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Comment by tlb | Hacker News Reader

Knowing little about it, I assume most accusations of witchcraft are a way of eliminating rivals, like in business or love triangles. But elderly women aren’t the demographic you’d expect to see accused. Can someone explain the reasons (cynical or ideological) why people do this?

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The idea in medieval Germany is that when farm yields were low, they were looking to reduce the number of mouths to feed and post-childbearing women were deemed sufficiently 'worthless'. It also could be that during these times they were eating moldy grain they otherwise wouldn't, and the mold may have been ergot, with potent psychedelic/hallucinogenic properties (it's LSD, basically).

At the height of the witch panic, in the years 1450-1750, 0.19 witches were executed per year, per 100k people. The homicide rate in Norway, today, is 0.5 per 100k people, 1.1 in Sweden, 3.0 in Europe overall, and 22.4 in Brazil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

With the aid of modern medicine, the rate of cancer deaths is 158.3 per 100k per year: https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/statistics

Compared to that, witchcraft executions had a negligible impact on number of mouths to feed. Sources:

European population in year 1500: 90M - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_demography#Demographi...

Executed for witchcraft in 1450-1750: 50k (upper estimate) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch-hunt

If you're suggesting that medieval witch-hunters may have been acting irrationally, I won't argue. Anyway, this isn't my hypothesis, it travelled around for awhile talking about supposed discoveries of ergot in soil samples. The Salem witch museum has come out against it[0]. A quote:

"When considering the question “What caused the Salem witch trials,” it is important to remember there is a danger in seeking the elusive, singular, all-encompassing explanation."

IMO a big part of it is likely the desire to 'explain'/'rationalize' misfortunes in some way, that suggests a 'solution'.

[0]: https://salemwitchmuseum.com/2023/05/17/debunking-the-moldy-...

This theory is appealing to me but in some sense seems contrived to attribute to drugs the evil which already exists in people's hearts. There are plenty of "sober" societies easily capable of such madness and cruellty absent any pharmacological agents.

I would assume most witchcraft accusations are made by people who believe in witchcraft and believe that the person they're accusing is a witch.

I don't think every aspect of culture necessarily can be traced back to a pragmatic reason. Sometimes people just act out their belief systems, regardless of whether the results are helpful or detrimental to them or their communities.

Or rather, an ideology doesn't operate in service to the individuals who hold it, but in service to itself. So rather than scratching our heads about how an older women could possibly be a rival to the baker, or the town leader, it makes more sense to look at how she might be a rival to the overall belief system of the community, especially in situations where a new belief system (e.g. Christianity) has displaced an older belief system (e.g. paganism, animism, etc).

They tend to be low status outsiders, and historically witchcraft has been associated with older people and women.

Inheritance / accumulated wealth?

Like the Salem case…

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