This essay is about sex witchcraft. That is, what the witches are doing. I explain how analytic philosophy can help people have better sex witchcraft. And, for that matter, better sex. I first distinguish witchcraft—the practice—from magick. The latter involves ontological questions about whether or why witchcraft works; I set those questions aside. I apply the methods of analytic philosophy to witchcraft. I suggest a common functional structure of witchcraft: Namely, witches draw on areas (...) of personal strength to fortify other areas of their lives. I then explain why sex is conducive to witchcraft, describe (and invent) conceptual resources that can help people explore sex witchcraft, and consider how self-conception affects witchcraft. I argue that sex witchcraft problematises orthodox taxonomies of sex, namely the kink-vanilla dichotomy and the casual-relationship dichotomy. Finally, I tentatively propose a legal argument for, and ethical value of, selling sacred sex. (shrink)

This paper proposes an interdisciplinary explanation of the cross-cultural similarities and evolutionary patterns of witchcraft beliefs. It argues that human social dilemmas have led to the evolution of a fear system that is sensitive to signs of deceit and envy. This was adapted in the evolutionary environment of small foraging bands but became overstimulated by the consequences of the Agricultural Revolution, leading to witch paranoia. State formation, civilization, and economic development abated the fear of witches and replaced it in (...) part with more collectivist forms of social paranoia. However, demographic-economic crises could rekindle fear of witches—resulting, for example, in the witch craze of early modern Europe. The Industrial Revolution broke the Malthusian shackles, but modern economic growth requires agricultural development as a starting point. In sub-Saharan Africa, witch paranoia has resurged because the conditions for agricultural development are lacking, leading to fighting for opportunities and an erosion of intergenerational reciprocity. (shrink)

The article aims to engage with the reception of biblical discourse in Africa and will show how the Bible was transmitted in Africa. It will show how the Bible was successfully used as a spell to control the unsuspecting or a bewitched African believer. The article will try to argue that the Bible has been treated as a ‘holy’ book that cannot be questioned, translating into insanity, irrationality and magical-ity. To achieve successful witchcraft, institutionalisation became critical to identify those (...) who did not belong or were classified as ‘heathens’. The article shall use the logic of Gabriel Setiloane to argue that Africans still believe in the Bible and Christianity because they are simply bewitched. Contribution: This article showed the suspense of rationality, and found answers in that suspense. The Bible was treated as a tool that was used for witchcraft. (shrink)

This article explores witchcraft-related violence against elderly women in the AmaZizi chiefdom of kwaZangashe in Eastern Cape, South Africa. The potential causes that have promoted such violence form the central subject of the study. The study includes a research design that combines questionnaires, focus groups and follow-on interviews. The findings have revealed a prevalence of witchcraft beliefs in the region and have pointed to elderly women as the likely victims of witchcraft violence. This has resulted in AmaZizi’s (...) elderly women being socially isolated, verbally abused and at risk of physical violence and even murder. This study concludes with several interventions organised to combat future witchcraft-related violence and to support the elderly women in the chiefdom.Contribution: By giving voice to the lives and stories of a community of people rendered invisible in the wider public sphere, this article introduces accounts on witchcraft and healthcare that might otherwise have gone unarticulated. (shrink)

This paper focuses upon African witchcraft and the impact of Christianity on this. After discussing the notion of mystical mentality, it examines the role of Pentecostalism with its emphasis on evil spirits and deliverance on the perpetuation of witchcraft convictions in Africa using Ghana as an illustrative example. There are clear parallels between the spiritual cosmology in African traditional religion and the Pentecostal demonic world. It moves on to examine the inequality, capitalism and the Prosperity Gospel in the (...) process of maintaining witchcraft beliefs. Overall, evidence supports the assertion that Pentecostalism in Africa maintains or even intensifies the phenomenon of witchcraft. (shrink)

First published in 1986, Knowledge, Belief, and Witchcraft remains the only analysis of indigenous discourse about an African belief system undertaken from within the framework of Anglo-American analytical philosophy. Taking as its point of departure W. V. O. Quine's thesis about the indeterminacy of translation, the book investigates questions of Yoruba epistemology and of how knowledge is conceived in an oral culture.

Witchcraft and the Rise of the First Confucian Empire. By Liang Cai. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 2014. Pp. xii + 276. $85, $27.95.

According to common scholarly opinion, witchcraft and witches rarely appear in 16th- and 17th-century German literature. This paper proposes a reassessment of this view on witchcraft as a literary topic. I argue that the cumulative concept of witchcraft, which has shaped the understanding of the crimen magiae since the 15th century, had a centralizing effect on the field of literature: Around the turn of the 16th century, various themes and characters of biblical, pagan-antique or medieval origin, which (...) had already been associated with magic, become aligned with the new concept, as Mathias Holtzwart’s biblical drama Saul (1571) exemplifies. A second case study on Philander infernalis (1648), which so far has received little scholarly attention, examines literary representations of 17th-century persecution practices. This unauthorized continuation of Moscherosch’s Gesichte Philanders von Sittewald combines legal case histories of witches and sorcerers with a voyage to their infernal places of punishment. Philander infernalis raises the question how literary imagination and the imaginary of law interact in the context of witchcraft. The conclusion identifies desiderata and suggests perspectives for an exploration of witchcraft in literature beyond demonology. (shrink)

J. Gordon Melton. Magic, Witchcraft, and Paganism in America:. Bibliography. New York: Garland. 1982. Pp. xi. 231. $44.00. cloth. L.C. 81‐43343. ISBN 0‐8240‐9377‐1.

Recent research has shown that an array of religious beliefs can be used to enforce socially normative behaviour, but the application of these theories to other supernatural beliefs, including witchcraft, is still nascent. Across two pre-registered studies in Mauritius, we examine how witchcraft is believed to be caused by envy and how this belief can create and enforce social norms around not causing envy. Data was collected in-person in Mauritius. In study 1 (N = 445), we found that (...) both practicing witchcraft and being motivated by envy or self-interest increase perceptions of harm. These motivations also increase the rate with which people suggest a person was doing witchcraft, with envy having the stronger effect. Belief that someone was doing witchcraft increases the negativity with which one views that person and damages their reputation. In study 2 (N = 292), we found that when a person breaks a norm around causing envy, participants believe that a subsequent misfortune is cause by witchcraft, but not by God. When someone acts selfishly towards others a subsequent misfortune is believed to be caused by God but not witchcraft. This suggests that witchcraft beliefs, but not religious ones, are enforcing norms around preventing envy. Together, these studies suggest that witchcraft beliefs can support locally specific social norms, and that these norms might be different than those supported by religion. (shrink)

Though foundational theories of modem science emerged during the Renaissance, the arguttbly nonscientific bdiefs in witchcraft and the consequent jxrsecution of zoitches coexisied with these incipient, rationalistic scientific theories. This coexistence centered around the notion of control, as patriarchal members of ruling classes asserted their auihority, simultaneously persecuting "witches" and focusing on the mechanism of science. Two seventeenth-century plays, The Witch of Edmonton and The Late Lancashire Witches, reflect this dichotomy, suggesting an unwavering belief in mtches but subtly hinting (...) that their persecution has perhaps gone too far. The plays idtimatdy reflect a transition betvxen animism and mechanical control, community and individuality, showcasing societal change during the emergence of "neto" science. (shrink)

This paper reviews the connection claimed to exist between magic, witchcraft, and parapsychology. Special attention is given to issues raised by the late Prof. Peter Bodunrin of Nigeria, including the demand that knowledge gained by psychic means be grounded in beliefs justified by good reasons and convincing experimental evidence. In contrast, I argue for a more inclusive view of both knowledge and the scientific enterprise that recognizes the importance of non-experimental evidence and the influence of social trends on the (...) choice of research orientations. (shrink)

Throughout history, to the present day, witchcraft raises questions about the distinction between reality and fantasy, faith and proof. This Very Short Introduction explores witchcraft, both as a contemporary phenomenon and a historical subject. It looks at witch-beliefs and accusations around the world, from pre-history to the present.

This essay explores the traditional African philosophical foundations that gave rise to current perspectives on the supernatural within contemporary African philosophical thought. It rejects the comparative Western tenet that while Western ontology is grounded on facts about nature, traditional African ontology is rooted in metaphysical fantasy. Critiquing African ontology outside the contextual framework that gives it structure and meaning will result in unjustifiable biases.

Cross-culturally, misfortune is often attributed to witchcraft despite the high human and social costs of these beliefs. The evolved cognitive features that are often used to explain religion more broadly, in combination with threat perception and coalitional psychology, may help explain why these particular supernatural beliefs are so prevalent. Witches are minimally counter intuitive, agentic, and build upon intuitive understandings of ritual efficacy. Witchcraft beliefs may gain traction in threatening contexts and because they are threatening themselves, while simultaneously (...) activating coalitional reasoning systems that make rejection of the idea costly. This article draws possible connections between these cognitive and environmental features with an eye toward future empirical examination. (shrink)

Much has been written on witchcraft by historians, theologians, philosophers, and anthropologists, but nothing by scientists. This book aims to reappraise witchcraft by applying to it the advances in cognitive sciences. The book is divided into four parts. Part One: Deep History deals with human emotions and drives to deepen the phenomenology of evil witchcraft agency and its female feature. Part Two: Historical Times focuses on the natural control of malefice that engendered rare state and church repressions. (...) Surprisingly, Islamic lands remained immune from stakes. Modern urbanizations are considered a blow to the persistence of rural civilizations that embedded witchcraft in their vision. Part Three: In the Laboratory applies neurosciences to specific case studies such as the personalization of misfortune, the millenary stereotype witch=woman, the reality of evil, and the contagious meme of treasure hunts. Part Four: Millennials wonders whether intentional malefic hatred is a closed chapter in the history of humanity. An Anatomy of Witchcraft is ideal reading for students and scholars. Given its interdisciplinary nature, the book will be of interest to scholars from many fields including evolutionary psychology, anthropology, women's history, and cognitive sciences. (shrink)

This paper presents a naturalistic response to the challenge of epistemic relativism. The case of the Azande poison oracle is employed as an example of an alternative epistemic norm which may be used to justify beliefs about everyday occurrences. While a distinction is made between scepticism and relativism, an argument in support of epistemic relativism is presented that is based on the sceptical problem of the criterion. A response to the resulting relativistic position is then provided on the basis of (...) a particularist response to scepticism combined with a naturalistic approach to the warrant of epistemic norms. It is argued that it is possible to comparatively assess the ability of epistemic norms to lead to epistemic aims. As against the epistemic relativist, it is possible to provide an objective basis for the choice between alternative epistemic norms. (shrink)

For Henry More, witchcraft served as an empirical confirmation of the existence of immaterial substances. Yet while he takes great care to make his reports as trustworthy as possible and argues against the claim that the effects of witchcraft are only the illusions of people suffering from melancholy, he almost completely ignores the possibility that such effects may be caused by natural magic. In More’s natural philosophical writings, discussions of magic are very much downplayed, as well. This may (...) seem surprising, as a crucial component of More’s metaphysical system is his doctrine of the Spirit of Nature, a sort of world-soul whose action is nonmechanical, vital, and magical. The essay argues that this deeply ambivalent approach to natural magic is due to the fact that More uses traditional magical notions to supplement the shortcomings of mechanicism and at the same time tries to divorce these notions from the potentially problematic background from which they originated. In the end, the essay suggests, More’s ambivalence toward magic is only one manifestation of a much deeper problem wherein he adopts an immanentist position while trying to avoid its more problematic, potentially pantheistic, consequences. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the problem of epistemological relativism, which I take to be the problem of providing epistemic norms with an objective rational justification, rather than the problem of arguing for universality. I illustrate the idea of an alternative epistemic norm by means of Evans-Pritchard's discussion of the Azande poison-oracle. Though I take there to be a sharp distinction between relativism and scepticism, nevertheless I present an argument for relativism at the level of epistemic norms which employs the (...) Pyrrhonian sceptic's problem of the criterion. I then attempt to show how a particularist response to the sceptic along the lines outlined by Roderick Chisholm may be combined with a naturalized view of epistemic warrant to ward off the threat of relativism posed by the problem of the criterion. (shrink)

Denounced by neighbors and scrutinized by demonologists, the early modern French witch also confessed, self-identified as a witch and as the author of horrific deeds. What led her to this point? Despair, solitude, perhaps even physical pain, but most decisively, demonology's two-pronged prosecutorial and truth-seeking confessional apparatus. This book examines the systematic and well-oiled machinery that served to extract, interpret, and disseminate witches' confessions in early modern France. For the demonologist, confession was the only way to find out the truth (...) about the clandestine activities of witches. For the witch, however, trial confessions opened new horizons of selfhood. In this book, Virginia Krause unravels the threads that wove together the demonologist's will to know and the witch's subjectivity. By examining textual and visual evidence, Krause shows how confession not only generated demonological theory but also brought forth a specific kind of self, which we now recognize as the modern subject. (shrink)

Today, we have come full circle from the Salem Witchcraft Trials—accusations of deviant behaviour; an ever-widening investigation conducted in an atmosphere of increasing hysteria; investigation procedures that assume the outcome and encourage accusations, leading to accusations of increasing numbers of individuals for a growing and ever more varied pattern of deviant behaviour; collapse, either before or after the initiation of the criminal process, of the ensuing web of accusations; and, finally, the emotional, financial, or reputational ruin of the accused (...) with no possibility of redress.Underlying the legal conundrum that these Satanic abuse episodes pose is the problem of power—the power to make our world that is an attribute of our social existence, and the potentially corrupting influence of that power. The problem of power is that it threatens the autonomy the hierarchical structure toward which society inevitably tends (in however fluid a manner) and from the power exercised by the loose and shifting majoritarian consensus that often dominates a community.The dilemmas inherent in our legal world arise from two paradoxical circumstances—that we, as politically autonomous, liberty-endowed individuals, are nevertheless socially constructed, and that the law, though it must be autonomous of collective values in order for individual freedom to be possible, must nevertheless reflect who we are in order to command our assent. The problem of false accusations expresses these dilemmas in an especially acute way, and the law must address these dilemmas more carefully if individual rights and collective power are to be maintained in tolerable tension. (shrink)

In teaching a class on what is arguably the most "sensational" area of anthropological study, i.e., the practices, beliefs, and behaviors that have been essentialized as magic, witchcraft, and religion by western theorists, one is faced with the problem of legitimizing something that many of our students view as unbelievable. Teaching a course in this area at a small, liberal arts college in Maine, I had to come to terms with just these sorts of problems, i.e., how do we (...) get people to enter into, posit and understand other ways of seeing and being that are radically different from their own? This paper discusses the structure (emic/etic) that I use to expose my students to problems of framing and understanding various ethnographic works through performing them, interpreting them, and debating them in class. (shrink)

Uncovers the methodological principles that govern interpretive change.

Michael Polanyi argues in Personal Knowledge (1958) that conceptual frameworks involved in major scientific controversies are separated by a `logical gap'. Such frameworks, according to Polanyi (1958: 151), are logically disconnected: their protagonists think differently, use different languages and occupy different worlds. Relinquishing one framework and adopting another, Polanyi's scientist undergoes a `conversion' to a new `faith'. Polanyi, in other words, presaged Kuhn and Feyerabend's concept of incommensurability. To what influences was Polanyi subject as he developed his concept of the (...) logical gap? The answer, as unfolded in this article, is twofold: Evans-Pritchard's Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande and the Confessions of St Augustine. (shrink)

The brief Reflection looks at the history of witches in both early modern Europe and the New World. Thousands of women were condemned as witting or unwitting sources of physical and metaphysical evil. Witches were blamed for a variety of misfortunes including illness, crop failure, and the deaths of babies or mothers during childbirth. Evils committed by witches were objects of lurid fascination attributed to demonic forces, documented by monks, priests, and church authorities. Eroticized accusations reflected profound misogyny and suspicion (...) toward those who did not conform to the patriarchal norms of church and society. Many of these witches were put to death in horrible ways, thereby adding rather than subtracting from the evils in the world. (shrink)

This study explores Àjẹ́kùnrin, a Nigerian film directed by Sharafadeen Olabode that explores the intersection of Yoruba spirituality, witchcraft, and gender politics in an intriguing plot. By focusing on the concept of àjẹ́ (Yoruba witchcraft), the film provides a nuanced portrayal of gender that transcends physical or societal constructs, instead presenting gender as shaped by spiritual forces. This research investigates how the film positions witchcraft as a space for negotiating gender nonconformity and power dynamics, presenting witchcraft (...) as a site where women’s agency is not only affirmed but also continually contested. Through the narrative, Àjẹ́kùnrin challenges traditional Western gender frameworks by illustrating that gender identity is not dictated by biology or external roles but is influenced by spiritual and metaphysical forces. Drawing from African epistemologies, the study lends its voice to the critiques of the dominance of Western knowledge systems and the erasure of Indigenous knowledge, and contributes to the decolonisation of gender studies. This work also adds to the growing discourse on the fluidity of gender in African cultures and underlines the importance of embracing Indigenous frameworks in global gender studies. (shrink)

The right kind of friends: Glanvill's biography and networks -- Weighing in on the witchcraft debate -- The Lux and the letter: Glanvill on the nature of spirits and souls -- Poisonous vapours and the science of witchcraft -- Playing a new tune: the drummer of Tedworth and Glanvill's stylistic reform -- Defending the high ground: Glanvill and the Royal Society -- Preaching science: the promotion of experimental philosophy through Glanvill's sermons and pastoral care -- Collaboration and method: (...) Glanvill and the reception of the Saducismus Triumphatus. (shrink)

This article considers the importance of a spatial dimension for witchcraft research, which has so far been largely neglected. In twentieth-century Europe people in certain regions still considered their world in terms of witchcraft; they attributed misfortune to bewitchments and usually blamed their neighbors. Here a part of Flemish-speaking Belgium is investigated with the help of legend texts collected in the 1960s. The witchcraft discourse that informed these texts did not just contain formulations of space; sometimes it (...) also determined how people negotiated space. In this part of Flanders, witchcraft was embedded in Roman Catholicism; monasteries were the favored destinations of all those who considered themselves or their family members bewitched. In order to find cures for bewitchments people undertook hazardous journeys of considerable distance and found their efforts hindered by the witch they sought to counteract. The measures against evil influences that they were given were meant to consolidate the boundaries between their own space and the space where witches roamed. Bewitchments were generally blamed on women. In the contemporary patriarchal social order, both public and domestic spaces were nearly always under men's control. This is why bewitchment was caused less by transgressions of male-defined boundaries than by infringements of bodily spaces such as by eying or touching somebody else's children. This suggests a different approach to female space based on notions of proximity. (shrink)