Witchcraft’s antihierarchical animism appealed to women excluded from elite magic systems

Evidence

The world of the witches was antihierarchical and everywhere infused with spirits. Every natural object, every animal, every tree contained a spirit whom the witch could summon, utilize, or commune with at will. Witches were thought to make individual pacts with the devil or a demon, usually through an animal familiar. They did not depend on the complicated hierarchical mechanisms of pneuma, or spiritus, to draw down celestial influences, as did the Neoplatonic magician. Nor did they depend on hierarchies of demons, as did a magus such as Agrippa. The immediacy of individual relationships with a spirit or demon and the possibility of revenge and control may account for the popularity of witchcraft among oppressed women. No hierarchies stood between the witch and the object of her will. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 575

Categorization

• XREF: Builds directly on the earlier chapters’ contrast between elite Neoplatonic natural magic (hierarchical, aristocratic, male) and the egalitarian animism of the powerless — ties to Merchant’s claim that cosmology maps social hierarchy.