Witches and Witchcraft

Wurundjeri People

  • Acknowledging meeting on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. Demonstrates respect for Indigenous custodianship and acknowledges the historical context of the land.

Assignments

  • Assignments submitted, feedback within three weeks. Ensures timely feedback for student improvement and engagement.

  • End of unit assessment around June 2 to June 6: three timed modules of short answers and multiple choice. Provides a structured assessment format to evaluate understanding of the unit content.

Witches and Witchcraft

  • Last week on witches and witchcraft, next week will focus on scientific rationality around intelligence. Connects previous and future topics, providing a cohesive academic trajectory.

  • This week: Witch hunts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Focuses on a specific historical period of intense persecution.

  • Witch hunts: Attempts to blame witches for misfortune leading to social persecution. Highlights the cause-and-effect relationship between blame and persecution.

  • Contrast to previous weeks: witchcraft as a rationality, witch hunts are murderous. Differentiates between rational beliefs in witchcraft and the violent persecution of alleged witches.

  • Woodcut: North Berwick Witches in 1590s Scotland. Provides a visual historical reference.

  • Witch hunts associated with groups of women in league with the devil, causing misfortunes like shipwrecks and illnesses. Explains common associations and accusations during witch hunts.

  • Relationship between witchcraft persecution and social anxieties, fears of social flux, social change, and social displacement, and the devil's role. Links persecution to broader social and psychological factors.

  • Anthropology: Potential further study in culture and communication or cyborg anthropology. Suggests potential avenues for further academic exploration.

Class Content

  • The devil's development within European religion, Great Witch Craze (late fifteenth to eighteenth century), logic of truth telling in witchcraft trials, torture, misogyny. Outlines key themes and historical contexts.

  • Fahriet Sada: Contemporary European witchcraft, witchcraft as a marginal logic when other answers fail. Introduces contemporary perspectives on witchcraft as a response to unresolved issues.

  • Witchcraft attacks distributed and vulnerable person via evil words. Explains method of attack.

  • Witchcraft as remedial institution, mediating social tensions. Describes witchcraft as a means of resolving social conflicts.

  • Example: Television show Succession, patriarch unable to choose successor leads to suspicion of evil forces. Illustrates contemporary examples of witchcraft beliefs.

  • Witchcraft accusations emerge during great social change due to vulnerabilities. Connects accusations to periods of instability.

  • Crises of witchcraft accusations indicate significant social rupture. Significant to society.

The Devil

  • Devil figure emerged through pre-Christian religion. Traces the origin of the devil figure.

  • Satana (Aramaic): adversary. Provides linguistic origin.

  • Diabolos (Ancient Greek): accuser, slanderer. Provides linguistic origin.

  • Diamond (Ancient Greek): minor deity, demigod, spirit associated with an emotion. Provides linguistic origin.

  • Daemonion: fallen angels. Explains theological context.

  • Middle Ages: Satan as the leader of fallen angels. Describes the devil's role in medieval theology.

  • Early Christian texts: Satan as one amongst others. Described in Ezekiel as fairest and most beautiful. Presents early depictions of Satan.

Philosophical Traditions

  • Dualism: good spirits/bad spirits, good forms/bad forms. Introduces the concept of dualism.

  • Mani (Iranian prophet): Manichaeism, radical dualism (good and evil), light and dark. Describes Manichaeism.

  • Gnosticism: Spiritual good world (spirit, soul) vs. corrupt physical world. Explains Gnostic beliefs.

  • Rene Descartes: Mind (spiritual, metaphysical) and body (physical). Connects philosophical concepts to the mind-body dualism.

  • Sense of good forces largely associated with disembodied things and bad things associated with embodied material things. Explains the association of good and evil with the immaterial and material.

  • Middle Ages art: Depictions of Satan as a monster (red, forked tail, horns). Describes visual representations of Satan.

  • Satan in hierarchical order with demons. Explains the hierarchical structure.

  • Frescoes (e.g., Oviedo Cathedral's The Last Judgment, Michelangelo's Last Judgment): Devils dragging people to hell. Provides examples of artistic depictions.

  • Evil depicted as embodied and ugly. Explains the portrayal of evil.

  • Martin Luther portrayed as playing bagpipes by the devil in Catholic propaganda (1535). Gives a specific historical example.

Witch Hunting Craze

  • European witch craze: late fifteenth to seventeenth century. Defines the period.

  • Approximately 100,000 deaths across Europe, primarily in France, lowland countries, Italy. Quantifies the scale of the witch craze.

  • Sporadic local outbreaks of witch persecution rather than coordinated movement. Describes the nature of the outbreaks.

  • Contradiction within Christianity: God's powers vs. witches' powers. Highlights the theological conflict.

  • Malleus Maleficarum (1480s): witchcraft is an abomination, but witches' powers are illusory. Explains the Malleus Maleficarum.

European Persecutions

  • Cathar heresy in Southern France. Provides historical context of religious persecution.

  • Spanish Inquisition: Targets Jewish people or people accused of being Jewish for crimes against the church. Gives detail on Spanish inquisition.

Geopolitical Challenges

  • Reformation (1517-1560s): Replacement of Catholicism with Protestantism. Describes religious upheaval.

  • Thirty Years' War: Millions die in ongoing conflict between Catholic and Protestant nations. Explains the impact of war.

  • Impoverishment, economic stagnation, crisis, fear due to war. Details the consequences of war.

  • Civil unrest and uncertainty lead to people searching for witches. Links unrest to witch hunts.

Process of Witchcraft

  • Conducted a trial, so like a public trial, like a judicial proceeding. Explains the trial process.

  • Maleficium (Latin malice, bad, faire, to do or doing): proof of bad things. Defines Maleficium.

  • Misfortunes attributable to somebody or something. Connection to Maleficium.

  • Physical marks on witches from interaction with the devil/demons. Describes physical evidence sought.

  • Knowledge power nexus: men serving as judges, testimony, physical tests, torture to withdraw confession. Highlights the power dynamics.

Salem Witch Trials

  • Salem, Massachusetts in 1692 is a famous example after the European witch craze. Gives context.

  • Puritans (religious minority) fled Western Europe. Explains the background of the Puritans.

  • Political uncertainty in Salem, Massachusetts. Describes political conditions.

  • Social change and pressure in small colony. Details social dynamics.

  • 30 people convicted, 25 die. Quantifies the outcome.

  • Accusations emerged alongside other accusations of apostasy, treason, sedition. Links accusations to broader political and religious issues.

End of Witchcraft

  • Trials stopped being successful. Explains the decline.

  • Accused were exonerated or acquitted. Details outcomes.

  • Rise of the enlightenment: the reasons for bad things happening are physical causes, not metaphysical causes. Connects to the rise of enlightenment.

  • Church with much less crisis by the 1660s. Describes the church's state.

  • Stabilization of nations that are securely Catholic and nations that are securely Protestant. Describes the stabilization of nations.

Torture

  • Mechanical torture used to get people to confess. Explains the use of torture.

  • Logic of witchcraft trials: evil in the world -> people responsible -> actions real or illusory. Describes the logic.

  • Illusion: tricks encouraged by devil, punish with death. Explains the prosecution of illusion.

  • Physical pain equates to truth. Describes the belief in torture.

  • Contemporary prohibition against torture. Notes the modern prohibition.

  • During witch hunt era, things said under physical pain were oracular truths. Highlights the historical view.

Social Structure

  • Socially elevated people seen as subject to bewitchment. Describes the victims of bewitchment.

  • Accused often marginalized women, elderly, poor, widowed or single. Details the accused.

  • Ninety five percent of those executed were women. Highlights gender disparity.

  • More recent examples in Zaire, Nigeria, Ghana, Papua New Guinea, etc. Mentions contemporary examples.

  • Reclaiming of the witch as resistance to gender discrimination (e.g., Sabrina, the Teenage Witch). Notes the feminist perspective.

Devil Evolution

  • Early Christianity: devil as exogenous, ugly, evil actor. Describes early depictions.

  • Later: devil becomes seductive in seventeenth and eighteenth century. Describes later depictions.

  • Milton's Paradise Lost, William Blake's illustrations: devil as beautiful seducer. Provides examples.

  • Satan is, or evil embodied in Satan is this hideous external force that after that within Christianity Satan emerges instead as a kind of figure within us all. An endogenous threat within us all that is rather than being something that we will know by its hideousness, we'll know instead by its beauty.

The Devil Today

  • Domestication of witches and devil, cutification, AFL team called the demons, devil themed restaurants, etc. Modern representations.

  • Stanley Tambia: Societies maintain multiple paradigms. Societal paradigms.

  • Morris dancing (pagan ritual) survives. Surviving pagan rituals.

  • Contemporary examples in African countries (Tanzania), accusations in moments affecting ambiguous social relations. Modern examples in African countries.

  • Open question: Is it irrelevant whether witches do or do not exist in the metaphysical sense, in the sense of actually having metaphysical powers, if their harms are experienced as socially real either way.