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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Darker Dreams (talk | contribs) at 06:55, 14 August 2023 (→Survey on Additional Statements). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Former good articleWitchcraft was one of the Philosophy and religion good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
February 3, 2006Good article nomineeListed
June 15, 2009Good article reassessmentDelisted
Current status: Delisted good article

Witchcraft is not intended to “harm others”. It is intended for personal power!

This is now being thoroughly debated in a new discussion on the same talkpage. – Asarlaí (talk) 21:38, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

This post is an insult to witchcraft! 74.75.145.117 (talk) 03:50, 29 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This article includes the history of witchcraft, which was stigmatised at the time.
Nicerbep (talk) 13:12, 27 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Nicerbep, I think the anon's point is that the lead is wrong; hence is unbalanced. Some witchcraft is intended for positive purposes (white magic vs. black magic), and this spans further back to subjects like Shamanism. The connotations of witchcraft as simply negative are also outdated, despite the fact that it isn't the first word related to (neutral) divination. 2A00:23C4:41A:9601:5024:97B:369B:2DAB (talk) 23:29, 27 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
(The "Witchcraft traditionally means the use of magic or supernatural powers to harm others" part. At the same time, I think specifically when the word "witchcraft" came into use it was like a word with negative connotations, but that is no longer completely true today. 2A00:23C4:41A:9601:5024:97B:369B:2DAB (talk) 23:30, 27 November 2022 (UTC) )[reply]
(At that point, it comes down to the philosophy of what the subject of this article really is about; is it solely about witchcraft with loaded negative connotations, and where do we blur the lines between subjects like healing magic, modern divination (e.g. tarot card readings not intended to harm) New Age Movements; but society has historically used the term negatively (like a sociological moral panic); such as in the 1597 book Daemonologie by King James VI and I. 2A00:23C4:41A:9601:5024:97B:369B:2DAB (talk) 23:35, 27 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
"New Age Movements" Some of these are continuing the traditional beliefs of western occultism, but I am not certain if there is a strong connection between their rituals and traditional conceptions of witchcraft. Dimadick (talk) 15:13, 28 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Dimadick: Why does that matter? There are at least 1.5 million people in the US alone who identify as Wiccan. The central tenant of Wicca is the practice of (modern beneficial) witchcraft. Witchcraft is also a defining element of millennial culture (at least for women). At what point does the modern concept of witchcraft become important enough to warrant integration into this article? According to WP:WEIGHT an article on witchcraft should cover all the aspects and meanings of witchcraft "in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources". Given that there are literally thousands of published books about modern witchcraft (not to mention countless articles on the web), I don't understand why it is so staunchly excluded from the scope of this article (with a few token exceptions). I suspect there is some age and gender bias happening here, as I doubt the demographics of the people controlling this article are very similar to the demographics of the people reading it. But I digress. My question is: At what point does the modern concept of witchcraft become important enough to warrant integration into this article? Nosferattus (talk) 16:15, 28 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'd say the connection between New Age adherents and "witchcraft" is not with the traditional meaning, or even with the more traditional Wiccan strains, but with the pop culture, self-helf, affirmations and charms as "spellcraft" type. Sort of the "white witchcraft" Wicca-lite of dabblers, spell kits with crystals advertised next to glitter makeup and Hello Kitty. - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 20:01, 28 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If you wanna talk about the history of my religion, and the persecution of my people, go ahead and put it in the history section. It does not belong in the second sentence, stated as fact. This is hate speech. Remove it now. 68.229.102.219 (talk) 00:05, 19 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe this page title should be changed to Witch (traditional)? I'm not entirely sure what to do if the current scholarly definition of witch is that it is harmful (is this up-to-date and true, is it euro-centric?), but its clear that the term witch has been used for a long time for occultist practices as well. I've run into these issues before and as a lay-user of Wikipedia it can be quite confusing when the modern term for something leads to a Wikipedia page for something completely different. Poketama (talk) 02:23, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I would support such a change in the page title. I have a close friend who calls herself a witch. Met some of her friends with whom she practices the customs of her craft. All lovely people. No different from bunch of Presbyterians practicing their craft, but with prettier ornamentation. I felt no threat. Nor would anybody else. While this article is obviously valuable, it doesn't describe my friend and her friends. HiLo48 (talk) 03:08, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Problem is, when more people became aware (in the 1980s and 1990s) that Wicca had been invented in the 1940s/50s, a lot of people focused on calling their practices "Traditional Craft". Some had emphasised "Craft" over "Wicca" all along. Hence: Traditional witchcraft. For the most part, the groups are pretty similar. Identical, even. But some insist they are not. I'm sure your friend is lovely. I know many like her. But if she introduces herself to people from living cultures that never had to invent this stuff, likely they will not see her as lovely, no matter how much she insists she doesn't mean it like that. She should be aware that "witch" as a positive thing is not a "reclamation" but a redefinition. - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 18:43, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Except the concept of "good" vs "wicked" witches is already present in the article predating your assumed origination by at least decades. And the idea that witchcraft meets condemnation is introduced exactly 2 sentences later if we don't impose it as moral condemnation in the lead. Darker Dreams (talk) 18:47, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's not so much that witchcraft that has been redefined in the world outside, it's been radically redefined here at Wikipedia: Old revision of Witchcraft. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 19:03, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
witchcraft is not used to harm others! Stop, forcing your opinions down other peoples throats! There are many things in life that harms, others, and witchcraft is not one of them. Witchcraft is about personal empowerment 174.162.157.131 (talk) 20:02, 1 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I'm sure others are offended too...

This is now being thoroughly debated in a new discussion on the same talkpage. – Asarlaí (talk) 21:38, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

This "information" is offensive if another religion was described with such discrimination it would be taken down! BB x 2.125.129.51 (talk) 16:27, 9 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You are welcome to feel how you like. But no, we have things somewhere on WP that will likely offend everyone in some way. WP:NOTCENSORED. DMacks (talk) 17:03, 9 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
OK, let’s try and experiment. How about you go to the page about the Jewish people. They have been persecuted throughout history, much like witches have, so that’s a fair example, seeing how they suffered at the hands of the nazis, and we suffered at the hands of white Christians (eg burned at the stake). Now go say in the second sentence that they are evil. Or causing harm. Or greedy. How do you think that would go over. Really good right? Stop attacking my people. Get this hate speech removed now. FYI, not all witches are Wiccan. 68.229.102.219 (talk) 00:10, 19 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The article you're looking for is Wicca. – Asarlaí (talk) 10:56, 8 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Not all witches are Wiccan. Which raft is a religion. Seeing this kind of discrimination over and over on Wikipedia of all places is disgusting. It’s hate speech. Remove it now. If you wants to mention, it’s negative connotations in history, do that in the history section! Not at the opening! Second sentence. Disgusting. 68.229.102.219 (talk) 00:03, 19 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Witch craft is not evil!

This is now being thoroughly debated in a new discussion on the same talkpage. – Asarlaí (talk) 21:38, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Withcraft is not evil although i can be used to hurt others that rarely ever happens! Please change thay begining part I am a witch and it hurt me deeply to see witch craft be so demonized like that. 2604:6400:460E:2A01:2D77:59A0:D888:3623 (talk) 05:26, 8 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The article you're looking for is Wicca. – Asarlaí (talk) 10:56, 8 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
yes i understand that you are and u hurt people but some witches make people's lives hell and can create sickness like depression and anxiety Lee gwebityala (talk) 12:09, 22 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Semi-protected edit request on 2 April 2023

106.51.166.180 (talk) 10:00, 2 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

witchcraft is not used to harm others. ai would request that be corrected. its simply using nature to get energies and powers from and transformation

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. — Paper9oll (🔔 • 📝) 11:11, 2 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Changes without consensus

@Randy Kryn: please read the sources and talk page. Editors have worked hard to come to the version we have. You will need consensus for the changes you want to make. Also, this is not a BLP. - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 23:05, 18 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Witches are people. I’m a witch. I’m not Wiccan. Are you enjoying attacking my religion? My ancestors were burned at the stake (yes really and I can prove it through my ancestry). This is hate speech. Remove it now. 68.229.102.219 (talk) 00:14, 19 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
As I said on user talk: The article is based on the solid sources, and a worldwide view, not just recent, western beliefs (post Gerald Gardner) that have redefined the word in a few cultures. Traditional cultures see it very differently, and we need to represent a worldwide, well-researched view, not the dreck you'll find at a newage store or in clickbait. The other views are thoroughly covered on the 'pedia as well. Read both the article and the links.
Any innocent you are concerned about being harmed for calling themselves a witch (as was probably the case with the IP's ancestors) should be aware it's not a neutral word, and they should do their research before calling themselves this. Most newage and neopagan books are written by amateurs and contain all kinds of misinformation, leading to well-intentioned, but inaccurate ideas about both history and diverse cultures. Best wishes, - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 19:03, 19 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Witchcraft is not meant for harm

This is now being thoroughly debated in a new discussion on the same talkpage. – Asarlaí (talk) 21:38, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

It is traditionally used for quite the opposite. Wikipedia articles are supposed to be written in a neutral point of view, right? This seems pretty negative towards this religion and belief system. Ashertheaxolotl (talk) 07:52, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Ridiculous!

This is an extremely biased and harmful view of witches and witchcraft! Neither witches nor witchcraft is evil, and magic is nothing like Harry Potter or Charmed or any other ridiculous fantasy film/TV show!

Spells are simply spoken affirmations,rituals are ways to focus and concentrate on self-awareness, self-discovery and self-correction, and magic is never used to harm or curse others!

Witches do not believe in evil or the devil or demons...this is lies spread by Christianity, and witch burning was a form of femicide. Powerful men used it to kill their lovers, mistresses, and women who accused them of sexual assault.

This article is NOT based on solid sources and worldwide views, it's based on the lies that have been spread by organised religion for hundreds of years now (mainly Christianity).

If you want this page to be correct, I suggest you do some non-biased research or even talk to some real witches...people who have practised for decades and know what they are actually talking about!!

If you want this page to be correct, I suggest you base it on facts instead of the opinions of organised religions intent on getting rid of all other beliefs that they don't agree with! 92.1.155.53 (talk) 20:16, 7 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The article you're looking for is Wicca.
This article is about the traditional and most common meaning of 'witchcraft'. It's absolutely based on solid academic sources and worldwide views. I suggest you take time and read it beyond the first line. – Asarlaí (talk) 13:11, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, Witch redirects here and not to Wicca, so this page and its short descriptor should be presenting a present-day world view as well as the terminology and slant that was literally used and promoted by murderers during the witchhunts and witch trials. It's interesting that Wikipedia is claiming, in its voice, the same reasoning and descriptors of witches (nowadays probably millions of women identify as witches, mostly nature-centered and peaceful people whose tasks and beliefs are positive and benign) that was used during the years of using witchcraft as an excuse to kill intelligent and self-driven women and even young girls. At a bare minimum Witch should redirect to wicca, but it would be much better to balance this page out with topic accuracy. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:19, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In that case I would suggest that Witch be redirected to Witch (disambiguation), where both the traditional and the Wiccan meanings can be listed. – Asarlaí (talk) 13:36, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The term "Witchcraft" also covers the beliefs and practices of witches, so this page should be balanced as well (as for traditional, whose tradition?). Witchcraft is not solely the excuse to kill women, fairly recently in the context of historical eras, but is an ongoing and evolving topic. The short descriptor of this page by itself ("Practice of malevolent magic") could have been used in the witchhunts and witch trials to gain convictions. This page, which has over 1,700 daily readers, seems to be broken, probably more than just redirecting Witch to different terminology. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:41, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I can agree. The page seems pretty biased, despite what Asarlai says. Just take from the first paragraph of the article "Witchcraft traditionally means the use of magic or supernatural powers to harm others...accused witches were usually women who were believed to have used malevolent magic against their own community, and often to have communed with evil beings. It was thought witchcraft could be thwarted by protective magic or counter-magic, which could be provided by cunning folk or folk healers. Suspected witches were also intimidated, banished, attacked or killed. Often they would be formally prosecuted and punished, if found guilty or simply believed to be guilty". This doesn't sound very neutral to me. The question is how to achieve this balance. Are there any sources we should add to ensure the page is more balanced? Historyday01 (talk) 14:35, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's an article focusing on the traditional, conventional and most common meaning of "witchcraft" worldwide, and it's based on modern academic sources. In what way is it not "balanced"? – Asarlaí (talk) 14:54, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If you, or your daughter, wife, girlfriend, mother, or good friend identified as a witch (millions of women do) you might not ask that question. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:59, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Again, you're talking about the neo-pagan religion Wicca and its offshoots. That is not the focus of this article. That's clear to anyone who bothers reading past the first line or paragraph, and it has been made clear many times on this talkpage. – Asarlaí (talk) 15:07, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
→The end of the lead says: In contemporary Western culture, followers of the neo-pagan religion Wicca, and some followers of New Age belief systems, may self-identify as "witches", and use the term "witchcraft" for their self-help, healing or divination rituals. Other Wiccans avoid the term due to its negative connotations. – Asarlaí (talk) 15:53, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The title "Witchcraft" and the fact that Witch redirects here goes counter to that fact that, I think (haven't hung out with witches in a while, lately I've see two of them once-a-year at yearly garage sales), most modern-day witches call their practice 'witchcraft' and not always, or maybe even usually, wiccan, and call themselves 'witches' and not 'wicca women' or something. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:14, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly. Not sure why Asarlaí is so opposed to making the page balanced,especially since there would be use of "modern academic sources". Historyday01 (talk) 17:02, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
A Wikipedian who identifies as a witch led to ANI by her fellow editors
Just noticed the Witchcraft (disambiguation) page opening line reads: "Witchcraft traditionally means the use of malevolent magic. It can also refer to the neo-pagan religion Wicca.". So again, whose "tradition", and yes, something broken here and also, as the Harry Potter "spell" is "spelled", Riddikulus. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:26, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The fact that Witch redirects here is something that should be discussed at its talkpage. I've said where I stand on that. Also, Wikipedia is based on reliable sources, not on our own experiences or what any of us might "think". – Asarlaí (talk) 15:53, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think it is worth discussing that here, as it is a redirect to this page. If necessary, a change of the redirect could also be posted on Talk:Witch as well. And surely, Wikipedia is based on reliable sources, but that doesn't mean that a page can't be biased and slanted. Even though making pages neutral is a Wikipedia principle, that doesn't mean it is actually carried out in practice. The tone of the article, especially the beginning comes off very negatively, when it shouldn't have that tone. You don't need to get so defensive about this page. All pages on here are fluid and should not be set in stone. I think this discussion would be better if it wasn't just the three of us (apart from the original IP address, who hasn't commented in this discussion apart from the original comment)... Randy Kryn posted a link to this discussion on the Women in Red WikiProject (where I first heard about it), but others should weigh in as well.Historyday01 (talk) 17:09, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I came here from the link at WikiProject Occult I don't think all the projects contacted were necessarily in-scope, but that one was and am inclined to agree with Kryn's and Historyday's stances -- the idea of discussing the redirect on its talk in particular seems pretty absurd. Wicca is one religion that people who identify as witches/warlocks/wizards/etc may believe in, and probably a minority one these days (I tend to think of it as a kind of 90s thing). Some substantial proportion of people looking for information on modern witches will be doing so at this article. There's a not-explicitly-stated but fairly strong suggestion here that we don't actually have a modern-witchcraft-type article, which is...interesting, but there you go. The lead and body of this article should, regardless of if another article is written, include some information on modern witchcraft, and 'Witch' should redirect to (or be) a disambig if the argument is being made that we have information on witches-of-various-kinds across multiple articles. Vaticidalprophet 17:28, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In terms of all the projects being contacted not being in scope, I just posted on all the WikiProjects listed on this page, so I guess I assumed they were "in-scope". Otherwise, I have to agree that the lead and body of the article should include information on modern witchcraft. I can also agree that "witch" should redirect to Wicca (which I think is what you are saying). I would add that the "Witches in fiction" sub-section should be expanded too (only ONE source is cited for that entire sub-section!), as I know off hand that witches are a major part of The Owl House and that there is a witch/ninja protagonist in OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes, as a person who often focuses on animation articles on here (including creating pages for new shows). Some other examples are listed at Witch (disambiguation) and Witchcraft (disambiguation), but there are others left out of those lists. And the suggestion that we don't actually have a modern-witchcraft-type article is surely interesting, to say the least. Historyday01 (talk) 18:12, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"The lead and body of this article should include some information on modern witchcraft" - it already does. The last paragraph of the lead is about Wicca and its offshoots, and this article has a whole section about Wicca and "neopagan witches".
All articles must have a focus. The focus of this article is the traditional/conventional/historical and still most widespread meaning of "witchcraft" as is studied by historians, folklorists and anthropologists. Wicca, or "modern Witchcraft" as you call it, is the focus of the Wicca article. However, you seem to be suggesting that we mix everything together and make this article more about Wicca too, even suggesting that "witch" redirect to "Wicca". – Asarlaí (talk) 18:24, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You seem to be overlooking the repeated expression that "modern witchcraft" (as a roughly umbrella term) and "Wicca" are different things, and the latter is a now-pretty-small subset of the former, even though it was the original big-deal of neopaganism. It's completely predictable (and indeed this was kicked off by it happening) that readers will anticipate typing 'witchcraft' rather than 'wicca' for the article about the former. I don't agree Witch should redirect to Wicca, but I don't think it should redirect here either if there's an insistence on making this article entirely historiographical and when a perfectly good disambig exists. If we don't have an article on modern-day witches, which the repeated suggestion that Wicca is that article implies, then we should and it should be hatnoted, and as this is a broad-concept article it should mention them in ways that aren't missed by readers explicitly telling you they've missed them. (This is a different statement to "it should be about them".) Vaticidalprophet 18:35, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with the original poster (92.1.155.53)'s sentiments. The opening sentence of the lede, "Witchcraft traditionally means the use of magic or supernatural powers to harm others" may well be supported by (two) reliable sources, but it sounds POV given that witchcraft has been used traditionally also for benevolent and healing purposes. And, bearing in mind that research comes in the wake of centuries of suppression, animosity, religious (and later, Enlightenment and more fundamentalist) beliefs, it really does come across as (witting or unwitting) propaganda, to me at least. I'd like to see this balanced up with more favourable reliable sources, and mention of the fact that there are "black", "white", and even "grey" practices. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 18:36, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"I'd like to see this balanced up with more favourable reliable sources" Do you have any specific sources in mind to support the suggested changes? Dimadick (talk) 15:04, 9 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The article largely focuses on the Western concept of Witchcraft. However, occasionally moves towards an intercultural approach, often with a short paragraph or even just one sentence, about similar beliefs in other cultures or religions. Whereby, it mixes up different conceptualizations on magical beliefs. Wiccan, for example, often doesn't follow the Christianity influenced depiciton of witchcraft (Wicca), likewise Middle Eastern beliefs, especially Islam, also may have more ambigious attitudes. Maybe the article should make a decission what it want sto be about: the Euro-centric concept of witchcraft or intercultural witchcraft-like practises. VenusFeuerFalle (talk) 12:07, 10 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This comes up periodically and we cycle through the same arguments. I agree with Asarlaí and the others who maintain this article that the worldwide definition still favors the traditional meaning of those who do harm - which we have focused on in the article, per RS sources. We have addressed the modern redefinitions in the lede and the body. To turn Witch into a disambig would be prioritize white pop culture sources over scholarly ones, and western over global and traditional/Indigenous/African/etc ones. If there are any changes to be made, it's not to lump more stuff into this article. While I could live with Witch being the disambig, it's not my preference. This article already has links to Wicca, disambig, and other redefinitions (which is what they are; they are not reclamations, though many modern Pagan adherents believe this due to fakelore in the 50's +/-). - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 21:10, 8 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is worth revisiting. We use two sources to define witchcraft as "the use of magic or supernatural powers to harm others". The first of these is 50+ years old, so I'd be very wary of viewing that as the best of contemporary scholarship. The second is much more recent, and notes that there are four contemporary definitions of witch. The author employs one of them, as quoted, but states of the other three "to call anyone wrong to use any one of them would be to reveal oneself as bereft of general knowledge and courtesy, as well of scholarship", yet we only use the most negative of the four definitions. Perhaps we need to expand the opening paragraph and note that there are other contemporary definitions of the term. - Bilby (talk) 00:45, 9 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The lead already covers multiple definitions. People can read more than one paragraph. - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 18:07, 9 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Articles should be understandable even in snippets, because, unfortunately, snippets are how most readers interact with them. About 60% of mobile readers (the majority) read only the lead of an article; given the structure of the Minerva skin (placing an image or infobox right after para 1), it can be expected a substantial proportion of them read only the first paragraph. Statistics are less clear for desktop readers, who seem more likely to read more but still very likely to read lead-only. A substantial amount of engagement with Wikipedia articles also doesn't happen on Wikipedia itself, but through knowledge graphs, AI assistant summaries, etc. I am reminded of how the opening paragraph to Dracula was rewritten after its author discovered that on Siri, the book's subject was represented as Harker visiting Dracula to conduct a real estate transaction. Vaticidalprophet 02:04, 10 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I tend to agree. I disagree with those who are defending the current text, which seems like a strange, bizarre position to me. Historyday01 (talk) 18:39, 9 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. The 50 year old source should be done away with regardless, as we shouldn't be using outdated scholarship in our articles. And the other source clearly showcases multiple variations on what the term is referring to. It doesn't matter if the rest of the lede showcases that when the first line explicitly only discusses one interpretation of the term and the most negative one. The lede very much needs to be rewritten. SilverserenC 18:47, 9 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Changing some of the focus of this page and doing a complete rewrite of the lead seems the way to go. And how about ditching the short description, which all mobile and readers of the default skin read 1,700 times a day when searching for Witchcraft or Witch: "Short description|Practice of malevolent magic". Randy Kryn (talk) 02:55, 10 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That sounds like a good idea. The short description is bad and really needs to be removed. Historyday01 (talk) 15:08, 10 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Bilby notes "we only use the most negative of the four definitions". Our article's first paragraph suggests our article is primarily about "the use of magic or supernatural powers to harm others", which presumably is one of those four. Is that one meaning itself substantive enough to have its own article? If so, so it should be, and the broader concept (presumably those four have a unifying higher-level topic) should have its own separate article in WP:SUMMARYSTYLE that links out to the specific article about any one of them. Or if they are fairly unrelated things that simply happen to have the same name, then that's exactly what WP:DISAMBIGUATION is for. DMacks (talk) 03:22, 10 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Across at Wikipedia talk:Systemic bias#Witchcraft, CorbieVreccan you boldly state that "Input was solicited at the Neopagan wikiproject and that is currently dominating the discussion." As Darker Dreams|Darker Dreams rightly pointed out, "the person who notified the Neopagan group says they notified all the projects listed".
It is not the Neopagan community who are responsible for systemic bias, but quite clearly the article itself, and the sources used, which are responsible for systemic bias that dates back hundreds of years (and also in recent years). Hopefully, more-involved editors will be able to come up with less partisan reliable sources.
The sources that Darker Dreams provided for the revised definition in the article's first sentence were, in my view, a dramatic improvement:
Witchcraft traditionally means the use of magic or supernatural powers.[1][2][3] ... This term carries negative connotations due to religious and social condemnation. [refs]
Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 13:27, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/witchcraft
  2. ^ https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/witchcraft
  3. ^ https://www.dictionary.com/browse/witchcraft
I looked at several Wikiprojects and saw no other notifications. Who notified wikiprojects, and which were notified besides Neopaganism? - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 17:35, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I found the notifications. Historyday01 notified the paranormal, horror, skepticism, occult, and anthropology projects but none of the ethnic/cultural ones. After I saw the Neopagan notification, I notified Indigenous of North America, African Diaspora and Systemic Bias, but there are a number of others that are also covered in this article that haven't been notified. - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 17:47, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I added only the WikiProjects were listed on this page, so the ones I listed were limited as a result. Historyday01 (talk) 18:21, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not including this here as a reliable source, but merely to note that traditional witchcraft has been painted black:
"Of the Healing Power of the Thirteenth Herb
"(13) XXV. The thirteen hearb is named of the Chaldees Olphantas, of the Greeks Hilirion, of the Latines Verbena, of the English men Vervin. This hearb (as witches say) gathered, the Sun being in the Signe of the Ram, and put with graine or corne of piony of one yere old, heals them that are sicke of the falling sickness."
Source: Albertus Magnus (c. 1200 – 15 November 1280), quoted in Idries Shah, The Secret Lore of Magic.
Regards, Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 14:11, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"Witchcraft traditionally means the use of magic" - so all magic is witchcraft? That's a ridiculous statement.
"The term carries negative connotations due to religious and social condemnation" - so 'witchcraft' was originally a positive term and only became negative because of 'religious condemnation'? Let's see some modern, high-quality academic sources for that. Preferably from actual historians, folklorists and anthropologists. The current academic sources in the article do not support that claim, but your proposed wording hijacks those.
As has been explained dozens of times, this article is primarily about the traditional/conventional and most common meaning of 'witchcraft' worldwide, .i.e. malevolent magic. Most cultures have believed in both benevolent and malevolent magic. Outside the Church, many ordinary Christians believed in both kinds of magic until recent centuries. In English, helpful or neutral magic was simply called 'magic' or the 'cunning craft', while harmful magic was called 'witchcraft'.
In the modern era, the likes of Margaret Murray tried to make sense of the European witch hunts. She theorized that accused witches had actually been followers of surviving pagan religion. But this 'witch cult' theory has been utterly discredited. Accused witches weren't pagans and they generally weren't doing any kind of magic. They were accused because people really did believe in harmful magic, and/or because of personal disputes. All of this is explained in this article if you care to read it. The witch cult' theory is often seen as pseudohistory and pseudo-folklore. Nevertheless, it was a big influence on the neopagan religion Wicca, which was originally named 'Witchcraft'. It looks as if you want this article to fit a Wiccan and/or pseudohistorical definition of 'witchcraft'. Wicca and its offshoots are discussed here briefly, but they have their own article. – Asarlaí (talk) 14:21, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
witchcraft, traditionally, the exercise or invocation of alleged supernatural powers to control people or events, practices typically involving sorcery or magic. Although defined differently in disparate historical and cultural contexts, witchcraft has often been seen, especially in the West, as the work of crones who meet secretly at night, indulge in cannibalism and orgiastic rites with the Devil, or Satan, and perform black magic. Witchcraft thus defined exists more in the imagination of contemporaries than in any objective reality. Yet this stereotype has a long history and has constituted for many cultures a viable explanation of evil in the world. The intensity of these beliefs is best represented by the European witch hunts of the 14th to 18th century, but witchcraft and its associated ideas are never far from the surface of popular consciousness and—sustained by folk tales—find explicit focus from time to time in popular television and films and in fiction.[1] Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 14:50, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ https://www.britannica.com/topic/witchcraft
Are you going to overlook the many high-quality academic sources in the article for one source that fits your view? WP:BRITANNICA: "There is no consensus on the reliability of the Encyclopædia Britannica (including its online edition, Encyclopædia Britannica Online). Encyclopædia Britannica is a tertiary source. Most editors prefer reliable secondary sources over the Encyclopædia Britannica when available."
Also see Wikipedia:Dictionaries as sources. – Asarlaí (talk) 15:00, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not presenting this as a reliable source (like Albertus Magnus, I just quickly pickied it at random): I merely wished to show you that there are other possible points of view other than your own and those of the current sources; though yes, of course, we need to be looking for reliable sources. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 17:58, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't a question of mathematic or scientific precision, nor is it a question of possibly inaccurate etymological descent. It is a question of postential harm from wikipedia passing a moral judgement based on a choice of which definitions are valid because a decision is made that "tradition" should supercede what you admit is (and deride as) a modern use. Darker Dreams (talk) 18:43, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Asarlaí It's quite interesting that the 1990s Britannica still had the following lead sentence: witchcraft, the human exercise of alleged supernatural powers for antisocial, evil purposes (so-called black magic), which is a fairly close match to the lead sentence people are objecting to here. Britannica's present-day lede is startlingly different. I'm not sure mimicking the 1990s' Britannica is such a good look for Wikipedia. Andreas JN466 19:58, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I have to agree with Asarlaí about the status of Brittanica. - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 17:59, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Also agree that all "magic" or things that get defined as "magic" are not called "witchcraft" in the cultures that have these metaphysical practices. In many cultures it is still a killing word. People have expressed the concern that innocents who call themselves witches will be harmed. Well, those who self-identify this way based on Wiccan and pop culture sources might want to be aware that they will be shunned or worse if they call themselves witches in many settings globally and even in the US and UK. It's a systemic bias issue in both current pop culture and among those who edit Wikipedia to think this is a neutral or positive word. Some cultures still have blood law around harming others with metaphysical means, and they call those people witches. They don't care if someone insists it's not what they mean by the word. I have seen this play out in person. This isn't my preference or edict, it's just a fact. - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 18:06, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The problem isn't that witchcraft is, or has been, a killing word. That is fully addressed in the first paragraph. The problem is that the current version you're insisting on portrays that as an appropriate position to still have by imposing the moral judgement of "all witchcraft is evil magic," when you acknowledge that's a limited ("traditional") definition that is not necessarily what people are going to be looking for when they arrive. The idea that "good witchea" only emerge from Wicca is false from the content of the article, which contains heroic wiches sourced back to 1919. One of the best known is the movie the Wizard of Oz (1939) which predates the public emergence of Wicca by more than a decade and still feels it appropriate to specify whether each witch is "good" or "wicked." And the idea that nothing can change in the article because "we're still validating sources" when the proposed sources include th Cambridge dictionary is nonsense. Darker Dreams (talk) 18:36, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I have recently watched The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) for the first time. The film features the heroic Witch of the Flaming Mountain who repeatedly rescues the other characters, and eventually duels with the film's evil sorcerer and kills him. I am not certain if she is the first "good" witch in film history, but she is probably the earliest one in animation. Dimadick (talk) 07:45, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This has absolutely nothing to do with endorsing a moral stance. The fact you see it that way makes it even more abundantly clear that you are engaging in this multi-article POV push in an effort to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. It's clear you believe the debunked "Myth of the Wicca", and that changing this article will protect people. But that is not the case. We are documenting a worldwide issue here. The Wiccan and current, Internet pop culture view is only one perspective. Worldwide, most cultures (many that neopagans imitate) have not redefined this word.
While many Wiccans truly believe the word has been "reclaimed", and was once a positive thing, they have been misled. Misrepresenting the situation on the 'pedia is neither honest nor helpful. If you're actually doing this out of concern for people, Darker Dreams, with your edit-warring on multiple articles now, encouraging naive people to call themselves this could actually endanger them. Again, I've seen it happen, with naive people telling traditional people they are "witches". Battling to change the definition is dishonest. - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 18:39, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the editors above that the lead paragraph of the article needs to reflect the full scope of the article, which includes both traditional and contemporary usage. Is there wording that we could all find acceptable? Nosferattus (talk) 22:12, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, I think maybe the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction now. We still need to mention that witchcraft traditionally implies using magic to harm others. We shouldn't remove that from the lead entirely. Nosferattus (talk) 00:18, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed. While we're still discussing this and waiting for more input, Darker Dreams has went on a solo-run and re-written the lead how they think it should be. So the lead no longer opens with the main topic of the article: malevolent magic. This goes against MOS:LEAD.
  • The opening line has been changed to "Witchcraft is the use of magic". But this article isn't about "the use of magic" in general, it's about witchcraft. If it's about "the use of magic" then why does this article and the term 'witchcraft' even exist? The wording also wrongly implies that all magic is witchcraft, despite the sources saying otherwise.
  • The Wiccan meaning has been put on top, even tho' the vast majority of the article isn't about that. Only one section of the article is about the redefinition used by some Wiccans/neopagans. That goes against MOS:LEAD because its giving undue weight and prominence to one small part of the article.
  • The part of the lead dealing with the witch-cult hypothesis, and how its discredited, has been deleted. No clear reason was given.
  • Online dictionary definitions are being used as the main sources for the new opening lines, that is not best practice.
I have added more references for the traditional definition being the most common meaning of 'witchcraft' worldwide.
Have we any sources that say the Wiccan/neopagan redefinition is just as common, or more common, than the traditional meaning? If not, then it shouldn't be given priority. – Asarlaí (talk) 14:08, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think there are going to be any sources evaluating the relative use of different definitions of "witchcraft", especially since the two definitions overlap significantly. However, any trip to a bookstore in an English-speaking country will let you know which definition is the most common these days, and I suspect it isn't a close competition. Regardless, I think we need to stop approaching this a war between the modern and traditional definitions. If the "modern" definition is positive and the "traditional" definition is negative, using a neutral definition to start off the article seems sensible. However, we still need to prominently explain the evolution of the term and its various connotations in the lead, hopefully in a way that reflects the contents of the article. Nosferattus (talk) 19:33, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You have nailed the problem on the head here. You wrote:
However, any trip to a bookstore in an English-speaking country will let you know which definition is the most common these days, and I suspect it isn't a close competition.
Yes, there's a lot of money being made selling pop-culture paperbacks full of spells and such. And the Intarwebs are full of their electronic equivalents, full of terrible or zero sourcing. But that's not representative of the global view. What's left out is oral traditions, Indigenous and other traditional cultures who have never redefined the word.
A more balanced view can be found via some anthropological sources and, more frequently now by members of those cultures themselves, but not all of it is discussed publicly. Which is a problem when it comes to sourcing if people go for quantity over quality. But the scholarly and from-the-cultures-themselves sources should be prioritized here. - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 20:02, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitrary break

Previously headed Wikipedia:Citation overkill ...

You have to be kidding me. Asarlaí has now added six citations back-to-back in the lede about the practice of witchcraft most commonly being seen as "malignant" and is still not satisfied. Surely, they can no longer again religiously insist that the opening sentence of the lede should read Witchcraft traditionally means the use of magic or supernatural powers to harm others. and short description, Practice of magic, usually to cause harm. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 12:06, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, there are now numerous citations, from academic sources, that malevolent magic is the most common and widespread meaning of "witchcraft". The vast majority of the article is about that. Yet Darker Dreams has put the minority Wiccan meaning (positive magic) on top of that and given it priority in the lead, going against MOS:LEAD. Any sensible Wikipedian would not be satisfied with that. – Asarlaí (talk) 12:47, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You will be well aware of this already, of course, but Ronald Hutton, for one, is being deliberately partial (writing only about witchcraft in its destructive manifestations). In Ronald Hutton, The Witch: A History of fear, from ancient times to the present, the author says after the "What is a witch?" quote: That is, however, only one current usage of the word. In fact, Anglo-American senses of it now take at least four different forms, although the one discussed above seems still to be the most widespread and frequent. The others define the witch figure as any person who uses magic ... or as the practitioner of nature-based Pagan religion; or as a symbol of independent female authority and resistance to male domination. All have validity in the present, and to call anybody wrong for using any one of them would be to reveal oneself as bereft of general knowledge, as well as scholarship. ... [I]n this book the mainstream scholarly convention will be followed, and the word used only for an alleged worker of such destructive magic. [emphasis added]. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 13:19, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
IMO, the article should present witchcraft neutrally as a form of magic. Then it should present a neutral history of the development of the practices and understanding of witchcraft. Positive/negative views are extremely cultural. They should be presented third as "Cultural views on witchcraft". There are many who object to various religions and practices. We do not start the articles on Buddhism or Christianity with the views of their opponents. We do not start the article on Gnosticism with the views of its Christian opponents. Why should we base the article on Christianity's violent oppression of practitioners of the craft? Witchcraft should be presented in a manner similar to Gnosticism; they have much in common, both relying on extra-Biblical knowledge, both having been seen as heresy by the Church. Yet in one case we present the thing in itself, for the other we present the views of its oppressors? Why the difference? Because there's no equivalent of the Nag Hammadi library for witchcraft? What about goetia? It's barely mentioned, but is likely connected to what was called 'witchcraft'. Skyerise (talk) 13:37, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, it's like writing a scholarly thesis on the topic of Christianity based only on a study of Christian Nationalism or Southern Baptists. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 13:49, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Here's an interesting tidbit to get started on, "... court pageants and festivals - notably masques ... Often they pitted royal figures against evil forms of magic and witchcraft - theurgia versus goetia ..."[1] "Magick" being the historically used English term for theurgy and "witchcraft" being the contemporaneous English term for goetia. We have an article on theurgy, but goetia merely redirects to Ars Goetia. We have no history of the practice of goetia from Greek times nor material about its spread throughout the Roman Empire, nor precisely when it got branded as "witchcraft". Skyerise (talk) 14:20, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Also, Magic (supernatural) § Witchcraft would make a good lead for this article, don't you think? Skyerise (talk) 14:50, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Ankerloo, B., Clark, S., Monter, W. (2002). Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, Volume 4: The Period of the Witch Trials. United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 168
"We do not start the articles on Buddhism or Christianity with the views of their opponents. ... Why should we base the article on Christianity's violent oppression of practitioners of the craft?" - That sums up the whole problem with your arguments, as CorbieVreccan has already noted. You seem to think this article is about a religion, and that "witchcraft" meant benevolent magic until it was "oppressed" by Christians. Have you even read the article? Witchcraft always meant malevolent magic, then the witch-cult hypothesis came along and suggested exactly what you're preaching. But the witch-cult theory has been rejected by academia. It's pseudohistory, and some of you are trying to make it the focus of this article. You overlook all the non-Western cultures around the world who believe in witchcraft, and define it as malevolent magic. This article is not about a religion, it's primarily about the traditional and most common meaning of 'witchcraft' worldwide. That was made clear in the lead. The religion has its own articles at Wicca and Traditional Witchcraft. – Asarlaí (talk) 15:05, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No, I'm not talking about religion, except in the sense of cult. I'm talking about Greek shamanic sorcery and its historical spread, the names by which it was called, goetia, sorcery, maleficium, and witchcraft. About its incorporation of materials from and into the Greek Magical Papyri and later from Jewish kabbalistic and sorcerous sources. It's a quite different and darker history than Wicca projected for itself. There are sources out there to support it, so why is this history absent from the article? Proper coverage would include merging maleficium (sorcery) and black magic as referring to the same subject. Parts of Grimoire also refer to the same tradition. Skyerise (talk) 15:24, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You're free to add that to the article with reliable sources. But please stay on the topic of discussion: we're debating the opening lines of the article. If you want to discuss "Greek shamanic sorcery", you'd be better starting a new section. – Asarlaí (talk) 15:59, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's all connected. I thought we wrote articles about the thing itself, not the word. Skyerise (talk) 16:04, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
As a "btw", to avoid an[excessive citations] tag, you can group unnamed references together, with bullet-pointed citations each on a new line (not easy to show that here): <ref>* cite1 * cite2 ... * cite6</ref>. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 16:23, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Asarlaí, I see that you've "added POV lead tag, as the minority Wiccan meaning has been given priority". I could have tagged the lede myself "added POV lead tag, as the traditional meaning, although more common, has been given undue weight, and citations are excessive." However, I will continue to refrain from making major edits to the article, and suggest that you simply go ahead and swap the two sections round. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 16:44, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Change of plan: Here, I volunteered to move the contemporary material after the more common traditional usage. Hope this helps. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 16:55, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That's what I had done here. But I was reverted by Darker Dreams, who complained that "the lead spends much longer on the negative definition". Of course it does! That's what the article is about! Leads summarize the article. The minority Wiccan meaning takes up only one section of the article. It was given a sentence in the lead, a hatnote, and I even added this note so readers wouldn't get confused. But some editors kept pushing their preferred meaning in the lead, ignoring the rest of the article and what it's about. Again, Wicca and Traditional Witchcraft have their own articles. – Asarlaí (talk) 17:31, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I have once again reverted Darker Dreams at Witchcraft (disambiguation) for the same issues. Please look at that user's contribs as they are doing this disruption on multiple related articles. (Darker Dreams (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 18:28, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think that Skyerise's concern that Wikipedia articles ought to be about "the thing itself, not the word" hits at the heart of our challenge here. Contrary to Gnosticism, which although historically maligned was an actual practice, "witchcraft" in the historical sense is really more of cultural bogeyman/bugbear than something people did in the sense being debated here (the practice of benign or positive magic). In all likelihood, historical practitioners of what is now understood by some as positive witchcraft would not have described their magic as such, not least because of negative contemporary cultural understandings of "witchcraft" as being evil in nature. Self-definition, I believe, is key. It seems, then, that we need two articles: one on "witchcraft" as a cultural bogeyman phenomenon representing fears of malevolent magic (and all the political profiteering and such around it), and another on "witchcraft" as a relatively modern religious/spiritual practice that is largely positive in nature. I do not believe that the "Wicca" and "Traditional witchcraft" articles are sufficient for the latter purpose since they do not describe the full range of practices self-defined as "witchcraft". To rehash the point and re-quote Skyerise, although there is one "word" here, there are two significantly different "things" to write articles about: globally widespread cultural fears of malevolent magic ("witchcraft") and the characteristics and consequences of those cultural fears one the one hand, and a range of spiritual and magical practices self-defined by their practitioners as "witchcraft" on the other. Since the word is shared, I think it entirely appropriate to disambiguate here since both concepts are relatively popular, although one is indeed far more recent (at least insofar as its own practitioners identified it as "witchcraft").Pliny the Elderberry (talk) 19:12, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Pliny the Elderberry: The thing is, there was an actual practice, though most of the people persecuted as witches did not actually practice it. That practice was goetia "low magic", as distinguished from magiea or theurgia "high magic". I've put together an article on it at Sorcery (goetia). This is a narrower subject than witchcraft, as it is primarily a Western European tradition. Sorcery in Western Europe was originally a synonym for goetia, as was witchcraft - however the latter also included more indigenous traditions as well as the Greek, so it is no longer an exact synonym. Because actual goetic practitioners were persecuted along with witches, there is some overlap. There may be material in the new article which would be useful here and vice versa. Hope this helps. Skyerise (talk) 12:53, 15 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Devilishly good work there, Skyerise! Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 13:13, 15 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Skyerise: Regarding use of the word "demon", demon is often confused with daemon (or daimon, genius, or Guardian Angel), which was bivalent and could be a trickster, and has quite literally been "demonised" or "angelified". See, for example, Patrick Harpur, The Philosopher's Secret Fire: A History of the Imagination. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 14:14, 15 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Esowteric: Yes, that's covered. The reputed parentage of Merlin triggered the eventual identification of daimon with demon. More could be added about the process, continually more subtle differences were noted between types of magic, since Merlin was almost always defined as "good" so his "natural" magic evaded condemnation, despite his parentage. See Lawrence-Mathers, A. (2020) [2012]. "Chapter 6: A Demonic Heritage". The True History of Merlin the Magician. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300253085. Skyerise (talk) 15:00, 15 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Skyerise: That's interesting, thanks. Another book to add to the wish list. In The Sufis, Idries Shah notes that in Islam there is such a thing as "sihr al halal (permitted magic) [which], according to Islamic legal definition, covers [encoded] Sufi material part of which is inaccessible elsewhere in written form." (ie that this and certain alchemical material was used as a vehicle, and hence permissible).
I invite people to look at my edit history. Here, I'll help by highlighting what they're talking about. Ensure that you check the preceding and following edits on each of those pages. Then you might compare with this string of Wikipedia:Tendentious editing that credits all possible positive definition of witchcraft solely to Wicca, and pushes that site wide even in the middle of screaming that my undiscussed edits are violations. Also worth note is that there is apparently a belief that Neopagans are dominant enough to create systemic bias in the mix. Darker Dreams (talk) 19:29, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Apparently these two editors have identified me, personally and individually, as the "main problem" sufficiently that they need to coordinate not just off this talk page, but off wikipedia entirely. Obviously, I have no idea who else they may or may not be privately canvassing or lobbying. Of note, the individual promoting this extra coordination is an administrator. Darker Dreams (talk) 21:53, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Positive magic is all Wicca thesis

One of the core conflicts in the current content/lead disagreement appears (to me) to be the contentions that a) all positive references to witchcraft are the result of Wicca, and b) their modern development and connection to Wicca means they should be discounted.

B would be an editorial decision that could be reached as a community, but it relies on A. The problem is that this idea is not supported in citation WP:OR and is demonstrably incorrect.

It is not argued that Wicca was founded by Gerald Gardener in England. This is believed to have occurred sometime between 1921 and 1950. [1] The first evidence appears for the practice of a neopagan 'Witchcraft' religion (what would be recognizable now as Wicca) during the 1930s in England.[2] Gardner founded the Bricket Wood coven in the 1940s, and wrote High Magic's Aid (1949), Witchcraft Today (1954), and The Meaning of Witchcraft (1959).

Given that timeline, I think we can likely assume that the influence by Wicca in depictions of “good witches” in Hollywood movies in 1939 (The Wizard of Oz, which identifies both “good” and “wicked” witches) was unlikely. Even less likely would be the same reference in the book of the same name appearing in the 1900 book) or a 1926 movie (The Adventures of Prince Achmed). While these are popular media depictions, not academic descriptions, that presence is even more likely to follow popular perceptions than lead them. Some of these depictions may have been influenced by Margaret Murray, who presented her version of it in The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921) and continued thereafter. It is worth pointing out that the earlier version of the Witch-cult hypothesis, pioneered by German scholars Karl Ernst Jarcke and Franz Josef Mone, was intended as an ominous threat – but did influence books like Charles Godfrey Leland's Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches (1899) and Aleister Crowley.

In this sense, the supposed causal chain being pushed through these edits is backwards; positive depictions of Witchcraft lead to Wicca. As I said at the beginning, presenting all positive or neutral references to witchcraft as Wicca-derived (and all witch-identifying traditions as Wiccan) is WP:OR, is clearly wrong, and is generating bias in editing decisions. Darker Dreams (talk) 22:43, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Doyle White, Ethan (2016). Wicca: History, Belief, and Community in Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press. ISBN 978-1-84519-754-4.
  2. ^ Heselton, Philip (November 2001). Wiccan Roots: Gerald Gardner and the Modern Witchcraft Revival. Freshfields, Chieveley, Berkshire: Capall Bann Pub. ISBN 1-86163-110-3. OCLC 46955899.
    Drury, Nevill (2003). "Why Does Aleister Crowley Still Matter?". In Metzger, Richard (ed.). Book of Lies: The Disinformation Guide to Magick and the Occult. New York: Disinformation Books. ISBN 0-9713942-7-X. OCLC 815051948.
Befana and Biddy Early are some other interesting examples of pre-Wicca not-evil witches. Cunning_folk_in_Britain has some cited passages that throw significant question on the hard line drawn between the cunning folk and witches in this article. Meanwhile, the "witches are evil" thread is widely and often tied to virulent strains of misogyny and repression of "undesirables."[2][3] While some keep digging up references to support their (not argued!) assertion that there is a negative classical connotation to witchcraft; they somehow keep missing there is also an accepted anthropological notation that marginalized people are far more likely to be "witches" than some acceptable version of magic user, and that the term "witch" will be much more associated with malignity when applied to those people. Darker Dreams (talk) 23:58, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Biddy Early was a healer who helped her community, who at a later time was accused of practicing witchcraft (doing harm). She's an example of how, in that traditional worldview/nomenclature, healers are at one end of the spectrum and witches at the other. To call her a witch was an insult and, at that time, an accusation of crime. - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 14:07, 14 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a reason that shouldn't feel cherry-picked to ignore actual points?
Meanwhile, "healers" and "witches" were not that far apart in the eyes of the law. The British Witchcraft Act of 1541 effected cunning folk. The 1562 Act Against Conjurations, Enchantments and Witchcrafts, also still applied to cunning folk. citations at Cunning_folk_in_Britain#England_and_Wales and Witchcraft Acts. Darker Dreams (talk) 14:42, 14 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You gave an example of someone who did not call herself a witch, and now you are offended this is pointed out? To call her a witch now is revisionism, based on the post-Witchcult modern redefinition (which has been debunked - healers were not called witches). This revisionism also seems to be evident in modern writings about Befana, but I'll leave that to those who speak Italian and can better vet the translations. Best wishes, - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 15:08, 14 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Possible sources from older versions

Another way of approaching this issue is to look back at how things have changed over the course of years. I mean to this article at Wikipedia (see this Old revision of Witchcraft), when the subject was treated very differently (though, of course, the article will have been "improved" over time as well), and to check out the sources used in the past. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 18:30, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The change to the lede was made around here, not so long ago in the history of the article: Edit difference. This was achieved by swapping out references. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 20:08, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And I think this is where the idea of harm was introduced: Edit difference. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 20:30, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Citations used earlier in the article's history (in the lede)
  • Witchcraft in the Middle Ages[1]
  • Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: Biblical and Pagan Societies[2]
  • Britannica[3]
  • Pócs, Éva (1999). Between the Living and the Dead: A perspective on Witches and Seers in the Early Modern Age. Budapest: Central European University Press. ISBN 963-9116-19-X.
Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 07:20, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Digging around looking for possible additional references. It does strike me that Drawing Down the Moon, which is widely recognized as one of the seminal works on modern Paganism, is used exactly once... and then relies on the 1979 version rather than the 1986, 1996, or 2006 versions each of which improved information and detail.
Darker Dreams (talk) 11:42, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • [4]
  • [5] The Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions states in the mandate’s 2009 Report that human rights abuses carried out due to beliefs in witchcraft have “not featured prominently on the radar screen of human rights monitors” and that “this may be due partly to the difficulty of defining ‘witches’ and ‘witchcraft’ across cultures - terms that, quite apart from their connotations in popular culture, may include an array of traditional or faith healing practices and are not easily defined.
  • [6] [7] [8]
  • [9]
  • [10]
Darker Dreams (talk) 15:42, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Russell, Jeffrey Burton (1972). Witchcraft in the Middle Ages. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. pp. 4-10. ISBN 978-0801492891. witchcraft definition.
  2. ^ Bengt Ankarloo & Stuart Clark, Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: Biblical and Pagan Societies", University of Philadelphia Press, 2001
  3. ^ Jeffrey Burton Russell. "Witchcraft - Encyclopædia Britannica". Britannica.com. Retrieved 2013-06-29.
  4. ^ "The ritualized activities, trance states, preternatural abilities, and supposed interaction with spiritual entities (demons, ghosts, etc.) that characterize shamanism constitute a remarkably pervasive aspect of magic in many cultures from earliest antiquity even to the present. Whether they are called shamans, seers, medicine men, witch doctors, or occasionally witches, people engaged in some type of shamanistic practice have been revered and celebrated, feared, or condemned in many societies. In addition, scholars have argued that remnants or residues of shamanistic practices underlie numerous magical rites in many other societies. Perhaps most famously, Carlo Ginzburg identified shamanistic elements in the rites of the so-called benandanti (well-farers) of early modern Friuli. Although the benandanti claimed that they battled witches in a trance state to ensure the fertility of crops, investigating inquisitors eventually became convinced that the benandanti were themselves witches." [1]
  5. ^ https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/witchcraft-and-magic-in-russian-and-ukrainian-lands-before-1900/
  6. ^ https://leedstrinity.academia.edu/AngelaPuca
Are you going to keep posting links without any explanation? What are these links meant to be supporting? Some of them even go against your arguments.
I've added more academic references showing that the traditional meaning (malevolent magic) is the most common meaning of 'witchcraft' worldwide. Can you show us any sources that say the Wiccan/neopagan re-definition is just as common, or more common, than the traditional meaning? If not, then it shouldn't be given priority here. Wicca and Traditional witchcraft have their own articles. – Asarlaí (talk) 15:55, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
this has some interesting language from a global perspective ("I challenge the notions that witchcraft and sorcery invariably lead to violence, that there is only one type of witchcraft and sorcery, and that what is labelled witchcraft and sorcery in English is entirely superstitious nonsense." "Despite early Christianisation, belief and practice of witchcraft continues to be prevalent in this primarily matrilineal province. Even outside the province, the flying witches of Milne Bay are legendary and Milne Bay itself has been described anecdotally as the witchcraft centre of PNG. In contrast to other chapters from PNG in this volume which speak of witchcraft and sorcery accusations that generate brutal violence on the accused, violence against women is much less in this province where witchcraft is highly articulated, and it is said to empower and contribute to the status of Milne Bay women.") Darker Dreams (talk) 14:43, 14 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
[11] JSTOR link broke (?) Witchcraft, Sorcery, Violence:Matrilineal and Decolonial Reflections, Salmah Eva-Lina Lawrence
[12] "Certain people, sometimes named but frequently referred to simply as trollgubbe ‘witchman’ or kloka gumma, ‘wise woman’, had special knowledge enabling them to carryout important and necessary supranormal tasks in the community. These people, also called cunning folk in the academic literature, were respected by their local communities for their skills in healing (37/299) and other matters (57/299) that required specialised knowledge (see also Midelfort 1974: 195–196). They are referred to in the archived material as trollkunniga or trolldomskunniga ‘skilled in witchcraft’, which does not translate well into English. Words such as trollkarl, trollkäring and trollgubbe are used in the data for different groups of people, both ingroup and outgroup. The informants do not make clear which of these pose a threat to the community, and which do not, and for this reason I would rather consider the word neutral without strong connotations." Darker Dreams (talk) 13:08, 17 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
[1]Darker Dreams (talk) 12:28, 19 July 2023 (UTC) Darker Dreams (talk) 12:28, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"Witchcraft beliefs, though a long-standing part of European folk tradition, are generally agreed to have been qualitatively transformed during the 16th century. As Cohn (1975:197) has observed, “Until the late fourteenth century the educated in general, and the higher clergy in particular, were quite clear that these nocturnal journeyings of women, whether for benign or for maleficent purposes, were purely imaginary happenings. But in the sixteenth and still more in the seventeenth centuries, this was no longer the case.” [...] Russel (1972:25, 279) regards the age of classical witchcraft as having its beginnings in the preceding century, when accusations began to manifest a marked bias against women (see also Monter 1976:24) [...] As Larner points out, until the early 14th century witchcraft trails largely tended to revolve around indictments for sorcery and only occasionally involved the charges of diabolism which we associate with classical witchcraft. The imputation of diabolism slowly increased in incidence during the course of the 15th century [...] although ‘’belief’’ in witches was endemic" [13] Darker Dreams (talk) 22:19, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
[14] interesting abstract, but paywalled. Abstract in part; "The argument that contemporary examples of witchcraft belief demonstrate an alternative form of modern subjectivity has been doubted by many anthropologists, who claim that so-called modern witchcraft is often only a reflection of traditional cultural epistemologies. [...] I argue that witchcraft imagery takes [a negative] form because Christianity has reshaped the cultural conception of personhood, space, and time, detaching witchcraft from the ethos of kinship." Darker Dreams (talk) 23:04, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
[15] Not at all useful for going back past Wicca as the 89-90 timeframe when this was published is going to be right in the middle of now-outdated scholarship. But a fascinating window into some official thinking on the subject... no idea whether it's useful or not.
[16] With full awareness that blogs are not normally considered reliable sources for Wikipedia, but... what about the Library of Congress blogs which seem to be well cited, researched, and have a serious reputation to uphold. "A skeptic, [Reginald Scot] wrote [the 1584 “The Discouerie of Witchcraft,”] to make it plain that “witches” were not evil, but instead were resourceful and capable women who practiced the art of folk healing as well as sleight of hand. Their apparently miraculous feats were in no way wicked. He wrote, “At this day it is indifferent to say in the English tongue, ‘she is a witch’ or ‘she is a wise woman.’ ” " Darker Dreams (talk) 01:15, 22 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
[17] paywalled Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2016 article on globalization trends of witchcraft and study of witchcraft. Darker Dreams (talk) 08:48, 22 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Adler, Margot (2006). Drawing Down the Moon; Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America. Penguin Books. p. 66. Bonewits's division of Witches into categories is meant to clear up some of the confusion surrounding the word Witch. For example, the "classical witch" or cunning folk, would be defined as:
    {{|blockquote|a person (usually an older female who is adept in the uses of herbs, roots, barks, etc. for the purposes of both healing and hurting (including midwifing, poisoning, producing aphrodisiacs, producing hallucinogens, etc.) and who is familiar with the basic principles of both passive and active magical talents, and therefore use them for good or ill, as she chooses.}}
    This "classical witch" would be found among most peoples. In Europe this woman (or man) would be an old peasant, perhaps, "a font of country wisdom and old superstitions as well as a shrewd judge of character." For this kind of witch, writes Bonewits, religion was fairly irrelevant to practice. Some considered themselves Christians; some were Pagans. [...] Relatively few classical witches exist today in Europe. But Bonewits thinks that most people who call themselves "witches" today are "Neoclassical" - that is they use magic, divination, herbology, and extrasensory perception without much regard for religion. {{cite book}}: line feed character in |quote= at position 196 (help)
Collection of possible sources with quotes

[18] Login required. Abstract: Religion, magic and witchcraft are conceptual, socially constructed categories, the boundaries of which have been contested under diverse religious, cultural and intellectual conditions in the west. This paper focuses firstly on the polemical relationship between religion and magic in the context of colonial South Africa, namely, the historical factors that privileged the category religion and the multiple effects of the social and legal imposition of western epistemologies on colonised communities whose practices constituted 'magic', and, therefore, were synonymous with 'witchcraft'. Secondly, examples of strategies to reinforce the religion/magic dichotomy, to collapse their subjective boundaries, and the complexity witchcraft discourses bring to both positions are provided in the context of the religious and cultural hybridity of postcolonial South Africa. A parallel discussion is on the influence Christian and Enlightenment thought had on category construction in the study of religion and questions the extent to which Religion Studies today engages in decolonising the categories religion, magic and witchcraft in ways that do not contradict religious realities in our society.

[19] Login required. Abstract: The European ideas associated with witchcraft came to the Americas as a multipronged weapon of imperialism, a conception of non-Christian beliefs not as separate worldviews but as manifestations of evil and the reigning power of the devil over Indigenous peoples and, slightly later, African slaves and free people of African origins or heritage. To create this imperialist concept, colonizers drew from a late medieval demonological literature that defined witchcraft as ways of influencing one’s fate through a pact with the devil and the ritual of witches’ sabbaths. Through the court structure of the Holy Offices of the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions, Iberian imperialists set up judicial processes that they designed to elicit confessions from their colonial subjects regarding their involvement in what was labeled witchcraft and witches’ sabbaths, but which was most likely either non-European beliefs and practices, or even popular European ideas of healing. Archival documents from the Holy Office fueled Europeans’ vision of themselves as on the side of cosmic good as well as providing some details regarding popular practices such as divination and love magic. Whatever ethnographic details emerge from this documentation, the use of the terminology of witchcraft always signals an imperialistic lens.

[20] In Witchcraft, Intimacy, and Trust: Africa in Comparison, Geschiere (2013: xx) suggests that witchcraft “has become so generalized in everyday language that its meaning becomes increasingly vague and limitless.” Yet, to “impose clear definitions and categorizations” would also limit the fluidity of witchcraft and falsely constrain the “diffuseness of the discourse” that “seems to be the secret of its power” (ibid.: 9-10).

Though van Beek and Olsen note that not all witchcraft is evil, this turn toward violent expressions of witchcraft as a means to access and understand witchcraft belief is a dominant theme in contemporary witchcraft studies. The problem of witchcraft, layered as both the problem of understanding witchcraft and the problem of witchcraft-related violence, is a motivating puzzle for many researchers and readers.

In Witchcraft and Colonial Rule in Kenya, 1900-1995, Katherine Luongo (2011: 8) examines colonial interpretations and terminology of “local beliefs” and “local people whom they had difficulty disciplining and whose powers they aimed to ultimately deny.” Colonial uses of witchcraft, supernatural, and magic were employed to connote “irrational and atavistic” practices intended to cause harm through malevolent power (ibid.: 9). Luongo’s analysis of witchcraft, as a “matrix of discourse, experience, knowledge and belief,” approaches colonialist discourses and local discourses as co-constitutive counterweights opposing each others’ power and legitimacy, yet bound in a dialectical discourse (ibid.). It is this conflict that is at the centre of academic concerns the task of defining witchcraft. Middleton and Winter (2013: 1), in Witchcraft and Sorcery in East Africa, argue that the inability to understand witchcraft beliefs “in the context of the lives of those who hold them, is often at the basis of naive statement that the ‘African mind’ is different in some fundamental way from the ‘European mind’ and in an ultimate sense incomprehensible.”

In Witchcraft in Post-colonial Africa, Mavhungu also stresses the importance of local context and warns that witchcraft belief “is neither homogeneous nor coherent” (ibid.: 19). However, the limitations of looking too closely at one context and failing to build a broader conception or clear links between experiences of witchcraft pose another challenge. By focusing on witchcraft as a local and unique experience, the concept risks expanding beyond the confines of language, becoming so diffuse as that it is beyond the act of naming.

It is incredibly difficult to escape the reflex of defining witchcraft as a means to explain misfortune. This approach is not only central to Western studies of African witchcraft, it has also greatly informed local conceptions of witchcraft in the past and present. In my own fieldwork (Roxburgh 2014), individuals in Ghana and Cameroon would defer to anthropological works employing this definition when discussing witchcraft in their own milieux. In one interview, a respondent did not want to answer the question of how to define witchcraft and instead instructed me to find an anthropologist to define the concept.

In an effort to move away from the interpretation of witchcraft as explaining events through a mistaken belief, many authors are focusing on the emerging paradigm of witchcraft as a form of power. Witchcraft as power questions what witchcraft does in its social context without constructing a hierarchy among diverse notions of reality. Importantly for studies of witchcraft, this approach fosters a coherent interpretation of witchcraft that can be applied across numerous contexts in time and space. Rather than seeking to understand what witchcraft explains, witchcraft as power centres what witchcraft does in a society. In this light, witchcraft can be coherently contained as an extension of one being’s will over another’s against the latter’s wishes. Like political, social, and economic power, witchcraft power gives one the exceptional ability affect and act over another in the real world.


[21] In the context of the sixteenth to early nineteenth centuries, the category of brujería encompassed a range of culturally-syncretic spiritual practices marginalized colonial subjects used to restructure social relations and acquire power that they were otherwise denied in their patriarchal environment. The intensity of women’s socio-political abjection at this time meant they had a particularly urgent need to counteract white men’s dominance, a desire that played a key part in the creation of an inter-caste, inter-class, mostly feminine network of relations focused on the commerce of magical knowledge, herbs, and rituals. Centuries later, we find the legacies of these relations in Latin American spiritual traditions, such as curanderismo (a form of traditional healing) and chamanismo (shamanism), which disenfranchised, majority Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) women, still utilize in everyday life as part of their efforts at overcoming systematic subjugation.

In New Spain, Christian discourses normalized associating Indigenous and African spiritual practices with sinful diabolism, such that colonial society began to label these practices as brujería using imported Spanish notions. However, it is important to clarify that for most of the Latin American colonial period — in stark contrast to Western European understandings of witchcraft — brujería was not typically associated with a broader conspiratorial network of witches, nor were witches presumed to engage in devil pacts, orgiastic sabbaths, and bloody sacrifices. Rather, brujería had a decidedly quotidian connotation, as it was primarily employed by lovers, spouses, enslaved people and enslavers, or servants and their employers to address conflicts within their relationships. In these settings, women and Black and Indigenous peoples — usually the subordinates in these relations — used syncretic spiritual practices for a range of affective purposes, including to enact revenge through bodily malaise, manipulate the other party, or simply gain power that was otherwise unavailable to them because of their gender or race. Thus, most instances of colonial Mexican brujería are more similar to European domestic sorcery than to openly devilish witchcraft.

[22] In analyses of African settings, witchcraft is often synonymous with “power,” Stroeken describes how, for instance, healer and witch are part of the same frame for Pentecostals, since they treat magic , bewitchment, divination , ritual sacrifice, and spirit possession as belonging to one domain.

In many cases in the past, in fact, it was reported that sorcery was an instrument of legitimate Big Man control (see Malinowski 1926; Zelenietz and Lindenbaum 1981; Stephen 1996; Dalton 2007, p. 43), and thereby to some degree it was similar to Geschiere’s djambe concept of power in Cameroon (Geschiere 1997). But in contemporary Melanesia we instead read about witches as being sick, old, ugly, and unskilled, as well as envious and greedy. In this context, they are perhaps more figures of anti-power (see Knauft 1985; Kelly 1993; Lipuma 1998).

[23] Requires login. Abstract: For years, self-identified witches have demanded the public acknowledgement of witchcraft as “religion” in Nigeria. These political debates are reflected in a long-ongoing scholarly discussion about whether “witchcraft” in Africa should be regarded as religion or not. At its core, this discussion concerns the quest for African meanings. I argue that we should focus on the translingual practice as the reason for today’s perception of “African” and “European” differences as incommensurable. Tracing back today’s understanding of witchcraft among the Yoruba (àjé), the Alatinga anti-witchcraft movement of the early 1950s becomes the nodal point of Yoruba witchcraft history. Discussing the Alatinga as translingual practice, I understand Yoruba witchcraft concepts as products of a global religious history. Only in the aftermath of the Alatinga, a hybrid movement, did the need arise to demarcate “African” and “European” meanings. Thus, Yoruba translingual practice has also affected European understandings of religion and witchcraft today.

[24] Requires login. Abstract: This paper explores the ways in which traditional beliefs of Andean peoples regarding health and sickness were transformed by the process of Spanish colonization. It also examines how the colonial context devolved new meanings and powers on native curers. The analysis of these transformations in Andean systems of meanings and role structures relating to healing depends on an examination of the European witchcraze of the 16th-17th centuries. The Spanish conquest of the Inca empire in the mid-1500's coincided with the European witch hunts; it is argued that the latter formed the cultural lens through which the Spanish evaluated native religion--the matrix through which Andean concepts of disease and health were expressed--as well as native curers. Andean religion was condemned as heresy and curers were condemned as witches. Traditional Andean cosmology was antithetical to 16th century European beliefs in the struggle between god and the devil, between loyal Christians and the Satan's followers. Consequently, European concepts of disease and health based on the power of witches, Satan's adherents, to cause harm and cure were alien to pre-Columbian Andean thought. Ironically European concepts of Satan and the supposed powers of witches began to graft themselves onto the world view of Andean peoples. The ensuing dialectic of ideas as well as the creation of new healers/witches forged during the imposition of colonial rule form the crux of this analysis.

[25] European fears of witchcraft performed by Andean and African women and New Christians, filtered as they were through Iberian ideologies of gender and religion, were transferred to the New World in ways that were not grounded in the reality of Spanish held Peru, but nonetheless had significant implications for the lives of New Christians and Andean women in the New World.

Spanish anxiety about Jews and indigenous witches in early colonial Peru was based in the imagined threats that these groups posed to the colonial order: in being non-Christian, both Jews and Andean women were antithetical to the logic of colonization and were imagined to threaten Christianity and colonial state formation. Despite the fact that New Christians in the New World were principally trying to assimilate into Christian, colonial society and hide their Jewishness, and that Andeans did not have a concept of the devil or witchcraft and as a result did not understand themselves to be practicing witchcraft, the Spanish colonial imaginary perceived New Christians and indigenous women as serious dangers to the foundation of the colonial state.

The Spanish uniformly understood Andean religion entirely in terms of their own Christian religion. Andean religion, thus lacking any internal coherence as a result of the Spanish separation of Andean religious tradition from its beliefs and history, was construed as superstition.35,36 In the Andean devotion to huacas and their ancestors, the Spanish saw devil worship, and not the religious beliefs that made such a worship make sense.37,38 Consequently, both the Spanish who understood Andean religion as in some way united to Christianity and ancient Mediterranean religion and the Spanish who saw Andean religion as totally unlike Christianity tried to understand Andean worship in terms of demonic illusion.

If Andean worship was indeed devil worship, then indigenous witches were simply manifestations of Andean women’s denunciation of Christianity and their practice of their traditional religion.

European witch-hunts, which accused primarily women of being agents of the devil, are generally considered a backlash both to women’s increasing independence from men and motherhood and to the Church’s fading authority.

[W]itch hunts explicitly targeted women and midwives in an attempt to incite fear in women who were using birth control and going against the gender order and to eliminate knowledge of birth control.62 The period of the most intense witch-hunts, moreover, was concurrent with the Church’s waning power in the post-Reformation era, and it took advantage of Europe’s most marginalized population (poor, old women) to reclaim its authority. Finally, this period marked the first time that the Church possessed the technology and the capacity to Christianize the European masses, which were thought to have been practicing pre-Christian sorcery. The European witch craze of the mid-sixteenth through the mid-seventeenth centuries was a fear-based reaction both to the new independence of women and to old, pre-Christian manifestations of spirituality in Europe. The fear that the idea of witches brought about for Christian Europe, thus, was simultaneously based in an understanding of Christianity as the only true religion, one that was so distinct from the pagan religions of Europe’s peasantry that mass forced conversion was required, and in new fears that were being engendered by a loss of Church control and by women’s empowerment. Though the witch craze in Europe arose from specifically European circumstances and fears, the European understanding of the devil working in religious and cultural traditions not well understood by the Church was at the heart of the witch hunts and Autos de Fe in Peru at the same time.

Spain’s witch hunts and Inquisition sought to bolster the authority of the Church and the state through the public condemnation of marginalized groups (namely women and Jews) who were, or were perceived to be, accruing their own empowerment and threatening the power of the state.

Andean women were not only stripped of their roles in organizing their own political and religious institutions, but were economically exploited in ways that were unprecedented under the Spanish system of tribute. Moreover, the equality they had enjoyed with their male counterparts was expunged as the Spanish colonial state and ideology enforced a subordination of indigenous people to the Spanish and a subordination of women to men. Consequently, and because of the power that the Spanish vested in Andean women as a result of their own European fears of powerful women, Andean witches used the Spanish ideology of witchcraft to reclaim their culture, religion, and their female autonomy.

By the very definition of witchcraft that the Spanish created in the Andes, the practice by Andean women of their religion and the maintenance of their culture was construed as witchcraft.

Both the Andean women who stayed in the reducciones and those that fled to the puna to create radical communities that rejected Christianity, colonization, and patriarchy in absolute terms were construed by the Spanish colonial state as witches simply because of their maintenance of their culture and religion.91 In fact, a Spanish priest who publicly whipped three Andean witches claimed that he punished these women not ‘“so much because of the fact that they believed in superstitions and other abominations, but rather because they encouraged the whole village to mutiny and riots through their reputation as witches.”’

[26] “Red Dirt Witch” is, of course, inspired by Jemisin’s experiences as a black woman, but also—and importantly—by her own ancestry. In an interview, she tells Khatchadourian about her father’s grandmother, “a woman people called Muh Dear,” who made a living “doing fortunes—magic, for lack of a better term” (Khatchadourian). This is the character that inspired Emmaline, the shaman-like figure featured in her story.

[27] The original concept of witchcraft corresponds to what anthropologists call sorcery: the attempt to influence the course of events by ritual means. Two other, quite different, phenomena have been called witchcraft. The first is the alleged diabolical witchcraft of early modern Europe and its colonies; the second is Neopagan witchcraft, a 20th century revival.

Witchcraft in Africa acts as something real and has pragmatic tasks in society that were like the role of opium in an ill or wounded human being. Witchcraft decreases people’s current agony and offers them pleasant fantasies which give them the muscle to persist.

[W]itchcraft has as invisible side, identified by Agbanusi (2016) that: “It is generally believed in West Africa that, apart from the onwards material appearance, there is the experience of an immaterial invisible reality. Witchcraft is part of such reality. However, there are still a lot of controversies about the nature of witchcraft. (p. 116)”

[28] Full article locked. Around 1980 both historical/anthropological research on witchcraft and ethnographic/anthropological enquiries on shamanism represented a burgeoning field of scholarly discussion and research. As to the former, among many other inspiring new approaches (such as the “sociology of accusation” proposed by Keith Thomas and Alan Macfarlane, the problem of the distinction of a “popular” layer of witchcraft beliefs from the learned concepts of the diabolic witches’ sabbath discussed by Norman Cohn and Richard Kieckhefer, or the question of gender addressed in a new way by Christina Larner) Carlo Ginzburg’s discovery of documents pertaining to the benandanti directed the attention of researchers to the problem of how a number of archaic sorcerer-types got caught in the web of witchcraft persecutions, and how the archaic beliefs related to them made their imprint on the evolution of learned concepts of witchcraft. This was the starting point for the discussion of the historical relationship between witchcraft and shamanism: the bold suggestion by Carlo Ginzburg, who perspicaciously observed that the traits of the benandanti (being born in a caul, undergoing initiation in dreams, participating in night battles during soul-journeys while their bodies lay at home in trance, communicating with the dead, etc.) “richiama immediatamente i culti dei sciamani.”

[29] “Occultism, Witchcraft, and Cultural Fashions; Essays in Comparative Religion” Mircea Eliade (book; not available online) In the period domoninated by the triumphs of scientific rationalism, how do we account for the extraordinary success of such occult movements as astrology or the revival of witchcraft? From his perspective as a historian of religions, the eminent scholar Mircea Eliade shows that such popular trends develop from archaic roots and periodically resurface in certain myths, symbols, and rituals.

[30] Requires login. Abstract: Virtually every society in the world has some sort of witchcraft concept. It is indisputable that witchcraft, as is the case with most occultism, is shrouded in mystery. There is also a lot of controversy about its rationality and logic in the modern world. Witchcraft has of late become a 'growth' subject and particular interest is centred on comparing and contrasting witchcraft within Africa itself as well as the now despicable "witch craze" of Medieval Europe. Studies of the evolution and role of witchcraft in the African continent are fraught with sensational and derogatory overtones. Conventional anthropologists and historians approach the subject with disdain and ethnocentric prejudices which impedes objectivity in understanding such a sensitive but pervasive phenomenon. This article articulates a number of historical accounts on the origins and distinctive features of witchcraft in pre-colonial Africa. It offers an appraisal on some poignant aspects such as magnitude, ramifications and controlling witchcraft in traditional settings. It aims to place witchcraft in its proper perspective as a socially constructed meaning system contending in many pre-scientific societies. Furthermore, it elaborates on the role of anti-witchcraft specialists (waganga) whose expertise and significance was deliberately misconstrued by over-zealous colonial administrators and pioneering Christian missionaries.

[31] Article locked. Abstract: Against a background of the feminist appropriation of the witch taking place concurrently in second-wave American, French and West German feminism, the paper examines Sarah Kirsch’s appropriation of the witch as a subversive figure in her poetry cycle Zaubersprüche (Conjurations, 1973). In subverting the traditional image of the witch, Kirsch establishes a new one: that of a feminist witch and a feminist witch-writer. The witch is both the fictive character created by Kirsch, and her own self-designation; in the latter case, writing, especially writing in the experimental fashion, is a form of witchcraft. The paper analyzes the poems using the theoretical concept of magical realism. Although magical realism is mostly associated with post-colonial studies, it proves to be an apposite mode for feminist studies as well. The magical realist modality contradicts the state-sanctioned aesthetic of socialist realism, a fact that makes Kirsch one of the subversive “GDR-Witches.”

We'll see if any of that is useful. - Darker Dreams (talk) 03:02, 30 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Discussions elsewhere

There are discussions related to this ongoing conflict that have been opened outside this talkpage:

Darker Dreams (talk) 22:09, 12 July 2023 (UTC) Edited above comment to account for project page archiving and add previous related discussion. Darker Dreams (talk) 23:53, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 15:04, 17 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Dummy edit to make sure that this thread is not archived while dispute resolution is going on. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 06:24, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Darker Dreams (talk) 07:13, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Darker Dreams (talk) 09:00, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Witchcraft_(feminist)#Merge proposal Darker Dreams (talk) 16:52, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Underscores

Resolved

Many underscores (like so) have been added in referenced quotations that are not present in the sources, to add emphasis and "metaphorically underscore" the editor's stance, which seems wrong to me. It's another form of editorialising. As well as this, the manual of style says: "Generally, do not underline text or it may be confused with links on a web page." Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 13:50, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Addendum: Changing the underscores to bold text is not the answer, either. As Wikipedians it is not our place to add our own emphasis, or to make a point, especially not in direct quotations. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 14:09, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. Just use the quotations verbatim. If some of the material is irrelevant, elide it with ellipses. Nosferattus (talk) 19:35, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I have fixed it. We do not change the style in a quotation. Material should be bolded or underlined only if it is in the source. The best way to make a point clear is to not overquote. Skyerise (talk) 20:50, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Short description

Consolidating here. We've gone back and forth on several phrasings in the long discussions above. Current form as of this post:

  • Type of magical practice

My concern with these is that we shouldn't state in Wiki-voice that everyone who claims to have supernatural powers actually has them. I'm also not sure that all readers will understand, or agree, with how "magic" is defined here (see linked disambig). Occultists came up with the "magick with a k" spelling to distinguish magic (supernatural) and ceremonial magic from stage magic (magic (illusion)). Some readers may still go to stage magic in their minds. We need to think outside the "everyone knows what pagan magic is" box with this. What can we use instead of "magic"? Metaphysical? Occult? - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 20:06, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe occult would be a possible word to introduce. Or supernatural. It's the same with what everyday people think of "imagination", ie mere fantasy. Henry Corbin, too, had to resort to the word "imaginal" (and the imaginal world, mundus imaginalis) to describe "real" or "active" imagination, and was at pains to make the distinction. And Jung didn't help by using the word fantasy when he meant active imagination. Others also talk of the "lost knowledge of the imagination". Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 20:12, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think you can (nor can you be expected to) come up with a short definition that will please everybody (those who believe, those who know, those who are staunch materialists, and those who have an opinion). "Knowledge is something which you can use. Belief is something which uses you." "Opinion is usually something which people have when they lack comprehensive information." ~ Idries Shah, Reflections. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 20:31, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Personally, I'd avoid using the word "mystical", because to many that means subordinating or annihilating the ego and surrendering to the will of a supreme being, and to others it might mean pink unicorns. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 20:45, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I do think of unicorns (pink or otherwise) when I hear of "mystical". What does the term have to do with a supreme being? Dimadick (talk) 21:13, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal

I've looked a bit into the history of this article. In 2017, the article Contemporary witchcraft was merged into this article, even though contemporary witchcraft does not fall under the definition used here of being malicious. That merge should be reversed, since it merged material that doesn't fit what seems to be the whole premise of the article.

Once material which does not fall under the negative view premise is removed, then this article should be renamed to something like Historical witchcraft or Premodern witchcraft or Historical views of witchcraft.

Most certainly, both Witchcraft and Witch should be disambiguation pages. Skyerise (talk) 10:14, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is an outstanding idea. I might suggest witchcraft and witch being a single (disambiguation) page still, just because I think that seems more like word-splitting than subject splitting. (Ie, a witch is someone who practices witchcraft, the problem being how witchcraft is defined in various times and places, including academic study of those times and places.) Darker Dreams (talk) 12:45, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I could be better that the two be merged to one disambiguation page, but in my view, why should the pages be disambiguated in one as a witch is a person and a witchcraft is a magic also Witch redirects to Witchcraft so what is the point? ToadetteEdit (chat)/(logs) 15:04, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

For clarity, I suggest the dividing line be historical: this article should in general end with the passage of the Witchcraft Act in 1736, though keeping the section about Modern witch-hunts seems reasonable. Thus, we should have one historical article which basically ends with the decriminalization of witchcraft, and another one which starts with Modern witchcraft. I'm sure reasonable discussion will lead to solutions for how to handle the intervening period, depending on which view the material best fits. Skyerise (talk) 10:26, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Good plan, and you may have explained where the problem occurred (the inadequate merging of "Contemporary witchcraft" to this page as well as the undiscussed merging of 'Witch' in 2007). Add mislinks - {{Magic and Witchcraft in the British Isles}} things like this have been linked to this article for a long time - and the point of departure that you've pointed out then grew into the boat-without-a-rudder effect which then "captured" the words witchcraft and witch. Randy Kryn (talk) 10:44, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that something along these lines would be helpful. There's a lot of confusion (at least for first-time visitors) when we have Witchcraft supposedly for premodern material, with modern stuff tacked on, and then we have Traditional witchcraft which you might expect to be premodern, but which turns out to be neo-pagan. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 10:48, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It turns out that the merge was invalid. The merge was proposed by @Midnightblueowl: who a month later closed the discussion against the rules (the proposer cannot be the one who closes the discussion) and implemented the merge against process and with no consensus. I've taken the liberty of restoring Contemporary witchcraft because of this irregularity. Skyerise (talk) 10:52, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds good. Might be worth explicitly explaining your reasoning on the talk page. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 10:55, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If the article is clearly titled, then earlier (and perennial) objections about negative bias in the lede would probably be reduced. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 11:16, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose the major difference between pre-modern and modern material here is that you have modern people who self-identify as witches in a positive way. You don't have that in older material, and that makes it spurious to cover witchcraft as something with a generic, fixed definition. It becomes more complicated because those who self-identify as witches often have their own definitions, which they apply also to historical people and material. I don't know if the available sources allow us to do this, but I like the approach in our article on Gnosticism in modern times. If we instead of "contemporary witchcraft" have an article on "witchcraft in modern times", it would be possible to cover every variation of the topic on its own merits: self-identifying contemporary witches, how the term has been tossed around as a label for people who don't use it about themselves, modern reception history and discussions about the term in general, presence in language and culture etc. I've thought about proposing a similar approach to our article on modern paganism, which has a lot of problems, but there I'm familiar enough with the most authoritative sources to know it's not possible. The article is a mess because it accurately reflects the existing scholarship. Ffranc (talk) 11:43, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Basically, premodern and modern witchcraft are two different things using the same name. Precisely the job of a disambiguation page. Trying to cover it without such a division as if they were one and the same thing is the root of the problem here. Skyerise (talk) 11:55, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
They're both several different things, and many of these things are too intertwined to make any definite distinctions possible. For example, "modern witchcraft" is sometimes to take things no one in pre-modern times thought of as witchcraft and label them as "pre-modern witchcraft". Ffranc (talk) 12:05, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not clear what point you are trying to make here. Skyerise (talk) 12:32, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Pre-modern and modern witchcraft are not really separate subjects. There are differences in how the word has been used in different times and places, but a separate article about modern or contemporary material would be defined by time period, not by its own distinct definition of witchcraft. Ffranc (talk) 12:44, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This is most likely a minority view. The discrediting of the witch cult hypothesis put the nail in the coffin of the idea that one is an historical continuation of the other. It is now well established that "witches" in premodern times practiced something completely different than "witches" in modern times. There being no continuity makes them two things: premodern witchcraft was a combination of indigenous practices and Greco-Roman goetia; Modern witchcraft was made up out of whole cloth in the 20th century, with a false veneer of historical continuation. Skyerise (talk) 12:57, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'll quibble slightly with the "from whole cloth" characterization... It's a semantic distinction, but modern "witchcraft" as practiced by Wiccans, "traditional witches," and the like has been assembled from a number of places including hermetic practice, goetia, various indigenous practices, historical/anthropological study of various quality, etc rather than just being completely fantasy inventions (though, there is some of that, too). I recognize that your actual point that there's no evidence for (and plenty of evidence against) "unbroken lineage of practice" and that is completely valid and accurate. Darker Dreams (talk) 13:32, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for clarifying my meaning. I agree completely with your restatement. Skyerise (talk) 13:35, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Darker Dreams gave a good summary of what I was thinking of while I was typing. I'll post my version anyway.
I'm not talking about the witch-cult theory but how the word "witchcraft" is understood in the first place. "Witches" in pre-modern times were people who were labelled as witches by someone else, in their own time or retroactively by someone in modern times. They didn't think of themselves as witches and the reasons for the label varied. The practice of labelling things as witchcraft didn't change in some major way with the advent of modernity, although it intensified with the witch trials in the early modern period.
Self-identifying witches are new, but that's just one part of the broader subject of (modern) witchcraft. Scholars of contemporary witchcraft as new religious movements often trace contemporary practices to things like goetia, renaissance magic and esoteric Christian practices. Some of these things caught the attention of contemporary witches because they saw they had been labelled as witchcraft, at some point in time, pre-modern or modern. The lumping together of paganism, magic and witchraft by ancient and medieval Christian writers is one part of the history of witchcraft, the idea that pre-modern goetia is witchcraft is another, the witch-cult theory is a third. Contemporary witches that draw inspiration from all these things can be said to be a fourth, or a part of the reception history of the earlier material. I don't see how these things can be separated as pre-modern and modern in a clearly definable way, and I'm not aware of any WP:RS that even tries to do this. "Modern" and "contemporary" witchcraft are here primarily about when things have taken place. Ffranc (talk) 13:50, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Not an insurmountable problem. Seriously, if this were a real obstacle, we'd have to merge science back into magick and chemistry back into alchemy. Sheesh. Skyerise (talk) 13:57, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps we could merge every Wikipedia article into one article titled "Everything", while we're at it! Skyerise (talk) 14:03, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Science is not derived from renaissance magic, if that's what you're implying. I'm not opposed to having an article about contemporary witchcraft, I'm opposed to defining it as qualitatively different from the witchcraft covered in this article. This article isn't perfect but has a good scope that includes a variety of subtopics such as witchcraft accusations, things that have been labelled as witchcraft at various times, different theories about witchcraft, portrayals of witchcraft in culture, and contemporary people who use the label for themselves. The article about contemporary witchcraft should have the same kind of material, just go more in-depth about contemporary history. Ffranc (talk) 14:09, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You wrote "Science is not derived from renaissance magic". Exactly. And contemporary witchcraft is not derived from historical "malevolent" witchcraft. Your reply would seem to support my point. Skyerise (talk) 14:13, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It does not, because there is no inherent correspondence between these subjects. I'm proposing that "contemporary witchcraft", as a subject, should be treated as the parts of this article's subject that are about contemporary times, including contemporary accusations about malevolent practices. Ffranc (talk) 14:58, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, and in point of fact, science did derive from Renaissance magic. Prior to the introduction of the term 'science', such studies fell under the rubric of 'magick'. The division proceeded first by distinguishing science as a type of magic, called Natural magic, which eventually came to be called 'science'. Skyerise (talk) 14:38, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
A reminder of how we arrived here: The opening sentence of Witchcraft read until the most recent editorial skirmish: Witchcraft traditionally means the use of magic or supernatural powers to harm others. Ditto, short description: Practice of magic, usually to cause harm. Redirecting unsuspecting readers and editors alike to this page, that should really be titled something like [Scholarly views on] "Witchcraft (premodern)", is the cause of much confusion and many heated talk page discussions. Skyerise's proposal seeks to address this and other concerns. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 14:42, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The article on natural magic only talks about natural science. Science is a broader subject, and the Wikipedia article on natural science doesn't shy away at all from covering pre-modern material as well. If we apply the logic of our discussion about witchcraft here, it would mean that you want us to treat modern science as largely unrelated to pre-modern science other than by name, whereas I propose that we should be careful about making too definite, qualitative distinctions.
I don't think I have anything more to add here. I'm interested in the subject, but I know from experience that the sources needed to write something that's actually useful about these kinds of topics often don't exist. A fully developed Wikipedia article about something as broad and elusive as witchcraft will often result in little more than a collection of statements from scholars who talk past each other. Ffranc (talk) 14:58, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
What I'm seeing here—and broadly throughout this talk page—is advocates of a religious movement attempting to give this movement undue weight within this topic. The concept of witchcraft has a long history, and there's extensive academic research related to that history. Witchcraft was understood to mean malevolent magic for hundreds of years before a handful of people started calling themselves "witches" and then insisting that their religion's interpretation was the Truth. Trying to supplant the broader concept with a religious movement's interpretation of the concept is inappropriate. This would be no different than saying that the article Satan should better reflect the beliefs and practices of Satanists or that the article apostle should reflect the Pentecostal understanding of apostles because some Pentecostal Christians identify as apostles today. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 14:49, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Nobody is trying to supplant anything. Splitting and disambiguating tthe article properly allows this article to be free from such attempts, as it would restrict itself to pre- "movement", as you put it. And the use of the word "handful" is derogatory. There are in excess of 1.2 million neopagans in the US alone. And your characterization of what editors "want" also seems specious: the only reason some want to make this article more positive is that certain editors, who would be the first to acknowledge the lack of historical continuation, have commandeered two terms whose historical and modern meanings differ and refuse to allow them to be disambiguated. This leaves editors with no choice but to try to improve the presentation in this article to cover two different topics, which in this case can not be done well. Skyerise (talk) 14:54, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If I want to create a religion whose primarily belief is that Finland doesnt exist, that wouldn't give my followers the right to spout any of it on any article relating to Finland.
Modern "witches" are allowed to believe whatever made up crap they want to, but that doesnt give them the right to come here and "make positive changes" just because there are "1.2 million of them"
Oh, and by the way, that 1.2 million number also includes other types of neopagans, but just wannabe witches. 2603:7000:CF0:7280:58B:3BD4:1DAB:AEB4 (talk) 14:51, 17 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Good points about the religious advocacy here, and that we don't write Satan to privilege the beliefs of modern Satanists. Agreed, Thebiguglyalien. - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 19:10, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Going forward...

To help resolve this dispute, I've had to resurrect Contemporary witchcraft. I've already proposed to collapse the Wicca structure by merging Traditional witchcraft either into Wicca or into Contemporary. Academic sources say that trad is part of Wicca. The relevant discussion is at Talk:Wicca#Merge proposed from Traditional witchcraft. If the Wicca folk reject it (the article is pretty large), then I'd suggest we merge it up into Contemporary. Then we can decide if there is a more appropriate or accurate title than Contemporary witchcraft. Skyerise (talk) 19:28, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot, Skyerise. And also: (b) a complementary and more accurate name for Witchcraft, should consensus be reached, (c) in some cases, better redirect target/s than this current article, Witchcraft. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 19:33, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I have to say that much of the problem came from merging the old Contemporary witchcraft the wrong way, since I don't believe there are academic sources which call the modern witchcraft movement malevolent. However, there may be a reason to separate trad from Wicca. We'll see... Skyerise (talk) 19:37, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
As I mentioned above, aside from some outliers, most of the contemporary people who self-id as "traditional witches" are Wiccans who changed their nomenclature after it came to light that Valiente and Gardner cobbled it together in the 40's/50's. This happened largely after Aiden Kelly published, but his manuscript, and similar research, had been circulated privately for many years before publication, and led to name changes to "Traditional Craft" in some quarters a decade or more prior. I know this has been written about in periodicals. Not sure if they're available online. - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 21:17, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Here is an academic source from 2007 with a consise summary of the use of "traditional" in this context, as well as a lamentation on the inconsistencies and sloppiness from scholars. I think this info can be added to the article on Wicca, and traditional witchcraft can then be redirected there.
"Most writers on the New Age and Paganism do not even make any differentiation between the British definition of Wicca (initiatory Gardnerian and Alexandrian lines) from the American definition of Wicca (anyone, initiated or not, who is committed to the ideology and practice of Modern Pagan Witchcraft). Nor do they seem to differentiate between the two different meanings of the word 'traditional' used when referring to Modern Pagan Witchcraft. The British tend to use that term to refer to Witchcraft believed to derive from pre-Gardnerian groups, whilst the American definition tends to refer to Gardnerian and Alexandrian initiatory lines."
Glancing at our article on Wicca, some of its confusing parts may result from attempts to patch something together from contradictory American and British material. It uses the term "British Traditional Wicca" in a way that would imply that the American individualist version now is the standard, which may or may not be the case. There is also the term "Modern Pagan Witchcraft" in the source I quoted, which I think is similar in scope to what Skyerise is aiming for in the contemporary witchcraft article, but I doubt it would be possible to have an article under that title. The existing corpus of WP:RS might just be too confused and contradictory for us to be able to write anything really worthwhile, and it becomes more about reducing the prevalence of outright misunderstandings. I usually find it more meaningful to cover these subjects through more concentrated articles, such as biographies or articles about creative works with related themes. When scholars attempt to cover the subject as a whole, it tends to quickly become bad and misleading. Ffranc (talk) 08:57, 17 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If you want to have an article about 'Witchcraft' as some neo-pagans re-define it, I suggest it be named Neopagan Witchcraft or something similar; preferably capitalized as we're talking about a religion. If you name it "contemporary witchcraft" you would have to include all the contemporary cultures that still define witchcraft as malevolent magic, which is the most common meaning worldwide. So you'd be mixing together two completely different things. – Asarlaí (talk) 11:08, 17 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Perfect. If everything doesn't get merged into Wicca, that's the best title proposal I've heard so far. Skyerise (talk) 11:35, 17 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Not for nothing, but if we're making this article all about the negative view of witches and witchcraft somewhere in here we should probably address how a significant part of the global "witchcraft is evil" ties in with Christianization. Whether from demonizing indigenous practices, using local beliefs to try to convert populace, etc... outside Europe it generally isn't a natural outgrowth of many of the existing cultures until they get that influence. I was digging for some of those references above, here's another [32] Darker Dreams (talk) 13:03, 17 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"the global "witchcraft is evil" ties in with Christianization" Probably true, but this should probably be covered on the main article on Christianization. At this point, its overview is a chronological list of events, with relatively little coverage for specific cultural changes. Dimadick (talk) 08:05, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed with Asarlaí and Skyrise that Neopagan Witchcraft is a far better title that "contemporary witchcraft" for the neopagan stuff. For all the reasons. I'm going to create the redirect and propose the move. Actually, let me get up to speed on today's state of the articles first. I'm not attached to who creates it, just that we resolve the "traditional" and "contemporary" issues with better terminology, like "neopagan". - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 17:46, 17 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And look at that. All kinds of stuff already happening at other pages: Neopagan witchcraft. - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 17:54, 17 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, everyone involved did some great work on this. Thank you! Hopefully now with a clear separation, clear hatnotes, and less confusing titles, there will be less complaints like the one that started all this. Skyerise (talk) 18:05, 17 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"Witchcraft": To move or not to move?

Per previous conversation, current Witchcraft article needs a destination for move, and disambig should move to main namespace. Several people have said they were going to submit move proposal and it doesn't look like anyone has. Darker Dreams (talk) 11:38, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a neat way of encompassing the topic range "worldwide historical and traditional views of witchcraft" in a new article title? Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 13:10, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
After informal discussion here, I guess this is the way to go (?): Wikipedia:Requested_moves#CM. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 15:04, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That would be my assumption. I propose Witchcraft (classical) based on Bonewits's divisions. Darker Dreams (talk) 12:17, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There's no need to re-name this article at all. It's about the traditional and still most common and widespread meaning of "witchcraft". The re-definition used by some neo-pagans is dealt with at Neopagan witchcraft, and there are hatnotes for anyone who might get confused. – Asarlaí (talk) 12:21, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Skyerise: What do you think? Clearly, from the above, it would be deemed a controversial move. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 15:19, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah. I'd say rather than a requested move, an RfC to discuss potential new titles and get a consensus for a specific title. Then a RM or another RfC to determine whether there is consensus to move to that new title. Skyerise (talk) 15:26, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps we could begin here by working out how to word the first RfC (to find consensus on a specific new article title)? Or else simply open that first RfC if you already know what you want to say. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 15:53, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

A joint effort to come up with a list of options seems in order before opening an RfC to choose between them... Skyerise (talk) 15:56, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
To propose a move we have to have a proposed title. People can suggest alternates in response to the move request. I agree that the problem has absolutely been animal by committee, and leaving the page at its current location will simply allow that problem to fester and recur. The regular round of visitors who show up to this page and are shocked to find their religion described as malevolent will continue to be an issue, while other editors will continue to point to that text as clear consensus that is how Wikipedia should present Wicca and other individuals involved with witchcraft. I'm opening the move request. Darker Dreams (talk) 19:34, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Skyerise has suggested that the first RfC contributors be presented with a list of optional names from which to choose. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 19:46, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
For those who think I may be exaggerating. Here is the entry at Witchcraft (disambiguation): Witchcraft, traditionally and worldwide, usually means the use of malevolent magic." and it came with a warning about revert warring. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 19:49, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Requested move can build consensus around alternatives other than the initial proposal, any RfC result will still needs to go through a move proposal. Sorry for overrunning everyone and firing off the move proposal, but it feels like a meeting about having a meeting and I'll admit to impatience and easy frustration as personal character flaws. Darker Dreams (talk) 20:10, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Some statistics (views over last year / daily views):

  • Witchcraft: 718,559 / 1,961
  • Wicca: 849,567 / 2,321
  • Neopagan witchcraft (formerly Contemporary witchcraft): Unknown
  • Contemporary witchcraft: 391 / 1
  • Witchcraft (disambiguation): 4,926 / 13
  • Witch (redirect to Witchcraft): 56,747 / 155

Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 08:36, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Look like Witchcraft and Wicca are already nicely naturally disambiguated. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:39, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
A slightly more pertinent analysis: page navigation. Almost no readers headed to witchcraft move on to Wicca, and none go from Wicca to witchcraft, meaning that there is little to no navigational confusion here. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:43, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The confusion is that most people who come to this article are looking for information on neopagan witchcraft, as that is the most popular use of the term "witchcraft" these days. If you don't believe it, just look through the Talk page archives. Nosferattus (talk) 15:38, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The numbers for witchcraft and Wicca would suggest that Wicca should actually be the primary topic on the dab page. Skyerise (talk) 15:45, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
They have scholarly consensus on their side. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 15:48, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Check out what brings people to Witchcraft and Wicca in the links that Iskandar323 provided (pity we don't have the search engine terms, too). Those seeking Witchcraft come from places like My Little Mermaid; those seeking Wicca look like they're more serious about the topic. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 16:04, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The Little Mermaid is just trending because of the recent release, and, because, yes, global film viewership is of sufficient magnitude to drive search traffic. By all accounts, Ursula is meant to terrify the Bejesus out of small children in the new film, so I guess they're all wondering about witches now. Outside of that you have skin-walker, which is core witchcraft folklore content and the Salem witch trials, for obvious reasons. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:11, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, "witch" comes out quite a lot higher than "witches", Skyerise. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 16:41, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This one's probably the most useful. Note how "good witch" is searched for about as often as "wicca" at about the same rate: witchcraft, wicca, "good witch". Skyerise (talk) 16:45, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Dummy edit to make sure that this thread is not archived while dispute resolution is going on. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 09:03, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 19 July 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Not moved per WP:SNOW. starship.paint (exalt) 02:27, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

– The current article has created contentious discussion regarding how to focus this article between various versions of the words Witch and Witchcraft. Primary divisions between topics seems to agree with some reasonable classifications/divisions. (Bonewits's classifications include; Neopagan, Classical, Gothic/Diabolical, Ethnic, etc.)[1] Tentative consensus was reached around separating the types, and allowing each to be addressed on their own sub-pages. However, leaving one as the primary topic will continue to feed this confusion and conflict. Other potential titles for what is currently the main Witchcraft page have been suggested, including (scholarly consensus) and (historic), however these potentially present additional value judgements beyond those necessary for deconfliction. Given the intent to focus the article on use of evil magic and worldwide persecution (gothic) or (diabolical) might instead be appropriate, leaving the classical subheading to Cunning folk (a comparison Bonewits is quoted as making). Regardless, the current name lacks clarity of topic, creating unnecessary conflict among readers and editors and producing disruption to article improvement. Darker Dreams (talk) 19:55, 19 July 2023 (UTC) Darker Dreams (talk) 19:55, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Adler, Margot (2006). Drawing Down the Moon; Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America. Penguin Books. pp. 66–67.
To cut to the chase: here is the entry at Witchcraft (disambiguation): Witchcraft, traditionally and worldwide, usually means the use of malevolent magic." and it points to this partial article which says the same thing. Inclusion of contemporary witchcraft is simply untenable, and thus this article does not represent the full picture about witchcraft.
Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 20:07, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Until recently, after a heated discussion, the opening sentence of the lede of Witchcraft read Witchcraft traditionally means the use of magic or supernatural powers to harm others. and the short description read, Practice of magic, usually to cause harm. And that is still the stance that established editors at the article maintain. Since Witch also redirects to this negative article, I believe that this introduces systemic bias into the whole field. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 21:44, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Soft oppose. I don't know to what extent the term Witchcraft (classical) is recognised in the literature, and to what extent we should have so many articles about the various types of way witchcraft. If truly such a term exists, with a substantive amount content, then I think it would be good to create a page for that. But I think there's no need to move anything nonetheless. Why not just create a page there, and edit it? Dawkin Verbier (talk) 08:13, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Have left a message about this discussion at all the wikiprojects shown on this talk page. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 21:32, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose. It is inappropriate to reframe Wikipedia's coverage of a topic based on a specific religious movement's understanding of the topic. I think it's particularly telling that one of the proposals among the editors proposing this change was to split off some of the coverage with the parenthetical "(scholarly consensus)" as if that's not the main factor to determine whether coverage is due. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:08, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - I've been watching this article for a long time, and was quite surprised to see the recent edit warring and POV pushing. I oppose renaming the article as it has been a WP:BROADCONCEPT article for a long time and see no need to "fix" it by renaming to align with certain more recent points of view. The article follows Wikipedia's naming conventions, and it is the WP:COMMONNAME of the subject. It is fine that it encompasses the scope of historical, traditional as well as modern and contemporary. BTW, I did some checking online and in off-line books, and the modern/contemporary Puebloan peoples' views on witchcraft appear to align with the traditional interpretation, similar to that of their neighbors, the Navajo. I disagree that this is a "negative" article. Netherzone (talk) 00:14, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose The point of view of new religious movements doesn't trump decades of academic coverage.★Trekker (talk) 01:34, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose: This would just be formalizing a WP:FALSEBALANCE. Not only are things like Wiccan religion and Neopaganism marginal topics to the overall subject of witchcraft past and present, I'm not even convinced that witchcraft is a particularly prevalent term for either of those. If you mean Wiccan religion or Neopaganism, you use those terms. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:50, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
As for the lack of prevalence of the term, a quick Google book search for modern witchcraft would suggest otherwise. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 08:15, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'll admit that there are more people wittering about Wicca than I expected, but I still see little cause for confusion between these topics. There are already naturally disambiguated and people searching for Wicca search for that. It's that simple. Any child who has read fairy tales knows what the general concept of witchcraft is, and that it is distinct from a modern neopagan belief system. Hence the almost non-existent traffic between the two pages. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:48, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Iskandar323: "Marginal topics"? You've got to either be kidding or living under a rock. Nosferattus (talk) 15:33, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If I am living under a rock where I don't have to hear about Wiccan beliefs then I count myself bloody lucky. I'd sooner go back to worshipping Odin, the all-father, than follow some absolute lunatic of a retired British civil servant as my prophet and indulge in some weird hobbyist mishmash of ancient religions. Iskandar323 (talk) 15:39, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yep, it's about as wacky as any other religion! Nosferattus (talk) 16:38, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: This is an example of concerted efforts at outreach or POV pushing, here at Neopagan witchcraft (formerly Contemporary witchcraft). It begins Traditionally, "witchcraft" generally means the use of magic or supernatural powers to inflict harm or misfortune on others, and this remains the most common and widespread meaning ...: Edit difference. This is an example of why this RM was brought (after perennial and frequent reversions and heated discussions). All your wiki are belong to us. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 08:51, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - I'm not sure the article needed to be split, but since it has, this article is no longer the primary topic and needs disambiguation. Nosferattus (talk) 15:32, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose: I'm usually not bullish on WP:BROADCONCEPT articles, but "historical" or "classical" witchcraft seems like a clear case to me where there's no difficulty finding WP:HQRS treating the topic comprehensively, and the movement is evidently the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Furthermore, there's no reputable scholarly support for any continuity between historical witchcraft and Wicca/Neopaganism, so those should be covered in separate articles that only warrant a mention here as others have said. Discussions of WP:FRINGE, ahistoric reconstructionist movements are as WP:UNDUE here as they are on e.g. Ancient Greece or Ancient Egypt related topics, WP:ONEWAY applies to pseudohistory regardless of whether it originates from a new religious movement or not. - car chasm (talk) 15:43, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Carchasm: The problem is that the history of witchcraft is not the history of an actual practice, it's the history of a made-up Christian concept. Neo-pagan witchcraft is an actual thing practiced by over a million people. Saying that the made-up Christian concept is more important than an actual widespread religious practice is a bit problematic, as this talk page attests to. Nosferattus (talk) 16:05, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      This article refers to the topic studied by historians and anthropologists, which is not exclusive to Christianity or WP:MADEUP, as the article itself already explains in detail. Perhaps you might want to read it yourself, you might learn something new from some of the cited sources about a topic that seems to interest you! But regardless, the fact that roughly a million people since the mid-20th century happen to have appropriated this academic terminology for their own use based on a now-widely discredited historical theory is marginal, and of interest mostly to this small minority WP:POV, whereas the scholarly consensus on an academic topic is potentially of interest to a much wider audience. Many Christians or members of other religions also often find wikipedia pages covering topics that contradict their religious beliefs, we don't give them more weight because they call themselves "religion" instead of something else. - car chasm (talk) 16:29, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      • @Carchasm: Considering that I'm the 8th highest contributor to this article and you're just a drive-by talk-page voter, I'm glad you could mansplain the topic to me. The fact is, the word "witchcraft" does not have the same meaning and connotations that it did 100 years ago. Wikipedia shouldn't pretend otherwise. Nosferattus (talk) 16:54, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        I'm not a man, but anyway, thanks for your contributions to the project! Please don't try to use them to pull rank though, if I claimed expertise on every page I've contributed more than 2.6% of I'd be a subject matter expert on an absurdly wide range of topics indeed, but I'd have an uphill battle convincing anyone of that! This article, however, which I haven't felt the need to contribute to yet (I think...?), is exhaustively sourced with WP:RS, demonstrating the broad meaning of witchcraft is still in use today, and those sources are what should be considered. - car chasm (talk) 18:41, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        @Carchasm: I've struck "mansplain" from my comment. I'm not trying to pull rank. I'm reacting to your belittling comment suggesting that I have never even read the article that I'm arguing about. Nosferattus (talk) 19:06, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - The traditional and still most common and widespread meaning of "witchcraft" worldwide is malevolent magic. That's supported by several high-quality academic sources in the lead. Clearly this traditional meaning is the primary topic. The recent re-definition used by some neo-pagans has its own article at Neopagan witchcraft, and there are hatnotes to guide readers to the right articles. I wholly agree with Thebiguglyalien who said it's "inappropriate to reframe Wikipedia's coverage of a topic based on a specific religious movement's understanding of the topic", and with Iskandar323 who noted it would be formalizing a false balance. – Asarlaí (talk) 20:39, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - I'd support a move to Evil witchcraft or Witchcraft (evil). Skyerise (talk) 17:31, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that is the issue in a nutshell! Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 18:17, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That's why I recommended an RfC. It wasn't clear that the defining distinction was clear yet. Skyerise (talk) 18:23, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
A first RfC to choose from a list of names, as you suggested, I think (?) Yes. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 18:25, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The idea would be shot to ribbons, or go down like a lead balloon, but this article deserves tagging: systemic bias and unbalanced. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 18:35, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that's why I instead added it to WikiProject Countering Systemic Bias. Skyerise (talk) 18:40, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
(Sorry for repeating this here): Ronald Hutton, for one, is being deliberately partial (writing only about witchcraft in its destructive manifestations). In Ronald Hutton, The Witch: A History of fear, from ancient times to the present, the author says after the "What is a witch?" quote: That is, however, only one current usage of the word. In fact, Anglo-American senses of it now take at least four different forms, although the one discussed above seems still to be the most widespread and frequent. The others define the witch figure as any person who uses magic ... or as the practitioner of nature-based Pagan religion; or as a symbol of independent female authority and resistance to male domination. All have validity in the present, and to call anybody wrong for using any one of them would be to reveal oneself as bereft of general knowledge, as well as scholarship. ... [I]n this book the mainstream scholarly convention will be followed, and the word used only for an alleged worker of such destructive magic. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 18:42, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]


  • Close? Anyone uninvolved here who can close this RM (snowball oppose) so that a new one can be opened? Thanks. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 18:35, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Agree with snow close, but the title you propose is unwieldy and unnecessary. Consensus from this discussion is that the current title is fine. - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 18:59, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Uninvolved Comment - There are two "Support" comments, so the article cannot be speedy closed. Let the discussion run its natural course, which could change in time. A new discussion is not needed to chose a different title, but as of now, there is no support to change the title; a new discussion soon after the close would likely be closed as "too soon". To close this discussion early, the nominator who has not made any further comments to this point, would need to withdraw their nomination. BilCat (talk) 22:03, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    My mistake, as the request was for a snowball close, not a speedy close. If the article is close as Oppose, a new move wouldn't be appropriate so soon after the close. Again, the only other option is for the nominator to withdraw the nomination. But at this point, their is also no support for a another title, so a new discussion is also likely to fail to reach a consensus. BilCat (talk) 22:09, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose It is the primary topic, moving it away would be along the lines of trying to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 20:12, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Islam section

Should we further move the Islam section? I feel like it doesn't fit the narrow definition of "Witchcraft" we tend to agree this article should focus on, since magic had a rather ambivalent role in Islamic culture prior to the rise of contemporary Salafism/Wahhabism. The boundaries between magic and "witchcraft" (magic performed with evil entities) are fluent. We often tend to merge Islam with Judeo-Christian tradition, overlooking that Islam was much more influenced by Asian and African traditions (which usually lacks the duality of nature/magic) than (Western) Christianity was. VenusFeuerFalle (talk) 10:58, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This article should clearly be about all witchcraft. If people want to focus on Witchcraft in Medieval Europe, or New-Age witchcraft, well those are mere subtopics of witchcraft and could have their own dedicated pages. It should be noted that "modern" witchcraft is extremely live and well in some parts of the world, and not in the cutesy New Age sense of the meaning. If you are an persecuted albino person living in Africa, the superstition around witchcraft is a matter of life and death. It's a serious subject in need clarity. Iskandar323 (talk) 22:07, 16 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

What, no mention of the TV fantasy drama "Charmed"?

There were 178 hour-long episode of Charmed in which the heroines, three sisters known as The Charmed Ones, were cast as "good witches" fighting demons and warlocks. It's still seen in reruns. 2600:8801:BE01:2500:1047:BD5C:178A:73C1 (talk) 16:16, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

See Neopagan witchcraft. Skyerise (talk) 17:09, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Is this a WP:BROADCONCEPT article or not?

Most of the people arguing against renaming this article above contend that it is a WP:BROADCONCEPT article. If that is the case, it needs to include some mention and summarization of Wicca and Neopagan witchcraft as related topics (which I tried to do but was reverted). If, however, it is a narrow-concept article, it should be renamed to clarify its scope. Nosferattus (talk) 17:45, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The problem being addressed is frequent complaints from Wiccan and Neopagan witches about being included in an article that starts out by defining witchcraft as malevolent. Unless 'malevolent' is removed from the overarching definition of the page, I would say that it is not a BROADCONCEPT article, regardless of it being the primary definition, and should be moved to Witchcraft (evil). Skyerise (talk) 17:48, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I thoroughly agree and Witchcraft (malevolent) crossed my mind more than once. To zealously promote the subject with an overarching theme of historical and indigenous witchcraft as being malevolent according to scholarly consensus, and to dismiss later (often benign) movements and religions as being ill-founded or illegitimate, makes the article unfit to be the primary topic. As the talk page amply attests, there is an apparent intolerance here masquerading as scholastic consensus. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 18:03, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
To clarify my comment above, for this to be a BROADCONCEPT article, witchcraft would have to be defined in terms which are inclusive of all its definitions, omitting characteristics which are not common to all the word's senses. Because it has not been so defined, instead choosing to focus on the primary definition's inclusion of malevolence, it fails to live up to BROADCONCEPT standards. Skyerise (talk) 18:05, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that the summary was useful. The topics might be distinct, but that distinction still needs explaining on this page, even if the only connection is Wicca borrowing terms, symbolism and tropes from 'witchcraft'. Iskandar323 (talk) 18:59, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The hatnote defines the scope of the article and directs seekers for information outside that scope to the more robust and complete articles and is Working as intended. Skyerise (talk) 19:01, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Skyerise: Even if this article were renamed to Witchcraft (malevolent), which doesn't seem likely to happen, I would argue that Wicca is still clearly a reaction to the history of "malevolent" witchcraft persecution and still warrants discussion, albeit brief. Same for the witch-cult hypothesis and Neopagan witchcraft. There is no way that the scope of these various articles can be cleanly and completely separated. Nosferattus (talk) 19:18, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, there are several ways that could be accomplished. The status quo is one of them. I'd say the two sentences at the end of the lead section are quite sufficient. Skyerise (talk) 19:21, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No, the first step is that you allow someone to summarize the relationship in the body (instead of reverting it); only then can you add it in the lead. You are putting the cart before the horse. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:59, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
See WP:BRD. Discussion is a necessary part of the process. The question that needs to be addressed is: How can we modify the article so the the material is not plopped into the middle of a non-neutral context. Skyerise (talk) 20:01, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You are having a discussion here about how the article should be scoped. At present, it already has all this explained in the lead, but not in the body. That's a violation of MOS:LEAD. The article ends in the present-day section talking about witchcraft in Africa, which is the end of the third paragraph, and then there is a blank void on the page where the section summing up Wicca and Neo-paganism should be, corresponding with the fourth paragraph in the lead. So you're saying leave the article broke? Iskandar323 (talk) 20:06, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No, I'm saying that those who want to include the material have to figure out how to make the context WP:NPOV first. Skyerise (talk) 20:08, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You're trying to have a rather esoteric discussion about whether the article is framed too much in terms of 'malevolent' magic, but witchcraft is first and foremost just a term that has had very associations with it pertaining to different cultures. Wicca is just another thing in the 20th century that has come along and piggybacked off the term, and it's already sitting there in the lead, but now, not in the body. What exactly was wrong with the perfectly adequate, brief summary that @Nosferattus added helping explain the linkage between witchcraft (broad concept) and Wicca? Iskandar323 (talk) 20:21, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not "trying to have a discussion", I am having a discussion. Since you object to the inclusion of Wicca in the lead, I've removed it. Skyerise (talk) 20:24, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The hatnote reads "This article is about worldwide historical and traditional views of witchcraft". Is Wicca worldwide? Is it historical? It is a "traditional view"? No, no, and no. Out of scope. Skyerise (talk) 20:27, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
So we've solved the problem of Wicca being associated with malevolent witchcraft by eliminating Wicca's association with witchcraft entirely?? Something tells me this solution won't last long. Nosferattus (talk) 20:43, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
But isn't the scholarly view of Wicca that it is both ahistorical and non-traditional? And isn't the topic of the article historical and traditional views? Could you explain why Wicca fits the scope? Skyerise (talk) 20:58, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't fit the scope, but per the lede we should probably have a brief section clarifying and redirecting people, yet again. Because people are still going to look for Wicca etc here no matter how bold the hatnotes. - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 23:43, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Iskandar323: About the missing section: There used to be a brief section on Wicca there, but someone (Skyerise, IIRC) moved it. To Neopagan witchcraft, I think. I think it would be appropriate to again have a brief section there (briefer than before) that expands a bit on the last para of the lede, with links to Neopagan Witchcraft, Wicca, Witch-cult hypothesis, etc, if nothing else to further distinguish the redefinition and redirect people who come to the article looking for that content. I don't think it would once again confuse the two, but would align with policy by filling out what is mentioned in the lede, and redirect those who don't pay attention to the lede but go paging through looking for Wicca. - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 23:41, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

After reading this whole thread and looking at the diffs, I am in agreement with Iskandar323 and Nosferattus that we should have a brief section and have added back the section Nosferattus added. - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 23:49, 20 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

But that is outside the clearly defined scope of the article which you have made a point of repeating over and over "historical and traditional views of witchcraft" - which is what you have been at pains to make all the disambiguation pages say as well, Is that now not the scope of the article? Are you now asserting that Wicca's views fall under "historical and traditional"? You can't have it both ways. The article is either completely inclusive and unfortunately written in a very WP:POV manner for a BROADCONCEPT article, or neopagan witchcraft and Wicca are out of scope, Which is it? Seems like you are changing your tune. aSkyerise (talk) 01:03, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If I may be so bold, Neopagan Witchcraft is tangentially relevant to discussions about the cultural concept of witchcraft, roughly as much as Satanism is relevant to the article on Satan. Just as Satanism has reinterpreted Satan from a malevolent being to a sympathetic being, so has Neopagan Witchcraft reinterpreted a belief in the existence of harmful occult spellcasting into a belief in the existence of positive occult spellcasting. It may not have a whole lot to do with the original subject, but insofar as it is inspired to some degree by the original subject it merits as much commentary as witchcraft in fiction. If nothing else, it provides a good opportunity to discuss the debunked witch-cult hypothesis. Pliny the Elderberry (talk) 03:40, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Precisely, it may not be within the core scope, but it is a sufficiently related subject to be mentioned as tangentially related, as well as differentiated, due to the obvious risk of confusion on account of the overlap in terminological usage. As Pliny notes, the witch-cult hypothesis also is a now debunked hypothesis about witchcraft itself, and so does definitely have a place here, and it is best contextualised within the framework of a mention of the movement that birthed it. Iskandar323 (talk) 05:59, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've notified The Signpost that they may want to cover this as a news story: how's Fictional but dead practitioners of malevolent magic used to smear the very real and non-malevolent living. Or maybe Cabal of Wikipedia editors reinforce negative coverage of living people using the ghosts of persecuted women falsely accused of witchcraft, which they deny exists. Skyerise (talk) 07:46, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Jayen466: Is this up your street? Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 07:51, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Skyerise, you know that I have a lot of respect for you, but in this case I think you are fanning the flames and exaggerating. It does not seem that what you are proposing a news story: how's Fictional but dead practitioners of malevolent magic used to smear the very real and non-malevolent living. Or maybe Cabal of Wikipedia editors reinforce negative coverage of living people using the ghosts of persecuted women falsely accused of witchcraft, which they deny exists. is going to help move this discussion towards consensus. To my mind it just deepens the divide. You are of course entitled to do and think what you wish, but in this case I think it is unwise to exacerbate the situation and escalate matters. Netherzone (talk) 21:04, 22 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Skyerise is a thoughtful, sensible, knowledgeable, resourceful, studious, intelligent, approachable, and pleasant editor who has made a great many useful contributions across so many articles. I think perhaps her proposal that events here could be newsworthy might be a measure of her frustration in the face of concerted, and at times adversarial, opposition. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 22:03, 22 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I agree she is all those things which is why I respect her, however should not our common goal here be to come to consensus peacefully and collegially? Netherzone (talk) 23:19, 22 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Let s/he who has not missed the mark cast the first stone:

"POV pushing against consensus"

At an ongoing edit warring noticeboard case, evidence has been presented, with the dismissive and frequent claim of "POV pushing" "against consensus":

Quote: (see here). I undid that, they removed the sentence again, I restored it, then they removed it again.

Ask yourself which is the more collegial, if errant:

  • "remove the primary example of systemic bias; this is also not cited correctly - it is not sufficient to provide five citation to prove "most widespread now", it would require say a linguistic survey, etc" (Skyerise).
  • Or "what the hell is this?" (Asarlaí).
  • Or "establish that most reliable academic sources don't consider malevolence part of the definition of witchcraft, but rather a stereotype projected by others" (Skyerise).
  • Or "unexplained removal of detail supported by numerous academic sources" (Asarlaí).
  • Or "NOT removed, rather QUALIFIED" (Skyerise).
  • Or "Skyerise, respect the consensus we've reached through this process." (CorbieVreccan).

Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 07:40, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Esowteric, I know you mean well, but please don't try to draw me into the drama. I made a friendly comment to a Wikipedian who I happen care about. Netherzone (talk) 14:36, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Netherzone: Thanks! I'd strike the comment, but I feel too much time has gone by for that to have much of an effect... Skyerise (talk) 14:39, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry about that, Netherzone. I didn't mean to meddle. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 14:42, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Systemic bias

Until recently, after yet more heated discussion, the opening sentence of the lede of Witchcraft (which purports to be a WP:BROADCONCEPT primary article) read Witchcraft traditionally means the use of magic or supernatural powers to harm others. and the short description read, Practice of magic, usually to cause harm. The lede still vigorously supports this view, with no less than six five references back-to-back in one place. And that is still the stance that established editors at the article maintain. Since Witch also redirects to this negative article, I believe that this introduces systemic bias into the whole field.

Skyerise also noted elsewhere that The article wasn't split. Some editor in 2017 basically redirected all the contemporary witchcraft links to witchcraft, effectively deleting Contemporary witchcraft without merging the bulk of the article anywhere. This was simply reversed and a small amount of relevant material was then merged to the resurrected article.

In a satellite article, Witchcraft (disambiguation) also reads: Witchcraft, traditionally and worldwide, usually means the use of malevolent magic.

Concerted efforts at outreach or POV pushing have also been made at other satellite articles such as Neopagan witchcraft (formerly Contemporary witchcraft). Until reverted (again), a lengthy segment was added which began Traditionally, "witchcraft" generally means the use of magic or supernatural powers to inflict harm or misfortune on others, and this remains the most common and widespread meaning ...: Edit difference. This is an example of why the earlier requested move was brought (after perennial and frequent reversions and heated discussions).

As for the sources used to reinforce the "scholastic consensus" and to preserve this biased state of affairs, Ronald Hutton, for one, is being deliberately partial (writing only about witchcraft in its destructive manifestations). In The Witch: A History of fear, from ancient times to the present, he says after the "What is a witch?" quote: That is, however, only one current usage of the word. In fact, Anglo-American senses of it now take at least four different forms, although the one discussed above seems still to be the most widespread and frequent. The others define the witch figure as any person who uses magic ... or as the practitioner of nature-based Pagan religion; or as a symbol of independent female authority and resistance to male domination. All have validity in the present, and to call anybody wrong for using any one of them would be to reveal oneself as bereft of general knowledge, as well as scholarship. ... [I]n this book the mainstream scholarly convention will be followed, and the word used only for an alleged worker of such destructive magic. So, it would seem that "scholarly convention" is deliberately biased and religiously adhered to.

Even Ronald Hutton, The Witch: A History of fear, from ancient times to the present, pp 168, 177, 183, 194, 206 talks of stereotypes in the 1300s and 1400s about the harmful and Satanic nature of witchcraft and the fear of such things.

This might be likened to a scholar writing a thesis on Christianity based on a partial study of Southern Baptists or Christian Nationalists. Of course the conclusions are going to be skewed and unflattering and support "scholastic consensus" or "scholastic convention".

There have been recent talk page discussions where it was suggested that Witchcraft be moved elsewhere and that "witchcraft" should be pointed instead to Witchcraft (disambiguation) (and later that something similar be done for "witch" that currently redirects to Witchcraft). I noticed how difficult it was to come up with a hypothetical new title for this article that summed-up its main topics, which the hat note depicts as "worldwide historical and traditional views of witchcraft". Witchcraft (historical)? Witchcraft (classical), suggested by Darker Dreams? Witchcraft (scholarly consensus)? However, since the scholarly sources by convention are partial and depict witchcraft as malevolent, perhaps the closest appropriate title that could be chosen, as suggested by Skyerise would be Evil witchcraft or Witchcraft (evil). Witchcraft (malevolent) had also been on my own mind.

To zealously promote the subject with an overarching theme of historical and indigenous witchcraft as being malevolent according to scholarly consensus, and to dismiss and effectively exclude later (often benign) movements and religions as being ill-founded or illegitimate, makes the article unfit to be the primary topic, and the inclusion of material on modern witchcraft traditions and religions untenable, and the source of much confusion and animosity, as the talk page history amply attests. This is not scholastic consensus but something else masquerading as scholastic consensus.

Something else to think about is that things were not always this way. See this Old revision of Witchcraft, when the subject was treated very differently and more inclusively (though, of course, the article will have been "improved" over time as well), and check out the sources used in the past.

Regarding false balance, please see Talk:Witchcraft#Pageview statistics and Google Trends.

An alternative proposal – which is, of course, tongue-in-cheek but does note concerted attempts to make sure readers and editors are aware that the most common scholarly opinion about witchcraft historically and worldwide is that it is intended to cause harm and malevolent – would be to template all relevant articles with a "Wiki Health Warning", that: "Witchcraft is malevolent. Dabbling in these arcane arts may seriously damage your mental health." ... because (if you'll permit me a little poetic licence) that is, in effect, what is happening.

Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 07:08, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"would be Evil witchcraft or Witchcraft (evil) " And what would be the difference from black magic (evil magic)? Dimadick (talk) 08:26, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
They should probably be merged. Nigromancy or black magic, aka maleficium were legal terms which were created to prosecute witchcraft. These details belong at whatever title the article ends up at. Skyerise (talk) 08:29, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"Witchcraft is malevolent. Dabbling in these arcane arts may seriously damage your mental health." We do not have such warnings for other harmful superstitions, such as Christian fundamentalism, biblical literalism, biblical inerrancy, or Young Earth creationism. What is the difference between different kinds of superstitious beliefs? Dimadick (talk) 08:32, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed, but the point I was trying to make is that all this pushing of malevolence at Witchcraft and associated articles and pages is, effectively, the same sort of thing as templating. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 10:11, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
My primary complaint is the single sentence in the lead, which I've removed. The initial definition should be inclusive of each of the following paragraphs. The next paragraph explicitly mentions 'evil', the third 'harm' - no problem with this. The fourth paragraph can't properly stand out as non-malevolent when it is already tarred with the systemic bias of that strong and not adequately cited sentence. Five different experts agreeing don't establish that "this remains the most common and widespread meaning" - we'd need a linguistics usage analysis type source to establish that. The way it is attempted to be supported is synthesis. If a proper supporting source is found, it could be readded after the paragraph about modern witchcraft. Introducing it in the first para muddies the lead with obvious bias. Skyerise (talk) 13:06, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"My primary complaint is the single sentence in the lead, which I've removed" - So, because you don't like the fact that malevolent magic is the most common and widespread meaning of "witchcraft" worldwide, you decided to just delete that from the lead? along with the five high-quality academic sources supporting it? Shocking behavior, which I've rightly reverted.
"Five different experts agreeing don't establish that 'this remains the most common and widespread meaning' - Yes it does. It seems you're trying to move the goalposts. – Asarlaí (talk) 13:29, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"Move the goalposts? Hopefully awaiting the time when professional contractors move in to level and re-turf the playing field. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 13:33, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The first paragraph is neutral. The second talks about accusations of malevolent magic in medieval times, which was the trend at the time. The third paragraph talks about it often being associated with harm, and gives some more examples. Then the last paragraph discusses some of the alternative contemporary usage. It's fine. Iskandar323 (talk) 14:00, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No, the first paragraph is not neutral. It does not cover even the range of meanings in the dictionary, much less the evolution of views over time. A robust BROADCONCEPT article would do both. See next section. Skyerise (talk) 14:02, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I fear you are expecting slightly too much of the first paragraph, i.e. "Try to not overload the first sentence by describing everything notable about the subject. Instead use the first sentence to introduce the topic, and then spread the relevant information out over the entire lead." MOS:FIRST. Iskandar323 (talk) 14:28, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The summary of the new section would be the second paragraph. Just like the other summary paragraphs. It's necessary to comprehend the range of views before going on to describe individual types and periods. Skyerise (talk) 14:37, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Skyerise:, you are editing against consensus, while discussion is going on. You have been blocked for this before. We are, and have been, working very hard on this. It is inappropriate for you to go in and make wholesale changes that you don't have consensus for. This view is not just historical, and not just due to "Christians". You are privileging a Western, white view that leaves out traditional and Indigenous cultures worldwide. Those cultures never redefined this word or concept. Only those who bought the witch cult theory did. As for "white witches" and such - that's a modification that, by it's very modifiers, indicate the negative status of the word/concept it modifies. This isn't my preference or choice, it's just what we are documenting. Stop the POV push. - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 18:26, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Don't forget: Consensus can change. Skyerise (talk) 19:37, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
As Idries Shah once wrote, in cases like this it sometimes helps to transpose an issue into more familiar terms. So, you could, for example, substitute in words like "Christians", "Muslims", or "My old dad". And then see how you feel. If that doesn't work, then substitute in your own self. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 14:17, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest we add subsections for the relevant components of the observed systemic bias. Two I've started below: "Views over time" and "Definition vs stereotype". There may be additional components of systemic bias to call out. Skyerise (talk) 19:35, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Views over time

One thing that I notice that the article does not include, and that is the evolution of views of witchcraft over time. A section early in the article should be written to cover this. Then the flat statement in the first paragraph should be expanded to summarize the contents of the new section, rather than just get stuck on a single superstitious definition. Skyerise (talk) 13:59, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Definition vs stereotype

It seems disingenuous to cherry-pick sources for a "definition" while ignoring sources which differentiate between a more basic definition and the stereotypical projection of qualities and intent. Since many sources (I've only presented a sampling) make this differentiation, it certainly deserves further analysis and a better presentation, but an integrated article works better if we make this distinction. Also, where is the scientific opinion on the reality of even the basic definition, much less the definition + stereotyping? Skyerise (talk) 15:59, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I mean, really, wouldn't something like: "Witchcraft is an imaginary use of imaginary powers, stereotyped in the imagination of some societies as causing harm or being intended to cause harm, which harm is also imaginary." be more accurate? Skyerise (talk) 16:06, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Even Ronald Hutton, The Witch: A History of fear, from ancient times to the present, pp 168, 177, 183, 194, 206 talks of stereotypes in the 1300s and 1400s about the harmful and Satanic nature of witchcraft and the fear of such things. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 16:34, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Jean La Fontaine wrote that the "stereotype of evil appears not to have been closely connected to the actions of real people except when it was mobilised against the current enemies of the Church."[1] Skyerise (talk) 17:14, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ La Fontaine, J. (2016). Witches and Demons: A Comparative Perspective on Witchcraft and Satanism. Berghahn Books. ISBN 978-1785330865.

Editorial directives in HTML remarks

25 November 2021 page top HTML comment [formatting removed]:

The article begins by discussing the central meaning of the term, which essentially involves harm, and then goes on to discuss some more positive recent meanings. Please read the entire introduction before editing it.

Later on the page top HTML comment changed to:

Please read before editing! This article is focused on the traditional and globally-predominant meaning of the term, which is the use of metaphysical means to harm the innocent. While recently-invented positive meanings, used in the modern Pagan and New Age movements, are touched on and linked further down, those are not the focus of this article.

on 8 July 2023, the page top HTML comment changed to:

NOTE: This article is primarily about the traditional and most common meaning of 'witchcraft' worldwide, which is the use of harmful magic. Newer positive meanings are mentioned here, but are not the focus of the article. The modern religion is covered on the article WICCA.

That doesn't sound very inclusive of a primary article on "Witchcraft" to me.

Hat-tip to Skyerise for spotting this. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 20:15, 21 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The idea of folkloric witchcraft has been around for over a millennium, and it is still what most people worldwide would associate with the word, so it is not undue to give it precedence even in an article that is a broad overview of witchcraft. The article still includes it, but making it literally 50/50 would result in undue weight. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 05:08, 22 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's also a matter of a global perspective vs Western one and the risk of systemic bias. Wicca is a distinctly Western phenomena; witchcraft more generally, as determined by anthropologists, is a global one. There is more material on Western witchcraft and Wicca because of the Western world looking inward on its own past and into its own contemporary beliefs, whereas witchcraft in more marginal societies globally remains still largely the preserve of anthropologists. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:41, 22 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The overarching (and overbearing) theme of this partial article is that of "malevolence". In fact, another editor has created Witchcraft (diabolic), which does appear to be a far more appropriate location for the material here, and which needs no "systemic bias" or "unbalanced" templates.
As for balance: "making it literally 50/50" is a straw man argument. That's not what I'm looking for, nor what we now get: "touched on and linked further down" [emphasis added]. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 08:47, 22 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No, (diabolic) is an example of a really badly thought out, non neutral piece of parenthetical disambiguation for something that doesn't even need disambiguating in the first place. For starters, "diabolic" is a reference to the devil, which is a specifically Christian conception, and not applicable to many relevant societies. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:51, 22 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Witchcraft (diabolic) is a duplicate of this article. A POV fork. It's a policy violation and should be deleted. - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 19:14, 22 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Use of the word "traditional[ly]"

The word "traditional[ly]" is used 17 times in the article, including the lede. Perhaps "historical[ly]" might be used instead, where appropriate? See MOS:RELTIME. Expressions like "former(ly)", "in the past", and "traditional(ly)" lump together unspecified periods in the past. "Traditional" is particularly pernicious because it implies immemorial established usage." (and suggests an appeal to authority). Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 08:54, 22 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

As an uninvolved editor advised: "'It's bad' is not much of a tradition." Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 09:05, 22 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Dummy edit to make sure that this thread is not archived while dispute resolution is going on. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 06:20, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

As I keep having to remind people, "traditionally" and "historically" are not interchangeable. In a global sense, "traditionally" has to do with living tradition, and the way all the communities, well, traditionally and still, define things. This has been confused by the neopagan redefinition, since the 1940s, of some Wiccans calling what they do "traditional witchcraft". Wiccan teachers, for decades, either didn't know, or chose to obfuscate, the fact this was a redefinition, only shared by a minority. But, depending on perspective, some users are using the word differently than others. As the global majority's traditions are contemporary, and shouldn't be past-tensed, we can't just swap in "historical". When this is done, living cultures (Indigenous, African, Afro-Diasporic, etc) are disappeared. Please don't do this. - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 20:16, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Um, 'scuse me but within some living Native American communities witches are seen as malevolent. These belief origins are precolonial, we just stole your word. There are historical, precolonial figures like Jug Woman and Raven Mocker and taboos up to contemporary times. The erasure/part-tensing is not appropriate or necessary. I am unsure as to why the views of the global Indigenous community is being pushed back on. Indigenous girl (talk) 23:37, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Indigenous girl: Just to be clear; no one is saying that malevolent witches are not a definition of witchcraft. Certainly not saying so about the Indigenous community, nor otherwise. What is being pushed back on is that it is not a the sole, universal definition within Indigenous communities. What is being pushed back on is that the only other definition is European Neopaganism. We understand that malevolant witchcraft is the sole definition within some, many, possibly even (though I don't know if we have a census to make this claim) most Indigenous communities. However, what is being pushed back on is that it is the definition in all such communities - which is provably, citeably, described by Indigenous researchers in multiple parts of the world, untrue. Darker Dreams (talk) 00:09, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that context matters and replacing every use of "traditionally" with "historically" isn't appropriate. However, this isn't about "past-tensing" or "pushing back" on global indigenous views. The point is precisely that "traditionally" is not interchangable with "historically". It's also not interchangable with "conventionally", "popularly", "normally", "ongoing", and other words which may be more appropriate depending on the context. (As Esowteric said, where appropriate.) The pervasive view that witchcraft is a harmful practice is less a tradition, and more a norm or convention. "Historically" was suggested because it seemed to be the appropriate word for some cases where it past usage was stressed. If stressing ongoing usage was the point, then evidently this was not clear to everyone and perhaps the wording may be better adjusted in some other way.
Neopagans aren't the only people who maintain a different view of witchcraft. The reappraisal and reclaimation of witchcraft has a long history in feminism. (For example, Margaret Murray, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Silvia Federici.) It's also pretty clear that the popular English-language understanding of "witchcraft" has changed significantly, and does not necessarily carry a negative connotation even among the general public. Arguably, it has not always been used negatively even in the past, as Darker Dreams has noted several times elsewhere on this talk page. It is simply factually wrong to frame it as though a small minority of neopagans are the only people who dissent from an otherwise universal view. In regards to living non-European traditions, the article itself notes that the syncretic Afro-Carribean tradition of brujería encompasses both helpful and harmful practices. This also happens to be one of unamibguous cases of where applying the term "witchcraft" in translation clearly is appropriate, since it explicitly takes on the spanish word for "witchcraft". It should not be assumed that non-European cultures universally share the view that "witchcraft" is harmful by definition.
I'd also be careful about how the views of global majority are interpreted, both because actual data on global views is too limited to conclusively confirm that a majority of people believe in the reality of witchcraft to begin with, and because it's questionable what counts as "witchcraft" when applying that term globally.
Arguably, there's a eurocentric bias in how the term "witchcraft" has been used to translate concepts in non-European cultures. Since historically Europeans have equated "harmful magic" with "witchcraft", they translated non-European concepts which were both "harmful" and "magical" as "witchcraft". It a bit circular to point to non-European cultures as a reason to define "witchcraft" as "harmful" when Europeans were the ones who applied this definition to the concepts/practices/beliefs of other cultures in the first place. Had Europeans applied the term differently, for example by equating any folk magic with "witchcraft", the views of the global majority on what we call "witchcraft" would look very different. (I hope that was clear.) – Scyrme (talk) 00:20, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Darker Dreams (talk) 00:33, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The entire reason I brought this point up is that there seems to be little consideration to communities outside of Europe and dominant culture North America. Indigenous girl (talk) 00:45, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I, for one, would love to see increased Indigenous coverage on the topic. If you have sources of verification and enough material I suggest (encourage!) creating a either a "Witchcraft in (XYZ culture)" or -if you don't feel there's enough material specific to one culture- "Witchcraft in Indigenous cultures." Care needs to be taken with the second one that you're not projecting one (or a few) culture's POV as all Indigenous cultures. That material would then be available to be part of the broad coverage in this article (and others) to help balance coverage overall. Darker Dreams (talk) 02:55, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Scyrme, you mention some feminists "reclaiming" witchcraft. They didn't re-claim it, they, re-defined it based on a debunked theory promoted by Margaret Murray. Europeans didn't merely equate witchcraft and harmful magic, that's what the term meant. – Asarlaí (talk) 12:49, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The views of later feminists don't owe much, if anything at all, to Margaret Murray's witch-cult hypothesis and I'm aware that the latter is now discredited. I mentioned Murray only to illustrate that feminist literature/views about witchcraft date as far back as the early 20th century.
"Reclaiming" is taking a term which is originally a perjorative defined by others (in this case, "witch") and embracing it, making it your own. That's exactly what this is even by your own description, so I don't understand the objection unless you think "reclaiming" implies a reclaimed word has to have been 'your own' to begin with before becoming a perjorative, but this is refuted by looking at basically any reclaimed perjorative. It's also often explicitly framed as "reclamation" by feminists themselves, regardless of whether you agree with their assessment. (eg. [33]) – Scyrme (talk) 13:44, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
They're attempting to claim and re-define it. To re-claim something it must have been yours to begin with. – Asarlaí (talk) 14:30, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Asarlaí: Your literal interpretation of the morphology of the word does not change how the word is actually used, particularly in relation to slurs which target marginalised groups who did not coin those slurs in the first place. If you prefer words to always have their most literal meaning, you can interpret the "re" in "reclaim" as referring to bringing a perjorative "back into acceptable usage", as the article puts it. – Scyrme (talk) 17:51, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Darker Dreams I really have no desire to write an article on the topic but thanks for the idea and encouragement. I don't wish to have a bunch of folks come in and attack Native culture, People or myself because of how a word is used by some communities. I simply don't have the spoons to play wack-a-mole. Indigenous girl (talk) 15:40, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I finally found this book in my (very messy) personal library (knew it was there somewhere): Witchcraft in the Southwest: Spanish and Indian Supernaturalism on the Rio Grande, by Marc Simmons, University of Nebraska Press, Bison Books. It's older, first edition originally published in 1974. There are dozens of accounts from the various Puebloan peoples (Laguna, Acoma, Zuñi, Cochiti, Jémez, Nambé, etc. etc.) as well as Navajo and Apache that witches are seen as malevolent, as they were represented in the article before the recent drama and edit warring. Although it's an older book, it is very well referenced in regards to Indigenous witchcraft, and how witchcraft was/is perceived by these cultures. It has an excellent bibliography. I don't want to cause any additional drama, however if the community decides to improve the section on non-European cultures, it may be a useful resource to expand that section. Netherzone (talk) 16:09, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Scyrme You said, "It a bit circular to point to non-European cultures as a reason to define "witchcraft" as "harmful" when Europeans were the ones who applied this definition to the concepts/practices/beliefs of other cultures in the first place. Had Europeans applied the term differently, for example by equating any folk magic with "witchcraft", the views of the global majority on what we call "witchcraft" would look very different." Except we chose the term. There are individuals within community who perform/practice/participate in other activities of a spiritual nature that do not fall under the umbrella of witch because they aren't malevolent. Indigenous girl (talk) 16:07, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't doubt that the term is used that way now, but the terms indigenous communities originally chose to use were terms in their respective native languages. Perhaps in some cases indigenous communities independently chose to translate their own native words this way, but I doubt that's universally true given the history of colonists, including the English, imposing their languages onto other nations. I admit I don't know for certain, which is why I said "arguably". You probably know more than I do. (I hope you don't mind, I added {{tq}} to your message to make the quoted part more distinct from the rest.) – Scyrme (talk) 17:51, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
First off, I am not speaking about the global Indigenous community I am speaking specifically to what is now known as North America. Of course we had and have terms in our own language. When we translate them we use terms of our choosing. In communities where the language was lost, those communities chose English words as replacements. Colonists heard stories of Granny Squannit and called her a witch, the term did not stick with the Wampanoag because she wasn't a badnick however witch was and is used for folks using negative...stuff. The term was used by Mather and Calef in The Witchcraft Delusion in New England to refer to John Indian and his wife Tituba, "By some Persons, these Indians have been supposed to belong to the Aborigines of our Country and to have obtained their knowledge of Witchcraft from the Indian Powows." so yes, the term was used by colonizers in a pejorative manner for folks who supposedly knew a little conjuring or what have you, which was normal within community. I'm not referring to this type of use. Indigenous girl (talk) 20:08, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"I'm not referring to this type of use" You weren't, but I was. When I initially suggested eurocentric bias earlier I was thinking of this type of use. To (hopefully) clarify, a lot of literature/scholarship has been published by (and for) Europeans and colonists about other cultures from a European/colonist perspective, translating or describing practices with terms like "witchcraft", "cult", "demon", "idol", "superstition", "delusion", etc. which people of those cultures would not use or would use under the influence (or coercion) of colonists and missionaries.
As you say, alongside this there are indigenous communities who have adopted English and translate/describe their own cultural concepts in these terms of their own volition without it being an imposition. I don't intend to deny the agency of indigenous people, and I apologise if I have done so.
My point was only that, as I said, we should be "careful". When some concept or practice is translated as "witchcraft", it matters who is doing the translating and why they are translating it that way. If we aren't careful, we end up repeating the sort of usage I was referring to alongside the sort of usage you were referring to as though the two are without difference, effectively allowing the former to speak on behalf of the latter, muddling up how the latter actually understand these topics and leaving us prone to misinterpretations. – Scyrme (talk) 21:30, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Those of you with access to JSTOR may find this article of interest: Hopi Indian Witchcraft and Healing: On Good, Evil, and Gossip. By: Geertz, Armin W., American Indian Quarterly, 0095182X, Summer2011, Vol. 35, Issue 3. It states therein:
  • To the Hopis, witches or evil-hearted persons deliberately try to destroy social harmony by sowing discontent, doubt, and criticism through evil gossip as well as by actively combating medicine men.
  • Individuals who act suspiciously, are unfriendly, have been seen crying for no apparent reason, or have mysterious things happen around them are assumed by Hopis to be witches or sorcerers (I will call them witches for short, both male and female). The stories about them are legion, and the Hopis constantly talk about them, eternally trying to guess who they are and what they are up to. They are called popwaqt, the plural of powaqa, "witch" or "sorcerer." They are unequivocally evil, casting spells, causing illness, killing babies, and destroying the life cycle. They practice powaqqatsi, the "life of evil sorcery." The Hopis call them kwitavi, "shit people."
  • The term powaqa means a "person who transforms."[2] The root, powa, implies change, for good or for bad. By extension, a powaqa is one who transforms his or her environment to evil ends. More precisely, a witch is a person who kills close family relatives in order to prolong his or her own life by four years. By killing, I mean causing through occult means an unnatural death, such as stillbirth, infants dying of ordinary illnesses, or healthy adults suffering from strange illnesses. Witches are also the occult cause of unusual circumstances, such as hailstorms on a sunny day, extreme drought, or people suffering bad fortune. And quite a bit more. If of interest to this discussion, the permalink is HERE. I'm pretty sure you need to be logged into the WP Library to read it. Netherzone (talk) 23:08, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Further, I have added the above here for two reasons, these words are in the language of the Hopi people, and I do not think these beliefs are necessarily driven by European notions of witchcraft. I also do not think they are used as systemic bias against New Age witches, NeoPagans nor Wiccans. Netherzone (talk) 23:40, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think we've pretty comfortably established that the primary definition among Indigenous North American cultures appears to be witchcraft as evil. Without a census of beliefs or a counter-example to disprove it, I don't think that's going to be argued. No one has ever argued that a definition of witchcraft as evil isn't a valid, accepted perspective. I think more than enough material has been brought forward for the people who keep bringing that material forward to create a sub-page for North American Indigenous Beliefs on Witchcraft; which can then be summarized and linked from a broad concept page.
It feels like examples of Indigenous North American perspectives continue to be brought forward because there is a sense that it should influence the central point of view of this article. By contrast, I don't think that this article should center on any one cultural perspective. It doesn't matter whether that is Anglo-European (Christian), Neopagan, or Indigenous North American. As a reminder; Indigenous North American is not the singular voice for Indigenous people, just like Anglo-European Christian is not the singular voice for the world. There are examples of Indigenous "positive Witchcraft" as close as Latin American which would be directly overridden by that assumption.
Edit to add; this belief by the Hopi almost certainly isn't driven by European notions of witchcraft. However, they could be the basis for bias (or subscribing to existing systemic bias) against New Age witches, NeoPagans, or Wiccans, and would represent bias/systemic bias if stated out of context in Wiki Voice. - Darker Dreams (talk) 00:04, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Scyrme I'm pretty confident I understand the differences between colonial imposed vernacular and chosen vernacular. I mean, generally it's all about context. If the word is being used by community then that is their given choice. If it's used toward community then it's not.
@Darker Dreams I personally brought up the point of the use in culture not because I believe it is of central import but because I felt it and other cultures and communities have been ignored.
I'm actually very confused about who specifically, as a community, group of individuals or singular individuals, identified themselves as having used witchcraft. Not who others identified them as having used it but they themselves specifically used the term. As practitioners of in the historical record. Indigenous girl (talk) 00:54, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's difficult to have a conversation about "self defining" in cultures outside of Europe because the term was spread in a specific (Anglo-European Christian) culural context that directly impacted how different groups were exposed to it. For example, the modern Latin American understanding of Bruja is a result of colonial imposition, but modern Brujas actively claim it - so, does that count? Meanwhile, even groups like the Hopi who chose the term as translation for evil did so based on an understanding of European languages that came from colonial forces that included Christian missionaries intent on conversion and cultural imposition - and consequently presented the term in a specific context.
Within Europe there are cases where you find "neutral" or "positive" definitions in folklore and traditional knowledge, some of that is discribed in the existing article regarding Russia and the Slavic parts of the content. Darker Dreams (talk) 02:14, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Darker DreamsI mean within Europe. Great Britain perhaps. I'm also befuddled about why the article claims that all participants in witchcraft in Europe were solely involved with the goddess Diana. That seems a little weird to me. So was/is it like a little sect or something of Diana followers and followers of say Abnoba clearly not participants in witchcraft? Because as things stand in the article it's a bit confusing. Does this mean that people that do/did folk magic who were dedicated to say house gods or goddesses not participants in witchcraft because no Diana? What about people who clearly did not identify as witches but were later designated as witches by anthros or historians? That's sort of revisionist and really not fair. In Russia, from reading the article and looking at further sources I wouldn't say that people were known specifically as 'witches', there were a variety of different roles or practices and they don't translate to witch and their skills don't translate to witchcraft. Also Russia is pretty huge and encompasses a lot of different peoples and the borders changed and include(d) countries/areas like Lithuania, Finland and Mongolia. Indigenous girl (talk) 03:39, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
These are absolutely valid confusions and I would love to see them clarified in complete articles with proper citations.
In very short, uncited form; no, they were not all involved with Diana. There was a theory called the witch-cult hypothesis where people thought there was a single big fertility/goddess-based (ie; Diana, Aradia, and a couple other names are commonly used here) pre-Christian religion that survived as "witchcraft" and suppression of that was the major driver of the witch trials. This has been definitively and repeatedly disproved. Instead, there were a lot of different local beliefs. "Witchcraft" ended up being a mix of traditional knowledge, folklore, and "magic" practiced as folk religion to varying degrees in different parts of the continent... and overall was a pretty minor consideration in the sweep of things happening in Europe. (Again; not what was being suppressed with the witch hunts.) - Darker Dreams (talk) 04:02, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the clarification! As the article stands it seems very bizarre, like "witchcraft" dedicated to Diana was/is some colonizer practice originating in the Mediterranean that came in and tried to displace local practices. Which at face value did not seem particularly nice to me. I know that folk beliefs/practices still exist in some areas from traveling and those people are just regular so I thought maybe they were hold outs from oppression or something from that. Obviously this isn't a topic I know a lot about but I find it interesting. So I am going to hit the stacks and research. Indigenous girl (talk) 14:53, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Darker Dreams...Ummm, Hopi land is quite isolated and it is seriously doubtful this is a basis for bias (or subscribing to existing systemic bias) against New Age witches, NeoPagans, or Wiccans. Netherzone (talk) 03:06, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Being isolated means it's less likely for that bias to be relevant; it doesn't mean it can't exist. It also doesn't mean that if, as I continued, if it were expressed as fact in Wiki-voice without context it wouldn't serve that purpose. Darker Dreams (talk) 03:16, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

British or American spelling?

The page seems to currently use both varieties - search for 'ised' and 'ized'. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:37, 22 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Could we defer to the dialect used by a predominance of the scholars cited (or translated)? Is British English preferable, since it's more of an "Old World" topic? Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 09:07, 22 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Probably. Britain (incl. England, Scotland, Wales) appears more than N. America. Iskandar323 (talk) 09:52, 22 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Per MOS:RETAIN, the article should use whatever version of English it first used. The earliest version of this article with a spelling variant used "characterize" and not "characterise", so American spellings are what this article should be using. Rreagan007 (talk) 22:34, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
MOS:RETAIN says to follow the first post-stub version, which I do not think that earliest version qualifies as, not that I want to be particularly WP:BURO about it. However, as noted above, the topic does have strong national ties to the British Isles, where the terminology derives from. The history of witchcraft in North America is only an inheritance by way of the cultural phenomenon in the British Isles and the wider Europe continent. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:04, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Just to note, -ize/-ise is not AmEng vs BrEng, per Oxford spelling. If the earliest version with a spelling variant uses -ize, that implies Oxford English as much as it does AmEng. (I have watched the rest of the discussions since my earlier contributions and...not touched most of them so far.) Vaticidalprophet 14:40, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Mixed -ise/-ize could be Oxford spelling or it could be simple inconsistency. It would depend on which words use -ize. Oxford spelling reserves it only for words with Greek etymology, but my understanding is that American English utilises -ize more widely. – Scyrme (talk) 04:35, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Mystical

In Western esotericism, mystical is contrasted with magical. Mystical refers to inner experience, magical to outer effects. Witchcraft is not typically referred to as 'mystical'. Skyerise (talk) 16:17, 22 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Summing Up the Problem

I'd like to, if I may, sum up the disagreement we have as it stands. This article is about malevolent witchcraft, which was practiced by exceedingly few people but has globally been a significant cultural anxiety. Our discussions, for the most part, agree that neopagan witchcraft and Harry Potter style witchcraft portrayed in (mostly Western) popular culture are related in name and general aesthetics only. Thus, they are only mentioned to explain how they grew out of the cultural concept of malevolent witchcraft. The disagreement now centers around whether an article about malevolent witchcraft needs to be labeled as such, or whether, per WP:COMMONNAME, "witchcraft" is already commonly understood to refer to malevolent spellcasting. Of the people who have voted on the matter, four believe that specification is needed and ten (excluding the "soft oppose") believe that it goes without saying. I think a fair bit of the disagreement may come from how you understand this article to be a WP:BROADCONCEPT article. I believe that those who support specification are worried that if this article is a broad concept, then it is an article about all practices known as "witchcraft". As such, an overwhelming focus on malevolent witchcraft may be seen as biased. However, the way I understand the article and the way that I believe those who are opposed to specification see it is as a broad concept article about malevolent witchcraft and all of its related socio-cultural phenomena (witch hunts, etc.) around the globe. Under this understanding positive/neopagan witchcraft does not fall under the broad concept because it is a novel phenomenon, related in name and some general aesthetics only. It deserves mention, but only as a distinct cultural phenomenon loosely inspired by the cultural concept of witchcraft. The article then, is not biased towards malevolent witchcraft and against neopagan witchcraft because it is specifically an article about malevolent witchcraft. The question, then, returns to whether we need to specify that this article is about malevolent witchcraft or whether witchcraft is already commonly understood to refer to malevolent magical practices, even if a noteworthy countercultural spiritual movement has appropriated and reinterpreted the term. Pliny the Elderberry (talk) 01:11, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate the attempt at summarization and I think that it's a reasonable attempt at doing so.
However, a relevant point that is missed is that there aren't just two relevant definitions. As @Esowteric pointed out previously; Ronald Hutton, in The Witch: A History of fear, from ancient times to the present, the author says after the "What is a witch?" quote: "That is, however, only one current usage of the word. In fact, Anglo-American senses of it now take at least four different forms, [...] The others define the witch figure as any person who uses magic ... or as the practitioner of nature-based Pagan religion; or as a symbol of independent female authority and resistance to male domination. All have validity in the present, and to call anybody wrong for using any one of them would be to reveal oneself as bereft of general knowledge, as well as scholarship." (emphasis mine. And Hutton isn't alone in acknowledging additional forms of "witch" and "witchcraft" academically. The "evil witch of witch trials" is just the most studied form.
There are already in the article (buried in the section on Russia), references to the "any person who uses magic," every article about cunning folk or similar figures includes at least a mention that they have been called "witches" at some point (both positively and negatively). Witchcraft in Latin America similarly describes such a neutral "witch." I don't know as there is any attempt in Wikipedia at a "feminist" witchcraft article - it seems like every attempt has been subsumed into Neopaganism. Darker Dreams (talk) 01:55, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Witch (word) is a distinct page on Wikipedia that can be defined differently. Ronald Hutton's definition pertains to the word "witch" specifically, not "witchcraft". Different word, different page, different possibilities for exposition. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:03, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Witch redirects to this article, not Witch (word). Darker Dreams (talk) 08:31, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We then that sounds like a separate discussion that could well be had. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:55, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Witch redirects here because this is the main topic. I'm not even sure that Witch (word) should be an article given WP:Dictionary. And, given that policy, I don't know how you separate Witch from Witchcraft. Darker Dreams (talk) 09:25, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You would separate the two by using definitions such as the one provided above. The term witch has expanded outwards and become broader far more rapidly than witchcraft itself. It is as strongly associated with literary and popcultural associations and stereotypes, including the black pointed hats and broomsticks, as it is anything to do with either medieval superstitions or anthropological witchcraft. Iskandar323 (talk) 15:55, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I just had a fridge moment that may explain my emotional reaction to this conversation. Essentially, the article as it stands feels like it's taking a position in Wikipedia official voice on Religious debates over the Harry Potter series, Satanic panic, and similar discussions without being open that's even what is under discussion. Darker Dreams (talk) 02:38, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It does feel like taking Satanic panic and turning it into an article that states that people were legitimately doing satanic rituals with D&D or whatever. SilverserenC 02:40, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Wiccan is Wicca, witchcraft is witchcraft. No need to add more adjectives. Wiccans can call themselves witches, but they aren't. Skate or get fatally injured (talk) 04:46, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Harry potter isn't about witchcraft either; it's about "wizardry" right? Men are wizards and women are witches, but I don't believe the word witchcraft is actually ever used. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:05, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Google book search for 'modern witchcraft' (without the quotes). Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 07:18, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, and they spell 'Natural Magick' with a 'k' ... what's the point? That the popular literature itself uses the term "modern witchcraft" shows that either the authors or the editors or both are cognizant that the topic needs to be clear and naturally disambiguated from "witchcraft" in general, lest it be a source of confusion/conflation. Both contemporary witchcraft and modern witchcraft exist and redirect to Neopagan witchcraft, so job done. Iskandar323 (talk) 09:02, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
They spell "magick" with a "k" as a deliberate archaism to distinguish their practices from stage magic and illusions; it's not an uncommon convention among practitioners. While I'm likewise not sure why the Google book search results a relevant here, I'm also not sure what your point is about the use of the -k.
As Religious debates over the Harry Potter series notes, the franchise was condemned for promoting "witchcraft", regardless of the extent to which it actually discusses witchcraft, so it doesn't matter if the word really was used. (Which, btw, it was; eg. in the full name of the school: "Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry".) It doesn't make a difference to Darker Dreams' point. – Scyrme (talk) 10:13, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I merely include a google search as an indication that when people wittingly or unwittingly search for "witchcraft" or "witch" either in a search engine or at Wikipedia, they are just as likely to be looking for contemporary witchcraft as for theories about witchcraft in antiquity or in other cultures (about which they may be unaware). And yet they are directed to the latter partial (as opposed to impartial) coverage by default. Even, if I may be so bold as to say it: directed there (and psychologically conditioned) by design. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 10:38, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Stereotypes are like that. They are intentionally propagated by a few who wish a subject to remain maligned, along with larger numbers of those who simply do it innocently or unconsciously. That's precisely why we have a project for addressing systemic bias, because it is a self-fulfilling loop which is extremely hard to break. Skyerise (talk) 12:11, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Reality of Witchcraft

I find the really problematic systemic bias is that the article doesn't question the reality of the definition at all. It seems to assume that "traditional" witches and their witchcraft were/are real. This is a view which is simply not accepted by science. The closest we have to a scientific view of what a witch actually refers to would be rooted in Carl Jung's theory of archetypes (e.g. [34]). If a "traditional" witch were a real thing, we should be able to point to a list of real, actual, witches. Can anybody come up with such a list? NO. Because the worldwide scientific consensus on witchcraft is that it was and is the product of the fevered imagination of an uneducated or poorly educated populace. Any other fictional or imaginary subject would be defined as such from the start. Yet the article doesn't even mention this. The words 'archetype', 'imaginary', 'imagination', 'projection' are not to be found. The article is taking a stance that witchcraft is REAL. That's unbalanced. Skyerise (talk) 10:43, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think you're onto something there, Skyerise. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 12:28, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I can't see why modern 21st-century editors would base the whole article on an assumption that the "worldwide historical and traditional" definitions of witchcraft refer to a hard objective reality rather than a more subjective psychological reality. I mean - it's a great article about those "historical and traditional" views - but it's not a great or comprehensive article on the entirety of the subject of witches and witchcraft, as it leaves out the scientific and psychological views. This is why it should be renamed to indicate precisely what its scope is. Or completely rewritten from the top down to include the scientific and psychological views from the get-go in the lead. Skyerise (talk) 12:34, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I can sense hackles being raised even as you speak, Skyerise. Maybe the idea could be developed as a separate article? If so, and you feel the urge: run with it. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 12:42, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I typically create new articles in my own sandbox, but if others are interested in participating I could make it a WP:DRAFT so that you and others could also help build it. Up for it? Skyerise (talk) 12:51, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Do whatever you feel works best for you, Skyerise. My study has not included reading through Jung's works themselves, but through the filters of those who have written about, or studied with, Jung and early followers (from whose works I've pulled thousands of quotes to use in a related Facebook group I caretake).[a] So I can't promise anything, but I will do my best to contribute. Note [a]: On depth psychology, Illuminationism, and western esotericism.
"If it proves impossible legally to compel the ruling power to change the ways it governs us, and if for various reasons those who reject this power cannot or do not wish to overthrow it by force, then the creation of an independent or alternative or parallel [society] is the only dignified solution ..." ~ Ivan Jirous, Parallel Polis: An Inquiry. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 12:58, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Nice quote! Skyerise (talk) 13:00, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Well they kind of did, they were even tried for it. The question surely is did Malificarum exist, did magic work? Not did the foolish and the silly believe in it. Can you give a specific example of where we say magic works? Slatersteven (talk) 14:39, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's implied by the factual tone and the absence of balancing views. Skyerise (talk) 15:35, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Unsure it is, but I do agree we maybe we need to have a bit stronger wording about how magic in fact does not work. Such as a quote from Cohen, Slatersteven (talk) 15:41, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds good. Perhaps you could add it. Skyerise (talk) 15:42, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Please no, we don't need a disclaimer that magic, of all things, does not work. Not encyclopedic to use such disclaimers. Imagine a printed encyclopedia. —Alalch E. 15:45, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We now have "alleged supernatural" in the lead. Anything supernatural is by definition something that is alleged. —Alalch E. 15:48, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Dear gods, did someone mention WP:FRINGE? Now we're done for! Edit summaries containing the words "lunatic charlatans" and "cosmic woo" are a giveaway. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 15:51, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Not to people who believe in it its not. Slatersteven (talk) 15:52, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Here's an interesting source which discusses opinions on the unreality of witchcraft. [35]. Skyerise (talk) 15:49, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's interesting that many of the disbelievers are mentioned in the article, but only that they thought it wrong to persecute witches, without any explicit mention of the fact that they did so because they believed that witchcraft is unreal. Skyerise (talk) 15:54, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Dummy edit to make sure that this thread is not archived while dispute resolution is going on. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 09:05, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

More discussion about the lede

@Skyerise: I did not revert anyone. So what's with more of your hitting undo when I, without changing the meaning, cut down on the excess verbiage? Your odd edit summary: Undid revision 1166785522 by CorbieVreccan (talk) let's not interrupt the collaborative process which is how we arrive at a new consensus; improve, don't revert. You going back and forth with one person on here is not a "new consensus". You are still at the 3RR board for this. - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 20:03, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

One revert does not an edit war make. Sure, your revert is a partial revert. It's still a backwards step. Skyerise (talk) 20:06, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't revert anyone. I dealt with the over-wordiness and clumsiness. Is the bit I removed sourced? Anyone? - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 21:08, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The lede has a lot of cites because they were demanded to prove the most common definition. Flagging as over-cited is a common POV push move, because the next move would be to wait and then say it's not sufficiently sourced. All anyone has to do is wade through talk and they will see why every one of the cites is there. The flag was disruptive and I have removed it. - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 21:16, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
To avoid an "excessive citations" tag, they can be grouped together: ref *cite1 *cite2 ... /ref, with the bullet points each on a new line. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 21:23, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Excessive citation are also connected with POV-pushing, original research, and synthesis. Removing tags without fixing the problem is something that has stock warnings. Should I give you one? Removing it is also your second revert. Even partial reversions count as reverts, and any removal is always a revert. To quote WP:REVERT: "The three-revert rule (part of the edit warring policy) limits the number of times an editor can revert edits (including partial reversions) on a page." Skyerise (talk) 21:27, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Statements that all Neopagan Witches are Wiccan are Unsourced

There have been repeated efforts to push the idea that all Neopagan witches are part of Wicca. I just cleaned up statement that sourced this claim to Adler in Drawing Down the Moon (the book does not say that). Multiple sources have been provided for this article and the Neopagan Witchcraft article that establish the opposite. Regardless of what any editor thinks "consensus" is, such claims need sourcing. I would think such sources should demonstrate more than passing familiarity with Neopagan movements - but any source is more than exists for that claim now. Darker Dreams (talk) 23:53, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Knowledge, Belief, and Witchcraft

A quote was requested from this book. You can read it here. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 13:00, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Case opened on dispute resolution noticeboard

I have opened a case on the dispute resolution noticeboard at Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard#Witchcraft. I have included as participants anyone that appeared to have expressed an opinion during ongoing discussions either as a !vote or more than once and had not indicated in some part of the discussion they do not want to be considered a participant. I apologize if you feel that you have been included inappropriately; I wanted to ensure that participation was widely inclusive. I also apologize if you would like to have been included and were not; I set a standard at the start for selecting names that I felt would be least likely to be biased towards any particular point of view. Darker Dreams (talk) 22:18, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It seems that not all the editors who have made comments on this talk page were pinged or their names added to the DRN. Netherzone (talk) 20:57, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Can Darker Dreams add more names, or can users do it themselves? Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 21:06, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've added you, Netherzone Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 21:11, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The person who filed the DRN needs to read through the talk page comments and add ALL the editors who contributed to the discussion, not a selection of editors. There were several who participated who were not alerted to the DRN. I am not saying that this was done deliberately, but without giving ALL editors the chance to participate, it could be perceived as gaming the system or a variant of forum shopping. Netherzone (talk) 21:17, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Can we tone it down a little and do some WP:AGF here? There are a lot of accusations of misbehavior flying around this conversation and I explained above why I included who I did and excluded who I did. I interpreted your comments here as wanting to not be involved. If that was an error I already provided an apology. If you need another specific apology; I'm sorry. I misunderstood your previous statement. The other individuals I did not include are those who restricted themselves entirely to the American/British English conversation (@Rreagan007:) and someone with a single drive-by agreeing with me (@Silverseren:). Anyone else missed was exactly that; missed among all these walls of text. And all of this is why the first thing I did after opening the notice was to place this announcement under a new heading to ensure anyone following the page / conversation would see it. Darker Dreams (talk) 22:14, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Tone it down? I think you are misunderstanding my intentions here, @Darker Dreams. I said I am not saying that this was done deliberately, but without giving ALL editors the chance to participate, it could be perceived as gaming the system or a variant of forum shopping. I am here in peace. Netherzone (talk) 22:23, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I'm just getting tired of it feeling like someone is going to lob "POV pushing" accusations at anything I try to do to improve this page/situation, and something[36] has me a little on edge about the whole situation. Darker Dreams (talk) 22:36, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Is magic real?

"What [Sir James George Frazer, in The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion] calls magic is the effort to conjure with the invisible world, whether intentional or not. While magical thinking—the assumption that my thoughts or actions can have an effect on the other—may strike us as naive and misguided, we have to recall the power of complexes, projections, scapegoating, psychic possession, and transference phenomena, which Jung helped identify, to admit that, indeed, there is such movement of invisible energy for which the word magic was once used." ... "Frazer's magic is primary psychic process".

~ James Hollis. The Archetypal Imagination (Carolyn and Ernest Fay Series in Analytical Psychology) (Kindle Location 417). Kindle Edition.

Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 12:47, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

For which there is no evidence, so no. Slatersteven (talk) 12:50, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
See Magical thinking and God of the gaps. Iskandar323 (talk) 13:01, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
So if we agree that there is no evidence, why do we present 'witchcraft' in a way that implies it is both real and malevolent in this article? Skyerise (talk) 13:05, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I am unsure we do. Slatersteven (talk) 13:15, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it has no reality in a mechanistic worldview, but it does have a certain reality in the realm of psyche, the metaphorical, the imaginal, and the archetypal, (which some may think of as the spiritual). PS: Synchronicity is acausal meaningful coincidence. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 13:18, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think that is where the problem lies, believing in magic is real, and people practicing magic is real. That does not mean it actually has to ability to achieve anything. Thus magic is not real, only the belief in it is. Slatersteven (talk) 13:22, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps we have to be careful here. We don't go around all the religious articles using qualifiers like "alleged", "superstitious"; etc, where even wp:fringe dare not go.
Do "mythical Sky Gods" get a pass, but not (say), the Great Mother or the anima mundi? Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 13:27, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but this article is restricted to "worldwide historical and traditional views of witchcraft", which there is is general agreement was not based on any historical "witchcraft religion". Witchcraft, to whatever extent it historically existed, was an ad-hoc collection of methods without any religious basis, except perhaps an opposition to enforced Christianity. Skyerise (talk) 13:41, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
God, so do we say (in thE lede of this article) "rejects the belief in any magic"? or "view knowledge concerning magic as derived from faith", as similar language is used in conjunction with hpeepls view of god. So (in that rep[sct) this page is less neutral, as it does not really present the idea that many experts do not accept the reality of magic. Slatersteven (talk) 13:42, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Article length

At over 186 kB, this article is too big. We should also be discussing how to split it. Skyerise (talk) 14:52, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Or cut content do we need 6 paragraphs on "European witch-hunts and witch-trials" when we have two articles covering it? Slatersteven (talk) 15:01, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly. It's also covered in European witchcraft. There is also Asian witchcraft and I think one for the Americas? I can't remember the name. Skyerise (talk) 15:19, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
At 72 kB of readable prose, the article is long but not so long that splitting is required. This is a type of a complex topic that warrants a longer article. 186 kB of markup size is irrelevant. Only readable prose counts under WP:SIZERULE. I'm against any ideas about what to do with the article that are based on size, at this time.—Alalch E. 15:24, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
So do you think European witchcraft and Asian witchcraft should be merged here? There seems to be a lot of duplication. Shouldn't they be section redirects? Skyerise (talk) 15:27, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Where we have a separate article we only need a brief (one-paragraph) intro. Slatersteven (talk) 15:28, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. I see that the Asian section in By region doesn't even have a paragraph, while the European section, even though there is an article, has a huge section even subdivided by country. Why the disparity? Skyerise (talk) 15:37, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Europe two sub-articles and 5 paragraphs then subdivided (again) into 6 subsections many with additional sub-articles, and 2 or 3 paragraphs. Slatersteven (talk) 15:51, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And strangely, European witchcraft fails to cover any country other than Britain? Skyerise (talk) 16:00, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've now added Italy and Spain to that article, but the better subdivided coverage of Britain should also be merged there. Skyerise (talk) 16:05, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, the Britain subsections belong there (e: not simply because of size, but due to organizational/hierarchy concerns).—Alalch E. 16:18, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Also, the "Witches in art" and "Witches in fiction" discuss only European art and fiction, so should also be moved to European witchcraft. Skyerise (talk) 11:32, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Where we have a main article about a topic which is organizationally a daughter article to another, broader article (parent article), we need a summary in the parent article (this article) that is no shorter than two nicely written and effectively summarizing paragraphs (sections should strive to include more than one paragraph), and no longer than what a fully fleshed out lead, usually four medium-size paragraphs, would be. I completely disagree that we only need a brief (one-paragraph) intro. That is way too short. Ideally, since the lead is already a summary of a topic, the sumamry of a daugher article in the parent article should be similar to the lead of the daughter article, and when it can be essentially identical (sometimes, not always, depending on the context), WP:SYNC applies (lead transclusion).—Alalch E. 16:11, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The length of the parent article summary is subject to editor discretion, as Alalch notes, and I agree that lead length could be a generally good rule of thumb to follow. This aligns with what is broadly advised just above WP:SUMMARYHATNOTE in the WP:SUMMARY guideline. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:28, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to remove the exclusively European material that has been merged to European witchcraft, as already discussed in the section Article length, as long as no one objects. Does anyone object? Skyerise (talk) 21:12, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean removing everything under the headings Britain, Italy, Spain, Witches in art and Witches in fiction? I think they should be trimmed down so we're left with only the key points, but I don't think we should remove everything. We should remove the country sub-headings and have a summary of Europe in general. But if something in a particular country stood out in some way, I think it should be kept in. – Asarlaí (talk) 22:09, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, of course we should have a couple paragraph summary along with the main article link. That's pretty standard. Skyerise (talk) 13:56, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I have been bold and made the changes. The summary of European witchcraft is still too long; the art and fiction summary may be too short or not inclusive enough, and the individual Asian countries should be moved to Asian witchcraft, but that article needs a longer lead to be used as the summary here. Skyerise (talk) 14:13, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"Stereotyped"

The longstanding opening line said that "witchcraft" commonly means the use of magic to inflict harm on others. Be aware that's only explaining the meaning of the word, not discussing whether it's real or not.

Skyerise changed it to say that "witchcraft" commonly means "the use of magic, generally stereotyped as doing harm". Aside from being grammatically wrong, this implies that the magic might be real but the idea of it being used for harm is 'just a negative stereotype'. The Cambridge Dictionary defines 'stereotype' as "a set idea that people have about what someone or something is like, especially an idea that is wrong".

Five references were added to support the claim. Here's what they say...

  • Willis, D. (2018). Malevolent Nurture: Witch-Hunting and Maternal Power in Early Modern England. Cornell University Press. pp.23-33...
    • "Although Thomas, Macfarlane, and Larner do think many accused women fell into the 'difficult neighbor' category and that a few may have intentionally practiced maleficium, they often treat the actions or beliefs of the accused as more or less irrelevant to the construction of the witch stereotype"
    • "Another approach to explaining the witch's gender is suggested by the witch stereotype itself, which associates the practice of harmful magic with misdirected nurture. Although popular beliefs do not assume the witch must be biologically female, they do represent the witch in terms of the maternal". — This is about the stereotypical or archetypal witch being female. It doesn't say that harmful magic is just a stereotype.
  • Napier, G. (2017). Maleficium: Witchcraft and Witch Hunting in the West. Amberley Publishing. Chapter 2...
    • "Since ancient times, a stereotypical image of a witch was the malevolent old crone" — This is about the archetypal image of a witch.
  • Ole Peter Grell and Robert W. Scribner (2002). Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation. Cambridge University Press. p. 45...
    • "Not all the stereotypes created by elites were capable of popular reception ... The most interesting example concerns cunning folk, whom secular and religious authorities consistently sought to associate with negative stereotypes of superstition or witchcraft. This proved no deterrent to their activities or to the positive evaluation in the popular mind of what they had to offer." — This is saying that religious authorities tried to smear cunning folk by associating them with witchcraft, something negative, but that the masses didn't buy into it.
  • Gaskill, M. (2010). Witchcraft: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. pp. 52, 88...
    • "The stereotype of the female witch, particularly the malevolent crone, was thus powerfully reinforced. In most witch-trials, however, misfortunes were not randomly blamed on women who looked like witches." — This is about the look of the archetypal witch.
  • Hallen, B., Sodipo, J. O. (1997). Knowledge, Belief, and Witchcraft: Analytic Experiments in African Philosophy (registration required). Stanford University Press. p. 96...
    • "In both Africa and the West, the witch personality stereotype is that of someone who is anti-social, deliberately, excessively and destructively malevolent and ... secretive." — This is about the personality of the archetypal witch.

As you can see, most of the sources are talking about the stereotypical image of a witch. None of them say that witchcraft meaning harmful magic is 'just a stereotype'. So the phrase should be removed from the sentence. The sources could be used to add more to the main body about the stereotypical image of witches. – Asarlaí (talk) 16:55, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This is good stuff for the DRN —Alalch E. 18:07, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The DRN is about how much prominence the neopagan meaning should be given. This is a separate issue about the word "stereotyped". – Asarlaí (talk) 19:25, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Please be aware of the DRN rules and moderator advice

Please be aware that due to the ongoing dispute resolution case, DRN Rule A now applies. We are advised by the moderator not to discuss the matter on talk pages, and to treat the article as if it were fully protected. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 19:19, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This full protection and suspension in editing applies to connected articles, as well, but people have been editing away. I avoided the articles for awhile, but there is some serious bias happening, with other "witchcraft" articles being used to push through the things did not gain consensus here. This is a problem. I want to respect the hold on editing, but misinformation is being put into article space, with the same users edit-warring to keep it there. - CorbieVreccan ☊ ☼ 22:57, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I know that ChatGPT gets a bad press

I know that ChatGPT gets a bad press, but maybe they can tell us a thing or two about this vexed subject of witchcraft, as an impartial witness?

[Querent]: ChatGPT, what is witchcraft? Please provide sources.

[ChatGPT]: Witchcraft is a complex and historically diverse topic that encompasses a range of beliefs, practices, and cultural expressions. It has been understood and defined in various ways across different cultures and time periods. Below, I'll provide a general overview of witchcraft and its historical context, along with some sources for further reading.

Witchcraft Overview:

Witchcraft typically involves the use of magical or supernatural powers for various purposes, such as healing, divination, protection, or influencing events. It often involves rituals, spells, and interactions with spirits or deities. Throughout history, accusations of witchcraft have led to persecution and trials, resulting in the suffering and death of many individuals, particularly during the European witch hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries.

Sources for Further Reading:

"The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present" by Ronald Hutton This book provides a comprehensive exploration of witchcraft through history, tracing its origins and evolution across different cultures and periods. It also delves into the social and cultural contexts that contributed to the fear and persecution of witches.

"Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: Ancient Greece and Rome" edited by Bengt Ankarloo and Stuart Clark This is the first volume of a series that examines witchcraft and magic across different time periods in Europe. It covers the ancient Greek and Roman perspectives on magic and witchcraft, offering insights into the historical roots of these practices.

"The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe" by Brian P. Levack This book focuses specifically on the European witch hunts of the early modern period (approximately 1450-1750). It examines the social, cultural, and religious factors that contributed to the witch hunts, as well as the legal and judicial processes involved in prosecuting alleged witches.

"The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology" by Rossell Hope Robbins This encyclopedia provides a comprehensive overview of witchcraft, demonology, and related topics. It covers historical and cultural aspects of witchcraft, as well as the beliefs and practices associated with it.

"Witchcraft Today" by Gerald Gardner Gerald Gardner is known for his role in popularizing modern Wicca, a contemporary pagan religious movement that draws on elements of witchcraft and nature spirituality. In this book, Gardner discusses his beliefs and practices related to witchcraft and Wicca.

Academic Journals and Articles:

Academic journals such as "Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft" and "The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies" often feature articles and research papers that delve into various aspects of witchcraft, its historical context, and its contemporary expressions.

Remember that witchcraft is a multifaceted topic, and definitions and interpretations may vary depending on cultural, historical, and individual perspectives. The sources mentioned above can provide valuable insights into the subject, but it's important to approach the topic with an open mind and a willingness to engage with diverse viewpoints.

[Querent]: Is witchcraft the use of malevolent magic?

[ChatGPT]: Witchcraft can encompass a wide range of practices and beliefs, and it's not limited to just malevolent magic. The perception of witchcraft as exclusively malevolent magic is a stereotype that has been perpetuated in various cultural narratives, but it's an oversimplification of a complex and diverse phenomenon.

Throughout history, witchcraft has been associated with both positive and negative practices. Some practitioners use witchcraft for healing, protection, divination, and other beneficial purposes. These individuals may be referred to as healers, shamans, or wise folk, depending on the cultural context.

On the other hand, accusations of malevolent witchcraft have also been a part of historical witch hunts and trials, often fueled by fears and misunderstandings. These accusations sometimes led to the persecution and execution of individuals based on the belief that they were practicing harmful magic or making pacts with malevolent spirits.

In modern times, many practitioners of witchcraft, particularly within Wicca and contemporary pagan traditions, emphasize the ethical use of magic and emphasize a "harm none" principle. However, even within these modern practices, there can be diverse interpretations and practices that incorporate both positive and potentially harmful magical actions.

In summary, witchcraft is a complex and multifaceted topic that encompasses a range of magical practices and beliefs, including both positive and potentially malevolent aspects. The portrayal of witchcraft as solely malevolent magic is a stereotype that does not accurately capture its historical or contemporary reality.

[Querent]: What are the four types of witchcraft that Ronald Hutton mentions?

[ChatGPT]: Ronald Hutton, a historian and scholar specializing in the study of folklore, paganism, and witchcraft, discusses four main categories or types of witchcraft in his book "The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft." These categories reflect the different strands of witchcraft that have emerged in modern times. It's worth noting that these categories are not universally accepted or agreed upon, but they provide insight into the diversity of modern witchcraft practices. The four types of witchcraft he mentions are:

Survivalist Witchcraft:

This category refers to the belief that certain pre-Christian pagan beliefs and practices have survived through the centuries in rural and folk traditions. This type of witchcraft emphasizes continuity with ancient spiritual practices and often involves working with local spirits and folk magic. It is linked to the concept of "folk witchcraft" and the idea that remnants of ancient pagan traditions are present in folklore and local customs.

Coven Witchcraft (Traditional Witchcraft):

This type of witchcraft is associated with the concept of covens, which are organized groups of practitioners who follow specific traditions, rituals, and magical techniques. Traditional witchcraft often emphasizes the practice of magic, working with spirits, and connecting with ancestral traditions. It is sometimes contrasted with Wicca, as traditional witchcraft tends to be less structured and more focused on regional or family-based practices.

Revivalist Witchcraft (Wicca):

Revivalist witchcraft refers to the modern pagan movement known as Wicca. Wicca was popularized by figures like Gerald Gardner and Doreen Valiente in the mid-20th century. It draws inspiration from a mixture of folklore, ceremonial magic, and ritual practices. Wicca often involves working with deities, practicing rituals according to a specific structure, and following a set of ethical principles. It has various traditions and branches, each with its own practices and beliefs.

New Age Witchcraft: New Age witchcraft encompasses a wide range of eclectic, modern, and often syncretic spiritual practices. It draws from various sources, including astrology, crystal healing, divination, energy work, and more. New Age witches often emphasize personal empowerment, self-discovery, and spiritual growth. This category is more loosely defined and can incorporate elements from different spiritual traditions.

It's important to recognize that these categories are not rigidly defined and often overlap. Witchcraft practices can be highly individualized, and practitioners may draw from multiple sources and traditions. Hutton's categorization provides a framework for understanding the diversity of modern witchcraft movements and the ways in which they draw on historical, folkloric, and contemporary influences.

[Querent]: Ronald Hutton writes that witchcraft, as most commonly understood in both historical and present-day communities, is the use of alleged supernatural powers of magic for malevolent purposes. Is that correct?

[ChatGPT]: I apologize for any confusion, but the statement you've provided does not accurately reflect Ronald Hutton's viewpoint on witchcraft. Hutton is known for his scholarly and nuanced approach to the study of witchcraft, and he emphasizes the diversity of practices and beliefs associated with witchcraft throughout history and in modern times.

While witchcraft has been associated with both positive and negative purposes, Hutton does not categorically state that it is commonly understood as the use of supernatural powers for malevolent purposes. In fact, he addresses the complexity of witchcraft beliefs and practices, including its positive aspects such as healing, divination, and protection, as well as its negative associations stemming from historical witch hunts and persecutions.

It's important to approach any scholar's work with accuracy and context. Ronald Hutton's writings provide a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of witchcraft that considers its multifaceted nature across cultures and time periods.

Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 18:33, 9 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

ChatGPT usually involves different sources it scanned online until a specific time-period. Especially regarding matters of evaluation of a certain subject, ChatGPT usually fails. For example, "Is witchcraft the use of malevolent magic?" requires a human reader, since the term might have different meanings depending on subject. We can use ChatGPT as a research tool in private, but I don't see how it can help or how it is an "impartial witness". Since it is not, it is a word calculator similar to an auto-correction which uses words once entered somethere in the sources it scans through. It is not a self-conscious emotionless being as AI are portrayed in popular culture. VenusFeuerFalle (talk) 19:07, 9 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That may be true, but compared to most Wikipedia editors, ChatGPT has read all the books, all the way through, whereas many WP editors stop reading once they have found the quote they are looking for. Skyerise (talk) 19:30, 9 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
ChatGPT is only working out what the next word should be, it does not understand what it is looking at nor what the contents of its output mean. At best it is systematically biased by whatever is on the internet, at large part of which wouldn't be considered reliable by Wikipedia standards (social media, wordpress, blogs, whatever reddit falls under). -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 12:37, 10 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Damn stochastic parrots. Skyerise (talk) 13:09, 10 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

RFC on Lede Section on Witchcraft

This is a three-part RFC on reworking the article on Witchcraft, beginning with the opening sentences.

Please reply to each of the questions about the introduction to the article in the Survey with a brief statement. Please do not reply to other editors in a Survey section. That is what the Discussion section is for. Robert McClenon (talk) 06:37, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

First Sentence

Which of the following opening sentences, A, B, C, D, or E, should be used to introduce the article on Witchcraft?

  • A: Witchcraft is the exercise of supernatural power.
  • B: Witchcraft is the exercise of certain types of supernatural powers.
  • C: Witchcraft is a type of magical practice.
  • D: Witchcraft, as most commonly understood in both historical and present-day communities, is the use of alleged supernatural powers of magic, generally stereotyped as doing harm or evil.
  • E: Witchcraft has a wide range of meanings based on historical, anthropological, religious, folkloric, and mythological contexts.

Survey on First Sentence

  • E Sources support a range of meanings for "witchcraft" beyond the purported use of supernatural magic. If this is to be a "broad concept" article it needs to introduce the concept broadly and not immediately corner it into this limited selection of the definitions provided in sources. Darker Dreams (talk) 06:45, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Second Sentence

The article for witch has been merged with witchcraft. Which of the following opening sentences, X, Y, or Z, should follow the above sentence to introduce this aspect:

  • X: Someone who uses witchcraft, or believes they are doing so, is a witch.
  • Y: Someone who uses witchcraft, or is believed to do so, may be termed a witch.
  • Z: A witch is a practitioner of witchcraft.

Survey on Second Sentence

  • Z covers both accusations and self reporting without specifically attributing truth to any claim (positive or negative) of "witch." If an individual does not practice witchcraft (regardless of which definition), they aren't a witch. I could see "practice" being substituted with other words, like "perform" or "engage in." Darker Dreams (talk) 06:52, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Additional Statements

Which of the following additional statements should be included in the opening paragraphs:

  • 0: (No additional qualifiers or definitions in lede)
  • 1: Traditionally, "witchcraft" means the use of magic or supernatural powers to inflict harm or misfortune on others, and this remains the most common and widespread meaning.
  • 2: Traditionally, "witchcraft" means the use of magic or supernatural powers to inflict harm or misfortune on others, and this remains the most common and widespread meaning, albeit with notable exceptions.
  • 3: For much of the Christian era, this was associated with doing harm to others and the worship of Satan.
  • 4: In some contexts, it may be viewed as beneficial, benign, or appropriate.

Survey on Additional Statements

  • 0 no additional qualifiers needed in the opening statement. Additional qualifiers can be added to specific definitions, but adding them here narrows it from "broad concept" to specific concept, and some qualifiers represent specific bias against certain definitions. Darker Dreams (talk) 06:55, 14 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

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