“Witches and wizards” is a topic that became very famous in our world: it had an impact on history, literature, and even in our culture. For my first blog entry, I would like to talk about the origin of the words “witches” and “wizards” and how these terms started to be used inside our society but, first of all, we’re going to start with the term “witchcraft” that, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, is “the exercise of invocation of alleged supernatural powers to control people or events, practices typically involving sorcery or magic”.
This kind of practices emerged from the Celts, which were a community who lived between 700 b.C. – 100 a.D. These people was very good at activities like musicians, storytellers, farmers, artists, and even warrior but also they were very spiritual who believed in a god and in a goddess and they believed in reincarnation. The time passed and their religious practices and beliefs changed with what is called as Paganism and those beliefs became mixed with the ones of the Indo-European descended groups, adopting to cast spells, doing works of magic, and preparing potions as practices so this became known as “witchcraft”. Now, after creating the word “witchcraft”, the term of “witch” became created thousands of years ago, when some cultures believed in goddess that have powers of nature that can be able to create new forms of life but then, the humanity gave the concept of “witch” to women who secretly practice witchcraft (essortment.com).
Finally, according to Edward Peters in his book “The Magician, the Witch and the Law”, it’s said that the concept of “wizard” or even called “magician” came from medieval and Renaissance ideas of aberration and disagreement (xiii). Peters also explained that the wizard or magician is the one that has natural gifts that make them different from the non-magical ones and that if the society started to believe that someone was a witch or a wizard, that person was persecuted because it was believed that they had pacts with the demon (xiii) but… this is another story. Well, that’s all for today… On the next entry I’ll write about these persecutions that can be seen in some history books.
Essortment. The History Of Witchcraft And Magic. 2011. 16 August 2011
Peters, Edward. The Magician, the Witch, and the Law. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992.
"witchcraft." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica, 2011. Web. 17 Aug. 2011.
(Important: If you want to know more about the information that is on the second paragraph, enter to essortment.com ... there's where I've got it).
