Wicked Witch of the West

“ He is a great magician who holds the god in his power, even as the wicked snake which charms the singing bird. Know also that I have discovered by watching closely how to break the spell and release the voice from its prison. It has promised me to make the people of Tolo the greatest on the river. Away with the white witch doctor,’ she shrieked. ‘I will be its priestess.’
“I realized that Eta must have been using her eyes closely during the last months. She knew how to operate Markley’s radio and this whole affair was a plot to take it from us.
“ ‘Kill the white men,’ Eta screamed in a frenzy. ”

“ Honestly, I don’t believe there is the slightest mystic revulsion against witchcraft in West Africa; public feeling is always at bursting-point on witches, their goings-on are a constant danger to every peaceful citizen’s life, family, property, and so on, and when the general public thinks it’s got hold of one of the vermin it goes off with a bang; but it does not think for one moment that the witch is per se in himself a thing apart; he is just a bad man too much, who has gone and taken up with spirits for illegitimate purposes. ”

“ Some days after I met the farmer. "Why," said he, "you have put me in the papers." "So I have," I answered, "but what I told was literally true." "True—aye," he said, "every bit. Old Snow cured me when the faculty gave me up. How he did it, neither you nor I know."
The white witch is an institution that has not been killed by board schools in the West, nor, as far as can be judged from the favour in which he is still regarded, is he likely to die. ”

“ If they are weakened seriously in any way, death is liable to ensue. The profound belief in the power of a witch causes a man who knows, say, that either a nail has been driven into an Nkiss down on the South-West coast, or the Fangaree drum beaten on him up in the Sierra Leone region, to collapse under the terror of it, and I own I can see no moral difference between the guilt of the man or woman who does these things with the intent to slay a fellow-citizen and that of one who puts bush into his chop—both mean to kill and do kill, but both methods are good West African witchcraft. ”

“ Now, if she was indifferent to the young signore, the dark maid-servant was not, for she had fallen as much in love with him as an evil, selfish nature would permit her, and she planned and plotted with her mother by night and by day to bring about what she desired. Now, the old woman, unknown to all, was a witch, as all wicked women really are—they rot away with vanity and self-will and evil feelings till their hearts are like tinder or gunpowder, and then some day comes a spark of the devil’s fire, and they flash out into witches of some kind. ”

“ You may say there is no religion and it’s all witchcraft, but this is a superficial view to take; you see the orthodox Christian view of witchcraft contains in it an element not present in the West African affair; the Christian regards the witch with hatred as one knowing good, yet choosing evil. The West African has not this choice in his mind; he has to deal with spirits who are not, any of them, up to much in the way of virtue viewed from a human standpoint. ”

“ Now this law god-cult affair, Purroh, Oru, Egbo, Ukukiwe, etc., etc., call it what you please, it’s all the same thing, is not the organisation that makes war on witchcraft in West Africa. It deals with it now and then, if it is brought under its official notice; but it is not necessary that this should be done; summary methods are used with witches. It just appeals at once to ordeal, any one can claim it. You can claim it, and administer it yourself to yourself, if you are the accused party and in a hurry. A. says to you, “You’re a witch.” ”

“ A wild, dreamy woman, who had acted as white witch till she thought the profession sinful and had given it up, to throw herself with all the vehemence of her nature into one of those fantastic forms of dissent that thrive so vigorously on Keltic soil. ”

“ Elise was obliged to pass close by them, and the witches fixed their wicked eyes upon her; but she repeated her prayer, gathered the stinging-nettles, and took them back with her into the palace. One person only had seen her; it was the Archbishop, he was awake when others slept; now he was convinced that all was not right about the Queen: she must be a witch, who had through her enchantments infatuated the King, and all the people. ”

“ Being wicked enough to be a witch, she did not hesitate at committing any other crime, even the most dreadful, and she therefore made up her mind that she would kill the mother of Nang Hsen Gaw so that she could be the chief wife. ”

“ Their trade consists in prescribing for the sick, in informing those who have been "overlooked" whose evil eye has influenced them for ill, where lost articles are to be found, and how spells cast on their cattle are to be broken.
A white witch is one who repudiates utterly having any traffic with the Evil One. His or her knowledge is derived from other sources—what, not specified. I had for many years as a tenant in one of my cottages a woman who was much consulted as a white witch. ”

“ And therefore neither the woman with all her Divinations, nor all the Devils in Hell, nor any created power, but the Lord Almighty, could have wrought this miracle, who would never have done it, to gratifie the humour, or to magnifie the cheating craft of an idolatrous, wicked and couzening Witch. ”

“ When they saw the Witch of the East was dead the Munchkins sent a swift messenger to me, and I came at once. I am the Witch of the North."
"Oh, gracious!" cried Dorothy; "are you a real witch?"
"Yes, indeed;" answered the little woman. "But I am a good witch, and the people love me. I am not as powerful as the wicked Witch was who ruled here, or I should have set the people free myself."
"But I thought all witches were wicked," said the girl, who was half frightened at facing a real witch. ”

“ The potency of evil lies within her to the end; and when, by a few muttered words, she can raise a hell storm on the ocean; when her eye's dim fire can wither the strength of her enemy; or when, with a lock of hair and a bit of wax, she can consume him with torturing pain, who will welcome her neighborly advances? The proper and artistic end of a witch is at the stake—blue flames curling up to heaven, and a handful of gray ashes scattered to the wind ”

“ The tinker again looked aslant. “Most of your witches are old women. At their Sabbats you’ll see a hundred withered gammers, dancing and leaping around a fire with the Devil sitting in the midst, and all sing-songing a charm and brewing in a kettle a drink with which to freeze men’s blood! But each crew hath always one young witch that they call the maiden. A young and well-looking wench with red lips and she calls the dance. ”

“ The witch, if he or she be destroyed, does leave ash, and the ordinary middle and lower class spirits leave the thing they have been in, so unaltered by their use of it that no one but a witch doctor can tell whether or no it has been possessed by a spirit.
You see therefore Fetish is in a way complex and cannot [Pg 119] be got into “worship of a material object.” There is no worship in West Africa of a material not so possessed, for material objects are regarded as in themselves so low down in the scale of things that nothing of the human grade would dream of worshipping them. ”

“ But the elves are the Devil’s cousins, and he’s always on hand, and some night he comes smirking up, dressed now this way and now that. So the woman drops a curtsy, and he puts out his hand and gives her something, just as he did in Eden Garden. She takes it, and that seals her both sides of the Judgement Day! Pay for pay! Blood gives him strength, and so he sucks from a little place he makes upon her body—that’s the witch mark that can’t be made to feel pain, and that’s why we strip and prick witches to find their mark, which is better proof even than their confessing! ”

“ He hath no Dominion over the just. But if the power of inchanting were free to the Devil, also it would be equally free to him to kill by a Knife or a Maul. And so none should be free. Therefore the Witch (he saith) doth, per ens naturale, form imaginatively a free Idea, which is natural and noxious. Which Idea Satan cannot form. Because that the formation of Idea’s do require the Image of God and a free power: And therefore the Witches do operate by a natural force, no less against the just and innocent, than against wicked men. ”

“ About her person she carried the renowned "Bad Medicine" that every Indian believes in—medicine that weakened the arm of the warrior in battle, that caused deformities, that poisoned minds and characters, that engendered madness, that bred plagues and epidemics; in short, that was the seed of every evil that could befall mankind. This witch-woman herself was immune from death; generations were born and grew to old age, and died, and other generations arose in their stead, but the witch-woman went about, her heart set against her kind ”

“ Once the Witch struck Toto a blow with her umbrella and the brave little dog flew at her and bit her leg in return. The Witch did not bleed where she was bitten, for she was so wicked that the blood in her had dried up many years before. ”

“ Now, devoted as I am to my West African friends, I am bound in the interests of Truth to say that many of them are sadly unprincipled. There are many witches, not witch doctors, remember, who make it a constant practice to set traps for dream-souls. ”

“ Thus in Venice—where, as is evident from the works of Bernoni, the witches are of Gypsy-Slavic-Greek origin—a witch loses all her power if made to shed even one drop of blood, or sometimes if she be defeated or found out to be a witch. In none of these countries has she received the horrible character of a mere instrument of a stupendous evil power, whose entire will and work is to damn all mankind (already full of original sin) to eternal torture. ”

“ The witches of Germany did not have prophetic power; those of Scandinavia, like the Norse Fates, did have it. The troll-wives of Scandinavia were like the witches of Germany—they were cannibals, especially relishing children, like the witch in Hansel and Grethel.
From the fourteenth to the eighteenth century all through Europe and the new world [Pg 135] people thought to be witches, and hence in the devil's service, were persecuted. It was believed that they were able to take the form of beasts. A wolf or other animal is caught in a trap or shot, and disappears. ”

“ White witches were honest, harmless practitioners of sorcery, “whom our custom and country doth call wise men and wise women.” [16] In Gaelic, there are no names corresponding to Black and White Witches, but the distinction indicated is well known. Those to whom the name Buidseach (witch) properly applies could only do harm. They raised storms, drowned people, took the milk from cows, etc., etc. There were others who by magic charms cured disease in man and beast, bestowed luck, warded off dangers, real and imaginary, and secured various benefits to those who resorted to them. ”

“ Divested of the devil-worship now first introduced, such assemblages have formed part of the belief of all races. In Hindu superstition the witches, through the use of mystic spells, flew naked through the night to the places of meeting, where they danced, or to a cemetery, where they gorged themselves with human flesh or revived the dead to satiate their lust. The Hebrew witch flew to the Sabbat with her hair loosened, as when it was bound she was unable to exercise her full power. ”

“ Witches were not the feeble-minded, but the strong-minded --- the evil mesmerists, the rulers of the elements. Many a raid on a witch, right or wrong, seemed to the villagers who did it a righteous popular rising against a vast spiritual tyranny, a papacy of sin. ”

“ Many witches obtain power over the fever demon. She fastens a string round the hero’s neck, and by a spell turns him into an ape. She often kills a child, and the heroine, like Genoveva, is falsely accused, and expelled from her home, until the plot is discovered and she is restored to her husband’s love. Lastly, we have the conflict between the powers of good and evil, the benevolent and malignant witch, which forms one of the stock incidents of the European folk-tales.10 The malignant, liver-eating witch is naturally associated with the tomb-haunting badger. ”

“ Don't pick your words, sweetheart! Call a spade a spade! You mean to say, such a vagabond brood of witches, who are beaten with rods whenever they are caught. I know it. But the devil does not forsake his daughters. The witch has sense enough, when she enters Kassa by the Eperies gate, to come, not with her [Pg 271] crutch in her hand and her bundle on her back, but in a jingling sledge, drawn by three horses; and when I throw aside this ragged mantle, I also am a person of honor. ”

“ It is remarkable that nowhere, not even in England, do the gypsies regard the witch as utterly horrible, diabolical, and damnable. She is with them simply a woman who has gained supernatural power, which she uses for good or misuses for evil according to her disposition. ”

“ In a great number of trials, when the witches acknowledged that they had been asked to become members of the society, there follows an expression of this sort, 'ye freely and willingly accepted and granted thereto'. And that they held to their god as firmly as those de Lancre put to death is equally evident in view of the North Berwick witches, of Rebecca West and Rose Hallybread, who 'dyed very Stuburn, and Refractory without any Remorss, or seeming Terror of Conscience for their abominable Witch-craft' ”