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 Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2005 8:38 am
I have been studying this subject for about a week but I haven't gotten a clear reason...
So how did witches get the stereotype of having pointy hats,ride brooms,warts and etc.?
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Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2005 10:02 am
Think back to the Salem Witch Trials. Rumors spreaded like wild fire on each side, (since the village was split in two, one side being on the good 'Light' side while being the domain of the 'witches' (since all the convicted or nearly all were on the one side) Girls had spreaded of how women would fly on broomsticks across the sky at night and convorse with the devil. Hence, since back then, around halloween, you see the place covered with old women with black pointy hats and crooked noses flying across the sky, usually with a full moon behind them. If I'm wrong on this, someone correct me, thats what i've picked up on in the last year.
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Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2005 10:40 am
Some of it comes from the European witch hunts as well. Read the Malleus Maleficarum and you'll see what I mean. xp
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Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2005 11:34 am
Ah, and now I show what you CAN actually learn from Charmed.
Pointy hats: The conical hats are meant to help focus power.
Warts: Most witches, during the Salem witch trials, were suspected to be what they were because they were really old ladies, with weird-looking features. And old ladies in those days had big effing warts.
Broomsticks: Brooms, or besoms, can be used to sweep out bad energies, but I'm not quite sure how these bozos made the jump to witches flying around on brooms. Possibly because it was such a portable thing, and they had nothing like cars in those days.
^_^ hope I helped you.
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Luck-In-Spades Vice Captain
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Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2005 12:20 pm
A lot of the stuff goes back before the Salem witch trails
(NOTE: You guys... remember that very very VERY few REAL witches were burned during the so-called "burning times." It was more of a political disaster than a holocaust.)
Supposedly in more ancient and early-european times, those that practiced the earth religion also tended to be farmers. And, there was a ceremony where the practicers ran around their field with their yard tools, jumping as high as they could, symbolizing how high they wanted their crops to grow. People saw this and got all freaked out at people "flying" on their yard tools.
Another suggestion is that before the hobby-horse was invented (the stuffed horse head on a broomstick), children were given just brooms to pretend to ride around on. Similarly, it has been suggested that adult pagan practioners did this as well in a similar ceremony as listed above.
I have heard NOWHERE about the conical hats meant to focus power. Can you site a source other than a TV show? If I had to offer a guess, I'd say that the conical shape was damn EASY to sew (its a remarkably simple pattern that only really requires two seams: one for the pointy piece and one to attach the pointy piece to the brim), which made it a logical early hat. Also, consider the large wide brim: many people worked the fields and needed to keep their eyes shadowed. Note that a pointy hat is also present in Chinese design woven hats, lending to a connection that way. I have read a few things about the "witch" hat being an older fashion before any of the burning times. Old women still wore these hats because they had them from when they were younger and the hats were more "fashionable."
Warts have been around for a long time, and were especially common for MANY people (not just old women). I would venture the guess that witches have been painted with grotesque features and warts in order to solidify a horrifying image that was used to scare both children and even adults from old religions like the earth traditions.
Please do note, that some of this is speculation on my part. Other things I have sort of pieced together from a few books that I have read. I would most importantly like to share that it is VERY doubtful that anyone anywhere knows for SURE what any of these things might represent, and have merely been interpreted the same way for years. Never take one author's word for gospel. Use your better judgement and average out many authors' ideas.
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Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2005 3:53 pm
My two cents: (Remember, this is just derived from MY research, and I encourage everyone to go to a library and do research themselves!)
Black dresses: Everyone wore black dresses back then. Or gray. It's just a colonial dress. It's considered an 'evil' dress now because black=darkness which is a feared thing.
Pet cats (not stated, but it's a stereotype all the same): People had long forgotten that cats saved Europe from the Black Plague. Cats were evil again by the time of the Salem trials, so anyone nice to a cat, especially a black one, was a witch.
Warts: Frogs/toads were among cats as an evil animal thought to be the devil or his minions in disguise. Frogs and toads have warts. People thought contact with these animals gave you warts, and of course a witch (the devil's harlot) would touch them frequently. Ergo, a warty person was a witch.
The broom reasoning that has been given (sweeping energy is what REAL Witches do, and the hobby horses made with broomsticks) is pretty much all you're going to find on that, I'm betting. However, the reason they "flew" was because flying was a magical act, the one thing animals did that humans never could, or SHOULD. It was where angels belonged, not humans. So to further the belief that a person was a devil's minion, "eyewitnesses" swore they saw them flying. The broom wasn't always used, actually, the person was supposedly just FLYING, on their own. Which I'm sure never happened, it was just a lie to superstious people to scare them more.
Coned hats: Actually, I think that's a modern thing. I hadn't seen ANY drawings of a witch wearing anything but a colonial cap until art from the 1960s. Possibly a coned hat was more dramatic, or it has something to do with Gardener's new witches. Do research on those topics, and let me know what you find. 3nodding
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Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2005 7:47 pm
If I may add one thing to all this-
Back around the Inquisition, I've read in more than one place that certain groups of women that met on times similar to the esbats would gather nude, and would "ride" brooms that were really just anointed with various psychedelic and/or hallucenogenic herbs, which, when a person "rided" the broom, would expose their *ahem* delicate areas to the chemicals on the broom, and likely gave them an out of body experience that allowed them to "fly." Or at least this is the definition people chose to describe when trying to seek these people out.
So, all those cardboard cut-outs you see around this time of year in supermarkets might actually hail back to a time when people would apply plant extracts to their errogenous zones to make an astral projection. (The more you know) 3nodding
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Posted: Sun Oct 02, 2005 1:26 pm
Sucellus ( The more you know) 3nodding You Forgot -Shooting star- lol
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Posted: Sun Oct 02, 2005 1:40 pm
(^hey buddy!!) I heard that the hats were something worn by herbalists or something.... But I think everyone else is right on. (Except maybe the hat focusing energy thing.... The Burning Times were mostly innocent women, not real witches (at least that's what I think), and I don't exactly think that Charmed is greatest resource source out there.... Sorry, that's just my opinion.)
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Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 1:24 pm
i would think because way back when people were afraid witches would taint their beleives so people tried to make them as ugly as they could(i think)
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Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 1:34 pm
*takes notes on everyones replys* ^^ See first poster always has to change something in the end XD
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Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2005 2:10 pm
Charmed, I will admit, isn't the greatest source for Wicca knowledge (In fact, it's among the worse), but my mother, who is Wiccan, confirmed that the conical hat was used for focusing energy, and as for the rest of it, like those who posted above me said: Go study for yourself, and see what you find.
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Luck-In-Spades Vice Captain
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Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 12:37 am
Galdrea Charmed, I will admit, isn't the greatest source for Wicca knowledge (In fact, it's among the worse), but my mother, who is Wiccan, confirmed that the conical hat was used for focusing energy, and as for the rest of it, like those who posted above me said: Go study for yourself, and see what you find. No offense, but for the sake of proving the point: what makes your mother the all-knowing source for Wicca? JUST saying. If she's read about it, then that's plausable. But a person's opinion can be wrong (as I repetively stated in my above post, as well.)
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Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 3:24 am
Luck-In-Spades Galdrea Charmed, I will admit, isn't the greatest source for Wicca knowledge (In fact, it's among the worse), but my mother, who is Wiccan, confirmed that the conical hat was used for focusing energy, and as for the rest of it, like those who posted above me said: Go study for yourself, and see what you find. No offense, but for the sake of proving the point: what makes your mother the all-knowing source for Wicca? JUST saying. If she's read about it, then that's plausable. But a person's opinion can be wrong (as I repetively stated in my above post, as well.) She's not the all-knowing source, and I don't know where she read it, but I'm fairly sure she did. *shrugs* But that's beside the point, right?
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Luck-In-Spades Vice Captain
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Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 12:19 pm
Galdrea Luck-In-Spades Galdrea Charmed, I will admit, isn't the greatest source for Wicca knowledge (In fact, it's among the worse), but my mother, who is Wiccan, confirmed that the conical hat was used for focusing energy, and as for the rest of it, like those who posted above me said: Go study for yourself, and see what you find. No offense, but for the sake of proving the point: what makes your mother the all-knowing source for Wicca? JUST saying. If she's read about it, then that's plausable. But a person's opinion can be wrong (as I repetively stated in my above post, as well.) She's not the all-knowing source, and I don't know where she read it, but I'm fairly sure she did. *shrugs* But that's beside the point, right? I suppose. I was just trying to point out that for the most part, all history of actual witchcraft is obscured greatly before 1950, especially due to eradication of it by the ruling powers of the areas. Only Voudon, Santeria, and North American Shamanism (and of course other similar things to all of them) are historically confirmed prior to 1950. European witchcraft has been pretty well erased =/
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