Witchcraft, in various historical, anthropological Anthropology is the holistic, global, comparative study of humans. It is the comprehensive study of human beings and of their interactions with each other and the environment. The term "anthropology", pronounced /ænθrɵˈpɒlədʒi/, is from the Greek ἄνθρωπος, anthrōpos, "human", and -λογία, -logia, ", religious and mythological contexts, is the use of certain kinds of supernatural The term supernatural or supranatural pertains of being above or beyond what is natural; unexplainable by natural law or phenomena. Religious miracles are typically supernatural claims, as are spells and curses, divination, the belief that there is an afterlife for the dead, and innumerable others. Supernatural beliefs have existed in many or magical Magic, sometimes known as sorcery, is the practice of consciousness manipulation and/or autosuggestion to achieve a desired result, usually by techniques described in various conceptual systems. The practice is often influenced by ideas of religion, mysticism, occultism, science, and psychology powers. Witchcraft can refer to the use of such powers in order to inflict harm or damage upon members of a community or their property. Other uses of the term distinguish between bad witchcraft and good witchcraft, the latter involving the use of these powers to heal someone from bad witchcraft. The concept of witchcraft is normally treated as a cultural ideology, a means of explaining human misfortune by blaming it either on a supernatural entity or a known person in the community.[1] A witch (from Old English wicce f. / wicca m. The word witch derives from the Old English nouns wicca /ˈwɪttʃɑ/ "sorcerer, wizard" and wicce /ˈwɪttʃe/ (fem.) "sorceress, witch". The word's further origins in Proto-Germanic and Proto-Indo-European are unclear.[citation needed]) is a practitioner of witchcraft.
Belief in witchcraft, and by consequence witch-hunts A witch hunt is a search for witches or evidence of witchcraft, often involving moral panic, mass hysteria and lynching, but in historical instances also legally sanctioned and involving official witchcraft trials, is found in many cultures worldwide, today mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa Sub-Saharan Africa is a geographical term used to describe the area of the African continent which lies south of the Sahara, or those African countries which are fully or partially located south of the Sahara. It contrasts with North Africa, which is considered a part of the Arab world (e.g. in the witch smellers Witch smellers, almost always women, were important and powerful people amongst the Zulu and other Bantu languages speaking peoples of Southern Africa, responsible for rooting out evil witches in the area, and sometimes responsible for considerable bloodshed themselves. In present day South Africa their role has waned and their activities are in Bantu Bantu is a large category of African languages. It also is used as a general label for over 400 ethnic groups in Sub-Saharan Africa, from Cameroon across Central Africa and Eastern Africa to Southern Africa. These peoples share a common language family sub-group, the Bantu languages, and broad ancestral culture, but Bantu languages as a whole are culture), and historically notably in Early Modern Europe In history, the early modern era of modern history follows the late Middle Ages. Historians refer to the period beginning from approximately 1500 AD and lasting to around 1800 AD. The events include the first European colonies, the rise of strong centralized governments, and the beginnings of recognizable nation states that are the direct of the 14th to 18th century, where witchcraft came to be seen as a vast diabolical conspiracy against Christianity, and accusations of witchcraft led to large-scale witch-hunts The period of witch trials in Early Modern Europe came in waves and then subsided. There were early trials in the 15th and early 16th centuries, but then the witch scare went into decline, before becoming a big issue again and peaking in the 17th century. Some scholars argue that a fear of witchcraft started among intellectuals who believed in, especially in Germanic Europe Germanic Europe is the part of Northern Europe which came under the sphere of influence of Germanic culture, giving rise to the linguistic predominancy of a Germanic language. Since the Reformation, most of these regions have been predominantly Protestant, with the exception of southern German speaking Europe.[2]
The "witch-cult hypothesis The Witch–cult is the term for a hypothetical pre-Christian, pagan religion of Europe that survived into at least the early modern period. The theory of its existence was postulated by some 19th and 20th century scholars based upon the theory that the European witchcraft which had been persecuted in the witch-hunt had been a part of a Satanic", a controversial theory that European witchcraft European Witchcraft is witchcraft and magic that is practised primarily in the locality of Europe was a suppressed pagan religion, was popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Since the mid-20th century, Witchcraft Contemporary Witchcraft refers to many different types of Witchcraft practises practised in the 21st Century. Two Pagan derived religions that accept the practise of Witchcraft is Wicca and Stregheria. Other people believe it to simply be a Witchcraft practices that are able to coincide with strict dogmatic religious such as Christianity has become the self-designation of a branch of neopaganism Neopaganism or Neo-Paganism is an umbrella term used to identify a wide variety of modern religious movements, particularly those influenced by pre-Christian pagan beliefs of Europe, especially in the Wicca Wicca is a Neopagan religion, that is also often referred to as Witchcraft or the Craft by its adherents, who are known as Wiccans or Witches. Its disputed origins lie in England in the early 20th century, though it was first popularised during the 1950s by Gerald Gardner, a retired British civil servant, who at the time called it the "witch tradition following Gerald Gardner Gerald Brousseau Gardner , who sometimes used the craft name Scire, was an English civil servant, amateur anthropologist and archaeologist, writer, weaponry expert and occultist who wrote some of the definitive texts for the religion of Wicca, which he was instrumental in bringing to public attention through his 1954 book, Witchcraft Today, who claimed a religious tradition of Witchcraft with pre-Christian roots.[3]
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Mirror.co.uk
Celebrating its tenth anniversary this year The Blair Witch Project created a storm of controversy when it opened due to its faux documentary style the ...
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Jayne
Sat, 02 Jan 2010 15:54:26 GM
Huh? Half a year or more ago - definitely more, actually - we began our big, crazy, re-do the whole upstairs project, wherein we divided our bedroom into two smaller rooms so that the kids could each have their own...
