Are You A Witch?
Could you survive a typical witchcraft trial?
I have never understood why people today call any prosecution a “witch hunt.” Perhaps it is because my mind immediately jumps to dunking stools, witch cakes, and Iron Maidens.
Or maybe this idiom doesn’t really fit because it was just too easy to convict anyone of witchcraft.
In 1486, Heinrich Kramer wrote The Malleus Maleficarum or The Hammer of Witches and it became the second best-selling book in Europe (the bible was the first). It’s also the most misogynistic book in literary history. (Let’s just say there are a lot of references to male impotence being the ladies’ fault.)
Here are the cliff notes;
“What else is woman but a foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil of nature, painted with fair colors!”
While painting your face like a prostitute might indicate you were evil incarnate, most of society needed more instruction to hunt out a witch. So the Hammer served as the witch hunters’ manual to determine who was having lustful romps with Satan. Thanks largely to this one book, up to 80,000 suspected witches were rounded up and put to death in Europe from 1500 to 1660.
Today, no one has time to slog through this tome. (668 pages!) So I have devised the following simple quiz to determine if you would be put to death as a witch…
(Note: This quiz determines pre-modern witchcraft and is not a reference to the modern-day religion, Wicca.)
Are you a witch quiz
Rules: Answer the following questions and give yourself 1 point for every A answer, 2 points for every B answer, and 3 points for every C answer.
1. What is your gender?
A. Male B. Transgender, Non-binary, Intersex, or prefer not to say C. Female
2. How old are you?
A. Under 25 B. 25–40 C. Over 40
3. If you are female, are you single?
A. I am happily married. B. Men are trouble. Who needs that. C. I am widowed. At least once.
4. Do you have a birthmark, wart, mole, tattoo, or sagging breasts?
A. My body is a sacred temple free of marks, and my breasts are as perky as a Kardashian’s. B. Yes, I was born with a birthmark and a couple of moles. C. Does a third nipple count as a birthmark?
(Add an extra point if the birthmark is under your armpit or near your genitals.)
4. Have you ever eaten herbs?
A. I would never use herbs. They are not approved by the FDA. B. I occasionally sip ginseng tea or imbibe in a mint julep. C. I only get high when drinking baby’s blood at the devil’s sacrament.
5. Have you ever flown?
A. I never leave my house. My husband won’t let me. B. Yes, and I have some frequent flyer points. C. Only on my broomstick and in the dead of night.
6. What happens when you are immersed in water?
A. I sink like a rock. B. I tread water to stay afloat. C. I can swim like Michael Phelps.
7. What pets do you own?
A. I don’t own pets. They are demon spawn. B. A dog, horse, or goat C. A cat
(Add one point if the cat is black and only seems to appear when you are missing.)
8. Has a man ever gone impotent around you?
A. Hell no! All my lovers are frisky horn dogs. B. Occasionally, a suitor might lose his vigor. C. I have been known to make their manhood shrivel up and fall off. But then I save his member in a birdnest.
9. How poor are you?
A. I write for Medium. It’s raining Benjamins. B. I occasionally struggle to pay bills. C. I must go door to door, begging for a scrap of moldy bread.
10. Do you suffer from osteoporosis?
A. My spine is as straight as a prima ballerina’s. B. I get a little hunched after sitting at a desk all day. C. That hump in my back is not my hoodie.
11. Has there ever been any strange weather patterns in your village?
A. None that I have noticed. B. There has been cold weather in every village. It has caused crop failures. C. I like to conjure up Satan to destroy the crops. I am calling it “The Little Ice Age.” And no one will know it was really my fault… (insert cackle here.)
Scoring:
Less than 10 points Congratulations! You are not a witch. But don’t think you are going to survive the accusation. You first have to get through a witch dunking so we are certain. This is when your accusers tie your right thumb to your left toe while you are strapped into a chair called a dunking stool. They then lower the stool into the water to see if you float. If you sink…congratulations! You are not a witch. But you are dead. Sorry about that.
10–20 points You are probably a witch. Depending on where you live, your death will not be pretty. If you live in Europe, you will be tortured and then burned at the stake. Salem, MA…you are in for hanging, starvation, or maybe being crushed by rocks. All your property will go to the state, and your family will be disinherited.
Religion will play a part in whether you are accused of witchcraft. Protestant witches were put to death in Catholic villages. Catholic witches were put to death in Protestant villages. Either way, next time you should think twice about making pacts with the devil.
20+ points You are definitely a witch. But you are probably over forty, and that is just freaky that you have lived that long. (At least in medieval Europe.) Bonus points if you are a midwife and some of the babies you delivered did not survive. We read Rosemary’s Baby. We all know what that is about.
The good news is that you are safe if you move to Spain. There was no witch craze there because they were too busy torturing Jews. So there’s that. If you live there, you are free to hex your neighbor and cast a few love spells on that cute guy you have been eyeing. Just pack a sweater. The Little Ice Age has kicked in, and the rumor is that witches are to blame.
Hopefully, you passed this witch quiz and can go back to your day. But if you didn’t, I would avoid misogynistic men, babies, pregnant mothers, small animals, crops, infectious diseases (good luck with that), and of course…Satan.
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