Witchcraft

This Tag refers to films with content depicting practices of a magical or ritualistic nature performed with the intent to harm others or otherwise celebrate the forces of Evil. Such practices commonly require the perpetrator, generally an expert in black magic, to employ supernatural powers or enter into an alliance with demonic entities.

From a historical and anthropological perspective, witchcraft constitutes a complex, multi-faceted phenomenon, given that beliefs associated with the subject have existed in virtually every known human culture since the dawn of time (+). However, here we're taking into account only those aspects of witchcraft of possible interest to horror films.

For the most part, these elements date back to Renaissance traditions, given that Europeans were rather complaisant - if not downright skeptical - about witchcraft during Late Antiquity and the High Middle Ages (+). The horizon began to darken during the 13th century, when the ever-more rigid stances taken by important exponents of Scholasticism (St. Thomas Aquinas first and foremost) and the growing hysteria exhibited by the Holy See in the face of proliferating apostasies and heretical movements only served to stoke widespread rumors of murky rituals involving devil worship and black sabbaths (nocturnal meetings of witches and familiars), along with other such superstitious gossip among the common people.

Starting in the first half of the 15th century, Europe saw large-scale campaigns waged against witchcraft, fueled by expanded powers granted to the Inquisition, Pope Innocent VIII's papal bull "Summis desiderantes" (1484), and the publication of the "Malleus Maleficarum" (usually translated "Hammer of Witches" - 1486) by the Catholic clergyman Heinrich Kramer (under his Latinized name Henricus Institor). The resulting climate of paranoia led to a precipitous increase in the number of witchcraft trials. Things ebbed and flowed throughout the 17th century, particularly in Protestant countries (the infamous 1692 Salem witch trials resulted in 14 women and 5 men being hanged as witches, another man being pressed to death for refusing to plead, and at least 5 other accused individuals dying in jail). The Age of Enlightenment, imbued with humanistic impulses and philosophical conceptions under the banner of reason, led to the gradual end of the phenomenon, at least in the context of the Western world.

Trivia: the tendency to think of witches as female derives from the misogynistic belief that women were more corruptible than men.

Note: here we've decided to exclude scenarios related to the world of voodoo, instead dedicating a separate Tag to that subject.