"Secret, black, and midnight hags"

The Magic Circle
John Waterhouse

Witches repulse and fascinate us. The artist John Waterhouse was incapable of painting an ugly woman, so this is as close as he gets. An attractive "witch" is casting a magic circle to purify a space where evil magic can't enter. To do this, she draws a circle on the ground with a wand while reciting a spell. Her crows are watching.

Hansel and Gretel
Arthur Rackham

They don't get any worse than the cannibal witch in the Grimms fairy tale. That story is packed with horrors-- starving children abandoned, lost in the woods, lured in by a candy house and then caged and fattened for dinner. In the end, smart brave Gretel burns the witch alive in her own stove and saves the day. Nice bedtime story.

The Witches' Sabbath
Arthur Rackham

All of Rackham's illustrations are imaginative and fantastic-- some are downright creepy.

Witches' Sabbath
Francisco Goya

Francisco Goya (1746-1828) was a liberal idealist living in a dangerous time to be one. He was an advocate of the Enlightenment that sought to replace superstition with reason and put an end to the horrible Inquisition and witch-hunting. This painting shows Satan as a goat, and it's angry satire directed at the royalists and clergy who controlled Spain.

Witches' Flight
Francisco Goya

Reason tells us people cannot fly, but Goya is showing our dark side that resists enlightenment. At least that's what art historians say about this painting. Who really knows what was going in in Goya's strange mind?

Macbeth and Banquo with the Witches
Theodore Chasserian

The classic witches of literature are the "weird sisters" in Shakespeare's Macbeth. They pull the strings from the very first lines of the play when Macbeth wanders on the heath and they give their prophesies. And chant the best spell every written!

Macbeth:
"How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags?

What is ’t you do?"

Witches:
"A deed without a name.
Double, double toil and trouble,

Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

Fillet of a fenny snake,

In the cauldron boil and bake.

Eye of newt and toe of frog,

Wool of bat and tongue of dog,

Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,

Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing,

For a charm of powerful trouble,

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble...

This way evil comes..."