Magical thinking is even more primitive than religious thinking. It is the connection between man and nature. It is difficult to trace the origins of magical thinking, but as far back as classical antiquity there are early documents describing women with powers to transform themselves at will and/or to transform animals.
In the life of man on Earth the boundaries between the real world and the imaginary world have never been well separated, where myths live
The human mind allows to imagine and this imagination has a strong relation with the occurrence of reality
Conscious and unconscious thought, coexist and are strongly interrelated being the constant motor of man's action
From distant times the sky is the expression of the masculine, of the fatherhood and of the superior order, while the earth is the expression of the masculine
of the feminine and is associated with maternity and fecundity
The notions of moon, night, death, are very much linked to feminine principles and are sometimes linked to malefic performances, especially since Christianity took root in Europe
Magical thinking is even more primitive than religious thinking, is the essential connection between human being and nature
In it, prayer, incantation and ritual are employed as procedures based on imitation and repetition, oriented to achieve an end for man
Since then it has been observed that the repetition of a prayer and an action has a powerful effect on the unconscious, the performance of the ritual thus becomes meaningful
It is revealed that the reiteration of the word influences the programming of the mind giving meaning to that prayer
It is difficult to go back to the origins of the magical thought, but already from the classical antiquity they are collected the first documents that speak of certain women with the ability to transform at will and transform other animals
We have to make an effort to try to understand these phenomena, in which it was sought to favor the opening of the perception through the use of substances that acted as a bridge between the logical world and the supernatural, releasing the rational structures and opening the mind to a contact with the subtle reality
An oral tradition is then initiated in which as the centuries go by, it feeds back such phenomena and perception
the same
Much later the fairy tales with a historical facet and a fantastic side are born, as an instrument of expression of fears and desires
In each story lies a very real and sincere passion
The pain of the peasant girl for not being able to make herself to be loved by the gentleman, the child beaten by the stepmother, the little girl mistreated by her older sisters, 35 00:03:24,288 --> 00:03:26,848 or the lady in the hands of the fierce male who takes pity on the beasts
It is important to take into account the power of suggestion in some communities, where the sermons of the parish priests provided an important effect in the collective suggestion
In the Ancient Age the antagonism between two types of qualities in man begins to be distinguished, the apollonian and the Dionysian
The Apollonian was based on the plastic, rational, masculine and linked with the sun and truth, on the other hand the Dionysian was associated with the ethereal, fauna, ecstasy, intoxication, music, dance and therefore became closer to the feminine
All these perceptions have been very present in the history of Europe and do not lose intensity
until the arrival of the 17th century, century of Descartes, Galileo and Newton
Where the advent of reason arises, most of the vestiges of magical thinking disappear, for the better
and for the worse
Only then we stop repressing the witches
and both the sorcerers, and the accusers of sorcery are equally impotent and become subjects of ridicule by the elite of rational thought
We are witnessing the birth of medicine as we understand it today, which has its origin in the popular empiricism that was then called witchcraft
They mock now the spirit that had agitated and inflamed the woman, the disease being the abstract and indefinite cause of all evils
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Historical context of witchcraft
XII-XV century
Christianity versus paganism and witchcraft
V-XII century
Women in the pagan world
XV - XVIII century
A more direct and magical perception of existence
The 4 elements of nature and the 4 seasons
The archetypes of feminine energies
The witches flights