The Feminine in Witchcraft: Part I

I was told that witches are the opposites to shades (ancestors) and ancestors being male then the witches must be female.… The witches dig up males simply because they are the ancestors so when they make a familiar of a male [corpse] they are killing the ancestor (BERGLUND 1, p. 277).

I am postulating that belief in witches and the power of witchcraft is universal and is based on the archetype of the ‘elementary feminine’, the archetype of the great mother as described by Neumann:

The phenomenology of the workings of the archetype extends from the unconscious instinctive drive of the primitive individual, contained in the group, to the formulation of concepts and beliefs in the philosophical systems of the modern individual. In other words, a vast number of forms, symbols and images, of views, aspects and concepts, which exclude one another and overlap, which complement one another and apparently emerge independently of one another, but all of which are connected with one archetype, e.g., that of the Great Mother, pour in on the observer who takes it on himself to describe, or even to understand what an archetype, or what this archetype, is (NEUMANN 16, p. 9) (my italics)

The complexity of this psychic area is so great, as can be appreciated from the above quotation, that it has taken me many years of research and considerable courage to talk and write about it. My work as a child and family psychotherapist has made me aware of the power of the feminine in relationships. But real understanding of it and how to deal with it remained elusive. My research with black people and especially black patients where this power has at least partially been crystallised as witchcraft and bewitchment has increased my understanding of a universal phenomenon and also my empathy with the ‘witch’ and the ‘bewitched’.

That witchcraft, especially as an evil force, is a universal principle—portrayed in mythology, fairy tales and legends, history, religions and the theories and practice of de