What is Witchcraft?
The word ‘witchcraft’ is made up of two important words-witch and craft. Both these words need to be explained in order to understand the meaning of witchcraft.
Witch
The word ‘witch’ is associated with female magician or a sorceress. It originated from the Indo-European word ‘weik’ or ‘wikk’, both of which are related to religion and magic. The Anglo-Saxons who came to Britain were essentially pagans and they used the word ‘witch’ to denote a person who could avert evil, a seer or a foreteller. It did not have any derogatory connotations.
The word ‘witch’ came to be associated with evil woman with the advent of Christianity who thought that all the gods of the pagans or practitioners/believers of the Old Religion were demons. They, therefore, denounced witches as worshippers of the devil.
Craft
The word ‘craft’ essentially means a creative art or science that can transform the shape and even the spirit of an existing object into a different reality. When this kind of transformation takes place we call the act as magic. This is generally what a magician does. He/she makes an object disappear and appear in different form.
The magic of witchcraft is as creative and transformative as the actions and experiments of scientists. For example, when scientists pour acid over metal, the later is dissolved and converted into gas. In words of common person, the hard metal - be it iron or copper or zinc disappears and a new reality is formed.
Since the scientists bring about transformation through explainable, visible, logical and tangible cause and effect system, we are not surprised by it. But the same transformation or magic brought about by witches through intangible will power or prayers surprises the common people who call it magic or witchcraft.
The witches performed different type of magic or acts of transformation in ancient times. They treated the diseases of the members of their communities by eliminating them with the help of potions, oils, herbs and other elements of nature.
More importantly, they used rituals, chants, religious affirmations to strengthen their will/mental powers that could treat a host of diseases. It was primarily for this reason that witchcraft came to be connected with magic based upon religion.
Since they used their craft or creative wisdom to resolve the physical and mental problems or issues of the people of their communities, they were called wise and sagacious people. Witchcraft was, therefore, rightly called the art or the craft of the wise people.
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