The superstition that witches steal is universal. They are especially said to steal milk which has a magical significance representing 'luck' or 'mana'. Often it is believed that the witch leaves her excrement as an equivalent for what she has stolen. A 'thief's candle', made of human fat, renders the owner invisible and so able to steal whatever he desires without risk of punishment. Róheim gives psychoanalytic interpretations of these superstitions. 'The witches are the representatives of the "bad mother" image of the talic aspect of the child's body destruction fantasy'. '… the thief is really the infant who tears all the "good objects" which life has failed to give him out of his mother's body…'

The universality of such oral-sadistic fantasies, and the direct applicability of individual psychopathology to mythology are debatable.