Witchcraft

<p>According to Gary Jensen, a former professor at Vanderbilt and author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Path-Devil-Early-Modern/dp/0742546977" target="blank"><em>The Path of the Devil: Early Modern Witch Hunts</em></a>, the pointed cap became an easy, evocative way to signal dark magic. Witches in peaked hats started to appear on postcards from the American colonies. Legendary figures like <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=f2cyAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA169&lpg=PA169&dq=mother+goose+peaked+hat&source=bl&ots=ew8odUjJ6K&sig=-Lg5ndZj_skjKLKtZwyYxmO1hoA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=3-NeUuDNA4iE8gTjuID4Ag&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=mother%20goose%20peaked%20hat&f=false" target="blank">Mother Goose</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Befana" target="blank">La Belfana</a>—an Italian mother deranged by the death of her infant, said to fly through the night air delivering gifts to children—acquired pointy hats. During the Salem Witch Trials, witnesses reported seeing the devil: “a large black man with a <a href="http://www.loyno.edu/_{history/journal/1990-1/westwood.htm}" target="blank">high, crowned hat</a>.” Later, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ingoldsby_Legends" target="_blank">Victorian-era storybooks</a> further developed the theme.</p>

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<p>But this timeline doesn’t tell us <em>why </em>conical hats were first chosen to represent evil. Less substantiated theories invoke old stories of witches in medieval England being <a href="http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/39268/why-do-fantasy-writers-depict-pointy-hats-as-the-headgear-of-choice-for-witches" target="blank">forced to don crowns shaped like church steeples</a>. The caps were supposedly meant to draw down God’s grace in a last-ditch effort to redeem the wearers. Or perhaps the credit goes to folk artists, who as early as the 1500s used pointed hats to subtly evoke devil horns, though rarely on women. (Goya’s 1798 oil painting, “<a href="http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://uploads8.wikipaintings.org/images/francisco-goya/witches-in-the-air-1798.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/francisco-goya/witches-in-the-air-1798&h=1257&w=870&sz=119&tbnid=MOH8uG_tW7b5AM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=62&zoom=1&usg=_LdZR3Ze-hsWdNFBHwd7SOOywtI=&docid=Q42SfWfWpUYSYM&sa=X&ei=UMdeUqzBI8qDkQeg-oDoDg&ved=0CDAQ9QEwAA" target="blank">Witches in the Air</a>,” is an eerie outgrowth of this trend.)</p>

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<p>The two explanations that seem most plausible have to do with real-life marginalized groups. In his book, Jensen describes how the 1215 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Council_of_the_Lateran" target="blank">Fourth Council of the Lateran</a> required all Jews to identify themselves by wearing the Judenhat (“Jewish hat” or “horned skullcap”). The style soon became a target for Anti-Semitism. Artists painted devils muttering curses beneath Jewish crowns. In 1431, Hungarian legal codes required first-time sorcery offenders <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Path-Devil-Early-Modern/dp/0742546977" target="blank">to walk among their peers in “peaked Jews’ caps</a>.” <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=7he42ihezJcC&pg=PA136&lpg=PA136&dq=pointed+hat+woodcut&source=bl&ots=MP6Bzg92Nq&sig=qDqtyok4ddOnBnRxZWLaaaSG7ME&hl=en&sa=X&ei=nqxeUvugI4rpkAejo4H4Cg&ved=0CEwQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=pointed%20hat%20woodcut&f=false" target="blank">Medieval representations tying Jews to Satan</a> were nothing new, and by the late 13<sup>th</sup> century, Jewish attributes had soaked up enough ugly significance to tar all “unbelievers, hypocrites, heretics, pagans, and demons,” Jensen writes. So does the Wicked Witch of the West’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002121/" target="blank">iconic chapeau</a> reflect an ancient association between black magic and the Chosen People?</p>

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Witchcraft

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