witchcraft

• witches dispensed selfish, antisocial magic

88:6.2There was both a pub­lic and a pri­vate phase to magic. That per­formed by the med­i­cine man, shaman, or priest was sup­posed to be for the good of the whole tribe. Witches, sor­cer­ers, and wiz­ards dis­pensed pri­vate magic, per­sonal and self­ish magic which was em­ployed as a co­er­cive method of bring­ing evil on one’s en­e­mies. The con­cept of dual spiritism, good and bad spir­its, gave rise to the later be­liefs in white and black magic. And as re­li­gion evolved, magic was the term ap­plied to spirit op­er­a­tions out­side one’s own cult, and it also re­ferred to older ghost be­liefs.

• wizards’ powers attained by eating human flesh

89:5.5Some can­ni­bal­ism re­sulted from the de­gen­er­a­tion of once su­pe­rior stocks, but it was mostly preva­lent among the evo­lu­tion­ary races. Man-eat­ing came on at a time when men ex­pe­ri­enced in­tense and bit­ter emo­tions re­gard­ing their en­e­mies. Eat­ing hu­man flesh be­came part of a solemn cer­e­mony of re­venge; it was be­lieved that an en­emy’s ghost could, in this way, be de­stroyed or fused with that of the eater. It was once a wide­spread be­lief that wiz­ards at­tained their pow­ers by eat­ing hu­man flesh.

• magic performed by irregular spirits

90:2.2An­cient black art, both re­li­gious and sec­u­lar, was called white art when prac­ticed by ei­ther priests, seers, shamans, or med­i­cine men. The prac­ti­tion­ers of the black art were called sor­cer­ers, ma­gi­cians, wiz­ards, witches, en­chanters, nec­ro­man­cers, con­jur­ers, and sooth­say­ers. As time passed, all such pur­ported con­tact with the super­nat­u­ral was clas­si­fied ei­ther as witch­craft or shaman­craft.

90:2.3Witch­craft em­braced the magic per­formed by ear­lier, ir­reg­u­lar, and un­rec­og­nized spir­its; shaman­craft had to do with mir­a­cles per­formed by reg­u­lar spir­its and rec­og­nized gods of the tribe. In later times the witch be­came as­so­ci­ated with the devil, and thus was the stage set for the many com­par­a­tively re­cent ex­hi­bi­tions of re­li­gious in­tol­er­ance. Witch­craft was a re­li­gion with many prim­i­tive tribes.

• shamans suppressed rivals by calling them witches

90:2.12The shamans dressed well and usu­ally had a num­ber of wives; they were the orig­i­nal aris­toc­racy, be­ing ex­empt from all tribal re­stric­tions. They were very of­ten of low-grade mind and morals. They sup­pressed their ri­vals by de­nom­i­nat­ing them witches or sor­cer­ers and very fre­quently rose to such po­si­tions of in­flu­ence and power that they were able to dom­i­nate the chiefs or kings.

• primitives attributed deaths to

90:3.73. Magic—the in­flu­ence of en­e­mies. Much sick­ness was thought to be caused by be­witch­ment, the ac­tion of the evil eye and the magic point­ing bow. At one time it was re­ally dan­ger­ous to point a fin­ger at any­one; it is still re­garded as ill-man­nered to point. In cases of ob­scure dis­ease and death the an­cients would hold a for­mal in­quest, dis­sect the body, and set­tle upon some find­ing as the cause of death; oth­er­wise the death would be laid to witch­craft, thus ne­ces­si­tat­ing the ex­e­cu­tion of the witch re­spon­si­ble there­for. These an­cient coro­ner’s in­quests saved many a sup­posed witch’s life. Among some it was be­lieved that a tribesman could die as a re­sult of his own witch­craft, in which event no one was ac­cused.

• witches dispensed selfish, antisocial magic

91:1.2Re­li­gion and its agen­cies, the chief of which is prayer, are al­lied only with those val­ues which have gen­eral so­cial rec­og­ni­tion, group ap­proval. There­fore, when prim­i­tive man at­tempted to grat­ify his baser emo­tions or to achieve un­mit­i­gated self­ish am­bi­tions, he was de­prived of the con­so­la­tion of re­li­gion and the as­sis­tance of prayer. If the in­di­vid­ual sought to ac­com­plish any­thing an­ti­so­cial, he was obliged to seek the aid of non­re­li­gious magic, re­sort to sor­cer­ers, and thus be de­prived of the as­sis­tance of prayer. Prayer, there­fore, very early be­came a mighty pro­moter of so­cial evo­lu­tion, moral prog­ress, and spir­i­tual at­tain­ment.

• to be progressive meant to be killed as sorcerer

92:3.5Only two in­flu­ences can mod­ify and up­lift the dog­mas of nat­u­ral re­li­gion: the pres­sure of the slowly ad­vanc­ing mores and the pe­ri­odic il­lu­mi­na­tion of ep­ochal rev­e­la­tion. And it is not strange that prog­ress was slow; in an­cient days, to be pro­gres­sive or in­ven­tive meant to be killed as a sor­cerer. The cult ad­vances slowly in gen­er­a­tion epochs and age­long cy­cles. But it does move for­ward. Evo­lu­tion­ary be­lief in ghosts laid the foun­da­tion for a phi­los­o­phy of re­vealed re­li­gion which will even­tu­ally de­stroy the su­per­sti­tion of its ori­gin.

• witch of Endor

146:7.1At En­dor Je­sus es­caped for a few days from the clam­or­ing mul­ti­tudes in quest of phys­i­cal heal­ing. Dur­ing their so­journ at this place the Mas­ter re­counted for the in­struc­tion of the apos­tles the story of King Saul and the witch of En­dor. Je­sus plainly told his apos­tles that the stray and re­bel­lious mid­way­ers who had of­ten­times im­per­son­ated the sup­posed spir­its of the dead would soon be brought un­der con­trol so that they could no more do these strange things. He told his fol­low­ers that, af­ter he re­turned to the Fa­ther, and af­ter they had poured out their spirit upon all flesh, no more could such semispirit be­ings—so-called un­clean spir­its—pos­sess the fee­ble- and evil-minded among mor­tals.

• superstition of ignorant minds

150:3.86. Div­ina­tion, sor­cery, and witch­craft are su­per­sti­tions of ig­no­rant minds, as also are the delu­sions of magic. The be­lief in magic num­bers, omens of good luck, and harbingers of bad luck, is pure and un­founded su­per­sti­tion.

150:3.97. The in­ter­pre­ta­tion of dreams is largely a su­per­sti­tious and ground­less sys­tem of ig­no­rant and fan­tas­tic spec­u­la­tion. The gospel of the king­dom must have noth­ing in com­mon with the sooth­sayer priests of prim­i­tive re­li­gion.

150:3.108. The spir­its of good or evil can­not dwell within ma­te­rial sym­bols of clay, wood, or metal; idols are noth­ing more than the ma­te­rial of which they are made.

150:3.119. The prac­tices of the en­chanters, the wiz­ards, the ma­gi­cians, and the sor­cer­ers, were de­rived from the su­per­sti­tions of the Egyp­tians, the As­syr­i­ans, the Baby­lo­ni­ans, and the an­cient Ca­naan­ites. Amulets and all sorts of in­can­ta­tions are fu­tile ei­ther to win the pro­tec­tion of good spir­its or to ward off sup­posed evil spir­its.