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Witchcraft is the practice of what the practitioner ("witch") believes to be supernatural skills and abilities, such as the casting of spells and the performance of magical rituals. Historically, witches have been commonly blamed to use supernatural means to cause harm such as the death of a child, bad harvests, or the death of cattle ... . But witchcraft is not necessarily sorcery and can be beneficial and often refer nowadays to benign, positive, or neutral metaphysical practices, such as divination, meditation, or self-help techniques found in the modern Pagan and New Age movements.
The Church and the legal power have used witchcraft as the main charge against other religious or political groups that were following a different course.The Albigensians (1209-1324) of the south of France were considered heretics and were drowned in their own blood by the Pope Innocent III. The Waldensians, the Cathari, the Patarenes were inspired … Read more
The origins of witchcraft date back to the apparition of man as a thinking animal. Paintings and carvings found in caves and sepultures reveal that from the beginning man has associated magic rituals with death, birth, hunting, … . Magic was and remains a way to explain phenomenon that goes beyond the understanding of man. … Read more
The trial of the Basque witches at Logroño, near Navarre, in northern Spain, which began in January 1609, against the background of similar persecutions conducted in Labourd by Pierre de Lancre, was almost certainly the biggest single event of its kind in history. By the end some 7,000 cases had been examined by by the … Read more
In 1611 at Aix-en-Provence (South of France), Father Gaufridi was burnt alive. As in the Loudun possessions, sexual themes played a large role in the possession testimony. The first 20–25 years of the 17th century were host to the peak of accusations in France’s witchcraft hunt. During this time-frame, the number of cases involving demonic … Read more
The evidence required to convict an alleged witch varied from country to country. There are particularly important differences between the English and continental witch-hunting traditions. The checks and balances inherent in the jury system, which required a 23-strong body (the grand jury) to indict and a 12-strong one (the petit jury) to convict, always had … Read more
Names of the victims Adamson, Francis: executed at Durham, England, in 1652 Albano, Peter of: died in prison circa 1310 Allen, Joan: hanged at the Old Bailey, London, England, in 1650 Allen, Jonet: burned in Scotland in 1661 Amalaric, Madeline: burned in France in mid-1500’s Ancker, (first name unknown): beheaded at Wurzburg, Germany, 1628-1629 Andrius, … Read more
A number of these “witch hunters” wrote books on witchcraft, including Nicholas Eymeric, the inquisitor in Aragon and Avignon, who published the Directorium Inquisitorum in 1376. The most notable of these works was published in 1487, written by the German Dominican monk, Heinrich Kramer – allegedly aided by Jacob Sprenger – known as the Malleus … Read more
During the witch trials of Early Modern Europe, many practitioners of folk magic that did not see themselves as witches, but as healers or seers, were convicted of witchcraft (Éva Pócs’ ‘sorcerer witches’) Many English ‘witches’ convicted of consorting with demons seem to have been cunning folk whose fairy familiars had been demonized and over … Read more