The Truth Behind Witches

When we think of a witch, we probably think of the ugly woman with the large, pointy black hat who flies around on a broomstick with her little black cat. In her downtime, she’s found in a cave-like housing structure typically just brewing cauldrons of potions all day long. There’s slight truth to that, however, most of everything we know about witches is simply a result of badly retold history and cinema magic. In this article, we’ll outline the truth about witches.

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Truth #1

Witches have never, in any point or time during history, professed to fly or were actually seen flying. Pictures of witches from the middle ages flying were created by heavily religious folks who wanted to portray witches in a bad light. So, no, no one’s been killing infants and using their blood and fat oil to lube up their broomstick in order to make it fly. As much as we wish some of that was real, the sad truth is, it’s definitely not.

Truth #2

Getting burned at the stake was actually pretty rare. Wood was something that had to be labored for back in those days, so it wasn’t as readily available as one might think. Even more effort had to be exerted in order to build a pyre. It just wasn’t something people wanted to do. Hanging was usually the most frugal choice for politicians and other law enforcement authorities in that time. Not even a single person who was accused of witchcraft in Salem was burnt at the stake. They were all hung instead. The rest were imprisoned, and one was crushed to death as means of torture--but not burnt at the stake

Truth #3

Witches didn’t really use things such as eyes of newts or lizard tails or virgin hair in their potions. Many times, they wanted to keep their potions and brews a secret, so when they wrote them down, they wrote in code. In a time of strictly holistic healing and the first version of the pharmaceutical industry, people wanted to keep their ingredients concealed so no one else could capitalize off of their healing serums. This was pretty off-putting for those who weren’t in the know, and it definitely worked in keeping other people from stealing recipes. Eventually, even these potions lost their demand by the population as people found that they enjoyed charms and enchanted trinkets to carry with them more than ingesting an unknown substance.

Truth #4

The Salem Witch Trials actually didn’t even take place in Salem, Massachusetts. It actually took place in what is now known as Danvers, but when the Puritans first arrived, they called it Salem Village. The hysteria that led to so many being hanged and imprisoned for being accused of participating in witchcraft actually has two very plausible explanations. The first is that the grain in the area had been festering with a deadly bacteria named ergot. It’s tasteless, but it’s wicked to say the least. It can cause fainting spells, hallucinations, and even death. Anyone would be a little hysterical if they were hallucinating while they were fainting, right? Modern science has told us that this certain bacteria mostly only effects women because it actually thrives off of substances that contain estrogen even moreso than simply grain.

Truth #5

Witchcraft wasn’t even recognized as real or working magic until around the 1400s. It was believed that only Christianity was real, and magic wouldn’t even have any type of effect. It was considered something that people who were ill with insanity would partake in. It wasn’t until there was plenty of arguments between religious officials during that time that the Pope decreed that any type of participation in magic, spells, or worshiping anything other than Christ was a crime punishable by death. It took a few hundred years until this became an actual law, but finally, in 1736, The Witchcraft Act was actually passed in England.

Hopefully now you feel a little bit more educated and a lot less scared about some of the scarier witch movies that are out today. There has been so much hype on the subject which leaves plenty of room for false information to be circulated. While some things being vamped up for Hollywood definitely makes quite a bit of money and really brings in the ratings, it’s not always true. There are some commonalities, and the lore of it all is terrifying—it’s terrifying to think of someone being killed for what they believe in. But always be sure to do your research!