Witch (archetype)

In Jungian depth psychology, the witch archetype is a common portrayal of a woman, usually old and living alone, who practices dark magic and other types of witchcraft. Witches are typically considered to be a dangerous, lurking threat. How the witch archetype is viewed typically depends on the religious and political context as well as the social context and its gender politics. Jean La Fontaine wrote that the "stereotype of evil appears not to have been closely connected to the actions of real people except when it was mobilised against the current enemies of the Church."

The origins of the witch archetype have been connected to antisemitic beliefs: in 1215, the Fourth Council of the Lateran issued an edict that all Jews must wear identifying headgear, a pointed cap known as a Judenhat. This style of hat then became associated with black magic, Satan worship, and other acts of which the Jews were accused.

In Jungian psychology, archetypes are innate, universal psychic structures that influence human thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. The witch archetype emerges as a dynamic representation of the collective unconscious, encapsulating both the light and shadow aspects of human existence. The witch symbolizes the repressed, marginalized, and misunderstood facets of the psyche, often associated with the darker aspects of femininity and the mysteries of the unconscious.

According to Jung,

The primordial image, or archetype, is a figure—be it a daemon, a human being, or a process—that constantly recurs in the course of history and appears wherever creative fantasy is freely expressed. Essentially, therefore, it is a mythological figure. When we examine these images more closely, we find that they give form to countless typical experiences of our ancestors.[...] In each of these images there is a little piece of human psychology and human fate, a remnant of the joys and sorrows that have been repeated countless times in our ancestral history.

Jung traces the term back to Philo, Irenaeus, and the Corpus Hermeticum, which associate archetypes with divinity and the creation of the world, and notes the close relationship of Platonic ideas.

According to Jungian psychologist, Erich Neumann, the Archetypal Feminine has two major axes: "M", her elementary character with focus on the maternal, and "A", her transformative character with focus on the anima or "soul image". Each axis is a continuum between positive and negative poles.

Figures such as the Archetypal Feminine embrace an "uroboric character" (like a serpent eating its own tail) or bi-valence. Thus the major archetype of the Great Mother has two major aspects, Good Mother (M+) and Terrible Mother (M−), which are in opposition and yet coexist. Neumann gives the example of the witch in the fairytale of Hansel and Gretel whose house (which symbolises the external) is made of gingerbread, but who in reality (internally) "eats little children". The other side of the coin is that the Terrible Mother, which is apparently negative, may exhibit a positive, transformative character, strengthening the ego, for instance, as in the case of Perseus who, in order to win Andromeda, must first kill the Terrible Mother, or witnessed in myths of heroic, masculine, dragon-slaying.