WITCHCRAFT. The actual meaning of this word appears to be the art or craft of the wise, as the word "witch" is allied with "wit," to know. From about the 15th century the word has been almost exclusively applied to workers of magic, whether male or female. Magicians and sorcerers are known in all parts of the world; among savage communities they are usually credited with supernatural powers by their fellow-tribesmen (see MAGIC). Divination (q.v.) or foretelling the future is one of the common est forms of witchcraft ; when this is done in the name of the deity of one of the established religions it is called prophecy; when, however, the divination is in the name of a pagan god it is mere witchcraft. This distinction is very clear in the account of the contest between Moses and Pharaoh's magicians as given in Exodus; but in the demotic story, which appears to give the Egyptian version of the incident, the wise priest of Egypt defeats the miserable foreign sorcerer whom he had saved from the water when a child.
When examining the records of the mediaeval witches, we are dealing with the remains of a pagan religion which survived, in England at least, till the 18th century, 1,200 years after the intro duction of Christianity. The practices of this ancient faith can be found in France at the present day, though with the name of the deity changed; and in Italy la vecchia religion still numbers many followers in spite of the efforts of the Christian Church.
The number of the witches put to death by the inquisitors and other persecutors in the 16th and 17th centuries is a proof of the obstinate paganism of Europe. Whole villages followed the be liefs of their ancestors; and in many cases the priests, drawn from the peasant class, were only outwardly Christian and carried on the ancient rites; even the bishops and other high ecclesiastics took part. As civilization increased and Christianity became more
firmly rooted, the old religion retreated to the less frequented parts of the country and was practised by the more ignorant members of the community. This is very noticeable in the in numerable trials of the 15th to the 18th centuries.
The Witch-cult.—The religion consisted of a belief in a god incarnate in a human being or an animal, and thus resembled in many ways the religions of numerous primitive peoples of the present day. This god, who was always called the Devil by the Christian recorders of the trials, appeared to his worshippers dis guised in various animal forms or dressed inconspicuously in black. The earliest form of the animal disguise is the figure of the man clothed in a stag's skin with antlers on his head, which is among the palaeolithic paintings in a cave in Ariege in southern France. Another early example is carved on a slate palette of the prehistoric period of Egypt ; in this case the man is disguised as a jackal. The goat disguise is not found in Great Britain though common in France and Germany, where it is probably the sur vival of the god Cernunnos. In the British Isles the usual forms were the bull, the dog and the cat.
The rites with which this god was worshipped are known to all students of primitive or savage religions, ancient and modern. The sacred dances, the feasts, the chants in honour of the god, the liturgical ritual, and above all the ceremonies to promote fertility, occurred at public assemblies as now in the islands of the Pacific or in Africa. The fertility rites attracted the special attention of the recorders of the legal trials. But to the fol lowers of the old god these rites were as holy as the sacred marriage was to the ancient Greeks; to them, as to the Greeks, it was the outward and visible sign of the fertility of crops and herds which should bring comfort and wealth and life itself.