Who is a Witch? What kind of role played in a community, a little society or a the social tissue? In which way fairies enter in this world of witches, curses, spells and vice versa; which were and are prayers practiced by shamans or other people with a solid devotion for trying to break a curse launched by a witch?But first of all: witches exist?
Witches represent a big universe, as explains in this new essay by Ronald Hutton The Witch A History of Fear from Ancient Times to the Present and diversified is their role in the social tissue where they operated.
I didn't know that, but witches, for what told in the book, can be of both sexes, but mainly, the representation given by literature and folklore is the one of a woman.
What kind of woman?
The perfect portrait of a witch? The one who lived in a community, and here and there cursed various known people.
A witch in fact is not like a vampire or another demoniac creature, who for case could meet a person along the road, harming him/her. No: a witch knows the person and wants all the bad for that person.
A witch can be Lilith; in this case we see the powerful lascivious part of the witch; Jewish thought that Lilith was the first woman of this world and from there, all disgraces would have happened to the humanity.
This book considers witches of all the world and we will see that certain places think that a witch is someone who tries to damage the social tissue of a place; other ones, that she is a snake acting inside a family; other ones again classify nudity, incest or other important voices as an act of witchery.
Someone else think that witches use special potions for cursing people; other ones think that they are born with special characteristics and ability of cursing people, and other cultures that they have special magical elements inside them in grade of permitting them of staying connected with the superior and devilsh sphere of the universe.
Instruments and tools for trying to fight against them? The most drastic ones.
In certain areas of the world, once killed, potential witches were cut in pieces; in other countries they were burned, so that all possible curses were broken.
In Europe there was a massive fight against witches; a potential beautiful or ugly person could become someone indicated as a witch.
With the time, populations of various countries, according to their own customs created resistance againt witches and their terrible power.
A witch substantially is a creature in grade to harm another person or more, creating a lot of sufferance.
In general she is human; she is not from another world. A vampire, a zombie, a ghost, are in this sense other kind of creatures and they scare everyone with their being not-human, or maybe having being humans but not anymore, or, as a vampire, living just an apparent fake, cursed existence-non existence.
The witch in all her humanity was born with certain characteristics.
Egyptian believed at dangerous entities, while Mesopotamians gave importance to demons and they were less relaxed if compared to the approach of Egyptians. Greeks and Romans believed in the power of witches and in this context operates the shaman or the healer, the one in grade, in various different ways of removing the curse from a person.
The shamanic experience must be beautiful I think: and it is typical of the Native Americans. The shaman enters in tranche and in contact with various entities.
Prayers, special rituals started to be practiced everywhere: the physical elimination of the potential witch would have brought back peace in a community, in a town or whoever the witch operated.
This terrible fight against witches contaminated also the New World; in Salem Massachusetts, there was the suppression of several women considered witches.
The Goddess taken more in adoration by witches in our countries was first of all Diana, because the protector of the environment, wild animals, and nature in general, followed by other ones as well. Hate against this goddess spread in all Europe with destruction of statues etc.
Jesus was not interested in magic, but Christianity took a position once the religion was solidly installed in Europe with severe punishments if a person was recognized to be a witch.
A special section is dedicated to fairies and witches.
They're two different worlds; fairies are fallen angels, for a reason or another they were angels who lost the possibility of staying close to God, as we know it; there is a super-naturalism and a magic that it is proper of the fairy. A fairy lives in a house, close to stones or other natural places, like rivers, hills; nature in a word. Per extension a fairy could also be represented by a beautiful girl who sings in the night, stealing the heart and mind of a man for then return to her own world, capturing him. A fairy in this case is the representation that for the sea is a mermaid.
Also when apparently a fairy lives peacefully in a house with her man and children, with all the possible magical instruments that could prevent her to return to her dimension, locked somewhere, she will find a way as some Nordic fairy-tales teach us.
Some people under trial for witchery told in the past told that they spent various days with fairies, and they learned the art of witchery by them, including a certain Margaret Fulton. Accused of having killed a lot of people the woman declared that "Her husband brought her back from the fairies."
Of course this one could have been a good excuse for trying to sort out a big problem like the one of a murder or more, and it was also a pretty interesting strategy, understandable. Anyway, all these people, the ones taken in consideration in these examples by the author were all recognized guilt of satanic witchcraft and condemned to death.
Witches have another power: they become animals. The most diversified ones although they prefer little animals, like mouses, cats, hedgehogs, and also every kind of insect and bird and this characteristic of the witch is more or less accepted in the entire world.
Personally I have been seriously scared by the idea of witches, because where I was born in people were serious witches-believers and my parents told me all the time of not stayig outside too much; witches love night and they could capture children. An aunt assured she had heard one day witches because she had heard clapping hands, and women laughing. Of course it could have been the echoes of other women washing clothes on a distant river.
Sure there is a magical dimension, lost now because we are too absorbed by PCS, smartphones, technological devices in grade of distract our souls. But that pregnant part of the Universe, that universe that would want to speak at us of the magic that there is in the world, is still alive.
And exists, to my point of view, the possibility for common people of wanting the best or the worst for other people and this desire becomes an energy and this energy is an act of real witchery.
An American expression tells: "Be careful what you wish for..."
The cover is beauty.
Highly recommended.
I thank Yale University Press for the physical copy of the book.
Anna Maria Polidori
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