Witchcraft in the Modern World

New Perspectives on Witchcraft, Magic, and Demonology

Brian P. Levack

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780815336709
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136538278
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Witchcraft and magical beliefs have captivated historians and artists for millennia, and stimulated an extraordinary amount of research among scholars in a wide range of disciplines. This new collection, from the editor of the highly acclaimed 1992 set, Articles on Witchcraft, Magic, and Demonology, extends the earlier volumes by bringing together the most important articles of the past twenty years and covering the profound changes in scholarly perspective over the past two decades. Featuring thematically organized papers from a broad spectrum of publications, the volumes in this set encompass the key issues and approaches to witchcraft research in fields such as gender studies, anthropology, sociology, literature, history, psychology, and law. This new collection provides students and researchers with an invaluable resource, comprising the most important and influential discussions on this topic. A useful introductory essay written by the editor precedes each volume.

Witch persecution after the era of the witch trials

A contribution to Danish ethnohistory

GUSTAV HENNINGSEN

Introduction

It is usually said that witch trials in Denmark stopped around the year 1700, and that the last witch-burning took place in Falster in 1693. Neither part of this statement is quite correct. The execution in Falster, when the witch was in fact beheaded before she was put to the stake, was the last public witch-burning in this country. Thirty years later an old woman was burned in a witch-lynching at Sailing. And insofar as the trials are concerned, witches continued to appear before the courts right up to the beginning of our own century, although as time went on they tended to be witch-trials “in reverse”, that is, the witch brought charges against the person who had accused him or her of witchcraft. Reports on the subject appear in copious detail in magazines and newspapers, but they invariably deal with individual cases and they are almost always accompanied by the writer's amazed comments on how such a thing could occur so long after “the era of witch-trials” The present article is an attempt to show how, when we collate these isolated cases, we can link “the era of witch-trials” in the 16th and 17th centuries with the era of folklore records of the 19th and 20th centuries. At the same time I wish to illustrate how the later trial material is often of greater ethnohistoric source value than the earlier records (previous to 1700), when the interrogations sought to confirm the witch-belief current at the time rather than to clarify the situation in the case in question. My material is chiefly limited to the references I have been able to find in the registers of the Danish Folklore Archives. If nothing else, despite its incompleteness, this essay may serve to show the results to be gained from searching for witch-trial records in our juridical archives from 1700 onwards, not to mention newspapers from the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries.

Although brief and imprecise, the newspaper accounts are often more satisfactory than the folklore records. If, for instance, we look at Vol. VI, 2 of Evald Tang Kristensen's Danske Sagn [Danish Legends] (Århus, 1901), which is entirely devoted to witches, we can easily form the impression that the reporters of these stories did not themselves believe in witches. Events almost always take place “in the past”. One of the few exceptions to this rule is a report by Karen Marie Rasmussen of Linde (nd. 1895); she writes to Tang Kristensen: “I have given much thought to whether I ought to write about any of this, as ‘the witch’ is still alive, [crossed out: and it all happened so recently]” (DS VI, 2, p. 6; DFS 1929/1 K. M. R.).

On the other hand, when we read the newspapers we see that witch-belief was a hard and brutal reality right up to the turn of the century. The emphasis on the past tense in the folklore records may perhaps mean that witch-belief was too prevalent to be mentioned in the present tense; for though the collectors were most interested in “the old days”, setting the records in the past may well have helped an informant to avoid giving details that were excessively compromising. Even as late as the 1960s, when I carried out fieldwork on witch-belief on a southern Danish island through interviews with persons selected from amongst those with a knowledge of the tradition, twenty of my hundred or so reporters revealed that they believed in witches. This island community was most likely an exception, but it is probably not an exaggeration to maintain that witch-belief existed in most places in Denmark up to the time of the First World War.

Recent research (Henningsen 1973) has shown that witch-belief is not dependent on foolish misunderstanding and lack of information, as has been argued since the Age of Enlightenment. Belief in witches is a conviction that enables people to cope with many problems in everyday life. It does not teach, as the church in Denmark did especially since the age of Pietism, that misfortune and adversity are trials sent by God, to be borne with the same humility and patience as shown by Job in the Old Testament. According to witch-belief evil assails us not as a trial or as punishment for sins committed but as villainous designs from a certain type of human being in league with mysterious powers, namely the witch. But witches are not invincible: according to the same beliefs we can combat them in two ways, either through counter-magic, when, possibly with the assistance of a cunning man (in Africa a witch-doctor), an attack is launched on the supernatural side of the witch's nature; or, since the witch is actually a human being with flesh and blood, by resorting to physical violence. That is to say, we can face the evil element in life as a concrete opponent. This is the cognitive function of witch-belief. But it has other uses too. The witch is the epitome of everything antisocial, everything that is contrary to accepted norms (cf. Henningsen 1970); in Denmark accusations commonly linked whore and witch, or thief and witch, indiscrimately. In brief, witch-belief acquires a moral dimension in that all take care to ensure that their behaviour can never incur a charge of witchcraft.

Witch-belief has a third and important function in serving as a kind of safety valve for all the hidden aggression that cannot be expressed through natural channels because the community will not tolerate it. It is hardly permissible to send a poor beggar away empty-handed, or to shut the door on one's neighbour when he wants to borrow something, or throw out one's mother-in-law when one has to give her house-room on her old age; but if one can convince oneself and others that these individuals are really witches, one need then have no compunction in turning away the beggar, locking the door on the neighbour and banishing one's mother-in-law to an outhouse to live on the scraps one puts out for her. Cases of this sort are merely a few examples of less violent aggression against witches in Denmark until c. 1900; I shall go on to show how far the reversal of moral and social norms could be taken when one had “learned” that a person was not a real human being, but a witch.

The most characteristic feature of more recent research, and here I am thinking especially of the socio-anthropological studies in Africa by Evans-Pritchard and his successors, is a concentration on those who believed in witches. This has provided the answers to a number of questions which traditional European research, blinded by focusing solely on the witches for several centuries, had been unable to give. The definitions I shall make use of below are largely inspired by the research on Africa, although I adopt more radical measures than Evans-Pritchard and his successors (Evans-Pritchard 1935, 417 ff.; Douglas 1970). I shall also discard the definitions I myself have put forward on a previous occasion. In contrast to the criterion I used earlier, in which I took the role society (the group) allots to the individual in relation to magic (Henningsen 1969 a, 727), this time I have chosen to begin with the concrete actions and define the magical roles according to the things which people do in actual fact, and ignore what others believe about them, the fictitious roles, we might say. The viability of such a criterion naturally depends on whether the sources allow us to get to the bottom of what actually did happen. This is not always possible for the modern ethnologist, who depends after all on how much people are prepared to tell him. Nor is it possible with trial material from the 16th and 17th centuries, when the witches' evidence was often distorted. Legal sources from the Age of Enlightenment, however, provide reliable details for the criterion,.since on the one hand the accused relate a great deal they would not reveal in an ethnological interview, and on the other hand were not urged to confess according to predetermined outlines. Indeed, this type of legal source can be found long before the rationalistic period, namely in the sporadic cases where the legal investigation was carried out on an empirical basis. The Spanish inquisitor Alonso de Salazar Frias's investigation of Basque witch-belief at the beginning of the 17th century is an example of this (Henningsen 1969, cf. my thesis The Witches' Advocate, University of Nevada Press, 1980).

Definitions

By sorcery I understand actions employing the use of magic, which, regardless of whether they lead to the desired result, are possible to perform. By witchcraft (Danish: hekseri) I understand actions which employ the use of magic and are physically impossible and which thus exist only as conceived beliefs. By counter-witchcraft (modtrolddom) I understand magic undertaken for the purpose of preventing, revealing or combating witchcraft. I use the term cunning man/wise woman (heksemester) for professional practitioners of counter-witchcraft, sorcerer/sorceress (sortekunstner) as the term for practitioners of sorcery, and finally I use the name witch (heks) for male as well as female practitioners of supposedly magic acts. I write supposedly, for as will be observed, according to my definition a witch is always a person who has not “done anything”. In opposition to a number of social anthropologists (e.g. Firth 1964, 237) I do not consider one can study witches without forming an opinion on whether they do in fact carry out any of the things they are accused of. If it becomes clear that a person accused of witchcraft has actually practised a form of bewitchment magic, then in my view he is no witch, but a sorcerer. It must be emphasised, moreover, that members of present-day various forms of “witch cults” cannot be included in this definition. These modern sorcerers and mystics have nothing to do with witches of the traditional ilk; if they follow any tradition at all it is derived from the learned magic which the upper classes in particular have been drawn to over the centuries. Finally let me make it clear that my definitions of witchcraft and sorcery are operative. They do not accord—to return now to Denmark—either with the popular concept, which distinguished between “doing good” and “doing evil”, or with the juridical view, which distinguished between “proper witchcraft (ægte trolddom)” and “not proper witchcraft (ægte trolddom)” determined solely by whether a pact with the Devil was involved or not.

The educated view of sorcery and that of the people

In Denmark no law was passed to abolish witch trials as happened in Prussia 1714 and in England 1736. A person could be sentenced to life imprisonment if he attempted to harm another with “deluded imaginary arts” (D. L. 6–1–10) up to 1840, when most of the regulations regarding sorcery in Danske Lov (Christian V's Danish Code of 1683) were replaced by a clause relating to fraud, which stipulated a few week's imprisonment. The main regulation regarding sorcery remained in force, however, until the abolition of Danske Lov and its replacement by the penal law of 1866. It runs in all its horror: “If any sorcerer or sorceress be found who has forsworn God, Christianity and baptism and abandoned himself to the Devil, he should be thrown alive on the fire and burned to death” (D. L. 6–1–9). These regulations remained not merely technically in force after 1700, but amazingly enough continued to be applied to some extent, as I shall show below. But first I want to sort out another misunderstanding, namely that the ruling class (to categorise nobility, ecclesiastics and the bourgeoisie under one heading) in the early 17th century rejected the witch- and devil-belief of the previous centuries. No doubt the rationalistic current from abroad had the effect of changing their view of witchcraft and sorcery so that they now tended to scorn that sort of thing as heathen superstition and the simple-minded gossip of the common people. But Denmark never carried out a radical reckoning with witch- and devil-belief such as occurred in other countries c. 1700. In the words of the English historian Trevor-Roper, we can say that in Denmark the “intellectual basis” of witch-belief went unchallenged until the middle of the 19th century. No one contested the theoretical possibility of making a pact with the devil or of bewitching one's neighbour; all they did was to emphasise the difficulties of bringing valid evidence in cases of this kind and urge judges to exert the utmost caution. This is made clear in the study by Jørgen Jacobsen, historian of law and culture, of 18th and 19th century writers and legal commentators: one of the interesting sections of his study of Danish Supreme Court sentences in witch trials, otherwise chiefly dealing with the 16th and 17th centuries. The examples which follow are all taken from Jacobsen's account (Jacobsen 1966, 209–229).

In 1748 the Danish playwright and essayist Ludvig Holberg writes that “you hear so many plausible stories that it is hard entirely to deny witchcraft” (Epistle 91). In his treatise on Danish criminal law (1760, reprinted 1773), the lawyer C. D. Hedegaard admits that “sorcery or witchcraft is something foreign to reason, but when one believes the Scriptures or the revealed word of God its reality cannot generally be denied”. However, he advises the judge to use the greatest caution in concrete cases, “so that he does not lightly take or regard anyone as a sorcerer”, for history offers abundant examples “that in the past many innocent persons have suffered burning in this way, cf. Becker's bezauberte Welt”. And where the common people are concerned Hedegaard thinks it is downright dangerous to treat these things as a philosophical possibility. He asks himself “whether it would not be better not to establish or believe that witchcraft existed; for then none would think of it or feel inclined to engage in it”. In 1788 Laurits Nørregaard, a professor of law, stated in his lectures: “In our enlightened times one gives no more credence to the law as to stories and reports of witch trials as a proof of the viability of the charges. Therefore all those who are concerned in cases of accusations of sorcery must act with the greatest caution … and investigate to acquire absolute certainty of corpus delicti before applying the laws; not blindly put their trust in superstitious witnesses, and least of all believe the accused person's own confession.” The Supreme Court lawyer Christia...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Content
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Newspapers and Popular Belief in Witchcraft and Magic in the Modern Period
• Hag-Riding in Nineteenth-Century West Country England and Modern Newfoundland: An Examination of An Experience-Centered Witchcraft Tradition
• Witchcraft Beliefs in Pre-revolutionary Russian and Ukrainian Villages
• "Tacit, Unsuspected, but Still Implicit Faith": Alternative Belief in Nineteenth-Century Rural England
• Methodism, the Clergy, and the Popular Belief in Witchcraft and Magic
• Nazi Ideology Redefining Deviants: Witches, Himmler's Witch-Trial Survey, and the Case of the Bishopric of Bamberg
• Whose Enlightenment? Medicine, Witchcraft, Melancholia, and Pathology
• The Victory of Psychiatry over Demonology: the Origins of the Nineteenth-Century Myth
• Witchcraft Prosecutions after the End of the Era of the Witch Trials: A Contribution to Danish Ethnology
• The Witch and Crime: the Persecution of Witches in Twentieth-Century Poland
• Fairy Faith and Changelings: The Burning of Bridget Cleary in 1895
• Justice by Magic: Witchcraft as Social Control among Franconian Peasants
• The Old Vinegar Lady, or the Judicial Modernization of the Crime of Witchcraft
• The Ross-shire Witchcraft Case of 1822
• Red Lilac of the Cayugas: Traditional Indian Laws and Culture Conflict in a Witchcraft Trial in Buffalo, New York, 1930
• Urbanization and the Decline of Witchcraft: An Examination of London
• If You are a Devil You Are a Witch and if You Are a Witch You are a Devil: The Integration of "Pagan" ideas into the Conceptual Universe of Ewe Christians in Southeastern Ghana
• Witchcraft in Statecraft: Five Technologies of Power in Colonial and Postcolonial Coastal Kenya
• Containing Occult Practices: Witchcraft Trials in Cameroon
• The ANC's Dilemma: The Symbolic Politics of Three Witch-Hunts in the South African Lowveld, 1990–1995
• Acknowledgments