The Misogynistic Truth behind the Origins of Witchcraft

Most people’s understanding of how the concept of witchcraft emerged is that, centuries ago, women who went against social norms were seen as witches – dangerous outsiders – and therefore had to be hanged or burned at the stake. To be a witch was a crime, and tens of thousands of innocent women were executed as a result of misogynistic stereotypes. But how did witchcraft become so deeply rooted in misogyny in the first place?

Between the fifteenth and seventeenth century, witch-hunts emerged all across Europe, spreading like wildfire. A large majority of these witch-hunts took place in small, rural communities, where it was easy to target and accuse women who were seen as eccentric or undesirable. Whenever something threatened male authority and the patriarchal structures of their established community, women who were outsiders, particularly widows, were immediately to blame. In early modern society, the only explanation they had for women who didn’t conform to their strict gender roles was that they were supernatural forces of evil to be feared. It was unnatural for women to be unmarried, to have a profession, and to possess more knowledge than men. Therefore widows, who were employed as healers or midwives and were much wiser than the young men in their community, were not trusted and were often convicted as witches.

Religion also played a part in the rising belief of witchcraft, with misogyny being strongly shaped by religious beliefs. In many biblical texts, women were presented as men’s subordinates and their morals were portrayed as more easily corrupted. For instance, in The Book of Genesis, Eve was a figure that came to represent women’s weakness of succumbing to temptation as she betrayed God through succumbing to the devil’s temptations in the Garden of Eden. These religious beliefs not only founded a lot of gender stereotypes, but fuelled the prosecution of women who were seen as witches. The belief that women easily yielded to temptation of the devil drove the notion that women were selling their souls and physical bodies to Satan in return for magic. Magic that allowed witches to shapeshift into animals, such as toads or black cats – small and domesticated animals that were associated with single women who kept them as companions.

Once a woman was accused of witchcraft, her death was sealed. It won’t come as a surprise to you that the judges and jury of witch trials were all men. Misogyny was the primary motivator of persecuting women of witchcraft, since women who possessed any sort of power deeply disturbed the social order; it was patriarchal society’s way of further oppressing and dehumanising women. There is something arguably ‘spooky’ in the way that misogynistic beliefs, stemming from witchcraft, have stretched over the centuries. We still haven’t reached a point in society where women in power are wholly accepted, with women constantly being stereotyped, sexualised, and degraded in today’s world. With or without magic, we certainly still find ourselves fighting to be seen and heard.