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The Pros And Cons Of Being A Witch

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Witches. What comes to mind when someone says that word? Many people think of the green, old ugly hags that are shown in cartoons from their childhood. Or, perhaps they think of the powers the witches wield; like their control over the elements, shape-shifting, illusions, and so many more. Yet, is what people learn from the cartoons, horror films, and books really the truth? Who are the witches? Are they just ugly, old hags or did they have a different appearance? What kinds of powers do they really have? And, how many people died for being a witch?
The word witch is derived from the old English word Wicca and the English word bewitch. Yet, the word Wicca does not mean witchcraft. According to Jeffery Russel, a history professor at the University …show more content…

Within the century, witch hunts were fairly common. Dan Brown mentioned Malleus Maleficarum in his novel The Da Vinci Code, “Malleus Maleficarum, or The Witches' Hammer – indoctrinated the world to "the dangers of freethinking women" and instructed the clergy how to locate, torture, and destroy them. Those deemed "witches" by the Church included all female scholars, priestesses, gypsies, mystics, nature lovers, herb gatherers, and any women "suspiciously attuned to the natural world". (Brown) Malleus Maleficarum was a guide to identifying, hunting, and interrogating witches. The prosecutions were made by not just the church but the whole Christian community. Many witches confessed, most while being tortured, were hung or burned at the stake. Dan Brown also says his belief on the numbers killed from the trails, “During three hundred years of witch hunts, the Church burned at the stake an astounding five million women”. (Brown) Dan brown’s number are extremely farfetched compared to reality. The people killed from the witch trial were not all women either “Between the 1500 and 1600s, up to 80,000 suspected witches were killed. 80% were thought to be in cahoots with the devil himself and were filled with lust. The highest death toll was in Germany and the lowest was in Ireland. As the witch hysteria calmed in Europe, it spread like wildfire in New World”. (History.com: History of Witches) Here are three well known witch …show more content…

The swimming test or also known as the ducking test, tested weather the accused person would sink or float. The person was stripped, bound, and then tossed into the nearest body of water. A witch would bob on the surface and an innocent person would sink. There was the ducking stool as well, this stool was attached to a long piece of wood that allowed the stool to be moved up or down in the water. “Many accidental deaths occurred with this test”. (Andrew) The touch test, an evildoer (someone who had fits or spells) would be touched by an accused witch. If the evildoer reacted then the person was a witch, if not they were innocent. The devil’s mark test was a search on the witch’s body for any unsightly blemishes that indicated a pact with the devil. “The blemishes included any moles, scars, or anything else that was labeled unsightly”.

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One theory people believed was that the devil had the power to get into someones body through birthmarks, and moles. Therefor if you were accused by one of the girls and you had a mole or a birthmark on your body, it was more believable that the girls were right and that you were a witch. Others believed in taking a few test, such as the prayer test, the touch test, picking and scratches test and the swimming test The prayer test consisted of reading sections of the bible, typically bible verses or prayers. If you were to mess up the bible verse of the prayer at all, then you were considered to be bewitched. The second test, the touch test, consisted of the young girls being under a spell and if when the accuser placed a hand on the young girls they stopped than it meant that the accuser did put the girls under a spell and they were a witch.

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In Massachusetts during 1692 a horrible expiernce had swept throughout the colonies that witches were real, and some of the key concepts that had a major impact to make people think they were real were superstation, economics, politics and there early ideal of gender shaped their era. Throughout the era of witches there had been puritans who were people who had believed in god and do that they thought to be able to see god and his angels you would have to believe in evil apparitions as well. Puritans at the time were one of the main contributing societies of witchcraft in Salem, and it was the belief that Satan was among them and roaming around freely. Next was the other type of contributing factor which was the relationships within and between

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“The American Promise” claims the amount of men accused was about twenty percent leaving eighty percent of the accused being women and most of those women were “past the normal childbearing age”. Although the amount of women charged with witchcraft compared to men is considerably larger, it shows that outspoken women were not only the targets of the Salem witch hunt. With speculation, one might say, that the age of the women could have played a role in the decisions of who was accused of being a witch. Especially since the sentence for being found guilty of being a witch was death.

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There was much superstition and ignorance in the 17th century England and hundreds of women were wrongly accused and punished. From 1484 until around 1750 some 200,000 witches were tortured, burnt or hanged in Western Europe and England. Most supposed witches were usually poor old women. Women who weren’t lucky enough to look beautiful. Any woman who was ‘crone-like’ with broken irregular teeth , sunken cheeks and a hairy lip was assumed to be a witch !

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Witches in the New World “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” (Exodus, 20:18). In February of 1692 and lasting just over a year, more than 200 people were accused of witchcraft and 19 were executed, 14 of them women, in a small fishing village called Salem. Once branded with the deadly label of witch, one either confessed or named other witches in desperation to be ridden of the title.

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One of the most infamous witch trials to take place was the Salem Witch hunts in 1692. It caused much hysteria in the town and caused many people to be accused, which led to a total of twenty-five people being wrongfully accused and killed. It might be hard to believe that these accusations and deaths all spiraled from the untruthfulness of a bunch of girls. The girls had many different reasons to behave this way, it has been strongly evident throughout history that these are all just fraudulent acts. A major piece of evidence that was documented was “witch cakes” which were created by Tituba.

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Witch trials had a lot to do with religion. In the Bible it says that Lucifer was a fallen angel who came to be the Devil that we know today. The people back then said that the “witches” signed the Devil’s “Black Book” and became his slaves. It was said that a sign that a witch was around was that prayer was impossible when they were

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A white witch used/ experimented with harmless purposes. A black witch used/ experimented with commit hardships and injury’s. The last one is contact with the devil this is known for the most extreme form of witchcraft(pooja). People believed witchcraft to be the gift of Satan or the give you soul to the devil.

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Salem Witch Trials Twenty four people were killed during the Salem Witch Trail madness. How, you ask, did this happen (Unknown, Life In Salem 1692, 2013)? In 1692 a circle of young girls started a sport in the middle of this town. Witch Craft.

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As the witch hunts got worse is when they started to execute them. In the middle 1400s to the mid-1600s, witchcraft trials became popular, sending death rates up. From 50,000 to 80,000 people were executed throughout Europe. From the 80,000 people roughly “80% were women” (Grace Z. 2007). This shows how mostly women were the ones that were giving up their life to the devil in order for them to have power and be able to proceed rituals.

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When people hear the word witch they might think of hexes, potions, broomsticks, wands, black cats, black magic, pointy hats, and covens. According to the History Channel’s “Bet You Didn’t Know: Witches” most of these stereotypes came from Western culture. They could also think of pop culture types of witches such as the ones in The Wizard of Oz, the Harry Potter series, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Hocus Pocus, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer; but those aren’t the only kinds of witches one would see in the world, all of that info is for a later time. This will be about a few aspects of Wicca and how a few of the stereotypes listed above is related to Wicca. Wicca is the practice of modern Witchcraft; some Wiccans prefer the word because “witch” has a bad rep; those Wiccans don’t want the negative vibes.

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Witches were stereotypically women, they believed that the women would make a diabolical pact with evil spirits. They would reject Jesus and take part in the witch’s sabbath becoming evil they would have a “devil's mark.” People believed that they would in frustrations, struggle to gain the power to deal with infertility, fear for children, revenge against lover these are reasons they did witchcraft. The people who were accused basically invited the devil to take their body, so the devil would be in human form. The evil things these individuals did were not done by themselves, but by the evil spirit who took over their body.

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Most witches were accused harming neighbor when unexplainable tragic event took place. Trials and execution were public event, for example, in France (1460) thousand people were in attendance in a witch trial. Legal weapon were wielded by courts to prosecute witches, like the Malleus Maleficarum, Hammer of the witches (by Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, two Dominican

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Bridget Bishop, a resident of Salem, was the first person to be tried as a witch. Surprisingly, Bishop was accused of witch craft by the highest number of witneses. After Bishop, more than two hundred people were tried of practicing witchcraft and twenty were executed. Many of these accusations arose from jealous, lower class members of society, especially towards women who had come into a great deal of land or wealth. Three young children by the names of Elizabeth, Abigail, and Ann were the first three people to be “harmed” by the witches.

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A group of young girls began to behave strangely, complaining of physical maladies, visions, and trembling, and babbling uncontrollably. They blamed their behavior on three village women who, the girls believed, practiced witchcraft upon them. (“Salem Witch Trials” Gale). Women who were accused of witch crafted were imprisoned, then hanged, drowned and stoned (Karlsen). Throughout 1692, 156 women were accused of witchcraft, and 20 of them were sentenced to death (Karlsen).

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