On Philosophy of Witchcraft – A Short Essay on My Preliminary Findings

– Robert Darnton,

I began my research on the history of witchcraft in order to find out whether there was any theoretical as well as philosophical basis for being labeled as witches, and if there was, whether such a requirement was consistently applied in identifying witches. Further, if they were identified as such according to a rigorous systematic investigation, whether the authorities who persecuted the witches had any legitimate grounds for arresting, torturing and in many cases burning them. Moreover, if the primal reasons for prosecuting them were their alleged association with the devils and their ‘superior’ understanding of medicinal practices, whether there were any philosophical evidence that the witches were indeed serving the devils, from whom they supposedly acquired their skills for midwifery, and if they constituted as magic – that is, in what respect were their methods of healing different from those practiced by barber-surgeons during the same period. The common beliefs about witches also intrigued me to further study the literature so as to get to the bottom of it, so to speak, and uncover whatever philosophical arguments made for the witches’ use of ‘flying ointment’ in order that they could be transported through space and time instantaneously to the Sabbath, where they expressly met with the devils for orgiastic rituals. In doing my research, I also wished to explicate whether such orgiastic rituals had any significance (for instance, why did they have to do it?) as well as elucidating the philosophy behind their cannibalistic nature in devouring unbaptized children.

Thus, I set out to answer, at least, some of the questions I had regarding the witchcraft, only to find myself wandering about from texts to texts without encountering a bit of theoretical rigor in the reasoning propounded by the prosecutors. Assuredly, the most infamous manual for witch-hunt was , or the Hammer of Witches, co-written by the two Dominican Inquisitors, Heninrich Godfrey Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, in 1486 and published in the following year. In this book, which is written in the form of a scholastic disputation – much like that of Thomas Aquinas’ – the authors made a giant leap in claiming that the disbelief in witchcraft is in itself a heresy, for “such an opinion is altogether contrary to the authority of the saints and is founded upon absolute infidelity” and therefore “those err who say there is no such thing as witchcraft.” In this way, Kramer and Sprenger established the existence of witchcraft, and subsequently labeled those who did not believe in witchcraft adamant heretics and the enemy of the Catholicism. This is somewhat troublesome – for if you profess that you do not believe in witchcraft, you are a heretic to be prosecuted, but if you say that you believe in witchcraft, you must explain what makes you believe that witchcraft exists. You cannot say that you believe in witchcraft because you are a witch, so the only conceptual resort you have left is to say that you have seen it happen. However, if you have seen it happen, then you must report such an incident, otherwise they believe that you are hiding a witch, or you yourself are a witch. So now you are involuntarily pushed to the edge and forced to ‘confess’ and name someone whom you have never seen performing the said witchcraft.

Granted that the Inquisitors did not go around asking people if they believed in witchcraft or why, the psychological pressure for the people to believe in witchcraft must have been high. This conceptual twist set the scene for the grand scale witch-hunt to take place offered no possibility of anybody speaking out that there was no such thing as witchcraft. Why did they have to insist that witchcraft was real? This is because the witchcraft signified the pagan rituals, and the pagan religion threatened the advancement of Christianity during the medieval period. Hence, this explains why witches were believed to be worshipping the ‘devil’ named Diana, a pagan god from whose name the Latin word for god, , is derived. In the same vein of reasoning, paganism came to be associated with black magic, as opposed to high or white magic. Magic could be anything that requires rituals in order to bring about a desired effect, often to solve a crisis or avoid bad luck. So in reciting a prayer, a priest is said to be invoking heavenly assistance to guide the people to safety. Because magic was a necessary component not only in religion but also in science (alchemy and divination were referred as high magic), a distinction was made between magic that is beneficial and magic that is harmful ().

Witches, then, were those pagans who practiced religious rituals according to their own religion, independently from Christianity. They were seen as heretics, as they did not observe what the Church ordained them to observe. Heretics could not possibly worship God, and therefore, what the pagans called their god must be nothing but a devil in disguise. In this way, witches (or , as the performers of were referred as) were conceptually associated with ‘bad doings’ ( + ). In people’s mind, witchcraft and diabolism – the worship of the Devil – therefore came hand in hand. Because those who came to be accused of performing witchcraft could also be the wielders of high magic, and because high magic required one to be literate and erudite, men as well as women were subject to such accusations.

As we now know what witches are, we can ask if these people who were called witches actually performed , sacrificing unbaptized children as offerings for the Devil, flying on a broomstick at night, instantaneously transporting themselves through space. The common belief such as the mass gathering of witches at the Sabbath, devouring the infants along with the devils, has yet never been witnessed. Because the belief in the night flight of the witches is tightly connected with the belief in the Sabbath (as night flight of the witches was a explanation if witches need to gather in one distant place during the night and all go home by morning), this belief is also groundless, and hence rather an ad-hoc belief to justify the already existent belief of the Sabbath. This may explain why there seemed not to be any potent properties in the recipes for the flying ointment, which was applied to the vehicle of flight. Unlike the or alchemically prepared medicament in the later periods, the ingredients for the flying ointment seems arbitrary at best, and the recipe is supported by no theoretical framework. Surely, the excrement from toads may have had a hallucinogenic effect, yet the other ingredients like bat’s blood and soot would not have had any significance but incite abomination in ordinary people for those who used them. Even the application of a hallucinogenic substance has nothing to do with the flying ability but only suggests that those witches who confessed to have flown to the Sabbath may have been hallucinating. In fact, twentieth century experiments with the ingredients showed that these ointments “contained atropines and other poisons which, when rubbed into the skin, can produce high excitement, delusion and lifelike dreams.” Further, witches were said to fly on a number of different objects, among them are sticks forked in the manner of a divining rod, pitchforks or tridents as well as animals. However, these can also be explained by the fact that divination was associated with the pagan rituals, tridents are traditionally what devils carry, and animal sacrifices were the norms in paganism. In the light of these findings, orgiastic rituals that the witches allegedly performed with the devils may have socio-historical significance, but not so much with regard to philosophy. What was made up without evidence or theory is an important factor to be considered in doing a social history, but in doing philosophy it is nothing but a vacuous claim. Similarly, official records tell us that witches would often steal milk from neighbours’ cows or deprive men of their virile member, but how they did it is unknown, but only that it happened so that those witches could “collect male organ in great numbers, as many as twenty or thirty members together, and put them in a bird’s nest, or shut them up in a box, where they move themselves like living members, and eat oats and corn.” The belief that one’s penis disappears can be psychiatrically analyzed in terms of , but it is highly unlikely that those who claimed to have their penis deprived suffered the same gradual process of torment in their penis as patients do. Devouring of unbaptized infants can also be traced back to the Christian conception of Paganism, as pagans were often distinguished from Christians by their barbaric customs such as cannibalism and manner of living. As a result, what is most repulsive to think about were associated with them who lived outside the commonsense. The reason why only the unbaptized infants were the witches’ targets is probably to encourage and promote christening of the children, which would offer them a supposed immunity from witchcraft. In light of all this, it seems safe to say that the alleged orgiastic rituals of the witches with the demons at the Sabbath too had only a socio-historical significance rather than a philosophical one.

Perhaps a word or two needs to be said about the witches’ extensive knowledge about medicinal recipes, using herbs or animals. In fact, this is what I set out to discover, amongst other things already mentioned, which is to find out what sort of medical knowledge these alleged witches as well as midwives in the period had. For one of the claims we hear often about the witches is that they used herbs or exotic ingredients extensively in order to cure or harm others according to socially unacceptable means, i.e. magic. This is what distanced the ‘witches’ from barber-surgeons or physicians of the time. Respected doctors cure by means of physical contact or divine intervention. What this divine intervention amounts to is difficult to observe, but one can see why a group of people who apparently cured or harmed others by performing action from distance to be suspected of getting help from the devils. For one thing, such a means never offers a consistent result, but also even if it works, its inner working is hidden from rational explanation. This is also why in the 17^th century Europe, some of the alchemical cures were thought to be rendering devil’s help, and thus must be condemned as heretical. Just as we have seen earlier, the belief that the witches used bat’s blood or excrement of a toad, if true, abhors us. If such a means could cure people, it must be the work of the devil. Indeed, the standard belief was that magic could not be performed without idolatry, i.e. the invocation of evil spirits, as all forms of magic was a result of magicians making pacts with the devil, as we have seen. However, if we look closely, not only medieval high/white magic but also classical medicine from the early Christianity is teemed with such practices. For example, Apuleius, the 2^nd century Latin prose writer, believed that “nails from cross possess magical potency”, drawing from a folk belief that “fingers and noses of crucified individuals have great power,” a clear reference to the relics of Christ. Augustine in the 5^th century also acknowledged “the mysterious qualities of the magnet, the power of goat’s blood to shatter the otherwise indestructible adamant, and the salamander’s capacity to survive fire.” Furthermore, a manuscript from Gaul around the year 800 on the uses of vulture contains an account of a cure:

“The skull, wrapped in the skin of a deer, cures headaches. Its brains, mixed with unguent and stuffed into the nose, are effective against head ailments. The kidneys and testicles cure impotence if they are dried out, pulverized, and administered in wine.”

Another treatise on everyday medicine, known as the of Bald, from the 10^th century, speaks in the minutest detail on the recipe of the medicine for skin disease:

“Take goose-fat, and the lower part of elecampane and viper’s bugloss, bishop’s wort, and cleavers. Pound the four herbs together well, squeeze them out, and add a spoonful of old soap. If you have a little oil, mix it in thoroughly and lather it on at night. Scratch the neck after sunset, and silently pour the blood into running water, spit three times after it, then say ‘Take this disease and depart with it.’ Go back to the house by an open road, and go each way in silence.”

This is a combination of herbal medicine and the procedure for transferring illness to running water, which is magical, and such a practice would be likened to witchcraft in a few hundred years later. This prescription is most likely a compilation of recipes from various sources, but it is truly a wonder what the ‘scratching of the neck after sunset’ has anything to do with it.

It is true that witches were said to have used not only herbs and animal parts but also used infants, taking “a bone from an unbaptized baby out to a crossroad, burying it there, and saying various formulas on that spot over nine days.” Yet, there seems nothing essentially different from folk medicine listed above that was not condemned as heretical. Indeed, no Inquisitors of witch-hunt cared about what people in the past had practiced, but only that there were witches who were doing what the Inquisitors deemed condemnable . This fact alone is a proof that this event, witchcraft, was not philosophical in nature and it never intended to be treated as such by the contemporary. For if it was meant to be philosophical, and if it was concerned with making coherent sense to make the correct judgment according to their religious commitment, witchcraft too had to be treated rigorously as the case was with the doctrine of transubstantiation, which included the thorough analysis of its history from the first use of its term in the 8^th century onwards for finding any contradictions or inconsistencies so that the belief in it would be as error free as one could be.

In conclusion, I have not been able to find in witchcraft anything that pertains to a systematic investigation of theoretical justifications for making accusations of, arresting, prosecuting, torturing, executing the witches, nor did I find any substantial grounds for which why we should believe witches must exist or what qualifies one as a witch. The whole rhetorical framework under which people were operating sums up the entire project of witch-hunt well: “it has never yet been known that an innocent person has been punished on suspicion of witchcraft, and there is no doubt that God will never permit such a thing to happen.” In other words, if someone is executed as a witch, he must have been a witch, and there is no mistake about it that he was a witch. It tantamount to say that whoever dies is a witch and whoever doesn’t is not a witch. In the world of such arbitrariness, surely there is no meaningful philosophy to be found.

Robert Darnton, “Peasants Tell Tales,” in The Great Cat Massacre, 54 (NY: Basic Books, Inc., 1984).

Kramer, Heinrich Godfrey & Sprenger, Jacob, Part 1, Question 1.

Brian P. Levack, (London, UK: Pearson Education Limited, 1987), 4-8.

The ratio throughout Europe between the male witches and female witches accused, convicted and executed is about 1:4, with the only exception in France where more male witches were executed. See , edited by Alan Charles and Edward Peters.

See Levack, 19. “…there is no proof that witches ever gathered in large numbers for any purpose, diabolical or otherwise.”

Ibid., 49. See also for the extensive research done by Sarah Lawless on her blog for more information, http://witchofforestgrove.com/2011/09/10/on-flying-ointments/

Ibid.

See for how the witches are said to dry up the milk from the cows. “…a witch will sit down in a corner of her house with a pail between her legs, stick a knife or some instrument in the wall or a post, and make as if to milk it with her hands. Then she summons her familiar who always works with her in everything, and tells him that she wishes to milk a certain cow from a certain house, which is healthy and abounding in milk. And suddenly the devil takes the milk from the udder of that cow, and brings it to where the witch is sitting, as if it were flowing from the knife.” Part 2, chapter 14.

tells us of an instance of which a young man lost his member, but having confronted the woman with violence whom he suspected to have bewitched him, she restored to him the health of his body. He then “plainly felt, before he had verified it by looking or touching, that his member had been restored to him by mere touch of the witch.” Part 2, chapter 7.

, ibid.

See Ivan Crozier’s scholarly article, “Making Up : Multiplicity, Psychiatry, Culture, and Penis-Shrinking Anxieties,” on more details for disease. In the article, witches are also believed to be the cause of it as well.

Of this, the most obvious example is the aforementioned ‘Powder of Sympathy’ – for more information on this medicament, see my article on the Weapon-Salve at http://isseicreekphilosophy.wordpress.com/2012/04/28/sympathetic-magic-the-weapon-salve-and-the-powder-of-sympathy-in-the-17th-century-europe/

Though, here, the basic underlining theme is not too different from that of early modern alchemists, who believed that nature hides the most valuable secret in least appealing places. Hence the belief in the transmutation of base metals into the high metals, and similarly, phosphorus was discovered out of fermented dungs and human feces.

See also Levack, , 39. Also Richard Keickhefer, (NY: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 41.

An activity that was included in the broad definition of witchcraft, i.e. , which normally denoted “either the practice of magical healing or the use of rather crude forms of divination in order to foretell the future, locate lost objects or identify enemies. See Levack, 11.

Keickhefer, , 36.

Ibid., 39.

Quoted from Keickhefer, 66.

Quoted from Keickhefer, 64. A leechbook is a doctor’s book, and Bald is the name of the person that appears in a poem in the book for whom this book was written.

Ibid., 59.

For a detailed historiography on the philosophy of transubstantiation, see my article at http://isseicreekphilosophy.wordpress.com/2012/02/24/history-and-philosophy-of-transubstantiation/

, Part 2, chapter 11.