The practices of a witch in the exercising of supernatural powers supposedly to conjure up, or become possessed by, spirits. The nature of these spirits and how witchcraft is presumed to be practiced has been perceived in many ways in different cultures throughout the world.
The legacy of the medieval Christian church made witchcraft satanic and synonymous with the devil, sorcery, the occult, and black magic, connecting it to the many negative cultural associations of the word “black.” This way of thinking rose from the church’s firm belief in the dualistic character of the universe: God and Satan, good and evil, heaven and hell, benediction and malediction. Given this basic assumption, it is not a big jump to suppose that, just as some people are in God’s league, there are others in league with the devil. During the Middle Ages and also into the early modern period, church courts and inquisitions used the notion of “evil powers” to intimidate people whose opinions disagreed with those of the church of Rome. Later, Christian churches of all denominations protected their own specific belief systems by persecuting those who thought differently. So witchcraft became a catch-all category for charges against dissidents, the specific accusations being the conjuring up of natural disasters (storms, floods, hail, drought and the like) and the bringing about of diseases and even plagues.