The contemporary cultural landscape is awash with the esoteric. On social media platforms, the #WitchTok phenomenon has amassed billions of views, offering a digital coven for a new generation exploring tarot, manifestation, and neopaganism. In literature and film, the witch has been reclaimed as a symbol of feminist defiance and untamed feminine power. Yet beneath this modern aestheticisation lies a chilling historical reality. The European witch trials, particularly the ferocious persecutions that swept through Scotland between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, remain one of the most profound examples of state-sanctioned misogyny. Understanding this brutal epoch is not merely an exercise in historical reflection; it is a necessary confrontation with the mechanics of scapegoating, the weaponisation of fear, and the enduring shadows of patriarchal violence.
Across early modern Europe, an estimated 50,000 to 80,000 people were executed for the crime of witchcraft. However, Scotland’s history of witch-hunting is uniquely severe. Between the passing of the Scottish Witchcraft Act in 1563 and its ultimate repeal in 1736, approximately 4,000 individuals – the vast majority of whom were women – were accused. In a nation with a relatively small population, the per capita execution rate was staggering, estimated to be five times higher than the European average and dwarfing that of neighbouring England. The catalyst for this fervent persecution cannot be attributed to a single factor, but it can be traced directly to the apex of power: the intense paranoia of King James VI.
The Royal Paranoia that Ignited a Nation
In 1589, King James VI of Scotland sailed to Denmark to collect his bride, Anne of Denmark. The voyages were plagued by severe and unseasonal storms, forcing the royal fleet to take refuge in Norway. James, a monarch already deeply insecure about his divine right to rule and facing intense political factionalism at home, became convinced that these meteorological anomalies were not natural occurrences. Instead, he concluded they were targeted assassination attempts conjured by witches in league with the Devil. This royal obsession birthed the North Berwick witch trials (1590–1592), a landmark series of prosecutions that fundamentally altered the Scottish legal and cultural landscape.
The investigation began in the coastal town of North Berwick in East Lothian. Suspicion initially fell upon Geillis Duncan, a young maidservant whose perceived abilities in miraculous folk healing made her an immediate target for the local bailie, David Seton. Under brutal torture – including the use of the “pilliwinks” (thumbscrews) and the violent wrenching of her head with a rope – Duncan was forced to confess. She subsequently implicated over seventy others, including Agnes Sampson, a highly respected local midwife and healer, and Dr. John Fian, a schoolmaster.
The accused were transported to Edinburgh’s Old Tolbooth, where they were subjected to horrific interrogations. They were coerced into admitting to supernatural feats, such as gathering at the Auld Kirk in North Berwick to meet the Devil, and sailing the treacherous Firth of Forth in sieves to summon the tempests that threatened the King.
James VI’s personal involvement in the trials was unprecedented in European history. He actively participated as an interrogator and judge, elevating the persecution of witches from local superstitions to a matter of national security and divine mandate. His obsession culminated in the publication of Daemonologie (1597), a deeply influential theological dissertation that served as an authoritative manual for identifying, interrogating, and prosecuting witches. By codifying his personal fears into royal text, James VI provided an intellectual and legal framework that justified decades of subsequent atrocities, firmly intertwining state power with religious zealotry.
The Bureaucracy of Fear and the Patriarchy’s Blueprint
It is a common misconception that the Scottish witch trials were spontaneous eruptions of mob violence or peasant hysteria. In reality, they were highly organised, bureaucratic processes sanctioned by the state and the powerful Kirk (the Church of Scotland). This systemic nature of the persecutions is forensically examined by human rights lawyer Claire Mitchell KC and writer Zoe Venditozzi in their acclaimed book, How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy’s Guide to Silencing Women.
Mitchell and Venditozzi meticulously dismantle the romanticised myths surrounding the era, exposing the grim economic and misogynistic realities that drove the panic. The victims were rarely the mystical, spell-casting figures of modern folklore. They were overwhelmingly ordinary women who existed on the margins of society – the elderly, the impoverished, the neurodivergent, or those who simply exhibited an independence of spirit that threatened the rigid, patriarchal social order of Scottish Presbyterianism. Widows, who operated outside the immediate control of a husband, were particularly vulnerable to accusations.
The process of identifying a witch was inherently degrading and specifically designed to break the spirit. It often involved figures like the “witch pricker” or “brodder.” Men such as the notorious John Kincaid were financially incentivised to travel the country, stripping accused women bare and repeatedly piercing their flesh with long pins to locate a “Devil’s mark” – a spot purportedly impervious to pain or blood. This public humiliation, frequently conducted before all-male congregations and local magistrates, underscores the deeply psychosexual dynamics of the trials. The control, examination, and violation of the female body was presented to the public not as sadism, but as a rigorous spiritual duty.
Furthermore, historical records correct the pervasive cultural image of the “burning times.” While the bodies of the condemned were indeed ultimately burned at the stake – a practice rooted in the theological desire to obliterate the physical form, prevent demonic reanimation, and deny the soul entry to heaven – the victims in Scotland were almost always garrotted or strangled to death first. The meticulous, codified cruelty of these methods reveals a society deeply invested in the theatricality of punishment and the absolute eradication of perceived deviance.
A Colossal Historic Injustice: The Witches of Scotland Campaign
For centuries, the thousands of victims of the Scottish witch trials remained largely unacknowledged by the state that executed them. They were relegated to the status of Halloween caricatures or footnotes in local tourist brochures. However, a recent, fiercely determined movement has sought to rectify this historical amnesia. Founded in 2020 by Mitchell and Venditozzi, the Witches of Scotland campaign set out with three clear, unyielding objectives: a legal pardon for all those convicted under the 1563 Act, a formal apology from the Scottish Government, and a permanent national memorial to honour the dead.
Their rigorous advocacy yielded a historic victory on March 8, 2022, appropriately coinciding with International Women’s Day. In a powerful, meticulously researched address to the Scottish Parliament, then-First Minister Nicola Sturgeon issued a formal, posthumous apology. Sturgeon explicitly acknowledged the virulent misogyny that drove the persecutions, describing the trials as an “egregious historic injustice” and “injustice on a colossal scale.” She correctly identified that the women were targeted simply because they were poor, vulnerable, or perceived as different in a society that demanded conformity.
This profound political recognition has been accompanied by culturally significant acts of memorialisation. An official Witches of Scotland tartan has been registered with the Scottish Register of Tartans, acting as a “living memorial.” Its design is heavy with poignant symbolism: black and grey threads representing the dark era and the ashes of the pyres, red for the blood of the victims, and pink mirroring the legal tape used in historical Scottish court documents. These acts of remembrance do vastly more than honour the dead; they serve as a contemporary mechanism for processing a national trauma and acknowledging the state’s historical capacity for violence against women.
WitchTok and the Modern Digital Coven
In stark contrast to the grim historical realities of the sixteenth century, the modern era has witnessed a radical reclamation of the witch archetype. The explosive rise of #WitchTok and modern neopaganism reflects a profound shift in how the occult is perceived and practiced. For many modern practitioners, particularly millennials and Generation Z, witchcraft is no longer synonymous with demonic pacts. Instead, it serves as a language of empowerment, a highly individualised tool for self-discovery, and a conscious rejection of traditional, patriarchal religious structures that have historically marginalised women and the LGBTQ+ community.
Yet, this contemporary digital resurgence presents a complex cultural paradox. On one hand, the democratisation of spirituality through global platforms allows isolated individuals to find community, share knowledge, and cultivate agency. On the other hand, the rapid commodification of the craft – where expensive crystals, pre-packaged spell kits, and curated aesthetic signifiers are aggressively marketed by influencers – threatens to reduce a complex, historically rooted spiritual movement to a fleeting, consumerist wellness trend.
Crucially, dedicated modern practitioners are careful to draw a firm line between their practices and the historical victims of the witch panics. Today’s self-identified witches engage in nature worship, tarot divination, and psychological manifestation; the women tortured in North Berwick, Fife, and across Scotland were, by and large, devout Christians who were arbitrarily designated as agents of the Devil by a paranoid state. To conflate the modern, empowered spiritual practitioner with the historically persecuted victim risks romanticising a very real, systemic genocide. As explored in our broader analysis of cultural villains in Killer charisma: the troubling allure of the monstrous, society frequently struggles to reconcile historical atrocities with contemporary aesthetic fascinations. Similarly, the mythologisation of women’s suffering is a recurring and problematic theme in Western art, echoing the narratives discussed in The Mermaid’s Silent Sacrifice: Unmasking Fairytale Truths.
Echoes in the Present
The enduring fascination with the witch trials lies not in their distance from our modern lives, but in their terrifying relevance to them. The acclaimed author Margaret Atwood has frequently observed that the dynamics of the Salem and European witch hunts – the collective hysteria, the demand for public confessions, the rapid scapegoating of the marginalised – invariably resurface when a society experiences acute cultural, economic, or political stress.
The physical mechanisms of the sixteenth-century witch trial may appear archaic – we no longer employ thumb-screws or witch prickers – but the psychological architecture of the witch hunt remains entirely intact in the twenty-first century. Whether it is the demonisation of vulnerable immigrant communities during economic crises, the moral panics surrounding gender and bodily autonomy, or the swift, brutal mob justice routinely meted out in the digital public square, the impulse to project societal anxieties onto an identifiable “other” is a persistent, dangerous human flaw.
The successful campaign for the Witches of Scotland, and the rigorous historical unearthing performed by scholars, lawyers, and advocates today, provides a vital framework for recognizing these patterns. By dragging the realities of the witch trials out of the shadows of folklore and into the harsh light of historical fact, we are forced to confront the capacity of ordinary institutions to normalise and execute profound cruelty. The brutal legacy of the witch trials continues to haunt us, not because of lingering supernatural curses, but because the patriarchal and societal structures that enabled them have never truly been dismantled.
