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..and the consequences: "Witchcraft beliefs around the world: An exploratory analysis [2022-11]" > Country-level variation in the prevalence of witchcraft beli

by xjay 4y ago

..and the consequences: "Witchcraft beliefs around the world: An exploratory analysis [2022-11]" > Country-level variation in the prevalence of witchcraft beliefs is systematically linked to a number of cultural, institutional, psychological, and socioeconomic characteristics. > Among the documented potential costs of witchcraft beliefs are; disrupted social relations, high levels of anxiety, pessimistic worldview, lack of entrepreneurial culture and innovative activity. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9683553/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9683553/

xyzelement 4y ago
// disrupted social relations, high levels of anxiety, pessimistic worldview, lack of entrepreneurial culture and innovative activity. Perhaps this was your point anyway but this sounds like a very modern set of problems. Perhaps religious history of "battling" witchcraft and demonism can be understood as societies having witnessed a similar set of social issues brewing and looking for the root cause. An interesting connection that popped in my mind is women I've met in life who called themselves witches, or were interested in the concept, or even just dressed every day like it's Halloween - these aren't people you easily picture being close to their family, being married with children, being optimistic and entrepreneurial, etc. You kinda picture them at least absent from those things but perhaps more actively seeking to subvert them (eg: r/WitchesVsPatriarchy - by "patriarchy" they basically mean "everything") So perhaps the religious history of battling witches is just a limited/filtered understanding of the larger (and necessary) social theme of trying to preserve virtuous, energetic, spiritual, values-driven society, during times they were under attack. The number of "perhapses" in this comment should make it clear that I am just riffing here, but this is what your post inspired.
- Ensorceled 4y ago
  > popped in my mind is women I've met in life who called themselves witches, or were interested in the concept, or even just dressed every day like it's Halloween - these aren't people you easily picture being close to their family, being married with children, being optimistic and entrepreneurial Ummmm, wow. You're explaining away old bigotry against witches by extrapolating your current bigotry ... For what it's worth, most "witches" I've encountered tend to be optimistic and entrepreneurial; often running their own small businesses -- for instance there are several psychic shops near me (tarot readings are very popular now) and all have been in business for the 8 years I've lived here. Are you sure you're not talking about goths?
  - xyzelement 4y ago
    Did I not have enough "perhapses" in my post to adequately communicate the lack of certainty?
    - morelisp 4y ago
      "I'm just asking questions but what if it's reasonable to torture single women to preserve entrepreneurship in society? Just asking questions!"
      - colonCapitalDee 4y ago
        "I'm just using quotation marks to strawman your argument. Just being rhetorically dishonest!"
        morelisp 4y ago
        Correct, this misogynist shit gets no respect from me.
        Ensorceled 4y ago
        HN doesn’t really like it when we call out obvious misogyny, always likes to give these guys the “benefit of the doubt”.
      - rodgerd 4y ago
        Sounds like Petey Thiel.
    - Ensorceled 4y ago
      If you have bigoted opinions that you are “unsure” of, perhaps leave off the “perhaps” and say nothing?
  - korroziya 4y ago
    It's not bigotry to mock modern-day women who think they have magical powers.
- krapp 4y ago
  > Perhaps religious history of "battling" witchcraft and demonism can be understood as societies having witnessed a similar set of social issues brewing and looking for the root cause. In the US and Europe at least, witch-hunts and the paranoiac ferver around them arose in the context of apocalyptic Christian belief at the time - Christians believed they were living in the "end of days" and that Satanic forces were being arrayed everywhere to infiltrate their communities and corrupt and undermine their values. "witches" weren't simply pagans, but people who actively and willingly entered into contracts with the Christian devil. Modern day witchcraft and neopaganism bears no resemblance to what people of the time recognized witches to be, it didn't even really exist at the time. In a finer-grained context, this could have been an expression of anxiety over cultural and political change, and very often it manifested as anti-Semitism (it's no coincidence witches were depicted in caricatures similar to Jews and that their meetings were called sabbats.) racism and misogyny, and like many moral panics today, was often employed by the religious and political powers to their own ends. One can see it today within the right-wing fringes of Christianity and QAnon, and their conspiracy theories about Satanic rites among the "elites" and "leftists" (which has many elements of anti-witch and anti-Semitic beliefs of yore,) within a movement almost entirely defined by fear of the future and the corrupting influence of secularism and "traditional values."
  - nradov 4y ago
    Much of the historical persecution of witches in Christendom stemmed from Exodus 22:18 in the King James Bible: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”. But even that appears to have been a mistranslation: the original text would be better translated as "poisoner" in modern English. https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/2017-08-17/ty-article/thou-shalt-not-suffer-a-witch-to-live-a-murderous-mistranslation/0000017f-e2c8-d804-ad7f-f3fa49340000 https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/2017-08-17/ty-article/th...
    - krapp 4y ago
      And ironically, the justification for a lot of European occultism and demonology comes from the New Testament where Jesus says he gives his disciples power to command demons. It was seen (not by the mainstream Church, obviously) as acceptable to bind the devil's minions to force them to do good. Of course there was an equivalent school of magic to do the same with angels. (angelology - see John Dee and the Enochian script[1]) There was even an old belief (that I think came from the Babylonian Talmud but I'm not sure) that King Solomon used a magic ring that bound demons to build the first temple. This genre of "Solomonic" magic is where the Ars Goetia and its famous roster of demons comes from[0], which pop up from time to time in pop culture. What's particularly interesting is that, given that literacy of the time was primarily among the nobility and how much liturgical information there is in a lot of texts on ceremonial magic, there must have been an underground of occultists within the priest class of the Church at the time reading and writing all of this. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_demons_in_the_Ars_Goetia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_demons_in_the_Ars_Goet... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enochian_magic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enochian_magic
- mmierz 4y ago
  For what it's worth, I have a counter-anecdote: all the women I know who are into witch stuff are married with children and several of them are self employed doing arts & crafts kind of stuff.
metalforever 4y ago
I don't think this is true. A lot of people in the witchcraft scene are entrepreneurs due to persecution. What is likely more correct is that "fantastic beliefs" are associated with bad economic conditions (looking for fantastic solutions to modern problems). The institution is insulting the members of this religion(again....) by saying they 'lack entrepreneurial culture' and are 'not innovative'. One walk into a witchcraft circle , community gathering, or event will show you that this is plainly and obviously false.
- morelisp 4y ago
  Everyone is misreading the extract. "Witchcraft beliefs" means people who are afraid of witches, not people who are witches. It's not a comment about witchcraft practitioners (esp. in the west) but countries where people routinely blame witches for various issues.

by xjay 4y ago

xyzelement 4y ago

// disrupted social relations, high levels of anxiety, pessimistic worldview, lack of entrepreneurial culture and innovative activity. Perhaps this was your point anyway but this sounds like a very modern set of problems. Perhaps religious history of "battling" witchcraft and demonism can be understood as societies having witnessed a similar set of social issues brewing and looking for the root cause. An interesting connection that popped in my mind is women I've met in life who called themselves witches, or were interested in the concept, or even just dressed every day like it's Halloween - these aren't people you easily picture being close to their family, being married with children, being optimistic and entrepreneurial, etc. You kinda picture them at least absent from those things but perhaps more actively seeking to subvert them (eg: r/WitchesVsPatriarchy - by "patriarchy" they basically mean "everything") So perhaps the religious history of battling witches is just a limited/filtered understanding of the larger (and necessary) social theme of trying to preserve virtuous, energetic, spiritual, values-driven society, during times they were under attack. The number of "perhapses" in this comment should make it clear that I am just riffing here, but this is what your post inspired.

Ensorceled 4y ago
> popped in my mind is women I've met in life who called themselves witches, or were interested in the concept, or even just dressed every day like it's Halloween - these aren't people you easily picture being close to their family, being married with children, being optimistic and entrepreneurial Ummmm, wow. You're explaining away old bigotry against witches by extrapolating your current bigotry ... For what it's worth, most "witches" I've encountered tend to be optimistic and entrepreneurial; often running their own small businesses -- for instance there are several psychic shops near me (tarot readings are very popular now) and all have been in business for the 8 years I've lived here. Are you sure you're not talking about goths?
- xyzelement 4y ago
  Did I not have enough "perhapses" in my post to adequately communicate the lack of certainty?
  - morelisp 4y ago
    "I'm just asking questions but what if it's reasonable to torture single women to preserve entrepreneurship in society? Just asking questions!"
    - colonCapitalDee 4y ago
      "I'm just using quotation marks to strawman your argument. Just being rhetorically dishonest!"
      - morelisp 4y ago
        Correct, this misogynist shit gets no respect from me.
        Ensorceled 4y ago
        HN doesn’t really like it when we call out obvious misogyny, always likes to give these guys the “benefit of the doubt”.
    - rodgerd 4y ago
      Sounds like Petey Thiel.
  - Ensorceled 4y ago
    If you have bigoted opinions that you are “unsure” of, perhaps leave off the “perhaps” and say nothing?
- korroziya 4y ago
  It's not bigotry to mock modern-day women who think they have magical powers.
krapp 4y ago
> Perhaps religious history of "battling" witchcraft and demonism can be understood as societies having witnessed a similar set of social issues brewing and looking for the root cause. In the US and Europe at least, witch-hunts and the paranoiac ferver around them arose in the context of apocalyptic Christian belief at the time - Christians believed they were living in the "end of days" and that Satanic forces were being arrayed everywhere to infiltrate their communities and corrupt and undermine their values. "witches" weren't simply pagans, but people who actively and willingly entered into contracts with the Christian devil. Modern day witchcraft and neopaganism bears no resemblance to what people of the time recognized witches to be, it didn't even really exist at the time. In a finer-grained context, this could have been an expression of anxiety over cultural and political change, and very often it manifested as anti-Semitism (it's no coincidence witches were depicted in caricatures similar to Jews and that their meetings were called sabbats.) racism and misogyny, and like many moral panics today, was often employed by the religious and political powers to their own ends. One can see it today within the right-wing fringes of Christianity and QAnon, and their conspiracy theories about Satanic rites among the "elites" and "leftists" (which has many elements of anti-witch and anti-Semitic beliefs of yore,) within a movement almost entirely defined by fear of the future and the corrupting influence of secularism and "traditional values."
- nradov 4y ago
  Much of the historical persecution of witches in Christendom stemmed from Exodus 22:18 in the King James Bible: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”. But even that appears to have been a mistranslation: the original text would be better translated as "poisoner" in modern English. https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/2017-08-17/ty-article/thou-shalt-not-suffer-a-witch-to-live-a-murderous-mistranslation/0000017f-e2c8-d804-ad7f-f3fa49340000 https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/2017-08-17/ty-article/th...
  - krapp 4y ago
    And ironically, the justification for a lot of European occultism and demonology comes from the New Testament where Jesus says he gives his disciples power to command demons. It was seen (not by the mainstream Church, obviously) as acceptable to bind the devil's minions to force them to do good. Of course there was an equivalent school of magic to do the same with angels. (angelology - see John Dee and the Enochian script[1]) There was even an old belief (that I think came from the Babylonian Talmud but I'm not sure) that King Solomon used a magic ring that bound demons to build the first temple. This genre of "Solomonic" magic is where the Ars Goetia and its famous roster of demons comes from[0], which pop up from time to time in pop culture. What's particularly interesting is that, given that literacy of the time was primarily among the nobility and how much liturgical information there is in a lot of texts on ceremonial magic, there must have been an underground of occultists within the priest class of the Church at the time reading and writing all of this. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_demons_in_the_Ars_Goetia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_demons_in_the_Ars_Goet... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enochian_magic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enochian_magic
mmierz 4y ago
For what it's worth, I have a counter-anecdote: all the women I know who are into witch stuff are married with children and several of them are self employed doing arts & crafts kind of stuff.

metalforever 4y ago

I don't think this is true. A lot of people in the witchcraft scene are entrepreneurs due to persecution. What is likely more correct is that "fantastic beliefs" are associated with bad economic conditions (looking for fantastic solutions to modern problems). The institution is insulting the members of this religion(again....) by saying they 'lack entrepreneurial culture' and are 'not innovative'. One walk into a witchcraft circle , community gathering, or event will show you that this is plainly and obviously false.

morelisp 4y ago
Everyone is misreading the extract. "Witchcraft beliefs" means people who are afraid of witches, not people who are witches. It's not a comment about witchcraft practitioners (esp. in the west) but countries where people routinely blame witches for various issues.