White witch or good witch are qualifying terms in English used to distinguish practitioners of folk magic for benevolent purposes (i.e. white magic) from practitioners of actual malevolent witchcraft.[1] Related terms are "cunning-folk", "witch doctor", and the French devins-guérisseurs, "seer-healers".
During the witch trials of Early Modern Europe, many practitioners of folk magic that did not see themselves as witches, but as healers or seers, were convicted of witchcraft (Éva Pócs' 'sorcerer witches'): many English 'witches' convicted of consorting with demons seem to have been cunning folk whose fairy familiars had been demonised;[2][3] and over half the accused witches in Hungary seem to have been healers.[4] Some of the healers and diviners historically accused of witchcraft have considered themselves mediators between the mundane and spiritual worlds, roughly equivalent to shamans.[5] Such people described their contacts with fairies, spirits or the dead, often involving out-of-body experiences and travelling through the realms of an 'other-world'.[6] Beliefs of this nature are implied in the folklore of much of Europe, and were explicitly described by accused witches in central and southern Europe. Repeated themes include participation in processions of the dead or large feasts, often presided over by a female divinity who teaches magic and gives prophecies; and participation in battles against evil spirits, 'vampires' or 'witches' to win fertility and prosperity for the community.[6]
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In literature
Sir Walter Scott spoke of a "white witch" in his novel Kenilworth (1821):
- You must know that some two or three years past there came to these parts one who called himself Doctor Doboobie, although it may be he never wrote even Magister Artium, save in right of his hungry belly. Or it may be, that if he had any degrees, they were of the devil’s giving; for he was what the vulgar call a white witch, a cunning man, and such like.
Perhaps the most famous "white witch" in modern literature is Glinda the Good Witch in L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and the film based on it. Another Popular "white witch," though different from its modern term is Queen Jadis the White Witch in C. S. Lewis's "The Chronicles of Narnia.."
See also
Notes
- ^ "There were a number of interchangable terms for these practitioners, ‘white’, ‘good’, or ‘unbinding’ witches, blessers, wizards, sorcerers, however ‘cunning-man’ and ‘wise-man’ were the most frequent." Macfarlane 1970 p. 130; also Appendix 2.
- ^ Emma Wilby 2005 p. 123; See also Alan Macfarlane 1970 p. 127 who notes how 'white witches' could later be accused as 'black witches'.
- ^ Monter () Witchcraft in France and Switzerland. Ch. 7: "White versus Black Witchcraft"
- ^ Pócs 1999, p. 12
- ^ As defined by Mircea Eliade in Shamanism, Archaic Techniques of Ecstacy, Bollingen Series LXXVI, Pantheon Books, NY NY 1964, pp.3-7.
- ^ a b Ginzburg (1990) Part 2, Ch. 1.
References
- Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971), p. 534.
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