The sorcery is a discussed term and its history is complex. According to the context and the cultural medium in which this word is employed, it indicates different ideas, even opposite. Each company has its own designs as regards tradition, of belief, religion, rites, report/ratio to the Au-delà and with dead and of good or bad spirits; it is sometimes impossible to find an equivalent from one culture to another.

The term sorcery often indicates the practice of the magic. According to the cultures, sorcery was considered with variable degrees of suspicion even of hostility, sometimes with ambivalence, not being intrinsically neither good nor bad. Certain religious doctrines regard any form of magic as sorcery, proscribe it or places it at the row of the Superstition. They oppose the character crowned their the clean ritual ones to the practices of sorcery.

This term is also employed in a pejorative way in reference to the practice of the magic. Sorcery is then, in this meaning, the charge carried against those which use supernatural means for a use rejected by a majority of the company. The beliefs in this type of experts of the magic met in the majority of the human society. Such charges sometimes led to witch hunts. In other companies, the Shamans or the griots were not only well accepted as experts of ritual traditional and intercessors with the forces and energies of invisible, but respected, sometimes feared, and often placed in socially dominant positions.

For the religions Western monotheists (mainly the Judaism, the Christianity and the Islam), sorcery was often condemned and regarded as a Hérésie. The concept of sorcery took a great importance for the catholics and the Protestants at the end of the Middle Ages. At that time sorcery gradually was comparable with a form of worship of the Diable. Charges of sorcery then were frequently combined with other loads of heresy against groups such as the Cathares and the Vaudois. Certain old or modern groups sometimes more or less openly claimed themselves of a worship " sataniste " dedicated to the evil.

Etymology

Two possible origins are retained concerning the word sorcery. Some affirm that it derives from Sourcier and others affirm that it derives from the word Sort , evil spell launched by a " throwing of sorts".

  • the German translation is " hexe" derived from old German " Hagazussa" , i.e. Zaunreiterin Femme which mounts a Brush, from where the traditional image of the witch flying on its Besom (word indicating the brush).

  • In Spanish, " bruja" comes from the term ibère bruixa , and more precisely from the Galician bruxa .
  • the word English " witchcraft" is directly derived from the Vieil English wicca (man Chaman) and/or wik (woman Chaman). Others think that the root common to Witchcraft and wicca and wik would be Wit, which would indicate knowledge/wisdom in very old English.

Wizard

According to the general and popular meaning of the term, the Sorcier is wizard, resorting to the black Magie. It can be " spécialiste" of a field, the such communication with the spirits, generally the late ones (one speaks then more readily about Mage or Voyant), or the animation of dead beings (See: Nécromancie).

From the anthropological point of view, the word wizard can cover various functions as Shaman or Man-medicine.

It is also a character malefic present in the Conte S and the Légende S. It appears from now on in the universe of the Roleplay, in the universe of Terry Pratchett and others, more fantastic, such as Harry Potter.

Witch

Sorcery indicates all that is regarded as Surnaturel without belonging to the official religion or all that is relating to the evil in these same religions. It appears that in mythologies of the first human society (Société matriarcale), the woman had a big role. The old religion becoming the devil of the news, the Christianisme often associated the women with roles malefic such as the Parques Mythologie gréco-Roman or Eve in the myth of Adam and Eve, who is combined with the snake (agent evil), to plunge the man under his sad condition. This explains partially the paramount role of the witches to that of the wizards in the European popular myths.

See also: Witch

Flying in the airs with - califourchon on its handle with brush, thus is represented the witch in the Western popular iconography. Antithesis of the Fairy, it has the same functions as the wizard, as well in anthropology as in the tales and legends.

Practices considered as sorcery

The term sorcery is commonly applied to the practices aiming at influencing the body or the spirit of a person, practices considered to be subversive and putting in danger the social order.

Some, the néo-pagan , regard the malefic nature of sorcery as being a Christian projection. However, the concept of " expert of the magie" influencing the body or the spirit of others against its liking was present within many cultures before even the introduction of the Monothéisme. Indeed, of old traditions of " white Magic " or the purpose of nuns were already to identify or counter these experts. Many examples of this type can be found in the old texts coming from Egypt and Babylon. In the cultures where it is believed that the wizard has the capacity to influence the body or the spirit of others, it appears a credible cause of disease (in the man or the animal), of bad luck, sudden death, various impotence or evils whose origin appears unexplainable. A benign folk magic and socially more acceptable can then be used to cure the magic spell, or to identify the wizard at the origin of the evil in order to defend oneself some or to demolish the enchantment of it.

Several magic practices are comparable with the sorcery, so that the people who use them were regarded as wizards by the Westerners, independently of the culture in which these practices are of use. One of the most known practices consists in manufacturing a clay headstock, out of wax or in rags with the effigy of real people and the actions which are carried out on these headstocks are supposed being transferred to the subjects which they represent (“Poupée voodoo” in the usual vocabulary, named dagyde in occultism).

The Nécromancie, consisting in requiring of the heart of a death to reveal the future, is also regarded as a typical practice of sorcery. The biblical witch of Endor is supposed to have practiced it while revealing the spectrum of Samuel (or the devil metamorphosed as a Samuel) in Saül.

The traditional and popular beliefs allot various types of capacities (acquired by démoniaque contract in the Christian tradition and monotheist more generally) were lent to the wizards: to fly in the airs, to torment the spirit of their victims. The imps, in the universe of the tales, can be used to them as auxiliaries. Some practical considered subversive or abusive and sometimes criminal fall under the blow of the law.

Differences between sorcery and the other forms in magic

Among certain contemporary occult movements, sorcery is particularly differentiated from the popular, religious magic or cérémoniale. The witches autoproclamées nowadays (among the members of the Wicca) are known to use the term of sorcery instead of the popular magic.

Traditional European sorcery

The European characterization of the Sorcière does not come from a single source. The néo-pagan belief suggests that the witches were simply women Chaman who were gradually transformed into malevolent figures by Christian propaganda. This vision is simplistic and supposes that the folk image of the witch comes from only one source, which is not the case. Indeed, the characterization of sorcery cannot be summarized with a caricature of the pagan priestess; she evolved/moved during time and is a combination many influences.

In the first times of Christianity in Europe, the population, accustomed for the use of the magic in the daily life, awaited Clergé a higher form of magic compared to the old pagan magic. Whereas Christendom competed with the Paganisme, this problem was of an crucial importance for the clergy, which little by little substituted for the ancestral practices the worship of the Relique S of the saints and Christ, thus taking again the popular use of amulets and Talisman S.

The traditional European vision of sorcery generally wants that the wizard, such Faust, sign a pact with the devil, by which it sells to him his heart in exchange of supernatural capacities. The wizards and witches were shown to disavow Jesus and the sacraments, to go to the Sabbath - assembly night where they were supposed to carry out diabolic rites, parodies of masses or offices of the church, to venerate the “prince of darkness there”, in order to obtain some to be able.

According to the academic max Dashu, many elements of the figure of the medieval witch find their source before the emergence of Christianity. Those can be found in the Bacchanales, in particular of time when these practices were carried out by the priestess Paculla Annia (of 188 av J. - C. until in 186 av J. - C.).

The example of England

In England, the exercise of the “curative magic” returned to the healer ( witch doctor ), so known under the terms of White Witch ( White witch ), Cunning Man (the Crafty one) or Wise Woman (the Wise Woman). The term of “healer” was already used in England before being directly associated with the African continent . The villainous healer ( Toad doctor ) was credited with the capacity to neutralize the action of the healers (other popular magicians were their own competent; Girdle-measurer was thus specialist to detect the evils launched by the fairies, while the Charmer ( charmers ) could cure more common problems, such as the burns or the tooth aches.

“In the north of England, the superstitions were enracinées in manners with an incredible force. The Lancashire is full healers, a whole long string of charlatans which claims to look after diseases and evils launched by the Malignant one… It are made call cunning men   ; they are extremely influential in the counties of Lincoln and Nottingham. ”

These “Crafty ones” claimed themselves only seldom wizard, and rejected this kind of charge. Certain writings dating from the the Middle Ages, however, suggest that the differences between the wizards and the healers, in connection with these “experts”, were not very clear with the eyes of the population. Thus, it appears that part of the population also intended to contact the wizards for requests of cure like divination, although the latter were especially recognized to be consulted by people eager to make curse their enemies. In fact, the major distinction was that the wizards were much more often denounced with the authorities than the guérisseurs  ; when the latter were continued, it was generally to have withdrawn money from their customers.

One of the consequences of this amalgam between the various experts of the magic of the time is current confusion in connection with what were really the wizards, in England. Did they aim to wound or look after their contemporains ? Which role (possibly) did they hold in their communauté ? Can these wizards/healers be comparable to the wizards and to witches which one finds the traces in the others cultures ? Or even, their role and wasn't their presence quite simply born from imaginary from the gens ? In the contemporary Western certainty, few differences are distinguished thus between healers, charmers, cunning men and wise women, astrologers and devins  ; they find all, more or less, affublés of the attributes of wizard (E).

The European wizards and witches were generally supposed to poison the wells, the sources, the cattle and food, or to make it inedible, fly in the airs using a brush, to throw fates malefic and to spread the fear and chaos in the local communities.

Rational explanation of some cases of sorcery

The Ergot of rye contains Ergotamine, of which one of the derivatives is the Lysergic acid (active ingredient of LSD). In certain cases, the consumption of Pain could give place to Hallucination S, which were, with the Moyen-âge, allotted to sorcery.

See too

Sorcery in the contemporary western world

Since the middle of the 20th century, sorcery developed by integrating a religious dimension, asserting Néo-paganism.

If this form of pantheist pagan religiosity appeared before, in the worships of nature, it took a new dimension after work of Margaret Murray, Egyptologist English of the 20th century, which wrote on the possible existence of a pagan religion taking its source in the times moved back and having survived until our days, and whose witches gathered in Coven S would from time immemorial have been the agents.

If this assumption were not proven, it had an influence on its contemporaries and supported the installation of a néo-pagan religion based on the sorcellerie : the Wicca, whose Gerald Gardner is the promoter. The Wicca is especially represented in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. There does not exist yet of official statistics on the number of Wiccans in the world.

Nowadays, certain old superstitions do not have any more course in the modern world. However, since the years 1940 with the emergence of the Wicca, religion claiming sorcery, considered and often called l'" Old religion" , a growing number of people autoproclamé wizard (E). Whereas the Western perception of sorcery remains very negative, Wiccans do not attach to it a particular direction, and do not compare either their practices to the satanism. In fact, the majority of Wiccans wish simply that their contemporaries cease comparing sorcery to malefic practices, confining the term with a negative connotation.

In 1968, a radical political group composed women was made known in the town of New York under the name of W.I.T.C.H., for “  Women' S International Terrorist Conspiracy From Hell  ” (the `terrorist international conspiracy of the women come from the hell'). This transitory group did not have particular impact on the development of sorcery, but marked the spirits thanks to its original denomination.

The very last symbol of the witches is of course Halloween, on October 31st, although Wiccans prefer Samhain to him, which takes place on November 1st. It is not a coincidence if the two festivals often tend to be associées  ; the association of the witches with Halloween could come from an attempt of denigration, the Church, this old Celtic festival celebrating last harvest.

Pushed by the alliance of consumption to marketing, in perpetual search of ideas, modes to launching, the phenomenon of the witches was spread once again, during the last decades, but this time like icons more or less sympathetic nerves of a globalized popular culture. Films like The Kraft, Practical Magic and the Project Blair Witch 2 (the continuation of the Project Blair Witch) as well as the televised series My well loved witch (Bewitched) ; Charmed ; Sabrina, the apprentie witch (Sabrina the Teenage Witch) and sometimes Buffy against the vampires (Buffy the Slayer Vampire) and X-Files, at the borders of reality (The X-Files) carried to the screen and popularized children and young wizard (E) S. All these stereotypes `general public' have however only few bonds with the movement of Wicca nor with the Christian perception of sorcery. The majority of these witches of small and big screen are, nowadays, of the attractive young women equipped with supernatural capacities.

A literary work describing well, from its evocative and poetic power, the magic universe of modern sorcery in the contemporary western world, by taking again the legend of Faust, is the Master and Marguerite of Mikhaïl Boulgakov.

The revalorization of the magic thought at the 20th century

The psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung proposed the concept of Archétype S in the unconscious human one, ancestral figures of the Inconscient collective, which emergent in particular in contact with people having a particular psychic profile; the figure of the wizard, or the malfaisant genius, is complementary to the professor/beneficial genius, and not clarifies the clean personality of the identified individual, but that of the subject in prey to the archetypal figures of its unconscious, called upon by the means of Rituel S.

The magic mode of knowledge , in competition with the thought conveyed by the religions monotheists in Occident, by them was largely devalued. Thus Hegel, which saw in this type of report/ratio in the world only one whole of superstitions. The anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss clarified the richness and the smoothness of the companies whose culture is primarily magico-nun, for example in their knowledge in botany, and their knowledge of living in general.

In the years 1960, Carlos Castaneda, studying in anthropology in a Californian university, left to study the medicinal plants with the Mexico. Its experiment, reported in many works, is a testimony on confrontation between these two ways of thinking, that, analytical, of the university Occident and its corpora, and that, discursive, of a magic type of thought. Escaping by definition from Western taxonomies, this thought implies an active participation, even ascetic, of the initiate, who gives his fruits only after long years.

Pierre Orchard left to initiate itself with the Brazil, with Bahia, the rites of origin Yoruba of the candomble, continued by voyages in Africa this initiatory experiment. This type of initiation was perceived like a " renaissance" by Orchard like by other Westerners, initiates thereafter with the rites chamanic and magic of these cultures, often characterized by the absence of written culture, and resistant to the Western concepts of " civilization".

One can thus conjecture that the negative connotation of the word " sorcier" takes its roots in an archetypal disfiguration - caricatural - of an action and way of thinking different from the official doxa. The arbitrary one of the " huntings for the sorcières" in is a lighting illustration.

Old beliefs of the Near and the Middle East

As certain ancient texts show it, sorcery played a part as well in the old Egypt as in Mésopotamie, as with Babylon. This extract of the Code of Hammourabi (approximately 2000 Before J. - C.): " if a man shows another of sorcery of them, without justification, that which is marked must go to the Sainte  River; ; It must plunge inside, and if the Holy River overcomes it, the indicter will be able to take the house of the wizard for sienne" in testifies.

Sorcery in the Tanakh (Hebraic Bible, Old Testament)

In the Bible, the references to sorcery are numerous; firm the judgment of the practice are not based as well there on the suspicion of trickery, but of course the concept as the magic in itself is an abominable practice. (cf Deutéronome 18:10 - 11 “  That one finds at home nobody (…) who exerts trade of Soothsayer, of Astrologer, of Omen, of magician, of Enchanter, nobody who consults those which evoke the spirits or say the Bonne adventure, nobody who questions the morts.  ”, Exodus 22:18 , “  You will not let live the magicienne.  ”).

The account of Saul returning visit to the wizard of In Dor ( I Samuel 28 ) shows us that he believes firmly in the evocation, by the wizard, of the shade of Samuel. Lastly, according to the Lévitique 20:27 , “  If a man or a woman has in them the spirit of a death or a spirit of divination, they will be punished of death; they will be lapidated: their blood will fall down on eux.  ”

Sorcery in the New Testament

The prohibition of sorcery in New Testament seems similar ( Épître with Gallates 5:20 , compared with Apocalypse 21:8, 22:15 and Acts of the Apostles 8:9, 13:6 ).

To suppose that the belief in sorcery concerned the popular superstition, it is strange nothing to find suggesting that the aspect malefic of these practices rested only on the fact of claiming to be in possession of capacities which do not exist.

Some interrogations rise nowadays, as for knowing if the word pharmakeia , used in the Épître with Gallates , finds a translation right with the term “  sorcellerie  ”. Indeed, this term was commonly used to speak about the use malefic of drugs as the poisons, the contraceptives or the substances making it possible to stop the pregnancies.

Judaïques perceptions of sorcery

The Jews often were perceived like wizard in Europe of the Moyen-âge, and were persecuted for this reason during the centuries of Chasse for the witches. But the great majority of them, perceive the practice of sorcery like a form of Idolâtrie, and thus an offense with the Judaism and its single God.

However, an small group of orthodoxe Jews, which study the Kabbale, believes in the magic. In practice, the ritual ones are very different from “traditional” sorcery, but the base (to use supernatural forces to influence the physical world) remains identical. Since the Lights, the majority of the Jews ceased believing in the Kabbale, and regard these practices as ridiculous.

Certain néo-pagan practice a form of magic, Syncrétisme of traditional Jewish mysticism and modern sorcery. A notable reference of this subject is the book of Ellen Canon Reed: The Witches Qabala: The Pagan Stalemate hand the Tree off Life . This book as well as the Zohar were a source of inspiration for several sects such as for example the Center of the Cabal.

Sorcery in the Muslim world

The Tales from the Arabian Nights, with their " Djinn s" (geniuses), transforming itself into column of smoke returning or outgoing of a flask, their " Carpet stealing " and their enchanted islands, abound magi and magicians and reflect the magic universe of the Orient. They also reflect an pre-Islamic world, the djinns being without question a reminiscence of the spirits of the former religions polytheists.

Today, many popular beliefs confer a great power on the Marabout S. In Islam sorcery is condemned and it belongs to the great sins.

African sorcery

The African continent collects a large range of traditional religions. The Christian Africans generally recognize the Christian dogma, just like their Asian and Latin-American brothers. The term of Healer, often proposed to translate inyanga, was badly interpreted, and became “  that which looks after by having recourse to the magie  ”, far from its original direction of “  that which diagnoses and looks after the evils caused by the magie  ”.

The combinations of beliefs and practices of the Roman Catholic church and the traditions, beliefs and religious practices West African directly contributed to the emergence of the Syncrétisme religious which one notices in Latin America, with practices, inter alia, like the Vaudou, the Obeah, the Candomblé or the Santeria.

In the South-African traditions, there are three various types of anybody which practice the magic. The thakatha is usually translated like the “  sorcière  ”, and is regarded as a malevolent character who secretly practices in order to harm others. The sangoma is a soothsayer, sometimes a teller of good adventure, whose services are necessary to detect the disease, to predict the future, to even identify the culprit of a misdeed. It also has some concepts of medicine. Lastly, the inyanga is often translated by the healer term (although many South-Africans call into question this translation, since it perpetuates the erroneous idea of an healer resorting to the magic). The task of the inyanga is to entreat the bad fate and to provide to its customers the grigris necessary. Among these three characters, the thakatha is almost always woman, the sangoma is usually a woman, while the inyanga is almost always a man.

Repression of sorcery

Many countries, in particular in Africa, punish the practices of sorceries.

Cameroun

The penal code, in its article 251, represses the practices of sorcery.

Is punished of a imprisonment from two to ten years and of a fine of 5  000 with 100  000 francs that which is devoted to practices of sorcery, magic or divination likely to disturb the order or public peace, or to attack the people, to the goods or fortunes of others even in the form of remuneration

Films, Series and Cartoons

Films and series in connection with sorcery.

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