Witchcraft

It is time to acquire a new dictionary. My seventh edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary (1984) says that a witch doctor is a ‘tribal magician of primitive people’. ‘Witchcraft’, it says, perhaps more accurately, is sorcery, or the use of magic.

In any event, the Witchcraft Suppression Act 1957 aims at exactly that, and it has some rather interesting provisions. It seems that being called a wizard, for example, was a pretty serious thing in 1957.

It is a criminal offence¹ to do any of the following:

• impute to any other person the causing, by supernatural means, of any disease in, or injury or damage to any person or thing;²
• name or indicate any other person as a wizard;³
• impute the cause of death of, or injury or grief to, or disease in, damage to or disappearance of any person or thing to another person, but in circumstances indicating that you profess or pretend to use any supernatural power, witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment or conjuration;⁴
• employ or solicit any witchdoctor, witch-finder or any other person to name or indicate any person as a wizard;⁵
• profess a knowledge of witchcraft, or the use of charms;⁶
• advise any person how to bewitch, injure or damage any person or thing;⁷
• supply any person with any pretended means of witchcraft;⁸
• on the advice of a witchdoctor, witch-finder or other person (or on the ground of any pretended knowledge of witchcraft) use or cause to be put into operation any means or process which (in accordance with such advice or his own belief) is calculated to injure or damage any person or thing;⁹
• for gain, pretend to exercise or use any supernatural power, witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment or spell;¹⁰
• for gain, undertake to tell fortunes;¹¹ and
• pretend, from skill in or knowledge of any occult science, to discover where and in what manner anything supposed to have been stolen or lost may be found.¹²