Dark Magic And Witchcraft

However, while the idea of white magic was customary, the population was extremely terrified of witches and “dark magic”. Dark magic was considered to be hateful, generally causing harm to others in some direct or indirect way. Examples in Stuart England of harm caused by a witch was the damage done to individuals by a “witch’s evil eye,” which was thought that one look from the ‘evil eye’ would constitute a certain death or severe injury. “Another was the harm allegedly caused to individuals by some completely internal act of the witch, such as wishing that a person were dead.” An additional problem was that the line distinguishing white and dark magic was often subjected. Occasionally, it was difficult to determine whether the act of

Similar to James, the English elite believed in witchcraft and encouraged witch-hunting. A select few of the elite class even participated in witch-hunting, yet the English elite did not give into the hysteria of the “witch-hunting” like the lower classes did. The belief in witchcraft within the elite classes however created a new subject for intellectual debate. The idea of dark magic and witchcraft “formed part of a popular subculture, separate and distinct from Hermeticism and mystical beliefs which had been seen were current in intellectual circles at this time.” Even though the elite disregarded the paranoia that erupted with witchcraft, the paranoia the common people refused to be settled. This led James I and Parliament enacting the Witchcraft Act of 1604, stating witchcraft a crime punishable by death and “shall use practice or exercise any Witchcraft Socerie, Charme, or Incantment wherebie any person shall be killed, destroyed, wasted, consumed, pined, or lamed on his or her bodie.” Additionally, other judicial processes concerning witchcraft trials were introduced as

“The most well-documented characteristic of those persons who were prosecuted for witchcraft is that they were predominantly, if not overwhelmingly, female.” Many wonder where the idea of women specifically committing dark magic originated. The idea of the English witch was comprised of a progression of beliefs and practices of ritual and popular magic common of the Pagan practicing. This idea comes from where the “early Christian Church insisted that all magical activity involved the power of the pagan gods, who were considered to be demons.” The first original idea that women are more vulnerable to sinning than men is obviously from the story of Adam and Eve in the Bible. However, the idea that mainly women were witches spread drastically from the manuscript of Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches), stating how “all wickedness, is but little to the wickedness of a woman… What else is woman but a foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil nature, painted with fair colors…Women are by nature instruments of Satan – they are by nature carnal, a structural defect rooted in the original creation,” published by the Catholic Inquisition in 1485-1486. The ideas of the Malleus