Witches are perhaps one of the most widely recognizable residents of folklore in the modern age. Withered old hags that can conjure powerful magick, fly on brooms and who tend to have black cats as familiars are usually the stereotypical image. But it begs the question, just how did this become what we think of when we think of a witch?
Well, no one really agrees where the full roots of the word witch go (and words are just vehicles for describing cultural ideas), but before our modern word witch we had the words wicca and wicce in Old English. These words referred to male and female practitioners of magic or witchcraft respectively. These words, according to professor Jeffrey Russell, hearkened back to an earlier, Indo-European word weik, which was associated with witchcraft, and wikk, which was the verb for working witchcraft. Thus the word witch is loosely conjured out of a European pagan tradition for those who were able to work magic in a religious sense.
Of course this isn’t the only interpretation. Another etymological explanation, from Reverend Walter W. Skeat, connects the Old English origin of wicca and wicce with the Norwegian word vikja. This word, developed by the same heathen peoples that gave us the origin for the word warlock, referred to someone that could “turn aside” or “conjure away,” giving the idea of a shaman that protected a people from outside threats. Alternatively the word witega is an Anglo-Saxon word for a prophet or a seer, which is fitting since it comes from the word witan, to observe. Also similar to Wotan, or Odin, the Norse god of wisdom who had the gift of seeing the future. It is possible that this is the origin of the word witch, who was a wise woman or a sorceress among Anglo-Saxon peoples. It is also completely possible that both origins of the word are true, and that their meanings and spellings combined on the rocky, linguistic path to the creation of Old English.
Now, how do we go from a village wise woman, one skilled in the necessary arts of spiritual and magical protection, to the destructive, devil-worshiping old crones that we associate with the Witch Craze and the Salem Witch Trials? Well, that is a matter of cultural differences and evolutions, combined with changes in religion. And it all begins with the coming of Christianity to the pagan Anglo-Saxons, Germanics and Vikings.
As the peoples who were evolving into Dark Age Britons became Christian, it became commonplace for the old gods to be demonized and turned into relics of a past age. It’s been theorized by some that the modern image of the devil that we have comes from incorporating these mythological parts and pieces; the goat legs of Pan, the trident of Poseidon, etc. And as Christianity kept its new flock in check by absorbing elements of the old faith, those who practiced old magic would also have been demonized as devil worshipers. In fact, according to the idea of Christian doctrine, it was required for a witch to worship the devil in exchange for power, as no human was capable of magic on their own. This statement was in fact one of the central themes of the Malleus Maleficarum, a book published as a witch hunter’s handbook.
So why are witches always female, and more often old than young? Well, there are a lot of theories on that. One is that the word witch was translated with a female bent in the Bible when it was put in English, which lead to the ever shrinking role of men in the idea of witchcraft. As to a witch’s appearance, there are several thoughts. One is that older women were more likely to be ostracized from the community at large, and thus to be outsiders that fell into the stereotype of a witch. They were also the ones with the largest accumulated knowledge, which would have made them targets as well. And of course there was the over-arching theory that evil and wickedness twisted a person’s physical appearance, thus making witches ugly in much the same way that being a werewolf would make one hairy and bestial looking. Sadly it was a theory that wasn’t put to rest until the death of phrenology.
In the modern day the image of the witch, as with the image of witchcraft, has gotten a facelift and a rejuvenation. In today’s culture witches can be of either gender (though they’re still most commonly women), and they’re as often good as evil, beautiful as hideous. Their powers come from knowledge or inheritance just as often as from dealing with the devil, and you can find witches everywhere. In fact one might even observe that it appears the cultural shift is moving back in the positive direction as concerns witches and their various crafts.
“The Derivation of the Word Witch,” by Doreen Valiente at Pagan Library
“Witch,” by Anonymous at the Online Etymology Dictionary
“Witch,” by Anonymous at Dictionary.com