Re: "What's the deal on witches and broomsticks"

Witches and broomsticks have an origin not mentioned in Cecil’s article: Anne Whittle, aka Mother Chattox, a historical Lancashire woman who was one of the ten people around Pendle Hill tried and hanged for witchcraft in 1612. She was an old crone who pretty much openly practiced dilletante witchcraft (love spells, potions, etc.) until she and her family were accused of using black magick for murder after an odd series of events that involved her family and another family in Lancashire. She wore a battered capotain that might have inspired the modern day witch’s hat, and one of the accusations at her trial was that she had bewitched a broom to fly. Illustrations from an 1840s novelabout her largely inform the Halloween witch costume.

As an aside, some Shakespeare historians believe that the role of the witches in Macbeth was greatly increased (if not added altogether) after the Pendle Hill events. James 1.6 was a major believer in witchcraft (and nominal author of a ghostwritten book on the subject) and fascinated by the trials. Macbeth, already his favorite of Shakespeare’s plays, had been performed at court before the trial but was performed numerous times afterwards, and it’s known there were changes; since part of the allegations of the Lancashire trials involved two families in which mother/daughter/granddaughter practiced witchcraft, the idea of three witches could well have been cut and pasted into the existing play.

I find calling these women devil worshiping as jumping too much to a conclusion.

There have always been shamans who practiced various folk cures throughout Europe. These included charms for love or money, curses, fortune telling, and a wide variety of various spells. To call them devil worshiping is not justified. You see many of the same potions and remedies mentioned in monastery texts and in physician writings.

I can imagine this practice of witchcraft was mainly done older women who learned various remedies and potions over their long life. I can imagine every once in a while, the public getting upset at something (plague, drought, the Yankees winning the World Series) and looking for a culprit. And, who would be a better culprit than an old widow woman who acted a bit odd? After all, you know they won’t hit you back.

Broomsticks and these witches probably did go together for pleasure purposes, but these women were probably …uh… a bit on the lonely side more than anything else. I have some doubts about the whole ointment thing.

(emphasis added)

Too, too obvious comment: Broomsticks? Ointment? Hell yeah, I should think. You’d definitely want some lube with your broomsticks. :slight_smile:

A couple of details from the way I heard the analysis:

Riding the broomstick (Let’s not get too witty with wordplay) was part of a fertility ritual, practiced at the harvest festival falling, coincidentally or not, at the Celtic observance of Samhain (which the Church filed the serial numbers off of and claimed as All Hallows Evening):o

The witches ( worshippers, priestesses, Druidesses) were “skyclad” wearing their usual professional attire; i.e. not even a bobby pin. (thanks, R.A.H.!):smiley:

The herbal ointment was originally intended to have magickal significance. :wink:

The nature of the hallucinations caused by some of the ingredients is a floating, flying sensation. :rolleyes:

Who described them as “devil worshipping”? The closest is Cecil citing the ideas of others like Michael J. Harner, where Cecil says

He also said

99% of what is published on this subject is bullshit invented in the 20th century. Without proper citations, there is no reason to take any of this seriously.

Assocating witches with devil worshipping is actually not a stupid association to make. Throughout the early-modern period witches were basically heretics. To become a witch, you’d make a pact with the devil and renounce the Christian God. You’d then promptly fly off to sabbaths and have sex with the devil (not sure if broomsticks were instrumental to this).

Also, while castigating others for making assumptions, you automatically assumed witches to be old women. Not all witches were old women, and not all were women at all. 90% of witches prosecuted in Iceland were men.

Just saying.

Please differentiate the rather bizarre and paranoid claims made by religious groups against people they did not like and what really happened. Throughout pretty much any period and any culture, people accused of being witches were simply people who were nonconformist in some way and then targeted by fantasy-prone individuals who had ulterior motives for making people insanely scared of otherwise harmless people.

Even the “ulterior motive” part is not generally true, unless you count such motives as, “I want to be a hero,” or “I’ve jumped to a conclusion, and now Honor demands that I defend it to the death, no matter how much the evidence and plain logic are against me.” In other words, it’s mostly just people being normal human assholes.

See Reginald Scot’s The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) for a contemporary skeptic’s deconstruction of the whole sorry business.

Differentiate in what way? The “bizarre and paranoid” claims, as you call them, as far as early modern Europeans were concerned, were what really happened. Anyway, it’s pretty much accepted among academics that at least a few accused witches were indeed practising witches. Just because you don’t genuinely believe in witchcraft doesnt mean many early modern Europeans, and contemporary Africans, didn’t/don’t. It’s a condescending viewpoint to take if you assume every one who accused witches did so simply because of ulterior motives, and it’s similarly naive to assume there did not actually exist a number of practising witches. If you thought you could get some decent action or smite your annoying wife just by writing some crap on some defixiones, wouldn’t you give it a go? Decades of historiography on witchcraft have long done away with such a mono-causal viewpoint.

The “non-conformist” fact is of course true, most witches were “social deviants” and the “charity refused” model is often a popular one for explaining why most witches were old women. I can’t remember whose model this was, but from what I remember it basically goes like this: old women comes begging (old widows were particularly prone to financial instability), person refuses her, bad thing happens to person, blame old person, old person is witch. Add to this the use of leading questions and torture to force the witch to name other witches and admit to making a pact with the devil etc. and you have a self sustaining system of witchcraft. Territories that did not allow torture against witches generally had a much smaller execution rate.

Concious ulterior motives (i.e. I know this person isn’t a witch but I’ll pretend she/he is) may have had something to do with the witchhunts, but the fact remains a lot of early Europeans did really believe in witchcraft.

Also, sorry that this has nothing to do with broomsticks.

You brought up contempary Africans: do you think that any of the children accused of witchcraft in Nigeria actually sold their soul to the devil and that forcing them to drink scalding water is a suitable form of exorcism?

According to a novel I just read, herbalists and others with healing skills felt in danger of being called witches - sounds logical to me.

Out of interest, I googled “Anne Whittle” and “capotain” and found but three references to the hat worn by the woman: two from your good self on the SDMB, and this decidedly freaky picture. Similar results using the name “Chattox” with the hat.

I wonder where you happened on that theory? Asked with genuine curiosity.

Just saw this. Is this question a joke or have you misunderstood what’s been posted?

I agree with Dan Norder that the claims of the religious groups in Nigeria that children are practicing witchcraft are “bizarre and paranoid” and have no basis in whether the children either 1. actually sold their soul to the devil or 2. professed that they’d done so.

I hold no particular prejudice as to which powerful mystical figure the average medieval defendant against witchcraft aligned themself with, merely pointing out that the suspicion of witchcraft doesn’t have to have any analogy or basis in reality. Though according to a documentary I watched about the “Stepping Stones” organisation in Nigeria, some credence is given to the idea that those targeted may have cognitive defects or conditions like epilepsy if I recall correctly. Abnormal = evil, of course.

Bizarre and paranoid to you, maybe. Witchcraft trials were more a phenomenon of the early modern than medieval period, but in either case it’s dangerous to take such a condescending viewpoint. You and I would of course view such claims with extreme scepticism, being informed in modern medicine and psychology. Obviously in many cases a number of innocent people were and still are accused of witchcraft. It’s the sole reduction of it to malign and concious motives on the part of the accusers that I was questioning.

But the fact is accusations DO have an analogy in reality to a large extent, this doesn’t necessarily mean the accused actually were guilty of all they were accused of. But they were almost always social deviants in that in some way many of them can be seen as posing a percieved threat to the community, not necessarily in a religious sense (look at the way factionalism, economics and puritanism interacted in Salem Village for example).

I disagree that witchcraft as a social phenomenon (EDIT:CAN) be reduced to ranting and raving “bizzare and paranoid” religious figures. It is a social phenomenon, while we explain the age old question “why do bad things happen to good people” with religion and modern rationalism, without the tools of modern medicine and psychology it is quite reasonable to resort to witchcraft. It is not bizzare or paranoid. To use those labels is dangerously condescending.

I don’t tolerate the labelling of innocent children of witches and I don’t accept the notion that it is anyone’s cultural right to do so, European or African.

Here’s some info about the practice from Stepping Stones Nigeria. They produced a fantastic documentary on the phenomenon and it is quite disheatening to realise that it persists to this day. As for the motivator: I’d say run of the mill avarice could be one option, as I’d wager with the case of Helen Ukpabio.

I’m a bit confused. I don’t think anyone on this board supports the labelling of innocent children as withces. And I don’t think anyone considers witch trials a cultural right. Witchcraft as a belief system, as I said earlier, is a way of filling in the gaps of explanation regarding otherwise unexplainable phenomenon. I said it is not bizzare or paranoid. To label it in that way is not culturally insensitive, but insensitive to the common human desire for explanation for things that otherwise cannot be accounted for.

To quote from your site: "The following have being identified as the major causes of child witchcraft, abandonment and killing:

Religious profiteering
Extreme poverty
Disintegration of the extended family structure
Ignorance and superstitious beliefs
Broken marriages"

Note that cultural belief is not even mentioned as a causal factor, all of the “major causes” are socio-economic in origin. “Ignorance” is labelled as a cause of belief in witchcraft. Harsh term, but I assume what is meant is a lack of rational explanation for certain phenomenon. Combined with social factors, witchcraft becomes a tool for both understanding and ordering a society and excluding those percieved as harmful to that society.

"The initiated person will then have the power to wreak havoc, such as causing diseases like HIV/AIDS, malaria, hepatitis, typhoid, cancer. All problems in life are seen to be the handiwork of these ‘witches’. "

There are no questions of cultural rights here, it is solely a question of Nigerians explaining the otherwise unexplainble with reference to the tools they have at hand.

In my opinion to phrase the issue as one of cultural rights is misleading. I read nothing about Nigerian culture demanding the labelling of witches.

Of course the practice is abhorrent. But in saying “I don’t tolerate the labelling of innocent children [as] witches” you seem to be implying the practice is one which the Africans have embraced simply for cultural reasons as opposed to social ones.

Again, nothing about broomsticks here. Sorry.

No, it isn’t. A few academics think that, but they are generally in the minority and considered to be basing their conclusions off of flawed books about a century out of date.

Never disputed that. That’s a pointless strawman argument.

No, what’s condescending is getting all bent out of shape when ignorance is pointed out and demand that said ignorance be respected as somehow superior to what happened in the real world.

Most were not old women, and social deviants were essentially anyone and everyone who was odd enough and lacked social position enough that if they were accused of some paranoid fantasy no one was willing to put their own reputations on the line to defend them.

So… territories that were more sane in general were overall less crazy. That’s a neat tautology.

Right, so it’s a battle you want, eh?

It’s difficult to quote you, after you’ve already quoted me, but I’ll try and cover all the bases.

This is what you initially requested of me:

“please differentiate the rather bizarre and paranoid claims made by religious groups against people they did not like and what really happened.”

You also stressed the fact that witchcraft was mono-causally driven by “fantasy-prone individuals who had ulterior motives for making people insanely scared of otherwise harmless people.”

I initially argued against the second part of your statement, basically saying that many early modern Europeans did actually believe in witchcraft and were not just acting on ulterior motives.

After a post by gamerunknown, I clarified that to call such claims bizarre and paranoid was to overlook the social and intellectual framework in which these claims were being made and to phrase witchcraft as a cultural practice or simply due to some sort of blanket “ignorance” was condescending and missed the point entirely. I even looked through the site that gamerunknown linked me too, and found that “ignorance” was only one among a host of other socio-economic causes identified as contributing to modern witchcraft beliefs.

Hence, my argument was that witchcraft did and does play a social role/function/whatever you want to call it (in explaining misfortune, particular environmental phenomenon etc.), and the fact that for us the function it plays has been overridden by modern science/religion does not make it ignorant or irrational. You had a go at me for using what you called conclusions based on flawed and out of date books. This would probably have more impact if the argument you are proposing was not one that in itself has long been gotten rid of by both historians and social anthropologists.

(Note: I want to stress that I was not advocating Margaret Murray’s idea of a pagan witchcraft cult, which I acknowledge is definitely historically outdated, but simply the fact that a number of people did obviously engage in maleficia throughout the early modern period, people made livings off of implementing such curses for their patrons, which implies a genuine market must have existed).

I even conceded that ignorance was part of the issue, I simply stressed that this had to be understood as part and parcel with these other contributing factors.

Essentially, from what I can see, you responded with this: “what’s condescending is getting all bent out of shape when ignorance is pointed out and demand that said ignorance be respected as somehow superior to what happened in the real world.”

Now, I don’t see how that response adds up with my statement. You completely ignored my argument, and even twisted what I said. I never said witchcraft practices should be respected as superior to what happens in the “real world.” In fact I think I made that quite clear that I found the practice abhorrent.
Finally, I concede that most witches were not old women in the early modern period (although they definitely learnt towards that pursuasion). Either I was simply wrong, or I meant to say many witches. (I admit it was probably the former).

Finally, finally, my statement on the relationship between torture and witchcraft accusations was not tautology. The links between torture and witchcraft EXECUTIONS, did not necessarily correspond to witchcraft accusations. Torture propelled the witch-hunts, it did not create them.

P.s. I hope you are not American (or English), calling torture insane may reflect badly on your nation (which, interestingly, last time I checked doesn’t execute witches anymore).