tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/witch-hunt-39885/articlesWitch Hunt – The Conversation2021-04-15T14:49:15Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1583362021-04-15T14:49:15Z2021-04-15T14:49:15ZFilm Coven of Sisters gets a lot right about the terrible 1609 Basque witch-hunt<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/394231/original/file-20210409-17-139n6fe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C667%2C4033%2C2444&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An engraving of the sabbath from Pierre de Lancre's _Tableau de l'inconstance des mauvais anges_.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Pierre de Rosteguy de Lancre’s 1612 book, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=s6l-hFTNPCwC">Tableau de l'inconstance des mauvais anges et démons</a> (Tableau of the Inconstancy of Evil Angels and Demons), is the most sensationalist account of a sabbat, the nocturnal gathering of witches, ever written. Recounting a witch hunt the judge had conducted in the French Basque country in 1609, the book is replete with allegations of cannibalism, vampirism and a great deal of demonic sex. </p>
<p>Historians have not quite known what to do with de Lancre, who may have executed as many as 80 women and men as witches. They’ve either desperately tried to make him out to be the very <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=VuR0CwAAQBAJ">“picture of the Catholic Reformation man”</a>. Or they descend into unhelpful denunciations of his <a href="https://www.amazon.fr/Histoire-sorcellerie-Pays-Basque-linjustice/dp/2708969730">“attitude bordering on imbecility”</a>.</p>
<p>The Spanish film <a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/80242819">Akelarre</a> (translated as Coven of Sisters) succeeds where the historians fail, capturing de Lancre’s personality – a blend of piety, curiosity and erotic fixation with the sabbat. It takes the material from de Lancre’s book and asks the simple question: how did de Lancre obtain this wealth of material about the witches’ sabbat? (“<em>akelarre</em>” in Basque.) </p>
<h2>Spellbound by the Sabbat</h2>
<p>The film, by the Argentinian director Pablo Agüero, centres on the relationship between a Spanish judge called Rostegui (based on de Lancre) and a group of teenagers suspected of witchcraft. In an attempt to evade execution, the six teenage girls decide to tell the judge what he wants to hear. Their leader, Ana, realises that the judge is desperate to prove the reality of the sabbat. They plan to string him along, even offering to re-enact the sabbat, with the hope of winning enough time for their fathers – sailors who had gone to the New World – to return and rescue them from the judge’s clutches. </p>
<p>De Lancre’s <em>Tableau</em> highlights the contrast between elite French culture and that of the Basque border territory. It even likens the inhabitants to Native Americans from the New World. This clash of cultures is well represented in the film – Basque food, language, and dress are cursed and mocked. </p>
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<p>Indeed, the contrast was more profound in real life. Like the film’s Spanish judge, de Lancre did not speak Basque. Every encounter had to pass through an interpreter, causing him considerable distress about possible deceptions. The film also captures this insecurity. The girls speak Spanish but switch into Basque to keep their secrets and undermine the judge’s superiority, just as de Lancre feared.</p>
<p>It might seem implausible that the judge desired to know every intimate detail of the sabbat but many scenes in the film are based on de Lancre’s account. The real French judges (de Lancre had a colleague) had the teenagers re-enact the dances they performed at the sabbat. The judges also asked one witch to fly off in front of them. When she could not, she promised to bring back the necessary potion the next time she went to the sabbat. Even the rather comic scene where the judge inquires about the size of the devil’s penis has roots in the Tableau.</p>
<h2>From the “witches” perspective</h2>
<p>While the film gets a lot right, it misses two crucial complicating factors.</p>
<p>The film, first of all, presents witchcraft as a novelty. The girls use the Spanish word for witch, <em>bruja</em>, even when speaking in Basque, as if it was unfamiliar to them. Yet Basques had a long, disturbing history of prosecuting witches. When the Spanish Inquisition first dealt with witchcraft in the late 15th century, its officials did not refer to supposed witches as <em>brujas</em> – they used the Basque equivalent <em>sorginak</em>. </p>
<p>Secondly, the abduction of children and teenagers by witches was a persistent part of Basque witchcraft lore on both the <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/703146">Spanish</a> and French side of the border. </p>
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<img alt="Akelarre film poster." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395261/original/file-20210415-16-1o6e7a8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395261/original/file-20210415-16-1o6e7a8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395261/original/file-20210415-16-1o6e7a8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395261/original/file-20210415-16-1o6e7a8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395261/original/file-20210415-16-1o6e7a8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1077&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395261/original/file-20210415-16-1o6e7a8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1077&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/395261/original/file-20210415-16-1o6e7a8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1077&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Akelarre film poster.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coven_(2020_film)#/media/File:Coven_(2020_film).jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
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<p>De Lancre did not consider his teenagers to be witches, he called them “witnesses”. Brought to the sabbat against their will, their role was to denounce those who had abducted them as witches. Although their bodies were searched for the devil’s mark – the film’s most harrowing scene – they were not usually at risk of death. </p>
<p>The French judges executed only one teenager, 17-year-old Marie Dindarte who made the mistake of confessing that she travelled to the sabbat on her own. De Lancre was delighted by her testimony. Marie, totally oblivious, confessed “continuously without torture”, implicating other witches. In vain, she recanted when she unexpectedly found herself on the scaffold. </p>
<p>These comments notwithstanding, Akelarre has got a lot right about the Basque witch-hunt’s most salient features: Pierre de Lancre’s erotic fascination with the sabbat and his strange collaboration with his teenage witnesses. Students of the early modern witch-hunt should take note of this film. And a wider audience might appreciate it more knowing how close to the truth it is.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/158336/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jan Machielsen is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at Cardiff University and a Humboldt Research Fellow at the TU Dresden. He is currently completing a book on the witch-hunt in the French Basque Country.</span></em></p>A historian reviews Pablo Agüere’s award-winning Netflix film Akelarre and explains why it is one of the best films around on the early modern witch-hunt.Jan Machielsen, Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1559402021-03-05T13:12:48Z2021-03-05T13:12:48ZWomen used to dominate the beer industry – until the witch accusations started pouring in<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387808/original/file-20210304-15-bf0kqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=21%2C21%2C3534%2C2713&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Three women dressed in Middle-Age period garb as alewives.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/barmaids-in-costume-from-the-festival-inn-east-london-which-news-photo/613511756?adppopup=true">Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>What do witches have to do with your favorite beer? </p>
<p>When I pose this question to students in my American literature and culture classes, I receive stunned silence or nervous laughs. The Sanderson sisters didn’t chug down bottles of Sam Adams in “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfteLe_G5MY">Hocus Pocus</a>.” But the history of beer points to a not-so-magical legacy of transatlantic slander and gender roles.</p>
<p>Up until the 1500s, brewing was primarily women’s work – that is, until a smear campaign accused women brewers of being witches. Much of the iconography we associate with witches today, from the pointy hat to the broom, may have emerged from their connection to female brewers. </p>
<h2>A routine household task</h2>
<p>Humans have been drinking beer for almost 7,000 years, and the <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/articles/women-and-beer-forgotten-pairing#:%7E:text=Women's%20involvement%20in%20brewing%20beer,in%20Mesopotamia%2C%20and%20possible%20earlier.&text=Historically%20women%20were%20involved%20in,also%20brewed%20their%20own%20beer.">original brewers were women</a>. From the Vikings to the Egyptians, women brewed beer both for religious ceremonies and to make a practical, calorie-rich beverage for the home. </p>
<p>In fact, the nun <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/hops-the-beer-ingredient-most-drinkers-love/2014/02/10/fd5daab0-8f57-11e3-84e1-27626c5ef5fb_story.html">Hildegard von Bingen</a>, who lived in modern-day Germany, famously wrote about hops in the 12th century and added the ingredient to her beer recipe.</p>
<p>From the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20161130-why-the-stone-age-could-be-when-brits-first-brewed-beer">Stone Age to the 1700s</a>, ale – and, later, beer – was a household staple for most families in England and other parts of Europe. The drink was an inexpensive way to consume and preserve grains. For the working class, beer provided <a href="https://newhistories.group.shef.ac.uk/the-medieval-beverage-of-choice-alcohol-or-water/">an important source of nutrients</a>, full of carbohydrates and proteins. Because the beverage was such a common part of the average person’s diet, fermenting was, for many women, <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/women-making-beer">one of their normal household tasks</a>. </p>
<p>Some enterprising women took this household skill to the marketplace and began selling beer. Widows or unmarried women used their fermentation prowess to earn some extra money, while married women partnered with their husbands to run their beer business. </p>
<h2>Exiling women from the industry</h2>
<p>So if you traveled back in time to the Middle Ages or the Renaissance and went to a market in England, you’d probably see an oddly familiar sight: women wearing tall, pointy hats. In many instances, they’d be standing in front of big cauldrons.</p>
<p>But these women were no witches; <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/298992595_Beer_in_the_Middle_Ages_and_the_Renaissance">they were brewers</a>. </p>
<p>They wore the tall, pointy hats so that their customers could see them in the crowded marketplace. They transported their brew in cauldrons. And those who sold their beer out of stores had cats <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41388926">not as demon familiars</a>, but to keep mice away from the grain. <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/xw9egk/witches-hats-alewife-brewster-history">Some argue that iconography we associate with witches</a>, from the pointy hat to the cauldron, originated from women working as master brewers.</p>
<p>Just as women were establishing their foothold in the beer markets of England, Ireland and the rest of Europe, <a href="https://www.history.com/news/how-medieval-churches-used-witch-hunts-to-gain-more-followers">the Reformation began</a>. The religious movement, which originated in the early 16th century, preached stricter gender norms and condemned witchcraft. </p>
<p>Male brewers saw an opportunity. To reduce their competition in the beer trade, some <a href="https://digpodcast.org/2018/10/21/witches-brew-how-the-patriarchy-ruins-everything-for-women-even-beer/">accused female brewers of being witches</a> and using their cauldrons to brew up magic potions instead of booze. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, the rumors took hold.</p>
<p>Over time, it became more dangerous for women to practice brewing and sell beer because they could be misidentified as witches. At the time, being accused of witchcraft wasn’t just a social faux pas; it could <a href="https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Witches-in-Britain/">result in prosecution or a death sentence</a>. Women accused of witchcraft were often ostracized in their communities, imprisoned or even killed. </p>
<p>Some men didn’t really believe that the women brewers were witches. However, many did believe that women shouldn’t be spending their time making beer. The process took time and dedication: hours to prepare the ale, sweep the floors clean and lift heavy bundles of rye and grain. If women couldn’t brew ale, they would have significantly more time at home to raise their children. In the 1500s <a href="https://digpodcast.org/2018/10/21/witches-brew-how-the-patriarchy-ruins-everything-for-women-even-beer/">some towns, such as Chester, England</a>, actually made it illegal for most women to sell beer, worried that young alewives would grow up into old spinsters.</p>
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<h2>Men still run the show</h2>
<p>Men’s domination of the beer industry has endured: <a href="https://apnews.com/press-release/pr-wiredrelease/7d27a05d2226d7d3667616b2e24ce705">The top 10 beer companies</a> in the world are headed by male CEOs and have mostly male board members.</p>
<p>Major beer companies have tended to portray <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90460642/heineken-tries-fails-playing-gender-stereotypes-alcohol-marketing">beer as a drink for men</a>. Some scholars have even gone as far as calling beer ads “<a href="https://doi.org/10.4135/9781483326023.n6">manuals on masculinity</a>.” </p>
<p>This gender bias seems to persist in smaller craft breweries as well. <a href="https://www.craftbrewingbusiness.com/featured/woman-looking-work-craft-beer-ask-female-leaders-share-stories-advice/2/">A study at Stanford University</a> found that while 17% of craft beer breweries have one female CEO, only 4% of these businesses employ a female brewmaster – the expert supervisor who oversees the brewing process.</p>
<p>It doesn’t have to be this way. For much of history, it wasn’t.</p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This article has been updated to acknowledge that it isn’t definitively known whether alewives inspired some of the popular iconography associated with witches today. It has also been updated to correct that it was during the Reformation that accusations of witchcraft became widespread.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/155940/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laken Brooks 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>Today, beer is marketed to men and the industry is run by men. It wasn’t always that way.Laken Brooks, Doctoral Student of English, University of FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1491102020-10-29T17:32:26Z2020-10-29T17:32:26ZSirens, hags and rebels: Halloween witches draw on the history of women’s power<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366482/original/file-20201029-13-12pdlan.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C5%2C3968%2C2127&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Witches have a long history dating back to Ancient Rome. This print from 1815 is by British engraver Edward Orme.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/agcca3t8">(Wellcome Collection)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Notwithstanding the pandemic, witches in pointy black hats appear in the windows of stores and homes across my city this Halloween. Witch costumes are popular with young girls who, in ordinary times, parade the streets collecting candy, reinscribing an ancient stereotype that has roots in misogynistic fears and fantasies about female power and its dangers. </p>
<p>Young women and girls don this costume because it allows them to flirt with the daring possibilities of female agency — expressed as naughtiness and defiance — that is normally off limits to them. But what are the origins and history of the witch stereotype that explain its enduring cultural appeal as a symbol of women’s dangerous power?</p>
<p>My book, <a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/naming-the-witch/9780231138369"><em>Naming the Witch: Magic, Ideology, and Stereotype in the Ancient World</em></a>, investigates the origins of magic, focusing especially on its association with women in ancient representations.</p>
<h2>The first witch</h2>
<p>Circe in Homer’s <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/odyssey.html"><em>Odyssey</em></a> has often been identified as the first witch. She lured men into her compound and turned them into wild pigs with a magic potion. Interestingly, the Greek text identifies her as a goddess, affirming that her powers derive from legitimate and divine sources, rather than mageia, associated with the religion of Greece’s nemesis, Persia. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366470/original/file-20201029-23-1aj9llr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An oil painting of Medea in a red dress in a forest" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366470/original/file-20201029-23-1aj9llr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366470/original/file-20201029-23-1aj9llr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366470/original/file-20201029-23-1aj9llr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366470/original/file-20201029-23-1aj9llr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366470/original/file-20201029-23-1aj9llr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366470/original/file-20201029-23-1aj9llr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366470/original/file-20201029-23-1aj9llr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=973&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 the Sorceress is an oil painting by British painter Valentine Cameron Prinsep (1838–1904) that depicts Medea collecting funghi to make a poison.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/medea-the-sorceress-193395">(Southwark Art Collection)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Medea, <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691043760/medea">another prototype for the witch in ancient literature</a>, similarly derives her power from divine sources: she is a granddaughter of the sun and priestess of Hecate, a goddess from Caria (in modern Turkey), who is identified with magic by the fifth century BCE. Hecate presides over liminal transitions — births and deaths — and was believed to lead a horde of restless souls on moonless nights, which needed to be placated by offerings at the crossroads. </p>
<p>It is likely this association with the restless dead that led Hecate to be frequently petitioned on curse tablets and binding spells from ancient Greece and Rome. By the Renaissance, she had become the witch’s goddess par excellence, <a href="http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/macbeth_3_5.html">as reflected in Shakespeare’s <em>Macbeth</em></a>.</p>
<h2>Depravation and witches</h2>
<p>The image of the witch begins to take shape in earnest during the Roman period: the Roman poet Lucan’s <em>Pharsalia</em>, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv3znzd3">which presents an account of the civil war that ended the Roman Republic</a>, depicts a necromantic hag to graphically signify the depths of depravity to which civil war leads. Erictho prowls cemeteries and battlefields, reviving corpses to learn from them the outcome of the war. She gorges out eyeballs, gnaws on desiccated fingernails and scrapes the flesh off crucifixes. </p>
<p>This image of an old hag — wizened, grey-faced and mutilating the dead — provides an important template for later representations of witches. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366476/original/file-20201029-17-8c8yi5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white print of Macbeth, the three witches and Hecate in Shakespeare's Macbeth surrounded by eight kings in the shadows" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366476/original/file-20201029-17-8c8yi5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366476/original/file-20201029-17-8c8yi5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366476/original/file-20201029-17-8c8yi5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366476/original/file-20201029-17-8c8yi5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366476/original/file-20201029-17-8c8yi5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366476/original/file-20201029-17-8c8yi5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366476/original/file-20201029-17-8c8yi5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A print made from an engraving by Robert Threw of ‘Macbeth, the three witches, Hecate, and the eight kings, in a cave,’ originally painted by Joshua Reynold.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/ekkmgkz5">(The Wellcome Collection)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>More influential still are the Roman poet Horace’s <a href="https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/book/canidia-romes-first-witch/chi-canidia-or-what-is-a-witch">many depictions of Canidia and her cohort of lusty hags</a> who dig for bones in a pauper’s cemetery and kill a child to use his liver in a love potion. </p>
<p>Scholars have speculated on the real identity of these women, <a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/naming-the-witch/9780231138369">missing the point that they are caricatures</a>. These characters do not illuminate the secret rituals of real Roman women, but are literary tropes that function in different texts to convey ideas about legitimate authority, masculinity and social order. </p>
<p>Images of depraved women, cravenly committing infanticide, violating their biological role as mothers, making potions to control men and violating male prerogative in a patriarchal society indicate more about the fears ancient writers had regarding patriarchal authority and the proper governance of society.</p>
<h2>Magic versus religion</h2>
<p>Accusations of illicit magic appear across the spectrum of ancient writings, including early Christian texts. Charges of practising magic functioned to denounce messianic competitors such as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Simon-Magus">Simon of Samaria (also know as Simon Magus)</a> or to delegitimize prophets and priests of alternative forms of Christianity that were subsequently denounced as heresy. Accusing these leaders of wielding magic (rather than miracle) was part and parcel of an effort to delegitimize them in favour of bishops and leaders of churches that came to form the Catholic Apostolic Church. </p>
<p>In Jewish writings also, depictions of using magic occurred within contexts of religious competition and were often linked to charges of heresy. In many cases, men are depicted using magic, but women are universally charged. In fact, <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Sanhedrin.67a?lang=bi">the Babylonian Talmud states that most women practise magic</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366486/original/file-20201029-17-140y79r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An illustration depicting witches in the fire as a clergyman watches." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366486/original/file-20201029-17-140y79r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366486/original/file-20201029-17-140y79r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366486/original/file-20201029-17-140y79r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366486/original/file-20201029-17-140y79r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366486/original/file-20201029-17-140y79r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=711&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366486/original/file-20201029-17-140y79r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=711&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366486/original/file-20201029-17-140y79r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=711&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">The burning of three witches in Baden, illustrated by Swiss clergyman Johann Jacob Wick in 1585.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickiana#/media/File:Wickiana5.jpg">(Wikimedia Commons)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Witch hunts and social order</h2>
<p>This history of associating magic with heresy and social disruption contributed to the witch hunts of the early modern era. Many people incorrectly assume that witch-burning was primarily a medieval phenomenon but, in fact, witch-hunting peaks in the modern era: <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/reformation/reformation">The Reformation</a> challenged religious authority, exploration exploded the limited view of the world previously held, and capitalism and urbanization disrupted the social networks that protected people and gave them a sense of security. </p>
<p>Within this context, accusations of witchcraft offered plausible solutions to people’s problems: if a poor neighbour asked for bread, the guilt of denying her might be assuaged by <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/76/4/1164/61615">accusing her of witchcraft</a>; if science was challenging belief that God exists, <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo3628714.html">torturing a woman into falsely confessing she had sex with a demon might offer tangible “proof” for the existence of supernatural beings</a>. </p>
<p>Women who challenged male authority might garner an accusation of witchcraft, <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/The-Devil-in-the-Shape-of-a-Woman/">as could women suspected of sexual immorality</a>. Witch-hunting functioned as a method of social control that <a href="http://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195342703.003.0001">sought to channel female behaviour into certain acceptable moulds</a>.</p>
<h2>Today’s witches</h2>
<p>While witch-burnings and the torturing of women merely for looking or acting different ended in the 18th century, the use of this stereotype to malign women, especially women in power, has not. During the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton was often <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/07/cursed-from-circe-to-clinton-why-women-are-cast-as-witches">either satirically depicted as a witch or was outright accused of committing acts</a>, such as child murder, that have been associated with witches for centuries. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366473/original/file-20201029-17-1l5x9uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3485%2C2316&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Three young girls n glittery witch hats." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366473/original/file-20201029-17-1l5x9uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3485%2C2316&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366473/original/file-20201029-17-1l5x9uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366473/original/file-20201029-17-1l5x9uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366473/original/file-20201029-17-1l5x9uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366473/original/file-20201029-17-1l5x9uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366473/original/file-20201029-17-1l5x9uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366473/original/file-20201029-17-1l5x9uz.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"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Witches are experiencing a resurgence, and not just at Halloween.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The shadow cast by Medea, Erictho and Canidia continues to haunt powerful women who question male authority or deviate from traditionally prescribed female roles of subservient wife and mother.</p>
<p>How, then, should we understand the popularity of witch costumes on Halloween? Or the <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1468-5906.2008.00439.x">increasingly wide appeal and legal recognition of Wicca as a new religious movement</a> that appeals to both men and women? </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/this-halloween-witches-are-casting-spells-to-defeat-trump-and-witchthevote-in-the-u-s-election-148213">This Halloween, witches are casting spells to defeat Trump and #WitchTheVote in the U.S. election</a>
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<p>Wiccans actively reclaim the label “witch” and construct an alternative identity for themselves through a myth of pre-Christian paganism. Witches filter ancient myths through an eco-feminist lens to formulate religious values that prioritize the Earth, elevate the female (without denigrating the male) and promote a non-hierarchical decentralized movement catering to personal needs and expressions of spirituality. This vision of witchcraft appeals to an ever-growing number of people today. </p>
<p>This Halloween, my three-year-old daughter and I are both dressing up as witches. In doing so, I hope to deepen her sense of opportunity and possibility in the world that lies before her.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149110/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kimberly Stratton received funding from the American Association of University Women (AAUW) and the Josephine de Kármán Fellowship Trust for research related to this article. </span></em></p>The role of witches in society relates directly to the role of women in society. And during times of social upheaval and changes, witches represent access to women’s power.Kimberly Stratton, Associate Professor, Humanities, Carleton UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1481012020-10-29T03:16:44Z2020-10-29T03:16:44ZHow witchcraft became a multi-billion dollar industry<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366048/original/file-20201028-19-bpstyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5246%2C3193&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Yoko Ono <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/461666-i-think-that-all-women-are-witches-in-the-sense">once noted</a>: “people respect wizards. But a witch, my god, we have to burn them”. </p>
<p>Witches were maligned for centuries because of their perceived dark power and influence — but could this fear have stemmed from their commercial success? </p>
<p>Witches have been savvy business women since the 13th century, when they flourished in the seaside towns of Scotland, England and Finland. </p>
<p>Today, witchy toys, crystals, and potion kits are big business and the craft has even cast its spell on some global brands. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/toil-and-trouble-the-myth-of-the-witch-is-no-myth-at-all-42306">Toil and trouble: the myth of the witch is no myth at all</a>
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<h2>Helping sailors, healing villagers</h2>
<p>Some 800 years ago, superstitious sailors would seek out sea witches to <a href="https://www.hjnews.com/the-power-of-knots/article_86613a82-be3a-5911-b2fa-b41735d25b99.html">purchase wind knots</a> — magical ropes bearing three knots. Untying one was believed to bring a breeze, two a stronger wind and three to cause a <a href="https://thepracticalshaman.com/wind-magic-managing-lifes-intensity-using-wind-knots/">gale</a>. </p>
<p>When women were killed during the witch hunts of the Early Modern period <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2778849?seq=1">around 1450 to 1750</a>, sailors sought other methods to control the wind. But villagers who couldn’t afford doctors were more dependent on them. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-witches-brews-helped-bring-modern-drugs-market-180953202/">Many witches were excellent healers</a> despite being banned from practising medicine in the 13th century. They offered a variety of treatments that are still found in drugs today. These include willow bark for inflammation (<a href="https://www.pharmaceutical-journal.com/news-and-analysis/infographics/a-history-of-aspirin/20066661.article?firstPass=false">aspirin was developed</a> from a chemical found in the willow tree), garlic for cholesterol (though research on its efficacy is <a href="https://www.webmd.com/cholesterol-management/high-cholesterol-alternative-therapies">inconclusive</a>) and flying ointment of henbane, nightshade and mandrake. While we don’t use it for flying now, the plant henbane contains <a href="https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD002851.pub4/references">hyoscine used for motion sickness</a> and nightshade contains <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25265768/">atropine, a muscle relaxant</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="La Voisin surrounded by devils and other evil creatures." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366056/original/file-20201028-21-15si6wq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366056/original/file-20201028-21-15si6wq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366056/original/file-20201028-21-15si6wq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366056/original/file-20201028-21-15si6wq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366056/original/file-20201028-21-15si6wq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366056/original/file-20201028-21-15si6wq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366056/original/file-20201028-21-15si6wq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of La Voisin by Antoine Coypel (1661–1722), calling her a ‘source of so many evils’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/386164">Met Museum</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>In 17th century France, witches could earn a grand living selling love potions and poisons. <a href="https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/dinner_party/heritage_floor/catherine_deshayes">Catherine Deshayes</a>, also known as <a href="https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-famous-people/black-masses-la-voisin-how-fortune-teller-became-murderess-french-royal-court-021057">La Voisin</a>, amassed a fortune selling women potions to poison a spouse or competitor — including selling to Louis XIV’s mistress. She also provided abortions. Deshayes was burned at the stake in 1680.</p>
<p>Witch hunters often treated independent women with suspicion. Between 1620 and 1725 in New England, <a href="https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/55276/17-signs-youd-qualify-witch-1692">89%</a> of women put on trial for witchcraft were wealthy, with no male children nor male siblings to share in their inheritance.</p>
<h2>Pagan rituals to social media</h2>
<p>Deshayes was a <a href="https://www.lexico.com/definition/satanism">satanist</a>. The wind sellers were <a href="https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/american_english/pagan">pagan</a> because they did not adhere to Christian beliefs. Yet they led the way to the development of the <a href="https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/wicca?q=wicca">Wicca</a> form of modern witchcraft in the mid-20th century. </p>
<p>In 1954, <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/gardner-gerald-brousseau">Gerald Gardner</a>, considered the founder of modern Wicca, published the book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Witchcraft-Today-Gerald-Gardner/dp/0806525932">Witchcraft Today</a> and founded his first coven. </p>
<p>By 2014, the <a href="https://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/witchcraft-too-mainstream">Pew Research Center</a> estimated almost 1 million Americans identified as Wiccan or pagan. </p>
<p>Spiritual pathways come with accoutrements, whether they be rosary beads, incense, or <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/sep/17/healing-crystals-wellness-mining-madagascar">crystals</a>. So, like the wind knots sold to 13th century sailors, witchcraft has enduring revenue potential.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366059/original/file-20201028-15-cmcant.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Crystals, spices and herbs." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366059/original/file-20201028-15-cmcant.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366059/original/file-20201028-15-cmcant.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366059/original/file-20201028-15-cmcant.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366059/original/file-20201028-15-cmcant.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366059/original/file-20201028-15-cmcant.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366059/original/file-20201028-15-cmcant.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366059/original/file-20201028-15-cmcant.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"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Catholics have rosary beads; witches have crystals.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Joanna Kosinska/Unsplash</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On dark moonlit nights, Renate Daniel, a small business owner and witch from Newcastle, can be found working either in a cemetery in <a href="https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/2347303/wollombi-general-cemetery">Wollombi</a>, New South Wales, laying flowers on gravestones while showing tourists on a ghost tour, or assisting in a paranormal investigation. </p>
<p>Witches can combine different spiritual practices alongside their witchcraft. Sydney witch, Janine Donnellan combines healing magic with <a href="https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/308772">Reiki</a> and <a href="https://atouchofbeauty.com.au/blog/article2/chakra-balancing-treatment/">chakra balancing</a>. Books <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9780008265144/witch-a-magickal-journey-a-hip-guide-to-modern-witchcraft/">like the one written by musician Fiona Horne</a> and <a href="https://www.witchinwares.com.au/">businesses like Witchin’ Wares</a> cater to the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-20/why-are-australians-turning-to-paganism-and-modern-witchcraft/8948824">estimated 22,000 Australians</a> who identify as Wiccan and pagan. </p>
<p>Witchcraft for most practitioners isn’t all about commerce. Donnellan says she has “a few people in the freezer” — meaning she has worked spells meant to keep negative energy away by putting someone’s name in a bag, filling it up with water and freezing it.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-murky-cauldron-modern-witchcraft-and-the-spell-on-trump-73830">A murky cauldron – modern witchcraft and the spell on Trump</a>
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<p>The American psychic services industry — including palm readers, mediums and astrologists — is worth <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6814487/Good-Fortunes-U-S-psychic-industry-grew-52-2005-reach-2-2billion-revenue-year.html">US$2.2 billion</a> (A$3.2 billion), mostly from small businesses. </p>
<p>Savvy witches are thriving on the internet. <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/amp/tag/witchtok?lang=en">#witchtok</a> on TikTok has had over 5.3 billion views, and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/witchesofinstagram/?hl=en">#witchesofinstagram</a> has more than 5.5 million posts. You can buy over 400,000 products tagged “witch” <a href="https://www.etsy.com/au/market/witch">on Etsy</a>, from candles to spell bottles to pentagram necklaces.</p>
<p><iframe id="tc-infographic-543" class="tc-infographic" height="400px" src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/infographics/543/5e3b30a76b2cc514bbc6bd0d54d329ad6ee0d333/site/index.html" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Corporate witchcraft</h2>
<p>It isn’t just cottage psychics and online influencers getting in on the act. Large corporations are exploring the mystical — with mixed success. </p>
<p>The Ouija Board, a tool witches and spiritualists said helped them commune with spirits, <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-strange-and-mysterious-history-of-the-ouija-board-5860627/">was patented in 1891</a> by the Kennard Novelty Company. Within a year, the company grew from one factory in Baltimore to two in Baltimore, two in New York, two in Chicago and one in London. By 1967, the patent was in the hands of toy company Parker Brothers and annual sales reached 2 million — more than Monopoly.</p>
<p>In 2018, cosmetics giant Sephora launched their US$42 “Starter Witch Kit”, containing sage, tarot cards and rose quartz. After witches around the globe decried it as cultural appropriation, Sephora <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-6161297/Sephora-forced-pull-Starter-Witch-Kit-backlash-REAL-witches.html">pulled the product</a> from the market. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366068/original/file-20201028-23-1jmgvja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Woman reading tarot." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366068/original/file-20201028-23-1jmgvja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366068/original/file-20201028-23-1jmgvja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366068/original/file-20201028-23-1jmgvja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366068/original/file-20201028-23-1jmgvja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366068/original/file-20201028-23-1jmgvja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366068/original/file-20201028-23-1jmgvja.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/366068/original/file-20201028-23-1jmgvja.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"></a>
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<span class="caption">Tarot cards are no longer consigned to speciality stores.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jen Theodore/Unsplash</span></span>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/cyclones-screens-lost-souls-how-the-ghosts-we-believe-in-reflect-our-changing-fears-125493">Cyclones, screens, lost souls: how the ghosts we believe in reflect our changing fears</a>
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<hr>
<p>This controversy hasn’t dissuaded other corporations. Last year <a href="https://www.elitedaily.com/p/airbnb-experiences-fall-equinox-retreats-are-the-ultimate-way-to-unwind-recharge-18749843">Airbnb</a> offered fall equinox rituals as holiday experiences. Urban Outfitters sell smudge sticks, tarot cards and crystals in their US stores and witch hat incense <a href="https://www.popsugar.com.au/home/witch-hat-incense-holder-from-urban-outfitters-46748338">holders</a> in Australian outlets. <a href="https://www.booktopia.com.au/books-online/non-fiction/mind-body-spirit/fortune-telling-divination/fortune-telling-by-cards-cartomancy/tarot-cards/cVXFC1-p1.html">Booktopia sells tarot cards</a>.</p>
<p>Witches can also claim globally recognised marketing iconography in the form of the <a href="https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/the-wizard-of-oz-and-a-brief-history-of-the-witch-hat">black hat</a>. Though COVID has put a dampener on Halloween, Americans are still <a href="https://www.thebalance.com/halloween-spending-statistics-facts-and-trends-3305716">expected to spend US$8 billion</a> on the holiday with <a href="https://time.com/5434659/halloween-pagan-origins-in-samhain/">pagan roots</a>. </p>
<p>The commercialisation of witchcraft has allowed modern witches to prosper financially without the fear of being burned at the stake, drowned or tortured. Now, having come out of the broom closet, there is no going back.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148101/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan 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>From village healers to global brands, witches have long cast their spells over commercial transactions.Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan, PhD candidate and author, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1297752020-01-20T19:03:18Z2020-01-20T19:03:18ZYou think this is a witch hunt, Mr President? That’s an insult to the women who suffered<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310423/original/file-20200116-181593-1ql4oo3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C2%2C781%2C416&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">US President Donald Trump has tweeted 'Witch Hunt' approximately once every three days since his inauguration two years ago. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115988/mediaviewer/rm1010453504">The Crucible (1996)/IMDB</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since his inauguration on January 20, 2017, US President Donald Trump has tweeted the words “Witch Hunt” (always with or in capitals) 337 times, or roughly once every three days in his presidency. </p>
<p>As the US Senate’s impeachment trial <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/12/us/politics/trump-impeachment-trial.html">looms</a>, it is timely to place witch hunts into some historical perspective.</p>
<p>Although the term did not come into common usage until the 1950s — when <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1996/10/21/why-i-wrote-the-crucible">Arthur Miller</a> wrote his play The Crucible — it refers to the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2778849?seq=1">witchcraft persecutions</a> that took place in Europe and America from around 1450 to 1750.</p>
<p>The victims have sometimes been estimated at up to nine million, but <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Witchcraze-History-European-Witch-Hunts/dp/0062510363">modern estimates</a> put the total number in Europe across 300 years as somewhere between 40,000 and 100,000. Although some men were accused and executed, the victims of the witch hunts were mainly women, often socially and economically marginalised.</p>
<h2>Wicked women</h2>
<p>Although there are significant variations across countries and regions, the incidence of women among those prosecuted runs at about 75-80%. In the <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/a-brief-history-of-the-salem-witch-trials-175162489/">Salem witch trials</a> in Massachusetts in 1692–3, around 78% of those accused and convicted were women.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310422/original/file-20200116-181617-z3o920.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310422/original/file-20200116-181617-z3o920.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310422/original/file-20200116-181617-z3o920.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=698&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310422/original/file-20200116-181617-z3o920.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=698&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310422/original/file-20200116-181617-z3o920.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=698&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310422/original/file-20200116-181617-z3o920.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=877&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310422/original/file-20200116-181617-z3o920.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=877&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310422/original/file-20200116-181617-z3o920.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=877&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Two alleged witches being tried in Salem, Massachusetts, as part of the infamous witch hunts.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Salem_Witch_trial_engraving.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These Salem trials are the only witch trials to which Trump has specifically referred and he has judged them as affording the defendants more proper judicial process than him. By the end of these trials, nineteen people had been hanged, one man was pressed to death with heavy stones, and several had died in prison. </p>
<p>Nearly 200 people were accused of practising demonic magic. It is unlikely any of them would agree with the President’s characterisation of his treatment.</p>
<h2>All Eve’s fault</h2>
<p>Commonplace in Christian thinking was the idea the evidence for the weakness of women, and their capacity to be “seduced” by Satan, was grounded in the story of Eve in the Garden of Eden. </p>
<p>She was “the weaker vessel” compared to Adam as one biblical text (1 Peter 3.7) put it. Thus, it was believed, women were more prone to the temptations of Satan and thus more likely to be witches.</p>
<p>At the popular level too, women were more likely to be perceived as witches. This is, at least in part because, more often than men, they were on occasion just that. Many women who were persecuted were in the magic or <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=-tPUAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA111&lpg=PA111&dq=Many+women+who+were+persecuted+were+in+the+magic+or+cunning+business&source=bl&ots=P7Rw_yNzCq&sig=ACfU3U07FvAO4ApAjwUrLLPeaTi_-tQT_A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjOppGCxYfnAhWVwzgGHWl9CpoQ6AEwCXoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=Many%20women%20who%20were%20persecuted%20were%20in%20the%20magic%20or%20cunning%20business&f=false">cunning business</a>. </p>
<p>The cunning or wise folk were <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cunning_folk_in_Britain">practitioners</a> of benevolent magic. They used herbal and magical medicine to heal the sick and the bewitched, find buried treasure, identify thieves, tell fortunes, induce love, and undo malevolent magic. But cunning women could turn nasty. Cursing, angry women with the imagined power to do harm were perceived as dangerous disturbers of the social order.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310418/original/file-20200116-181617-1l1yky9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310418/original/file-20200116-181617-1l1yky9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310418/original/file-20200116-181617-1l1yky9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310418/original/file-20200116-181617-1l1yky9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310418/original/file-20200116-181617-1l1yky9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310418/original/file-20200116-181617-1l1yky9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310418/original/file-20200116-181617-1l1yky9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310418/original/file-20200116-181617-1l1yky9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Women were many times more likely to be accused and persecuted as witches than men. The Witch Hunt by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1888)</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.wikiart.org/en/henry-ossawa-tanner/the-witch-hunt-1888">Wikiart</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Demons, sex and sabbaths</h2>
<p>The witchcraft persecutions were driven by Christian theorising about the Devil and his minions. Witches were thought to do evil but they were also heretics. </p>
<p>In his translation of The Malleus Maleficarum, a late medieval text on witchcraft first published in 1486-7, scholar <a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/Hammer-Witches-Complete-Translation-Maleficarum/dp/0521747872">Christoper S. Mackay</a> wrote that this sorcery had six hallmarks: a pact with the Devil, attendance at Satan’s debauched assemblies (called “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/witches-sabbath">sabbaths</a>”), sex with the Devil, aerial flight, maleficent magic and the slaughter of babies. None of the President’s so-called “witch hunters” has accused him of any of these activities, so far.</p>
<p>It is likely such cults never existed, and that the witch hunts were the outcome of fears of ideological and social enemies — a hidden “other” working from within society to destroy it.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310419/original/file-20200116-181639-19c8lgy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310419/original/file-20200116-181639-19c8lgy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310419/original/file-20200116-181639-19c8lgy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310419/original/file-20200116-181639-19c8lgy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310419/original/file-20200116-181639-19c8lgy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310419/original/file-20200116-181639-19c8lgy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1041&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310419/original/file-20200116-181639-19c8lgy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1041&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310419/original/file-20200116-181639-19c8lgy.jpeg?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">In Francisco Goya’s Witches Sabbath (1798) the devil in the form of a garlanded goat is surrounded by a coven of disfigured, young and ageing witches.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.wikiart.org/en/francisco-goya/witches-sabbath-1789">Wikiart</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>An allegory</h2>
<p>It is not a matter for surprise, perhaps, that such a theory should later arise in the Western world, itself <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/red-scare">tormented</a> by the fear of the subversive Communist operatives within its democracies. </p>
<p>Miller’s 1953 play about the Salem witch trials was an allegory of the persecution of suspected communists by the American state, spearheaded by Wisconsin <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/McCarthyism">Senator Joseph McCarthy</a> in the 1950s.</p>
<p>From Miller’s The Crucible and the McCarthy investigations, there is a straight line to Trump’s understanding of a witch hunt – the American state as the inquisitor and persecutor of an innocent individual.</p>
<p>That confessions to impossibly horrible crimes, and fingers pointed at others, were extracted from supposed witches in Europe and Scotland was often the consequence of torture. By contrast, in England, torture was not used to extract confessions nor to “finger” others. </p>
<p>In England, despite King James’s book <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/king-james-vi-and-is-demonology-1597">Daemonologie</a> in 1597 which outlined his belief in witchcraft and the death penalty for those that practised it, it was earthly crime and not demonic dealing that dominated <a href="https://www.historyextra.com/period/the-war-on-witches/">the courts</a>.</p>
<p>Thus, in England, witchcraft persecutions were the consequence of village tensions, of interpersonal conflicts, and of economic difficulties. This was the understanding of witchcraft outlined by English sceptic <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-discovery-of-witchcraft-by-reginald-scot-1584">Reginald Scot</a> in his 1584 book The Discovery of Witchcraft:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>She was at my house of late, she would have had a pot of milke, she departed in a chafe because she had it not, she railed, she curssed, she mumbled and whispered, and finallie she said she would be even with me: and soone after my child, my cow, or my pullet died, or was strangelie taken. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The enchanted world</h2>
<p>Witchcraft beliefs were deeply embedded in early modern societies among both demonologists in priestly and courtly circles and in the rural and urban masses. They reflect a world radically different from ours, although vestiges of it live on in conservative Christian circles still.</p>
<p>It was a world of ever-present “natural” disasters, both collective and individual - events like the death of a child, the lameness of a pedlar, a wife’s madness, a child’s frightening tantrum, the death of livestock, fires, floods and famine.</p>
<p>In the early modern period, the distinction between the natural and the supernatural was <a href="https://conference.pmrg.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/The-Natural-and-the-Supernatural_Abstracts.pdf">anything but clear</a>. </p>
<p>Elements of the natural world were closely interwoven with reports of supernatural experiences — the appearance of a spectre, talking animal spirits, sex with the Devil, a corpse bleeding in the presence of its murdering witch, levitating children and flying witches, ghosts and goblins, and a punishing God. In the witchcraft persecutions, the natural and the supernatural worlds clashed in reckoning.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310421/original/file-20200116-181634-7fwcvd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310421/original/file-20200116-181634-7fwcvd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310421/original/file-20200116-181634-7fwcvd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310421/original/file-20200116-181634-7fwcvd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310421/original/file-20200116-181634-7fwcvd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310421/original/file-20200116-181634-7fwcvd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310421/original/file-20200116-181634-7fwcvd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310421/original/file-20200116-181634-7fwcvd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=487&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 Witches Convention by William Holbrook Beard (1876).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.wikiart.org/en/william-holbrook-beard/the-witches-convention-1876#">Wikiart</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Historians take seriously the persecution, torturing, and executions of innocent men and women for crimes that they could not have committed in an enchanted world most of us no longer believe in. Their deaths were among the darkest historical moments in Western civilisation.</p>
<p>It borders on the ludicrous to hear the US President, touted as the most powerful man in the world, complain of being persecuted like a witch. The deaths of those convicted of witchcraft should not be demeaned and belittled by irresponsible, inaccurate, and plainly ignorant statements.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129775/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philip C. Almond 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>With President Donald Trump’s frequent use of the term “witch hunt” he paints himself as a victim. The women persecuted in one of history’s darkest chapters should not be forgotten so easily.Philip C. Almond, Emeritus Professor in the History of Religious Thought, The University of QueenslandLicensed 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/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/788992017-06-26T00:48:02Z2017-06-26T00:48:02Z‘I wanna be white!’ Can we change race?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174547/original/file-20170619-22092-1iupe4o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In this fantasy episode of "The Mindy Project," Mindy Lahiri dreams of becoming a white man after getting rejected for a job. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Hulu/Richard Foreman)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Few academics expect to find their work <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/18/opinion/the-uproar-over-transracialism.html?_r=0">hotly debated</a> in <em>the New York Times</em>. Those who publish in feminist philosophy journals can reasonably expect a certain degree of obscurity. How then did philosophy professor Rebecca Tuvel’s article, “<a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/hypa.12327/full">In Defense of Transracialism</a>,” become the target of an angry petition, vociferous debate and international media commentary? </p>
<p>Published this spring in <em>Hypatia</em>, the article, which argues that changing one’s racial identity should be as acceptable as changing one’s gender identity, quickly elicited an “<a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1efp9C0MHch_6Kfgtlm0PZ76nirWtcEsqWHcvgidl2mU/viewform?ts=59066d20&edit_requested=true">open letter</a>” signed by hundreds of academics who demanded the journal retract the article. And in an unprecedented turn of events, the associate editors of the journal issued a long apology saying that the article should never have been published. (The Editorial Board responded with its own <a href="http://hypatiaphilosophy.org/Editorial/index.html">statement in support</a> of the author.) </p>
<h2>The case of Rachel Dolezal</h2>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174583/original/file-20170619-11015-hm685p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/174583/original/file-20170619-11015-hm685p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174583/original/file-20170619-11015-hm685p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174583/original/file-20170619-11015-hm685p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174583/original/file-20170619-11015-hm685p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174583/original/file-20170619-11015-hm685p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/174583/original/file-20170619-11015-hm685p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&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">Then NAACP President Rachel Dolezal speaking at a rally in downtown Spokane, Washington.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Aaron Robert Kathman)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
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<p>The outcry is not surprising, given that Tuvel’s article begins with the highly publicized case of Rachel Dolezal, the former head of a local NAACP who was born to white parents but has lived for many years as a black woman. Dolezal’s outright deception angered many. But Tuvel is right to ask: What does the case of Rachel Dolezal teach us about how we think about race? </p>
<p>Tuvel argues that if we can celebrate the practice of gender transition, we should also accept racial transition. She wonders if society might “shift away from an emphasis on ancestral ties or skin colour of origin toward an emphasis on racial self-identification.” Simply put, Tuvel says that we should accept someone’s genuine desire to identify differently than their assigned race or gender.</p>
<p>It’s not that anyone talking about the Dolezal case condones her deception. But as <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/rachel-dolezal-black-like-her">Jelani Cobb wrote in the New Yorker</a>, while Rachel Dolezal was lying, “she was lying about a lie.” Drawing on the story of his own ancestors, which included light-skinned African Americans who looked not unlike Dolezal, Cobb explains it was her knowledge of that history that allowed Dolezal to violate the trust of her community.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, as Cobb argues, it is the historical policing of racial categories that represents an even greater harm. </p>
<h2>Glib discussion ignores brutal facts</h2>
<p>Rebecca Tuvel, originally from Toronto and currently teaching philosophy of race and gender at Rhodes College, has a history of challenging injustice through philosophical and abstract thought. But in the “open letter” her critics say that she fails to engage with scholars of colour. Elsewhere, philosophy professor <a href="https://gendertrender.wordpress.com/nora-berenstain-on-rebecca-tuvel-and-hypatia/">Nora Berenstain charges that Tuvel harms the transgendered community</a> by objectifying transgendered bodies. </p>
<p>It is clear that Tuvel’s dispassionate stance, common to philosophers, may be interpreted as a kind of glibness. She glides over the political context of transgender communities and skips over the violent facts of racism that make racial boundaries inflexible in the lives of so many people of colour. </p>
<p>By comparing racial and gender transition in abstract ways, we are in danger of forgetting that much racial transition has had its origin in the brutal facts of slavery. </p>
<h2>This is about race</h2>
<p>However, neither her critics nor her supporters have engaged with Tuvel’s argument on transracialism. Tuvel’s detractors outright condemn her work and demand that it be stripped from the academic record; her supporters focus on rhetorical claims about academic freedom, “callout culture” or “<a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/05/transracialism-article-controversy.html?mid=fb-share-di">witch hunts</a>.” </p>
<p>But no one is actually talking about race. And not dealing with race is precisely the problem we’ve had for decades.</p>
<p>My own research into community organizations shows that hyper-emotional resistance to discussing racism inevitably sidetracks work on “diversity.” Instead of having productive conversations, people get angry, defensive, or focus on their own guilt, rather than on organizational practices. </p>
<p>So shutting down any attempts, however inelegant, to grapple with the politics of race today only perpetuates that silence. Tuvel deliberately takes race outside of its deeply historical categories in order to unravel its meanings.</p>
<p>It has been well established by genetic analysis that <a href="http://harvardmagazine.com/2008/05/race-in-a-genetic-world-html">there is no real or biological basis to what we used to think of as “races</a>.” And yet the political, social, economic, psychic and physical impact of racial categories has been and continues to be brutal. </p>
<h2>We need creative and radical thought</h2>
<p>This is the central conundrum. We must recognize the everyday oppression that is based on rigid categories of race and gender — but at the same time, we must absolutely assert that those categories do not define us. </p>
<p>Not surprisingly, Rachel Dolezal’s story has become a carnivalesque side-show. Let’s not also make a circus of Rebecca Tuvel’s work. In treating both of these cases as spectacle, we only cultivate the notion that we would be better off not straying outside racial and theoretical lines, and that to stray is worthy of ridicule and censure. </p>
<p>On the contrary, wide-ranging and radical thought and practice is precisely what we need to not only take us outside deeply entrenched categories of race and gender, but also to explode them.</p>
<p>If we want to imagine race differently, if we want to challenge both racial hierarchies and categories, we will need radical creativity and imagination. </p>
<p>We might take inspiration from the most creative efforts of popular culture today. Some comedic writers, for example, have taken on our absurd notions about race, gender and sexuality.</p>
<p>An episode of <em>The Mindy Project</em> entitled “If I Were a White Man,” aired this spring. After being passed over for a job as the head of obstetrics in favour of a less qualified white male colleague, Mindy wishes she were one. In this magic realist farce, Mindy wakes up the next morning in the body of a white man (played by Ryan Hansen), who effortlessly earns the respect of his colleagues and is offered the job as head of obstetrics. “But, don’t I need to tell you why I would be an effective leader?” he asks the hiring committee. They chuckle jovially, “We don’t need to ask you. We can tell you’re a good leader just by looking at you.” </p>
<p>Similarly, the comedic team of Key and Peele have made their mark by using transracial theatre to challenge racism. In one tragicomic sketch, Key takes on the guise of a white police officer in a biting satire of recent police shootings.</p>
<p>The point of these comedic interventions is not to change one’s race, but to change how we think about racism and sexism. More cultural and intellectual creativity like this might help us to genuinely change how we think about race itself. </p>
<h2>We should keep asking difficult questions</h2>
<p>One might be tempted to imagine that the production of knowledge happens in isolated ivory towers with little impact on the average person. Explosive academic debates remind us not only that ideas have real and harmful impacts, but also that ideas are, thankfully, continually challenged, fought over and evolving.</p>
<p>We should be brave enough to keep asking difficult questions about race, gender and injustice; we must also be strong enough to weather the pain of getting it wrong. Retracting “In Defense of Transracialism” only narrows the opportunities we have to extend our ways of thinking about gender and race. </p>
<p>Let’s instead have conversations about how we might both recognize the daily violence of racism and also craft a different future — one that loosens the suffocating strictures of race and gender. Let’s have those conversations with strength, creativity and even some subversive humour.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78899/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarita Srivastava has received funding from SSHRC.</span></em></p>When philosopher Rebecca Tuvel asked if racial identity could be as fluid as gender, she unleashed a storm of controversy and anger. Instead of shutting her down, we should listen and debate.Sarita Srivastava, Associate Professor of Sociology, Gender Studies and Cultural Studies, Queen's University, OntarioLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.