Is witchcraft still a crime in the UK?

Witches have always been a bit of an endangered species, but what does the current law in the UK actually say, if anything, about witchcraft? In a country where now only a tenth of people believe in the Devil, is witchcraft still illegal? Is it even recognised in today’s legislation?

There’s always a twist in the tale, so let’s start at the beginning.

The Middle Ages

Back in the Dark Ages, witchcraft was conflated with paganism, which had come under threat by the expansion and then dominance of Christianity throughout Europe. Various rulers, including Charlemagne and Aethelstan, the first King of England, even enshrined laws against witchcraft.

A few centuries later, paganism was no longer the big problem linked to witchcraft: it was heresy (beliefs that contradict the religious orthodoxy). One notorious early example came in 1431, when Joan of Arc was put on trial for heresy by a pro-English court and by the end of her trial, she was explicitly accused of being a witch.

At the same time, our modern idea of Satan as the root of all evil (as opposed to a legion of different demons with various purposes) was taking shape, which eventually enabled the enduring connection between witchcraft and devil worship.

Organised choreographed witch-hunts

The 16th and 17th Centuries were turbulent in Europe with plague outbreaks, the Reformation, and the Thirty Years War. Witch-hunting and burning really started to kick off, especially in Germany and Scandinavia, and in 1542 the English Parliament passed the Witchcraft Act (penalty: death). It didn’t help that James I (reigned 1603-1625) was an enthusiastic demonologist who even wrote a book about witches (a book which probably inspired Shakespeare during the writing of Macbeth).

Witch-hunting in the UK reached its bloody peak during the English Civil War, when Matthew Hopkins, a Puritan who liked to call himself Witchfinder General, took it upon himself to ‘investigate’ and execute witches, popularising methods such as finding the ‘witch’s mark’, skin pricking, and the infamous ‘ducking’. The ‘witch’s mark’ was any kind of mole or beauty spot on a suspect’s body, which was supposedly a sign of communion with Satan, while skin pricking involved trying to pierce the skin with a bodkin (witches’ skin being apparently impermeable). And as for ducking, well. A witch would be ducked in water and if they floated, they were a witch. If they drowned, they weren’t a witch. Still dead. But not a witch. Interestingly enough, ducking was actually outlawed during the witch-hunts, presumably by someone who pointed out the flaw in the logic.

Like James I, Hopkins wrote a book on the subject, which became influential in the English Colonies.

Such as Massachusetts.

What happened next?

Across the British Isles, there were around 5,000 witch trials, with executions estimated between 1,500 and 2,000. In Europe as a whole, there were approximately 80,000 trials and 35,000 executions. By the early 18th Century, however, appetite for witch-hunting had thankfully dwindled and the last explicitly named Witchcraft Act of 1735 didn’t actually prosecute witches. In fact, it prosecuted ‘fraudsters’ claiming to have supernatural gifts, which is how legislation that has replaced it since (such as the Vagrancy Act 1824 and the Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951, the latter of which saw five prosecutions).

The relevant current legislation is the excitingly named Schedule 4 of the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008.

So, practising witchcraft in the UK is technically legal – just don’t shout too loud about it.