What are the differences between religion, magic and witchcraft?
Answers
Answer:
Explanation:
WITCHCRAFT
We all need to blame someone else for calamities and tragedies – never ourselves. So when one of your cows dies, and a neighbour is on bad terms with you, clearly she has put a spell on your cow, even more clearly if, in the words of Discoveries of Witchcraft published in 1584, the neighbour is an old woman who is ‘lame, blear-eyed, pale, foul and full of wrinkles’. If she has a cat to keep her company, the case is even stronger. All witches have ‘familiars’ (demonic creatures that appeared in the form of animals). There were countless old women who were falsely accused of being witches, on no stronger evidence than that. Essex was particularly full of witches; or was it just that the county enjoyed the services of a particularly energetic witch-hunter? Witches were not all women. Lurid tales were told in whispers, of covens of men and women meeting at midnight, and sexual intercourse with the Devil, and wild flights … It has been suggested that a certain ointment popular in witchcraft circles contained mercury, which could induce a sensation of flying.
MAGIC
Horror at one remove has always been enjoyable. Elizabethan ballads catered for that taste as surely as the latest horror movie of our days. Even the wisest had some lingering belief in magic, whether evil or benevolent. Elizabeth, that daughter of the Renaissance, gave the Earl of Essex, whom she loved, a magic ring to protect him from the dangers of travel. And it was well known that a piece of unicorn’s horn would protect against poison.
The Elizabethans’ belief in some ‘medical’ practices can only be described as superstitious. Foremost in this was the theory of the Weapon Salve. Suppose you have suffered a sword wound: you must somehow obtain that very weapon – how, is not explained – and anoint that sword with a special salve obtainable at vast expense only from authorized sources. Forget about the wound itself. The anointing of the sword will ensure that the wound that it had inflicted heals.
RELIGION
When Elizabeth came to the throne, England had experienced a series of religious convulsions. It was vital for her to calm everyone down, assuring them that she cared, while avoiding violent reactions. This was a path that only a brilliant tactician could tread successfully.
What her own religious convictions were is impossible to tell. The Catholics held passionately to the belief in transubstantiation: that the bread and wine at Mass were truly Christ’s body and blood. What did she believe? Elizabeth brilliantly circumnavigated this –
His was the word that spike it,
He took the bread and brake it,
And what that word did make it,
That I believe, and take it.
As ruler, she ‘did not seek to make windows into men’s souls’. So as long as you conformed, decently and publicly, you could privately believe what you liked.
A useful guide to conformity was published as the Book of Common Prayer, slightly modified from the version first issued in the reign of Edward VI. There were 39 Articles of Religion, some more obscure than others. Transubstantiation was dismissed as ‘repugnant to the plain words of scripture … and hath given rise to many superstitions’. Superstition was just what the new Church of England wanted to sweep away. With it went ‘Purgatory, Pardons, worshipping and adoration as well of Images and Repiques, and also invocation of saints’. To someone born before Henry VIII cut loose from Rome in 1531, who had survived the brief nightmare of Edward’s extreme Protestantism and who had welcomed the return to Rome under Mary Tudor, this wholesale jettisoning of familiar rites, relics and saints must have been traumatic indeed. And the bare white walls of the parish church were little comfort, compared to the parables and saints that had colourfully enriched a Catholic church. The only colour to escape the whitewashing brush was the stained glass in the windows, which would have been too expensive to replace.
Once your duty had been done in your parish church, it might be amusing to go along to St Paul’s Cathedral and listen to the sermons at Paul’s Cross. They were given by celebrities, and attracted visitors and tourists from far and near. They were sometimes on the long side, over two hours, but it was perfectly decent to spend the time in assessing the current fashions, or discussing business deals. They were a useful source of current news, as well as spiritual uplift. Sometimes there were several thousand people there, tightly packed together, and, as one foreign tourist observed, smelling.