European witchcraft in the context of "Black magic"

Witchcraft is the use of magic by a person called a witch. Traditionally, "witchcraft" means the use of magic to inflict supernatural harm or misfortune on others, and this remains the most common and widespread meaning. Though the idea of witchcraft is largely imaginary, it has nevertheless served in many cultures as a way to explain the presence of evil. The belief in witches has been found throughout history in a great number of societies worldwide. Most of these societies have used protective magic or counter-magic against witchcraft, and have shunned, banished, imprisoned, physically punished or killed alleged witches. Anthropologists use the term "witchcraft" for similar beliefs about harmful occult practices in different cultures, and these societies often use the term when speaking in English.

Belief in witchcraft as malevolent magic is attested from ancient Mesopotamia, and in Europe, belief in witches traces back to classical antiquity. In medieval and early modern Europe, accused witches were usually women who were believed to have secretly used black magic (maleficium) against their own community. Usually, accusations of witchcraft were made by neighbors of accused witches, and followed from social tensions. Witches were sometimes said to have communed with demons or with the Devil, though such accusations were mainly made against perceived opponents of the Church. It was thought witchcraft could be thwarted by white magic, provided by 'cunning folk' or 'wise people'. Suspected witches were often prosecuted and punished, if found guilty or simply believed to be guilty. European witch-hunts and witch trials in the early modern period led to tens of thousands of executions. While magical healers and midwives were sometimes accused of witchcraft, they made up a minority of those accused. European belief in witchcraft gradually dwindled during and after the Age of Enlightenment.

In folklore, a werewolf (from Old English werwulf 'man-wolf'), or occasionally lycanthrope (from Ancient Greek λυκάνθρωπος 'wolf-human'), is an individual who can shapeshift into a wolf or therianthropic hybrid wolf–humanlike creature, either voluntarily or involuntarily due to a curse or other affliction. In modern fiction, especially film, transformations are often depicted as triggered by the full moon and transmitted by a bite or scratch from another werewolf. Early sources for belief in this ability or affliction, called lycanthropy, are Petronius (27–66) and Gervase of Tilbury (1150–1228).

The werewolf is a widespread concept in European folklore, existing in many variants, which are related by a common development of a Christian interpretation of underlying European folklore developed during the Middle Ages. From the early modern period, werewolf beliefs spread to the Western Hemisphere with colonialism. Belief in werewolves developed in parallel to the belief in witches during the late Middle Ages and the early modern period. Like the witchcraft trials as a whole, the trial of supposed werewolves emerged in what is now Switzerland, especially the Valais and Vaud, in the early 15th century and spread throughout Europe in the 16th, peaking in the 17th and subsiding by the 18th century.

In early modern Scotland, in between the early 16th century and the mid-18th century, judicial proceedings concerned with the crimes of witchcraft (Scottish Gaelic: buidseachd) took place as part of a series of witch trials in Early Modern Europe. In the Late Middle Ages, there were a handful of prosecutions for harm done through witchcraft, but the passing of the Witchcraft Act 1563 made witchcraft, or consulting with witches, capital crimes. The first major issue of trials under the new act were the North Berwick witch trials, beginning in 1590, in which King James VI played a major part as "victim" and investigator. He became interested in witchcraft and published a defence of witch-hunting in the Daemonologie in 1597, but he appears to have become increasingly sceptical and eventually took steps to limit prosecutions.

An estimated 4,000 to 6,000 people, mostly from the Scottish Lowlands, were tried for witchcraft in this period, a much higher rate than for neighbouring England. There were five major series of trials in 1590–91, 1597, 1628–31, 1649–50 and 1661–62. Seventy-five per cent of the accused were women. Modern estimates indicate that more than 1,500 persons were executed; most were strangled and then burned. The hunts subsided under English occupation after the Civil Wars during the period of the Commonwealth led by Oliver Cromwell in the 1650s, but returned after the Restoration in 1660, causing some alarm and leading to the Privy Council of Scotland limiting arrests, prosecutions and torture. There was also growing scepticism in the later seventeenth century, while some of the factors that may have contributed to the trials, such as economic distress, subsided. Although there were occasional local outbreaks of witch-hunting, the last recorded executions were in 1706 and the last trial in 1727. The Scottish and English parliaments merged in 1707, and the unified British parliament repealed the 1563 act in 1736.

Hyoscyameae is an Old World tribe of the subfamily Solanoideae of the flowering plant family Solanaceae. It comprises seven genera: Anisodus, Atropa, Atropanthe, Hyoscyamus, Physochlaina, Przewalskia and Scopolia. The genera Atropanthe and Przewalskia are monotypic, the first being endemic to China and the second to Tibet.

All seven genera of the tribe are poisonous and have a long tradition of use as medicinal plants, being rich in tropane alkaloids with anticholinergic properties. Furthermore, the genera Atropa, Hyoscyamus, Scopolia and Physochlaina have furnished entheogens - the first three in the historical context of European witchcraft and, more specifically, of the flying ointments employed in such practices, while the similar chemistry of the remaining genera points to the potential for entheogenic use. Six of the genera have dry, pyxidial fruits i.e. capsules dehiscing by an operculum and thus resembling a pot with a lid. The fruit of the remaining genus Atropa is a glossy, juicy berry, making Atropa species especially dangerous poisonous plants, since - unlike other Hyoscyameae - their attractive fruits may easily be mistaken for edible berries, particularly by children - as has frequently occurred in the case of Atropa belladonna, the infamous Deadly Nightshade.