Witchcraft is defined as the utilization of various kinds of magical and supernatural powers to influence people and things, with either good or bad intentions, and it has been practiced for at least a thousand years in many regions of the world, including Africa, Europe, and South America.  Historically, witchcraft has primarily been viewed as an evil practice, with the most well known variant of it being the witchcraft from the medieval period in Europe, in which spells were cast by witches that had results such as  causing people to commit murder or get sick.  Witches have not always been seen as evil beings, such as in the case of witch doctors who treat illnesses or European ‚white witches‚Äù who worked to undo the spells of evil witches.  But up until recently the main attitude toward them has been one of fear and revulsion, which has led to many thousands of people being killed in witch hunts.

The amount of people believing that witches and witchcraft are real, in the sense that witches not only do certain things such as using incantations, casting spells, and making potions, but that these things also really do have magical powers to influence people, has undergone an interesting evolution.  With the belief being widespread among the population up until the nineteenth century, then declining steadily in the developed world as the prestige of science rose while still being widespread in undeveloped countries.  But then rising again recently in developed countries with the emergence of New Age philosophies and greater respect for indigenous religious practices.

Today there is an interesting dichotomy with regard to modern day witches and witchcraft.  However in the developed world it is portrayed in a positive light in the media, such as with portrayals of benevolent Caribbean voodoo practitioners and Native American shamans.  A somewhat romanticized version of it is practiced by middle class people, as with the neopagan Wiccans.  There are still witch hunts in the Third World to this day; witch killing cases have been reported in countries like Tanzania, Uganda, and Ghana, and there was a report that fifteen suspected witches had been killed in the month of February 2003 alone in Nigeria.  What both of these views have in common is the belief that witchcraft actually works, and my own view is that this belief is both harmful, in that it generates fear, and incorrect, since there is no scientific evidence backing it up.