Women and Witchcraft throughout history: What the Bible and Ghana have to teach us about superstition

There is a bizarre YouTube story about women in Ghana who are branded witches. Someone in their village accuses them of practicing dark magic, and they are forced to leave their home and families and live in "witch camps." Sometimes it happens to men, but it's usually older women who have become an economic burden. The accuser may have evidence as flimsy as merely dreaming about them casting a spell, or she may accuse the supposed witch of consorting with spirits. It will not surprise anyone familiar with witch trials that women are more likely to be accused of being witches when party to disputes over land or inheritances.

Meanwhile in America, our superstitions prefer blaming innocent men. Note the recent phenomenon of women blaming the husband of Lindsay Clancy for killing his children despite overwhelming evidence of Lindsay’s guilt and none to the contrary. It suggests that some American women believe they have abilities of deduction far beyond centuries of Anglo-American jurisprudence. Others determined he was guilty because of astrology.

There is considerable difference between African superstition and white women superstition. In Ghanaian superstition, the sick, the old, and the female are considered suspicious. The weak are to be feared. This is possibly because Ghana is a sweltering country where disease thrives, making someone weak inherently threatening.

White American women have developed their own superstitions. Theirs find men, virility and power threatening. Not necessarily the wicked man made worse by possessing power—worrying about men like that is just good sense. The uniquely white American superstition is fearful of strength, period. Because the ex-husband of Lindsay Clancy looks fairly masculine and seems healthy, he is viewed with suspicion.

The modern West’s glorification of victimhood is one of the most unusual parts about our culture. When I lived in China, the people there felt ashamed for having been conquered by the West or bullied by Japan, but they felt no shame for conquering Tibetans or Uyghur Muslims. Conquering them was seen as entirely appropriate. Similarly, Arabs and Iranians and Indians feel completely justified whenever they conquered anyone. I’ve brought this up before, but this is one of the most profound yet least discussed differences between the West and the rest.

The Bible says, in Exodus 22:18, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” I don’t think that means to hang any woman who reads the astrology section of the newspaper. In Hebrew the word for witch is more accurately translated as sorceress, which, according to Google, is a woman who whispers, murmurs, or casts spells. The dictates of Exodus 22:18, if implemented in the extreme, could result in the deaths of kooky but harmless people. But if you let witchcraft spread, it will destroy people.

This is an African connection to the Salem Witch Trials but a tenuous one. An indigenous women named Tituba was the slave of minister Samuel Harris. Possibly Tituba taught the girls about Haitian Voodoo, but I can’t confirm that. It is interesting how normal superstition is across centuries and continents.

Apparently, Russian nobles were pretty similar. In Anna Karenina, there is a scene where highly educated people are sitting at a noble’s house, and it turns out the women believe in spiritualism.

"My opinion," answered Levin, "is only that this table-turning simply proves that educated society—so called—is no higher than the peasants. They believe in the evil eye, and in witchcraft and omens, while we..."

"Oh, then you don’t believe in it?”

"I can’t believe in it, countess."

"But if I’ve seen it myself?"

"The peasant women too tell us they have seen goblins.”

Anna Karenina is famous for mocking the pretensions of the modern educated classes. The passage above is not a Marxist depiction of the elite where every wealthy person is a cartoonish vampire. The book depicts people who went to the best schools and yet are still people, and people have a strong tendency towards folly. The educated classes cut themselves away from the traditions that push back against their foolishness—not out of malice or even a vain pride. They just ended up that way.

I suspect historians of tomorrow will recognize the support for Lindsay Clancy as being part of a long pattern of superstition overwhelming people. (I must admit that I feel like Levin right now.)

At the end of the YouTube video about Ghanaian witch villages, the narrator goes on about the poor state of education in Ghana. Perhaps it is in such a sorry condition, but I don’t think that superstition is an educational issue at its core. Americans, with their libraries, universities and widespread internet access, aren't much more immune than illiterate Ghanaian subsistence farmers. I think humans are just superstitious and often like to blame undeserving people for petty purposes. Sometimes our natural proclivities towards superstition and scapegoating result in horror.

From the ancient Middle East to Ghana to modern America, the best we can do is keep our collective demons on a leash.