tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/sorcery-52768/articlesSorcery – The Conversation2022-06-14T12:29:07Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1823922022-06-14T12:29:07Z2022-06-14T12:29:07ZWhere the witches were men: A historian explains what magic looked like in early modern Russia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468478/original/file-20220613-28309-z8kxki.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1022%2C628&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'A Sorcerer Comes to a Peasant Wedding,' a 19th-century painting by Russian artist Vassily Maximov.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maksimov_A_Sorcerer_comes_to_a_peasant_wedding_1875_gtg_ed.jpg">Tretyakov Gallery/Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The word “witches” makes many Americans think of <a href="https://theconversation.com/most-witches-are-women-because-witch-hunts-were-all-about-persecuting-the-powerless-125427">women working in league with the devil</a>. But that hasn’t always been the face of sorcery. </p>
<p>Most of Catholic and Protestant Europe embraced the idea of magic as a satanic craft <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-evolution-of-the-medieval-witch-and-why-shes-usually-a-woman-104861">practiced by women</a>, and strong, independent women were kept in line through such accusations. In Orthodox Russia, however, accusers overwhelmingly blamed men for bewitching them and held different ideas of where the power of “magic” came from. </p>
<p>Evidence about Russians’ belief in witchcraft <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Witchcraft_Casebook.html?id=bpWroAEACAAJ">survives in all kinds of documents</a> from the 12th to the 18th centuries: sermons; historical chronicles and tales; stories of saints’ lives; laws and decrees; manuals of herbal healing and spell books; and court records. These documents provide insights into the lives of ordinary people otherwise lost to history: in peasant homes and military regiments, on serf-owning estates and on barges on the Volga River. Verbatim testimonies in trial records show fraught, often abusive relationships between husbands and wives, masters and servants, patrons and clients. </p>
<p>This history – the focus of three of books I’ve written <a href="https://lsa.umich.edu/history/people/faculty/vkivelso.html">as a scholar of medieval and early modern Russia</a> – shakes up understandings of who “witches” were. Here, <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801469374/desperate-magic/">men were the usual suspects</a>, for reasons that highlight the frighteningly capricious ways power and hierarchy structured everyday life.</p>
<h2>A typical trial</h2>
<p>Three out of four Russians <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801469374/desperate-magic/">accused of witchcraft</a> were men. Most were accused of acting alone or with one or two associates, and almost all faced charges for everyday, practical kinds of magic.</p>
<p>Whereas trials in Western European involved lurid visions of <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781461639886/Magic-and-Superstition-in-Europe-A-Concise-History-from-Antiquity-to-the-Present">satanic witchcraft</a> – black sabbaths where naked witches flew on brooms to cannibalistic feasts and diabolical orgies – <a href="https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/0-271-01966-2.html">Russian witches</a> were thought to deploy magic toward more immediate, worldly ends, such as healing wounds or hurting a competitor’s business.</p>
<p>Witches employed spells and simple potions made mainly of herbs and roots, throwing in the occasional eagle’s wing, eye torn from a live chicken or dirt from a grave. Their magic called on the forces of nature and the beauty of poetic diction. <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/witchcraft-and-magic-in-russian-and-ukrainian-lands-before-1900/">They drew on the force of analogy</a> – “as this, so that” – to activate their spells and curses: For example, “as a log burns and withers in the fire, so may my master’s heart burn and wither.”</p>
<p>Some spells invoked supernatural beings, from Jesus Christ and Mary to nature spirits and mythic <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Russian-Folk-Belief/Ivanits/p/book/9780873328890">figures from Russian legends</a>, such as a golden fish or a wingless bird. Occasionally spells called on Satan and “his many little satans,” or invoked saints and satans at once.</p>
<h2>Everyday magic</h2>
<p>While some of the accusations were clearly false, lodged out of malice, surviving records make it equally clear that many of the accused did enact the kinds of rituals and spells that their accusers charged.</p>
<p>Practitioners <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Power_of_Words/PXPIAAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=a.+l.+toporkov&pg=PA71&printsec=frontcover">used their craft</a> in efforts to heal the sick, help the lovelorn, locate lost people and objects, protect people from guns or arrows and guard livestock. At the same time, records show some practitioners had darker motives: to curse, inflict illness, possess others, cause impotence, extinguish love or kill. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="In a painting, a sad-looking woman in a yellow shirt and blue skirt sits outside as an old man opens the door to exit a home." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468476/original/file-20220613-35158-4colz1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468476/original/file-20220613-35158-4colz1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468476/original/file-20220613-35158-4colz1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468476/original/file-20220613-35158-4colz1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468476/original/file-20220613-35158-4colz1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468476/original/file-20220613-35158-4colz1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468476/original/file-20220613-35158-4colz1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘For the Love Potion,’ a late-19th-century painting by Russian artist Mikhail Nesterov.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mikhail_Nesterov_-_For_the_love_potion.jpg">Radishchev Art Museum/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a society without trained medical providers, folk healing offered the only option for the sick other than prayer. Many people consulted both priests and healers who used magic, and saw no contradiction between the two. Fear that witches had a tendency to bewitch newlyweds made it common to invite sorcerers to protect the bride and groom during weddings and to pay them well in vodka for their service. Everyone from <a href="https://brill.com/view/journals/ruhi/40/3-4/article-p297_3.xml">the czar’s wife</a> to the lowliest serf might turn to magic at some juncture in their lives.</p>
<p>Perhaps most revealing are what were usually called “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230583535_10">love spells</a>” – which by their very nature were coercive, intended to subordinate the will of their target to that of the spellcaster.</p>
<p>Love spells used by men were usually sex spells. <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501750656/witchcraft-in-russia-and-ukraine-10001900/">Surviving examples</a> are both beautiful and terrifying, with the spellcaster wishing agony on his beloved whenever she is away from him:</p>
<p>“As a fire burns for a year and half a year and a day and half a day and an hour and half an hour, so may that [woman] burn for me, with her white body, her ardent heart, her black liver, her stormy head and brains, her clear eyes, black brows, and sugary lips. May she suffer as much misery and bitterness as a fish without water. May that [woman] suffer as much bitterness for me for a day and half a day, for an hour and half an hour, for a year and half a year, for all the years, and thus let it be.”</p>
<p>In the minority of cases where <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801469374/desperate-magic/">women were accused of witchcraft</a>, their “love spells” usually aimed to calm their husbands’ anger, avert their fists and make them “be kind.”</p>
<p>When a woman attempted to turn the tables and dominate her husband or master, however, that threatened to <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801469374/desperate-magic/">invert the patriarchal social order</a> – and hence the punishment was especially harsh, including some executions.</p>
<h2>‘Spells to power’</h2>
<p>Beyond love spells, a broader category called “spells to power” <a href="https://brill.com/view/journals/ruhi/40/3-4/article-p532_16.xml">challenged the social order</a>. I see these spells, which aimed to win the love of one’s social superiors, as an important reason that so many men were accused.</p>
<p>While women were often stuck at home or on estates, men of all ranks, even serfs, were relatively mobile. During their outings, they might run up against the arbitrary authority of a master, a judge, an official, a military officer, a nobleman or a bishop. In any of these situations, being armed with a protective written spell was simply good planning.</p>
<p>A spell book from 1763, for instance, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52903-9_7">includes the following</a>:</p>
<p>“… Like the sun rises, and the moon, by the will of the highest, and like tsars and princes, and kings, and generals, and governors, and all people, so may I, slave of God, appear with the beauty of the sun and the moon in their eyes. … As tsars and kings, and knights, and governors, and generals, and rulers love any precious stone, and may all people love me, slave of God.”</p>
<p>In a fiercely hierarchical society, where everyone except the czar was under the absolute and arbitrary authority of someone higher on the social ladder, belief in magic offered a sense of protection – a way to exercise a tiny bit of power in a world stacked against the subordinate. </p>
<p>And since belief in magic was universal, elites and common folk alike saw its possibilities and dangers. Magic threatened to arm the underling and to subvert the accepted social order. Although women participated in these practices, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3879463">it was men</a> who were more likely to bump up against authorities, to come under suspicion and to be discovered with a scrap of paper with a “spell to power” tucked into a hat or a shoe.</p>
<p>Ideas about witchcraft in Orthodox Russia may have been less sensational than those in Catholic and Protestant Europe, but it was seen as equally threatening to a social, religious and political order built on unquestioned hierarchies.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182392/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Valerie Kivelson receives funding from NEH, ACLS</span></em></p>The idea of a ‘witch’ was usually female in Western Europe, but not so in Orthodox Russia – partly because of the period’s rigid social hierarchies.Valerie Kivelson, Professor of History, University of MichiganLicensed 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>
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</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>
<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/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklysmart">You can get our highlights each weekend</a>.]</p>
<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>
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<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>
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<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/1048612018-10-19T15:16:39Z2018-10-19T15:16:39ZThe evolution of the medieval witch – and why she’s usually a woman<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241218/original/file-20181018-67185-1e6lsrl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/silhouette-weather-vane-witch-flying-on-485557525?src=sVqbhcwiajzKFNzZneXhIg-1-9">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Flying through the skies on a broomstick, the popular image of a witch is as a predominantly female figure – so much so that the costume has become the go-to Halloween outfit for women and girls alike. But where did this gendered stereotype come from? Part of the answer comes from medieval attitudes towards magic, and the particular behaviours attributed to men and women within the “crime” of witchcraft. </p>
<p>Taking one aspect of the witch’s characterisation in popular culture – her association with flight – we can see a transformation in attitudes between the early and later Middle Ages. In the 11th century, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Burchard-bishop-of-Worms">Bishop Burchard of Worms</a> <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Medieval-Popular-Religion-1000-1500-Civilizations/dp/1551116987/ref=dp_ob_title_bk">said of certain sinful beliefs</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Some wicked women, turning back to Satan and seduced by the illusions and phantasms of demons, believe [that] in the night hours they ride on certain animals with the pagan goddess Diana and a countless multitude of women, and they cross a great span of the world in the stillness of the dead of night.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>According to Burchard, these women were actually asleep, but were held captive by the devil, who deceived their minds in dreams. He also believed that none but the very “stupid and dim-witted” could think that these flights had actually taken place. </p>
<p>But by the end of the 15th century views of magic had changed considerably. While many beliefs about women flying through the skies persisted, the perception of them had transformed from one of scepticism to one of fear. The magic night flight became associated with secret gatherings of witches known as “the sabbath”, involving nefarious acts such as killing babies, taking part in orgies and worshipping the devil. </p>
<p>This suggests that what was originally considered to be a belief held only by women and foolish men was now being taken much more seriously. So what happened to cause such a transformation?</p>
<p>One explanation offered by <a href="https://history.iastate.edu/directory/michael-bailey/">historian Michael D. Bailey</a> is that at some point during the 14th and 15th centuries, religious officials perhaps unwittingly conflated two distinct traditions: “learned” magic and “common” magic. The common kind of magic required no formal training, was widely known, could be practised by both men and women, and was usually associated with love, sex and healing.</p>
<p>By contrast, learned magic came to Europe from the east and featured in the “magic manuals” that circulated among educated men whom <a href="https://www.history.northwestern.edu/people/faculty/affiliated-faculty/richard-kieckhefer.html">Richard Kieckhefer</a> described as members of a “clerical underworld”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241221/original/file-20181018-67179-1x5eruz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241221/original/file-20181018-67179-1x5eruz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=812&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241221/original/file-20181018-67179-1x5eruz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=812&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241221/original/file-20181018-67179-1x5eruz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=812&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241221/original/file-20181018-67179-1x5eruz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1021&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241221/original/file-20181018-67179-1x5eruz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1021&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241221/original/file-20181018-67179-1x5eruz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1021&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Champion des Dames, broom sticks from the 15th century.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikicommons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Interestingly, descriptions of humans in flight do appear in these manuals – but in relation to men rather than women. One example is found in a 15th century notebook in which the male author describes riding through the skies on a magically conjured “demon-horse”.</p>
<p>Two key differences between this account and the ones associated with women are that the person flying is an educated male and demons are now explicitly involved in the act. By conflating popular beliefs about the night flights of women with the demon-conjuring magic of the clerical underworld, medieval inquisitors began to fear that women would fall prey to the corruption of demons they could not control. </p>
<h2>Witchcraft and Women</h2>
<p>While men also feature in the infamous 15th century witch-hunting manual Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of the Witches), the work has long been <a href="https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/iatl/reinvention/issues/volume6issue1/oleary/">recognised as deeply misogynistic</a>. It suggests that women’s perceived lack of intelligence made them submissive to demons. One section reads: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Just as through the first defect in their [women’s] intelligence they are more prone to abjure the faith; so through their second defect of inordinate passions … they inflict various vengeances through witchcraft. Wherefore it is no wonder that so great a number of witches exist in this sex. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>By the end of the Middle Ages, a view of women as especially susceptible to witchcraft had emerged. The notion that a witch might travel by broomstick (especially when contrasted with the male who conjures a demon horse on which to ride) underscores the domestic sphere to which women belonged. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241223/original/file-20181018-67170-1a3t2np.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/241223/original/file-20181018-67170-1a3t2np.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241223/original/file-20181018-67170-1a3t2np.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241223/original/file-20181018-67170-1a3t2np.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241223/original/file-20181018-67170-1a3t2np.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241223/original/file-20181018-67170-1a3t2np.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/241223/original/file-20181018-67170-1a3t2np.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">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The witch hunter’s handbook.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikicommons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The perceived threat to established norms inherent in the idea that women were moving beyond their expected societal roles is also mirrored in a number of the accusations levelled against male witches. </p>
<p>In one example, a 13th century <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=fswxYJDBLygC&pg=PR6&lpg=PR6&dq=Pope+Gregory+IX:+Vox+in+Rama&source=bl&ots=rQN5LkkSFV&sig=tnlMeyZ1p4pGkvOfIvrStZELm28&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi7nfWd5I_eAhVrB8AKHR4LCCs4ChDoATAAegQICRAB#v=onepage&q=Pope%20Gregory%20IX%3A%20Vox%20in%20Rama&f=false">letter by Pope Gregory IX</a> described a gathering of heretics which was very similar to the later descriptions of the witches’ sabbath. It stated that at orgies, if there were not enough women, men would engage in “depravity” with other men. In doing so, they were seen to become effeminate, subverting the natural laws believed to govern sexuality.</p>
<p>Magic was then, in many ways, viewed by the church as an expression of rebellion against established norms and institutions, including gendered identities. </p>
<p>The idea that women might have been dabbling with the demonic magic previously associated with educated males, however inaccurate it may have been, was frightening. Neither men nor women were allowed to engage with demons, but while men stood a chance at resisting demonic control because of their education, women did not. </p>
<p>Their perceived lack of intelligence, together with contemporary notions regarding their “passions”, meant that they were understood as more likely to make pacts of “fidelity to devils” whom they could not control – so, in the eyes of the medieval church, women were more easily disposed to witchcraft than men.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104861/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Farrell 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>The history of why witchcraft was seen as a woman’s work.Jennifer Farrell, Lecturer in Medieval History, University of ExeterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/949662018-04-24T19:06:56Z2018-04-24T19:06:56ZThe hypodermic effect: How propaganda manipulates our emotions<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215824/original/file-20180422-75104-1n8b5ob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg departs after testifying on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., in April 2018 about the use of Facebook data to target American voters in the 2016 presidential election and data privacy. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The scandal surrounding the improper use of data by <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-cambridge-analytica/cambridge-analytica-ceo-claims-influence-on-u-s-election-facebook-questioned-idUSKBN1GW1SG">Cambridge Analytica and Facebook in the 2016 U.S. election</a> is reminiscent of the old debates about propaganda and its ability to “violate the minds of the masses,” according to <a href="https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/wiki/Sergei_Chakhotin.html">Sergei Tchakhotin,</a> an expert in the study of Nazi propaganda.</p>
<p>The Russian sociologist said that the masses were subjected to a sophisticated machinery of manipulation that could, through the strategic use of radio, film and well-orchestrated performances, touch on and influence the basic instincts of Germans.</p>
<p>Decades later, we’re once again back discussing the manipulation of emotions, this time via social media platforms. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215973/original/file-20180423-94115-qux4ip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215973/original/file-20180423-94115-qux4ip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215973/original/file-20180423-94115-qux4ip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215973/original/file-20180423-94115-qux4ip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215973/original/file-20180423-94115-qux4ip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=974&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215973/original/file-20180423-94115-qux4ip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=974&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/215973/original/file-20180423-94115-qux4ip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=974&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nazi propaganda minister Dr. Joseph Goebbels is seen in this October 1938 photo as he speaks to members of the Nazi party.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Of course, the communication ecosystem is very different from what existed for Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister. But the underlying principles for manipulating the masses do not seem to have changed much. </p>
<p>Reports indicate that <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/cambridge-analytica-and-the-perils-of-psychographics">Cambridge Analytica</a> developed a methodology that allowed them to establish psychographic profiles of Facebook users, and thus push emotional buttons that could influence their political preferences and voting behaviour. </p>
<p>To some degree, this represents the return of what’s known as the <a href="https://www.utwente.nl/en/bms/communication-theories/sorted-by-cluster/Mass%20Media/Hypodermic_Needle_Theory/">hypodermic effect</a> in which the audience falls “victim” to powerful media that have the ability to manipulate our emotions and shape our understanding of the world.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-we-should-all-cut-the-facebook-cord-or-should-we-93929">Why we should all cut the Facebook cord. Or should we?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Research, however, indicates that how we respond to <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/two-step-flow-model-of-communication#ref1199152">media does not adhere to what’s known as a stimulus-response causality</a>. There are other factors that intervene in the way people use, perceive and process what they consume in the media. They are known as “mediations” that, according to the Spanish-Colombian professor Jesús Martín Barbero, are the <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1742766506069579">different ways people interpret the messages conveyed by the media</a>.</p>
<h2>Using our data to influence us</h2>
<p>But today, governments, corporations and political parties have the unprecedented ability to process a litany of data and then, through sophisticated algorithms, broadcast messages and images to influence an increasingly segmented audience. </p>
<p>One must ask, then, what role will Martín Barbero’s mediations — our cultural references, values, family, friends and other reference groups that influence our reading of the mediated messages — play in how we consume information and entertainment on social networks? </p>
<p>Are we condemned to live the “dystopian realism” presented by the British TV series <em>Black Mirror</em> in which <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/dec/01/charlie-brooker-dark-side-gadget-addiction-black-mirror">digital media penetrate the intimacy of a human being too clumsy to resist the temptation of being manipulated</a>, according to the show’s creator Charlie Brooker?</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/god-is-an-algorithm-why-were-closer-to-a-black-mirror-style-reality-than-we-think-90669">God is an algorithm: why we're closer to a Black Mirror-style reality than we think</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The debate about the influence of Facebook and unscrupulous companies like Cambridge Analytica reveals the importance of emotions not only in our private lives but also in our so-called “public lives” as citizens. The problem arises in terms not only of “emotional manipulation” but of the role emotions play in how we relate and understand the world around us.</p>
<p>As the <a href="https://elpais.com/elpais/2018/03/27/ciencia/1522150428_248366.html">neuroscientist Antonio Damasio recently said</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Culture works by a system of selection similar to that of genetic selection, except that what is being selected is an instrument that we put into practice. Feelings are an agent in cultural selection. I think that the beauty of the idea is in seeing feelings as motivators, as a surveillance system, and as negotiators.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If feelings are an integral part of this “cultural selection,” are we facing a shift in this sociocultural evolutionary process due to the “algorithmization” of emotions? </p>
<p>Is historian Yuval Noah Harari right when he says that “technological religion” — <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/50bb4830-6a4c-11e6-ae5b-a7cc5dd5a28c">he calls it “dataism”</a> — is transforming us in such a way that it will make the homo sapiens irrelevant and put the human being on the periphery in a world dominated by algorithms?</p>
<h2>More isolation ahead?</h2>
<p>These are complex questions that are difficult to answer. </p>
<p>In any case, it seems that our intellectual or even emotional laziness is transforming us into puppets of our emotions. Evidence is emerging that digital media is changing the configuration of our nervous system and our forms of socialization. </p>
<p>Sherry Turkle, a professor at MIT, observes in her book <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jan/30/alone-together-sherry-turkle-review"><em>Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other</em></a> that there are already signs of dissatisfaction among young people who are obsessed with their image on social media while losing the ability of introspection; mothers who feel that communication with their children via text messages is more frequent but less substantive; and Facebook users who think that the banalities they share with their “virtual friends” devalue the true intimacy between friends. </p>
<p>If virtual relations replace face-to-face contact, we may see more isolation, individualism and less social cohesion, which does not bode well for the survival of democracy. </p>
<p>It’s also likely that the expansion of social media does not make us more rational. Although we have access to more information and participate in more public debates about issues that affect us as individuals and as a society, that doesn’t mean we’re doing so more rationally or based on arguments that are scientifically factual.</p>
<p>The rise of religious fundamentalism, nationalism, of beliefs in all kinds of sects and New Age fashions are symptoms of a “return of sorcerers” or magical thinking in our digital society. </p>
<p>We deploy our egos on social media, sometimes with a compulsive need for recognition. This knowledge of our self, quantified in big data and transformed into affective algorithms, is exploited by corporations and political parties to give us, as <a href="https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/fifteen-minutes-of-fame.html">Andy Warhol said, our 15 minutes of fame</a>. </p>
<p>The sorcerers of propaganda are back — this time with more powerful means that their predecessors.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94966/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Isaac Nahon-Serfaty has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.</span></em></p>Knowledge of our selves, quantified in big data and transformed into affective algorithms, is exploited by corporations and political parties to give us our 15 minutes of fame.Isaac Nahon-Serfaty, Associate Professor, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of OttawaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.