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Why Do Witches Wear Pointy Heats?

Ava Gardner

Artykuł - źródło: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2013/10/17/the_history_of_the_witch_s_hat_origins_of

_its_pointy_design.html

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Thanks in part to The Wizard of Oz, the word witch has become code for a certain

type of dress. Flowing black robes. Black boots. Accessorize as you wish with a

broom or a grassy complexion, but on pain of expulsion from the coven, do not

forget the peaked, black, wide-brimmed hat.

The hat makes the witch, to paraphrase Mark Twain. And yet the story of this

particular hat—where it originated, and how it took on its demonic resonance

—is a murky one. That’s largely because history is full of pointy hats, from the

tapering hennins favored by medieval noblewomen to the soft Phrygian caps

adopted by French revolutionaries (and Smurfs). There are simply too many

varieties of pointy hat to describe in a single blog post, more possible

antecedents than can be ruled out. But weirdly, one of the earliest

incarnations of the conical headpiece is also one of the most familiar:

Three female mummies uncovered in the Chinese region of Subeshi

—known as the “witches of Subeshi”—are famous for covering their hair

with large funnel-shaped contraptions of black felt. They look like aunts in

a fourth century B.C. outtake from Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

Experts aren’t sure exactly when pointed lids became associated with sorcery.

Medieval depictions of witches often show them nude and bare-headed, their

long hair mingling with flames and smoke. Woodcuts from the 1600s

occasionally outfitted spell-casters in common bonnets. It wasn’t until

the 1710s and 1720s that children’s chapbooks in England began illustrating

supernatural tales with crones in peaked hats. Fueled by the popularity of

these “penny merriments,” the stereotype caught on quickly. Western European

artists began to modify images of witches from the Middle Ages, lengthening

the blunt tips of their caps into devilish spikes.

According to Gary Jensen, a former professor at Vanderbilt and author of The

Path of the Devil: Early Modern Witch Hunts, 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 Mother Goose

and La Belfana—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 high, crowned hat.” Later, Victorian-era storybooks further

developed the theme.

Veronica Lake

But this timeline doesn’t tell us why conical hats were first chosen to

represent evil. Less substantiated theories invoke old stories of witches in

medieval England being forced to don crowns shaped like church steeples.

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, “Witches in the Air,” is an eerie

outgrowth of this trend.)

The two explanations that seem most plausible have to do with real-life

marginalized groups. In his book, Jensen describes how the 1215 Fourth

Council of the Lateran 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 to walk among their peers in “peaked Jews’ caps.” Medieval

representations tying Jews to Satan were nothing new, and by the late

13th 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 iconic chapeau reflect an

ancient association between black magic and the Chosen People?

A second theory holds that the pairing of witches and peaked hats flows

from anti-Quaker prejudice. A minority sect in colonial America, the Quakers

were thought to consort with devils and dabble in witchcraft. Puritan backlash

against the community was cresting in the mid-18th century, at around the

same time that the figure of the cone-headed spell-weaver began to insinuate

herself into American folklore. There’s just one problem with this hypothesis:

Quakers didn’t wear pointed hats. But the theory may yet hold water. Quaker

headgear was itself the locus of squall and controversy.

The movement’s founder, George Fox, famously refused to doff his hat in the

presence of Cromwell’s ministers. "When the Lord sent me forth into the world

He forbade me to put off my hat to any, high or low,” Fox told the magistrates.

(Why? Because such “hat-honour” was “invented by men in the fall and in the

alienation from God.”)

Fox endured three separate prison stays for his disrespect; in the colonies,

Friends honored his example by keeping their hair covered at all times. In 1876,

an American magazine called Littell’s Living Age hailed the Quaker hat as “the

war-standard of this quaint army of non-fighters.” Colonial Puritans, though,

were not so kind, at times using the hats as an excuse to prosecute their

religious rivals. Jensen suspects that it was a short hop from the Quaker

cap as a symbol of doctrinal insubordination to the witch’s hat as an emblem

of infernal craft.

Of course, most modern people who identify as witches don’t actually wear

the stereotypical witch’s hat. (They don’t have to pull on flowing garments

either, although certain rituals are associated with color-coded robes.) Still,

the peaked cap holds special significance for some Wiccans, who see it as a

visual representation of the Cone of Power they draw on for their spells.

Vocabulary:

robe - szata broom - miotła grassy complexion - trawiasta cera ( w kolorze zielonym :)) expulsion - wydalenie coven - sabat czarownic peaked - spiczasty wide-brimmed hat - kapelusz z szerokim rondem murky - mętny, podejrzany tapering hennins - zwężające się nakrycie głowy noblewomen - szlachcianki pointy hat - spiczasty kapelusz antecedents - przodkowie, poprzednicy incarnation - ucieleśnienie conical - stożkowy funnel - lejek contraption - ustrojstwo black felt - czarny filc lid - pokrywka sorcery - czarnoksięstwo mingle - wtopić się w tłum, wmieszać woodcuts - drzeworyty spell casters - te, które rzucają urok bonnet - czepek chapbook - mała książeczka zawierająca wiersze, ballady, opowieści, itp - popularne od 16 wieku crones - stare, brzydkie kobiety penny merriments - tanie uciechy deranged by - obłąkany substantiate - popierać faktami don - przywdziać steeple - iglica redeem - zrekompensować outgrowth - pochodna plausible - wiarygodny mutter - mamrotać curse - klątwa offender - przestępca soak up - wchłaniać tar - smoła Wicked Witch of the West - czarownica z książki Czarnoksiężnik z Krainy Oz, L.F. Bauma chapeau - kapelusz the Chosen People - Naród Wybrany prejudice - uprzedzenie consort - zadawać się dabble - zajmować się czyms lekko backlash - gwałtowna reakcja crest - grzbiet, szczyt cone - stożek insinuate - sugerować headgear - nakrycie głowy locus - miejsce squall - szkwał, wrzask doff - uchylić (kapelusza) quaint - uroczy, osobliwy prosecute - wnosić sprawę/ oskarżenie hop - skoczyć infernal craft - piekielne rzemiosło garments - ubrania