What Is a Witch?
Many people picture a witch as the familiar old crone with a broom, a cauldron, and an animal companion, living in an isolated cottage. But this image didn’t appear overnight, and it doesn’t fully reflect what witchcraft is. Witchcraft encompasses practices such as healing, divination (not fortune-telling), and rituals centred on connecting with nature. At its heart is the belief that you can do what you want, as long as you cause no harm to others or nature.
But over time, those beliefs were distorted into the idea that witches practised maleficium, a Latin term meaning harmful magic, and made pacts with demons. This misconception fuelled a wave of witch hunts that had little to do with witchcraft itself—many of those accused and executed as witches had never practised witchcraft at all. In fact, many were simply outspoken, intelligent women who were being repressed.
Ancient and Pre-Christian Inheritances
Modern witchcraft has no single, unbroken lineage; it draws on pre-Christian practices from various regions. Later stories recast these practices as witches’ powers. Circe’s transformation of men into animals developed into tales of witches turning people into animals or taking animal forms. Medea used herbs, potions, prophecy, and ritual knowledge to help Jason win the Golden Fleece; later accounts portrayed witches as using similar tools to cause harm.
The Medieval Transformation
In the later Middle Ages, Christian theologians increasingly linked harmful magic to heresy, apostasy, and service to the Devil. They saw sorcery not merely as an attempt to harm, but as power gained through demonic pacts and the rejection of God. Inquisitors used torture and psychological manipulation to extract confessions of such pacts, nocturnal flights, and secret gatherings. Lawyers and judges made these beliefs prosecutable, while preachers spread them, which fuelled public fear. Yet none of these feared events was actually occurring.
The Early Modern Witch Hunts
So began the witch hunts, driven by demonological beliefs, local conflicts, religious divisions, judicial practices, political instability, and print. Demonological treatises amplified fear. An estimated 90,000–100,000 people worldwide were prosecuted and 40,000–60,000 executed, mostly in Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Though men were also accused, most accused were women. Illness, spoiled food, livestock deaths, storms, or a neighbourly disagreement could spark an accusation.
England and Scotland: Neighbours, Familiars, and Cunning Folk
Cunning folk offered charms, healing, divination, and protection against magic, but they could also face suspicion themselves. Those who made their living helping others could suddenly find themselves accused of causing harm.
- Agnes Waterhouse, Essex, 1566: She is remembered as the first woman known to have been executed for witchcraft in England. She was accused of keeping a cat familiar, and testimony from neighbours, including her own daughter, helped shape the belief that she had made a demonic pact.
- In Pendle, Lancashire, 1612: Ten people were executed after an illness followed a roadside dispute. Poverty, family rivalries, reputations for healing, local grudges, and a child’s testimony all played a part.
- Anne Armstrong, Northumberland, 1673: She accused several local people of witchcraft, saying she had witnessed nighttime gatherings—though it’s unclear whether they actually took place—where people supposedly feasted, danced, transformed, flew, and met the Devil.
- Scotland’s 1563 Witchcraft Act made practising witchcraft and even consulting witches capital offences. This contributed to a more intense wave of witch-hunting hysteria in Scotland than in England.
The Slavic World: Baba Yaga and the Limits of the Label “Witch”
Baba Yaga is a fascinating supernatural figure in East Slavic folklore, often portrayed as a fearsome older woman who makes her home deep in the forest. Her hut stands on birdlike legs and is sometimes surrounded by a fence made of human bones. Rather than riding a broom, she flies in a mortar, using a pestle to propel herself and sweep away her tracks.
Baba Yaga is more than an evil witch. She bridges the ordinary world and a dangerous supernatural realm, acting as predator, examiner, guardian, or helper. In *Vasilisa the Beautiful*, she threatens Vasilisa with seemingly impossible chores. After Vasilisa completes them with supernatural help, Baba Yaga gives her a skull lantern whose fire destroys her cruel stepfamily. “Witch” is therefore useful but imperfect: unlike people accused in Western European trials, Baba Yaga is an otherworldly being who tests those entering her domain.
How the Iconic Witch Was Assembled
Iconic witches didn’t emerge from a single tradition. Their familiar features gradually took shape as folklore, demonology, courtroom testimony, visual art, and popular storytelling borrowed from and reshaped one another over time. Everyday household objects became magical tools, while older tales of supernatural travel and transformation found a place in the learned image of a Devil-worshipping conspirator.
- Broomstick and flight: No single account explains the flying broomstick. Medieval tales of nighttime journeys, later reports of travel to witches’ sabbaths, and printed images gradually linked flight to a tool associated with women’s household work. This made the alleged witch recognisable, transforming an everyday object into a means of secret travel.
- Cauldron: The cauldron transformed an everyday vessel into a potentially threatening symbol of knowledge. Used for cooking, brewing, healing, and remedies, it also suggested nourishment and care. Hostile portrayals cast it as a source of poison, harmful potions, and weather magic, linking healers’ practical skills to fears of secret, dangerous substances.
- Familiars: Animal companions featured prominently in English and Scottish accusations. Court records said spirits could take the form of cats, dogs, toads, birds, and other creatures, advising witches or carrying out harm for them. Later popular culture reduced this varied tradition to the iconic black cat.
- The witches’ sabbath: Demonologists and interrogators viewed witchcraft as an organised conspiracy, not isolated acts of harm. The sabbath combined accusations of nocturnal flight, worship, feasting, dancing, sexual disorder, and loyalty to the Devil. Repeated in trials, sermons, treatises, and images, this shared fantasy linked unrelated suspects to one hidden sect.
- Shape-shifting: Classical and folk narratives often depict people transforming into animals and back. During witch hunts, claims that witches became hares, cats, wolves, or other animals to travel unseen or cause harm echoed these themes. Their recurrence shows transformation stories’ adaptability, not a continuous or organised witch tradition.
- The older woman: The crone stereotype partly reflected circumstances that made some women vulnerable to accusation: age, poverty, widowhood, dependence on neighbours, healing reputations, or outspoken, quarrelsome behaviour. But it was not universal: men and younger women were also prosecuted, and patterns varied sharply by region.
These motifs fused into a figure that moved from courtrooms into prints, plays, fairy tales, and modern entertainment. The broom, cauldron, familiar, sabbath, animal transformation, and aged female body came from distinct contexts, but together suggested Europe had always known a clearly defined witch.
From Trial Record to Fairy Tale
Although European witch prosecutions declined in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, witches remained vivid in the popular imagination. They moved from indictments and confessions into oral tales, children’s books, theatre, and art. Freed from specific offenders, the witch became a versatile fictional figure through which storytellers explored hunger, danger, temptation, forbidden knowledge, and the threatening wilderness.
In Hansel and Gretel, the witch embodies these anxieties: her edible house promises food but conceals captivity and cannibalism, turning home comforts into traps. The forest isolates the children, and the oven becomes a terrifying household object. Unlike Baba Yaga, who may test, reward, or help visitors, this witch is a clear predator; her defeat restores moral order.
Nineteenth-century collectors shaped these figures into enduring literary forms. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm presented their work as preserving German oral tradition, but selected, combined, and revised tales across editions. Their changes clarified narratives and emphasised Christian morality, violence, and the contrast between innocent children and dangerous female antagonists. Thus, printed fairy tales were not untouched relics of the past, but literary works reshaped for new audiences.
Growing interest in folklore, national identity, wild landscapes, and the imagined medieval past transformed the witch. Detached from prosecution, she came to symbolise ancient mystery, social disorder, supernatural danger, or forbidden power. The accused neighbour became the forest-dwelling villain of children’s literature, while older motifs such as cannibalism, harmful magic, deceptive domesticity, and the threatening older woman persisted.
Modern Reinvention
Modern culture continually reimagines the witch. The frightening crone of folklore remains in horror stories and Halloween imagery, alongside comic witches, occult practitioners, healers, outsiders, feminist icons, and symbols of resistance. This diversity brings fresh perspectives on identity, authority, nature, exclusion, and personal power.
Modern religious identities should be distinguished from the satanic conspiracy imagined by early modern persecutors. Wicca, which emerged publicly in twentieth-century Britain, is a modern pagan religion and not a surviving Devil-worshipping cult. Beliefs and practices vary, though many Wiccans value ritual, seasonal cycles, nature, and ethical responsibility. Calling both Wiccans and historical defendants “witches” can obscure the difference between a chosen identity and a hostile criminal accusation.
Novels, films, television, Halloween, and heritage tourism have made the witch instantly recognisable. Pointed hats, black cats, broomsticks, cauldrons, and green skin make her easy to spot. Still, they can blur distinctions between regional traditions, fictional beings like Baba Yaga, and people prosecuted for alleged harmful magic. Entertainment often blends these sources, favouring memorable images over historical accuracy.
Feminist and countercultural movements reclaimed the witch as a powerful symbol of women’s knowledge, independence, solidarity, and resistance to patriarchy, challenging claims that powerful women are dangerous. But portraying every victim as a healer or witch replaces one myth with another, overlooking male victims, regional differences, and coerced confessions. The modern witch is most empowering when she honours, rather than rewrites, the experiences of those persecuted under that name.
The Witch as a Mirror of European History
The familiar European witch—a solitary crone with a broom, cauldron, black cat, and sinister cottage—took shape over centuries rather than coming from a single ancient tradition. Classical stories contributed magical transformations and dangerous knowledge, while medieval theologians connected harmful magic with heresy and the Devil. Courts turned local suspicions into claims of pacts, flight, and secret gatherings. Regional traditions also added distinctive elements, from English familiars and neighbourhood quarrels to Scottish demonology and Baba Yaga’s otherworldly ambiguity.
As prosecutions declined, these motifs gradually entered fairy tales, literature, art, film, religion, and politics. The witch took many forms: a child-eating villain, a healer, an occult practitioner, and an empowered outsider, each shaped by different circumstances. Europe never had just one witch tradition; instead, each era reimagined the witch to reflect its fears and hopes around misfortune, gender, authority, nature, knowledge, and resistance. The history of the European witch is not simply the story of a single supernatural being; it also shows how societies, time and again, gave fear, and sometimes defiance, a human face.
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