Witchcraft in South Australia: Part I The Hammer of the Witches.

Witchcraft in South Australia: Part I

The Hammer of the Witches.

Over the coming weeks, I will be looking into crimes in South Australia relating to Witchcraft, but before we get to those cases, I thought it best to establish some background on the persecution of Witches around the world, which was predominately focused on women in most countries.

Witchcraft – the word conjures up images of, cauldrons, green-skinned women riding on brooms, and women being burnt at the stake. Many people also associate witchcraft with the Salem, Massachusetts witch trials in 1692/93, but don’t know that the trials were much further widespread at the time, with many scholars agreeing that in the one hundred years between 1600 to 1700, somewhere between 100,00 and 200,00 people were tried for witchcraft across Europe, and between 40, 000 to 60, 000 people were executed for the crime. (Wiesner-Hanks, 2006)

Back in those days, there were two basic claims associated with being a witch, performing harmful or evil magic or directly making a pact with the devil. Male practitioners of witchcraft were known as ‘malefici’ and female practitioners of witchcraft were known as ‘maleficae’. [in Latin the terms are maleficia = evil deeds; maleficium = evil deed].

 In South America, many women fled into the mountains to avoid slavery from the Spanish who were entering South America under the guise of “spreading the word of God”. These women were sometimes captured, and because they would not yield to their Spanish captors and take the word of the Lord (A God and religious system they had never heard about) they would be tried as witches, and often they were executed.

We don’t hear much about people being persecuted for witchcraft nowadays in the Western World, as most countries have repealed their witchcraft laws, but as late as 1944, 3 women were sentenced in the UK for breaking the law, with one, Mrs Helen Duncan considered the last of the Witch Trials. 
 Duncan had come under scrutiny after making claims about a sailor on a sunken British ship. The sinking of the ship had never been made public, so she drew the attention of military officials, who after testing her abilities, concluded she was a fake. She was charged with two counts of conspiring to contravene the Witchcraft Act, two counts of obtaining money by false pretences, and three counts of public mischief – she was sentenced to nine months imprisonment. (News, 1944).

Modern Witchcraft, sometimes called Wicca or “The Craft” is very different to the witchcraft of old. Modern witchcraft concerns mainly the worship of the Goddess, and many following this interpretation of witchcraft see themselves as healers or helpers and often take from various pagan beliefs that have before them such as shamanism and druidism.

In the next blog, we will look at the various Witchcraft Acts around the world, some of which still apply to this very day!

Researched and written by Allen Tiller © 2018

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Bibliography

Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, Early Modern Europe 1450-1789 (Cambridge and New York, 2006), pp. 386-93.

WITCHCRAFT. (1853, December 10). Adelaide Observer (SA : 1843 - 1904), p. 1 (Supplement to The Adelaide Observer.). Retrieved April 9, 2018, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article158095751

1944 'Medium in "Ghost" Trial Gets 9 Months' Gaol', News (Adelaide, SA : 1923 - 1954), 4 April, p. 5. , viewed 09 Apr 2018, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article128401480