Which Witch is Witch? The Female Witch as the Hag, Seductress, and Inverted Woman in Early Modern...

Nicholas Perez Indiana University Southeast, Spring 2014 – Prof. YuShen 1

Witches have mostly been depicted as or spoken of being women.

Ever since some of the oldest mythologies and folklores, it has

been believed that the majority of witches were women. Some of

the most famous accounts of female witches include the

Mesopotamian witch trials, the Biblical Witch of Endor, the hag-

witch Baba Yaga of Slavic folklore, the witch Circe from the

Greek epic The Odyssey, the Greek goddess of witchcraft called

Hecate, and the semi-messianic witch known as Aradia from Charles

Leland’s Aradia, Or the Gospel of Witches.1 Witches in the medieval

period mostly had one common depiction in art and literature as

the hag witch,2 but eventually changed into two other archetypes

that arose during the early modern period. I believe that the

three separate images are the old hag, the seductress, and the

empowered or rebellious woman; however, some depictions of

witches could meld two archetypes together. These archetypal

images that were represented in early modern art were the result 1 Charles Leland, Aradia, Or the Gospel of Witches (London: David Nutt, 1899).2 When referring to female witches who are depicted as old, haggard, ugly, andwith sagging physical features the word “hag” shall be used to describe them. “Hag” is an older term to describe such witches as the more modern term today is “crone”. However, “crone” comes from the Wiccan and Neo-Pagan religions who worship a goddess that appears in three forms the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone; however, the Crone in this sense denotes a wise, older woman. In this paper, hag witches are being disassociated from the word “crone” because there is a religious attachment to it.


of societal and religious views on women and witches as shown

with the many paintings or depictions used in this paper.

Over the centuries, the changes to the image of the witch have

resulted from various factors. These factors include the

Renaissance art movement, society’s views on women, religious

views on women, and folkloric tales of female creatures or

beings. The appearance of the witch was originally not an

important factor for those who accused them. After the

transition into the early modern period in the late 1400s, that

changed.3 Appearance factor aside, due to many women being

accused as witches, the witch hunts and trials, specifically

those of early modern Europe (from the 15th century to the 18th

century), were seen as misogynistic.

Before looking at what factors led to the extensive number of

female victims and how female witches were portrayed, it is

informative to know that witch hunts and trials were not first

done by the Christian Churches during the early modern period and

as such, the birth of the archetypes is much older. As with the 3 While the early modern period itself spanned from the 1500s to the 1700s, the paintings in this paper are predominately from the 1500s and the 1600s. However, at least one picture from modern times is put in to show how the archetypes and their influences continue.


aforementioned examples of ancient witches, witch trials had

begun in antiquity throughout various parts of the world.

Christianity obtained its views on witches and witchcraft from

its Jewish predecessors, and the Jewish predecessors from the

ancient Semitic and Mesopotamian cultures that surrounded and

influenced them. These ancient anti-witchcraft proceedings,

which were first learned about by modern historians in 1895, were

called the maqlû (meaning “burning”). The maqlû may have been

the earliest burning of rogue witches in human history.

In terms of gender, the exact number of male and female

victims of the maqlû is not known; however it appears that even

the maqlû, like its early modern successor, had some focus on

female witches. A part of the maqlû tablets, a series of tablets

from the Akkadian Empire, specifically address female witches or

enchantresses accusing them of attempting to enchant or curse

their victims. Furthermore the witchcraft that they performed

defied the gods which would identify these female witches as the

rebellious archetype.4 Similar to the Jews and Christians that 4 Tzvi Abusch, “Mesopotamian Anti-Witchcraft Literature: Texts and Studies Part I: The Nature of Maqlû: Its Character, Divisions, and Calendrical Setting.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies Vol. 33, Issue 2 (April 1974):257-258, accessed February 18, 2014, http://www.jstor.org/stable/544736.


came after them, the ancient Mesopotamian cultures saw witchcraft

as an act of heresy against the gods. Heresy is considered the

ultimate sin in the Jewish and Christian religions and everyone

condemned as a witch under the Judeo-Christian scope was also

considered a heretic, but women were believed to be more prone to

commit heresy. For Mesopotamian civilizations, heresy did not

solely include acting against the gods for it was also considered

as going against the social norms which practicing witchcraft was

also seen as being a part of.

There is at least one known Mesopotamian account of two women

being tried for witchcraft as a result of a conflict between a

man named Ili-iddinam and his son Ur-Shubula; the women

specifically being the wife and mother-in-law of Ur-Shubula. The

story goes that Ili-iddinam gave Ur-Shubula some barley to plant

in a field, however, Ur-Shubula got rid of the barely and leased

out the field to a farmer. Shocked at his son’s behavior, Ili-

iddinam believed that sorcery and witchcraft were involved and

accused Ur-Shubula’s wife and mother-in-law as kassaptum (an


ancient Akkadian word meaning “sorceresses” or “witches”).5

Throughout the remainder of the account, it is clear that Ili-

iddinam is set on accusing Adad-dumqi (Ur-Shubula’s mother-in-

law) for being a witch and those reasons may have been tied to

her occupation as an administrator of stock and supplies, making

her one of the few women in ancient Mesopotamian society that

held her own profession and property. Adad-dumqi was further

accused of being an aggressive and assertive woman who went

against the traditional norms.6 Illi-iddinam’s view of Adad-

dumqi being a witch, heretic, and going against social norms is

one of the first examples of the archetype of the witch being

remembered as a rebellious woman.

Adad-dumqi was not the only heretical or rebellious witch in

the ancient world, for even the Biblical story of the Witch of

Endor reflects the role of heresy, and more specifically a

heretical woman. In the Bible, the first warning against magic

and witchcraft comes from Deuteronomy 18:11-12, which warns that

5 Stanley D. Walters, “The Sorceress and Her Apprentice: A Case Study of an Accusation.” Journal of Cuneiform Studies Vol. 23, Issue 2 (1970): 28, accessed March 11, 2014, http://www.jstor.org/stable/13591086 Rivkah Harris, Gender and Aging in Mesopotamia: The Gilgamesh Epic and Other Ancient Literature (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003), 97.


anybody practicing such arts shall be driven out of Israel by

God. Two later quotes, Exodus 22:18 and Ezekiel 13:17-23,

specifically warn against women using magic. The first quote

says that any woman practicing magic or witchcraft is to be put

to death while the second one warns against women who use magic

charms and partake in divination. The meaning of the Exodus

quote has been debated by Biblical scholars who believed that it

was changed after King James I of Britain translated the Bible

into English in 1604. When James I was translating the Bible the

early modern witch trials were at their height. Some believe

that Exodus 22:18 was translated differently to incur anti-

witchcraft sentiment against women who used herbal remedies,

because the original translation from Hebrew to Greek uses the

phrase pharmakous ou peripoiesete, to refer to women administrating

healing medicines.7

Resuming the Witch of Endor, apparently the Witch of Endor was

able to escape the grim fate ensured by the Biblical laws against

7 Donald J. Bretherton, “An Invitation to Murder? A Re-interpretation of Exodus 22:18 ‘You Shall Not Suffer A Witch to Live’.” Expository Times Vol. 116, Issue 5 (February 2005):145-147, accessed February 25, 2014, http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?sid=98606960-0602-42f4-a568-f3fd44b79156%40sessionmgr4002&vid=1&hid=4201&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=aph&AN=20259043


witchcraft. There is little known about her except the she lived

in a village that was situated in northern Israel and may have

been a Canaanite; her name is also subject to debate as Jewish

rabbinical texts call her Zephaniah but Pseudo-Philo names her as

Sedecla.8 Her story is told in the First Book of Samuel 28:3-25

where King Saul wishes to speak with the recently departed

prophet Samuel and has his servants seek her out. Once Saul’s

servants find her they report back to him and Saul disguises

himself to go see her. When Saul arrives at the Witch of Endor’s

home he requests her to raise the spirit of Samuel with

witchcraft. She initially protests against it as she is aware of

the anti-witchcraft laws but Saul assures her that no harm will

come to her. She succeeds in raising Samuel’s spirit but is

angered to find out that it was Saul she was helping as

performing witchcraft in front the king would surely get her

executed.

The Witch of Endor has always been a mystery to Bible readers

given the strict laws about witchcraft and magic. It is with the

story of the Witch of Endor that we find another mention of the

8 M. R. James, The Biblical Antiquities of Philo (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2007), 240.


archetype of the witch as the empowered or rebellious woman. It

is apparent that she did not give up witchcraft or flee despite

the fate of other witches. She ignores the heretical views of

witchcraft, she stands her ground when Saul approaches her not

wanting anyone invading her private space, and she is furious and

yells at Saul when she discovers that he deceived her despite

that he is of higher authority than her. The Witch of Endor is

infuriated at Saul’s deception because she thought that he was on

a witch hunt of his own. We also find the archetype of the witch

as a seductress with the Witch of Endor. In verses twenty-one

and twenty-two of the original story, the Witch of Endor uses

sexual related speech and begins to seduce King Saul; she uses

certain words and phrases which when translated into Hebrew sound

seductive and sexy.

Furthermore, verse twenty-one says that the Witch of Endor

“came into Saul” (which in Hebrew has a sexual insinuation) and

calls herself his handmaid; she even calls herself a “morsel of

bread”, meaning that she is a delicious piece that he can have

his way with.9 Saul, however, refuses her sexual advances and 9 Pamela Tamarkin Reis, “Eating the Blood: Saul and the Witch of Endor.” Journalfor the Study of the Old Testament Issue 73 (March 1997): 13-14, accessed February 27,


instead accepts her offer to eat a fatted calf with unleavened

bread before leaving, making the Witch of Endor the victor in

swaying Saul’s idea to not execute her as a witch. Despite the

sexually-charged story of the Witch of Endor and King Saul, some

of the first pieces of art depicting the scene did not give the

Witch of Endor the appearance of a seductive or beautiful woman.

A painting by the Dutch Catholic artist Jacob Cornelisz van

Oostsanen entitled Saul and the Witch of Endor (1526; see detail Figure

1) portrays the witch as a hag with angered dropping face rather

than a youthful beauty. The reasons for this being that

Oostsanen followed with the Catholic views of witches which

believe that all, if not most, female witches were hags.10

Themes of sexuality, such as women’s breasts and fertility

related creatures, are not absent from the painting which ties in

the theological ideas about witches in the early modern period.

2014, http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?sid=0b471d6a-15f0-4e26-a469-a7a9687ced9b%40sessionmgr4003&vid=1&hid=4101&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=aph&AN=559921810 Linda C. Hults, The Witch as Muse: Art, Gender, and Power in Early Modern Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 50.


(Figure 1, Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen, Saul and the Witch of Endor, 1526)

Whereas early modern paintings of seductive witches display a

youthful, vibrant, and enticing sexuality, Oostsanen’s Saul and the

Witch of Endor displays the evil and corrupt sexuality that Judeo-

Christian religious teachers had warned about. In the painting

there are satyrs (sexually perverted goat-men from Greek

mythology), owls, goats, hens, and demons, all of whom represent

the sexual nature of the scene while the witch raising one arm

towards Heaven and the other striking a burning cauldron,

represents heresy and the mocking of the Catholic sacraments.11 11 Ibid., 49-50.


Since witchcraft was seen as an insult or mockery to Catholicism,

the Saul and the Witch of Endor painting conveys the image of the witch

as a rebellious woman alongside the image of the witch as a hag.

Although the Witch of Endor has her breasts exposed and is

surrounded by animals and creatures which were believed to have

been mythological and folkloric representations of corrupt

sexuality, the painting does not depict the witch as a seductress

as seductive witches are typically displayed as youthful and

mischievous looking women. The Witch of Endor would not become

the seductive witch until Kunz Meyer-Waldeck’s depiction entitled

Die Hexe von Endor (1902; see detail Figure 2; title is German

translation of The Witch of Endor), during which nudity and sexuality

were not considered as things to abhor or hide or being as being

corrupt.


(Figure 2, Kunz Meyer-Waldeck, Die Hexe von Ednor, 1902)

Sexuality and witchcraft often went hand-in-hand with each

other in the early modern period, and the relationship between

the two was often reflected in the various art pieces created

during the time period. Part of this relationship between

witches and sexuality came from the witch hunter’s manual known

as Malleus Maleficarum (Latin translation of The Witches’ Hammer) which

was published in 1487. The Malleus Maleficarum postulates that

witch, male or female, is granted the powers of witchcraft

through a pact with the Devil or another demon. However this

pact, especially with female witches, may involve sexual


intercourse. The idea that women were more prone to sexual sins

comes from the Biblical story of Adam and Eve where Eve, the

first woman, falls to temptation and eats the forbidden fruit

from the Tree of Knowledge. The Malleus Maleficarum expands on this

idea saying that Eve passed down the sins of lust, jealousy, and

wickedness to other women and that all evil women embraced these

sins in order to thwart men and challenge God.12 Since

witchcraft was seen as an amalgamation of all these sins, it was

justifiable to see that women were more susceptible to become

witches.

Although young and seductive witches were most often depicted

in sexualized art,

that does not mean

that their

predecessors, the

hag witches, were

not sexualized, as

one can see with Oostsanen’s Saul and the Witch of Endor.

12 Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, The Malleus Maleficarum (Mineola: Dover Publications, 1971), 43-45.


(Figure 3, Jacob Cammerlander, Witches before a cauldron, 1544)

Depictions of nude hag witches like Jacob Cammerlander’s woodcut

Witches before a cauldron (1544; see detail Figure 3), in which a few

men can be seen, were popular during the early modern period.

Due to the fact there are both naked elderly men and women in

the woodcut there is a notion of irregular sexuality, as elderly

people were considered to no longer eligible to partake in sexual

activities, and a connection to the aforementioned theory that

the power of witchcraft was gained by a demonic sexual pact (it

was common belief that witches made a pact with a demon or the

Devil and then engaged in sexual intercourse). In this

particular woodcut the witch sitting by the cauldron is

voluptuous whereas the witch on the far right is haggard with

sagging breasts, showing the difference between the seductive

witch and the hag witch. The voluptuous witch’s sexuality and

fertility are connected to her supernatural abilities as she is

using some sort of magic with the cauldron, but the hag witch is

envious and insatiable (as shown by her facial expression)


desiring to drain the fertility from the voluptuous witch.13

This shows that although they have completely converted to an

anarchistic and diabolical cult, female witches could still

express jealously and lust.

In Cammerlander’s woodcut we can also see a glimpse of the

reversal of gender roles as two male witches simply blow horns

rather than help the female witches carry the large cat-like

creature, ignoring manual labor that was typical of men. It was

common for artwork depicting male witches to show them being not

in control by riding on animals rather than leading them. Often

depictions of male witches riding animals backwards, like

Cammerlander’s Riding (1544; see Figure 4), represented male

sexual disorder and a man’s failure to control his wife.14

13 Natalie Kwan, “Woodcuts and Witches: Ulrich Molitor’s De lamiis et pythonicis mulieribus, 1489-1669.” Germany History Vol. 30, Issue 4 (December 2012): 508-510, accessed January 22, 2014, http://web.a.ebscohost.com.oberon.ius.edu/ehost/detail?sid=57fbfee2-c2e6-49c0-bf2d-afe179fdccbc%40sessionmgr4002&vid=1&hid=4206&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=aph&AN=82975420&anchor=GoToAllQVI14 Ibid., 509.


(Figure 4, Jacob Cammerlander, Riding, 1544)

While female witches were often depicted as women who were

rebellious, ugly, and seductive, the depictions of male witches

seem to have represented the emasculation of men, or men who

failed to show dominance over their wives. This further shows a

connection between women and witchcraft, as witchcraft was

associated with women who were believed to be subordinate and

dominated by men.

Anything associated with the feminine or women were

traditionally seen as being weak or second in power in the early

modern period. As a result, the inquisitors and those against

witchcraft believed that women could become prone to using


witchcraft to escape their unidealistic lifestyles such as

marriage or prostitution. One such example of using witchcraft

to escape prostitution or marriage occurred in seventeenth

century Venice with the two sisters Marietta Battaglia and Laura

Malipiero. According to historian Sally Scully, both Marietta

and Laura were married and had been tried numerous times for

witchcraft; although Laura was believed to have used witchcraft

more in order to escape her marriage and be with her true

lover.15 Marietta on the other hand was already a widow when she

was first tried in 1637, although when she was tried again in

1645 she was betrothed to another man and she claimed that the

second trial was designed to prevent her marriage to him.16

Throughout the time periods between their other trials,

Marietta and Laura used witchcraft in order to get what they want

from other Venetian citizens, the inquisitors, or politicians.

The differences were that Laura employed witchcraft more often

than Marietta and even used it to heal people despite the strong

15 Sally Scully, “Marriage or a career?: Witchcraft as an alternative in seventeenth-century Venice.” Journal of Social History Vol. 28, Issue 4 (Summer 1995): 858, accessed January 23, 2014, http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=5c6ecd43-f372-4fea-a154-49bdc44bd32f%40sessionmgr4004&vid=2&hid=410716 Ibid., 859.


presence of Roman Catholicism within Venice. It is apparent that

Marietta decided to use witchcraft only a few times and thus did

not have the power like Laura to sway the Venetian authorities

and was eventually banished from Venice, whereas Laura died in

her own bed with her lover at her side.17 Despite their

different fates, Laura and Marietta were able to use witchcraft

to gain some limited freedom from the patriarchal society that

they lived in. Laura and Marietta appear to be early modern

examples of the witch as the rebellious or empowered woman as

they were able to go against the social rules of their time (like

Adad-dumqi and the Witch of Endor before them).

As with the case of Marietta Battaglia and Laura Malipiero,

women of early modern Europe may have followed alternative paths

in order to survive the patriarchal societies they lived in. The

life choices for women of the early modern period were limited,

as they had been since the medieval period. Not even the

Renaissance or the Protestant Reformation, the two biggest

movements of early modern Europe, could give women any more

choices. The cultural movement of the Renaissance began in the

17 Ibid., 862-864.


late 14th century and lasted till the 17th century (before the end

of the early modern period) during which art, literature,

religion, science, and philosophy were completely renovated

drawing on influence from intellectual ideas produced in ancient

Greece and Rome. It was also a time when humanism (an ideology

that focuses on the value, beauty, and being of humans) became

influential across Europe.

Furthermore, it was during the Renaissance that artists,

particularly male artists, desired to depict human beings as

being beautiful and sometimes sexual. Most often women were the

subject of these sexual art pieces. Many different female

figures were depicted in Renaissance artwork ranging from nymphs

(sexually playful maidens from Greek mythology), the Greek love

goddess Aphrodite, her Roman counterpart Venus, the Greek goddess

of spring Persephone (also called Kore), witches and even female

Biblical figures. Despite the religious ties to the Biblical

female figures, many of them were depicted in Renaissance art as

being nude or in seductive poses, most notably Mary Magdalene.

Next to witches, Mary Magdalene becomes one of the many notable

sexualized female figures of art.


Like witches, Mary Magdalene was once a woman whose story

filled people with interest but whose image became filled with

sexuality. In the Bible, Mary Magdalene is a woman from the town

of Magdala near the shores of the Sea of Galilee who in the

Gospel of Luke 8:1-3 had seven demons exorcised from her by Jesus

Christ. She is also present at Jesus’ crucifixion and is the

first person to see him resurrected. Despite these interactions

with the messiah of Christianity, Pope Gregory I, during a

Christian mass in 591 A.D., misidentified her with a prostitute

that Jesus protected in the Gospel of John 8:1-7. From then on,

Mary Magdalene became the repentant harlot.

(Figure 5, Leonardo da Vinci, Mary Magdalene, 1515)

Depictions of Mary Magdalene

as a sexualized woman, like

Leonardo da Vinci’s Mary Magdalene

(1515; see Figure 5), had irked

many Protestant Christian

theologians at the time. Many

Renaissance artists sought to make


their own images of Mary Magdalene as she was the closest they

could come to sexuality within a religious context, as religious

figures like Mary Magdalene were honored by the artists’ patrons.

Some even sought to make her religious ecstasy akin to sexual

orgasm.18 As shown with Mary Magdalene, it was the Renaissance

art movement that made female sexuality something to stare at

rather than look away from. Mary Magdalene’s case is the same as

female witches, two people who have significant meaning in early

modern Europe but were engulfed in sexuality. The reason that

images of seductive witches arose was because the Renaissance

sexualized beautiful women and their bodies. Seductive witches

were one of the many objectified female figures of art in the

Renaissance artists’ journey to create the absolute beauty.

The Protestant Reformation, the other significant movement

of early modern Europe, also made its own ideas regarding women.

The Reformation began in 1517 when a Catholic priest named Martin

Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the main door of the All

Saints’ Church in the German city of Wittenberg. The ninety-five

theses contained Luther’s responses to a series of issues that 18 Olwen Hufton, The Prospect Before Her: A History of Women in Western Europe, 1500-1800 (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), 34.


Luther himself saw as hurting the Roman Catholic Church. These

responses included complaints against clerical abuses (such as

the sale of indulgences), arguments against the current Catholic

theology, the usage of certain sacred scriptures, and the request

to remove the position of the pope. Pope Leo X gave Luther a

chance to recant his ninety-five theses, but Luther ignored this

warning and was excommunicated from the Catholic Church in 1521.

Luther was not alone in the Reformation, as other

theologians such as John Calvin and Huldrych Zwingli left the

Catholic Church in hopes of reforming Christianity with their own

theological ideas. Although new branches of Christianity were

emerging during the Protestant Reformation it did not mean that

traditional religious ideas concerning women, even female

witches, had changed. Protestant Christians, like Luther, became

abhorred with the Catholic images of the Virgin Mary which

depicted her as divine woman, the aforementioned sexual images of

Mary Magdalene, and the innumerable depictions of the Catholic

saints; particularly the female ones. In fact, Protestant

Christianity moved away from any divine female imagery that was

involved in Catholicism and underwent a complete masculinization


of both imagery and scriptural teachings, removing anything in

the Bible that venerated female imagery or female figures.19

However, when it came to the images of evil women or the evil

feminine Protestant Christians had vivid interpretations,

including witches.

By the time of the formation of the many different

Protestant denominations, the witch hunts were already increasing

in Central Europe. Persecutions against witchcraft were rapid

amongst Protestant Christians in the 16th and 17th centuries

(probably even more so than their Catholic contemporaries) and

Protestant artists like Hans Baldung Grien sought to show witches

as evil women as shown in Grien’s

Witches Preparing for the Sabbath Flight

(1510; see Figure 6).20 In Grien’s

etching we see the return of the

hag witches with the exception of

the witch riding the goat creature

near the top of the picture who

19 Rosemary Radford Ruether, Goddesses and the Divine Feminine: A Western Religious History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 223.20 Ibid., 223.


does not appeared with a haggard body. While Protestant

depictions of witches differed from Catholic versions where the

witches were beautiful, they still maintained the idea that

witches were evil women who embodied corrupt sexuality.

Protestants did not remove all Catholic teachings from their new

theology, especially the ones on witchcraft and demonology; even

the Malleus Maleficarum (or The Witches’ Hammer) had become more popular

within Protestant countries.21

(Figure 6, Hans Baldung Grien, Witches Preparing for the Sabbath Flight, 1510)

Despite strong religious influence on what witches looked

like and how they acted, the archetype of the witch as the

seductress persisted throughout the early modern period due to

the Renaissance movement. Although many artists attempted to

make their depiction of witches fall in line with the religious

influences, even they caved in to the Renaissance’s desire to

find the absolute beauty. The aforementioned Grien depicted the

witch as the seductress in his painting entitled The Weather Witches

(1523; see Figure 7). The witch on the left of the painting in

21 Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 266.


particular fills the position of the seductive witch. Her back

is facing the viewer and only the side of one of her breasts is

shown almost as if she is teasing the viewer with her nudity and

her seductive smile gives a hint that she knows that she’s

teasing the viewer. The witch on the right openly displays her

nudity and curvy figure.

(Figure 7, Hans Baldung Grien, Weather

Witches, 1523)


While both of the witches in The Weather Witches are an example

of the Renaissance sexualized woman, Grien himself would claim

that sexualizing women was not the purpose of the painting.

Seductive witches and their bodies are deceptive shells of the

hag witches, whose bodies represent the flesh’s corruption.22

While seductive witches still represented corrupt sexuality like

their hag predecessors, their voluptuous and tempting bodies were

admired by their male viewers. This continued admiration of the

nude feminine was a result of the

Renaissance movement turning to

ancient Greco-Roman art for its

artistic inspiration and the

presence of Neo-Platonic philosophy

(which will be discussed later)

within early modern Europe.

Classical Greece and Imperial Rome

had some of the most detailed and

beautiful pieces of art in the ancient world and had sexualized

depictions of women which influenced its early modern successors.

22 Linda C. Hults, The Witch as Muse: Art, Gender, and Power in Early Modern Europe, 98.


Aphrodite and Venus, the Greek and Roman goddesses of love

and sexuality respectively, were the most sexualized female

figures of the ancient Greco-Roman world and their sexuality was

revived by Renaissance artists. Aphrodite/Venus gained a curvy,

voluptuous figure during the Renaissance to show the ideal figure

that men wanted on women. Many seductive witches’ bodies of

early modern art were practically mirror images of

Aphrodite/Venus’ body.

(Figure 8, Albrecht Dürer, The Four Witches, 1497)

Albrecht Dürer’s The Four Witches (1497; see Figure 8) could be

compared to Venus and like many other Renaissance art pieces

invokes old pagan influence. Some viewers of The Four Witches

compared the voluptuous witches to the goddess Venus and the

Three Graces as the center witch is the focus of the engraving

but she is surrounded by three equally seductive witches; also

the center witch wears a wreath of myrtle in hair, a plant

associated with Venus.23 Other viewers would also related The Four

Witches to Greek myth, but rather to Persephone, the goddess of

23 Ibid., 62.


spring and Queen of the Underworld, and the Fates thus taking the

engraving as a sign of the end times.24

Witches and witchcraft connected to old pagan beliefs and

culture was a common thought in early modern Europe especially

with the occurrence of the Protestant Reformation. In fact, the

archetype of the witch as seductress can at best be called a

Circean witch, named after the Greek witch Circe from the ancient

Greek tale The Odyssey by the poet Homer, one the world’s oldest

pagan myths. In the ancient tale, Circe seduces the hero

Odysseus and his men to come and have feast in her mansion.

There Circe turned Odysseus’ men into pigs, Odysseus pleaded with

her to change them back but she said she would only do so if he

had sexual intercourse with her. Odysseus agreed but only after

he made Circe promise not to take his manhood in his sleep.

Centuries before early modern Europe and the Renaissance,

the seductive witch of the ancient world was Circe. In early

modern art, the seductive witch was Circe’s successor. A witch’s

beauty is deceptive, especially for Circean witches who engaged

in taboo activities such as seduction, transformation,

24 Ibid., 62.


emasculation, and corrupting the creatures they associate with

(owls, goats, chickens etc.); all of which signify the corrupt

nature of their beauty.25 Witches being associated with paganism

became a popular thought after a series of certain confessions

from women. The Malleus Maleficarum itself addressed these

confessions.

The confessions from these condemned women stated that they

went out riding on strange beasts with Diana, the Roman goddess

of the moon, nature, hunting, and fertility. Based on the Malleus

Maleficarum, the inquisitors questioned if the ridings with Diana

were a part of the witches’ imagination yet strangely enough they

added a woman named Herodias as being a part of the imaginations

as well.26 Herodias was a woman from the New Testament section

of the Bible who told her daughter Salome to perform a dance

before King Herod Antipas so that she could behead John the

Baptist, the cousin of Jesus Christ. How Herodias made it into

the Malleus Maleficarum and people’s confessions alongside the

goddess Diana is unknown. However, Herodias may have been

25 Ibid., 23.26 Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, The Malleus Maleficarum, 3.


connected to a pagan witch who helped shape the archetype of the

witch as the empowered woman.

Witches being connected to the goddess Diana made the

inquisitors look at the witch hunts with a different view. The

inquisitors wondered if they had discovered an underground cult

set on being against the Church. With Diana becoming the

“goddess of the pagans” during the early modern witch hunts, it

gave the inquisitors the idea that the cult of Diana (or the

witches who confessed to be riding with her at night) was a

deformation of an ancient religion.27 This idea had spread to

the citizens of Europe as well who believed that there was a

society that met at night with Diana or Herodias at the center.28

For the female witches, as followers of Diana, they were not

merely heretics or apostates, they were also Diana’s priestesses.

French historian Jules Michelet helped shape that idea of

early modern witches being pagan priestesses in his book The

Sorceress (original French title La Sorcière). Michelet believed that

female witches were women who had to become pagan priestesses

27 Carlo Ginzburg, Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 91. 28 Ibid., 94.


after Christianity shunned them. These priestesses supposedly

venerated Dianom (a goddess who was the combined form of the

goddesses Diana, Luna, and Hecate) and the god of nature (who is

the Devil and the gods Pan, Bacchus, and Priapus) peacefully at

the Black Mass where they were also the host and alter for their

deities.29 While Michelet passionately wrote The Sorceress, it was

merely a blend of the Romantic idealization of women and

hostility towards the Church in the hopes of making witchcraft

look like a peaceful protest from the lower class against the

social norms that oppressed them.30 Michelet practically

describes the archetype of the witch as the empowered or

rebellious woman to more modern audiences.

The aforementioned Herodias even became a rebellious witch

with pagan ties, etymologically speaking. Aradia (a witch

mentioned in the first page of this paper) was a witch from the

Tuscan countryside in Italy who became public knowledge thanks to

folklorist Charles Leland. Scholars believe that “Aradia” is a

nickname or comes from that Italian name “Erodiade” which is that

29 Jules Michelet, The Sorceress (La Sorcière) (London: L. J. Teotter, 1863), 99-103.30 Philip G. Davis, Goddess Unmasked: The Rise of Neopagan Feminist Spirituality (Dallas: Spence Publishing Company, 1998), 311-312.


Italian translation of “Herodias”.31 Aradia was supposedly the

daughter of the goddess Diana and her brother Lucifer (believed

to be an alternate named for the god Apollo) who taught

witchcraft to the lower class farmers, Jews and gypsies to defend

themselves against the Church.32 Leland’s Aradia and Michelet’s

The Sorceress are practically mirror images of one another.

The archetype of the witch as seductress was born due to the

Renaissance art movement and the theological ideas brought about

with the Protestant Reformation. The aforementioned information

regarding pagan connections to female witches brought about the

archetype of the witch as the rebellious or empowered woman. In

general, witches seem to be the inversion of the natural order

and the image of the good woman.33 To someone with a more

feminist viewpoint, female witches as the inverted or rebellious

woman in the early modern period would be empowered as she rebels

against the restrictive authority of the patriarchal society. A

31 Raven Grimassi, The Book of the Holy Strega (Springfield: Old Ways Press, 2012), 20.32 Charles Leland, Aradia, Or the Gospel of Witches, 1-4.33 Elspeth Whitney, “International Trends: The Witch “She”/ The Historian “He”.” Journal of Women’s History Vol. 7, Issue 3 (Fall 1995): 77, accessed January22, 2014, http://web.b.ebscohost.com.oberon.ius.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=b3d0fc28-7f48-446b-ae1c-1c5844ee37e1%40sessionmgr113&vid=2&hid=126


woman going against the social norms of early modern Europe, even

without the usage of witchcraft, was considered unfathomable.

Nevertheless, women speaking out or rebelling against the social

norms did happen. Most notably was the Italian-born French

author Christine de Pizan, who wrote a series of literary works

speaking out against the late Medieval and early modern

patriarchal social standards.

Pizan’s works have been considered as being some of the

earliest feminist works for the time period she lived in. In one

of her works, Pizan critiques the sexism generated by the

literary and philosophical discourses of the time and goes so far

to make a new canon of literature and history in which women are

recognized for their intellectual contributions.34 There is an

obvious difference between women going against social norms

through the means of witchcraft and women who simply put forth

literature attempting to show the problems that women face in

patriarchal societies. It has already been discussed that both

women and men practicing witchcraft represents both corrupt 34 Keiko Nowacka, “Reflections on Christine de Pizan’s ‘Feminism’.” Australian Feminist Studies Vol. 17, Issue 37 (March 2002): 82, accessed March 28, 2014, http://web.b.ebscohost.com.oberon.ius.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=1ae768e5-7045-40a2-b434-94f962a36177%40sessionmgr198&vid=2&hid=126


sexuality and possible changes of gender roles. With the witch

as the rebellious or inverted woman, it was the belief that

female witches who went against the social norms attempted to be

like men (and male witches to be like women) by trying to

magically mutate from woman to man.35

The witch as the rebellious or empowered woman, however, was

never represented in early modern art with masculine qualities.

They completely retained their femininity. Take, for example,

Dosso Dossi’ painting A Sorceress (1515-16; see Figure 9). When

compared to other witch depictions such as the nude Weather Witches

and Four Witches, the witch in A Sorceress is completely clothed but

still performs magic by sticking her wand into the small cauldron

on the right.

(Figure 9, Dosso Dossi, A Sorceress, 1515-16)

Looking closely at the

manikins at the top left of

the picture, one can see that

one of manikins has its hands35 Francesco Maria Guazzo, Compendium Maleficarum (Mineola: Dover Publications, 1988), 57.


folded as if he’s pleading her to stop using magic. The witch in

the painting is beautiful and has a fixed gaze on the pleading

manikin who represents a male victim of female sorcery; in short,

the painting is a warning to male viewers about witches being

able to dominate men.36 Witches as rebellious or empowered women

being represented in art would make sense based on the situation

of the witch trials and hunts. The witch hunts and trials showed

men’s inhumanity to women who, as witches, were portrayed as

being menacing of sexual power.37 It would be a natural response

for a woman to rebel against both the witch hunters and

patriarchal societal norms. Part of the reason for this

rebellion against societal norms, other than the witch hunts, was

the presence of Neo-Platonic philosophy throughout early modern

Europe. Neo-Platonism is a mystical revamp of the original

philosophic teachings of the Classical Greek thinker Plato; Neo-

Platonism began in the 3rd century A.D. and regained popularity

during the Renaissance movement.

36 Linda C. Hults, The Witch as Muse: Art, Gender, and Power in Early Modern Europe, 189-190.37 Joseph Klaits, Servants of Satan: The Age of the Witch Hunts (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 51.


When relating to gender in early modern Europe, Neo-

Platonism helped to build a philosophical support for duality

between men and women by defining gender and sexual roles.38 In

theory, Neo-Platonism in early modern Europe would show that

women are the object of men’s love, but this relationship is not

reciprocal for Neo-Platonism teaches that women are only

beautiful and exist for procreation.39 As a result, Neo-Platonic

philosophy would not do well for women either. Women would not

be bound by traditional gender roles and would seek to elevate

themselves to the level of men. Thus they would turn to

witchcraft and build the archetype of the rebellious witch.

Like the hag and seductive witches before her, the empowered

or rebellious witch could have a mixing of the themes of the

witch archetypes. The seductive witches, who are the Circean

witches, were the objects of desire for the Renaissance artists

on their path to depict the absolute beauty. However, for some

artists coming from a more religious background like Grien, the

38 Katherine Crawford, The Sexual Culture of the French Renaissance (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2010), 112.39 Jacqueline Murray, “Agnolo Firenzuola on Female Sexuality and Women’s Equality.” The Sixteenth Century Journal Vol. 22, Issue 2 (Summer 1991): 205, accessed March 14, 2014, http://www.jstor.org.oberon.ius.edu/stable/2542732


beauty of the seductive witches was merely a façade and attempt

to seduce men. Underneath the seductive witch was her true and

corrupt form, the hag witch. The hag witch is the disgusting

reality of the seductive and Circean witches, their beautiful

forms melted into an ugly form.40 The same could said for

Dossi’s A Sorceress who although covers herself like any modest

woman of early modern Europe, deceives her male viewers by

practicing witchcraft to harm men (hence the male manikins).

The empowered or rebellious witch combined easily with the

seductive witch. The combination of sexuality and rebelliousness

was the ultimate trouble for early modern patriarchal societies.

Circean witches themselves

could be seen as a combination

of the seductive and rebellious

witches given the original tale

about Odysseus being afraid of

Circe removing his manhood.

Recalling Cammerlander’s Witches

before a cauldron, the witch at the

40 Linda C. Hults, The Witch as Muse: Art, Gender, and Power in Early Modern Europe, 37.


center near the cauldron was more voluptuous than the other

witches around her because she was working with magic to recharge

her sexuality and fertility. This depiction helps aides the

theory that hag witches were the true forms of seductive Circean

witches.

(Figure 10, Niklaus Manuel Duetsch, Witch Carrying the Skull of the Artist, 1513)

An example of the combined image of the seductress and

rebellious witch is Niklaus Manuel Duetsch’s Witch Carrying the Skull of

the Artist (1513; see Figure 10) in which one sees a rather

flamboyant witch wearing nothing but a headdress and some jewelry

around her body which points to her vulva. Duetsch himself was a

Swiss soldier and as such experienced the horrors of war and

death and had several engagements with prostitutes. Whereas

other artists would depict the sole seductive nature of witches,

Duetsch depicted more complex views. In this depiction, Duetsch

portrays the association of cruelty and death (the skull and her

laughing expression) with a whoring woman (the fact that she’s

based off a prostitute); a rather negative view of a woman who


represents the male anxiety of a woman laughing at a man’s

death.41 Her rebellious or empowered aspects are her laughing as

she holds a man’s skull making her a mistress over death (a

position usually given to the male Grim Reaper or Angel of

Death). Her seductive aspects are her scantily clad body covered

by a mere chain which nearly exposes her genitals hinting at the

sexual nature of witchcraft.42

Even in an artist point of view, the witch in Duetsch’s

depiction is being rebellious against Renaissance art’s beauty

standards. She is neither voluptuous nor does she have a clean

or shaven vulva, looking closely at her groin on can see some of

her pubic hair. Many women in Renaissance art, including

witches, were often voluptuous and completely free of pubic hair

like Grien’s Weather Witches. Rather than teasing the audience

like the witch in Weather Witches, the witch in Duetsch’s portrayal

vulgarly exposes herself. Her seduction is on a different level

than the witch in Grien’s painting, she seduces the viewer toward

her groin hinting at the powers of her sexuality.

41 Ibid., 104.42 Ibid., 106.


Given the Witch Carrying the Skull of the Artist’s aforementioned

connection to prostitution, there is evidence of Renaissance

artists, particularly religious artists like Deutsch and Grien

(both were Protestants), trying to shows witches’ connection to

corrupt sexuality. As mentioned before, the presence of Neo-

Platonism on gender roles and sexuality limited to how women in

the early modern period could express or experiment with their

sexuality. Women who could express their sexuality the most in

the early modern period were prostitutes. Prostitutes were often

the subject, and sometimes the models, of Renaissance artwork and

their association of liberal sexuality may have influenced

seductive witches and empowered or rebellious witches. Like

witches, prostitutes and their sexuality were scorned by

religious authorities by exemplified by Renaissance artists and

humanists.

Prostitutes were practically the image of explicit female

sexuality and as such they attracted ambivalence from their

contemporaries and observers, whether those observers honor them

or hate them.43 Witches, especially the seductive and rebellious43 Elizabeth S. Cohen, “‘Courtesans’ and ‘Whores’ Words and Behavior in Roman Streets.” Women’s Studies Vol. 19, Issue 2 (August 1991): 201, accessed April


or inverted archetypes, were in the same boat as prostitutes.

Both of them are women that neither early modern society, the

Church, nor God could control. However, the difference between

prostitutes and witches was that witches were beyond saving and

the prostitutes could find redemption. Just as the nature of the

female witch was shaped by teachings of the Malleus Maleficarum, the

nature of prostitutes was shaped by another theological factor;

the Christian views of the aforementioned Mary Magdalene.

Mary Magdalene falsely identified as a prostitute, became

the early modern period’s redemptive prostitute, practically a

role model for other prostitutes. Although she had become a

prostitute, Mary Magdalene was able to achieve forgiveness and

redemption through Jesus Christ. As a result, prostitutes could

do what Mary Magdalene did and Mary Magdalene became their role

model. Mary Magdalene showed that through penitence, prostitutes

could achieve salvation meaning that even the vainest and

frailest women could overcome sin.44 For witches, their role

25, 2014, http://web.b.ebscohost.com.oberon.ius.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=86aae23a-bbed-45e8-9c69-11e0de69b285%40sessionmgr113&vid=2&hid=12844 Olwen Hufton, The Prospect Before Her: A History of Women in Western Europe, 1500-1800, 31.


model was a woman of more severe vices and the origin of their

curse.

The Malleus Maleficarum had stated that the sins and power of

witchcraft were all passed down from Eve, the wife of Adam who

had eaten the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. In early modern

art, before Eve eats the fruit she is usually portrayed as

youthful and beautiful but after eating the fruit and being

expelled from the Garden of Eden she usually portrayed as ugly

and distorted as shown with Masaccio’s The Expulsion from the Garden of

Eden (1425; see detail Figure 11).45 Her expression is akin to

those of the hag witches. Before Eve ate the fruit, her

nakedness and sexuality were things that did not matter to her.

After disobeying God and eating the fruit, Eve succumbed to her

carnal desires and became the origin for the craving of liberal

sexuality.

45 Ibid., 28-29.


(Figure 11, Masaccio, The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, 1425)

This disobedience towards God and craving of liberal

sexuality was passed down through all women, which Christian

theologians of the time believe was supported by various female

figures throughout the Bible. Manipulative and deceptive women

like Jezebel, Delilah, Gomer, the Whore of Babylon, and the

Scarlet Woman were all disobedient woman who used their sexuality

to get what they want.46 Because of these examples, the Malleus

Maleficarum postulates that more woman are infected with the

heresy of witchcraft than men and that there are more witches

than wizards.47 Just as Eve has been portrayed similar to a hag

witch, the aforementioned Biblical women have been portrayed 46 Ibid., 31-32.47 Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, The Malleus Maleficarum, 47.


similar to seductive witches or rebellious witches. All with the

unique themes of corrupt sexuality, heresy, paganism, nudity, and

demonic abilities or pacts.

Typically, the three witch archetypes are often portrayed by

themselves or combined with one other archetype in early modern

art. Rarely does anyone see all three archetypes portrayed

together in one depiction. At least one artist of the early

modern period

was able to

produce artwork

which showed

the three

archetypes

together. This

artist is

Jacques de

Gheyn II, a Dutch Protestant artist who came from a long line of

professional artists. Religious views of witches greatly

influenced de Gheyn’s work, especially the diverse religious


views of the Dutch Republic where he was from which supported

humanism, Calvinism, and Catholicism.48

(Figure 12, Jacques de Gheyn II, Witches’ Kitchen, 1604)

De Gheyn’s drawing entitled Witches’ Kitchen (1604; see Figure

12) shows the three archetypes all together. On the left and

center of the picture, hag witches prepare concoctions around the

cauldron. On the right, two beautiful and seductive witches

enter the kitchen, one with a seemingly pregnant belly and

another one dressed scantily clad holding a platter with a man’s

head. All the witches in the picture represent the inverted or

rebellious woman as they are all secretly meeting together (which

hints that de Gheyn believed that witches were a part of an

underground cult against the Church) and there is a desecrated

male corpse underneath the cauldron which shows that witchcraft

is tied to the power of women conquering men.49 Even the

scantily clad witch with the man’s head is reminiscent of Salome,

the daughter of Herodias in the Bible who performed a seductive

48 Linda C. Hults, The Witch as Muse: Art, Gender, and Power in Early Modern Europe, 146-147.49 Ibid., 158-160.


dance before Herod Antipas to have John the Baptist beheaded.50

Salome herself is considered to be a promiscuous and seductive

young woman who used her sexuality to get a man to do what she

wants.

Although the witches became a favorite subject amongst many

early modern artists of Europe, their fame eventually died down.

The intellectual movement of the Enlightenment, which began

towards the end of the early modern period in the 1700s, led to

the end of the witch hunts. The theorists of the Enlightenment

saw the belief in witchcraft and the witch hunts as remnants of

Europe’s dark and Middle Age past supported by the zeal of the

populace and the secular and ecclesiastical courts.51 Since then

multiple historians like Norman Cohn, Carlo Ginzburg, Jules

Michelet, and Margaret Murray have all studied and put forth

their own ideas about the reasons and causes behind the witch

hunts and witchcraft. Some historians who focus on the

historiography of witchcraft would contribute to the witch-cult

hypothesis, a hypothesis that states that the witches tried

during the early modern period were adherents to pre-Christian 50 Ibid., 158.51 Ibid., 2-3.


religious beliefs as evident by various confessions from

suspected witches and the Malleus Maleficarum.

However, the witch trials and hunts were not forgotten.

Suffragettes and feminists of the late modern and current

contemporary periods would revive interest in witches during the

various feminist movements. During these feminist movements,

women would criticize the witch hunts as one of the most

misogynistic events in human history. Some feminists saw the

witch craze as a clerical disease which demonized and eroticized

women as anarchists who served the Devil; they also believed that

witch hunts coincided with women’s early emancipation.52 Radical

feminist theologian Mary Daly herself claimed that the European

witch hunts signaled a new era of “gynocidal processions”

(gynocidal meaning violent towards women.)53 Although these

feminists saw female witches as abused victims, many women became

interested in what the witches stood for.

The originally three archetypes of the female witch had been

revived by women and feminists during the 1970s who embraced them52 Julia O’Faolain, ed., and Lauro Martines, ed., Not in God’s Image: Women in History from the Greeks to the Victorians (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 207.53 Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1990), 229.


as feminist icons. Whether the witch was a hag, seductress, or

inverted woman the feminists saw them as role models. The hag

became the wise woman, the seductress the woman with control over

her own sexuality, and the inverted woman as the challenger of

patriarchal laws and society. All three archetypes appeared in

various T.V. shows and movies ranging from Bewitched, The Witches of

Eastwick, Las brujas de Zugarramurdi (The Witches of Zugarramurdi), and

American Horror Story: COVEN. The archetypes and the original

descriptions of them based on the Malleus Maleficarum also survived

into modern art as shown in Gonzalo Ordóñez Arias’ painting Circe

(2007; see Figure 13).

The witch in Circe depicts the

woman of the same name from the

Greek epic The Odyssey. Circe was

already discussed earlier in the

paper when it was discovered

that seductive witches could

also be called Circean witches

as Circe is the ancient Greek


version of both the seductive witch and the witch as the

rebellious woman. In Arias’ depiction, Circe has a voluptuous

body with brimming breasts and she gives a seductive smile while

half of her face is hidden behind her hair; all of which hint at

her deceptive and sexual nature. She holds a stick as a wand

which ties her to the nature-based pagan religious beliefs. She

also holds a goblet of blood some of which has splashed some onto

her face and gives a hint of her demonic origins and a heretical

desecration of the sacraments.

(Figure 13, Gonzalo Ordóñez Arias, Circe, 2007)

As one can see, the three witch archetypes never became

absent from art after the early modern period and still continue

to this day in art, television, movies, and other aspects of

popular culture. The witch archetypes- the hag, the seductress,

and the inverted or rebellious or empowered woman- originally

appeared during the 1500s when the witch hunts were at their

height and after the publication of the Malleus Maleficarum.

Various societal, religious, and philosophical influences helped

shaped these three archetypes and how they were produced in art.

These influences include traditional gender roles, the Malleus


Maleficarum’s provocative description of female witches, and the

various Catholic and Protestant ideas about witches, Neo-

Platonism’s revaluation of sexuality and gender, and many other

things. Because of all these influences the female witch was a

sexually liberal and defiant woman who followed the Devil rather

than God and did everything in her power to profane Him. While

we know what witches looked and acted like during the early

modern period, we still may be able to learn what other

unorthodox women looked and acted like in early modern Europe.


Bibliography

Primary

Guazzo, Francesco Maria. Compendium Maleficarum. Translated by

Montague Summers. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1988.

Kramer, Heinrich and Jacob Sprenger. The Malleus Maleficarum.

Translated by Montague Summers. Mineola, NY: Dover

Publications, 1971.

Secondary

Abusch, Tzvi. “Mesopotamian Anti-Witchcraft Literature: Texts

and Studies Part I: The Nature of Maqlû: Its Character,

Divisions, and Calendrical Setting,” Journal of Near


Eastern Studies Vol. 33, Issue 2 (April 1974). Accessed February

18, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/544736

Bretherton, Donald J. “An Invitation to Murder? A Re-

interpretation of Exodus 22:18 ‘You Shall Not Suffer A Witch

to Live’.” Expository Times Vol. 116, Issue 5 (February 2005).

Accessed February 25, 2014.

http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?sid=98606960-0602- 42f4-

a568-

f3fd44b79156%40sessionmgr4002&vid=1&hid=4201&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3Qtb

Gl2ZQ%3 d%3d#db=aph&AN=20259043

Cohen, Elizabeth S. “‘Courtesans’ and ‘Whores’ Words and

Behavior in Roman Streets.” Women’s Studies Vol. 19, Issue 2

(August 1991). Accessed April 25, 2014.

http://web.b.ebscohost.com.oberon.ius.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfv

iewer?sid=86aae23a- bbed-45e8-9c69-

11e0de69b285%40sessionmgr113&vid=2&hid=128


Crawford, Katherine. The Sexual Culture of the French Renaissance.

Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Publishing,

2010.

Daly, Mary. Gyn/Ecoloy: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism. Boston, MA:

Beacon Press, 1990.

Davis, Philip G. Goddess Unmasked: The Rise of Neopagan Feminist

Spirituality. Dallas, TX: Spence Publishing Company, 1998.

Ginzburg, Carlo. Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath. Chicago,

IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004.

Grimassi, Raven. The Book of the Holy Strega. Springfield, MA: Old

Ways Press, 2012

Harris, Rivkah. Gender and Aging in Mesopotamia: The Gilgamesh Epic and

Other Ancient Literature. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma

Press, 2003.


Hufton, Olwen. The Prospect Before Her: A History of Women in Western

Europe, 1500- 1800. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1998.

Hults, Linda C. The Witch as Muse: Art, Gender, and Power in Early Modern

Europe. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania

Press, 2005.

James, M. R. The Biblical Antiquities of Philo. New York, NY: Cosimo

Classics, 2007.

Klaits, Joseph. Servants of Satan: The Age of the Witch Hunts.

Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1985.

Kwan, Natalie. “Woodcuts and Witches: Ulrich Molitor’s De

lamiis et pythonicis mulieribus, 1489-1669.” German History

Vol. 30, Issue 4 (December 2012). Accessed January 22, 2014.

http://web.ebscohost.com.oberon.ius.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfvie


wer?sid=57fb1165- 1547-41b1-83e3-b4254e2c0efa

%40sessionmgr115&vid=30&hid=103

Leland, Charles Godfrey. Aradia, Or the Gospel of Witches (London:

David Nutt, 1899), accessed January 22, 2013,

http://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/aradia/index.htm

Michelet, Jules. The Sorceress (La Sorcière) (London: L. J.

Teotter, 1863), accessed January 22, 2013,

http://sacred-texts.com/pag/sor/index.htm

Murray, Jacqueline. “Agnolo Firenzuola on Female Sexuality

and Women’s Equality.” The Sixteenth Century Journal Vol. 22, Issue

2 (Summer 1991). Accessed March 14, 2014.

http://www.jstor.org.oberon.ius.edu/stable/2542732.

Not in God’s Image: Women in History from the Greeks to the Victorians. Edited

by Julia O’Faolain and Lauro Martines. New York, NY:

Harper & Row, 1973.


Nowacka, Keiko. “Reflections on Christine de Pizan’s

‘Feminism’.” Australian Feminist Studies Vol. 17, Issue 37

(March 2002). Accessed March 28, 2014.

http://web.b.ebscohost.com.oberon.ius.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfv

iewer?sid=1ae768e5- 7045-40a2-b434-

94f962a36177%40sessionmgr198&vid=2&hid=126

Reis, Pamela Tamarkin. “Eating the Blood: Saul and the Witch

of Endor.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Issue 73 (March

1997). Accessed February 27, 2014,

http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?sid=0b471d6a-15f0-

4e26-a469- a7a9687ced9b

%40sessionmgr4003&vid=1&hid=4101&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl

2ZQ%3d%3d#db=aph&AN=5599218

Ruether, Rosemary Radford. Goddesses and the Divine Feminine: A

Western Religious History. Berkeley, CA: University of

California Press, 2005.


Scully, Sally. “Marriage or a career?: Witchcraft as an

alternative in seventeenth-century Venice,” Journal of Social

History Vol. 28, Issue 4. Accessed January 23, 2014.


wer?sid=90916939- 9361-4136-a26a-

c254c631f3e6%40sessionmgr112&vid=2&hid=103

Walters, Stanley D. “The Sorceress and Her Apprentice: A Case

Study of an Accusation,” Journal of Cuneiform Studies Vol. 23,

Issue 2 (1970). Accessed March 11, 2014,

http://www.jstor.org/stable/1359108

Whitney, Elspeth. “International Trends: The Witch “She”/

The Historian “He”.” Journal of Women’s History Vol. 7, Issue 3

(Fall 1995). Accessed January 22, 2014.


wer?sid=9153ed9a- 9601-4b8d-abdb-

0086e5b72eb5%40sessionmgr114&vid=2&hid=103


Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E. Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe.

Cambridge, England: University of Cambridge Press, 2008.

Which Witch is Witch? The Female Witch as the Hag, Seductress, and Inverted Woman in Early Modern...

Documents

Transcript of Which Witch is Witch? The Female Witch as the Hag, Seductress, and Inverted Woman in Early Modern...