Witch Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

Trivia quiz questions with answers about witches.

Witch Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

What is Witchcraft?
A: Witchcraft or witchery broadly means the practice of and belief in magical skills and abilities exercised by solitary practitioners and groups.

The concept of witchcraft and the belief in its existence have persisted throughout what?
A: Recorded history.

They have been present or central at various times and in many diverse forms among cultures and religions worldwide, including what?
A: Both "primitive" and "highly advanced" cultures.

Scientifically, the existence of magical powers and witchcraft are generally believed to lack credence and to be unsupported by what?
A: High-quality experimental testing.

Historically, the predominant concept of witchcraft in the Western world derives from what?
A: Old Testament laws against witchcraft.

From the mid-20th century, witchcraft – sometimes called contemporary witchcraft to clearly distinguish it from older beliefs – became the name of a branch of modern what?
A: Paganism.

It is most notably practiced in the Wiccan and modern witchcraft traditions, and no longer practices in what?
A: Secrecy.

Many cultures worldwide continue to have widespread practices and cultural beliefs that are loosely translated into English as what?
A: Witchcraft.

During the Age of Colonialism, many cultures across the globe were exposed to the modern Western world via colonialism, usually accompanied and often preceded by intensive what?
A: Christian missionary activity.

Beliefs related to witchcraft and magic in these cultures were at times influenced by what?
A: The prevailing Western concepts.

What still occurs in the modern era, with killings both of victims for their supposedly magical body parts, and of suspected witchcraft practitioners?
A: Witch hunts, scape goating, and killing or shunning of suspected witches.

Suspicion of “what”, due to beliefs about illness being due to witchcraft also continues in many countries to this day?
A: Modern medicine.

HIV/AIDS and Ebola virus disease are two examples of often-lethal infectious disease epidemics whose medical care and containment has been what?
A: Severely hampered by regional beliefs in witchcraft.

Other severe medical conditions whose treatment is hampered in this way include what?
A: Tuberculosis, leprosy, epilepsy and the common severe bacterial Buruli ulcer.

Historically the witchcraft label has been applied to practices people believe do what?
A: Influence the mind, body, or property of others against their will.

Some modern commentators believe the malefic nature of witchcraft is a what?
A: A Christian projection.

The concept of a magic-worker influencing another person's body or property against their will was clearly present in many cultures, as traditions in both folk magic and religious magic have the purpose of doing what?
A: Countering malicious magic or identifying malicious magic users.

Many examples appear in early texts, such as those from where?
A: Ancient Egypt and Babylonia.

Malicious magic users can become a credible cause for what?
A: Disease, sickness in animals, bad luck, sudden death, impotence and other such misfortunes.

The folk magic used to identify or protect against malicious magic users is often what?
A: Indistinguishable from that used by the witches themselves.

The medical arts played a significant and sometimes pivotal role in what?
A: The witchcraft controversies of seventeenth century New England.

Not only were physicians and surgeons the principal professional arbiters for determining natural versus preternatural signs and symptoms of disease, they occupied what?
A: Key legislative, judicial, and ministerial roles relating to witchcraft proceedings.

How many male physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries are named in court transcripts or other contemporary source materials relating to New England witchcraft?
A: Forty six male physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries.

These practitioners served on coroners' inquests, performed autopsies, took testimony, issued writs, wrote letters, or committed people to prison, in addition to what?
A: Diagnosing and treating patients.

There has also existed in popular belief the concept of white what?
A: White witches and white witchcraft, which is strictly benevolent.

Many neopagan witches strongly identify with this concept, and profess ethical codes that prevent them from doing what?
A: Performing magic on a person without their request.

Where belief in malicious magic practices exists, such practitioners are typically forbidden by what?
A: By law as well as hated and feared by the general populace.

Probably the most widely known characteristic of a witch was the ability to do what?
A: Cast a spell, "spell" being the word used to signify the means employed to carry out a magical action.

A spell could consist of what?
A: A set of words, a formula or verse, or a ritual action, or any combination of these.

What is necromancy?
A: The practice of conjuring the spirits of the dead for divination or prophecy.

In Christianity and Islam, sorcery came to be associated with what?
A: Heresy and apostasy and to be viewed as evil.

Among the Catholics, Protestants, and secular leadership of the European Late Medieval/Early Modern period, fears about witchcraft rose to fever pitch and sometimes led to what?
A: Large-scale witch-hunts.

Throughout this time, it was increasingly believed that Christianity was engaged in an apocalyptic battle against whom?
A: The Devil and his secret army of witches, who had entered into a diabolical pact.

How many people were executed?
A: Tens or hundreds of thousands.

Others were what?
A: Imprisoned, tortured, banished, and had lands and possessions confiscated.

The majority of those accused were what?
A: Women, though in some regions the majority were men.

In early modern Scots, the word Warlock came to be used as what?
A: The male equivalent of.

The Malleus Maleficarum, (Latin for "Hammer of The Witches") was a witch-hunting manual written in 1486 by whom?
A: Two German monks, Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger.

It was used by both Catholics and Protestants for several hundred years, outlining how to do what?
A: How to identify a witch, what makes a woman more likely than a man to be a witch, how to put a witch on trial, and how to punish a witch.

The book defines a witch as what?
A: Evil and typically female.

The book became the handbook for secular courts throughout where?
A: Renaissance Europe.

The book was not used by the what?
A: The Inquisition, which even cautioned against relying on the work.

It was later officially what?
A: Condemned by the Catholic Church in 1490.

Belief in witchcraft continues to be present today in some societies and accusations of witchcraft are what?
A: The trigger of serious forms of violence, including murder.

Where are such incidents common?
A: In places such as Burkina Faso, Ghana, India, Kenya, Malawi, Nepal and Tanzania.

Accusations of witchcraft are sometimes linked to what?
A: Personal disputes, jealousy, and conflicts between neighbors or family over land or inheritance.

In Tanzania, about 500 older women are murdered each year following accusations against them of what?
A: Witchcraft or of being a witch.

In Saudi Arabia practicing witchcraft and sorcery is a crime punishable by what?
A: Death and the country has executed people for this crime in 2011, 2012 and 2014.

Wicca is now practiced as a religion of an initiatory secret society nature with positive ethical principles, organized into what?
A: Autonomous covens and led by a High Priesthood.