The religious-philosophical foundations of ‘Witchcraft’

Abstract

The article deals with the religious-philosophical foundations of ‘Witchcraft ’. Witchcraft is a mental phenomenon, a diverse thought-construct resulting from the intellectual understanding of such social phenomena as the witch-hunt in the unity of its diverse aspects. The focus of this paper is on the analysis of two key elements of witchcraft: the formation of the concept of evil in early Christian philosophy and its infl uence on the transformation of the witches’ image in the culture of the European Middle Ages. The origins of the understanding of evil as a metaphysical concept are traced back to ancient Greek philosophy. The article presents a brief analysis of the evolution of the concept of evil in the philosophical systems of Parmenides, Platon and Plotinus that had the greatest impact on the formation of ideas about evil in the Christian tradition. In Christianity, the question about the nature and the cause of evil becomes particularly critical and topical in the context of understanding God as Absolute, as ultimate authority bearing full responsibility for his creation. The philosophical heritage of Tertullian, Origen and Augustine made a significant contribution to the development of the concept of evil. Their doctrine of evil became the impetus that provided witchcraft with a fundamental philosophical foundation and launched the process of transformation of the concept. The representation of witches acquired its logical completeness when the concept of witchcraft , after having gone through a long stage of its development, was defined by Christian theologians as heresy, characterized as the conscious denial of the established system of Christian values. A theologically articulated conception of the imperfection of women that originates from the interpretation of the fall of man by Christian theologians made an important contribution to the formation of the image of the witch. The very essence of the medieval world-view in which the fall of man was comprehended as a victory of the body over the spirit explained accusations made against the woman that she was the main culprit of original sin. And since the body was identified with the woman and the spirit with the man, the woman was doomed to bear the main responsibility for sin in this system of values.