A Brief History of Witches: Dancing Between the Darkness and Light
A Brief History of Witches: Dancing Between the Darkness and Light
For as long as humans have gathered around fires and whispered to the stars, there have been witches. They’ve taken many names—wise women, cunning folk, healers, midwives, herbalists, seers—but their craft has always shared one sacred thread: a deep, ancient relationship with the plants of the Earth.
Long before witches were painted with broomsticks and black cats, they walked among us as keepers of nature’s secrets. They were the women and men who could read the language of leaves, who knew which root could cure fever and which blossom could break a heart.
In every culture, from the misty forests of Europe to the deserts of North Africa and the jungles of the Americas, witches were the ones who knew how to listen to the green world—and speak its language.
Among the Muscogee and Cherokee people of the southeastern woodlands, one such witch was known as Spearfinger. Her story, like the smoke from a cedar fire, twists between darkness and light—between healer and hunter, protector and predator. And within her myth lies the oldest truth of witchcraft itself: that power drawn from nature is never entirely good nor entirely evil—it is wild.
In every leaf, a spell. In every root, a story. In every breath, the memory of the first witch who dared to listen.
Roots in the Ancient World
Long before the word witch carried the weight of fear, it was simply a title for someone who knew. The Old English wicce meant “to bend or shape,” a reference to the art of bending nature’s forces to one’s will. In this sense, witches were the first scientists, herbalists, and pharmacists of their time.
In ancient Mesopotamia, temple priestesses used herbs like myrrh, mandrake, and juniper in rituals meant to cleanse the spirit and drive away illness. Egyptian healers burned blue lotus to open the mind and heart to the divine, while Greek pharmakeia blurred the line between magic and medicine, giving us both the word pharmacy and the concept of the pharmakon—a substance that could heal or harm depending on the dose.
Every herb carried a spirit, a story, and a purpose. Rosemary for remembrance. Sage for purification. Mugwort for dreams. Henbane and belladonna—dangerous, seductive herbs—were used in potions and flying ointments that blurred the line between the physical and the astral.
To the ancients, these were not weeds. They were portals.
The Celts gathered mugwort beneath the full moon to open prophetic dreams. African root workers called upon ancestor spirits through tobacco and kola nut. And in the Americas, shamans burned sage, sweetgrass, and cedar to cleanse the spirit and summon clarity.
Every herb carried both medicine and mystery.
Witches understood that rosemary could protect the home, that lavender soothed sorrow, that belladonna—beautiful but deadly—could open the gates of vision. To know these secrets was to hold the power of life and death in one’s hands.
It was the same double-edged knowledge embodied in the legend of Spearfinger.
Spearfinger: The Stone Witch of the Mountains
Spearfinger scuplture by Tis Mal Crow
The Cherokee called her Uʻtlûñ’ta, “the one with the spear finger.” The Muscogee people knew her too—a witch with skin of unbreakable stone, a long obsidian talon on her right hand, and a gift both divine and monstrous. She roamed the fog-drenched peaks of the Smoky Mountains, her footsteps shaking the trees.
In many stories, she started as a medicine woman and a midwife, helping people with her deep herbal wisdom. But eventually, she was overwhelmed by her own power and chose immortality over humility. It’s said she knew the healing uses of every mountain herb—goldenseal, bloodroot, and ginseng—but twisted that wisdom for her own dark hunger. Her desire for power pushed her to the dark side, and she became the brutal, cunning, and nearly undefeatable hunter of children.
Spearfinger could take any form she desired—often appearing as a kindly grandmother, her voice gentle, her basket filled with herbs. She would approach children and weary travelers, offering to heal their wounds or soothe their pain with plants she gathered from the forest. But when they came close, she would strike with her stone finger and steal from them the very thing that gave them life—their livers, which she consumed to maintain her power.
Her touch could mend flesh, yet it could also take it away.
In this way, Spearfinger was the mirror of every witch who ever lived: a being who understood nature so deeply that she became both its healer and its terror.
The Witch’s Dilemma: To Heal or to Bewitch
In medieval Europe, a village healer with a basket of herbs wasn’t so different from Spearfinger—someone both needed and feared. If a child recovered from illness, the woman was praised. If the child died, she was accused of witchcraft.
Every herb carried a spirit, a story, and a purpose. Rosemary for remembrance. Sage for purification. Mugwort for dreams. Henbane and belladonna—dangerous, seductive herbs—were used in potions and flying ointments that blurred the line between the physical and the astral. Plants embodied a similar dichotomy. The same plants that saved lives could also end them.
Henbane, aconite, belladonna—each had a sacred purpose in the old pharmacopeia. A pinch to relieve pain, a draught to send one into dreams, a touch too much to stop the heart.
The witch was therefore not an embodiment of evil, but of ambiguity.
She reminded people that nature is untamable—that creation and destruction grow from the same root. Just as Spearfinger’s sharp nail could cut away sickness or pierce the skin, so too did every herb carry dual meanings: balm and bane, medicine and magic.
This raw wiccan power drove people into madness. By the 14th and 15th centuries, Europe’s paranoia reached fever pitch. The Malleus Maleficarum, a grim manual published in 1487, declared witches to be enemies of God and advised that they be tortured and burned. Many of those executed were herbal healers—the “cunning folk” who kept alive the old knowledge of plants.
The Green Magic of Herbs
Witches were masters of the garden—not just for beauty, but for power. Each plant carried energetic properties tied to both physical and metaphysical effects. A witch’s apothecary was a living library.
- Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) burned for dreams and second sight, a plant said to repel dark spirits.
- Mandrake, with its human-shaped root, was prized for its narcotic and aphrodisiac powers. It was used in flying ointments and fertility charms.
- Belladonna (literally “beautiful woman”) dilated the eyes and, in small doses, induced trancelike states that brought visions to the brave and madness to the reckless.
- Rosemary was burned to purify and protect against illness, for memory, for love, for remembrance of the dead.
- Yarrow healed wounds and was worn by warriors for courage , to stop bleeding and to strengthen courage.
- Lavender calmed the mind, soothed nightmares, and attracted loving energy.
- Nettle, the sting of which drives away stagnation, was used in banishing spells and to restore vitality.
The witch’s use of herbs was as much symbolic as medicinal. A healing potion might also serve as a love charm. A protection spell might also cleanse a fever. Witchcraft blurred the lines between magic and medicine because, in truth, the two were never separate.
To the witch, herbs were not ingredients—they were spirits. Each had to be spoken to, harvested with intention, and given an offering in return.
Spearfinger herself, legend says, could command the plants of the mountains; even the leaves trembled at her passing. Yet those same leaves would later betray her.
The Fall of the Stone Witch
According to Muscogee and Cherokee tradition, the people eventually united against Spearfinger. They prayed to the birds and the animals for guidance. The Chickadee, the bird of truth, revealed her weakness: beneath her stone heart was one small spot of flesh. When the warriors struck there with sharpened obsidian arrows, the witch fell. Her stone body shattered across the mountains, scattering pieces of her power into the earth.
Some say those shards became the shining mica that still glimmers in the soil of the Southern Appalachians—a reminder that magic never truly dies. It only changes form.
Even in defeat, Spearfinger left behind her legacy: the dual knowledge that to heal, one must first understand harm. To hold the secrets of nature is to walk a narrow path between benevolence and temptation.
The Witch Reborn
By the 19th and 20th centuries, the witch was reborn—not as a villain, but as a symbol of feminine power and rebellion against dogma. Folklorists began to uncover the old herbal texts, and the rise of modern paganism and Wicca reclaimed witchcraft as a celebration of the Earth.
Today, witchcraft has become both personal and planetary. The resurgence of herbalism, sustainable living, and spiritual ecology all echo the old ways. The witch’s garden has returned in the form of herbal apothecaries, organic farms, and moonlit self-care rituals.
We burn sage not out of fear, but to reconnect with the ancient rhythm of breath and earth. We brew chamomile tea for calm, lavender for love, mugwort for dreams—each act a small enchantment, a remembrance of who we are.
Yet every time we gather herbs under the moon, every time we brew a potion or burn a bundle of plants in prayer, we invoke the same paradox: that the Earth’s medicine can both mend and mesmerize.
The old witch of the mountain teaches us not to fear that power, but to respect it—to remember that balance is the heart of all magic.
The Magic in the Medicine
To the modern witch—or anyone who listens to the whispers of nature—herbs are more than just plants. They are teachers. Each leaf and root carries a memory of our shared evolution, a record of the ancient pact between human and earth.
When we sip tea to soothe our nerves, when we light incense to clear a room, when we grow basil in our window to invite abundance—we are practicing a kind of everyday magic. The same magic the old witches knew: that healing and bewitching are two sides of the same leaf.
The history of witches is, in truth, the history of humanity’s intimacy with the natural world.
And while the cauldrons and broomsticks may have become symbols, the deeper lesson endures—that within the quiet, green language of herbs lies a power older than time itself.
Because in the end, the story of witches is not about evil or virtue. It’s about relationship—our eternal dance with the living world, where every leaf hides both poison and promise.
The Power of Incantations
Every story about witches has one thing in common — the incantations to conjure the spirits. Here are some of the most iconic spells of all time.
1. Macbeth’s Witches — Shakespeare (1606)
“Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.”
This spell is part of a ritual to summon apparitions and foretell Macbeth’s fate — a blend of herbal alchemy, blood, and prophetic poetry.
“Thither, thither, over rock and river,
Through the dark and through the deep,
By root and leaf and blood we leap.”
It’s a mythical expression of spirit flight — traveling astrally via herbs. Medieval “testimonies” (often fabricated under torture) described witches anointing themselves with “flying ointment” made from belladonna, henbane, and mandrake.
“She mixed the potion, stirred with honey sweet,
And when they drank, she waved her wand and spoke the spell complete.”
The ancient Greek enchantress Circe used herbs and charms to transform men into swine. Her power came from pharmakeia — sacred plant alchemy.
“Night’s dark daughters, stars of heaven,
Witness now the power I weave.”
The sorceress Medea renewed her father-in-law’s youth by boiling herbs and chanting. It’s one of the first written examples of herbal resurrection magic.
“A worm came crawling, it killed nothing.
For Woden took nine glorious twigs,
He smote the serpent that it flew apart into nine parts.”
One of the earliest recorded herbal spells, it calls upon both herbs and gods for healing — blending pagan medicine and incantation.
“Glass to catch the devil’s eye,
Twist of thread, and herbs to tie.”
Used to trap negative energy in a glass orb filled with herbs like basil, sage, and rue.
“By root and leaf, by thorn and tree,
The spirit of the green guard me.”
A common British folk charm for traveling safely between the physical and spiritual realms — the “hedge” is the boundary between worlds.
8. The Wiccan Rede & Circle Casting
“In perfect love and perfect trust,
The circle is cast, the spell is just.”
A modern Wiccan opening ritual invoking harmony, balance, and consent with the forces of nature.
9. Spearfinger’s Song
And then we have Spearfinger. Although there are no written accounts of her spells or incantation, perhaps it went something like this:
By bone and leaf, by blood and rain,
Awaken, Earth, remember my name.Hand of healer, hand of blade,
I stir the dark where herbs are made.Spear of finger, stone of skin,
I call the wild to rise within.Cedar smoke and yarrow flame,
Bind the wound and bear the pain.Ginseng heart and mandrake breath,
Give me life and lend me death.What’s cut shall heal, what’s healed shall hunger,
The mountain stirs, her roots grow stronger.By moon’s soft tongue and river’s cry,
I heal, I take, I never die.So hums the leaf, so bleeds the vine—
The witch, the wound, the Earth—are mine.
Anthony Bear
Founder of Bear Blend
Anthony Bear is the originator and founder of Bear Blend. After exploring herbs for many years, he is now dedicated to upholding the ancient traditions of herbs and herbal awareness by educating others about the uses of plant medicines and other spiritual technologies. Follow him on Instagram for more valuable content.
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