Mollie Medine

Elizabeth Kent
English 1020 R
Unit 1
8 February 2016
I Put a Spell on You
Ms. Kent, my goal for this project is to research witchcraft from the 18th century to
modern day and learn more about it as well is how the world views it. I chose witchcraft because
I have always been drawn to it. Something about movies, music, and television shows filled with
hocus pocas grabs my attention. Also, even though I think of myself as a Christian, there is part
of me that believes witches and witchcraft maybe real to a certain extent. With that being said, I
would like to ask if opinions are acceptable in these journals, or if it needs to be strictly research?
During my basic google search I discovered witchcraft, also known as witchery or
spellcraft, is the practice of magic that can be exercised individually or with a group of people
who retain the secret knowledge of witchery. This group of witches who work together to cast
spells is typically called a coven. The concept of witches came from the Western world where
the Old Testament contained laws against it. When witchcraft gained approval from the Church,
it started to become more mainstream. Witchcraft is believed by some to be a religion,
divinatory, to be inspired by a God, or to have a medical focal point, also know as their healing
powers.
Most of the time, when we think about witches we associate them with sorcery,
paranormal, magic, superstition, necromancy, possession, shamanism, spiritualism, nature
worship, and the occult. When I found all these associations, I was not quite sure what all of the

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meant so I dug just a little deeper to gain a better understanding of what I would be dealing with
in my research. What I found was that necromancy is the practice of communicating with the
dead, and especially when someone is trying to predict the future. Shamanism is having access to
the world of benevolent, good, and malevolent, evil, spirits, and the practice of divination and
healing. Witches are also into spiritualism, which is communication with the dead. Another
interesting thing that I found during my google search was that in witchery, they worship mother
nature. They believe that nature is the center of their abilities, and without it they would be
unable to use their gifts. The last related topic that I found on witches was the occult. This
generally means hidden or secret. In Latin it is known as knowledge of the hidden, but in
English it is referred to as knowledge of the paranormal.
After about an hour into my google search, I ran across the phrase Black Magic. I have
heard these two words many times in my lifetime. When we think of Black magic, we typically
think it is just a dark magic used to do bad things. But, a clearer definition shows that those who
practice black magic are actually involving the invocation of evil spirits for evil purposes. With
that, I also read the some even believe there to be black and white witches. This leads us into one
of the few arguments around witchcraft. Besides the argument referring to the actually existence
of witches, some who believe, develop different knowledge of the black and white witch. Many
have been taught that a witch who focuses of doing bad is considered a black witch, and those
who focus on using their gifts for good are white witches. Then there is another group of people
who believe there are no black or white witches. They believe that every witch has their good
and bad days. Sometimes they will tinker with a little bit of black magic, and something could go
wrong. They try to believe that every witch will make a mistake with magic, but as long as they
grow from the experience and try to better themselves they will shed light on the world.

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Though there is a conflict between good and bad of witches, and the theory that they may
worship the devil, practicing witchery in modern day is no longer done in secret. Practicing
witchcraft long ago resulted in deaths, torture, and scapegoating. It also accumulated many years
of witch trials and witch hunts. Times have majorly changed now because some churches have
an intense belief, opposition, non-belief, or even approval of the practice. This would result in
another argument around the idea of witchery.
What I will need to do to get to the writing stage of this paper is do a more in-depth
research on my topic. Some questions that I will need to answer in my assignment are Why or
why not do people believe in witch craft?; How did it get involved in Chirstianity?; Are there
really Black and White witches?; What are the different types of witches?; How do they use
Mother Nature? I plan on answering many of these questions by reading websites specifically
concentrated of the idea of witch craft. I also plan on reading into Christians views on witchery,
and why they believe what they do. With that, I believe there will be a lot of research that is put
into this paper, probably more than I would like to admit. The good thing is I actually enjoy my
topic. I should start my research now and continue throughout the time of the project to ensure I
am receiving the greatest amount of information along with the most beneficial facts. I think the
best way to get this information would be to gather as many websites as I possibly can and go
through them to determine how reliable and relevant they are to me. Im not quite sure what
genres I would want to use for my project. I referred to assignment four, but Im still a little
confused as to what I would need those for. Do you have any suggestions that could maybe work
well with my topic? Also, I wanted to ask about picking a topic. Is witchcraft considered my
topic, or would that need to be narrowed down to something more concentrated? What I hope to
accomplish with this research paper is to gain a better understanding of witches and witchcraft,

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and to also discover how the world views this topic. Maybe I can even help decipher if witchcraft
is an actually thing or something people just made up in fairytales long ago. My classmates
should definitely be interested in this topic because this is something discussed in the real world.
If witchery turns out to be a really real thing, then who knows! Maybe even one of them
possesses a gift that could possible make a difference in their lives and others.