Witchcraft Ideas And Their Parallels Across The World :: essays research papers fc

Witchcraft is said to be the most widespread pagan phenomenon in existence today and throughout history. Even those who shun the ideas of witchery cannot discount the similarities in stories from all corners of the globe. Witchcraft and its ideas catch spread across racial, religious, and language barriers from Asia to Africa to America. Primitive state from different argonas in the world have shockingly similar accounts of witchcraft occurrences. In most cases the strange parallels cannot be explained and one is just now left to assume that the tales h grey-haired some truth. Anthropologists govern that many common elements about witchcraft are shared by different cultures in the world. Among these common elements are the physical signs and the activities of supposed witches. I will go on to highlight some of the witch characteristic parallels found in printed accounts from different parts of the world and their comparisons to some historied fairy tales.First of all, throu ghout many cultures, physical characteristics associated with witches ring strangely the same. Anthropologist Philip Mayer says that witches typically bear a physical stigma, like a red center of attention for example (Mayer 56). In the Brothers Grimm fairytale "Hansel and Gretel," the witch shares this same beastly characteristic. Also, people usually cast off as witches are typically ceaselessly old women. In Slovakia, Milan Mramuch accused his elderly neighbor of witchcraft and allegedly beat the old woman to death (Whitmore). In "Hansel and Gretel" the witch who lives in the tempting, candy house is an old crippled woman and in the Brothers Grimm fairytale "Snow White," the witch who was an elegant queen, performs her craft disguised as an old peasant woman.     A second characteristic of witches - and what witches are most commonly known for - is that they cause horrible misfortune to their neighbors and others close to them. Death , sickness, and weather disasters are examples of natural occurrences that witches cause are often blamed for, especially when the occurrences calculate strange or out of the ordinary. They can cause this harm exactly by willing it to happen. "The witch only has to wish you harm, and the harm is as good as done" (Mayer 56). In Slovakia, Mramuch, who killed his neighbor Anna Tomkova, did so because he suspected the woman of casting a spell on his granddaughter. It was the only answer Mramuch had to counter his granddaughters sudden suffering of epileptic seizures (Whitmore). In sulphur Africa, Mmatiou Thantsa was accused of witchcraft and summoning lightning (Keller).