Witchcraft is known as the "Old Religion" and is an ancient practice dating back to biblical times.  Witchcraft can be defined as the performance of magic forbidden by God for nonbiblical ends.  The word witchcraft is related to the old English word wiccian, "practice of magical arts."

It was during the Middle Ages that witchcraft experienced a great revival.  It was an age where everyone believed in the supernatural and superstition abounded.

If someone wanted to become a witch, there was an initiation process.  Some of the techniques were simple and some were complicated, but there were usually two requirements.  The first requirement was that the would-be witch must join of his or her own free will.  The second requirement was that the prospective witch must be willing to worship the devil.

Witches are usually organized into covens.  "The word 'coven' dates from about 1500 and is a variation of the word convent.  It means simply an assembly of people, but -it came to be applied especially to the organization of the witches' society" (Geoffrey Parrinder, Witchcraft.- European and African,   London: Faber and Faber, 1963, p. 39).

WITCH HUNTING

One of the darkest periods in European and American history was the time of the "Great

Witch Hunt.  " Although there had been scattered instances of persecution of witches as early as the 12th century, it did not truly get started until the end of the 15th century when two significant events occurred.

The first was a papal letter (known as a Bull) issued on December 5, 1484, by Pope Innocent VIII, which instituted the beginning of official action against suspected witches.  This Bull received wide circulation and in it power was granted to men who were responsible for punishing witches.  These men were known as inquisitors.

 How did one describe a witch?  WM= West, an Engfish writer during the reign of Elizabeth 1, gave the following description:

     A witch or hag is she who-deluded by a pact made with the devil through his persuasion, inspiration and juggling-thinks she can bring about all manner of evil things, either by thought or imprecation, such as to shake the air with lightnings and thunder, to cause hail and tempests, to remove green corn or trees to another place, to be carried on her familiar spirit (which has taken upon him the deceitful shape of a goat, swine, or calf, etc.) into some mountain far distant, in a wonderfully short space of time, and sometimes to fly upon a staff or fork, or some other instrument, and to spend all the night after with her sweetheart, in playing, sporting, banqueting, dancing, dalliance, and divers other devilish lusts and lewd disports, and to show a thousand such monstrous mockeries (William West, Simboleography, 1594).

 The second event that helped cause the great witch hunt was the publication of a book called Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of Witches) in 1486 by Jakob Sprenger and Prior Heinrich Kramer.  This publication was a handbook for witch hunters.

The Papal Bull, along with the publication of Malleus Maleficarum, led to a 300-year nightmare.  People saw witches everywhere.  Those accused of being witches had little or no defense against their accusers.  During this period more than l00, 000 people in every European state were executed for supposedly being witches.

Witches were supposed to have a variety of different powers which kept the people in fear of them.  However, the most feared power thought to be held by the witches was that of bewitchment, the ability to cause sickness and death.

Roger Hart makes an apt comment:

     It can easily be imagined how-in the days when medicine was primitive-various ailments could be mistaken for bewitchment; Paralysis, lockjaw, fevers, anemia, sclerosis, epilepsy, hysteria.  Such illnesses often displayed symptoms which were extremely frightening to educated and uneducated people alike (Hart, Witchcraft, op. cit., p. 54).

 To this fist we could add Huntingtons Chorea and Tourette's Syndrome.  Huntington's Chorea is a disease which does not show up in most of its victims until they are past 30 years of age.  This disease causes the victim to behave in a peculiar manner, including involuntary body movements, fits of anger, and a loss of intelligence.

The victim may make strange outbursts of laughter, cry like a baby, or talk endlessly.  It can easily be seen how a sufferer could be mistaken for being bewitched or being a witch.  Huntington's Chorea is also an inherited disease which would convince the superstitious that the bewitchment has been passed to the children.

Tourette's Syndrome is a rare disease which usually begins in childhood.  The victim experiences tics-involuntary muscle movements-throughout the body but especially in the face.  The sufferer also may kick and stamp his feet.  Along with making awful faces, the victim makes involuntary noises which include shouts, grunts and swearing.  All of these symptoms are beyond the control of the sufferer but appear to the uneducated as a sign of being a witch.

America did not escape the great witch hunt.  Roger Hart comments:

     Perhaps no single witch hunt has attracted so much popular attention as that which took place at Salem in New England in the year 1692.  This American witch hunt was remarkable not merely on account of the large number of people found guilty (Salem was a small community), but also because of the late date at which it took place (lbid, p. 109).

 Although Salem was a relatively small town of about 100 households, the percentage of those tried for being witches was enormous.  Says historian R. H. Robbins-.

     All in all, the toll of Salem, a township of a hundred-odd households, was enormous.  During the hysteria, almost 150 people were arrested.  A search of all the court records would no doubt add to this number Because of the time taken to convict each prisoner, only thirty-one were tried in 1692, not including Sarah Churchill and Mary Warren, two accusers who briefly recanted.  The court of Oyer and Terminer (hear and determine) sentenced to death all thirty-one, of whom six were men.  Nineteen were hanged.  Of the remaining twelve, two (Sarah Osborne and Anne Foster) died in jail; one (Giles Cory) was pressed to death; one (Tituba) was held indefinitely in jail without trial.  Two (Abigail Faulkner and Elizabeth Proctor) postponed execution by pleading pregnancy and lived long enough to be reprieved.  One (Mary Bradbury) escaped from jail after sentencing; and five made confessions which secured reprieves for them (Robbins, op. cit., p. 185).

 Fourteen years later one of the accusers, Anne Putnam, retracted her charges, stating she and others carried the guilt of innocent blood.

The great witch hunt of the Middle Age is remarkable for a number of reasons.  First, it lasted some 300 years and took hundreds of thousands of lives.  It also took place during a time of renewed interest in learning.

The people who participated in this craze were not all irrational individuals but were rather some of the most brilliantly educated people of that day.  Scientists, philosophers and lawyers were among those who participated in the great witch hunt, showing that superstition knows no educational bounds.

It is also unfortunate that much of the persecution came from professing Christians doing it in the name of God.  The passages which were used to justify the witch hunt were misread and taken totally out of context.  The legal penalties of such Old Testament crimes were part of the then-operating theocracy in Israel.

The Lord God was the King in Israel; He had the right to determine the crimes and punishments against His holy and sovereign state.  One who participated in witchcraft was aligning himself with Satan, the foe of God.  Such an alignment was treason against the government of Israel, a government directed personally by the Lord God.

Even today treason is often punished by death.  However, since no nation today is a theocracy, a nation governed directly by God, the penalties instituted then are not applicable.  Witchcraft is still evil and is still rebellion against God.  It is not treason.  Jesus Christ warned that physical death was not the ultimate punishment anyway.

Those who practice witchcraft, displaying their rejection of Jesus Christ, should heed His warning: "And do not fear those who kill the body, but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy soul and body in hell" (Matt. 10:28).

WITCHCRAFT TODAY

Although witch hunting and witch trials no longer occur, the practice of witchcraft continues.  The modern witch does not fit the stereotype of the old hag, for many people who are practicing this art are mainstream of society.  The question is why? Why a renewed interest in this an among both the educated and the ignorant?  Daniel Cohen fists a couple of possible reasons:

     First, there is the eternal appeal of magic, the promise, however muted, that there are secrets available that will give a person power, money, love, and all those things he or she desires but cannot seem to obtain.  Second, witchcraft is a put-down and a revolt against some of the establishment beliefs in organized religion, science, and rational thinking.  The historic connection between witchcraft and drugs and sex also has undoubted appeal.  Here is a set of beliefs that claim to be part of an extremely ancient religion.  Yet this is a religion in which drugs and free sexuality are not condemned, but might be encouraged.

Despite all the publicity and all the witch covens that have been organized, witchcraft still is not taken seriously (Daniel Cohen, A Natural History of Unnatural Things, New York: McCall Pub. Co., 1971, pp. 31, 32)

 Modern witchcraft bears little resemblance to the witchcraft of the Middle Ages or to witchcraft in still primitive, preliterate societies.  Modern witchcraft is a relatively recent development (the last 200 years), embraces hundreds of beliefs and practices and has hundreds of thousands of adherents.  The one common theme running through modern witchcraft is the practice of and . belief in things forbidden by God in the Bible as occultic.

 Up until a couple of decades ago, and for previous centuries, there were no admitted witches anywhere.  Most people have thought of witchcraft as something that only the superstitious gave any credence to.  Witch hunts and broomsticks were filed away together in a little-used corner of the mind.

Today, in a massive spin-off from the culture-wide interest in the occult, this has all changed.  Tens of thousands across America some of them with university degrees-are dabbling in witchcraft, Satanism, voodoo, and other forms of black and white magic.  Witches appear openly on television.  Every high school is said to have its own witch. In Cleveland you can rent a witch to liven up a party.  There are some 80,000 persons practicing white magic in the United States, with 6,000 in Chicago alone.

Some of this is a fad.  But unfortunately, much of it isn't.  Murder after murder has been liked to the craze, with the murderers openly admitting to police or to reporters that they worshipped Satan.  Police more and more frequently are finding grim evidence of both animal and human sacrifice (George Vandeman, Psychic Roulette, Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1973, pp. 99, 100).

THE BIBLE AND WITCHCRAFT

Both the Old and New Testaments make repeated references to the practice of witchcraft and sorcery, and whenever these practices are referred to they are always condemned by God.  The Bible condemns all forms of witchcraft, including sorcery, astrology, and reading human and animal entrails.  The following passages describe the various forms of witchcraft which are condemned by God.

1.  You shall not allow a sorceress to live (Ex. 22:18).

2.  You shall not eat anything with the blood, nor practice divination or soothsaying (Lev. 19:26).

3.  Do not turn to mediums or spiritists; do not seek them out to be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God (Lev. 19:31).

4.  There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, one who uses divination, one who practices witchcraft, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who casts a spell, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead.... For those nations, which you shall dispossess, listen to those who practice witchcraft and to diviners, but as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do so (Dent. 18:10, 11, 14).

5.  Then they made their sons and their daughters pass through the fire, and practiced divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking Him (2 Kings 17:17).

6.  Stand fast now in your spells and in your many sorceries with which you have labored from your youth; perhaps you will be able to profit, perhaps you may cause trembling.  You are wearied with your many counsels; let now the astrologers, those who prophesy by the stars, those who predict by the new moons, stand up and save you from what will come upon you (Isa. 47:12, 13).

7.   But as for you, do not listen to your prophets, your diviners, your dreamers, your soothsayers, or your sorcerers, who speak to you, saying, "You shall not serve the king of Babylon." For they prophesy a lie to you, in order to remove you far from your land; and I will drive you out, and you will perish (Jer. 27:9, 10).

8.    And when they had gone through the whole island as far as Paphos, they found a certain magician, a Jewish false prophet whose name was Bar-Jesus, who was with the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, a man of intelligence.  This man summoned Barnabas and Saul and sought to hear the word of God.  But Elymas the magician (for thus his name is translated) was opposing them, seeking to turn the proconsul away from the faith.  But Saul, who was also known as Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, fixed his gaze upon him, and said, "You who are full of all deceit and fraud, you son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, will you not cease to make crooked the straight ways of the Lord?" (Acts 13:6-10).