It is likely there have nearly always been witches in nearly all societies.
Think of Medea, Jason's wife.
Where appeal is made to dark powers and the black arts are practiced, there is witchcraft or something like enough.
Papa Doc held down his people in terror of the tonton macoot, yes.
But also in terror of himself, the evil master of voodoo sorcery.
It is only enlightened boobs, generally lefties and liberals like Arthur Miller, who insist with bland inconsequence that there are no witches because there is no Satan, there are neither devils nor demons, and there are no dark gods.
Even Mencken, notorious iconoclast and independent mind, bought that line, since no one has ever advanced any other reason for the claim, egregiously false but that he endorsed, that there are not and never have been witches.
As if to say there are no priests because there are no gods.
Like priests, witches live on superstition.
Unlike them - well, unlike most priests of most religions - witches live by terror of themselves and awful faith in their abilities to harm others.
They pander to and encourage malice and terrify people into obedience.
What makes their viciousness tolerable is that a man who has paid a witch to curse his neighbor has not paid a hit man to kill him.
And that is all.
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