ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the intellectual, moral, and legal responses and draws examples from across the globe and throughout history. It focuses on the major witch hunts of late medieval and early modern Europe. These constitute by far the most well-studied example of the vigorous condemnation magic has sometimes suffered, and they allow us to see how all the major areas of debate and contestation can interact to sometimes dire effect across an entire society. Incredulity toward magic is often thought to be a paradigmatically modern attitude. Neo-pagan Witchcraft offers a particularly rich example of dynamic, even though it exists within the modern Western world that largely denies the reality of magic. The history of magic in Europe is frequently seen as exceptional when placed in a larger global context, both because of the spectacular horrors and elaborate diabolical stereotypes of its major hunts and because of its supposed subsequent disenchantment and rejection of all forms of magic as silly superstition.
