Witchcraft: The Accusation of

A detailed Summary of Witchcraft: The Accusation of

Witchcraft is a sensation that has captured the minds of people since the beginning of time. I think it important to first discuss some history of witchcraft. The World Book Encyclopedia (2002) describes some of the history as follows:

The term witch comes from the Old English word wicca, which is derived from the Germanic root wic, meaning to bend or to turn." "In many places around the world, witchcraft beliefs and practices have existed for centuries with little change, [and] [p]rehistoric art depicts magical rites to ensure successful hunting. (p. 371, 372).

Some beliefs about witchcraft may have risen from stories and legends told, possibly around a fire, just as ghost stories are now told around a campfire. Around A.D. 700, Christian religion saw witchcraft as denouncing the Catholic Church and began to question "heresy", a rejection of the church, and, "began a long campaign to stamp out heresy...[and] [b]eginning in the 1000's, religious leaders sentenced heretics to death by burning" (World Book, 2002 p. 372). It was then that society and the church began associating witchcraft with devil worship. Although, according to The World Book Encyclopedia (2000), "historians doubt that worship of the Devil was ever

The reason for this bias against women can be explained by the Nupe's lifestyle and their backward sense of normality of social roles. Nadel (1952) states:

In conclusion, as shown, and mentioned earlier, women are definitely the focal point, and were most often thought to be, and accused of being witches. According to Nadel (1952), the Nupe belief system is "related to specific anxieties and stresses arising in social life [and] indicate the precise nature of the social causes of which they are the symptoms-marriage-relations in Nupe" (p. 28). Nadel (1952) believed that the success of the women causes attacks on witches and on the Nupe's idyllic culture. Nadel (1952) states that the way in which the Nupe men handle their hostilities toward the women by way of their "fantasy realm", is not a proper solution to help the Nupe relationships between men and women, and that:

Barstow (1994) comments that women have yet to recover from the indecencies they suffered during the "witchcraze", and that the conventional representation of the early European woman was affected, reinforcing and reducing the status of women and "demonizing the image of women in a damaging way. That women were criminalized for the first time as witches...not until the mid-nineteenth century did the status of Western women begin to recover from the witch hunts" (p.12). So many people were put to death centuries ago. There were so many reasons for these witch-hunts as with the Nupe's superstition and a means of control over women, the European's mindset of organized institutions, and the most effective way of controlling female independence, suppression. Today, there is no punishment for practicing witchcraft, and though modern man has given up on witch-hunts, torture, humiliation and the executions of hundreds of women, there is still some misconceptions about witchcraft as a tradition and religion. Yet, witchcraft is widespread throughout the world and women are open and proud of being witches, but still, the stigma remains. Ask a child to draw a picture of a witch, and on average, the child will not draw a pretty woman or a handsome man, no, the child will more than likely draw a haggard old woman, dressed in black with a huge wart on her nose.

In their need for control and the frustrations of being considered the lower of the two sexes, the Nupe man can only find superiority on the "fantasy-realm" where "the main collective weapon against witchcraft lies in the activities of a male secret society which, by threats and torture, 'cleanses' villages of witchcraft [and] the men alone have the secret power of defeating female witchcraft" (Nadel, 1952p. 19). This way, even though their power is held only in the "fantasy realm", the victims accused of witchcraft are held accountable on a real, tangible plane where the man is finally victorious over the woman.

More women than men have been accused of witchcraft whether out of fear and helplessness as with the Nupe, or a need for suppression as with the early Europeans. Men manipulated fears in women in order to dominate them. It may have been that men manipulated fears such as a woman's housewife responsibility, or her responsibility for preserving boundaries of social and cultural life. If this was disrupted, the need to fulfill the woman's role, her identity was put to question. According to Barstow (1994), throughout the world during these times, a devastating number of women were accused and put to death, "on average, 80 percent of those accused and 85 percent of those killed were female. Some areas, however, hunted down women more ferociously than others" (p. 23). The statistics of those accused and murdered in early Europe are astounding. For example: "Pre-1500", 705 people were accused of being witches, 71% of those accused were female and of the 490+ executed, 71% were also female. During the time of "Holy Roman Empire", in S.W. Germany, a staggering 4, 208 people were accused

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Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page double spaced)

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