Sunday 25 October 2015

"Hags"?: Transformation and the problem of age in modern fantasy and fairytales



 
What do the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1996-2003), the musical Into the Woods (2014), the film of Neil Gaiman’s Stardust (2007), and Doctor Who's “The Shakespeare Code” (2007) have in common?
They all show witches who appear as young and beautiful as the coven from Supernatural in last week’s post, but are in reality a middle aged mother (desperately wishing to relive teenage glory years), hags seeking to restore their youth, or an alien who looks like a hag, disguising herself as a young woman to seduce victims. Nor are they alone. Women who use magic to attain a youthful appearance, or who are deeply threatened by women who are younger are recurring theme in modern fantastical fiction, and adaptations of fairytales.
This trope is almost an ugly duckling in reverse, and I think exposes an ongoing concern with the ephemeral nature of beauty, and concerns over the behaviour of women 'of a certain age'. Unlike the Ugly Duckling however, these women rarely experience a permanent transformation, and are usually severely punished.
The problem with this trope is there are very few cases from history where witches used witchcraft to restore their youth (after all, botox and face lifts weren’t available in the early modern period). However the quest for an elixir of youth or the desire to restore one’s youth and beauty certainly did appear in Gothic literature, and the exchange of one’s soul for youth has been incredibly influential ever since Oscar Wilde penned his hedonistic Faust-tale The Picture of Dorian Grey.
In fact these witches owe far more of their trope to Dorian Grey, the stereotypes associated with female vanity, and ideas about the transitory nature of female beauty ( which is an illusion that amount to subterfuge where hags appear as beautiful younger women, like Michelle Pfeiffer’s Lamia in Stardust), than they do to actual early modern witchcraft cases. ), there are no direct parallels in the cases I look at in early modern England.
However there are other links that should be briefly addressed here. In Thinking with Demons Stuart Clark points to complaints about the use of masks in popular festivals as a Devilish, and were derided in language that mimicked critiques of witches’ sabbats.[i] For the witches in Stardust, the heart of a Star can maintain their youth, but it is not a permanent change, or solution. Like the elixir made from Harry Potter’s eponymous Philosopher’s Stone, this is a youth booster, not true eternal life.
It has been contended in the media that we live in a world which prefers women to be young, but any attempts to maintain female youth are through invasive surgery are treated as the domain of the foolishly vain. To say we, as a society, have a problematic relationship with female appearance would be an understatement.
In Films like Stardust the witches are contrasted with both the eternally youthful, beautiful and good Yvaine, and the gracefully aging Princess Una (whose many years of imprisonment by the witch Ditchwater Sal have not aged her apart from a single streak of white hair). While the witches in Stardust are portrayed as greedy, vicious, selfish murderers, while Yvaine and Una are generous, loving, and selfless.[ii]
In “Beyond Wicked Witches And Fairy Godparents: Ageing and Gender in Children's Fantasy on Screen”, Rebecca-Anne C. Do Rozarion and Deb Waterhouse-Watson argue that “Crones [...] are frequently penalised for the magical appropriation of youthful, beautiful bodies, as more adult fantasy films such as Stardust [...] and Into the Woods [...] show.”[iii]
I would argue that in the case of Stardust the punishment is meted out primarily be turning Lamia’s deteriorating youth into a recurring joke. In early modern plays, witches’ lust and stupidity (or the gullibility of their victims) could similarly be played for comic affect, as in The Late Lancashire Witches (1634).
I suspect there is quite a deal to say about our current obsession with youth and beauty (particularly in relation to women) in these portrayals of witches. An obsession we might likewise compare with early modern concerns over female sexuality and the susceptibility of women to the Devil’s influence (though I would argue that those concerns also play a role in our current obsession with female beauty).
Last week I suggested that witches on supernatural were simply updated caricatures of early modern conceptions of witches - with a little occultism thrown in for good measure. They were the worst nightmares of early modern theologians come to life. The witches in Stardust, and other films present different nightmares: that young women are or will soon be hags; that ‘bad women’ lie about their appearance to deceive others; and that age is a punishment – particularly for women.
On the last idea, I was particularly struck when I recently watched Into the Woods. The film is of Sondheim’s musical, and in the witch becomes the meeting point for different fairytales: she is both Rapunzel’s abductor  and the source of Jack and the Beanstalks’ magic beans. Meryl Streep’s character declares early on:
The Witch: You see, when I had inherited that garden, my mother had warned me I would be punished if I were ever to lose any of the Beans.
In flashback we see how The Witch was transformed into the crazy-haired hag figure we see in the first two-thirds of the film. The Witch’s desire to break her mother’s curse and regain her beauty is both the driving force behind the narrative of the film, and an interesting comment on the relativity of youth and beauty (after all it is still Meryl Streep, she doesn’t transform into a girl of 20).
Similarly Michelle Pfeiffer, while acclaimed as one of the most beautiful actresses in Hollywood, is not ‘young’ in the traditional sense either. So perhaps the concern here is really with that mid-life period, where women are no longer nubile girls, but not yet crones either. When botox injections, cosmetic surgery, and cosmetics can deceive the eye, I suppose a concern with appearance (not unknown in the early modern era either) and magic's transformative powers in that area seems a rich vein for fictional witches to exploit. The other side of this trend is that in which vanity leads the wicked woman to be jealous of young women’s beauty (see Evil Queen in the various adaptation of Snow White),[iv] and attempt to use magic to destroy her, with sometimes drastically ageing consequences, as in Mirror Mirror.
While this might seem just desserts for a would-be murderer, it is the motivations of 'femme fatales' (including the non-witches) in fantasy films that often strikes me. As with the recent (scintillating) portrayal of the wicked stepmother in Cinderella (2015) by Cate Blanchett, and Angela Lansbury's earlier turn in the same role in Ever After (1998), women 'of a certain age', are viewed as predatory, and a little bit desperate. And not only for themselves, but for their daughters. There is often a sense that these women see the clock moving forwards, and while they cannot (as Lamia and other witches do) move time backwards, but they can ensure that their daughters do not waste their own youth (and/or beauty). In an aside, one of the more amusing comments on this portrayal was an assertion on Hollywood Life that this was the most evil portrayal, because Blanchett emphasised the Evil Stepmother's envy and jealousy.
So as I attempt to wrap up what has rapidly become something of a ramble, let me say that there has been quite a good deal said on the topic of female age, and our societies apparent disposal of women over a certain age. The portrayal of women over 30 in fantasy or modern interpretations of fairytales often show these women as aware of their fading youth, and enraged by it (if they are not saintly mothers, or the heroine. And yes, we are definitely in Madonna/whore territory here - see Stardust, above). 
These women who rage at middle age is perhaps best epitomised by the mother who literally steals her daughter's body in Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Season One episode "Witch":
Catherine:  How dare you raise your hand to your mother! I gave you birth. I gave up my life so you could drag that worthless carcass around and call it living?
As always, Catherine is punished for her crimes with what she wanted: to return to her glory days as cheerleader, albeit forever trapped as the moving eyes of her own cheerleading trophy.
I suppose the question I am really posing here is: what is our problem with women and the ageing process that it recurs so frequently in recent portrayals of witches?
I hope you have caught on by now that I don't think this is a recent development, after all older women make up a significant percentage of early modern witch trials in some jurisdictions, and men have been concerned about women's use of cosmetics to falsify youth and beauty for millennia. I would argue that little has altered to our perception since Snow White was first penned that women who are vain cannot be good, or that old chestnut that true beauty comes from within (though being physically attractive is usually also a requirement, even if it involves its own transformation).
As with the recurrence of the coven of sexy young women who are avaricious and stupid enough to become enslaved to the Devil (see last week’s post), I don’t see this trope fading away. So expect to see more vain women trying to use magic to either transform themselves, or eliminate their younger competitors. As long as we still associate age with ugliness and female envy, there will probably be witches on film who rue the loss of their youth, and are prepared to do anything to get it back.  



[i] Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe, 1996: 22.
[ii] The only other notable female character, Victoria, is also portrayed as vain, greedy, and self-interested.
[iii] Rebecca-Anne C. Do Rozarion and Deb Waterhouse-Watson “Beyond Wicked Witches And Fairy Godparents: Ageing and Gender in Children's Fantasy on Screen” in Imelda Whelehan and Joel Gwynne eds., Ageing, Popular Culture and Contemporary Feminism: Harleys and Hormones, (2014).
[iv] As with Lamia in Stardust, these witches are portrayed by famously beautiful actresses, Charlize Theron and Julia Roberts.

Sunday 18 October 2015

Malleus Maleficarum



*Note, this blog contains some obscenities. If you find that offensive, please do not continue reading.

When it comes to fictional witches on our television screens (or our computers or tablets, come to think of it) there is often a simple dichotomy: good sisters of an ancient wiccan-style religion, or evil, licentious backstabbers using harmful magic to get ahead whatever the cost.

Over this post, and the next two, ending with the post on November 1st (All Saints Day), I want to examine some of the common tropes used to portray witchcraft in our contemporary media, and contrast these with early modern examples and concepts. Next week I intend to discuss the use of age and vanity as a trope in depictions of evil witches, and on November 1st I want to examine the 1990s obsession with witches of the first kind described above - witches who owe a great deal to the fertility cult conception of Margaret Murray adopted by many modern wiccans.

But this week and next week I want to discuss popular depictions of witches that have far more in common with how most people in early modern Europe would have conceived of them: members of a satanic cult which sought personal gain at the expense of their souls.

In 1928 the occultist, Priest, and early modern drama enthusiast Montague Summers translated the Malleus Maleficarum, a late fifteenth-century work on demonology and witchcraft. The Malleus is most famous (or infamous) for serving as a practical guide to discovering witches in early modern Europe. Summers endorsed the content of the Malleus, and by increasing its availability, and translating it into English he obviously extended the reach of its ideas.

For example when a group of young drama students (including me) went looking for rituals associated with witchcraft and Satanism at the university library, the Summers 1928 edition of the Malleus was still available (sadly it lacked the sort of things we were looking for).

In the last century wicked witches have often taken the form of hags: older, warty, suffering from an unfortunate case of verdigris, cackling and mean to children.

However there is another popular conception of witches as attractive women, often promiscuous, treacherous, vengeful and driven by their lusts (with a sub-category of extremely vain witches, I will examine next week).

Unsurprisingly the CW channel show Supernatural (2005-present) has tended to use witches of youthful, attractive sort. The first truly witch-centric episode of the show came in Season Three, with the amusingly titled “Malleus Maleficarum”.
via
One of the opening scenes shows the two heroes of the show, brothers Dean and Sam, discussing witches in a rather long piece of exposition which both rhetorically references and dispenses with the concept of the old hag:

DEAN
So we're thinking witch?

SAM
Uh, yeah, and not some new age wicked water douser either. This is Old World black magic Dean, I mean, warts and all.

The exposition continues with:

DEAN
So what are we thinking, we're uh, looking for some old craggy blair bitch in the woods.

SAM
No it could be anyone. Neighbor, coworker, man, woman that's the problem Dean, they're human, they're like everyone else.

In the end the brothers discover a coven of women, three of whom were driven by petty desires to do better materially.

In brief, one of the witches committed the first murder seen in the episode, in order to get revenge against her ex-lover (she kills his wife). That witch is then killed by another member of the coven, in order to protect them from her ‘instability’ – this other member of the coven is later revealed to actually be a demon disguised as their friend, and the instigator of the women’s decision to use witchcraft by providing them with the spellbook they use.

The kind of witches that appear most commonly as antagonists in Supernatural owe their trajectory to the real witches of the early modern period. They have made a deal with the Devil in return for powers in order to gain the things they desire in life. The Examination and confession of certaine wytches at Chensforde (1566), described how an accused witch called Elizabeth Francis was offered material wealth by an evil spirit, who came to her in the form of a cat:

this Elizabeth desired firste of the sayde Cat (callinge it Sathan) that she might be ryche and to haue goodes, and he promised her she shoulde, askinge her what she would haue, and she sayde shepe […] & this Cat forthwith brought shepe into her pasture to the nu[m]ber of .xviii blacke and whyte, whych continued wyth her for a tyme, but in the ende dyd all weare awaye she knewe not howe[…]

[W]hen she had gotten these shepe, she desired to haue on Andrew Byles to her husband, which was a man of some welth, and the cat dyd promyse she shold, but that he sayde she must fyrste consent that this Andrew shuld abuse her, and she so did.

And after when this Andrew had thus abused her he would not mary her, wherfore she willed Sathan to waste his goodes, which he forthwith did, and yet not beyng contentid with this, she wild him to touch his body, whych he forthewith dyd whereof he died.[i]

The comparisons with the witches in the episode of Supernatural are easy to spot. These are witches who would not have surprised the early modern observer.  

The other aspect of this episode that is of interest is the presence of a demon as a member of the coven. The use of a human figure who introduces a witch to the diabolic arts, but who may also be the Devil appeared in the famous case at Warboys, in the late 1580s and early 1590s.

After the guilty verdict and executions were announced at the trial of the Warboys witches (the Samuel family), the elderly Alice Samuel pleaded that she should be reprieved as she was pregnant, and a jury of women was therefore appointed to examine her. Given her advanced years, the women appointed to examine her determined ‘that she was not with childe, unlesse (as some saide) it was with the Diuell, & no marueile’.[ii]

This part of the case was discussed in detail in Philip Almond’s The Witches of Warboys. Almond suggests that the idea that the Devil may have impregnated Alice may have been put to the women by Henry Pickering, who was both involved in trial, and had some knowledge of continental cases where witches claimed to have copulated with Devils and been impregnated by them.[iii] The extent of Pickering’s influence may perhaps also be seen in Alice’s confession that she had allowed William Langley, from whom she received her spirits, to have ‘carnall knowledge of her bodie’ when he handed over her familiars.[iv] The pamphlet goes on to suggest that: ‘Some are of opinion, that [Langley] was the Diuel in mans likenesse.’[v]

So the idea that the Devil could masquerade as a witch in order to tempt others into becoming witches also has precedent in early modern Europe.

While witches had – until Season 10 – played a minor role in the show, the problems over the show's treatment of women have been raised by quite a few different writers, fans, and even a member of the show’s cast. Many of those questioning the simplistic characterisations - and often violent demises - of the show's female characters have described the show as blatantly sexist and misogynistic. However, Supernatural is part of a genre that is quite famous for its misogyny. The punishment of women in horror for sexual behaviour, or for being anything other than virtuous and/or maternal figures is quite well-recognised (and even has a Wikipedia page).

Hence the use of early modern conceptions of witches as women who are either promiscuous, greedy, venal, vengeful servants of the Devil or so stupid as to get involved in such clearly diabolic schemes, is unsurprising. The failure in this case is that Supernatural has shown so little desire to play with these tropes – as shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Game of Thrones have – and therefore create a dialogue with their audience’s preconceptions of gender and witchcraft. And I don’t see that happening any time soon.




[i] John Phillips, The Examination and confession of certaine wytches at Chensforde in the countie of Essex, pp.13.
[ii] [Anon], The most strange and admirable discouerie of the three Witches of Warboys, p. 51.
[iii] Almond, The most strange and admirable discouerie of the three Witches of Warboys, p. 101.
[iv]  [Anon], The most strange and admirable discouerie of the three witches of Warboys p. 112
[v]  [Anon], The most strange and admirable discouerie of the three witches of Warboys p. 112                          

Sunday 11 October 2015

The Long Shadows of Montague Summers and Margaret Murray



Over the next few weeks I want to discuss some modern representations of witchcraft or uses of the term witch. I want to compare and contrast them with early modern examples. In order to do this, I want to briefly air some of my thoughts on the figure of ‘the witch’ in modern culture. I have been working on a piece on witches in a television series for publication elsewhere, and the process has caused some related thoughts to coalesce.

It could be witches
Some evil witches -
Which is ridiculous
'Cause witches, they were persecuted
Wicca good and love the earth
And women power and I'll be over here

~ Xander Harris, “I’ve Got a Theory”, from  “Once More with Feeling”, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 7

In the early twentieth century two authors wrote a series of works which argued that the idea of a secret cult within Christian Europe - often found in early modern witchcraft tracts and trials - had a basis in fact. The eccentric author and clergyman, Montague Summers believed that ghosts, werewolves, vampires, and witches were real.[i] While the folklorist Margaret Murray argued that early modern witches were part of a pre-Christian fertility cult.[ii]

Though this idea has been roundly dismissed by modern witchcraft historians,[iii] the idea still has great popular currency, not least because it suits a number of different agendas.

From genre fiction, to popular television shows, to modern wiccans, some feminist authors, and some atheists, the idea that witchcraft trials were the persecution of a religious minority by an oppressive Christian church is a rather appealing idea. Modern Wiccans and Satanists often believe their traditions extend from antiquity, not that they were inventions of the last two centuries (like so many other ‘traditions’), so calling those who died during ‘theBurning Times’ their sisters and brothers has some appeal.

In America associations between witchcraft and Satanism remain fairly strong compared to other countries, and modern day panics about satanic cults and secret religious societies are still a recurring theme of both public life and popular culture. Although I have noted another correlation with another popular conspiracy: alien abduction. For some people it seems that the Devil has been replaced by little green (or grey) men who may or may not be here to extract you organs, and may or may not be in league with Uncle Sam (their very own modern day Antichrist).

For some feminists the ‘gendercide’ of witchcraft remains a rallying cry against the patriarchy. While I am myself a feminist, I do wish people would at least attempt to get their facts right before explaining to me (again) that a million women burned, or that no men died in the witch trials. Or, worst of all, that witches were members of Margaret Murray’s female fertility cult.

And some atheists have pointed to the European witch trials as part of Christianity's oppression of those who think differently, or are different. Quite often you can find these ideas connected to one another, with the oppressive church targeting women, who were the last remnant of an oppressed religion with its own healing practices.

For Joss Whedon’s TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) witches got one of their many outings in genre television in the 1990s. The first appearance of a witch on the show was an evil, deceitful, and vain mother. But regular characters who had ‘wicca’ powers were, for the most part, portrayed more favourably.

Which is ridiculous
'Cause witches, they were persecuted
Wicca good and love the earth
And women power and I'll be over here

Is part of a verse from song “I’ve Got a Theory” in the musical episode “Once More with Feeling”, which captures the ‘wicca-fertility-cult/real-witches-that-were/are-empowered-women’ concept that underlay some representations of witches in the 1990s. This idea has ongoing resonance for some people, and continues to affect the way in which some people conceive of men and women killed for witchcraft in the early modern period.

 Around this time of year I am regularly reminded of David Mitchell's amusing discussion of the way in which distance removes the sting of actual historical events. Mitchell pointed out that the term "Rape and Pillage" has become an amusing term even though we would not find either rape or pillage amusing today. I don't wish to sound like a stick in the mud, nor do I find most genre depictions of witchcraft in anyway offensive. But occasionally I find the way people casually make some correlation between their own situation with that of early modern people who actually died for a crime that most likely they didn't commit (diabolism), or which from my point of view, they couldn't have committed (maleficium), somewhat problematic.  

I cannot count the number of times this concept has been raised by people when I tell them about the topic of my dissertation. In the past I have occasionally directed people to a few places where they might find facts to replace common misconceptions.

This post is not meant as a replacement for that, but as background for future posts on modern representations of witchcraft, particularly in genre fiction and television between now and Halloween.




[i] Montague Summers, The History of Witchcraft and Demonology, (1956).
[ii] Margaret Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, (1921); Margaret Murray, The God of the Witches, (1933); Margaret Murray, The Divine King of England, (1954).
[iii] See James Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness, (1995): pp. 7-8; Brian P. Levack,  The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, (2006): pp. 19, 294-295.

Sunday 4 October 2015

Daemoni, etiam vera dicenti, non est credendum


Even when the Devil tells the truth, he must not be believed.
 





One of the interesting Latin phrases my father taught me was Daemoni, etiam vera dicenti, non est credendum. The idea that the Devil is so deceitful that even his use of the truth is tainted by association has always interested me. This was an idea the witchfinder Matthew Hopkins seems to have agreed with, arguing that the Devil used facts over which he had no power (the truth) to deceive witches into believing they had actually harmed their victims with his help.

In 2014 I attended the Early Modern Women, Religion, and the Body conference at Loughborough University. At that conference I presented a paper which focused on how on Matthew Hopkins used ideas found in earlier demonological works to underpin his arguments on the Devil’s deceit of witches in The discovery of vvitches (1647).

I argued that a key passage in Hopkins text described how when witches, the Devil’s ‘deare and nearest children’,[i] believed that the Devil was granting their desire to harm their enemies, he was actually tricking them into worshipping him in return for the deaths of people who were already ill and going to die in the near future:

[The Devil] is of a long standing, above 6000. yeers, then he must needs be the best Scholar in all knowledges of arts and tongues, & so have the best skill in Physicke, judgment in Physiognomie, and knowledge of what disease is reigning or predominant in this or that mans body, (and so for cattell too) by reason of his long experience. This subtile tempter knowing such a man lyable to some sudden disease, (as by experience I have found) as Plurisie, Imposthume, &c. he resorts to divers Witches; if they know the man, and seek to make a difference between the Witches and the party[.]’[ii]

This recourse to the idea that the Devil understands human beings and their natures, and has studied then for his work also appears in the earlier text of George Gifford. However for Gifford, his learning is not just about the Witch’s victim, but about the witch herself:

‘WHen Satan at the first enterprised the ruine and destruction of man, he did not vnaduisedly set vp on the worke, but in great subtilty chose him a fit instrument for the purpose, euen the serpent who was more subtill then any beast of the field. He is now an old serpent, & long practised, and hath increased his subtilty by much approoued experience. He doth not nowe attempt his wicked worke, but [...] all y^[...] fittest waies & meanes that hée can: hée doth obserue time & place, with all other circumstances: and looke of what sort soeuer his worke shalbe, he séeketh co~uenient persons as matter to work vpon; he chuseth out fit instruments to worke withall·when he raiseth vp some heresie to destroy y^[...] true faith, which is with subtill shew to be defended: he suggesteth not the same into the minde of a blunt vnlearned foole which is able to say litle: but if it be possible, he espieth out a subtil minde, which is also proud, vaine glorious, & stiffe to maintain any purpose[.]’[iii]

The idea that the Devil tailors his temptation to the victim was a common theme, and my own favourite discussion on who the Devil chooses, and how he them fits his temptation to them, comes from King James VI & I’s Daemonologie. For King James there were witches who did not need to be deceived, as they were of the “grosser sorte, [who]runnes directlie to the Deuill for ambition or desire of gaine”.[iv] In my thesis I argue that:

King James did not see this plain and knowing contract as the only way in which people came into the Devil’s service, also citing two other forms. In some cases ignorant people could be deceived by the Devil into magical practices, without understanding that doing so was apostasy and diabolism.[v] And some learned men were tempted by knowledge into attempting sorcery, believing that they could control the Devil. In both cases King James emphasised the Devil’s use of deceit, and his desire to entice both the learned and the ignorant into the same grave error as the wilful, sinful witch: making a contract with the Devil that damned their soul.[vi] So for King James, witches could be divided into the sinfully greedy, the woefully ignorant, and the learned who, through pride, were deceived by the Devil.

The importance of the Devil’s understanding of human desires and the human body are central to Hopkins’ work. Therefore I have always argued that Hopkins’ The discovery of vvitches presents a complex demonological argument about the corporeality of the Devil, and his interaction with witches and the bewitched. And though he only cites James VI & I, it is easy to trace many of his ideas in George Gifford, William Perkins and Richard Bernard’s seminal demonological texts. Hopkins brief (comparatively it was extremely short for a treatise on demonology or the account of a witchfinder) work presents its reader with a mixture of popular beliefs around familiars, and elite demonology.[vii] There are several signs in both Hopkins’ and Stearne’s pamphlets that they consulted with demonological texts, magistrates and others in formulating their method of finding witches, for example at one point Hopkins claims his methods in one case were ‘upon command from the Justice’. [viii]

These links to others place Hopkins and Stearne firmly within English demonology – not without as claimed by Wallace Notestein.[ix]

At Loughborough I pointed out that Hopkins himself opened his pamphlet with the injunction from Exodus 22:18 cited by both Gifford and Richard Bernard: ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’, and likewise follows the paths laid down by earlier demonologists in ascribing to the Devil only a limited role in God’s work:

‘God suffers the Devill many times to doe much hurt, and the devill doth play many times the deluder and impostor with these Witches, in perswading them that they are the cause of such and such a murder wrought by him with their consents, when and indeed neither he nor they had any hand in it[.]’

Unlike John Gaule’s assessment that the witchfinders and those who employed them had no respect for God’s providence, Hopkins was demonstrating an understanding of how the world was supposed to work, with the Devil’s ‘power’, such as it was, primarily lying in deception and illusion. When Hopkins argues that “God suffers the Devill many times to doe much hurt”, he does not mean physical hurt, in terms of acts of maleficium or harmful magic, rather he means that the Devil is allowed to do much hurt to the witch.

This idea came to mind when I recently read Verena Thiele’s “Demonising Macbeth” in Magical Transformations on the Early Modern English Stage (2014), which argues that the demonic, tangible, transferable evil of the witches is contrasted with the temporary, localised evil of the human Macbeth who is a ‘bad man’ made worse by the influence of the witches. As I was reading her work I was struck by the way in which the three witches seem to do more than represent evil, they seem to embody the Devil (an inversion of the Holy Trinity?). While Macbeth himself stands in the place of the early modern witch. Macbeth is a bad man whose faults are manipulated. But the witches use truths (and half-truths) to deceive Macbeth, and to engender his ‘fall’.

This is an idea I am just wandering around the edges of – and I wager there may well be someone in the vast wealth of Shakespearian literature who has thought of it before me! Yet it seems to be playing on my mind, and I keep returning to Macbeth’s terrible declaration in Act V, that nothing can harm him because he has been told it cannot.

‘Bring me no more reports; let them fly all:

Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane,

I cannot taint with fear. What's the boy Malcolm?

Was he not born of woman? The spirits that know

All mortal consequences have pronounced me thus:

'Fear not, Macbeth; no man that's born of woman

Shall e'er have power upon thee.'[x]  

But Birnam did come to Dunsinane, and Malcolm was not ‘born of woman’. The witches (as the Devil) knew how to manipulate Macbeth, knew how he would interpret their prophecies, and so they used they used truth to deceive him.

For Hopkins, the Devil used ‘the truth’ of a person’s illness to deceive a witch into believing she was able to cause physical harm to another human being through him. Hopkins representation of the Devil’s knowledge and ability to deceive, and its interaction with the witch’s malice, vanity, and pride, has become one of the key points I keep in mind when I think about witchcraft in early modern England.



[i] Matthew Hopkins, The discovery of vvitches, (1645): p. 9.
[ii] Matthew Hopkins, The discovery of vvitches, p. 9.
[iii] George Gifford, A discourse of the subtill practises of deuilles by vvitches and sorcerers (1587): p. 32.
[iv] James VI & I, Daemonologie in forme of a dialogue, diuided into three books, p. 12.
[v] James VI & I, Daemonologie in forme of a dialogue, diuided into three books, pp. 7-8
[vi] James VI & I, Daemonologie in forme of a dialogue, diuided into three bookes, pp. 9, 12,
[vii] See Richard Bernard, A guide to grand-iury men, (1627); George Gifford, A discourse of the subtill practises of deuilles by vvitches and sorcerers; William Perkins, A Discourse of the damned art of witchcraft, (1610).
[viii] Hopkins, The discovery of vvitches, p. 2.
[ix] Wallace Notestein. A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718, 127-129
[x] William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act V, Scene III