This girl would probably not be so obvious if she lived in Nepal or Nigeria. (c)iStockphoto/AlexanderNovikov

I’ve always felt kind of bad for witches, having been a longstanding scapegoat for society’s ills and all. That and having to customarily suffer the indignity of dying at the hands of superstitious hicks. They’ve found themselves on the wrong end of land grabs and wide swings to new worldviews. Take the emergence of science. The nascent medical community decided it couldn’t stave off the competition from traditional healers for the few centuries until it reached germ theory and bam! Death to witches. What’s that you say? Oh, you’re a pagan? You likey the goddess of spring do you? Well, we’re organizing this here religion, see, and you might want to get on board. Bam! Death to witches. A couple dozen people end up hallucinating from moldy wheat in Massachusetts and bam! Death to witches.  Historically, pretty much whenever there’s not an ethnic minority handy, witches bear the brunt for society’s ills. Homogeneity, understandably, makes witches nervous.

What’s noteworthy about witches is that it’s us “straights” who lay our “hang ups” on them; there is no such thing as witches. Witches are midwives who competed with early physicians. Witches are folk healers who crossed a government official. Witches are Middle Age acid freaks who liked to trip on datura and hensbane (that’ll make you think you’re flying on a broomstick for sure). Witches are enthusiastic adherents of obscure religions who take themselves too seriously. Even the Wicca are really just uberhippies who throw a superfluous k on the end of magic and leave gifts for woodland gods. Perhaps H.P. Lovecraft suggested the most awesome interpretation of witchcraft in his short story “Dreams in the Witch House”: that magic is merely an advanced grasp of quantum mechanics.

None of this reasoning has ever stopped us straights from killing witches by the scores, hundreds and thousands. Witches are conjured in times when reason has left us in the face of a failure beyond our control within the modern civilization we’ve made. Witches come out when we’re gnawed by the sense that we’ve strayed too far into modernity. Like a global economic recession, for example.

Say we’re in the middle of a global economic recession right now! And wouldn’t you know it, witches are being killed around the world! Witches of the past didn’t have the UN to step in on their behalf, however. In addition to conflict resolution, armed peacekeeping, hammering out climate treaties and scrambling to prevent Iran from getting the bomb, the United Nations is taking up the cause of witch protection, according to a Reuters article. (Thanks for the link, Roxxx.) In nations as disparate as South Africa, India and Papua New Guinea women and children are being murdered on the basis that they are witches. The children in particular are suffering hardships, as they are going from simply homeless and ostracized to being murdered as authorities begin to turn their attention to issue and their families fear they will have to take the children back in. The UN councils examining the situation believe these witch hunts are indeed based in part on the hard times created by the economic recession. Crazy.

How odd is it to think that a couple in Florida who accepted a risky loan in 2005 and the hyper zealous lender who sold it to them might have lead to the death of a child under the auspices he was witch in Nepal in 2009?

More on HowStuffWorks.com:
How Witchcraft Works
Were the American colonists drugged during the Salem witchcraft trials?
How the United Nations Works

Oh! Also, Chuck just reminded me to mention the Stuff You Should Know Kiva.org team. We’ve established a team to provide loans in increments as small as $25 to entrepreneurs in developing countries. Check out http://kiva.org/team/stuffyoushouldknow for info and to join.