The history of witchcraft: from antiquity to today

A Roman senator once wrote that a woman in Thessaly had been caught drawing down the moon. The charge was not hyperbole. In the first century CE, the practice of magic was a criminal offense under the Lex Cornelia de sicariis et veneficiis, the law against murderers and poisoners. Witchcraft, broadly defined as the use of supernatural powers for harm or benefit, has been documented in every known culture, from the clay tablets of Mesopotamia to the smartphone apps of the twenty-first century.

Definition

Witchcraft is the practice of magic, often involving the manipulation of natural forces, spirits, or deities to achieve specific outcomes. The term carries a heavy historical weight. In the ancient world, it was a neutral or even respected skill — healers, midwives, and diviners operated in plain sight. By the late medieval period, it had been criminalized as heresy, and the word “witch” became synonymous with Satanism and evil. Today, it is reclaimed by millions as a spiritual path, a craft, or a form of cultural resistance.

Where Did the Concept of Witchcraft Begin?

The earliest written record of witchcraft comes from the Code of Hammurabi, circa 1750 BCE. Law paragraphs 1 and 2 deal with accusations of witchcraft: if a man accuses another of practicing witchcraft but cannot prove it, the accused must undergo the river ordeal. If the river drowns them, the accuser takes their house. If the river clears them, the accuser is put to death. The law assumes witchcraft is real, dangerous, and actionable.

In ancient Egypt, magic — heka — was a neutral force, as natural as the Nile flood. The gods themselves used it to create the world. A priest could use heka to protect the pharaoh; a commoner could use it to curse a thief. The Egyptian Book of the Dead is packed with spells to traverse the underworld. There was no moral judgment attached to the practitioner.

Across the Mediterranean, the Greek and Roman worlds distinguished between goeteia (low sorcery, often associated with the dead and with love spells) and theurgia (high magic, the ritual invocation of gods). The witch figures of classical literature, Circe, Medea, the witch of Endor in the Hebrew Bible, were not necessarily evil. They were dangerous, powerful, and outside the social order. The Roman poet Horace tells of the witch Canidia, who buries a boy up to his neck to use his liver for a love potion. The detail is gruesome, but it reflects real anxieties: magic was a tool, and its users were feared not because they worshipped the devil (a concept that did not yet exist), but because they could override the natural order.

How Did Witchcraft Become a Crime?

The shift from neutral magic to diabolical heresy took centuries. Early Christian authorities tolerated folk charms as long as they did not invoke pagan gods. The Council of Ancyra in 314 CE prescribed penance for those who “consulted soothsayers,” but not death. The real turning point was the 1486 publication of the Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches), written by the Dominican friars Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger.

The Malleus argued that witchcraft was not just a superstition but a demonic conspiracy. Witches made pacts with the devil, flew to sabbaths, and destroyed crops, livestock, and children. The book became a legal manual for witch hunters across Europe. It explicitly targeted women, claiming that women were more susceptible to demonic influence because of their “imperfect intellect” and “insatiable carnal desire.” The text was not universally accepted: the University of Cologne condemned it, and the Inquisition itself sometimes ignored it, but it was printed in twenty-nine editions and shaped the European witch hunts for two centuries.

The witch hunts themselves peaked between 1560 and 1660. Estimates vary wildly: modern historians place the total number of executions at roughly 40,000 to 60,000, with about 80% of the victims being women. The trials were not a medieval phenomenon, they were early modern, prosecuted by educated judges using legal procedures. The last official execution for witchcraft in Europe took place in Switzerland in 1782, when the servant Anna Göldi was beheaded for allegedly making a child vomit pins.

What Did Witchcraft Symbolize in Different Eras?

In the ancient world, witchcraft symbolized the boundary between the tame and the wild. A witch was someone who operated outside the city walls, in the graveyards and crossroads, where normal rules did not apply. The Roman poet Lucan describes the witch Erictho, who haunts battlefields to collect corpses for prophetic rituals. She is not a villain, she is a force of nature, as amoral as a storm.

During the witch hunts, witchcraft became a symbol of absolute evil. The devil was believed to mark his followers with a “witch’s mark,” an insensitive spot on the skin that would not bleed. The witch’s sabbath was imagined as a grotesque inversion of the Christian Mass: the cross was trampled, the host was replaced with a turnip, and the kiss of the devil was given on the anus. These images were not invented by the accused. They were imposed by interrogators, who used torture to extract confessions that matched the demonological template.

The modern revival of witchcraft, beginning in the 1950s, transformed the symbol again. The witch became a figure of resistance, nature worship, and feminist reclamation. The apple, once a symbol of Eve’s sin and the witch’s temptation, was reinterpreted as a symbol of knowledge. When you cut an apple crosswise, you reveal a five-pointed star, the pentagram, a central symbol of modern witchcraft. We do not know who first noticed that, but it is a detail that pleases the eye and the mind.

How Has Witchcraft Been Practiced Across Time?

The practices of witchcraft are as varied as the cultures that produced them. In ancient Greece, practitioners used katadesmoi (curse tablets), thin sheets of lead inscribed with a name and a petition, then rolled up and pierced with a nail, deposited in a grave or a well. The lead was chosen because it was soft, cold, and associated with the underworld. The name of the target was often written backwards, or with the letters scrambled. The dead were asked to bind the victim’s tongue, hands, or genitals.

In medieval Europe, folk magic was a practical, everyday affair. The cunning folk, white witches, wise women, devins-guérisseurs, were consulted for healing, finding lost objects, and protecting against evil. They used charms, herbs, and the sign of the cross. The church condemned them, but local communities relied on them. The line between a saint and a cunning woman was thin: both were believed to intercede with supernatural forces.

The modern practice of witchcraft, often called Wicca, was formalized in the 1950s by Gerald Gardner, a retired British civil servant. Gardner claimed to have been initiated into a surviving coven of witches in the New Forest, and he published Witchcraft Today in 1954. His system combined elements of ceremonial magic, folk practice, and theosophy, with a focus on the worship of a Horned God and a Triple Goddess, and the observance of eight seasonal festivals (the Wheel of the Year). The Wiccan Rede, “An it harm none, do what ye will,” became the ethical foundation.

Today, the term “witchcraft” covers a vast spectrum. Eclectic witches draw from multiple traditions. Traditional Wiccans follow Gardner’s lineage. Folk witches work with local spirits and ancestors. There are Christian witches, Jewish witches, and atheist witches. The common thread is the belief that the practitioner can affect change through will, ritual, and the manipulation of symbolic objects.

Who Were the Notable Figures in Witchcraft History?

The biblical Witch of Endor, in 1 Samuel 28, summons the spirit of the prophet Samuel for King Saul. She is a ba’alat ob, a mistress of a ghost, and her skill is acknowledged without condemnation. The text does not say she is evil.

The Greek witch Medea, daughter of King Aeëtes, used her knowledge of herbs and magic to help Jason steal the Golden Fleece. She later killed her own children after Jason abandoned her. She is a complex figure: a sorceress, a healer, a murderer, and a goddess in some cults.

The seventeenth-century English witch Isobel Gowdie was accused in 1662 and gave one of the most detailed confessions in Scottish history. She described flying on a horse made of straw, shape-shifting into a cat, and meeting the devil in the form of a dark man. Her confession was likely extracted under torture, but it is a priceless document of the folk beliefs that the authorities were trying to suppress.

In the twentieth century, Gerald Gardner and Doreen Valiente, his High Priestess, shaped the modern religion of Wicca. Valiente rewrote Gardner’s rituals, adding poetry and depth. She later left Gardner’s coven and became a key figure in the public spread of witchcraft.

What Are the Common Misconceptions About Witchcraft?

The most persistent misconception is that witches worship Satan. Satan is a figure from Christian theology, and the concept of a devil opposing God is not present in pre-Christian European paganism. Wiccans and many modern witches do not believe in a literal devil at all. The accusation of devil worship was a smear applied by witch hunters, not a real practice.

Another misconception is that all witches were burned during the witch hunts. In England and the American colonies, witches were hanged. In Scotland, they were strangled and then burned. In continental Europe, burning was common, but it was often preceded by strangulation. The “burning times” is a phrase used in modern Paganism, but it conflates many different legal systems.

A third misconception is that witchcraft is a relic of the past, practiced only by uneducated people. The revival of witchcraft in the twentieth century was led by middle-class, literate individuals, many of them academics, artists, and civil servants. Today, witchcraft is practiced by lawyers, doctors, and software engineers. It is not superstition; it is a structured belief system with its own theology, ethics, and practices.

FAQ

When did the history of witchcraft begin?
The earliest written evidence of witchcraft accusations comes from the Code of Hammurabi, around 1750 BCE. The practice of magic itself is older than writing.

Are witchcraft and Wicca the same thing?
No. Wicca is a specific religion founded in the 1950s by Gerald Gardner. Witchcraft is a broader term for the practice of magic, which can be part of many religions or none.

Were all witches burned at the stake?
No. Many were hanged, especially in England and the American colonies. Burning was more common in continental Europe, but often after strangulation.

How to Dive Deeper into the History of Witchcraft

The history of witchcraft is not a single story. It is a set of overlapping histories, legal, religious, folk, literary, each with its own sources and biases. We keep a copy of the Malleus Maleficarum on the reference shelf, but we read it with the knowledge that it was a piece of propaganda, not a field guide. The real history is in the trial records, the herbals, the curse tablets, and the oral traditions that survived in spite of everything.

For a broader view of how magic and religion have intertwined across cultures, explore our guide to the history of occult traditions. For a closer look at the symbols used in witchcraft, from the pentagram to the witch’s ladder, visit the glossary of magical symbols. And if you want to understand the modern revival in detail, read our guide to the birth of Wicca and the Gardnerian tradition.