Much has been written on the topic of European and American witchcraft. A quick subject search on the Internet produces a result of thousands of books, articles, and web pages devoted to this specific topic. In this chapter we use some examples that we have selected from the literature that are illustrative of the themes running throughout this book.

Mary Douglas, in an early edited collection (Witchcraft: Confessions and Accusations, 1970), stressed the importance of the “accusation phase” in studying witchcraft. This phase is equivalent to the phase of rumor and gossip. Here we take cases from the European and American canon of materials and indicate how a prehistory of gossip and rumor invariably precedes an overt witch-hunt or witch trial and witch killings. These materials demonstrate how a sense of social hysteria can be induced, leading to persecution and violence against targeted groups. Our discussion of them in this chapter follows from materials already given in Chapter 1. First we give some general background.

The longer term background to ideas that became branded as witchcraft in Europe is contested. Margaret Murray (1970 [1931]) argued that witchcraft and its covens or sabbats represented an aspect of an old European pagan religious complex centering on fertility. Its prosecution by clerical authorities therefore represented the campaigns of the Christian church against the remnants of paganism.