to women, particularly in getting married and having children.</p>
<p>Both Greek and Latin have a single word for man and husband – “aner” in Greek and “vir” in Latin. Socially and ritually, men were essentially seen as adolescents until they became husbands and fathers. </p>
<p>Female control over reproduction was symbolized as a kind of <a href="https://www.medievalists.net/2010/10/from-greek-myth-to-medieval-witches-infertile-women-as-monstrous-and-evil/">ability to control life and death</a>. In ancient Greece, women were expected to bear all responsibilities during early child rearing. They also were the ones to exclusively take on special roles in mourning the dead. Suspicion, anxiety and fear about mortality were then put on to women in general.</p>
<h2>Powerful women</h2>
<p>This was true especially for women who did not fit into typical gendered roles like the virtuous bride, the good mother or the helpful old maid. </p>
<p>While ancient Greek does not have a word that directly translates as “witch,” it does have “pharmakis” (someone who gives out drugs or medicine), “aoidos” (singer, enchantress) and “graus” or “graia” (old woman). Of these names, graus is probably closest to later European stereotypes: the mysterious old woman who is not part of a traditional family structure.</p>
<p>Much like today, foreignness invited suspicion in the ancient world as well. Several of the characters who may qualify as mythical witches were women from distant lands. Medea, famous for killing her children when her husband, Jason, proposes marrying someone else in <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:abo:tlg,0006,003:1249">Euripides’ play</a>, was a woman from the east, a foreigner who did not adhere to the expectations for a woman’s behavior in Greece.</p>
<p>She started her narrative as a princess who used <a href="https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/potions-and-poisons-classical-ancestors-of-the-wicked-witch-part-2/">concoctions and spells</a> to help Jason. Her powers increased male virility and life.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494731/original/file-20221110-15-969u88.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white engraved illustration of Medea, known as a sorceress in Greek literature, as Jason prepares the departure of the expedition of the Argonauts." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494731/original/file-20221110-15-969u88.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494731/original/file-20221110-15-969u88.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494731/original/file-20221110-15-969u88.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494731/original/file-20221110-15-969u88.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494731/original/file-20221110-15-969u88.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494731/original/file-20221110-15-969u88.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494731/original/file-20221110-15-969u88.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Medea killed her children when her husband, Jason, proposes marrying someone else in Euripides’ play.</span>
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<p>Medea allegedly learned her magical craft from her aunt, Circe, who shows up in Homer’s “Odyssey.” She lived alone on an island, luring men to her cabin with seductive food and drink to turn them into animals. Odysseus defeated her with an antidote provided by the god Hermes. Once her magic failed, Circe believed she had no choice but to submit to Odysseus. </p>
<h2>Witches over time</h2>
<p>Elsewhere in the “Odyssey” there are similar themes: the Sirens who sing to Odysseus are enchantresses who try to take control of the hero. Earlier in the epic, the audience witnesses Helen, whose departure with the Trojan prince Paris was the cause of the Trojan War, add <a href="https://chs.harvard.edu/chapter/weaving-pseudea-homoia-etumoisin-false-things-like-to-real-things-5-helens-good-drug/">an Egyptian drug called nepenthe</a> to the wine she gives <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0136%3Abook%3D4%3Acard%3D219">to her husband, Menelaos, and Odysseus’ son</a>, Telemachus. This wine was so strong, it made people forget about the pain of losing even a loved one. </p>
<p>In each of these cases, women who practice magic threaten to exert control over men with tools that can also be part of a pleasurable life: songs, sex and families. Other myths of monstrous women reinforce how misogynistic stereotypes animate these beliefs. The <a href="https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2020/10/26/the-child-killing-lamia-whats-really-scary-on-halloween-is-misogyny-3/">ancient figure Lamia</a>, for example, was a once beautiful woman who stole and killed infants because her children had died. </p>
<p><a href="https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2017/10/21/ancient-greek-vampires-empousa-and-lamia/">Empousa</a> was a vampiric creature who fed on the sex and blood of young men. Even Medusa, well-known as the snake-haired Gorgon who turned men to stone, was reported in some sources to have actually been a woman so beautiful that Perseus cut her head off <a href="https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2016/10/08/an-alternate-telling-of-medusa-male-discourse-leads-to-sexual-violence/">to show it off to his friends</a>.</p>
<p>These examples are from myth. There were many living traditions of women’s healing and song cultures that have been lost over time. Many academic authors have traced the modern practices of witchcraft <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674663244">to ancient cults</a> and the survival of pagan traditions outside of mainstream Christianity. Recent <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20411/20411-h/20411-h.htm">studies of ancient magical practices</a> show how widespread and varied they were. </p>
<p>While ancient women were likely subject to suspicion and slander for witchcraft, there is no evidence that they faced the kind of widespread persecution of witches that swept Europe and the Americas a few centuries ago. The later 20th century, however, saw renewed interest in witchcraft, often in concert with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1300/J015v16n02_13">movements empowering women</a>. </p>
<p>Modern witches are crossing international borders and learning from each other without leaving their homes by creating communities on social media, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-63403467">like TikTok</a>. If fear about women’s power led to paranoia in the past, exploring and embracing witchcraft has become part of reclaiming women’s histories.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193696/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joel Christensen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From ancient Greece to modern-day TikTok witchcraft, the world of witches has been a changing one.Joel Christensen, Professor of Classical Studies, Brandeis UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1685692021-10-21T13:03:34Z2021-10-21T13:03:34ZHow do you spot a witch? This notorious 15th-century book gave instructions – and helped execute thousands of women<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426808/original/file-20211017-13-1f32vd0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=77%2C38%2C5098%2C3220&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The 'Malleus Maleficarum,' a medieval handbook, was used to try and execute supposed witches. Its influence lasted for centuries – including at the Salem Witch Trials. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/copy-of-the-malleus-maleficarum-is-on-view-at-the-salem-news-photo/1229237900?adppopup=true">Jonathan Wiggs/The Boston Globe via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Books have always had the power to cast a spell over their readers – figuratively. </p>
<p>But one book that was quite popular from the 15th to 17th centuries, and infamously so, is literally about spells: what witches do, how do identify them, how to get them to confess, and how to bring them to swift punishment.</p>
<p>As fear of witches reached a fever pitch in Europe, witch hunters turned to the “Malleus Maleficarum,” or “Hammer of Witches,” for guidance. The book’s instructions helped convict some of the tens of thousands of people – <a href="https://theconversation.com/most-witches-are-women-because-witch-hunts-were-all-about-persecuting-the-powerless-125427">almost all women</a> – who were executed during the period. Its bloody legacy stretched to North America, with 25 supposed “witches” killed in Salem, Massachusetts, in the late 1600s.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://doi.org/10.31046/tl.v13i2.1941">a reference librarian</a> and adjunct professor at the General Theological Seminary in New York, I have the rare opportunity to hold <a href="https://gts.bywatersolutions.com/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=126371&query_desc=kw%2Cwrdl%3A%20Malleus%20maleficarum">an original copy</a> of the “Malleus” in my hands and share this piece of history with my students and researchers. Much has been written about the contents, but the physical book itself is a fascinating testament to history.</p>
<h2>Witches 101</h2>
<p>The “Malleus” was written circa 1486 by two Dominican friars, Johann Sprenger and Heinrich Kraemer, who present <a href="https://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/mm/index.htm">their guide</a> in three parts. </p>
<p>The first argues that witches do in fact exist, <a href="https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526137814">sorcery is heresy</a>, and not fearing witches’ power is itself an act of heresy. Part Two goes into graphic detail about witches’ sexual deviancy, with one chapter devoted to “the Way whereby Witches copulate with those Devils known as Incubi.” An incubus was a male demon believed to have sex with sleeping women.</p>
<p>It also describes witches’ ability to turn their victims into animals, and their violence against children. The third and final part gives guidelines on how to interrogate a witch, including through torture; get her to confess; and ultimately sentence her.</p>
<p>Twenty-eight editions of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Malleus-maleficarum">the “Malleus”</a> were published between 1486 and 1600, making it the <a href="https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/35002/341393.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">definitive guide</a> on witchcraft and demonology for many years – and helping the prosecution of witches take off.</p>
<h2>Targeting women</h2>
<p>The authors of the text reluctantly admit that men can be agents of the devil, but argue that women are weak and inherently more sinful, making them his <a href="https://theconversation.com/you-think-this-is-a-witch-hunt-mr-president-thats-an-insult-to-the-women-who-suffered-129775">perfect targets</a>.</p>
<p>Accusations were often rooted in the belief that women, especially those who did not submit to ideals about obedient Christian wives and mothers, were prone to be <a href="https://theconversation.com/most-witches-are-women-because-witch-hunts-were-all-about-persecuting-the-powerless-125427">in league with the devil</a>.</p>
<p>The authors detail “<a href="https://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/mm/mm01_11a.htm">four horrible crimes</a> which devils commit against infants, both in the mother’s womb and afterwards.” They even accuse witches of eating newborns and are especially suspicious of midwives.</p>
<p>Women on the fringes of society, such as healers in Europe or <a href="https://nyupress.org/9780814712276/tituba-reluctant-witch-of-salem/">the slave Tituba</a> in Salem, were convenient scapegoats for society’s ills.</p>
<h2>Hand-held history</h2>
<p>At the General Theological Seminary, anyone interested in examining our copy of the “Malleus” needs to make an appointment to visit the special collections reading room. Due to the book’s fragility, visitors are asked to wash their hands before touching it.</p>
<p>One striking aspect is its size. The “Malleus” is just under 8 inches long, with 190 pages – this book was meant to travel with its reader and be stored in a coat or bag. </p>
<p><a href="https://gts.bywatersolutions.com/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=126371&query_desc=kw%2Cwrdl%3A%20Malleus%20maleficarum">Our copy</a> is from 1492, and it was published by the famous bookbinder Peter Drach from Speyer, Germany. This makes it a rare example of “incunabula,” as scholars call European books published before about 1501 – the earliest period of printing.</p>
<p>After much wear and tear, this copy was rebound in leather in the 19th century. Small handwritten notes cover most of the pages. On page 48, for example, a reader numbered three points and wrote the words “delightful religious journey” on the opposite page. Numerous pages feature hand-drawn arrows pointing to paragraphs. </p>
<p>Another point to consider when looking at this edition is its provenance, meaning who has owned it over the years. This copy is originally from the collection of the Rev. <a href="https://www.episcopalhighschool.org/news-detail-heads--faculty?pk=901981">Edwin A. Dalrymple</a>, who was the rector of a school and Episcopal church in Virginia in the mid-19th century. The book moved from his shelves to the <a href="https://marylandepiscopalian.org/2020/10/28/from-the-archives-history-of-the-maryland-diocesan-archives/">Maryland Diocesan Library</a> until it entered our library system.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this “Malleus,” in addition to the text itself, is a bookplate pasted on its back cover. This bookplate states: “It was the handbook of the Witchcraft Persecution of the 15th and 16th centuries. This copy possesses much the same interest as would a headman’s ax of that date in as much as it has probably been the direct cause of the death of many persons accused of sorcery.” </p>
<p>It’s unclear who attached this statement, but its sentiment rings very true: The “Malleus” represents the power of ideas – for good or ill.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melissa Chim is affiliated with the Atla Scholarly Communications and Digital Initiatives Committee. </span></em></p>Witch trials relied on a medieval text called the “Malleus Maleficarum” – a book this reference librarian can hold in her hands.Melissa Chim, Adjunct Professor and Reference Librarian, General Theological SeminaryLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1408092020-07-02T12:26:45Z2020-07-02T12:26:45ZThe invention of satanic witchcraft by medieval authorities was initially met with skepticism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344310/original/file-20200626-104484-1dbzjs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C10%2C3344%2C2773&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Woodcut, circa 1400. A witch, a demon and a warlock fly toward a peasant woman.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/circa-1400-a-witch-a-demon-and-a-warlock-fly-towards-a-news-photo/51240919">Hulton Archive /Handout via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On a midsummer day in 1438, a young man from the north shore of Lake Geneva presented himself to the local church inquisitor. He had a confession to make. Five years earlier, his father had forced him to join a satanic cult of witches. They had flown at night on a small black horse to join more than a hundred people gathered in a meadow. The devil was there too, in the form of a black cat. The witches knelt before him, worshiped him and kissed his posterior.</p>
<p>The young man’s father had already been executed as a witch. It’s likely he was trying to secure a lighter punishment by voluntarily telling inquisitors what they wanted to hear.</p>
<p>The Middle Ages, A.D. 500-1500, have a reputation for both heartless cruelty and hopeless credulity. People commonly believed in all kinds of magic, monsters and <a href="https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15568.html">fairies</a>. But it wasn’t until the 15th century that the idea of organized satanic witchcraft took hold. As a historian who <a href="https://history.iastate.edu/directory/michael-bailey/">studies medieval magic</a>, I’m fascinated by how a coterie of church and state authorities conspired to develop and promote this new concept of witchcraft for their own purposes.</p>
<h2>Early medieval attitudes about witchcraft</h2>
<p>Belief in witches, in the sense of wicked people performing harmful magic, had existed in Europe since before the Greeks and Romans. In the early part of the Middle Ages, authorities were largely unconcerned about it. </p>
<p><a href="https://pages.uoregon.edu/dluebke/Witches442/PaganTraces.html">A church document</a> from the early 10th century proclaimed that “sorcery and witchcraft” might be real, but the idea that groups of witches flew together with demons through the night was a delusion. </p>
<p>Things began to change in the 12th and 13th centuries, ironically because educated elites in Europe were becoming more sophisticated.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344356/original/file-20200626-104489-1x8hg5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344356/original/file-20200626-104489-1x8hg5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344356/original/file-20200626-104489-1x8hg5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344356/original/file-20200626-104489-1x8hg5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344356/original/file-20200626-104489-1x8hg5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344356/original/file-20200626-104489-1x8hg5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=609&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344356/original/file-20200626-104489-1x8hg5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=609&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344356/original/file-20200626-104489-1x8hg5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=609&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Henricus de Alemannia lecturing students at the University of Bologna in the second half of the 14th century – one of the earliest illustrations of a medieval university classroom.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Laurentius_de_Voltolina_001.jpg">Laurentius de Voltolina/Kupferstichkabinett Berlin</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Universities were being founded, and scholars in Western Europe began to pore over ancient texts as well as learned writings from the Muslim world. Some of these presented complex <a href="https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-08213-4.html">systems of magic</a> that claimed to draw on astral forces or conjure powerful spirits. Gradually, these ideas began to gain intellectual clout.</p>
<p>Ordinary people – the kind who eventually got accused of being witches – didn’t perform elaborate rites from books. They gathered herbs, brewed potions, maybe said a short spell, as they had for generations. And they did so for all sorts of reasons – perhaps to harm someone they disliked, but more often to <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/popular-magic-cunning-folk-in-english-history-9780826442796/">heal or protect</a> others. Such practices were important in a world with only rudimentary forms of medical care.</p>
<p>Christian authorities had previously dismissed this kind of magic as empty superstition. Now they took all magic much more seriously. They began to believe simple spells worked by summoning demons, which meant anyone who performed them secretly worshiped demons. </p>
<h2>Inventing satanic witchcraft</h2>
<p>In the 1430s, a small group of writers in Central Europe – church inquisitors, theologians, lay magistrates and even one historian – began to describe horrific assemblies where witches gathered and worshiped demons, had orgies, ate murdered babies and performed other abominable acts. Whether any of these authors ever met each other is unclear, but they all described groups of witches supposedly active in a zone around the western Alps. </p>
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<p>The reason for this development may have been purely practical. Church inquisitors, active against religious heretics since the 13th century, and some secular courts were looking to expand their jurisdictions. Having a new and particularly horrible crime to prosecute might have struck them as useful.</p>
<p>I just translated a number of these early texts for a <a href="https://www.academia.edu/43358448/Origins_of_the_Witches_Sabbath">forthcoming book</a> and was struck by how worried the authors were about readers not believing them. One fretted that his accounts would be “disparaged” by those who “think themselves learned.” Another feared that “simple folk” would refuse to believe the “fragile sex” would engage in such terrible practices.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520320574/european-witch-trials">Trial records</a> show it was a hard sell. Most people remained concerned with harmful magic – witches causing illness or withering crops. They didn’t much care about secret satanic gatherings.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344298/original/file-20200626-104499-4etmz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344298/original/file-20200626-104499-4etmz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344298/original/file-20200626-104499-4etmz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344298/original/file-20200626-104499-4etmz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344298/original/file-20200626-104499-4etmz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344298/original/file-20200626-104499-4etmz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344298/original/file-20200626-104499-4etmz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344298/original/file-20200626-104499-4etmz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The handbook for detecting and persecuting witches in the Middle Ages, ‘Malleus Maleficarum’ or ‘Hammer of Witches.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:J._Sprenger_and_H._Institutoris,_Malleus_maleficarum._Wellcome_L0000980.jpg">Wellcome Images/Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1486, clergyman Heinrich Kramer published the most widely circulated medieval text about organized witchcraft, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/literature/european-literature/hammer-witches-complete-translation-malleus-maleficarum?format=PB&isbn=9780521747875">Malleus Maleficarum</a> (Hammer of Witches). But many people didn’t believe him. When he tried to start a witch hunt in Innsbruck, Austria, he was kicked out by the local bishop, who accused him of <a href="https://www.dtv.de/buch/heinrich-kramer-guenter-jerouschek-wolfgang-behringer-der-hexenhammer-30780/">being senile</a>. </p>
<h2>Witch hunts</h2>
<p>Unfortunately, the fear of satanic witchcraft grew. The 15th century seems to have provided ideal soil for this new idea to take root. </p>
<p>Europe was recovering from <a href="https://cornellup.degruyter.com/view/title/568227">several crises</a>: plague, wars and a split in the church between two, and then three, competing popes. Beginning in the 1450s, the printing press made it easier for new ideas to spread. Even prior to the Protestant Reformation, religious reform was in the air. As I explored in an <a href="http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-02225-3.html">earlier book</a>, reformers used the idea of a diabolical conspiracy bent on corrupting Christianity as a boogeyman in their call for spiritual renewal.</p>
<p>Over time, more people came to accept this new idea. Church and state authorities kept telling them it was real. Still, many also kept relying on local “witches” for magical healing and protection.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344300/original/file-20200626-104484-6oipp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344300/original/file-20200626-104484-6oipp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344300/original/file-20200626-104484-6oipp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344300/original/file-20200626-104484-6oipp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344300/original/file-20200626-104484-6oipp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344300/original/file-20200626-104484-6oipp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1041&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344300/original/file-20200626-104484-6oipp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1041&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344300/original/file-20200626-104484-6oipp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1041&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The execution of alleged witches in Central Europe, 1587.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Wickiana3.jpg">Zurich Central Library/Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The history of witchcraft can be quite grim. From the 1400s through the 1700s, authorities in Western Europe <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Witch-Hunt-in-Early-Modern-Europe-4th-Edition/Levack/p/book/9781138808102?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI9s_H7OuV6gIVi8DACh3paAtCEAAYASAAEgLcLvD_BwE">executed around 50,000 people, mostly women,</a> for witchcraft. The worst witch hunts could claim hundreds of victims at a time. With 20 dead, colonial America’s largest hunt at Salem was moderate by comparison. </p>
<p>Salem, in 1692, marked the end of witch hunts in New England. In Europe, too, skepticism would eventually prevail. It’s worth remembering, though, that at the beginning, authorities had to work hard to convince others such malevolence was real.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140809/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael D. Bailey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The idea of organized satanic witchcraft was invented in 15th-century Europe by church and state authorities, who at first had a hard time convincing regular folks it was real.Michael D. Bailey, Professor of History, Iowa State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1254272019-10-23T12:32:41Z2019-10-23T12:32:41ZMost witches are women, because witch hunts were all about persecuting the powerless<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298195/original/file-20191022-55701-1c717jp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C957%2C4658%2C4081&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Seventy-eight percent of the people executed for witchcraft in New England in the late 17th and early 18th centuries were women.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/117493936?src=W3YtoqVJj70I5HmWizIP3w-1-1&size=huge_jpg">Jef Thompson/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Witch hunt” – it’s a <a href="https://time.com/5696533/trump-rally-minnesota-impeachment/">refrain used</a> to deride everything from <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/gregg-jarrett-pelosi-schiff-impeach">impeachment inquiries</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/feb/12/michael-haneke-metoo-witch-hunt-coloured-hatred-men">sexual assault investigations</a> to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/18/world/netanyahu-police-investigation/index.html">allegations of corruption</a>. </p>
<p>When powerful men cry witch, they’re generally not talking about green-faced women wearing pointy hats. They are, presumably, referring to the <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=igBQccp-wqAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=entertaining+satan&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjJ39Wji6blAhVIw1kKHX8AC3wQ6AEwAHoECAIQAg#v=onepage&q=appendix&f=false">Salem witch trials</a>, when 19 people in 17th-century Massachusetts were executed on charges of witchcraft.</p>
<p>Using “witch hunt” to decry purportedly baseless allegations, however, reflects a misunderstanding of American history. Witch trials didn’t target the powerful. They persecuted society’s most marginal members – particularly women. </p>
<h2>Too rich, too poor, too female</h2>
<p>In my <a href="https://sites.uml.edu/bridget-marshall/research/">scholarship on the darker aspects of U.S. culture</a>, I’ve researched and <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=R16hSpCuzLQC&pg=PA145&lpg=PA145&dq=there+shall+be+a+wonder+in+hadley&source=bl&ots=ONhswI0OFL&sig=ACfU3U0_y-9vX36yLdgLJEzSf1GjW8xk4g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjd4bTggaTlAhUKVN8KHYOlBsAQ6AEwAXoECAYQAQ#v=onepage&q=there%20shall%20be%20a%20wonder%20in%20hadley&f=false">written</a> about numerous <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=R16hSpCuzLQC&pg=PA145&lpg=PA145&dq=there+shall+be+a+wonder+in+hadley&source=bl&ots=ONhswI0OFL&sig=ACfU3U0_y-9vX36yLdgLJEzSf1GjW8xk4g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjd4bTggaTlAhUKVN8KHYOlBsAQ6AEwAXoECAYQAQ#v=onepage&q=there%20shall%20be%20a%20wonder%20in%20hadley&f=false">witch trials</a>. I teach a college course here in Massachusetts that explores this perennially popular but frequently misinterpreted period in New England history.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most salient point about witch trials, students quickly come to see, is gender. In Salem, 14 of the 19 people found guilty of and executed for witchcraft during that cataclysmic year of 1692 <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=TvxES1lB6XoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+Salem+witch+chronicles+a+day+by+day&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi90viyg7HlAhVCqlkKHZV5CG0Q6AEwAHoECAMQAg#v=onepage&q=the%20Salem%20witch%20chronicles%20a%20day%20by%20day&f=false">were women</a>. </p>
<p>Across New England, where witch trials occurred somewhat regularly from 1638 until 1725, women <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=EMDabpjdotYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22witch+hunting+in+seventeenth+century+new+england%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjoo6qGjKblAhWkzlkKHckKAXAQ6AEwAHoECAIQAg#v=onepage&q=%22witch%20hunting%20in%20seventeenth%20century%20new%20england%22&f=false">vastly outnumbered men in the ranks of the accused and executed</a>. According to author Carol F. Karlsen’s “<a href="https://www.wwnorton.co.uk/books/9780393317596-the-devil-in-the-shape-of-a-woman">The Devil in the Shape of a Woman</a>,” 78% of 344 alleged witches in New England were female. </p>
<p>And even when men faced allegations of witchcraft, it was typically because they were somehow associated with accused women. As historian John Demos <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=igBQccp-wqAC&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false">has established</a>, the few Puritan men tried for witchcraft were mostly the husbands or brothers of alleged female witches. </p>
<p>Women held a precarious, mostly powerless position within the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/godinamerica-early-american-groups/">deeply religious Puritan community</a>. </p>
<p>The Puritans thought women should have babies, raise children, manage household life and model Christian subservience to their husbands. Recalling Eve and her <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article-abstract/XLIV/4/639/798339">sinful apple</a>, Puritans also believed that women were more likely to be tempted by the Devil. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298198/original/file-20191022-55685-18b3p8s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298198/original/file-20191022-55685-18b3p8s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298198/original/file-20191022-55685-18b3p8s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298198/original/file-20191022-55685-18b3p8s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298198/original/file-20191022-55685-18b3p8s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298198/original/file-20191022-55685-18b3p8s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298198/original/file-20191022-55685-18b3p8s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298198/original/file-20191022-55685-18b3p8s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Maybe she didn’t smile enough.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Witch_in_the_Salem_Witch_Trials.jpg">'Witch Hill (The Salem Martyr)'/New York Historical Society Museum and Library</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Powerless people</h2>
<p>As magistrates, judges and clergy, men enforced the rules of this early American society. </p>
<p>When women stepped outside their prescribed roles, they became targets. Too much wealth might reflect sinful gains. Too little money demonstrated bad character. Too many children could indicate a deal with a devil. Having too few children was suspicious, too. </p>
<p>Mary Webster of Hadley, Massachusetts, was married without children and relied on neighborly charity to survive. Apparently, Webster was not meek and grateful enough for the alms she received: She <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=R16hSpCuzLQC&pg=PA145&lpg=PA145&dq=there+shall+be+a+wonder+in+hadley&source=bl&ots=ONhswI0OFL&sig=ACfU3U0_y-9vX36yLdgLJEzSf1GjW8xk4g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjd4bTggaTlAhUKVN8KHYOlBsAQ6AEwAXoECAYQAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false">developed a reputation for being unpleasant</a>. </p>
<p>Webster’s neighbors accused her of witchcraft in 1683, when she was around 60 years old, claiming she worked with the devil to bewitch local livestock. Boston’s Court of Assistants, which presided over cases of witchcraft, declared her not guilty. </p>
<p>Then, a few months after the verdict, one of Webster’s upstanding neighbors, Philip Smith, fell ill. Distraught residents blamed Webster and attempted to hang her, supposedly to relieve Smith’s torments. </p>
<p>Smith died anyway. Webster, however, survived the attempted execution – much to the terror of her neighbors, I imagine.</p>
<p>The accused witch Mary Bliss Parsons, of Northampton, Massachusetts, was the opposite of Webster. She was the wife of the wealthiest man in town and the mother of nine healthy children. </p>
<p>But neighbors found Parsons to be a “woman of forcible speech and domineering ways,” historian James Russell Trumbull <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=eQ8ThGcHgcMC&pg=PA51&lpg=PA51&dq=%22woman+of+forcible+speech+and+domineering+ways,%22+Historian+James+Russell+Trumbull&source=bl&ots=dQXZBdO_Lp&sig=ACfU3U25qG7yu_xgn2aSlLJp3OKuoslmGg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiVsL313qPlAhWNiOAKHWE8BDUQ6AEwAHoECAEQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22woman%20of%20forcible%20speech%20and%20domineering%20ways%2C%22%20Historian%20James%20Russell%20Trumbull&f=false">wrote in his 1898 history of Northampton</a>. In 1674 she was charged with witchcraft. </p>
<p>Parsons, too, was acquitted. Eventually, continuing witchcraft rumors forced the Parsons family to resettle in Boston.</p>
<h2>Stay in line, woman</h2>
<p>Prior to Salem, most witchcraft trials in New England resulted in acquittal. According to Demos, of the 93 documented witch trials that happened before Salem, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=igBQccp-wqAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=entertaining+satan&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjJ39Wji6blAhVIw1kKHX8AC3wQ6AEwAHoECAIQAg#v=onepage&q&f=false">16 “witches” were executed</a>.</p>
<p>But the accused rarely went unpunished.</p>
<p>In his 2005 book “<a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/237923">Escaping Salem</a>,” Richard Godbeer examines the case of two Connecticut women – Elizabeth Clawson of Stamford and Mercy Disborough of Fairfield – accused of bewitching a servant girl named Kate Branch.</p>
<p>Both women were “confident and determined, ready to express their opinions and to stand their ground when crossed.” Clawson was found not guilty after spending five months in jail. Disborough remained imprisoned for almost a year until she was acquitted. </p>
<p>Both had to pay the fines and fees related to their imprisonment.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298197/original/file-20191022-55650-1lz7gfn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298197/original/file-20191022-55650-1lz7gfn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298197/original/file-20191022-55650-1lz7gfn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298197/original/file-20191022-55650-1lz7gfn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298197/original/file-20191022-55650-1lz7gfn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298197/original/file-20191022-55650-1lz7gfn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298197/original/file-20191022-55650-1lz7gfn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/298197/original/file-20191022-55650-1lz7gfn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">For Puritan women, there were so many ways to get accused of witchcraft.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/244388722?src=636erx6mva-FL12XnMOX_w-1-0&size=huge_jpg">Everett Historical/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Woman v woman</h2>
<p>Most Puritans who claimed to be victims of witchcraft were also female. </p>
<p>In the famed Salem witch trials, the people “afflicted” by an unexplained “distemper” in 1692 were all teenaged girls.</p>
<p>Initially, two girls from the Reverend Samuel Parris’ household claimed they were being bitten, pinched and pricked by invisible specters. Soon other girls reported similar feelings. Some threw fits, crying out that they saw terrifying specters.</p>
<p>Some have suggested that the girls were faking their symptoms. In a 1700 book, Boston merchant and historian Robert Calef called them “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=ZMY8AAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=robert+calef+witch&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjGs4m7oablAhUCwlkKHXGjCn0Q6AEwAXoECAQQAg#v=onepage&q&f=false">vile varlets</a>.” </p>
<p>Arthur Miller’s play “The Crucible” also casts one of the Salem girls as the villain. His play depicts Abigail – who was, in real life, a girl of 11 – as a manipulative 16-year-old carrying on an affair with a married man. To get his wife out of the way, Abigail makes witchcraft accusations.</p>
<p>[ <em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>. ]</p>
<p>Nothing in the historical record suggests an affair. But Miller’s play is so widely staged that countless Americans know only this version of events.</p>
<h2>Systematic oppression</h2>
<p>Other Salem stories blame Tituba, an <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=_UQPAAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=six+women+of+salem&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi-pPPHhbHlAhUtrVkKHb_kAFsQ6AEwAHoECAMQAg#v=onepage&q=tituba&f=false">enslaved woman in the household of the Reverend Samuel Parris</a>, for teaching witchcraft to the local girls. Tituba confessed to “signing the devil’s book” in 1692, confirming Puritans’ worst fears that the devil was actively recruiting. </p>
<p>But given her position as an enslaved person and a woman of color, it’s almost certain that <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/483035?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Tituba’s confession</a> was coerced.</p>
<p>This is why witch trials weren’t just about accusations that today seem baseless. They were also about a justice system that escalated local grievances to capital offenses and targeted a subjugated minority. </p>
<p>Women were both the victims and the accused in this terrible American history, casualties of a society created and controlled by powerful men.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125427/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bridget Marshall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Powerful men often proclaim baseless accusations to be a ‘witch hunt.’ But American witch trials have always targeted a persecuted minority: women.Bridget Marshall, Associate Professor of English, UMass LowellLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1057202018-10-30T21:57:04Z2018-10-30T21:57:04ZHello magic and witchcraft, goodbye Enlightenment<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242826/original/file-20181029-76396-1supnl7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=56%2C50%2C1845%2C2153&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An old Canadian law which outlaws magic fraud is about to be eliminated. This print by William Hogarth, 'Credulity Superstition and Fanaticism,' from 1762 epitomizes the Enlightenment view that witchcraft and religious fanaticism go hand in hand.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">William Hogarth/1762</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Recently <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-tuesday-edition-1.4874731/why-ontario-police-have-charged-a-fortune-teller-under-an-antiquated-witchcraft-law-1.4874734?fbclid=IwAR2RfoGqKmvWl6bl5OX3QLxlM_Wpnm96_JzzLUF-G66eGAbJR66d2RNg-wA">a Canadian woman was charged with pretending to practise witchcraft</a> under a <a href="https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/section-365.html">law</a> on the verge of disappearing from the Canadian Criminal Code. She had attempted to extort considerable sums of money from vulnerable clients. </p>
<p>On the surface, this law looks like the last vestiges of the period of the witch trials: that the Canadian law still implicitly believes in witchcraft. In fact, the reality is quite different. The law is a sign of the Canadian inheritance of the Enlightenment project. This was an <a href="https://theconversation.com/criticism-of-western-civilisation-isnt-new-it-was-part-of-the-enlightenment-104567">18th-century movement</a> that attempted to eradicate superstition — and the grave miscarriages of injustice of the witch trials that arose from such superstition. </p>
<p>The story goes back to the 16th century.</p>
<h2>Attempts to control magic</h2>
<p>Magic was not against the law in <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=Tt-1CwAAQBAJ&pg=PA113&lpg=PA113&dq=witchcraft+act+1542&source=bl&ots=CJ_z4I5ifL&sig=jb-baM9Nv0odp0dNhf77lvWfZzA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiiosvlh63eAhWGKXwKHb6jBzQ4FBDoATAAegQIARAB#v=onepage&q=witchcraft%20act%201542&f=false">England until 1542 when Henry VIII made magic a capital offence</a>. Despite being commonly referred to as the “Witchcraft Act,” Henry’s law was overwhelmingly concerned with other kinds of magic practitioners, in particular <a href="https://books.google.ca/books/about/Popular_Magic_Cunning_folk_in_English_Hi.html?id=Upi6BwAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">cunning folk</a> (“folks healers”) and treasure hunters who were usually male. It gave little attention to witchcraft, which in England was typically understood to be a female pursuit and connected to <em>maleficium</em> (doing harm to others). </p>
<p>No one was ever prosecuted under Henry’s Act and it was <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/private-lives/religion/overview/witchcraft/">repealed by his son, Edward VI, in 1547</a>. </p>
<p>Before 1542, in the rare cases when magic practitioners were prosecuted, they were tried in the Church courts. The Church could never impose the death penalty, only public penance. This was the situation again after 1547 until 1563, when Elizabeth I once again made magic an offence. </p>
<p>Like her father’s legislation, <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=Tt-1CwAAQBAJ&pg=PA113&lpg=PA113&dq=witchcraft+act+1542&source=bl&ots=CJ_z4I5ifL&sig=jb-baM9Nv0odp0dNhf77lvWfZzA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiiosvlh63eAhWGKXwKHb6jBzQ4FBDoATAAegQIARAB#v=onepage&q=witchcraft%20act%201542&f=false">Elizabeth’s Act focused on a variety of real magic practitioners and not primarily on witches</a>. But Elizabeth’s Act was never used against its primary targets. Instead it was used in the sporadic witch trials that occurred between it and the second half of the 17th century, when they petered out. </p>
<p>Her act was strengthened by <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=Tt-1CwAAQBAJ&pg=PA113&lpg=PA113&dq=witchcraft+act+1542&source=bl&ots=CJ_z4I5ifL&sig=jb-baM9Nv0odp0dNhf77lvWfZzA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiiosvlh63eAhWGKXwKHb6jBzQ4FBDoATAAegQIARAB#v=onepage&q=witchcraft%20act%201542&f=false">James I in 1604,</a> who believed in witchcraft and gave more explicit attention to witches. Ironically and sadly, almost none of the women and men accused of witchcraft were actual magic practitioners.</p>
<h2>Downgrading magic to fraud</h2>
<p>By the time these draconian acts were repealed in 1736, there had been no attempts to try witches for 19 years and no execution for more than 50 years. So the repeal was essentially legal house-cleaning. </p>
<p>The act that replaced them formed the foundation of Section 365 of the Criminal Code, the Canadian law now about to be repealed. The 1736 law was driven by Enlightenment sentiments that regarded all magic as false; it downgraded magic to a form of fraud. </p>
<p>This is why the Canadian law prohibits <em>pretending</em> to practise magic rather than magic itself, as the early acts had done. But why make a specific law on magic? Then as now, <a href="https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/section-380.html">conventional fraud legislation</a> was more than adequate to cover cases of magical fraud. </p>
<p>The answer is that the legislators regarded magic as a special case, not for legal reasons, but for ideological ones. Under the influence of the Enlightenment, they rejected belief in magic as a superstitious feature of a passing world view. Magic was associated with religious fanaticism that was considered distasteful to sober, modern thinkers. </p>
<p>In fact, they reasoned, tragedies like the witch trials would never have taken place without such belief in magic. For this reason, belief in magic needed to be stamped out by laws like Section 365. </p>
<p>In short, Section 365 is not a remnant of the old laws that held that witchcraft was real. It’s purpose is to <em>attack</em> superstition and the mistaken beliefs that gave rise to the witch trials. </p>
<p>But none of these laws, the old or the new, seem to have been effective in stamping out magic.</p>
<h2>The early laws did not stamp out magic</h2>
<p>Those accused of witchcraft were almost always completely innocent of magic practices. </p>
<p>In most cases, real magic practitioners were left alone because their community used them, liked them and wanted them around. In the few cases where magicians found their way into court it was mostly because they were believed to have committed fraud, treason, or some other form of social disruption. </p>
<p>The reasons such legislation didn’t work is that people liked their own personal magicians, fortune-tellers or folk healers. There was no general will in the population to prosecute practitioners unless they were patently predatory and disruptive. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242867/original/file-20181030-76396-uyqks1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242867/original/file-20181030-76396-uyqks1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242867/original/file-20181030-76396-uyqks1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242867/original/file-20181030-76396-uyqks1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242867/original/file-20181030-76396-uyqks1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242867/original/file-20181030-76396-uyqks1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242867/original/file-20181030-76396-uyqks1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A model of a 19th-century cunning woman in her house, at the Museum of Witchcraft, Boscastle in England.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In other words, those pre-modern laws to stamp out magic entirely missed their target and didn’t work at all.</p>
<h2>Section 365 did not stamp out magic either</h2>
<p>Just like in the pre-modern period, the recent uses of the Canadian law have only targeted grievous and patent cases of fraud, while most magic practitioners have gone about their business entirely without interference. </p>
<p>Fraud (in this case, magical fraud) <a href="https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/section-380.html">has to involve the loss of money or something of value</a>. </p>
<p>If all magic and fortune-telling is “pretend,” or false, as Section 365 assumes, then newspapers that contain astrological horoscopes, bookstores that sell books on practising magic, local and online psychics, card and palm readers, occult shops, crystal stores and anyone offering an online course on practical magic are all technically magical fraud. </p>
<p>Even Wiccans and other organized groups of modern magic practitioners might fall under the definition of fraud if their members made any financial contributions to their organizations. </p>
<p>In the end, it will be a popular move to do away with a law that most people assume to be last remnant of the laws that made the witch trials possible. In fact, it’s the last remnant of the Enlightenment efforts to combat superstition through law. </p>
<p>Future historians may look back on this moment as a tacit admission by our legislators that, after hundreds years of trying, the supporters of the Enlightenment project have not managed to stamp out magic. The laws inspired by the Enlightenment, along with the broader campaign against magic and superstition, have been a futile exercise.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105720/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frank Klaassen has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p>An antiquated Canadian law against magic and witchcraft is about to be repealed. A close look at its history reveals that it is far less superstitious than it appears.Frank Klaassen, Associate Professor of History, University of SaskatchewanLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1058702018-10-29T16:11:46Z2018-10-29T16:11:46ZWar of the witches: woman are accused while men claim victim status<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242701/original/file-20181029-76396-1d1hcvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Witches at a protest against Donald Trump in St. Paul, Minnesota, 2018.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Fibonacci Blue</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Halloween is a time when <a href="https://theconversation.com/halloween-turning-to-the-supernatural-to-work-through-our-anxieties-104517">cultural norms are turned upside down</a>: we encourage children to dress up as creatures from nightmares – witches, zombies, vampires – and we send them out to wander the streets in the dark, demanding sweets from strangers. Yet the witch, so often invoked as a sign of societal disruption through history, is no longer content to be confined either to Halloween or to history – if, indeed, she ever was.</p>
<p>Witch hunts didn’t end with the cataclysmic events of Salem in 1692. In Britain, the last witch trial took place in 1944, when <a href="https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofScotland/Helen-Duncan-Scotlands-last-witch/">Helen Duncan was jailed</a> for claiming to have conjured up the spirit of a dead sailor from the HMS Barham – the sinking of the ship by the Germans was classified information, and the authorities were worried that she might also reveal details of the D-Day landing plans. She was released after nine months, and lived to see the <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/private-lives/religion/overview/witchcraft/">repeal of the Witchcraft Act in 1951</a>, although she continued practising spiritualism for the rest of her life.</p>
<p>The practice of witchcraft continues. Browse any new age bookshop, visit the <a href="https://museumofwitchcraftandmagic.co.uk/">Witch Museum in Boscastle</a> in Cornwall, or Pendle in Lancashire, where Britain’s <a href="http://www.pendlewitches.co.uk/">most famous witch trial</a> took place in 1612, or the tiny village of Burley in the New Forest where the so-called “White Witch”, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/south/series1/sybil-leek.shtml">Sybil Leek</a>, lived in the 1950s before she was forced by hostile locals to flee to the US. You’ll find that the books available are not just about the history of witches, but their present existence and practices. A <a href="https://www.ashmolean.org/spellbound">current exhibition</a> at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford also shows that both popular and academic interest in witchcraft is thriving.</p>
<h2>Every witch way in US politics</h2>
<p>But the witch in Western society continues to exist in other ways too, primarily self-identified and given to using political and sociopolitical language rather than incantations. The inauguration of the US president, Donald Trump, provoked women’s protest marches around the world, with some banners reading: “Hex the Patriarchy”, “Witches for Black Lives”, and “We are the daughters of the witches you didn’t burn, and we are pissed off.” </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242695/original/file-20181029-76405-jpoiul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242695/original/file-20181029-76405-jpoiul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242695/original/file-20181029-76405-jpoiul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242695/original/file-20181029-76405-jpoiul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242695/original/file-20181029-76405-jpoiul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242695/original/file-20181029-76405-jpoiul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242695/original/file-20181029-76405-jpoiul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242695/original/file-20181029-76405-jpoiul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Witch at a Black Lives Matter demonstration, Brooklyn, 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul Sableman</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>An event even took place in October in Brooklyn, New York, to hex supreme court justice, Brett Kavanaugh. The meeting was sold out and the protest made <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-45928212">headlines across the world</a>. It is no surprise that, at a time when women’s rights are under increasing pressure in some areas of Western society, that the witch should be used as a feminist symbol of power, both in language and in the claimed reality of witchcraft.</p>
<p>But there are other people looking to get in on the act. Trump has repeatedly stated that the 2016 investigation into his alleged collusion with Russia was “the biggest witch hunt of a politician in American history”. According to the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/18/us/politics/fact-check-trump-russia-election-interference-.html">New York Times</a>, Trump used the term “witch hunt” – casting himself as victim – in tweets more than 110 times in the period May 2017-18. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"968472532843196416"}"></div></p>
<p>Further, the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements led Woody Allen to <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/10/woody-allen-harvey-weinstein-witch-hunt-atmosphere">invoke the spectre of Salem</a>, but with men as accused witches, saying: “You also don’t want it to lead to a witch-hunt atmosphere, a Salem atmosphere, where every guy in an office who winks at a woman is suddenly having to call a lawyer to defend himself.” In these cases, men are positioning themselves and their peers in the role of witches, but in this scenario the witch is an innocent, a victim. These men are actually denying their own status as witches, using the power associated with claims to victimhood as a weapon against those considered oppressors. They position their accusers as powerful, while simultaneously accusing them of abusing that power.</p>
<p>Yet Trump – and countless others – still use “witch” as a term of vilification against women. During the 2016 presidential election campaign, Hillary Clinton was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/07/cursed-from-circe-to-clinton-why-women-are-cast-as-witches">repeatedly defined as a witch</a> by Trump supporters: Clinton was “the wicked witch of the Left”, pictured with green skin, pointy hat, and riding a broomstick; her opponents <a href="http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2016/10/11/alex-jones-hillary-clinton-obama-demon-sulfur/">claimed she smelt of sulphur</a>. Aligning her with such stereotypical representations of witchcraft evidenced the power plays at the root of such blatant and public misogyny.</p>
<h2>Innocence and guilt</h2>
<p>This concentration on the binary nature of witch accusations – on the guilt or innocence of both accusers and accused – shows how the reclamation of the witch for the 21st century is, as it has always been, concerned with power and, frequently, the relative positioning of gender. The accusation of witchcraft is one that has been used to undermine the status of both women and <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-behind-children-being-cast-as-witches-in-nigeria-57021">children</a> – who have also been branded as witches, from Salem in 17th-century America to Nigeria today.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242702/original/file-20181029-76393-q70x68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242702/original/file-20181029-76393-q70x68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242702/original/file-20181029-76393-q70x68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242702/original/file-20181029-76393-q70x68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242702/original/file-20181029-76393-q70x68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242702/original/file-20181029-76393-q70x68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242702/original/file-20181029-76393-q70x68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 19th-century lithograph depicting the Salem Witch Trials.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Library of Congress</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As American historian and philosopher Perry Miller <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=kVHFWP8ic0wC&pg=PA191&lpg=PA191&dq=perry+miller+salem&source=bl&ots=ebujBmTecx&sig=U48ylu3tkWN8dr3-mNToatL4t3o&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwix6_fhraveAhVJKMAKHctRDkoQ6AEwCnoECCcQAQ#v=onepage&q=perry%20miller%20salem&f=false">has argued</a> regarding the difficulties of understanding the Salem witch trials, “language itself proves treacherous” – by which he meant we struggle to put ourselves into the minds of the Puritans who threw around accusations of witchery in 17th-century New England. And now, in the early 21st century, it seems that efforts to understand the resurgence of the word “witch” in public discourse may be no less troubled.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105870/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kristina West does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>So often used to condemn women through history, feminism is reclaiming the word ‘witch’ in the 21st century. Some men also want to get in on the act.Kristina West, Adjunct Lecturer, School of English, University of ReadingLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1023372018-09-03T20:05:37Z2018-09-03T20:05:37ZCan we learn from the past in tackling witchcraft-related violence today?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234211/original/file-20180830-195319-9zuail.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A medieval engraving of the persecution of witches: historians are increasingly demonstrating that belief in witchcraft survived in Western Europe well into the 18th, 19th and even 20th centuries. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Between 1450 and 1750, some 45,000 men, women and children were executed in Western Europe as accused witches. Today, emerging <a href="http://dpa.bellschool.anu.edu.au/experts-publications/publications/5815/ib201731-sorcery-accusation-related-violence-papua-new-guinea%22%22">new research</a> shows that, during the past 20 years, upwards of 600 people were reported killed in witchcraft related attacks in Papua New Guinea, while current estimates are that <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/issues/albinism/pages/witchcraft.aspx">thousands are killed in witchcraft-related violence around the world each year</a>.</p>
<p>Today, it is popularly believed that violence against those accused of “witchcraft” and “sorcery” in the Global South mirrors European witchcraft-persecutions in the past. For example, international media outlets have responded to current accusations of sorcery related violence in Melanesia with headlines such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2013/feb/20/papua-new-guinea-asia-pacific">“Papua New Guinea ‘Witch’ Murder is a Reminder of our Gruesome Past”</a>. </p>
<p>Various reports similarly state that, unlike in Melanesia today, <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/world/witchhunt-20130415-2huha.html">“Witch-hunts went out of style in Europe some time in the 1700s</a>” and that <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/vdpk3y/witch-hunting-is-a-growing-concern-in-papua-new-guinea-686">“We Europeans also</a> killed lots of witches in the Middle Ages”. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234212/original/file-20180830-195316-kl3apk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234212/original/file-20180830-195316-kl3apk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234212/original/file-20180830-195316-kl3apk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234212/original/file-20180830-195316-kl3apk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234212/original/file-20180830-195316-kl3apk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234212/original/file-20180830-195316-kl3apk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234212/original/file-20180830-195316-kl3apk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234212/original/file-20180830-195316-kl3apk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Supplied image obtained in 2015 of Mifila, a Papua New Guinea woman reported axed to death after being accused of sorcery in the country’s highlands.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anton Lutz/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But what exactly are the connections and similarities between these two different contexts? Historians and anthropologists are understandably wary of the colonial overtones of any argument that places present-day Melanesian beliefs and practices in an evolutionary schema – equating them with those of pre-modern Europeans. But does this mean such comparisons should never be made? </p>
<p>Historians today largely attribute the decline in European witchcraft trials to increased scepticism by judges and magistrates about the possibility of proving witchcraft in a state court (even if they continued to believe in the existence of witchcraft). </p>
<p>This scepticism included concern about the veracity of confessions obtained under torture, which was the main source of evidence in many trials (a notable exception here is England in which suspects were not tortured). As torture is widely used in vigilante “trials” of those accused of sorcery in PNG today, we wonder if efforts to end torture might have far-reaching consequences in ending sorcery-related violence.</p>
<p>Although state-sanctioned witchcraft trials did die out in Europe (almost entirely by the 18th century) we now know that belief in witchcraft and associated violence lasted much longer. Indeed, historians are increasingly demonstrating that belief in witchcraft survived in Western Europe well into the 18th, 19th and even 20th centuries (see, for example, Owen Davies’ work on <a href="http://researchprofiles.herts.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/american-bewitched(e8ab27c3-ff8a-4ac2-a5c1-d1e7197c4643).html">witchcraft in America</a> or his new book on <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/a-supernatural-war-9780198794554?cc=au&lang=en&">supernatural belief in the First World War</a>). </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/witches-both-mad-and-bad-a-loaded-word-with-an-ugly-history-52804">Witches both mad and bad: a loaded word with an ugly history</a>
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<p>For contemporary policymakers, this suggests that overcoming sorcery accusations and related violence may not require first changing entire belief systems, or introducing so-called “rational” ways of thinking into a population. </p>
<p>Instead, it directs attention to considering far more specific questions about what motivates people to accuse and harm those they suspect of witchcraft or sorcery.</p>
<h2>The role of law</h2>
<p>The role of law in addressing contemporary violence related to accusations of sorcery is a contentious one. There are debates for and against creating specific forms of crime to deal with the problem, such as crimes of accusing someone of practising sorcery, or specific types of violence addressed at those accused of witchcraft. For example, <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/president-ram-nath-koivnd-gives-nod-to-assams-anti-witch-hunting-bill-1884328">in India last month a specific anti-witch hunting Bill was enacted</a>. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-witch-hunters-can-teach-us-about-todays-world-75176">What witch-hunters can teach us about today's world</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In early modern Europe, the legislation criminalising witchcraft was eventually repealed and replaced in some countries with legislation criminalising those who tried to “trick” or deceive others through pretending to use witchcraft. The historical record indicates that one impact of this legislative change was that it made it much easier for people to talk openly about their scepticism towards witchcraft, and made the public defence of witch beliefs increasingly socially unacceptable in educated circles. </p>
<p>While law alone cannot change belief systems, the early modern experience suggests a potentially valuable role for legislation in facilitating certain types of public discourse about witchcraft, and officially condemning violence as a response towards fears of it.</p>
<h2>Contagious narratives</h2>
<p>History is also replete with examples of stories with a catalysing effect on communities, provoking sporadic “outbreaks” of violence. This suggests that all populations can potentially be susceptible to contagion of new and terrifying narratives, particularly where they resonate with existing prejudices or ways of thinking. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wNGIe5fD5tA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>In PNG, and indeed many places across the world today, new or revised narratives of sorcery and witchcraft are infecting populations and leading to what some describe as “epidemics” of violence. These are spread by word of mouth, social media, and in Africa at least, through popular local films.</p>
<p>In tackling their impact on populations, it is important to recognise these as being new or recently modified stories in many places, rather than entrenched cultural traditions. Framing them as foreign can potentially help to undermine arguments that such violence is justified by culture, and can prompt attention to countering their transmission.</p>
<p>There are of course some limitations with taking a comparative approach. Violence against witches in the South Pacific tends to be incited by individuals or communities acting outside the law; whereas early modern Europe executed and tortured witches fully in accordance with legal statutes against witchcraft. </p>
<p>It is crucial to acknowledge these differences and to be very careful not to suggest that witchcraft is the same everywhere, across time and place.</p>
<p>But, at the same time, if it is possible to learn anything at all from the past about how to stop the torture and murder of hundreds of innocent men and women in the world today then these conversations can have a very real impact.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102337/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Midena receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Miranda Forsyth receives funding from Pacific Women Shaping Pacific Development through the Australian Aid program. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charlotte-Rose Millar does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It is estimated that thousands of people are killed in witchcraft-related violence around the world each year. How can we tackle this problem today?Charlotte-Rose Millar, UQ Research Fellow, The University of QueenslandDaniel Midena, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, The University of QueenslandMiranda Forsyth, Associate professor, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/874932017-12-19T01:41:39Z2017-12-19T01:41:39ZMarket bubbles and sonic attacks: Mass hysterias will never go away<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199472/original/file-20171215-17863-mpj8c0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1738%2C0%2C6202%2C4737&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Were U.S. diplomats at the embassy in Cuba stricken by a mass delusion?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Cuba-Sonic-Attacks/be7ba705400847398b024df1ef81bea9/4/0">AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ancient and quaint seem the days of <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=FfUcvgAACAAJ&dq=Extraordinary+Popular+Delusions+and+the+Madness+of+Crowds&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjezcXZqPPXAhWlzIMKHXPHA8EQ6AEIKDAA">witch crazes, demon scares and tulip manias</a>. <a href="https://www.csicop.org/si/show/mass_delusions_and_hysterias_highlights_from_the_past_millennium">Instances of mass hysteria</a> may strike you as rare events in modern advanced societies. But such outbreaks are products of their times. They’re still around today, just in different guises. </p>
<p>Aided and abetted by its status as an internet meme, the <a href="https://www.snopes.com/slenderman/">myth of an evil, supernatural Slenderman</a> has been <a href="https://theconversation.com/beware-the-slenderman-how-users-created-the-boogieman-of-the-internet-71338">panicking adolescents</a> since 2009, even culminating in an attempted murder by proxy. If it’s easy to brush this off as a case of impressionable teens with too much internet access, then what of otherwise rational late 20th-century <a href="https://youtu.be/gVJJijESlko">American adults participating</a> in <a href="http://www.heavensgate.com">suicide cults</a>, Puerto Rico’s mythical cattle-killing <a href="http://www.animalplanet.com/tv-shows/lost-tapes/creatures/chupacabra-history/">Chupacabra monster</a>, the “<a href="https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10421.html">irrational exuberance</a>” of the dot-com bubble in the 1990s, or the seemingly insane rush to make <a href="https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/355/transcript">bad real estate investments</a> in the latter 2000s? </p>
<p>A diplomatic dustup between the U.S. and Cuba may be the latest well-publicized case of collective delusion. In 2017, the U.S. State Department claimed its diplomats in Havana were subjected to “<a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/diplomats-in-cuba">sonic attacks</a>” that produced a range of physical symptoms including hearing loss, headaches and dizziness. Consequently, the federal government <a href="https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2017/09/274518.htm">pulled out most of its embassy staff</a> and sent packing most Cuban diplomats stationed in the U.S. </p>
<p>Although medical exams have <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/doctors-identify-brain-abnormalities-u-s-embassy-victims-cuba-attack-n826996">identified unusual physical conditions</a> in some diplomats, those exams lacked proper experimental controls and fall well <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/12/cuba-mass-hysteria-sonic-attacks-neurologists">short of providing evidence</a> for any sort of sonic attack. There remains no demonstrably valid evidence that diplomats were subjected to sonic attacks at the American embassy in Havana – and a good deal of evidence has now been amassed suggestive of the contrary. The latest culprit to be fingered is the <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/01/the-real-story-behind-the-havana-embassy-mystery">chirping of crickets or cicadas</a> – in conjunction with mass hysteria.</p>
<p>So how do otherwise logical and informed 21st-century people fall under the spell of these mass delusions? Over the past several decades, psychologists and sociologists have used examples like these to dig into when and how this kind of false belief gains traction.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199296/original/file-20171214-27555-13p9e4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199296/original/file-20171214-27555-13p9e4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199296/original/file-20171214-27555-13p9e4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199296/original/file-20171214-27555-13p9e4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199296/original/file-20171214-27555-13p9e4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199296/original/file-20171214-27555-13p9e4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199296/original/file-20171214-27555-13p9e4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199296/original/file-20171214-27555-13p9e4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">One of the most famous mass delusions in America led to the Salem witch trials in 17th-century Massachusetts.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2003677961/">Joseph E. Baker, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A recipe for collective delusion</h2>
<p>Collective delusions are the culprits behind mass hysterias and related phenomena. As traditionally defined, <a href="https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/little-green-men-meowing-nuns-and-head-hunting-panics/">they’re characterized</a> by a rapid, spontaneous and temporary spread of false beliefs within a circumscribed population.</p>
<p>Nowadays that circumscribed population can be a virtual one, bounded only by cyberconnections to a shared source of misinformation. The recent upsurge in vocal flat-Earth proponents, for example, is not the result of geographical neighbors whipping each other into a near frenzy. <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-social-media-fires-peoples-passions-and-builds-extremist-divisions-86909">Social media makes it easy</a> to find like-minded others, serve distorted information to the curious, and stir up excitement about events such as the 2017 eclipse, celebrity endorsements, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/you-dont-need-to-build-a-rocket-to-prove-the-earth-isnt-flat-heres-the-simple-science-88106">a proposed rocket launch by a flat-Earth proponent</a> intended to prove once and for all that we are all living on a disc.</p>
<p>Collective delusions emerge under a combination of several conditions. Each of these precursors is straightforward enough, but it’s harder to foresee when they might occur in concert. In turn, this makes predicting delusional outbreaks a very inexact science.</p>
<p>The most obvious precursor is the presence of multiple people who are sufficiently connected so as to share information or experiences. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199473/original/file-20171215-17889-jwk6gq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199473/original/file-20171215-17889-jwk6gq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199473/original/file-20171215-17889-jwk6gq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=879&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199473/original/file-20171215-17889-jwk6gq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=879&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199473/original/file-20171215-17889-jwk6gq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=879&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199473/original/file-20171215-17889-jwk6gq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1105&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199473/original/file-20171215-17889-jwk6gq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1105&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199473/original/file-20171215-17889-jwk6gq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1105&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In 1978, Rev. Jim Jones orchestrated a ritual of mass murder and suicide of his followers, isolated in Jonestown, Guyana.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Jonestown-Remains/7ac740d31fe246208412db8b9f757208/96/0">AP Photo/File</a></span>
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<p>Second, just as an isolated individual may develop some beliefs and behaviors that depart from prevailing norms, collective delusions and responses are more likely to occur in relatively insular groups or networks. </p>
<p>Third, a collective delusion is more likely to take hold if the group is undergoing some kind of distress. This could be rising unemployment, political destabilization or an enemy’s threats of warfare. On a smaller scale, a town may lose a crucial employer, or a fire-and-brimstone minister can instigate a satanic panic with rumors of baby-killing cults. </p>
<p>And fourth, the stressors are potent enough to trigger, in at least some individuals, either a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/11635758/Psychosomatic-disorders-When-illness-really-is-all-in-the-mind.html">psychosomatic response</a> or <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hide-and-seek/201312/the-psychology-scapegoating">scapegoating behavior</a>. Psychosomatic reactions – physical symptoms with psychological causes – may be as mild as itching or as severe as blindness. Scapegoating involves blaming a group of innocent (or possibly nonexistent) others for causing problems – psychosomatic or otherwise. </p>
<p>When conditions are ripe, this catalyzing subset of group members <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=WVNrDys7cyIC&oi=fnd&pg=PA163&dq=Imitation+as+entrainment+Brain+mechanisms+and+social+consequences&ots=aeSUUGQfAl&sig=anvDTaHKs6fEdQwIhK0j5N6QEhw#v=onepage&q=Imitation%20as%20entrainment%20Brain%20mechanisms%20and%20social%20consequences&f=false">sets off a chain reaction</a>. They begin to seek and identify external causes for their distress, or sources for its relief. Psychosomatic responses spread; contempt for the scapegoats grows. People become hypervigilant and toss critical thinking out the window, looking for and finding imagined threats. Conspiracy theories are spawned, angels and demons invoked, fears stoked, panic induced. The supernatural may start to seem natural.</p>
<p>As more and more group members become ensnared in a positive feedback loop, the perceived threat is legitimized, only broadening and deepening social distress further. Because they are inherently newsworthy, mass delusions are picked up by mass media, which <a href="https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/publication/panic-attacks/9780750937856/">fan the flames</a> even more.</p>
<p>In these ways, a nonexistent threat can set off a self-sustaining cascade of irrationality that lasts until the perceived threat recedes.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199306/original/file-20171214-27597-khjcfn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199306/original/file-20171214-27597-khjcfn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199306/original/file-20171214-27597-khjcfn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199306/original/file-20171214-27597-khjcfn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199306/original/file-20171214-27597-khjcfn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199306/original/file-20171214-27597-khjcfn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199306/original/file-20171214-27597-khjcfn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199306/original/file-20171214-27597-khjcfn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Will they look back and wonder what they were thinking?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Visual_kei_1.jpg">Jacob Ehnmark</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Delusion everywhere, to different degrees?</h2>
<p>While descriptions of mass hysterias make great reading, they represent only the far end of a continuum of what sociologists like me call social diffusion processes. For the most part, these are quite mundane – you might recognize a few from your own daily life. While around the world stock market bubbles and bank runs make news, less frenetic responses to perceived threats and conspiracies abound: the <a href="https://www.csicop.org/si/show/the_9_11_truth_movement_the_top_conspiracy_theory_a_decade_later">9/11 “truthers</a>,” the recent uptick in <a href="https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/home/">flat-Earth beliefs</a>, <a href="https://www.prevention.com/eatclean/read-this-if-youre-still-afraid-of-eating-gluten">fears of gluten</a> and <a href="https://www.csicop.org/si/show/no_health_risks_from_gmos">genetically modified foods</a>, <a href="https://www.skeptic.com/insight/signs-of-hope-and-despair-on-climate-change/">climate change deniers</a>, <a href="https://www.skeptic.com/magazine/archives/22.4/">wars on science</a> on some liberal college campuses, and more. Even the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Fear-Fashion-Critical-Cases-Anxiety/dp/9198038885">desire to be fashionable</a> can be seen as a response to the fear of being excluded. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.24.1.265">Simple mathematical equations</a> can quite elegantly describe the speed, duration and extensiveness of the spread of beliefs and behaviors. A typical “diffusion model” shows how the penetration through a population of such things as beliefs, behaviors, illnesses, innovations or products is determined by just a few parameters. These typically include the group’s size, the density of its members’ interconnections and the inherent contagiousness of the thing being spread.</p>
<p>Irrational beliefs, and the often ill-considered responses they engender, can spread like an infection across groups as large as nations or as small as nuclear families. Sunshine, as they say, is the best disinfectant. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.36.4.343">Social impact theory</a> would suggest that the best approach to administering social disinfectant is via large numbers of geographically nearby, authoritative nonbelievers.</p>
<p>In the case of the supposed sonic attacks in Cuba, one approach to stemming the scare would have been a rapidly deployed on-site investigation by acoustic experts, neurologists, psychiatrists and military strategists. A folklorist as well wouldn’t hurt. Short of such a full-frontal counterattack, disseminating easy-to-digest skeptical information as early as possible in the process should help to slow the diffusion process and quell a mass delusion.</p>
<p>It’s easy enough to be caught up in a mass delusion. Fads and fashions are great examples, though their most harmful consequence may be our embarrassment when we look back on some of our previous style choices. As long as people are stressed and living in groups, most of our mass delusions will remain invisible to us until they have already run their course.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an article originally published on Dec. 18, 2017.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87493/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Barry Markovsky does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Sociologists know what conditions make it more likely a mass delusion will take hold and spread through a group – whether adherence to a fashion fad or belief in a doomsday cult.Barry Markovsky, Professor of Sociology, University of South CarolinaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/850682017-10-26T21:22:13Z2017-10-26T21:22:13ZWhy ‘The Witch’ is the scariest historical film ever<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192123/original/file-20171026-13331-vsugwi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Robert Eggers’ "The Witch" is a scary representation of Puritan life in the 17th century.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(The Witch, A24 Films, 2016)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Popular culture and literature has been rife with depictions of New England witchcraft for years. Perennial Halloween favourites include Disney’s <em>Hocus Pocus</em>, John Updike’s <em>The Witches of Eastwick</em>, <em>Practical Magic</em> and Arthur Miller’s play, <em>The Crucible</em>, which was also made into a movie starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder. </p>
<p>All of these movies are entertaining, but none of them are supposed to be scary, or very historical, although <em>The Crucible</em> comes closest. The story is suspenseful and Miller researched the notorious <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/a-brief-history-of-the-salem-witch-trials-175162489/">Salem Witch Trials</a> to interrogate what he called “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=940CE0DB1038F93BA3575AC0A960958260">a paranoid situation</a>.” When Miller staged the play in 1953, that situation was the <a href="http://americanhistory.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-6">Red Scare</a> and McCarthyism. </p>
<p>By 1996, when <em>The Crucible</em> appeared as a film, Miller <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=940CE0DB1038F93BA3575AC0A960958260">told</a> <em>The New York Times</em> he had “immense confidence in the applicability of the play to almost any time, the reason being it’s dealing with a paranoid situation…that doesn’t depend on any particular political or sociological development. I wrote it blind to the world. The enemy is within, and within stays within, and we can’t get out of within. It’s always on the edge of our minds that behind what we see is a nefarious plot.” </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iUIAxTxrnCc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for <em>The Crucible</em> (1996) based on Arthur Miller’s 1953 play.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Enter Robert Eggers’ indie film, <a href="https://a24films.com/films/witch#watch-now"><em>The Witch</em> (A24 Films, 2016)</a>. The movie chronicles the saga of a Puritan family in the 1630s as they try to carve out an isolated existence after their village exiled them over differing interpretations of the New Testament. Horror soon ensues as children disappear into the woods and the oldest girl, Thomasina, is accused of witchcraft. </p>
<p>Telling any more of the story risks spoiling it. But I will say that by using extensive historical research, Eggers offers the most captivating — and historically accurate — representative of the Puritan imagination I’ve ever seen. And it’s terrifying.</p>
<h2>Who were the Puritans?</h2>
<p>The Puritans were members of an English Protestant church. They deemed the <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/reformation">Protestant Reformation</a> unfinished because English monarchs had supposedly allowed too much religious compromise and inclusion. Steeped in Calvinist doctrine, Puritans sought a morally refined Christianity that eschewed the supposed luxuries of Catholicism and Anglicanism.</p>
<p>The Puritans promoted the absolute sovereignty of God and believed that the best way to attain his favour was through close, intimate relationships that were facilitated through small prayer groups and zealous, evangelical sermons. </p>
<p>In the early decades of the 17th century, Puritans began migrating from England to colonize Massachusetts and Connecticut. As the theologian <a href="https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/winthrop.htm">John Winthrop said</a> in 1630, Puritans hoped to make their settlement a “city upon the hill” and serve as an example of spiritual purity to Europeans back home.</p>
<p>All this, though, was easier said than done. The Puritans struggled against a range of enemies, both internal and external, to establish a colony committed to the worship of God in the emerging British Empire. </p>
<p>Believing themselves to be in a “<a href="https://public.wsu.edu/%7Ecampbelld/amlit/purdef.htm">covenant</a>” with God, Puritans’ religious zeal coloured how they saw the world. Obsessed with demonstrating their religious devotion in the hopes of securing salvation in the afterlife, many Puritans feared that living in the supposed “wilderness” of New England might lead them to spiritual savagery.</p>
<p>As a result, they had a tendency to see the devil everywhere, which led to paranoia over witchcraft during most of the 17th century.</p>
<p>Historians have offered different interpretations of what motivated this paranoia. In her 2003 book, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/122784/in-the-devils-snare-by-mary-beth-norton/9780375706905/"><em>In the Devil’s Snare</em></a>, Mary Beth Norton makes a compelling case that trauma from violent conflicts between white settlers and the Abenaki people of Maine underlay accusations of witchcraft in the Salem Witch Trials. </p>
<p>But as Carol Karlsen points out in her now-classic book, <a href="http://books.wwnorton.com/books/The-Devil-in-the-Shape-of-a-Woman/"><em>The Devil in the Shape of a Woman</em></a>, “the story of witchcraft is primarily the story of women.” By making John Proctor, a farmer who was executed for witchcraft, the protagonist, <em>The Crucible</em> missed the mark. Witchcraft, Karlsen asserts, “confronts us with ideas about women, with fears about women, with the place of women in society, and with women themselves.”</p>
<p>It’s this Puritanical, fanatical fear of women and witchcraft — as it plays out in the New England wilderness — that <em>The Witch</em> captures so brilliantly. </p>
<h2>Fear of women</h2>
<p>First, there’s the wilderness, shot on location in <a href="https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/movies/2016/02/19/setting-of-the-witch-once-a-small-town-kiosk-lies-empty.html">Kiosk</a>, northeastern Ontario, which Eggers positions as an intimidating character. The film is abundant with images of thick white pine and hemlock forest, dark under a clouded sky. </p>
<p>At the beginning of the movie, William, the patriarch of the family, sees the woods as a place of spiritual salvation. Raising his arms up to the heavens, he proclaims, “What went we out into this wilderness to find? Leaving our country, kindred, our fathers’ houses, we travailed a vast ocean. For what? For the Kingdom of God.” </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iQXmlf3Sefg?wmode=transparent&start=9" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Witch (2016)</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Quickly, though, the forest becomes a place of wickedness, at least in the family’s imagination. William forbids his children from entering the woods, fearing the evil spirits they believe lurk in it. </p>
<p>Of course, things go wrong. Children, including the family’s oldest son, Caleb, are lured into the trees surrounding the family’s isolated farm. They come back changed, if they come back at all. “There is evil in the wood,” says William by the end. </p>
<p>This follows many Puritans’ own ambivalent relationship to nature. At once a place of spiritual refuge, prominent Puritans, including ministers <a href="http://salem.lib.virginia.edu/people/i_mather.html">Increase Mather and his son Cotton</a>, “theorized about the desperate evils of the wilderness,” as the literary critic Richard Slotkin notes in his classic study, <a href="https://books.google.ca/books/about/Regeneration_Through_Violence.html?id=552NfCm3-WwC&redir_esc=y"><em>Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860s</em></a>. </p>
<p>The Mathers feared that living near the forest, close to supposedly “heathen” Indigenous peoples, would seduce Christian believers into spiritual degeneracy. </p>
<p>For five years, Eggers culled from this historical record to craft the dialogue for his script. As <a href="http://www.vulture.com/2016/02/how-robert-eggers-researched-the-witch.html">Eggers told <em>Vulture</em></a>, he used collections of Elizabethan witch pamphlets, for instance, to write dialogue for the children when they’re possessed. </p>
<p>“I had to research the vocabulary and understand the grammar structure,” he said. “After that, it was about going through the primary source materials and pulling out sentences and phrases and organizing them in a phrase book for different situations.”</p>
<h2>‘Feminism rises to the top’</h2>
<p>Perhaps inspired by Karlsen’s book, Eggers’s historical research brought him to the realization that making a movie about Puritan witchcraft would have to be about women. </p>
<p>As a result, the film centres around Thomasina, whose transition from girlhood to womanhood seems to threaten the family’s spiritual purity. For this reason, Thomasina quickly becomes the black sheep of the family and is accused of being a witch by her siblings and her own mother. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192121/original/file-20171026-13367-1c2asmw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192121/original/file-20171026-13367-1c2asmw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192121/original/file-20171026-13367-1c2asmw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192121/original/file-20171026-13367-1c2asmw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192121/original/file-20171026-13367-1c2asmw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192121/original/file-20171026-13367-1c2asmw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192121/original/file-20171026-13367-1c2asmw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">David Eggers’ The Witch centres around Thomasina and her transition from girlhood to womanhood.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://thewitch-movie.com/">(The Witch, A24 Films, 2016)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“Feminism rises to the top,” Eggers <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2016/2/19/11059130/the-witch-director-robert-eggers-interview">says</a> about his film. “In the early modern period, the evil witch (represents) men’s fears and ambivalence and fantasies about female power. And in this super male-dominated society, the evil witch is also women’s fears and ambivalence and fantasies and desire about their own power.” </p>
<p>Women accuse other women of being witches, as happened so prominently in the Salem Witch trials. At the same time, accused women, uncomfortable with whatever power they find themselves able to exercise, particularly if it’s sexual, are left guessing if they are, indeed, bewitched. </p>
<p>As scholars such as <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674261556">Perry Miller</a>, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/entertaining-satan-9780195174830?cc=us&lang=en&#">John Demos</a>, <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300172416/puritan-origins-american-self">Sacvan Bercovitch</a> and <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/100085/the-name-of-war-by-jill-lepore/9780375702624/">Jill Lepore</a> demonstrate, what has proven so fascinating about the Puritans is less what they experienced and more what they perceived. </p>
<p>This is why dramatizing the Puritan imagination, or “nightmare,” as Eggers phrased it, makes for such a fascinating film. With carefully crafted dialogue, stunning visuals and chilling music, akin to what Stanley Kubrick used for <em>The Shining</em>, <em>The Witch</em> is able to capture the Puritan nightmare in a way the best historical scholarship cannot.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85068/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melissa J. Gismondi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Robert Eggers’ indie film The Witch brilliantly chronicles Puritan life in the 1630s. Horror soon ensues as children disappear into the woods and one girl, Thomasina, is accused of witchcraft.Melissa J. Gismondi, Lecturer in Women, Gender and Sexuality, University of VirginiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/739672017-03-24T09:43:01Z2017-03-24T09:43:01ZDangers of the witch hunt in Washington<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162312/original/image-20170324-4938-idddo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">FBI Director James Comey and National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers at hearing on allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As an anthropologist, I know that all groups of people use informal <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/anthropology/social-and-cultural-anthropology/witchcraft-sorcery-rumors-and-gossip">practices of social control</a> in day-to-day interactions. Controlling disruptive behavior is necessary for maintaining social order, but the forms of control vary.</p>
<p>How will President Donald Trump control behavior he finds disruptive? </p>
<p>The question came to me when Trump called the investigation of Russian interference in the election “<a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-russia-focus-political-witch-hunt">a total witch hunt</a>.” More on that later. </p>
<h2>Ridicule and shunning</h2>
<p>A common form of social control is ridicule. The disruptive person is ridiculed for his or her behavior, and ridicule is often enough to make the disruptive behavior stop. </p>
<p>Another common form of social control is shunning, or segregating a disruptive individual from society. With the individual pushed out of social interactions – by sitting in a timeout, for example – his or her behavior can no longer cause trouble.</p>
<p>Ridicule, shunning and other informal practices of social control usually work well to control disruptive behavior, and we see examples every day in the office, on the playground and even in the White House. </p>
<h2>Controlling the critics</h2>
<p>Donald Trump routinely uses ridicule and shunning to control what he sees as disruptive behavior. The most obvious examples are aimed at the press. For example, he refers to The New York Times as “<a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2017/02/new-york-times-ceo-takes-on-trumps-false-failing-claims-234541">failing</a>” as a way of demeaning its employees. He infamously <a href="http://www.people.com/politics/trump-denies-mocking-journalist-disability-watch-video/">mocked a disabled reporter</a> who critiqued him. </p>
<p>On the other side, the press has also used ridicule, calling the president <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/2/8/1631304/-The-world-has-taken-Donald-Trump-s-measure-toxic-incompetent-and-weak">incompetent</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/opinion/is-it-time-to-call-trump-mentally-ill.html">mentally ill</a> and even making fun of the <a href="http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a47296/donald-trump-hand-size-chart/">size of his hands.</a> </p>
<p>Trump has shunned the press as well, <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/14/media/donald-trump-media-blacklist/">pulling press credentials</a> from news agencies that critique him. Press Secretary Sean Spicer used shunning against a group of reporters critical of the administration by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/us/politics/white-house-sean-spicer-briefing.html">blocking them from attending</a> his daily briefing. And Secretary of State Rex Tillerson shook off the State Department press corps and headed off to Asia with <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/rex-tillerson-reporters-asia-state-236109">just one reporter invited along</a>. </p>
<p>Again, the practice cuts both ways. The media has also started asking themselves if they should shun Trump’s surrogates – such as Kellyanne Connway – <a href="http://www.gq.com/story/heres-an-idea-stop-putting-kellyanne-conway-on-tv">in interviews</a> or <a href="http://pressthink.org/2017/01/send-the-interns/">refuse to send staff reporters</a> to the White House briefing room.</p>
<h2>Accusations of witchcraft</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161639/original/image-20170320-9114-1hbuhky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161639/original/image-20170320-9114-1hbuhky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161639/original/image-20170320-9114-1hbuhky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161639/original/image-20170320-9114-1hbuhky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161639/original/image-20170320-9114-1hbuhky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161639/original/image-20170320-9114-1hbuhky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/161639/original/image-20170320-9114-1hbuhky.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Witches persecuted in Colonial era.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/item/2003677981/">Library of Congress</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>But what happens when informal means of control don’t work?</p>
<p>Societies with weak or nonexistent judicial systems may control persistent disruptive behavior by accusing the disruptive person of being a witch.</p>
<p>In an anthropological sense, <a href="https://global.oup.com/ushe/product/witchcraft-oracles-and-magic-among-the-azande-9780198740292?cc=us&lang=en&">witches</a> are people who cannot control their evil behavior – it is a part of their being. A witch’s very thoughts compel supernatural powers to cause social disruption. If a witch gets angry, jealous or envious, the supernatural may take action, whether the witch wants it to or not. In other words: Witches are disruptive by their very presence.</p>
<p>When people are threatened with an accusation of witchcraft, they will generally <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Navaho-Witchcraft-Clyde-Kluckhohn/dp/0807046973">heed the warning</a> to curb their behavior. Those who don’t are often those who are already marginalized. Their behavior – perhaps caused by mental disease or injury – is something they cannot easily control. By failing to prove they aren’t a “witch” – something that’s not easy to do – they give society a legitimate reason to get rid of them. </p>
<p>When communities and their leaders turn to accusation of witchcraft as a means of social control, it usually leads to executions. From the 15th to the 17th century, as many as 100,000 accused witches were put to death <a href="http://www.routledgetextbooks.com/textbooks/9781138808102/">in Europe</a>. And in Salem, Massachusetts, 20 people were executed during the notorious <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/a-brief-history-of-the-salem-witch-trials-175162489/">witch trials</a> of 1692 and 1693.</p>
<h2>Modern societies aren’t immune</h2>
<p>While few people today believe in witches that doesn’t mean that modern societies have given up the idea that there are people who are inherently disruptive or even dangerous to society. We might not always use the word “witch,” but the idea of purifying society of uncontrollable evil is still with us. </p>
<p>In the <a href="http://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/1-segregated/jim-crow.html">Jim Crow South</a> blacks were seen as inherently disruptive to white society and formally segregated. In some cases, they were lynched. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005143">Holocaust</a> followed the pattern of a modern witch hunt. The Nazis saw Jews as inherently dangerous and disruptive to social order. At first they humiliated and ridiculed them, then they segregated them in ghettos and finally they executed them. </p>
<p>One could argue that Americans are already accusing immigrants and Muslims of being the witches of our time. Both groups are seen by some in power as disruptive to social order by their very presence. Some even see them as inherently <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/442565/muslim-immigration-ohio-state-stabbing-shows-dangers-lets-be-honest">dangerous</a>. Indeed, there are ongoing efforts to separate them from the United States, both by deportation and blocking their entry into the country.</p>
<p>Still, the U.S. has a strong judicial system, so why worry that Americans might turn to accusations of witchcraft – albeit by another name – to control behavior? </p>
<p>The worry is that the Trump administration has shown itself to be highly effective in exploiting informal means of social control to shape public discourse, and has <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/trump-judge-attack-backfire-234649">repeatedly berated</a> the judicial system as ineffective or corrupt. </p>
<p>If the judicial system continues to block the administration’s efforts to control Muslims and immigrants, what will the administration do next?</p>
<p>We need to be mindful of the consequences of identifying people as inherently disruptive to social order, as unable to control an innate evilness, or as being, in anthropological terms, witches. When we start to see witches among us, the end game is death.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73967/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Neal Peregrine does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A ‘witch hunt’ is what Trump called investigations into his campaign and Russian interference in the 2016 election. An anthropologist explains the connection between witch hunts and social control.Peter Neal Peregrine, Professor of Anthropology and Museum Studies, Lawrence UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/562332016-03-15T11:01:28Z2016-03-15T11:01:28ZThe Witch: the facts behind the folktales<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/114973/original/image-20160314-11285-179pmk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Witch, film poster.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BAf7dtMrSmI/?taken-by=thewitchmovie">The Witch/Instagram</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>From The Wizard of Oz to Harry Potter, Macbeth to Bewitched, witches have long been a part of popular culture. Witches are now regularly presented as <a href="http://flavorwire.com/192340/the-10-coolest-witches-in-pop-culture">cuddly feminists</a>, but Robert <a href="http://filmmakermagazine.com/people/robert-eggers/#.VubSOqiLQ4Y">Eggers’s</a> new film <a href="http://thewitch-movie.com/">The Witch: A New England Folktale</a> vividly reminds us of the horrors lurking behind the fantasy. </p>
<p>The is a horrifying tale of 17th-century New England, where witches roam the deep, dark forest kidnapping settlers’ children so they can boil down their fat and bones for <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/908398-the-botany-of-desire-a-plant-s-eye-view-of-the-world">ointments</a> which help them to fly. Witches were said to be able to fly on <a href="http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/why-do-witches-fly-brooms">broomsticks</a>, perhaps because the broom was a symbol of female domestication, and flying on it was the ultimate rebellion.</p>
<p>In the 1600s, in both new and old <a href="http://www.historyextra.com/feature/witches-dock-witch-trials-10-britains-most-infamous">England</a>, and across the European continent, people often believed witches were “difficult” women (sometimes difficult men) who hated their neighbours and cursed them with sickness and bad luck. </p>
<p>As in the film, witches were thought to be <a href="http://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Witches-in-Britain/">attracted to children</a>, particularly by their innocence and corruptibility. Children’s small, soft bodies could easily be sickened by spells or possessed by demons and they were especially vulnerable before they had undergone the ritual of baptism, because they weren’t thought to be <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Qr6_q-chR6MC&pg=PA142&lpg=PA142&dq=witches+children+and+baptism&source=bl&ots=GdRy4vZ1pn&sig=wgg7KmNiqNzrRA3w7gUtnZAu2IY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiWzJnOqcDLAhWGTBQKHcESAcoQ6AEIKTAC#v=onepage&q=witches%20children%20and%20baptism&f=false">protected by the christian church</a>. </p>
<p>In the supposedly rational modern world, these superstitions may now seem ridiculous, but the fact that we still shudder when we hear such tales is a telling sign of the witches’ power. </p>
<h2>Toil and trouble</h2>
<p>Anxieties about children being kidnapped and murdered by witches were strongest in southern Germany, western France and the Alpine countries – and it was here that the <a href="http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/salem/witchhistory.html">persecutions</a> were carried out most enthusiastically. In these areas, witches were said to meet in groups of several hundred, worshipping the devil in the form of a man or a goat, <a href="http://witcombe.sbc.edu/davincicode/witches.html">holding orgies and plotting evil</a>.</p>
<p>In Britain and the American colonies, witches were more likely to be accused of <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=i1kKLrnjGsQC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false">less dramatic activities</a>, not necessarily devil-worship, but certainly murder and mischief on a smaller scale. They were not usually thought to be able to fly – so not much need for the baby-fat recipe – but every now and again, a truly horrific story was told. </p>
<p>In Lancashire in 1612, the teenage <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/domesday/dblock/GB-360000-429000/page/18">Grace Sowerbutts</a> explained how three women had transported her around the countryside, making her dance and have sex with strange black creatures. She added that they had broken into a neighbour’s house and murdered his sleeping baby by sucking its life out through the navel. </p>
<p>After the child’s burial, they dug up the body, boiled and roasted it. They ate some and saved the rest for flying ointment. The court rejected Grace’s evidence, however: her story was just too unusual in England – even in the age of the witch. It was explained away as the work of a renegade catholic priest making trouble for good protestants.</p>
<h2>Fire burn and cauldron bubble</h2>
<p>While it was easy for devout people then to imagine a malign devil lurking in the shadows, witchcraft was not immediately used to explain every misfortune. In America, the early protestant colonists felt protected by a “good” god – much like in the film.</p>
<p>The film’s settlers experience exactly the miseries endured by their real counterparts: crop failure, hunger, disease, animal attacks, loss of faith. Under the circumstances, they hold out pretty well. But once the first accusations of witchcraft are made, it becomes horribly easy for communities to <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Y2ZeU1RMYK0C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false">turn on each other</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Evil comes in many forms.</span></figcaption>
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<p>One heartrending 1662 tale from Hartford, Connecticut tells how eight-year-old <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=pASHBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA45&lpg=PA45&dq=Bethia+Kelly&source=bl&ots=R4w1qzISwF&sig=Ie5M9HnGMHgEv7qjop-VB96gqCo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiQvJCWtsDLAhWIThQKHe7YDh0Q6AEISjAL#v=onepage&q=Bethia%20Kelly&f=false">Bethia Kelly</a> died of an inexplicable disease, her last hours disfigured by fits and claims that an invisible spirit sent by her neighbour Goodwife Ayres was pressing her belly and bowels. Another girl, Ann Cole, then began to name further people as witches, including <a href="http://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2008/03/rebecca-greensmith.html">Rebecca and Nathaniel Greensmith</a>. In the end, even Rebecca came to agree that her husband Nathaniel was a witch. </p>
<p>Nathaniel had met strange creatures in the forest, Rebecca told the court, and although he was a small, weak man, he was suddenly capable of huge feats of labour. None of this could be natural, surely? Both the Greensmiths were executed, along with at least two fellow-accused. Others spent years in jail. </p>
<p>For these tight-knit communities, it was often incredibly hard to rebuild after the “touch of a witch”. Once accusations began, they quickly spread like wild fire. Sometimes it was just easier for “witches” to run away, than try to explain themselves. Even their own family would turn against them, and it was safer to drop everything and run.</p>
<p>The Witch allows us, modern viewers, to see how easy it would be for our ancestors, driven by misapplied faith and pressed by calamity, to believe in and persecute witches – and why people still do so in some places today. In fact, staring into the dark forests brought to life the film, it’s hard not to wonder why the early American colonists didn’t become even more obsessed with the mysterious forces and withccraft that may have been lurking within.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/56233/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marion Gibson has received funding from the AHRC for research on American witchcraft. </span></em></p>Were evil witches really stealing children in the 17th century?Marion Gibson, Professor of Renaissance and Magical Literatures, University of ExeterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.