Witchcraft

Black magic is practised by people unwittingly possessed of little understood, natural or supernatural powers or by those consciously using such powers for selfish or evil purposes.

Witchcraft and sorcery are usually manifested in fear, belief, imputation and accusation rather than in the discovery of rites taking place, since the psychic aspects of witchery, like the evil eye and the laying on of curses, are not necessarily accompanied by ritual actions. The belief in witchcraft is widespread among primitive tribes in Africa, Asia, Australasia and America. Witchcraft is very evident even in the urban areas of developing countries. Witchcraft may be used by football teams to jinx each other. Witchcraft is often suspected in unsolved murders. Men may divorce their wives because they are suspected of being witches. Some traditional healers contribute directly to the deterioration of their patients or merely endeavour to extort money from them (as may be the case with some practitioners of modern medicine). In 1993 the government of Equatorial Guinea accused the ambassador of the USA of using witchcraft because of an election-day visit to British war graves.

In South Africa in 1990, it was reported that large sums of money had been offered to black nannies looking after white children to hand them over to witchdoctors to be used in the production of a potion to end the civil war amongst the blacks in Natal. In 1990 in Nigeria it was reported that male genitalia were being spirited away by witchcraft and were being sold, notably to politicians as a way of enhancing their powers. The phenomenon was reportedly taken sufficiently seriously to prevent people from shaking hands (physical contact being one of the means through which the disappearance was effected). In industrialized societies there are still scattered claims. In the 1960s cases of black magic were reported in England; a village milkmaid in the former Soviet Union was accused of witchcraft; and beliefs and practices among peasants in Lower Saxony gave rise to a government investigation. In the 1950s, two alleged practitioners of witchcraft were lynched in Queretar, Mexico; in Guatemala, the wife of a political rival of the anticommunist colonel Carlos Castillo Armas was accused of practising witchcraft against the colonel. Witchcult religion survives in France and Italy with witches Sabbaths; and in the USA, where California and New York covens celebrate the rites of bell, book and candle. A considerable number of modern books advocating witchcraft have recently appeared in America and western Europe.