Under the wandering moon, 
bare-footed and hair disheveled, 
Canidia and Sagana, 
pale of face, 
gather bones and poisonous herbs in the cemetery: 
then start whooping a witch-chant. 
With their nails they scratch the ground 
and tear a black lamb to pieces. 
The blood is poured into a pit, 
to conjure the spirits of the dead. 
There is an image made of wool, 
representing Canidia: 
another one, of wax, 
representing the victim. 
The waxen image stands suppliant, 
destined to perish. 
Hecate, goddess of Hell, 
and Tisiphone, one of the Furies, are invoked. 
Snakes and hounds of hell appear. 
Ghosts utter shrill, forlorn cries. 
The waxen image, thrown into the fire, makes a blaze. 

---Horace (65 B.C.-8 B.C.), Roman poet. Satires 2.8

are people who are DEEMED to exercise supernatural powers. Witches are ASSUMED to be servants of the devil (and in this respect differ from sorcerers, wizards, conjurors, and other practitioners of black magic) who have supposedly learned to master the devil.   This is totally untrue - witches do NOT believe in the devil. It is Christians who invented the devil. However, though witchcraft is worldwide in scope it has had greatly varying roles at different times and places. 

The origin of the word witch comes from the old English word wicce and wicca. It is generally meant to represent those who believed in the ancient pagan gods of earth and nature. However, the term witch has also come to represent wise women, midwives, and practitioners of magic and folk arts. This is not to say that these are distinct groups. Rather it is to suggest that the word's meaning changed and meant different things at different times to different people. As such the word witch does not necessarily exclude a person from the belief in Christianity as often they blended the old mythology with the new.

From what is known of the Sabbat and from other evidence, most contemporary scholars have come to the conclusion that witchcraft was the survival of an ancient folk religion, essentially a fertility cult, that prevailed throughout Europe before the advent of Christianity. According to this theory, the old religion continued to exist alongside Christianity through medieval times, although constantly losing adherents and importance. As Christianity gained the ascendancy, it persuaded most people to regard the gods of the old religion as devils. Those who continued to practice the old religion became witches in the eyes of ecclesiastical authorities and orthodox Christians.

Witches and magicians figured significantly too in the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome; Thessaly, in Greece, was a particularly important centre of the black magic. The first major witch-hunt in the modern sense occurred in ad 367 by order of the Roman emperor Valerian.

In its early period, the Christian church was lenient toward witchcraft. Persons proved to have practiced it were required only to do penance. Clergymen, still struggling to consolidate the power of the church, recognized that all-out conflict with the extremely numerous devotees of the old religion would be disastrous. They therefore tolerated the old worship and, according to reliable records, frequently participated. Christian opposition.

The attitude of the church began to stiffen as it grew strong enough to fight openly against the already disintegrating old faith. Also, growing social unrest during the later Middle Ages and early modern times found expression in witchcraft as well as in heresy (q.v.) and secularism. Because those tendencies threatened to undermine ecclesiastical authority, church authorities treated secularism as heresy, identified heresy with witchcraft, and attempted to destroy all three. The most influential papal bull against witchcraft was the Summis Desiderates promulgated by Pope Innocent VIII (1432-92) in 1484. To implement this bull, he appointed regional inquisitors.

The witch-hunting mania obsessed Europe from about 1050 to the end of the 17th century; it subsided occasionally but then attained greater fury. Children were encouraged to inform against parents, husbands against wives, relatives and neighbours against one another. Witnesses were paid to testify. Inhuman tortures were inflicted to force confessions. The inquisitors did not hesitate to betray promises of pardon to those acknowledging guilt.

A class of professional witch finders arose who collected charges and then tested the accused for evidences of witchcraft. They were paid a fee for each conviction. The most common test was pricking. All witches were supposed to have somewhere on their bodies a mark, made by the devil, that was insensitive to pain. If such a spot was found, it was regarded as proof of witchcraft. Among other proofs were additional breasts, supposedly used to suckle familiars, inability to weep, and failure in the water test. In this last-named test, if a woman sank when thrown into a body of water, she was considered innocent; if she stayed afloat, she was guilty.

For more information related to Wicca and other spiritualities, please take time to visit SpiritBytes.com -- a sister site to this one, but is more fact based as opposed to simply myth and folklore. 

A World Without Witches
                                                 by Robert F. Potts
 
Can you imagine a world without witches,
A world with all people the same?
Where the only known dragons are hiding in books,
And children are terribly tame?
A world without magic would be sad indeed.
I cannot imagine the pain
Of having a world where there's no Santa Claus,
Where wizards are searched for in vain.
 
Can you imagine a world without spells,
That science and businesses run?
And think of the sadness a unicorn feels
When he no longer plays in the sun
Can you imagine a world without witches,
No elves, and no magical pools?
And can you imagine how dull it would be
If all that we had were the schools?
 
I cannot imagine a world without witches,
A world with no magical wand.
A world without beauty, or even a dream,
Or a wood sprite of whom to be fond
They say I should grow up and be more mature,
Like a normal adult ought to do.
But I'd rather, at night, go to dance with a witch,
And I'll bet that you feel that way, too.