In our modern context of the twenty-first century United States, terms like “witchcraft” and “magic” contain specific assumptions and connotations. Perhaps the Salem witch trials, the Harry Potter franchise, or images of a wrinkled older woman wearing a black hat in front of a boiling cauldron come to mind. These renderings of magic and witchcraft tend to be Eurocentric, gendered as they involve women, and vaguely historical in the sense that they occurred sometime in the past. However, witchcraft, magic, and other forms of ritual have never been uniquely the domain of women, nor were they necessarily in opposition to religion in the pre-modern world. Rather, people from all walks of life used the materials and methods at their disposal to interact with the world around them. Women in Tudor England and colonial Guatemala relied on love magic to attract a lover or protect themselves from domestic violence. Haitian vodou practitioners invoked spirits to protect enslaved laborers from epidemic disease and abuse at the hands of plantation owners. Many practitioners of magic melded Christian concepts with other forms of spirituality, invoking charms with a prayer or asking a demon for guidance. Ritual practices that societal authorities recognized as magic or witchcraft were integral to communities throughout the pre-modern World.

Dr. Hannah Abrahamson