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Comment by thaumasiotes | Hacker News Reader

Evil spellcasters are a familiar concept in every known culture, present or attested.

I don't really think it's a stretch to use the modern word "witch" to refer to this universal concept.

i’d say “shaman” might be preferred? Again, it’s the connotations not the word. You can fairly talk about “the cultic practices of such and such religion” but it’s gonna tweak noses even if you mean the more technical sense of the word.

we don’t know anything about this grave find except that the deceased was high status, of course, so this could just as well be nothing to do with such things.

Witch can be an appropriate word, here, to denote a person of exceptionally low status. "John was a victim of witch-hunting for his political views" is a modern, ordinary usage of the word.

We tend to use more precise words in these cases, such as doxxing or cyber-bullying, or gang-stalking, etc.

The modern word "witch-hunt" is used in reference to the way people were treated during the witch trials, rather than a direct reference to the word "witch" itself. I have never heard of anybody using the word "witch" to describe the subject of a witch-hunt. In fact, the entire point of the word is to express doubt that the subject being 'hunted' is actually guilty of whatever they were accused.

I've heard it used colloquilly. "I was just like a witch back in high school, I was bullied so bad," I remember someone saying.

witch != shaman. Both are complicated concepts with culturally-specific meanings. Overlap is limited, and they're certainly not synonyms.

Yes, I agree completely.

La Tiene celts were ~animist in 200BC, so shaman seemed a reasonable modern word here. I suppose "druid" would also be OK, but I don't think scholarship has much to say about continental druidism, and what the consensus is generally is "they were probably called that and beyond that we really have no idea". (because we've long since lost anything close to a primary source, among other things)

agree. both have various definitions in different cultures to be honest, but generally they refer to the same differences between the two.

i can imagine though, that a shaman in old times Europe, could have been identified by the church as a witch. (as confused we are about the definitions today, they probably were even more so back then.)

Right, except this woman died about two centuries before the birth of jesus, so there was no Church.

Magic is a rather culturally specific idea.

Africa and Europe had a lot of cultural exchange, but Australian Aborigines and Native Americans had wildly different views. That’s not to say similarities did not exist, but the more universal the idea the more vague it must be.

Aka, Evil people with power is more universal than the ability to cast a persistent curse.

Some Native Americans absolutely have a (pre-Columbian) concept of witchcraft.

Source: my godmother is a Maya shaman.

Well, that's not something I read every day.

Could you liberally expand on this if possible? Stuff like, what does she do, what is notable about her worldview, what's her view of other worlds (in christian terms, hell/heaven, in norse terms valhalla and the world tree etc), what can we on HN learn from her. Anything else you'd wish to add.

(I've got the popol vuh, just wish I could find time to read it).

Major TIA.

It is.

http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/old-english-context-lecture-3-relig...

is fun listening.

The specific implementation, so to say, yes. But the general idea is always, that the mind and will of the spellcaster can alter reality.

Unless you're a very ancient greek, of course, in which case you're just a husk for the gods to work through and you have no will to speak of anyway.

IDK, the Hittites - the neighbours and contemporary of the Mycenaean Greeks that you referred to (Bicameralism theory, right?) certainly had their own (women-exclusive) spellcasters being different to godstalker/priests...

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