The True Story of Witches: Magic, Myth and Modern Practice | Documentary

Witches. Wise, herb-wielding women. Or child-eating beasts. For centuries we've been told legends and myths about these enchanting women. There's an aspect of witchcraft that becomes darker, demonic. Witches roam between different realms and guard arcane secrets. They also use magic herbs, special ingredients used to cast love spells. Time and again they are mercilessly persecuted out of fear. It's of course plausible that this chain was used to bind someone to a stake. To this day people remain fascinated by witches and their magic. We witches believe that there is an ethereal plane where we can work with different forms of energy. So what are the stories behind the myths? And why do people believe in magic? Salem, Massachusetts, 1691. Out of nowhere, the daughter and the niece of a Puritan preacher start acting as though they were possessed. They scream, have seizure-like fits, and nothing can be done to help them. The doctor who comes to check on them has no idea what's wrong. The Salem witch trials began in 1692 and ended in 1693. They were caused by girls in the household of the minister of Salem having unexplainable fits. The doctor suggested that they were the cause of being under an evil hand. People are quick to point to a Caribbean house servant who goes by the name of Tituba. She confesses she is a witch. While interrogated, she names several other women who have their own deals with the devil. This is the beginning of a full-fledged witch hunt. Over the next two years, nearly half of the 500 men and women living in Salem are accused of witchcraft. Nineteen of them are hung at the gallows. The Salem witch trials are the result of a madness that gripped an entire settlement. To the 17th century Salem inhabitants, witchcraft is a real thing. Deadly superstitions with deep cultural and historical origins. The mythic image of the witch is constantly refreshed by our cultural relationship with women, magic, and femininity. Nowadays we mostly hear about witches in fairy tales and legends, but also in pop culture. Movies and TV series often depict witches as strong heroines with supernatural powers. Flying on broomsticks, brewing potions, and of course, casting spells. Almost always for good. But sometimes things are different. As evil sorceresses, witches stop at nothing to hunt down their victims. Good witches or bad witches? Where does this bewildering polarity even come from? Arguably the most famous stories about witches come from the 19th century. From the Brothers Grimm, the authors of Hansel and Gretel. The Grimm Brothers' story of Hansel and Gretel and the witch in the forest really helped to cement this form of a little old lady who threatens cannibalism and death to these children. And this idea of them being remote, away from society, hidden in a forest. The life's work of the Brothers Grimm is on display at Grimm World in Kassel, Germany. You can even see the original version of Grimm's fairy tales with handwritten comments in the ledger, which go to show the Brothers were eager to develop their stories. Folklore expert Katrin Pürger-Alde wants to get to the bottom of the origins of the evil witch. We're obviously curious as to how the archetype of the evil witch came about. We can trace the origins very clearly in the different versions of the fairy tales. An earlier version of the Grimm fairy tales from 1812 portrays witches as meek and old, but also as human women with magical powers. Over time, witches take on monstrous and unhuman characteristics. Witches have red eyes and poor eyesight. Yet they possess animal-like senses and can detect when people are near. So the image of witches takes a dramatic turn in Grimm's fairy tales. From humans to animalistic monsters. This shift is also depicted in illustrations. Sometimes witches are shown as old women with long noses and warty chins. At other times they are portrayed as beasts, looking to sink their teeth into the nearest victim. The purpose of all this was to paint witches as evil creatures, so that burning them at the stake would seem like the only logical way of dealing with them. Evil, of course, needs to be defeated, so all goodness can shine through. So that's how the Grimm brothers portrayed witches as evil antagonists of an educated society. In fact, powerful female figures with magical powers are much older, and not limited to Central Europe. In Slavic mythology, Baba Yaga lives in a house made of chicken legs, eats children, and flies around in a mortar. Sometimes she is even a cunning advisor. In the North, Finnish epics sing about the powerful witch queen Lohi. She attacks entire armies as an oversized eagle, while her sons carry plagues and diseases across the land. Then there's the Celtic witch Cailiach, who haunts England with her natural powers. She wields her hammer to conjure up storms and lightning, and is considered to be the personification of winter. In Japan, Yama Uba is said to have lived in the mountains. Disguised as a young woman, the old mountaintop witch could turn her hair into snakes, much to the dismay of stray hikers. These images are all both fantastic and terrifying at the same time. The German word for witch, Hexe, was derived from Middle High German and means something like the fence rider. A reference to her ability to move between two worlds. This too is something the brothers Grimm embraced. Both Wilhelm and Jakob in their fairy tales, and their younger brother Ludwig in his illustrations. Once again we can see here that he perhaps also understood witches to be otherworldly figures. The image shows two children caught between good and evil. On the one side the witch is lurking in the shadows, on the other side civilization is depicted in the form of a city flooded with light. Both worlds are separated by a border, the water. Only human children are able to do this, so to speak, because the world beyond, the other world, the magical world, is separate. It's a very traditional notion stemming from Greek mythology. The witch as a messenger from another world. An image that can be traced back to ancient times. There are many ways that witches are represented across art and literature. You have the Maleficia, the harm-doer, but also the Maga, the sorcerer. There is the Saga, the fortune teller, and the Striga, the old witch, the old hag. The multiplicity of images and terms suggests that witch folklore is far richer and more complex than the depictions of child-eating beasts from grim fairy tales would suggest. At the Leipzig University Library in Germany, theologian Marko Frenchkovski is researching the historical origins of witches. His research starts where the divine world met the human world some 3,000 years ago, in ancient mythology. There are indeed quite a few passages in Greek and Latin literature that describe witches. However, this is only fiction. We don't know for sure whether it was based on true stories or not. One of the most famous stories of ancient times tells of an encounter between a sorceress named Circe and the Greek hero, Odysseus. Homer's Iliad describes her as a seductively beautiful goddess, living on an island surrounded by tame lions and wolves. She mixes magic herbs into the food of Odysseus' companions, transforming them into pigs. The power that Circe possesses is that she knows magical words, sorcery, but she also knows a lot about magical herbs and readily uses them to cast love spells. As daughter of the sun god Helios, Circe possesses supernatural powers. She also uses resources that mortals have access to. Such as spells and herbs. In the 2nd century AD, Roman writer Apuleius depicts another woman who becomes a seductress with magical powers in his novel, Metamorphoses. The narrator covertly watches Pamphile rub an herbal ointment all over her body. She then grew feathers and bird-like claws, transforming into an eagle owl who flies to see her lover. In earlier ancient traditions, there are elements of sorcery and witchcraft wrapped up in figures that otherwise are seen as goddesses, as divine beings. And in these cases, they're usually beautiful, alluring female figures. But later on, there's an aspect of witchcraft that becomes darker, demonic, with a figure that is a witch that could be crone-like, hag-like, and certainly associated with aspects of death. Professor Frenchkovsky also found a similar character in ancient literature. Her name was Erecto, a witch and necromancer from the epic poem Pharsalia by the Roman poet Lucan. Lucan was writing about the civil war between Caesar and the Senate in the 1st century BC. Lucan claimed Erecto lived in Thessaly, a land in northern Greece doomed by fate. Everything coming from there is sinister and cruel. Thessaly was actually considered the birthplace of magic and sorcery. Thessalian sorceresses were believed to be so powerful that even the gods were afraid of them. And Erecto was the most terrible of them all. She lives in abandoned graves, serving the gods of the underworld. Her body is gaunt and ghastly. She only leaves her hiding place during storms and at night. Because she rarely sees the light of day. Her skin is deathly pale. Her hair is wild. Her breath poisons the air around her. Everything she steps on dies. Ancient horror stories that play on the fears of the ancient Romans. Whereas characters like Circe and Pamphili seduce with their magic, characters like Erecto symbolize death and destruction. It becomes clear that even in ancient times, witches are portrayed as both fascinating and terrifying beings. But what does this reveal about their origins? Is there any truth behind any of this? Of course, when we look back at these things today, we are wondering about how things were like in society back then. We're curious about the rites, about what people believed. We're curious about the role magic played in the lives of men and women of the ancient world, and also in subsequent periods. That's one aspect. But of course, we also want to find out if there is any truth to all this. In other words, what's real and what's fiction? The Leipzig University Library holds around 140 magic manuscripts that could help answer the question. They date back to the early 18th century and shed light on common magical practices. Anyone seeing this will recognize it immediately because it still exists. Especially for children, it's an abracadabra. A magic spell dating back more than 2,000 years. It was used to cure fever and malaria. A vanishing spell, as it's called. Repeated time and again, each time with a shorter exposure, it kills the disease. Witchcraft and supernatural belief have extremely deep roots in human history. And the more modern, western reimagination of witchcraft ties back to these ancient desires to control the uncontrollable. In search of ancient magical rituals, Professor Frenczkowski travels to Rome. Here, at the end of the 1990s, archaeologists made an astonishing discovery. During construction, they find an ancient well. It was used as early as 4th century BC. Carved into it are the words, To the holy nymphs of Anna Perenna. The fountain is dedicated to Anna Perenna, a Roman goddess traditionally honored with a great quantity of wine on the 15th of March. The number of goblets consumed symbolizes how long her worshippers will live. The researchers discover an even bigger surprise behind the well. Mysterious traces of magic rituals. Curse tablets and wax dolls point to rituals of dark magic. The age-old desire to exert supernatural power over one's own life or others. Some of these artifacts are exhibited in the museum of the Terme Diocletiano in Rome. They provide insight into the scarcely studied world of magical rituals in ancient Rome. What do they reveal about how magic was practiced at the time? Today, archaeologists believe the dolls were used to harm other people. Or to gain the upper hand. Similar dolls were also used for love spells. What we do know now is that these tiny figures were made of organic materials like wax, milk, and flour. X-rays also reveal animal bones, some with magical inscriptions. The dolls were discovered in lead containers, addressed to the powerful demon Abraxas. One of them vividly illustrates the curse. Here we are looking at a person who is immobilized. Who is imprisoned, bound, entwined by a snake, and pierced by a nail. And also held captive in a container that was locked three times. The curse panels also have creative designs. This one here is a curse on a judge named Sura. His punishment is to have his eyes taken away. Probably so that he can't see certain facts from the trial and won't be able to convict the person who placed the curse. The illustration in the middle is supposed to be Sura as an embryo, born from a cursed vulva. It remains unknown whether the curse actually harmed its victim. But the discoveries show that magic was part of everyday life in the Roman Empire. Even though magic was part of daily life in the ancient world, there were also certain types of magic that were considered unacceptable even in Roman times. Black magic was one such kind. Despite their popularity, practicing some forms of magic was officially forbidden in the Roman Empire. This applies in particular to curses and black magic, which were considered crimes. From the 4th century onwards, the era of Christianization introduces yet another dimension to the common understanding of witchcraft. Magical practices are interpreted as a renunciation of God. There are references to this in the 10th century Canon Episcopi. It says that women allowed themselves to be deceived by the devil and instill the belief in witches among the people. The text, however, does not directly condemn individual witches, but rather positions the belief in witchcraft as a form of delusion and heresy. It isn't until the medieval times that witches are considered real creatures doing the work of the devil. The first time someone is officially convicted of witchcraft is in 1419 in Lucerne, Switzerland. People believed that angels and demons and gods and devils could actually intervene in their lives. Witches were an example of those who were actually directly interacting with devils and demons. One book symbolizes the beginning of the witch hunt like no other. Maleus Maleficarum, written by the Dominican monk Heinrich Kramer in 1486. It is also known as the witch's hammer and primarily targets women. Kramer believed that women were not only quicker to doubt the Christian faith, but were also more willing to renounce it. He felt this was caused by their voracious sexual desires, which they then indulged unrestrainedly in alliance with the devil. By making half the population his enemy, Kramer's book marks the beginning of the era of mass murder in Europe, with the goal of eradicating all those trying to destroy the divine order through demonic carnal lust. It was exacerbated, oddly enough, by the climate. At the end of the Middle Ages, the weather takes a sudden turn for the worse. It is the beginning of the Little Ice Age. Between the 15th and 17th centuries, long cold winters and wet rainy summers led to poor harvests. On top of that, there is war, epidemics, and death. Look how the Lord has punished us! That's not the Lord, it's the witches! As humans, we're particularly hardwired to find causal explanations for the world. This is kind of a problem when we're faced with things that are hard to explain. Maybe it's the witches that caused it. And this offers a way for us to control those bad outcomes by controlling witchcraft. This is a misconception with deadly consequences. Current estimates suggest that up to 60,000 people, mostly women, will fall victim to witch hunts in Europe alone. Convicted not by the church, but by secular authorities. Major institutions bought into this, church, state, and science. They confirmed the suspicions of all the people. The witch was the worst possible criminal. Every single part of them had to be destroyed so there was no chance of them returning as a revenant. No part of a witch could remain in this world. In Allensbach in the southwest of Germany, there might be some evidence of this persecution. On an execution site spanning 700 square meters, archaeologists find the base of a gallows. And several burn pits with traces of human remains. Were witches executed here? Anthropologist Michael Franken and archaeologist Jürgen Halt examine the remains at the State Monuments Office in Baden-Württemberg. We found pits with burned human remains. They could theoretically be from executions involving fire. But they could also just be remains of corpses that have been burned, because we also know that the bodies of people that were hanged were also burned. They were completely destroyed as an additional punishment for the afterlife. This could also be a possible explanation for these remains. As a reference, the researchers put together one of the better preserved skeletons. The bone remains from the burn pits consist of many individual fragments. So far, the team has examined the remains from two of the burn pits. Results show that they probably belonged to four women and one unidentified individual. For anthropologist Dr. Franken, the discoloration and fracture patterns provide information about the temperatures under which the bones were burnt. The dirty white discoloring shows that these bones were likely exposed to very high temperatures, over 600 degrees, but not at peak combustion temperatures. If you look at the cross-section here, we can see a black bone, which means that the temperature was a little lower, so it wasn't completely burned through, at least not everywhere. Do these bone remains belong to witches who were executed there? The final examinations have yet to be carried out. But archaeologist Dr. Jürgen Halt has found another clue that might support this. A massive iron chain, 1.53 meters long. This type of iron chain was commonly used at the time. We recognize them from illustrations showing execution chains. That is why it's an important indicator for us that these could have indeed been corpse-burning pits, because it is possible that a person who was hanged was then burned as additional punishment and thrown into the pit with his chains. The other possibility is that someone was bound with this chain to a stake, which indicates the burning itself as execution. Searching for answers, archivist Friedemann Scheck discovers clues in trial records from the 16th century. Between 1575 and 1585, records show that 14 people were executed for witchcraft. Thirteen women and one man. Among them a mother and her daughter. The mother dies in custody and is buried at the place of execution. Her daughter survives and confesses to being a witch, ultimately implicating her deceased mother. The mother was convicted after having died, and her body was dug up and burned. At the time, fire is thought to possess divine properties. A soul possessed by the devil can be purified by flames before entering the kingdom of heaven. At the same time, like other banishing rites, it is thought to protect against irrevenants. In European and Christian traditions, people believed that burning the body prevented resurrection, so it was kind of an ultimate method of execution. Trial records from the early 17th century reveal who the victims were. 1608, Überlingen, on the shores of Lake Constance, Germany. Margaretha Salzmannin is accused of practicing witchcraft. She is known throughout the town as a prostitute. After the death of her daughter, she is said to have taken a special suitor, the devil himself. It is said that she made a pact with him and was able to fly to the witch's dance. She then used her newfound powers to take revenge on those who insulted her and to commit murder. Her sentence is to be burned at the stake. Margaretha Salzmannin is one of 20 victims to have been executed for witchcraft in Überlingen between 1529 and 1615 alone. For historian Johannes Dillinger, Überlingen is a good example of how the belief in witchcraft impacted an average town in the early modern period. To this day, the town has a monument dedicated to Emperor Charles V, who issued the Constitio Criminalis Carolina in 1532, known as the Penal Court Order. The court order states that witch trials can only be held if there is incriminating testimony. There are also rules on torture. But these are hardly ever adhered to. In fact, many witch trials would probably have been considered unlawful even by the standards of the time. However, local courts often ignore them. To this day, the city archives store the trial records of this period, including the records from Margaretha Salzmannin's case. So what do they tell us about the victim? Margaretha Salzmannin's case was quite unusual. She made a full confession. However, it appears she didn't show any signs of remorse, which the interrogators obviously expected. Painful torture leads many of the accused to confess and plead for mercy. Margaretha Salzmannin's lack of remorse results in her being burned alive at the stake. The people in the docks at the witch trials were, of course, innocent. The reason they were there was the belief that witches were responsible for any kind of evil or catastrophic events. Professor Dillinger finds the diary of a Latin teacher, Sebastian Pfau, in the archives. It documents the first 30 years of the 17th century, as well as the execution of Margaretha Salzmannin. On the 14th of July, three evil women, Margaretha Salzmannin, U. Deckerin and Maria Grevin, were burned at the stake on account of their wicked sorcery. Two of them were Christian, but the third died unrepentant and thus received eternal damnation. The diary sheds light on the Christian worldview that dominated the early modern period. In the diary, he actually endorses their execution. It would have been against his worldview not to punish the witches in such a fashion. He expresses regret that they had committed a crime, that they had endangered their salvation. He specifically notes that of three witches who were burned that day, two converted to Christianity, but the third died unrepentant. This clearly weighs on his mind. Black magic is feared the most. Witches are said to use it to bring about disease, death and crop failure. Witches only commit evil acts because they are the servants of the devil, and as such it is easy to explain to a court why witches kill seemingly indiscriminately, why they make people sick, why they conjure up bad weather. They do this by order of the devil, and this is ultimately how every claim of damage or loss can be explained. Ithic explanations are not widely recognized at the time. Therefore, anyone who attracts negative attention in any way can be accused of being a witch. Frequently these people are on the fringes of society, and are mostly women. In Europe, they make up to 80% of the victims. In the early modern period, people believed that there was a female magic and a male magic, corresponding more or less to the division of labor in households. Everything having to do with money was male magic, like enchanting treasures. Female magic is all about preparing food and caring for the sick and children. Researchers have long believed that the witch hunt specifically targeted women with medical knowledge, such as midwives. In some instances, records mention a mysterious and rather atypical murder weapon used in the alleged witchcraft crimes. Allegedly, witches would use a special type of ointment for their diabolical activities, particularly for their flight. This was an ointment that they would receive either directly from the devil or in the form of a recipe. In the case of Margarete Salzmannen, it is also alleged that she conjured up frost using a black ointment that was found in a pot. She is said to have received the pot from the devil. The ointment was never recovered. The court asked the witch, how were you able to fly? How did you make this person, this animal, sick? The suspect has to answer something, so she says, I used the ointment that the devil gave me. While the courts were focusing primarily on the alleged crimes of witchcraft, researchers are trying to get to the bottom of the mystery ointment used at the time. Could it really hold a key to black magic, and be the reason why the accused was able to supposedly fly to the witch's dance? Back in ancient Roman history, Pamphile the witch also used an ointment to fly as an eagle owl. Back at the Leipzig University Library, Professor Frenchkovsky frequently comes across similar reports while conducting his research. It is true that people practicing magic were also using herbs and ointments to a certain extent, but what exactly did they use to make them? It's a difficult question to answer, because the trial records unfortunately give us no such information. In the trials, the accused witches mention only an ointment that they claim to have received from the devil. They do not tell us how the ointment is made. Nor are there any archaeological remains that could be pharmacologically examined. Since early modern times, physicians and researchers have been trying to reveal the secret of the mysterious ointment. Some of them claim to have figured out what it was made from, and recreated recipes from the mythical ointment. One such doctor was Johannes Hartlieb. In the 15th century, Hartlieb wrote the Book of All Forbidden Arts. This contains some of the oldest recipes. They prepared the ointment using seven different herbs, crushing each herb on their designated days. On Sunday, for example, they crushed and dug Solsequium. On Monday, it was Lunaria. On Tuesday, Verbena. On Wednesday, Mercurialia. On Thursday, Barbam Jovis. On Friday, Capillus Veneris. With these, they made the ointment by mixing it with bird blood and boiled animal fat, the types of animals I won't mention here, because I don't want to encourage anyone. If you look at all these recipes, you'll see that some of the plants that are used are commonly used in herbal medicine. But there are also plants like Verbena, Belladonna, or Deadly Nightshade. These plants do indeed have psychoactive properties. Do the psychoactive properties of the plants provide a scientific explanation for the alleged witchcraft crimes? Were the victims simply intoxicated by drugs? This theory persisted into the 20th and 21st centuries. Some researchers believe the events at Salem may have been caused by ergot poisoning. Ergot is a tubular fungus that grows on grains in humid conditions. It contains alkaloids that can cause various symptoms of poisoning and hallucinations. However, there is no scientific evidence to support the theory that ergot caused the seizures in the girls in Salem. But researchers have been trying to test this hypothesis for quite some time, particularly when it comes to reports of people being able to fly. Professor Will Eric Poikert was one of them. In the 1920s, the folklorist created an ointment, which he then tried on himself. While intoxicated, he claims to have been able to fly, to have attended great feasts culminating in erotic adventures. For him, it proved that claims of people flying to the witch's dance are simply intoxication-induced hallucinations. His fellow researchers, however, were extremely skeptical of his hypothesis. In the scientific community, there is a great deal of controversy about how real all this is and how seriously we should take it. Did Johannes Hartley really obtain this information from authentic sources, or did he make up the recipes knowing fully well what effect the plants will have? All of these questions have been researched extensively, and are still being researched to this day, and we still have no answers. What witch's dances actually looked like still remains a mystery. What historians know today, however, is that of the 60,000 European victims between 1550 and 1650, only a few of them were midwives. The historical records do not provide any evidence of a bloody campaign against herbal medicine practitioners. And by the time the 17th century rolled around, scientific progress had led to a revolution in health care anyways. At the same time, at the end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648, the states within the Holy Roman Empire reorganized themselves, consolidating their legal system. But the belief in witches remained. Denying the efficacy of magic and the awfulness of witchcraft would have seemed absurd to them. The most prominent German opponent of witch hunts, the great Friedrich Spee, never openly criticized the belief in witches. He only criticized the witch trials as an abuse of judicial power. As recently as 1782, a woman was executed for witchcraft in Switzerland, the final victim of the European witch hunt. A few decades later, the witch figure appears in the first versions of the grim fairy tales. Over the next 200 years, witches are all over pop culture, not least thanks to characters like Sabrina the Teenage Witch or the Wizard Apprentices from the Harry Potter universe. However, books and films aren't the only places where we can find magic and sorcery. A worldwide study from 2022 shows how widespread the belief in witchcraft's power still is to this day, particularly in poorer countries or in countries plagued by crisis. But also, to a lesser extent, in developed and seemingly advanced nations. Even the people in modern Europe live in times of crisis. Their worldview is largely shaped by their helplessness. Our beliefs about the world and the afterlife have significant effects on us, both physically and psychologically. They form our reality. Believing in something not only affects the human psyche, but also the body. Psychologists at the University of Marburg are investigating how these responses came about. Their area of expertise is what we refer to as placebo and nocebo effects. In clinical research, the placebo effect is used to describe an improvement in physical condition, even though no active ingredients have been administered. The nocebo effect describes the opposite. Even though a placebo is used, negative physical side effects are reported. Both phenomena are brought about by our psyche, by the mere expectation of an effect. Could this explain the symptoms of the alleged victims of witchcraft? Christoph Benke conducts an experiment to find out how certain physical reactions are triggered. In the first part of his experiment, a lack of oxygen is induced in the test subjects as soon as a blue square is seen. In their minds, the blue square is meant to be associated with shortness of breath. Next, the actual experiment starts. And now we will change the conditions. We will no longer induce shortness of breath and see if the person still experiences a shortness of breath. To what extent will the mere expectation of a lack of oxygen elicit a physical response? The underlying psychological mechanism would be the same as when someone is put under a black magic spell. How will subjects respond to the blue square? Now here's the blue square. There you see it, this giant spike here. This is, so to speak, our body's response that we're seeing here. That's probably fear. Individual experiences also play a reinforcing role in such phenomena. If someone has already experienced a panic attack, the fear of an expected negative experience increases measurably. The responses therefore differ from person to person. In the second part of the experiment, the shortness of breath stopped occurring. At some point, at the beginning, I still suspected that it would happen, but at the end, yes, then I was a little confident that it wasn't going to happen anymore. The symbol was shown for a while before the shortness of breath came, and then I noticed that I was getting nervous and was afraid that I wasn't going to be able to breathe anymore. This experiment is proof of how even a simple blue square can have an impact on the body and mind. Therefore, very real factors could offer an explanation for the alleged magic. The placebo effect, when healing spells are cast, and the nocebo effect, when people are cursed, indeed, have a significant and indisputable effect on our psyche. So the magical powers that witches are said to have actually work, by way of the expectations and imagination of their purported victims. If you perform a ritual and a good outcome happens, you might be tempted to think that the ritual worked. And those are the cases you tend to remember because of confirmation bias. They support a belief that you already have. So when you do the ritual and the good outcome doesn't happen, you tend to forget those events because they're in conflict with what you already believe. In the 20th century, witch mythology took on yet another dimension. Feminist movements position witches as symbols of independent strong women, who demand sexual empowerment and rebel against male supremacy. The oppression of the witch by patriarchal traditions isn't just the oppression of women. It's an oppression of our relationship with nature, magic, and all that we associate with the feminine, which includes emotion, intuition, pleasure, and our relationships with the body. In the 21st century, witches are taking over social media as well. One of these witches is Shisha Rainbow. In 2020, the Berlin native launched her own TikTok channel and now has over 100,000 followers. Guys, you don't have a say in who can call themselves a witch. Let's be happy that we now have so many fellow witches. We've been underground for way too long. The 30-year-old describes herself as a modern witch and wants to put an end to old-fashioned witch cliches. She is also an author. She's been fascinated by witchcraft and magic since she was a teenager. When working with spells and formulas, Shisha Rainbow experiences, as she puts it, a certain empowered spirituality. She feels connected to another world far away from her own perceived reality. We witches believe that there is an ethereal plane where we can work with different forms of energy, planes where our spells work, where there are perhaps other creatures, spirits, or other kinds of beings. So we believe in an astral plane or parallel world or whatever you want to call it. Today, Thomas wants to use a detachment spell to help him move on from an unhappy relationship. He himself has no experience with magic. It is his first ritual under the guidance of Shisha Rainbow. But before she gets down to business, the room has to be cleared of negative energies using singing bowls and smudge sticks. After the external energies have been cleared, the internal energies need to be aligned with the help of meditation. Breathe in deeply. The candles represent Thomas and his beloved. The cord between them, their emotional bond. When the candles burn down, the cord will catch fire and their bond will be broken. Now I'd like you to close your eyes, put your hands down here by the glass, and really feel it. Even though you don't say anything, reach out with your feelings. Okay. Now close your eyes. The fire, the fire carries you down, and old ties burn like a fever. Separated you are forever. There's not much left to do. You are free of all anchors. It is done. You are apart. You need to wait a moment. You can relax a little bit. By looking at how the candles and string burn, Shisha Rainbow is able to understand the dynamics of the relationship. My side is melting, but nothing happens. Really, when we're talking about witches, they are those who have esoteric knowledge, who seek out wisdom, who try to heal others, who look to solutions to help their communities. And it's those aspects, I think, of witchcraft that are being revived and invested back into by modern practitioners. It's a distraction. How brutal. Yeah, it really reflects your... The candle is almost gone. It really reflects your current situation. It is very symbolic. This is the last breath. We now have a relatively clear outcome. A woman who tried to break away at all costs, and a man who wanted to hold on so badly that he was willing to destroy himself. I hope that we were able to prevent some things that would have likely happened in the future. It was an intense experience for Thomas. I actually felt more than I expected. So, yes, it did affect me quite a bit, and now I'm also a bit pensive. But was this magic, or am I just more aware of my feelings now? I don't know. Modern magic that works in our minds after all. Religiosity and supernatural belief are found in basically every human culture. They offer us a way to understand, explain, and control these important things around us that are hard to control. We find friends, allies, and a common purpose together. Witches. Myths that have captivated our imaginations and have given rise to fear and wonder since ancient times. They represent evil, bears of misfortune and sickness. And at the same time, they are symbols of female empowerment and the female-led rebellion against oppression. The culture on historical significance of witches is astonishingly rich in contradictions and complex interpretations. Nevertheless, our fascination by their supernatural powers as guardians of secret knowledge remains undiminished. A fascination fueled in part by the longing that there is more between heaven and earth than our minds can fathom.