page_title: European witchcraft
section_title: "Witch" stock character
hierarchical_section_title: European witchcraft / "Witch" stock character
context_page_description: Belief in and practice of witchcraft in Europe can be traced to classical antiquity and has continuous history during the Middle Ages, culminating in the Early Modern witch hunts and giving rise to the fairy tale and popular culture "witch" stock character of modern times, as well as to the concept of the "modern witch" in Wicca and related movements of contemporary witchcraft.
  The topic is a complex amalgamation of the practices of folk healers, folk magic, ancient belief in sorcery in pagan Europe, Christian views on heresy, medieval and early modern practice of ceremonial magic and simple fiction in folklore and literature.
context_section_description: The characterization of the witch in Europe is not derived from a single source.
  The familiar witch of folklore and popular superstition is a combination of numerous influences.
  At the end of the Middle Ages, the recurring beliefs about witches were:
  The ride by night
  The pact with the Devil
  The formal repudiation of Christianity
  The secret nocturnal meeting
  The desecration of the Eucharist and crucifix
  The orgy
  Sacrificial infanticide, and
  Cannibalism
  The Malleus Maleficarum (1486) declared that the four essential points of witchcraft were renunciation of the Catholic faith, devotion of body and soul to evil, offering up unbaptized children to the Devil, and engaging in orgies that included intercourse with the Devil; in addition, witches were accused of shifting their shapes, flying through the air, abusing Christian sacraments, and confecting magical ointments.
  Witches were credited with a variety of magical powers. These fall into two broad categories: those that explain the occurrence of misfortune and are thus grounded in real events, and those that are wholly fantastic.
  The first category includes the powers to cause impotence, to turn milk sour, to strike people dead, to cause diseases, to raise storms, to cause infants to be stillborn, to prevent cows from giving milk, to prevent hens from laying and to blight crops. The second includes the power to fly in the air, to change form into a hare, to suckle familiar spirits from warts, to sail on a single plank and perhaps most absurd of all, to go to sea in an eggshell.
  Witches were often believed to fly on broomsticks or distaffs, or occasionally upon unwilling human beings, who would be called 'hag-ridden'. Horses found sweating in their stalls in the morning were also said to be hag-ridden.
  The accused witch Isobel Gowdie gave the following charm as her means of transmuting herself into a hare:
  I shall go into a hare,
  With sorrow and sych and meickle care;
  
  And I shall go in the Devil's name,
  
  Ay while I come home again.
  Especially in media aimed at children (such as fairy tales), witches are often depicted as wicked old women with wrinkled skin and pointy hats, clothed in black or purple, with warts on their noses and sometimes long claw-like fingernails. Like the Three Witches from Macbeth, they are often portrayed as concocting potions in large cauldrons. Witches typically ride through the air on a broomstick as in the Harry Potter universe or in more modern spoof versions, a vacuum cleaner as in the Hocus Pocus universe. They are often accompanied by black cats. One of the most famous modern depictions is the Wicked Witch of the West, in L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
  Witches also appear as villains in many 19th- and 20th-century fairy tales, folk tales and children's stories, such as "Snow White", "Hansel and Gretel", "Sleeping Beauty", and many other stories recorded by the Brothers Grimm. Such folktales typically portray witches as either remarkably ugly hags or remarkably beautiful young women.
  In the novel by Fernando de Rojas, Celestina is an old prostitute who commits pimping and witchcraft in order to arrange sexual relationships.
  Witches may also be depicted as essentially good, as in Archie Comics' long running Sabrina the Teenage Witch series, Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, in Hayao Miyazaki's 1989 film Kiki's Delivery Service, or the television series Charmed (1998–2006). Following the film The Craft, popular fictional depictions of witchcraft have increasingly drawn from Wiccan practices, portraying witchcraft as having a religious basis and witches as humans of normal appearance.
caption: Representation of Sabbath gatherings from the chronicles of Johann Jakob Wick
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