Why We Need Witches

When my sister and I were around 8 and 10, we discovered Lang’s Fairy Books, a series of children’s stories published between 1889 and 1913 by Andrew Lang and his wife Leonora Blanch Alleyne. They themselves did not collect these stories from the original oral sources, but Mrs. Lang did most of the translations into English from their original languages. These books contain many scary and creepy folk tales, of evil stepmothers and ogres and witches who eat children, like the witch in Hansel and Gretel. My sister and I read them over and over, fascinated by the magical world they described.

Did you ever sit around a fire while people told ghost stories? There’s something thrilling about sitting outside in the dark, with a warm fire and friends in front of you and the cold darkness behind you. Before the invention of gas lights, for the majority of our species’ existence, that was a common, everyday experience. The night world was dark and scary and there was no escaping it. There were a lot fewer people back then, too. The UN estimates that there were one billion people on Earth in 1804. There are approximately 8 billion now. So not only were we in the dark, there were a lot fewer human places and a lot more nature.

While thinking about magic and Halloween and fairy tales, I started wondering about witches. It’s one of those subjects that once you start looking for it, you discover it’s everywhere. There are so many modern versions of witches throughout our media, from children’s stories to adult books and all kinds in movies and tv. And many of them are positive and charming, from Samantha in Bewitched, to the sisters from Charmed, the Wizards of Waverly Place, and Harry Potter. So when I started researching the question of what is a witch, I was surprised to discover that many of the definitions I encountered said specifically that witches are evil with malicious intentions.

It was at this point that I realized that there had been a cultural shift in our understanding of witches. And so my question had to be examined from a historical perspective and take into account the growth and development of science and the need for witches in pre-modern society versus in our own. It was actually not that long ago, although that time feels like the dark ages compared to the present, with our worldwide communication and travel. Science has only really existed for just under 500 years: the Scientific Revolution is considered to have begun in 1543 when Copernicus published his observations about the solar system. Five hundred years may seem like a long time, but considering that we have existed as a species for over 200,000, in an evolutionary sense, it’s not.

Magical thinking is the belief that our thoughts, actions, or rituals can influence the natural world. It’s still in full force in this modern age: just last night I saw a Yankee batter tugging ritually on a good luck charm around his neck. Twenty percent of Americans and 40% of people worldwide believe in witches and 70% believe in angels. According to theories of anxiety relief and control, people turn to magical thinking when there exists a sense of uncertainty and danger. Superstitious behavior is also more common in high stress circumstances. Magical beliefs help people feel in control of situations that are otherwise unpredictable or out of their control and can help people explain events that seem random or inexplicable.

My reading showed me that most, if not all, societies differentiate between witches, who are bad, and cunning folk, medicine men or wise old people, who are helpers (although they, too, can be a little scary!). These are the people who collect the knowledge of our forbears and apply it to help other people. If we blend the meanings of witches and cunning folk we can say in general that witches are people who know stuff that other people don’t and know how to use it to affect the world, change things, make things happen. Good witches exist in part to protect us from bad witches. They are also the original health care workers.

I think the old bad witches are the equivalent to our sociopaths, manipulative and cruel people who wish you harm. Sociopathy, a personality disorder, is found in between 2 and 5% of the population and evolved as a survival strategy whereby individuals manipulate and exploit other people to succeed in their own lives. Sociopaths take advantage of the natural predilection of humans to trust other people. No other species has as complex cooperation among members as do humans, which unlike other species, extends far beyond kin to include strangers and therefor requires an instinctual foundation of trust.

Truly, humans might not even exist without our cunning folk and medicine people. Margaret Mead was once asked what the first sign of culture and she said a healed femur, because no one with that injury could have survived without others helping them. Chimpanzees have been observed treating their wounds and many other species have been observed using certain plants to treat ailments, especially parasites. In her 2023 article, “The Greatest Invention of All Time”, Cat Bohannon, wrote about the invention of gynecology and midwifery in protohumans, and says that “the arrival of midwives is one of those moments in hominin history for which we can truly say, “This is when we started to become human.””

In this age of high tech pharmaceuticals, it’s hard to remember that nature provides a rich cornucopia of pharmacologically active compounds, most often from wild plants, but also from fungi, animals and microorganisms. Humans have always used this wide range of chemicals to heal illness and injury and cure infections and in service to spiritual awakening or psychological care. One of my favorite fictional characters is Claire Fraser from the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. A big part of Claire’s appeal for me is the fact that she is a doctor in the 18th century. Gabaldon’s descriptions of apothecary shops are fascinating and describe a real world historical fact: Humans have been practicing medicine for millennia. Archaeological evidence shows that Paleolithic people used over 60 medical plants.

Why do we need witches? Because being human is difficult. There are malevolent people who want to do us harm, and illnesses and injuries and old age. There are mental illnesses and grief and metaphysical experiences. And so, the answer to this question is ultimately twofold. Bad witches come with the territory of being human. Nature gave us sociopaths just like it gave us natural disasters, mental illness, sickness and death. And to counterbalance all of that, good witches and cunning folk and midwives and herbalists and wise old people came into being to help us survive all the bad stuff. And even though we modern people know everything and can do anything, there is still that little center of unknowing and unknowableness that keeps our belief in magic alive.