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Over time the world and society have both changed tremendously and one thing that has changed with that is the idea of Witchcraft. Witchcraft has never been prosperous but has been around ever since society has had any written records of time. Different societies and areas all experienced Witchcraft and were driven by the same motives like naivety and fear. Society has a very different view on witchcraft from 35,000 BC compared to present present day because things change over time. Witchcraft has never really been socially acceptable in most countries but the view and ideas about Witchcraft has definitely changed over time. Witches, depending on the country and time period, were characterized with specific traits and appearance
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features. The different practices of Witchcraft varies depending the country and has changed over time. Some people used Witchcraft as a religion and some used it as a practice. The idea of witchcraft dates back to as early as 35,000 BC and was interpreted by cave drawings from France. In the cave burial sites there have been amulets found on the skeleton of people who have died there which they used for protection. Skulls were used as cups to drink and it gave the drinker more wisdom from the spirit. Other than the one cave, there has been many paintings that have shown that ancient people believed that witchcraft will help with hunting. Many countries adopted witchcraft as a religion and practiced it openly with no worries. They could practice it freely and not Brown 3 worry about getting executed. People believed that the ghosts of the deceased could roam the Earth with the power to hurt or help somebody. The Greeks had a unique form of magic called Theurgy which is basically the practicing of rituals. Witchcraft is a lot more common than most people thought, Many Greek philosophers have been praised despite them being able to controversially be labeled as a witch because of the Greek religion. These days there was no stereotypes about what a witch looked like because there was no fear of it, and it was being practiced like a religion opposed to it being described as the devil's religion. There were no killings recorded from 3,500 BC to 1647 AD. Witchcraft in the 1600’s was very frowned upon. Society was afraid of witchcraft and all accusations in this period were made off strictly fear. From 1400-1600 there was about 50,000 to 60,000 executions made in just Europe alone. There was a very strict view on what they looked like, Witches were characterized as being ugly, old, crooked toothed, hairy lipped, and even being a woman which is basically our present view on witches today. If a woman has a cat she was even more likely to get accused of being a witch, which is ironic to our present day view on witches because we view them with cats as well. Cats were also often burned and killed over the fear of being accused of evil witchcraft. Witches in the 1600’s were prosecuted on the regular and were often false accusations. The persecutions were not pretty at all, witches were often killed in the most torturous ways possible to send a message to all the other possible future suspects. Over the years Brown 4 witches were burned alive, hung, and tortured across Europe. The witches were tortured extremely with many different methods, the most used ones were the Thumbscrew which was a torturing device used in the Middle Ages which basically crushed the person's finger or toe very slowly. The other method was Leg Irons which was ironically made of four pieces of wood wedged together and the person who is being tortured is to put their foot inside of it and it is hammered to cause pressure and to crush the person's foot. These techniques of torture brought people to believe that witchcraft is real and not to be tolerated. Whether the people confessed over the extreme pain or not it gave hunters the reason to keep looking for them and persecuting them. This only made everything worse and put more fear into people’s heads. There were many ways to find out if a person was a witch or not. One way was that they would poke the accused person with a needle and if they felt no pain then that means the person is a witch and needs to be executed, this was done most often by Matthew Hopkins who was notorious for finding witches. He was a fraud because his needle wasn't a needle and all it basically did was retract when you push against the person’s skin so they wouldn't even feel the needle. The other big way to see if someone was a witch or not was the “Swimming test”. The swimming test had the accused person tie their thumbs to their opposite big toes and they were tossed into a river and if the person sinks they are innocent and if they float they are guilty. This method makes absolutely no sense because the person ends up drowning regardless if they are proven innocent or guilty. It was very easy to get accused of witchcraft which why Brown 5 you had to be very careful about what you did during this time period. There were many false accusations and this was mainly because of fear. Many people that were accused would deny and deny and then blame someone else and say that they are witch. This was the biggest reason why witchcraft grew so fast and big and because it was contagious and everybody would just point their finger at somebody else. Witchcraft is still alive and is still looked down on but is not as strict.
Some countries are even accepted for the religion. Countries like India, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Indonesia all still practice witchcraft and have had people recently executed. Witches nowadays have no stereotype and could possibly be anyone. In the Democratic Republic of Congo there were 50,000 kids accused of witchcraft simply because they had a bad dream, wet the bed, or were mentally disabled. There are currently still 80,000 in the United States who practice witchcraft which is a surprisingly big number. Witchcraft has changed so much since it was created and has gotten so much more diverse being there are hundreds of different types of witchcraft when they all had to branch off of one type of it.
Everything is constantly changing over time and one of the things that has changed drastically is our society's view on Witchcraft. It started out as being a regular religion but was more negatively talked about as the years went by. Society’s view on Witchcraft never really changed but our morals as people did. We have accepted that it is a religion and
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we cannot just kill people because of that. Society’s view on witchcraft has changed so much and you can tell by looking at the execution
statistics. Brown 1 Jermaine Brown 11/21/15 Period: 4 Humanities Witchcraft Witch comes from the Celtic word Wicca, which means wise one or magician. Witches have unique powers and are believed by the entire world. Depending on your religion is how you view witches. For example, Catholics believe that Witchcraft is anti-Christian and ties along with the devil while Witchcraft in Africa and the West Indies is not associated with the devil and can be used for good purposes like making people fall in love with one another. Witchcraft has been around for as long we have had civilization dating all the way back to 35,000 BC. Many people were killed by just even being accused of being a witch. The Christian church was extremely strict on witchcraft killing about 300,000 women for being a witch between 1484 to 1782. The Christian Church also controlled all the books that were made about witchcraft which put fear into the people and made them hate it. No one was granted mercy, if you were a witch you were going to die. Witchcraft has many different forms and you can interpret it in the way that you choose.
Witchcraft was relentlessly thought as the work of the devil with only sinful and immoral intentions. Julio Caro Baroja explains in his book on Basque witchcraft that women who were out casted from society and unable to fulfill their womanly duties became witches as a way to compensate for her failed life. They were thought to be a threat to society as they dwindled in evil magic. This misunderstanding may have originated from the literary works of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, in their published book, “Malleus Maleficarum”. Accusations of being adulterous, liars and dealing with the devil materialized because of the...
Witchcraft had always fascinated many people and been a very controversial topic in North America during (seventeenth) 17th century. Many People believe that witchcraft implies the ability to injure or using supernatural power to harm others. People believed that a witch represents dark side of female present and were more likely to embrace witchcraft than men. There are still real witches among us in the Utah whom believe that witchcraft is the oldest religion dealing with the occult. However the popular conception of a witch has not changed at least since the seventeenth century; they still caused panic, fear and variety of other emotions in people…………………….
... see things more rationally led to a mechanical philosophy which contradicted the major concepts concerning witchcraft. It is therefore inevitable that the developments throughout the period led to a decline in witchcraft as they largely focused on increasing awareness throughout society and thus leading to wide spread questioning about magic and witchcraft. This questioning created a situation in which witchcraft prosecutions were much rarer and took much longer to reach. Finally, therefore the changes in attitudes across the period were the most important consequence of the factors described and led to the decline in witchcraft prosecutions.
Witchcraft is a term which sprouts many different meanings. As stated above, it is attributed to witches. But what is a witch? Probably an evil haggish-like women who has signed a pact with the devil if we think of it in the English sense. So witchcraft must be evil doings; putting curses on people to make their life miserable, using wicked spells to transform humans to frogs etc. But does this hold true to everyone's idea of what witchcraft is.People's believes on the subject of witchcraft might differ between different cultures.
In Western culture magic has been traditionally viewed negatively. The word often conjures up images of witches, spells, cults, and dark rituals. As Malidoma displays, in Dagara culture, along with most traditional African culture, magic is viewed positively and is at the core of religion.
Religious influence, the manipulation of fear, and the frightening aspects of witchcraft all are very influential to the popular belief of witchcraft during this time period. The popularity of witchcraft in this time period is important because it has shown how in the past when there is no logical explanation they would automatically blame Satan and say it was Satan’s doing. It also shows that history repeats itself because during the Cold War many individuals were accused of being communist even though there was no hard evidence proving this accusation; however, out of fear people will still be convicted, just like during the witch trials. Moreover, witch trials were not only influenced by many things but they have been influential; therefore, showing that they influenced things in our time
“Jumping to conclusions is like playing with wet gun powder: both likely to go off in wrong direction.”-Charlie Chang. The puritans were a group of English Protestants who adhere to strict religious principles and oppose sensual enjoyment. The puritans had a strong belief that the Devil could be walking among them at anytime. Due to this belief, the puritans believed that people could sign there souls away to the devil. By signing their souls away to the devil, a person could become a witch or wizard. In Arthur Millers’ novel The Crucible, the puritans go on a hunt to rid their town of witches. The puritans also had a big emphasis on how one would act in society. For example, if one didn’t go to church often, the people would be very suspicious about that one. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories “Young Goodman Brown” and “The Minister’s Black Veil”, the puritans become suspicious of others because of a strange event. The strange events lead the puritans to mistrust and reject each other. In both of Hawthorne’s short stories “Young Goodman Brown” and “The Minister Black Veil” and in Miller’s The Crucible, a strange event makes the puritans jump to conclusions of witchcraft.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is not God's work to kill. It is not God's work to coerce innocent Christians into admitting a connection with the devil when none so obviously exists! "Thou shalt not kill," is but one of the ten fundamental commandments legislated by the Lord himself in the Bible. Any true Christian would recognise the brutality of these witchcraft hangings as simply a blatant disregard for the Holy Bible itself. Has it not occurred to the officials of the court that those that have confessed have only done so out of the fear of hangin' for telling the truth? Aye, Goody Good and ...
Witchcraft is said to be the most widespread cultural phenomenon in existence today and throughout history. Even those who shun the ideas of witchcraft cannot discount the similarities in stories from all corners of the globe. Witchcraft and its ideas have spread across racial, religious, and language barriers from Asia to Africa to America. Primitive people from different areas in the world have shockingly similar accounts of witchcraft occurrences. In most cases the strange parallels cannot be explained and one is only left to assume that the tales hold some truth. Anthropologists say that many common elements about witchcraft are shared by different cultures in the world. Among these common elements are the physical characteristics and the activities of supposed witches. I will go on to highlight some of the witch characteristic parallels found in printed accounts from different parts of the world and their comparisons to some famous fairytales.
For hundreds of years, Wicca and witchcraft has been considered the practice of the Devil. In result, many witches throughout those hundreds of years have been tortured, burned, hanged, and killed outright. Although the “witches” from the infamous Salem Witch Trials were not actual witches, it is the thought that counts. The assumption that witchcraft involves summoning the devil and sacrificing animals is extremely inaccurate, as well as a little insulting. Wicca and witchcraft has been misunderstood throughout the time it has existed, and it is actually a very beautiful practice.
...e wrong to think that because it had just given even worse results than killing people. One example would be that the town would no longer prosper to it's former glory, and other towns are starting to be affected this witchcraft as well. In fact, one town had it's court overthrown by the people. With these actions and others happening as a result of society calling the big shots, I think people would want to believe their own personal beliefs or actions.
...ches and witchcraft have been passed down through generations to generations. From way back to the 1200’s to today in the present times, that is how long witches have been around. As of the history of witches and witchcraft, stories were used to keep the history alive inside the stories written in ancient mythology to Walt Disney’s movies. Check your family history. What and who were they. Were they witch hunters or were they a witch? There’s more to the story of Halloween or All Hallows Eve than meets the eye. What story or legend will come next?
By contrast, self-proclaimed witches still have a function in some societies today, mainly in the developing world. Magic, however, is often a word used to describe certain people’s modes of divination, mainly those in the developing world.... ... middle of paper ... ...
Witchcraft persecution peaked in intensity between 1560 and 1630 however the large scale witch hysteria began in the 14th century, at the end of the Middle Ages and were most intense during the Renaissance and continued until the 18th century, an era often referred to as the Enlightenment or Age of Reason. Representation of witches, nay, representation in general is a political issue. Without the power ot define the female voice and participate in decisions that affect women -similar to other marginalised groups in society- will be subject to the definitions and decisions of those in power. In this context, the power base lay with men. It can be said that the oppression of women may not have been deliberate, it is merely a common sense approach to the natural order of things: women have babies, women are weak, women are dispensable. However the natural order of things, the social constructs reflect the enduring success of patriarchal ideology. As such, ideology is a powerful source of inequality as well as a rationalisation of it. This essay will examine the nature of witchcraft and why it was threatening to Christianity.
I. INTRODUCTION The Enlightenment and the emerging of modern rationalism have paved the way to a worldview where the suspicion of witchcraft is not needed to explain the mysterious phenomena of this world. This is not the case in Africa. The belief in the existence of witches, evil persons who are able to harm others by using mystical powers, is part of the common cultural knowledge. Samuel Waje Kunhiyop states, “Almost all African societies believe in witchcraft in one form or another.