Witchcraft

== Beliefs about practices ==
[[File:Hexenszene 1700.JPG|thumb|''Preparation for the Witches' Sabbath'' by [[David Teniers the Younger]]. It shows a witch brewing a potion overlooked by her [[familiar spirit]] or a demon; items on the floor for casting a spell; and another witch reading from a [[grimoire]] while anointing the buttocks of a young witch about to fly upon an inverted [[besom]].]]

Witches are commonly believed to cast [[curse]]s; a [[Incantation|spell]] or set of magical words and gestures intended to inflict supernatural harm.<ref name=LevackOxford>{{cite book |last1=Levack |first1=Brian |title=The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America |date=2013 |publisher=Oxford University Press}}</ref>{{rp|54}} Cursing could also involve inscribing [[runes]] or [[sigil (magic)|sigils]] on an object to give that object magical powers; burning or binding a wax or clay image (a [[poppet]]) of a person to affect them magically; or using [[herb]]s, animal parts and other substances to make [[potion]]s or poisons.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Luck |first=Georg |title=Arcana Mundi: Magic and the Occult in the Greek and Roman Worlds; a Collection of Ancient Texts |date=1985 |publisher=[[Johns Hopkins University Press]] |isbn=978-0801825231 |location=Baltimore, Maryland |pages=254, 260, 394 |author-link=Georg Luck}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Kittredge |first=George Lyman |title=Witchcraft in Old and New England |date=1929 |publisher=Russell & Russell |isbn=978-0674182325 |location=New York City |page=172}}</ref><ref name=DaviesWitch>{{Cite book |last=Davies |first=Owen |url=https://archive.org/details/witchcraftmagicc00davi |title=Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 1736–1951 |date=1999 |publisher=[[Manchester University Press]] |isbn=978-0719056567 |location=Manchester, England |url-access=registration}}</ref>{{r|HuttonFear|p=19-22}} Witchcraft has been blamed for many kinds of misfortune. In Europe, by far the most common kind of harm attributed to witchcraft was illness or death suffered by adults, their children, or their animals. "Certain ailments, like impotence in men, infertility in women, and lack of milk in cows, were particularly associated with witchcraft". Illnesses that were poorly understood were more likely to be blamed on witchcraft. Edward Bever writes: "Witchcraft was particularly likely to be suspected when a disease came on unusually swiftly, lingered unusually long, could not be diagnosed clearly, or presented some other unusual symptoms".{{r|LevackOxford|p=54-55}}

A common belief in cultures worldwide is that witches tend to use something from their target's body to work magic against them; for example hair, nail clippings, clothing, or bodily waste. Such beliefs are found in Europe, Africa, South Asia, Polynesia, Melanesia, and North America.{{r|HuttonFear|p=19-22}} Another widespread belief among Indigenous peoples in Africa and North America is that witches cause harm by introducing cursed magical objects into their victim's body; such as small bones or ashes.{{r|HuttonFear|p=19-22}} [[James George Frazer]] described this kind of magic as [[sympathetic magic|imitative]].{{efn|"If we analyze the principles of thought on which magic is based, they will probably be found to resolve themselves into two: first, that like produces like, or that an effect resembles its cause; and, second, that things which have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each other at a distance after the physical contact has been severed. The former principle may be called the Law of Similarity, the latter the Law of Contact or Contagion. From the first of these principles, namely the Law of Similarity, the magician infers that he can produce any effect he desires merely by imitating it: from the second he infers that whatever he does to a material object will affect equally the person with whom the object was once in contact, whether it formed part of his body or not."<ref name=Golden>{{Cite book |last=Frazer |first=James |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3623/3623-h/3623-h.htm#c3section1 |title=The Golden Bough |date=1922 |publisher=Bartleby}}</ref>}} 

In some cultures, witches are believed to use human body parts in magic,{{r|HuttonFear|p=19-22}} and they are commonly believed to [[Infanticide|murder children]] for this purpose. In Europe, "cases in which women did undoubtedly kill their children, because of what today would be called [[postpartum psychosis]], were often interpreted as yielding to diabolical temptation".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Burns |first1=William |title=Witch Hunts in Europe and America: An Encyclopedia |date=2003 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |pages=141–142}}</ref>

Witches are believed to work in secret, sometimes alone and sometimes with other witches. Hutton writes: "Across most of the world, witches have been thought to gather at night, when normal humans are inactive, and also at their most vulnerable in sleep".{{r|HuttonFear|p=19-22}} In most cultures, witches at these gatherings are thought to transgress social norms by engaging in cannibalism, incest and open nudity.{{r|HuttonFear|p=19-22}} 

Witches around the world commonly have associations with animals.{{r|HuttonFear|p=264-277}} [[Rodney Needham]] identified this as a defining feature of the witch archetype.<ref>Rodney Needham, Primordial Characters, Charlottesville, Va, 1978, 26, 42</ref> In some parts of the world, it is believed witches can [[Shapeshifting|shapeshift]] into animals,{{r|HuttonFear|p=264}} or that the witch's spirit travels apart from their body and takes an animal form, an activity often associated with [[shamanism]].{{r|HuttonFear|p=264}} Another widespread belief is that witches have an animal helper.{{r|HuttonFear|p=264}} In English these are often called "[[familiar]]s", and meant an evil spirit or demon that had taken an animal form.{{r|HuttonFear|p=264}} As researchers examined traditions in other regions, they widened the term to servant spirit-animals which are described as a part of the witch's own soul.{{r|HuttonFear|p=269}} 

[[Necromancy]] is the practice of conjuring the spirits of the dead for [[divination]] or [[prophecy]], although the term has also been applied to raising the dead for other purposes. The biblical [[Witch of Endor]] performed it (1 Samuel 28th chapter), and it is among the witchcraft practices condemned by [[Ælfric of Eynsham]]:<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Semple |first=Sarah |date=December 2003 |title=Illustrations of damnation in late Anglo-Saxon manuscripts |url=http://dro.dur.ac.uk/3709/1/3709.pdf |journal=Anglo-Saxon England |volume=32 |pages=231–245 |doi=10.1017/S0263675103000115 |s2cid=161982897 |access-date=2018-10-26 |archive-date=2020-07-31 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200731181142/http://dro.dur.ac.uk/3709/1/3709.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Semple |first=Sarah |date=June 1998 |title=A fear of the past: The place of the prehistoric burial mound in the ideology of middle and later Anglo-Saxon England |journal=World Archaeology |volume=30 |issue=1 |pages=109–126 |doi=10.1080/00438243.1998.9980400 |jstor=125012}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Pope |first=J.C. |title=Homilies of Aelfric: a supplementary collection (Early English Text Society 260) |date=1968 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |volume=II |location=Oxford, England |page=796}}</ref> "Witches still go to cross-roads and to heathen burials with their delusive magic and call to the [[devil]]; and he comes to them in the likeness of the man that is buried there, as if he arises from death."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Meaney |first=Audrey L. |date=December 1984 |title=Æfric and Idolatry |journal=Journal of Religious History |volume=13 |issue=2 |pages=119–135 |doi=10.1111/j.1467-9809.1984.tb00191.x}}</ref>