Witchcraft

Witchcraft offers the model of a religion of poetry, not theology. It presents metaphors, not doctrines, and leaves open the possibility of reconciliation of science and religion, of many ways of knowing. ~ Starhawk

Witchcraft in various historical, anthropological, religious and mythological contexts, is the use of powers or abilities conceived as supernatural or magical. Historically witchcraft has often been associated with evil and the infliction of harm upon members of a community or their property, but the term is now also used in the context of virtuous activity involving healing. Concepts of witchcraft as innately harmful are often treated as products of cultural ideology, as a means of explaining human misfortune by blaming it either on a supernatural entity or a known person in the community. A practitioner of witchcraft is called a witch (from Old English wicce f. / wicca m.), a sorceress, sorcerer, magician or a wizard, with males sometimes being called warlocks.

Warlock redirects here; for the fictional Marvel superhero known by that name see: Adam Warlock

Quotes

You may find good people and bad people in the world; and so, I suppose, you may find good witches and bad witches. But I must confess most of the witches I have known were very respectable, indeed, and famous for their kind actions. ~ L. Frank Baum

Alphabetized by author or source

I am mistress of all the sciences. I go so far beyond all else that my work is called magic. … Do you understand me? ~ R. A. Lafferty

• Now, it's common knowledge that most towns of a certain size have a witch, if only to eat misbehaving children and the occasional puppy who wanders into her yard. Witches use those bones to cast spells and curses that make the land infertile... Yet of all the witches in Alabama, there was one who was the most feared. For she had one glass eye, which was said to contain mystical powers.
  • John August, in Big Fish (2003), based on the novel of Daniel Wallace

• "But what can I do?" cried she, spreading out her arms helplessly. "I can not hew down trees, as my father used; and in all this end of the king's domain there is nothing else to be done. For there are so many shepherds that no more are needed, and so many tillers of the soil that no more can find employment. Ah, I have tried; hut no one wants a weak girl like me."
  "Why don't you become a witch?" asked the man.
  "Me!" gasped Mary-Marie, amazed. "A witch!"
  "Why not?" he inquired, as if surprised.
  "Well," said the girl, laughing. "I'm not old enough. Witches, you know, are withered dried-up old hags."
  "Oh, not at all!" returned the stranger.
  "And they sell their souls to Satan, in return for a knowledge of witchcraft," continued Mary-Marie more seriously.
  "Stuff and nonsense!" cried the stranger angrily.
  "And all the enjoyment they get in life is riding broomsticks through the air on dark nights," declared the girl.
  "Well, well, well!" said the old man in an astonished tone. "One might think you knew all about witches, to hear you chatter. But your words prove you to be very ignorant of the subject. You may find good people and bad people in the world; and so, I suppose, you may find good witches and bad witches. But I must confess most of the witches I have known were very respectable, indeed, and famous for their kind actions."
  "Oh. I'd like to be that kind of witch!" said Mary-Marie, clasping her hands earnestly.
  • L. Frank Baum, "The Witchcraft of Mary-Marie", in Baum's American Fairy Tales (1908).

• Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.
  • Louis Brandeis, concurring, Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357, 376 (1927).

• We have winning wiles and witcheries,
  Such incantations as thy sterner wit
  Did never dream of. Time hath been ere now
  That Jove hath listen'd to our minstrelsy.
  Till wrath would seem to drop out of his soul
  Like a forgotten thing.
  • Hartley Coleridge, Sylphs to Prometheus, in Prometheus (fragments of an unfinished play, written c. 1820).

• Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.
  • Exodus 22:18 (King James Version), some have asserted that the word translated as "witch" here should be translated poisoner, or slanderer.

• Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft are written by men.
  • Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett in Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (1990)

• Any prowling maniac would have had more than his work cut out if he had accosted Anathema Device. She was a witch, after all. And precisely because she was a witch, and therefore sensible, she put little faith in protective amulets and spells; she saved it all for a foot-long bread knife which she kept in her belt.
  • Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett in Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (1990)

• A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles.
  • Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Taylor (June 1798), after the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts.

• "I am mistress of all the sciences. I go so far beyond all else that my work is called magic. I manipulate noumena, regarding monads as points of entry tangential to hylomorphism. As to the paradox of Primary Essence being contained in Quiddity, the larger in the smaller, I have my own solution. The difficulty is always in not confusing Contingency with Accidence. Do you understand me?"
  "Sure. You're a witch."
  • R. A. Lafferty, in Space Chantey (1968), Ch. 6.

• Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, as quoted in The Portable Nietzsche (1954) translated by Walter Kaufmann, p. 96.

• One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar and I didn't know it. I mean there was a little blood there, and something like that.
  • Christine O'Donnell, Politically Incorrect (ABC), 29 October 1999 

• The 10^th incarnation of The Doctor: They've still got one foot in the Dark Ages — if I tell them the truth they'll panic and think it was witchcraft.
  Martha Jones: OK. What was it then?
  The Doctor [Pauses briefly, stares grimly at her]: Witchcraft.
  • Gareth Roberts, in The Shakespeare Code (2007) for the Doctor Who television series (originally written as Love's Labour's Won, based upon the legendary "lost play" of William Shakespeare).

• Martha Jones: So. Magic and stuff — it's all a bit Harry Potter … but is it real though — I mean, witches, black magic and and all that — it's real?
  The Doctor: Of course it isn't!
  Martha: Well, how am I supposed to know? — I just started believing in time travel; give me a break!
  The Doctor: It looks like witchcraft, but it isn't — can't be.
  • Gareth Roberts, in The Shakespeare Code (2007) for the Doctor Who television series.

• Most people think witches are a coven of lesbians dancing naked in the forest celebrating the semen stolen from imprisoned hypnotized males, which they then use to inseminate one another using turkey basters in order to create a legion of demon babies. Well, that's only part of it. We are also active in community outreach programs.
  • Amy Sedaris, Paul Dinello and [[Stephen Colbert], in Wigfield: The Can-Do Town That Just May Not (2003), Ch. 13

• The philosophies behind witch and a wiccan are totally different. A wiccan wears ceremonial black robes and invites her body to be inhabited by an evil spirit that commands her to perform tasks of mayhem and destruction. A witch, on the other hand, can wear anything she wants.
  • Amy Sedaris, Paul Dinello and [[Stephen Colbert], in Wigfield: The Can-Do Town That Just May Not (2003), Ch. 13

• Witchcraft offers the model of a religion of poetry, not theology. It presents metaphors, not doctrines, and leaves open the possibility of reconciliation of science and religion, of many ways of knowing.
  • Starhawk, The Spiral Dance : A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess (1979), p. 209

• In the past, men created witches: now they create mental patients.
  • Thomas Szasz, in the Introduction to The Manufacture of Madness : A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement (1970), p. xxiv

• When have I last looked on
  The round green eyes and the long wavering bodies
  Of the dark leopards of the moon?
  All the wild witches, those most noble ladies,
  For all their broom-sticks and their tears,
  Their angry tears, are gone.
  • William Butler Yeats, in "Lines Written In Dejection" in The Wild Swans at Coole (1919)