Witchcraft: everything you wanted to know | HistoryExtra
""‘Do we have a rough idea of people actually believed in witches and witchcraft? Or was it more a case of people using witchcraft as a way of, to their own benefit basically, to kind of persecute somebody that perhaps they didn't like or had a had a bit of beef with’
‘Most people who were prosecuted for witchcraft during the witch trials, and after were utterly innocent of the crimes and nearly all of them are really entirely innocent of the crimes or things they were said to have done, but we do have to remember that people did practice harmful counter magic of all myriad forms. And we may think about the Voodoo Doll today. But there was a whole idea of image magic and sticking pins into pictures and cruel little dolls. That happened. People did do it, people did it during the time of the witch trials. So we have to separate two things out here. One is that people yes are performing a harmful magic. And often harmful magic is actually done against suspected witches. In other words, you're using kind of harmful magic to counter the harmful magic that the witch has put on you, the spells put on you. So yes, people are practicing this, at the same time that people who are normally accused of it, which is, you know, vast majority cases, we have no evidence they were actually doing that at all...
On the continent, a lot of the continent operated under Roman law, inquisitorial law, and that doesn't mean it's related to the Inquisition. What it means is that trials take place, following evidence gathered by investigating judges. So whether it's in France, or some of the German states, or whatever, accusations are made in a community, they get reported to the judges, the judges, then go and investigate, they gather evidence, they use torture, and then the trial takes place following the gathering. So that's how it takes place under Roman law and Roman law still very much dictates quite a lot of law in European countries.
Britain very different. And obviously, in colonial America, which was using common law, English common law. A trial can only take place when someone makes a complaint. A person, the state can't go around creating trials, someone has to make a complaint, and because of the process of a magistrate, etc. So you can imagine someone who thinks they're bewitched has to think about whether they want to report this to the authorities, go through a trial. It's expensive, takes time. And we have to remember that in England, for example, it was not kangaroo court here, a lot of people got off, a lot of people were found not guilty. So you can go to all that expense of trying to get rid of the witch in your community. And in the end all you end up out of pocket and still having to have the supposed witch in your community still.
So it's just one of several options, and people would often go to a cunning person to find out who the witch is. And then you would use counter magic against the witch. So cunning folk provide this alternative in the sense to the legal ways in which you deal with a witch… some cunning folk were accused of witchcraft. There's, there's a big misnomer out there and it's on, full on the internet. That is that the witch trials are all about wise women being, midwives being prosecuted. That, that's nonsense. There is no evidence that that was the predominant reason for why people are accused of witchcraft and who were, who were accused of witchcraft.
But there are a small percentage of those, more or less, in different countries, different cultures, who were were tried for witchcraft, who were cunning folk or wise women, the usual reason for it was that someone would go to a cunning person, because they think they're bewitched. The cutting person will say oh I know who did this, for a few shillings, I will give you this, this charm, these herbs go away. But if it's connected, particularly with illness, and it doesn't go away, then the person starts thinking, hold on, I've just paid all this money to this cunning person. I'm still feeling bad. I'm still bewitched. Maybe it's the cunning person that's doing this to me.
So people, so people kind of do get accused of witchcraft, but it normally it's in relationship to the, to the client-patient relationship with someone who thinks they're already bewitched, and then comes to have the conviction, then, because the spell doesn't seem to be broken that they're being bewitched by the cunning person. So that, that's often one of the reasons...
Torture was illegal in witch trials in England. It's obviously used widely on the continent. And a degree of torture is also used in Scotland, In England torture was for, for treason. Was was was used for treason but you know, it was not allowed, it was illegal to torture a witch for confessions. On the continent, it was widespread, doesn't matter whether it's Protestant or Catholic, or whatever. And the whole, the whole reason of confession was the idea that your kind of religious underpinnings that torture is considered to be valid in the sense of because you have to make these people confess, because to confess, not only in trial, but to confess before God... torture is one of the key reasons why we have 10s of 1000s of people prosecuted and executed because torture, under torture, people name names, spirals and spirals and spirals...
There's a notorious case in the town of Elvingen [sp?]. in what's now Germany, where torture ratcheted up to the point at which, you know, nearly half the town was somehow under investigation, and it collapses, the whole thing collapses under its own intrinsic illogicality in a sense because one of the wives of one of the judges gets accused, named under torture, and the whole thing collapsed. So at that time, you know, dozens of people have been executed...
There are examples of similar sorts of trials taking place in China, 18th century'...
‘Were people who practised medicine, kind of more likely to be accused of witchcraft?’
‘The link between female healers on witch trials is fairly tenuous. Yes. If you go through all the witch trials, you will find people who practise it, practised a bit of herbal medicine or whatever. You might find, you'll find a few midwives because there was a, every community had informal, formal midwives, that there's a whole history of how men dominated the profession later. And yes, you know, some cunning women, wise men were caught up in the trials as well. But that's, that's not the main link. Most most of those accused were were not petty healers, or cunning vocal wives, our midwives. Most women and men would practice some form of domestic medicine, and herbal remedies. But the real deal, you would go to an expert, you would go to a licensed physician or a cunning person or a folk healer, for that sort of, commonly. But those generally aren't the people who are being accused. So it isn't about secret female knowledge of medicine or anything like that. That's not that's not why people are being accused of witchcraft, people are being accused of witchcraft, because of misfortune’"
Feminist history once again is bullshit
