The Origins of Witchcraft - Lecture by Professor Teofilo Ruiz

I'm trying to get more of a grasp on the history of witchcraft and the causes of the witch craze in Europe. There's so much information, so much to read... I decided to try youtube for lectures or documentaries and came across a few lectures by Professor Teofilo Ruiz. I'm watching some but will also try to triangulate by finding other sources who might support or challenge this one. 

 

For the sake of my essay and getting information down before I forget it, I tried to write out a bunch of what he was talking about.

•  'Between 1480 and 1660 the majority of people believed in witches or people who would consort with the devil - mainly elderly women. The majority of those subjects were burned at the stake or hanged (in England). Extraordinary phenomenon. How did this happen? What prompted these kinds of beliefs? ...No one believed this in the middle ages... they emerged out of the blue'. 

The aim of the lecture is to examine witchcraft, as opposed to the witch craze. 

• Begining by referencing Jean Bodin with the following definition: "Sorcerer or witch - one who by commerce with the devil, has the full intention of obtaining his or her ends" Creating ties with the Devil in essence. 

• In Europe from late 15th century onwards, scholars and Kings sought to define what witchcraft was. Innumerable texts taking the lead from the Malleus Maleficarum. Trying to discuss whether the Devil, Incubus, Succubus etc could occupy individuals. 

• By the 16th century, witchcraft has acquired a personality in Europe. It underpins the whole persecution of witches and the creation of the witch craze. Remarkable because in an earlier period, the Catholic church had dismissed the charges and ideas as preposterous. As a whole, the church did not accept the idea of the mass conspiracy. God holds the power, never the Devil. Why did this idea get overthrown and replaced by something else?...i.e. the way that people thought about witches and witchcraft.

• The witch craze and trial of witches carried out throughout most of Europe killed massive numbers in the Early Modern Period.

• Historians have argued that witches exist in all cultures. There are references to them everywhere, including the Bible. It is a universal.

• Professor Teofilo Ruiz argues against this and says concepts of good and evil are culturally specific. 'Defining something as witchcraft in another culture is applying our own idea or concept of culture onto them. The concept of evil is very different in other cultures. We could define something as witchcraft in another country, but that country may not consider it that. We have to be careful what we define to be witchcraft.'

• Origins: Historically, the first religions of mankind were fertility cults and essentially were not religions at all. Religion and magic are always intertwined but there is a great deal of difference in the way in which witchcraft and magic are conceived, versus how religion is conceived. Magic is how early civilisations tried to contain and dominate the world. 

Magic as power over nature. Religion as accepting we have no power over nature:

• Man before the birth of religion - how do they deal with nature before they understand it? How did they guarantee that the sun that gave them warmth and allowed their plants to grow came up every day? So began a series of ceremonies and incantations that attempted to give man a sense of control or power over nature. Is the realisation that these things do not work the leap to religion ; which is the acceptance that you cannot control the world, that you have to surrender to it, and that you have to depend on a deity or a collection of deities (depending on which society you live in). So religion grows out of this changed relationship with the sacred - we cannot control nature.

There will be histories who relate the beginnings of witchcraft to many of these practices, which remain alive in some cultures and rural populations.

To this very day, people, religious or not, still engage in acts of what we could define as magic, or acts of witchcraft. It could be simple, routines or practices, lucky items, superstitions. We attribute to the physical world some elements of magic, which essentially gives us the control. Even in religions today, there are elements that reference the very beginnings of history - the attempts to control the world and control nature to some extent.

• This notion that witchcraft is really the result of consorting with the devil is grounded on the popular belief that magic is real. That you can gain powers by certain formulas, and if you don't it's because you haven't repeated the formulas correctly. The notion of good vs evil and a duality to the world. That duality begins with our own awareness of the universe.

• Anthropological examination of witchcraft roots. Day v night, sun v moon, creating dualistic opposites in our culture, in western culture. Fears of the night that still have a grip on us and had a tremendous grip on ancient man. Good and Evil is a very western phenomenon.

How do historians look at witchcraft and the witch craze?

The topic has a specific and unique attraction and there are all kinds of opinions about the topics. What witchcraft is? or what prompted the craze?

• Some historians argue... that the witch craze is nonsense, constructed by those in power as a way of creating an escape for people - escaping by persecuting others - scapegoating for serving political purposes.

 

Lack of reliable evidence:

• 'We cannot trust the historical evidence from the 16th and 17th centuries. This is evidence that is obtained through coercion and planted in the minds of poor people brought to trial by inquisitors, who are eventually led to the admission of preposterous charges with no foundation whatsoever.'

• We are drawing from sources that are hostile to witchcraft. Biased. We do not ever hear the voice of the 'witch'. It is only ever mediated by the questioner. We have no documents that tell us what they really thought. We have only essentially the information given to us by those in power.

• '...This historiographical approach (which looks at the victims, which looks at witchcraft from the bottom up, that is to say, the people who have been victimised by the discourse of witchcraft) is the kind of methodology that dominated the history of witchcraft.'

However, there is another point of view. 

• Historian Margaret Murray, wrote a book in the early 1920s - also related to the great work by James Frazer, The Golden Bough - Murray argues that the witchcraft was a reality. The inquisitors were responding to a reality. The reality was the survival of varying cults. They manifested themselves in the 16th century. These practices were, in fact, taking place in Europe - these ceremonies and beliefs etc.

Info about Murray: 

• Anglo-Indian Egyptologist, archaeologist, anthropologist, historian and folklorist. 
• First woman to be appointed as a lecturer in archaeology in the United Kingdom.
• Worked at the University College London from 1898 to 1935.
• Served as President of the Folklore Society from 1953 to 1955
• Unable to return to Egypt due to WW1, she focused her research on the witch-cult hypothesis, the theory that the witch trials of Early Modern Christendom were an attempt to extinguish a surviving pre-Christian, pagan religion devoted to a Horned God. 
• The theory gained widespread attention and proved a significant influence on the emerging new religious movement of Wicca, but was academically discredited.
• Known as both 'The Grand Old Woman of Egyptology' and 'Grandmother of Wicca'

• Murray was laughed out of academia, and her ideas were dismissed and no one took them very seriously. Until around 30 years ago or so, when Carlo Ginzberg wrote a book titled 'The Night Battles', and more books, dealing more or less with the same theme. He identified a group of people, the Benandanti (or 'Good Walkers') who had a system of beliefs which harkened back to an agrarian cult that had been preserved in Europe. In Friuli, Northeastern Italy. There have been criticisms of this, accusing Ginzberg or resurrecting Murray's ideas. Many dismissed the story that there was the cult that survived.

Professor Teofilo Ruiz agrees with Ginzberg. That there could well be value in tracing back practices to different parts of the world, connecting different kinds of esoteric beliefs, and finding that they did indeed influence the craze and perception of witchcraft.

• 'The point is that from the 13th century on, we see a slow shift in the way that Christianity begins to define witchcraft.' 

• 'It was a response to changing economic, social and political conditions. In the 13th and 14th centuries, we have an attempt within Christianity to define what witchcraft is and how to deal with it. This led to a completely new definition of witches. From the late 15th century onward, a series of economic and social factors - changing conditions in the European countryside, penetration of church into areas that had not been fully Christianised until then - led to those new cultures to come into contact with worlds that had not yet fully been brought into Christianity. The result of that, emerging out of new definitions, new social and economic conditions, close to 100,000 people paid with their lives.