Tradition on Witches

[Ail]

Recently in the thread about Monsters as Metaphors, people spoke about Gluttony as an excellent 'meaning' for witches. At the same time, my suggestion that they were connected to free-will and a certain liberation were contest.

I thought about this and it occurred to me that we may come from countries with different traditions regarding witches. For me, Gluttony is not an obvious choice because there is nothing in the Portuguese tradition about witches that suggests that. But during that reflection I understood how much the Cauldron is important for the witch in other cultures and how the fairy tale of Hansel & Gretel has the witch wanting to eat them. So, in this thread, I'd like to compare charactersitics of witches in differnet countries.

About my own, Portugal, I can not go far back. I never knew much about old traditions of monsters or how they were centuries ago, but I heard some reports of witches as they are believed in even now (like, first account reports that I've heard).

So, the witch here is mainly feared because:
- she casts bad luck
- she wither crops and sours wine
- she steals food
- if she can not kill from afar, at least she can cause you an accident
- she makes men (and only men, from what I've seen) go mad or crazy or behave unappropriately (according to moral)
- she has dealings with the devil and does not respect the dead
- she dries wombs
- she takes a form she wishes and can even transform into an animal to steal, but when revealed (this is done by piercing her with a spiked iron used to drive the oxen) she appears as a naked woman.

So, here is what I can recall about witches around these parts. Tell me if they're very different over there.

Also, a note. In the DoDread there has appeared a Bruja, which is not Evil aligned. Does any one know where this one has come from? Bruja is simply the spanish word (Bruxa in Portuguese) for Witch, so she's as evil as her English-speaking sisters . Why is she portrayed as a kind of beneficial character?

Thanks.

Ail

[Nathan of the FoS]

Eh?

I believe I was the first to connect hags and gluttony, and DeepShadow seconded that idea. I think a large part of the confusion is that "hag" and "witch" are Not The Same Thing. (I'm going to use only the most common folkloric definitions here--both words are most commonly now in an entirely figurative sense for a woman you don't like. )

Hags are creatures like Baba Yaga, Black Annie and Jenny Greenteeth--inhuman monsters with a passing resemblance to human woman, but that are actually a sort of ogre. Some (Baba Yaga) are excellent magicians, but the chief thing about them is that they eat people.

Hence, Gluttony.


"Witches" (and the standard male counterpart, "warlock") are humans who associate themselves with evil spirits and use that association to do other people harm and gratify their own selfish desires (Faust is probably the most pertinent example from literature).

BTW: "A spiked iron used to drive the oxen"--the word you're looking for is "goad".

The whole "bruja" thing is a way to make another Ravenloft monster that is like yet unlike the original; just like goblyn/goblin, vampyre/vampire, and so forth. It's not that the writers of Ravenloft thought that there was a great tradition of "good" hags/witches in Iberia.

[Ail]

Thanks for the difference. Up to now, I really thought Hag and Witch were the same thing

Why, I'd always translate them with the same word (actually, I still will There's not that many words of current use regarding monsters in Portuguese).

Thanks a lot then
And thanks a lot for the 'goad' too

Alex

[Ail]

Considering my confusion above, that begs another question, then: if I'm not going to use Hags for 'witches', since they're not the same thing after all, what could I use? If I recall, VR's guide about witches was mainly about Hala's good or neutral witches.
Is it the same thing, only with reversed alignments?

Ail

[Nathan of the FoS]

Well, VRG to Witches (is it Witches, or Hags?...sigh...I should know this) confuses the issue by talking about both hags and Halan witches. The reason for the perceived similarity is that both Halan witches and hags use "weave" magic.

Halan witches are humans who worship Hala and use weave magic; they are intended to resemble the modern Wiccan witches, not the medieval Satanist witches.

Hags are ogre-like creatures (that are born indistinguishable from humans and mature into their monstrous powers, which contributes further to the confusion) who use weave magic, and are based on the hags of folklore (the aforementioned Baba Yaga et al.).