Talk:Witch

It would be nice if 'witch' were not so culture-centric. The concept of witch is much broader than that of the celts. Classical literature and mythology is full of people with powers - remember Hecate, after all, is Greek. Thracian witches are a commonplace of Greek and Latin literature - Horace's Satire 1 is a mockery of witch-women doing some kind of ritual in a graveyard and being scared off. --MichaelTinkler

Yeah, thats the next step, but its already better than the wicca-centric version that was there. Asian cultures have a pretty creepy version of what a witch is, so right there, "bad" connotations outway "wicca" connotatations. I would be prone to place less common versions tagged as an "other cultures" subheading in this entry since mostmostmost people would stop right there finding what they need.

Okay, I tried to make the article a bit more balanced. I separated out the wiccan meaning from the traditional meaning. I also put the European stuff into its own section so hopefully others will add sections for other cultures. --Dmerrill

How about also starting witchcraft ? A witch practices witchcraft, the article reads. That explains nothing; like a terrorist practices terror. Maybe a few spells, or a reference to Ye Olde Magick.. ~BF

The article (second paragraph especially) repeats some common myths about the "burning times". See this paper. The idea that the Catholic church persecuted witches to drive out a rival religion, and even that the Catholic church was primarily responsible for witch hunts, seems to have been shown to be a myth. - Gwalla 02:38, May 28, 2004 (UTC)

Merge[edit]

Should this be merged with witchcraft? —Ashley Y 20:01, 2004 Jun 4 (UTC)

I think so. This was almost 3 years ago now. How come it's not already been done?!! --Rebroad 20:46, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It has been done; the talk pages just weren't merged. - Jmabel | Talk 18:36, 8 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Merge again[edit]

I don't know how this article became un-merged again, but there's very little in it (perhaps nothing?) that really warrants a separate article to Witchcraft. This article merely re-covers a whole load of ground that the Witchcraft article already covers. We want to avoid repetition if at all possible, since two articles on the same subject means double the effort to maintain!

This article also is currently packed with original research and inaccuracies, like the infamous "9,000,000 witches killed" hoax, which I just fixed. I suggest we merge this back fairly quickly before too much time is wasted in cleaning it up and fleshing it out. Lets not make extra work just for the sake of it! Fuzzypeg ☻ 00:34, 8 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've read through the article more carefully, and discovered only one statement that is not adequately (or much better) covered in Witchcraft or Witch-hunt, or is not essay-type original research. No-one has commented on my suggestion, so I'm going to go ahead and merge. Fuzzypeg ☻ 06:16, 28 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Move discussion in progress[edit]

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Witch (word) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 18:17, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]