Oct. 12, 2026 by Julia Clemmensen (‘29)
Witchcraft has always been viewed as a confusing concept to humans since civilization itself began, always having this kind of stigma and negative connotation attached to it. It has existed in ancient Egypt through inscribed incantations and magician’s tools, medieval Europe through alchemy, the Renaissance period with astrology, and in the American colonies of the late 1600s through ghost stories. It has also always been depicted in texts and mythology like in the ancient Greek tale the Odyssey, in which explains the sorceress Circe, and in Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy of the Renaissance period that explore themes of spiritualism.
But how has witchcraft existed through so many different regions and time periods, and why has it been judged so much? Well, the reason that the so-called practice of “witchery” has stood the test of time is because it’s very psychological, as it surrounds the human fascination with things like death, and the inability we have as humans to fully grasp that concept. That fascination turns us to things like religion for explanation and feelings of comfort.
However, religion can limit the aspect of further exploration of death because of the tie it has to the devil or other evil deities. “Witchcraft” in a nutshell is intuitively connecting with energies that can exist both on Earth and past our knowledge of life. To a lot of people throughout history, that sounds a bit unsettling and like getting yourself mixed up with the evil deities of religion.
This kind of spirituality got the title of witchcraft and was labeled as an unethical way of living and doing. It became the “source of all evil,” and the perfect thing for societies to blame on for occurrences that could not be scientifically proven in ancient and colonial times. These occurrences included failure in farming and livestock, natural disasters, and illness, which are all things that we can easily identify now as certainly not the doing of an individual.
Through the idea that witchery could be used as the perfect excuse for anything without a real explanation, escalation started fast. Trust was disregarded without care, as people would be blamed innocently for causing any event. The more this would happen, the more people felt the need to defend themselves from blame by blaming others.
Witch trials would begin, and society would reach chaos. But the odd thing was, women were far more accused of being witches than men. This makes us wonder why women were more believably responsible for doing “evil” practices, and the easy answer is misogyny. Witch trials occurred in the American colonies all the way to Europe in the 1400s-1700s, and misogyny, which has existed worldwide since the beginning of human existence, makes the connection of only women being accused as witches an unfortunately believable way of thinking in a society. And when thinking about how our society views witches in the modern world today, we do think of women. The concept of a “witch” makes us usually just think of Halloween now, but the real concept of witchcraft can make us wonder; should practicing spirituality still be labeled as witchery, or is spirituality something that should be completely separated from religion, leaving it unjudged?