The term witchcraft (and witch) is a controversial one with a complicated history. Used with entirely different contexts, and within entirely different cultural references, it can take on distinct and often contradictory meanings. Each culture has its own particular body of concepts dealing with magic, religion, benevolent and harmful spirits, and ritual; and these ideas do not find obvious equivalents in other cultures.

Sometimes witchcraft is used to refer, broadly, to the practice of magic, and has a connotation similar to sorcery. Depending on the values of the community, witchcraft in this sense may be regarded with varying degrees of suspicion and hostility, or with ambivalence, being neither intrinsically good nor evil. Members of some religions have applied the term witchcraft in a pejorative sense to refer to all magical or ritual practices other than those sanctioned by their own doctrines, though this has become less common, at least in the West. According to some religious doctrines, all forms of magic are labeled witchcraft, and are either proscribed or treated as superstitious. Such religions consider their own ritual practices to be not at all magical, but rather simply variations of prayer.

Witchcraft is also used to refer, narrowly, to the practice of magic in an exclusively inimical sense. If the community accepts magical practice in general, then there is typically a clear separation between witches (in this sense) and the terms used to describe legitimate practitioners. This use of the term is most often found in accusations against individuals who are suspected of causing harm in the community by way of supernatural means. Belief in witches of this sort have been common among the indigenous populations of the world, including Africa, Asia and the Americas. On occasion such accusations have led to witch hunts.

Under the monotheistic religions of the Levant (primarily Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), witchcraft came to be associated with heresy, rising to a fever pitch among the Catholics, Protestants, and secular leadership of the European Late Medieval/Early Modern period. Throughout this time, the concept of witchcraft came increasingly to be interpreted as a form of Devil worship. Accusations of witchcraft were frequently combined with other charges of heresy against such groups as the Cathars and Waldensians.

In the modern West, witchcraft accusations have often accompanied the Satanic Ritual Abuse hysteria. Such accusations are a counterpart to blood libels of various kinds, which may be found throughout history across the globe.

Recently, witchcraft has taken on a distinctly positive connotation among Wiccans and other Neopagans as the ritual element of their religious beliefs.

A great deal of confusion and conflict has arisen from attempts by one group or another to canonize their particular definition of the term.

Practices typically considered to be witchcraft

Influencing another person's body or property:

Practices to which the witchcraft label are applied are those which influence another person's body or property against his or her will, or which are believed, by the person doing the labeling, to undermine the social or religious order.

Some modern commentators, especially neopagan ones, consider the malefic nature of witchcraft to be a Christian projection. However, the concept of a magic-worker influencing another person's body or property against his or her will was present in many cultures before introduction of monotheism, as there are traditions in both folk magic and religious magic that have the purpose of countering witchcraft or identifying witches from those times. Many examples can be found in ancient texts, such as those from Egypt and Babylonia. Where witchcraft is believed to have the power to influence the body or possessions, witches become a credible cause for disease, sickness in animals, bad luck, sudden death, impotence and other such misfortunes. Folk magic of a more benign and socially acceptable sort may then be employed to turn the witchcraft aside, or identify the supposed witch so that punishment may be carried out. In some cases, the folk magic used to identify or protect against witches is virtually indistinguishable from that used by the witches, themselves.

Poppets or effigies:


There are several magical practices that are associated with witchcraft, to such a degree that those who use them were given the label 'witch' by Westerners, irrespective of the culture in which they appear. The most immediately recognisable practice is the making of poppets or effigies. Witches were believed to create figures in clay, wax, or from rags, to represent people, and the actions performed upon these figures were believed to be transferred to the subject.

"To some others at these times he [the Devil] teacheth how to make pictures of wax or clay. That by the roasting thereof, the persons that they beare the name of, may be continually melted or die away by continually sickness."
Source: James I, Demonologie
The making of wax figures was also a means of countering witchcraft and turning the magic back on the caster.

Conjuring the dead:


Necromancy, the conjuring of the spirits of the dead, is also regarded as a typical witchcraft practice; the Biblical 'Witch' of Endor is supposed to have performed it, and it is among the witchcraft practices condemned by Aelfric.

"Yet fares witches to where roads meet, and to heathen burials with their phantom craft and call to them the devil, and he comes to them in the dead man's likeness, as if he from death arises, but she cannot cause that to happen, the dead to arise through her wizardry."
Source: Aelfric's Homilies

Other practices:

A host of other powers were said to be received through demonic compacts, such as those of riding through the air on a broomstick, assuming different shapes at will, and tormenting a witch's chosen victims. It was believed that an imp or "familiar spirit" was placed at the disposal of practitioners, able and willing to perform any service that might be needed to further their nefarious purposes. Supernatural aid is also invoked to compass the death of a particularly undesirable individual, to awaken the passion of love in those who are the objects of desire, to call up the dead, or to bring calamity or impotence upon enemies, rivals, and fancied oppressors. For this reason, "witchcraft" practices are typically forbidden by law where belief in them exists (as well as being hated and feared by the general populace) while "folk magic" is tolerated or even accepted wholesale by the people, even if the orthodox establishment objects to it.

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