Witchcraft and Religion

When I share with people that I’m taking a course on witchcraft and witch-hunts this semester, many are surprised and intrigued. I have heard a couple of remarks on how others find it “ironic” that a Christian school, like TCU would even offer such a course.  (As an aside, I am taking another honors colloquia class this semester, entitled “Sex, Evolution, and the Brain”, and I applaud TCU and the Honors’ College for encouraging its students to branch out from their normal course of study and learn more about such fascinating aspects of life and history). 

 

Growing up, I knew a couple of people whose parents wouldn’t allow them to trick or treat on Halloween or celebrate in any other manner, because (as very strong and religious Christians), they believed the holiday was “worshipping the devil”.  I also follow an Orthodox Jewish woman on TikTok who shared that most members of her faith also do not celebrate Halloween because of its history as a Pagan holiday. 

 

But as we’ve gone through the course, I’ve come to understand that religion and witchcraft (and more broadly, superstition outside of religion) are not necessarily mutually exclusive.  As A History of Magic and the Occult noted, despite the fact that “the early Church associated magic with paganism and demons, a common tradition of magic survived, and even thrived, in Europe throughout the medieval period,” (p. 92), and “both science and magic were infused with Christian ideas,” (p. 144).

 

Even in the Judaic Tanakh, practices such as belomancy, “the shaking of arrows in a sacred quiver,” (p. 29) were detailed to foresee the future; such practices reminded me of other magic practices such as palm reading and the reading of tea leaves to see what lies ahead. 

 

However, as we’ve seen throughout the course, in our reading, and even in some films (like The Witches of Eastwick) religion and magic soon came to be at odds, a dichotomy that continues to this day.  To me, it seems that Puritans and other religious communities used God and religion to account for the good things in life, and relied on organized religion in particular to prescribe how an orderly life should be lived and rules and morals to live by.  On the other hand, when things went wrong, they looked not at themselves and their religion but at those who they felt they had little in common with—often poor, single and childless women, “not adhering to the teachings of the Puritan church,” (p. 189), who were blamed for everything from death and disease to sick cattle and famine.  

 

Though much of the popular culture we are surrounded by today focuses on Puritanism and the Salem witch trials, A History of Magic and the Occult noted that in German, England, and many other European countries, witches were often persecuted as well: “In western Germany, the zealous archbishop of Trier set out to purge his small territory of nonconformists, including witches, and he alone accounted for 300 executions… Scotland executed at least 200 alleged witches between 1560 and 1660,” (p. 178-179).  In India, Ghana, and Papua New Guinea, witches were also of concern to the rest of society, with widows and other women “ostracized by their community,” (p. 181) relegated to the Kukuo witch camp. 

 

I also find it fascinating that there was so much similarity between the accusations of those in North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia; the terminology, type of women accused, and treatment of “witches” between culture to culture bore a striking resemblance before ideas could be easily and quickly spread between continent to continent or even country to country.  To me, this demonstrates the universal and damaging powers of fear, discrimination, and “othering”.