Witchcraft Ideas And Their Parallels Across The World :: essays research papers fc

Witchcraft is said to be the most widespread cultural phenomenon in existence today and throughout history. Even those who shun the ideas of witchcraft cannot discount rate the similarities in stories from all corners of the globe. Witchcraft and its ideas have spread across racial, religious, and verbiage barriers from Asia to Africa to America. Primitive people from contrary areas in the world have shockingly similar accounts of witchcraft occurrences. In most cases the contradictory parallels cannot be explained and unitary is only left to assume that the tales h obsolescent some truth. Anthropologists say that some(prenominal) common elements about witchcraft are shared by different cultures in the world. Among these common elements are the physical characteristics and the activities of supposed witches. I get out go on to highlight some of the witch characteristic parallels ensnare in printed accounts from different parts of the world and their comparisons to some famou s fairytales. number one of all, throughout many cultures, physical characteristics associated with witches ring strangely the same. Anthropologist Philip Mayer says that witches typically wear upon a physical stigma, like a red eye for employment (Mayer 56). In the Brothers Grimm fairytale "Hansel and Gretel," the witch shares this same beastly characteristic. Also, people normally cast off as witches are typically always old women. In Slovakia, Milan Mramuch charge his elderly neighbor of witchcraft and allegedly devil the old woman to death (Whitmore). In "Hansel and Gretel" the witch who lives in the tempting, edulcorate house is an old crippled woman and in the Brothers Grimm fairytale " ascorbic acid White," the witch who was an elegant queen, performs her craft disguised as an old niggard woman.     A second characteristic of witches - and what witches are most commonly know for - is that they cause horrible misfortune to thei r neighbors and others close to them. Death, sickness, and weather disasters are examples of native occurrences that witches cause are often blamed for, especially when the occurrences seem strange or out of the ordinary. They can cause this harm simply by willing it to happen. "The witch only has to wish you harm, and the harm is as full as done" (Mayer 56). In Slovakia, Mramuch, who killed his neighbor Anna Tomkova, did so because he hazard the woman of casting a spell on his granddaughter. It was the only swear out Mramuch had to counter his granddaughters sudden suffering of epileptic seizures (Whitmore). In South Africa, Mmatiou Thantsa was accused of witchcraft and summoning lightning (Keller).