Witchcraft is not considered a religion in itself, but rather a practice or belief system that can be found within various religions. The term "witchcraft" often refers to a pagan or neopagan practice that involves the use of magic and rituals to connect with nature, spirits, and deities. In modern times, witchcraft is most commonly associated with Wicca, a religion that emerged in the mid-20th century and is centered on the worship of a goddess and god. Wicca incorporates various elements from ancient pagan traditions, such as reverence for nature, the cycles of the seasons, and the use of ceremonial magic. However, witchcraft can also be found in other religions and cultural traditions. For example, in some African and Afro-Caribbean religions, practitioners known as "witchdoctors" or "medicine men" use rituals, herbs, and spells to heal, protect, or harm others.
Fig 6. Witchcraft beliefs, anxiety, and worldview.
Each panel of the figure presents the results of estimating 7 different models, in which the metric of innovation indicated in the panel title is regressed on the prevalence of witchcraft beliefs, along with a set of control variables. The remaining 4 models, named Income, Religiosity, Kinship, and Institutions include, respectively, real GDP per capita, average religiosity, kinship intensity index, and the rule-of-law index in addition to continental fixed effects and geographic variables.
For example, in some African and Afro-Caribbean religions, practitioners known as "witchdoctors" or "medicine men" use rituals, herbs, and spells to heal, protect, or harm others. It is important to note that witchcraft has often been misunderstood and demonized throughout history, leading to persecution and witch hunts in various parts of the world. In recent years, there has been a growing movement to reclaim and celebrate witchcraft as a valid spiritual path, emphasizing empowerment, personal transformation, and connection with the natural world.
Witchcraft beliefs around the world: An exploratory analysis
This paper presents a new global dataset on contemporary witchcraft beliefs and investigates their correlates. Witchcraft beliefs cut across socio-demographic groups but are less widespread among the more educated and economically secure. Country-level variation in the prevalence of witchcraft beliefs is systematically linked to a number of cultural, institutional, psychological, and socioeconomic characteristics. Consistent with their hypothesized function of maintaining order and cohesion in the absence of effective governance mechanisms, witchcraft beliefs are more widespread in countries with weak institutions and correlate positively with conformist culture and in-group bias. Among the documented potential costs of witchcraft beliefs are disrupted social relations, high levels of anxiety, pessimistic worldview, lack of entrepreneurial culture and innovative activity.
Copyright: © 2022 Boris Gershman. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
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