Witchcraft 101
Hey guys,
I assume you all are kinda curious what i learn in my course..hahha..okay..lemme clarify..First of all, it isn't really witchcraft, but kinda like a scholarship into the phenomenon of witches in history, spanning from 400BC to 17th century. We study several different cultures to get a feel of what they understand by witchcraft/witches/magic, how they practice magic [or what they thought witches did], and hopefully eventually we will reach the part where we will study the intensive witch trials that took place in medieval Europe, the witch inquisitions.
To start off, magic was an essential part of most cultures. Remember in chinese customs there is the 'Da2 Xiao3 Ren2' where we have a paper figure with the persons birth timings and we keep hitting the paper with a clog? then we have the usual voodoo dolls where people poke pins and needles. Or there were specific spells where ancient greek/roman/egyptian/wadever were read to invoke certain kinds of effect onto some things. Example of which is a witch chanting a spell in a bowl of water, with the words describing an octopus, and afterwhich pouring the water on a vine and expecting it to sprout forth like an octopus sprouts off his tentacles.
Magic is done with an effect in mind, but the focus is on the process rather than the result. If say a spell was cast on a field to make it prosperous, and instead the crops failed, rather than blaming the magic, it was naturally reasoned that someone else with stronger magic had cursed the fields. Thus magic was not possible to disprove, and people chose to believe in it rather than doubt it.
In certain cultures, witchcraft instead had a 'scapegoat' effect in their lives, and was an answer to any particular failures that they met. For example, if a hunter took all the pains to ensure that he was not stepping on anything dangerous, but he still steps into a root and falls down, he will complain that he was fully aware of everything, but witchcraft had cursed his eyes to miss that root.
Other examples would be like if someone had made sure that he was 'magicked' against poison by the wiseman in the village, and made sure that he checked all the food before eating them, but still got poisoned, he'd cry that witchcraft was in effect rather than blaming the protection magics.
And as usual, there are the myths that spoke of witches that blew on brooms, gather at night for nefarious activities, including orgies, eating of children, cursing the community, or there are the other faction that believed that witches are sub conscious to their deeds, exercising their hereditory powers without knowing it, or there are those that believe witches are beings endowed with power from birth and are able to perform hexes naturally without spells and rites whereas magicians are those who specifically relied on rites and equipment and spells.
In conclusion, there are many different beliefs about witches and witchcrafts that differ from culture to culture, but it is generally held that the pattern of identifying witches are closely linked as to the social rules within the society, and that witches generally defied what was considered the social norms of that culture.
[mock prof] brian signing off..
I assume you all are kinda curious what i learn in my course..hahha..okay..lemme clarify..First of all, it isn't really witchcraft, but kinda like a scholarship into the phenomenon of witches in history, spanning from 400BC to 17th century. We study several different cultures to get a feel of what they understand by witchcraft/witches/magic, how they practice magic [or what they thought witches did], and hopefully eventually we will reach the part where we will study the intensive witch trials that took place in medieval Europe, the witch inquisitions.
To start off, magic was an essential part of most cultures. Remember in chinese customs there is the 'Da2 Xiao3 Ren2' where we have a paper figure with the persons birth timings and we keep hitting the paper with a clog? then we have the usual voodoo dolls where people poke pins and needles. Or there were specific spells where ancient greek/roman/egyptian/wadever were read to invoke certain kinds of effect onto some things. Example of which is a witch chanting a spell in a bowl of water, with the words describing an octopus, and afterwhich pouring the water on a vine and expecting it to sprout forth like an octopus sprouts off his tentacles.
Magic is done with an effect in mind, but the focus is on the process rather than the result. If say a spell was cast on a field to make it prosperous, and instead the crops failed, rather than blaming the magic, it was naturally reasoned that someone else with stronger magic had cursed the fields. Thus magic was not possible to disprove, and people chose to believe in it rather than doubt it.
In certain cultures, witchcraft instead had a 'scapegoat' effect in their lives, and was an answer to any particular failures that they met. For example, if a hunter took all the pains to ensure that he was not stepping on anything dangerous, but he still steps into a root and falls down, he will complain that he was fully aware of everything, but witchcraft had cursed his eyes to miss that root.
Other examples would be like if someone had made sure that he was 'magicked' against poison by the wiseman in the village, and made sure that he checked all the food before eating them, but still got poisoned, he'd cry that witchcraft was in effect rather than blaming the protection magics.
And as usual, there are the myths that spoke of witches that blew on brooms, gather at night for nefarious activities, including orgies, eating of children, cursing the community, or there are the other faction that believed that witches are sub conscious to their deeds, exercising their hereditory powers without knowing it, or there are those that believe witches are beings endowed with power from birth and are able to perform hexes naturally without spells and rites whereas magicians are those who specifically relied on rites and equipment and spells.
In conclusion, there are many different beliefs about witches and witchcrafts that differ from culture to culture, but it is generally held that the pattern of identifying witches are closely linked as to the social rules within the society, and that witches generally defied what was considered the social norms of that culture.
[mock prof] brian signing off..
posted by B-Rok | 4:05 PM
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