WITCHCRAFT

   a widespread system of BELIEFS and practices involving supernatural power and agencies thought to influence human affairs. It is generally distinguished from SORCERY and takes many FORMS in different CULTURES. Sometimes the conscious action of individuals is involved, on other occasions it operates without conscious effort as a result of inherited powers or alien forces. Since the ENLIGHTENMENT it has been usual to regard witchcraft as an IRRATIONAL system of beliefs belonging to a primitive past. But, anthropologists, beginning with EVANS-PRITCHARD, have shown that witchcraft involves a system of thought which once accepted follows a logical pattern. In the West popular belief in witchcraft died out during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to be revived in the late nineteenth century by GARDNER and other OCCULTISTS as a form of RITUAL MAGIC and continues today with groups like WICCA. In other parts of the world witchcraft has never died out although its manifestation is very different due to the SOCIAL setting from modern witchcraft in the West.