The term witch comes from the Old English word wicca, which is derived from the Germanic root wic, meaning to bend or to turn.” “In many places around the world, witchcraft beliefs and practices have existed for centuries with little change, [and] [p]rehistoric art depicts magical rites to ensure successful hunting. (p. 371, 372).

Some beliefs about witchcraft may have risen from stories and legends told, possibly around a fire, just as ghost stories are now told around a campfire. Around A.D. 700, Christian religion saw witchcraft as denouncing the Catholic Church and began to question “heresy”, a rejection of the church, and, “began a long campaign to stamp out heresy…[and] [b]eginning in the 1000’s, religious leaders sentenced heretics to death by burning” (World Book, 2002 p. 372). It was then that society and the church began associating witchcraft with devil worship. Although, according to The World Book Encyclopedia (2000), “historians doubt t

In their need for control and the frustrations of being considered the lower of the two sexes, the Nupe man can only find superiority on the “fantasy-realm” where “the main collective weapon against witchcraft lies in the activities of a male secret society which, by threats and torture, ‘cleanses’ villages of witchcraft [and] the men alone have the secret power of defeating female witchcraft” (Nadel, 1952p. 19). This way, even though their power is held only in the “fantasy realm”, the victims accused of witchcraft are held accountable on a real, tangible plane where the man is finally victorious over the woman.

They were stripped so that their flesh could be torn off by red-hot pincers. Then Anna’s breasts were cut off. The bloody breasts were forced into her mouth and then into the mouths of her two grown sons…This fiendish punishment was thus used as a particular torment to women…imposing an extreme humiliation on her. (p. 143)

In S. F. Nadel’s article titled Witchcraft in Four African Societies: An Essay in Comparison (1952), he talks of how the Nupe have a concrete belief in witchcraft that include the perception of “witchcraft as unequivocally evil, as destroying life, mainly through mysterious wasting diseases, and as implying the power of witches to ‘eat’ the ‘life-soul’ of their victims” (p.18). Although their belief is solid and tangible, this belief of witches takes place on a “fantasy realm”, which is non-tangible. These witches can not be seen when they attack, as “their bodies remain asleep at home, thus deceiving any ordinary attempts at proving, or disproving, these mystic activities”, and the Nupe describe this way of traveling about as the witch leaving her “shadow-soul”. (Nadel, 1952 p.19). The Nupe witch is always a woman, and as Nadel (1952) observes, the only way men are ever associated with witchcraft is in the fight against it as, “[c]ertain individuals [men] are said to possess a power similar to witchcraft, which enables them to see and deal with witches. This power is…essentially good; so that the men possessed of it can control and combat the women witches” (p.19). Note the word “control”. Women witches need the “control” of the men to fully activate their powers, “for only when the female and the male powers are joined does female witchcraft become fully effective…[and the men] use their power not to assist, but to restrain the female witches, by withholding the required aid” (Nadel, 1952 p.19). Therefore, men have a certain power over the women even in their “fantasy realm”. Nadel (1952) notes that if there is a case of witchcraft where there is a death or something unimaginable, it is said, “a few evil individuals among the men (whom no one can name) have betrayed their own sex and become the helpers of a woman witch [and] men are never blamed or accused of witchcraft” (p.19).

According to B. Scribner in his article Witchcraft and Judgment in Reformation Germany (1990), in the case of Ursula Fladin, a 60-year-old married woman and mother was charged with witchcraft by four accusers – all of who were men: H. Einer accused her of giving him diarrhea, H. Eylenberger said she caused harm to his father’s cattle five years before, V. Kempe said that after he stole milk form Ursula he became ill and pastor, and as Scribner (1990) states, M. Heintz “reported finding a sweaty pipe or reed, dripping with cream, which had been stuck into a skull in the parish ossuary. He averred that Ursula Fladin was responsible” (p. 3). According to Scribner (1990), Ursula denied the first three accusations, but she admitted to the incident in the parish ossuary saying that she only wanted to find out who stole her milk. In fact, she “learned how to do this from old Hans Helbig…who told her she could discover the culprit by dipping a reed in her mild and sticking it in a skull in the ossuary” (Scribner, 19

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