Conclusion

Abstract

Taking the approach of trying to determine what was real about early modern witchcraft and magic has revealed a number of significant new insights. To begin with, maleficium, the aspect of witchcraft of most concern to early modern commoners, was real. Not every supposed harm inflicted by every supposed witch was real, of course, for some forms of maleficium, like weather magic, were, as far as we can tell, impossible, and since much maleficium was supposed to be perpetrated through occult, or hidden, channels, it was easy for fears, angers, jealousies, and rivalries to generate unfounded accusations. However, the great bulk of alleged maleficium concerned illness and other harm to people and animals, and not only did it involve a number of surreptitious physical activities whose potency has never been in question (although their significance has generally been minimized), but also it involved a combination of overt or subliminal communication of hostility and psychophysical vulnerability to stress that constituted a much more harmful form of interpersonal conflict than has been conventionally appreciated (see Chapter 1). Particularly noteworthy are the facts that, on the one hand, this interpersonal influence can be triggered by unconscious as well as conscious expressions of anger and by subtle as well as overt threat displays, and, on the other hand, it does not depend for its effect on some sort of symbolic somaticization, or even belief in its power, in order to work, although of course belief can intensify the effect and symbolic somaticizations do occur. Instead, it is an effect that can occur spontaneously, when one person’s impulsive expression of anger triggers the stress response in another, although it can of course also be triggered consciously, with the explicit hope that an angry display will cause injury.