In the 1600s, witches were among the most feared individuals in society. The fear and suspicion surrounding witches led to widespread belief in their ability to harm others through dark magic and witchcraft. As a result of this fear, witches were often depicted in a particular way, both in art and in the popular imagination. One common image of a witch in the 1600s is that of a woman with a long, pointed hat. The hat was often black and had a wide brim, enabling the witch to conceal her face and add to her mysterious, menacing appearance. This hat is now commonly associated with the image of a witch, though it is worth noting that historical evidence for witches wearing such hats is scarce.

Why Do Witches Wear Pointy Hats?

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 [PDF]—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.

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 13 th 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-18 th 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.

What did witches wear in the 1600s?

I nstead, she would have worn a reed or leather pair of stays over a chemise and skirt. Another 17th century aspect of the modern purple witch dress is the apron. Aprons were universal in 16th, 17th, and 18th century fashion. Everyone wore them, even if they were wealthy and never cooked a meal in their life!

Where did the witch costume come from?

Witch fashion, 1938. All Hallows’ Eve, as it’s also known, was brought to the United States by European immigrants in the 1800s and with it, the witch costume.

What is a witch’s hat called?

Pointed hat, in general. Hygrocybe conica, a fungus commonly known as the “witch’s hat”

Why do witches wear pointy shoes?

Pointed Shoes The church eventually began to associate them with sex and sin, likely because of their phallic shape, and also thought they prevented people from being able to kneel while praying. They even became known as “Satan’s Claws.”

Why do witches fly on brooms?

Flying Witches Linked to Pagan Ritual? Anthropologist Robin Skelton suggests the association between witches and brooms may have roots in a pagan fertility ritual, in which rural farmers would leap and dance astride poles, pitchforks or brooms in the light of the full moon to encourage the growth of their crops.

Why does the wicked witch have green skin?

In Maguire’s story the Witch’s name is “Elphaba” who is green due to her mother consuming “Green Miracle Elixir” while she was pregnant with her.

This hat is now commonly associated with the image of a witch, though it is worth noting that historical evidence for witches wearing such hats is scarce. In addition to the pointed hat, witches were often depicted wearing long, flowing, dark-colored robes. These robes were typically made from heavy fabrics like wool or velvet and were intended to give the witch an air of dark elegance.

Is she a witch Monty Python?

A duck floats in water [bread, apples, very small rocks, cider, gravy, cherries, mud, churches, lead]. If the woman weighs the same as a duck, then she is made of wood. The woman weighs the same as a duck. Therefore, the woman is a witch.

How did people deal with witches in the 1500s?

Burning at the stake was only one way to deal with witches in the 1500s and 1600s. Being accused of witchcraft is problematic at the best of times, but in the 1500s and 1600s — at the height of the witch hysteria, it was downright deadly. The worst of it was that you didn’t even have to be a witch to be accused, tortured and executed as one.

What kind of clothing did the 1500s wear?

1500 S English Clothing. collar and cuff ruffles were referred to as a “suit of ruffs.”. The man wears a deep-red velvet chamarre. His puffed sleeves are decorated with pearl-studded gold bands. The gown is lined with black fur, which shows at the collar and the tail of the garment.

What did the witches wear in the Salem witch trials?

Some will say it was inspired by the cone-shaped hennins women of nobility wore during the Middle Ages, while others will point to the Salem Witch Trials’ description of the devil as a tall, dark man in a “high-crowned hat .”

What kind of clothes do witches wear in real life?

However, real-life witches might say that none of this comes at all close to being accurate. As Doreen Valiente, one of the founders of Modern Wicca, wrote in the 1978 book Witchcraft for Tomorrow, “the traditional attire of witches is generally believed to be nudity.”

10 Witchy Outfits Inspired by Salem, Massachusetts

The robes were often long and reached the ground, further adding to the witch's mysterious aura. Witches in the 1600s were also often depicted wearing various types of jewelry, such as rings, pendants, and bracelets. These pieces of jewelry were often adorned with gemstones or symbols associated with witchcraft and magic. The jewelry served to enhance the witch's appearance and signify her connection to the supernatural. Furthermore, witches were often shown with a broomstick, a well-known symbol of witchcraft. It was believed that witches used their broomsticks to fly to their covens or to cast spells. The association between witches and broomsticks persists to this day, despite the lack of historical evidence for witches actually using broomsticks in this way. It is important to note that the way witches were depicted in art and popular culture during the 1600s may not accurately reflect how real witches dressed at the time. The image of the witch as a haggard old woman wearing a pointed hat and flowing robe is largely a creation of the popular imagination. In reality, accused witches came from all walks of life and their clothing would have varied just as much as that of any other person living in the 1600s. Overall, the image of the 1600s witch as depicted in art and popular culture persists to this day, with the pointed hat, flowing robes, and broomstick being iconic symbols associated with witches. While there may be some historical basis for these depictions, it is important to recognize that they do not represent the reality of witches in the 1600s..

Reviews for "The Witch's Dress: A Window into the Role of Clothing in Witch Trials"

- John - 2/5 - I was disappointed in "What did witches wear in the 1600s". The author did not provide enough detailed information about the topic. I was expecting to learn more about the fashion choices and clothing materials used by witches during that time period, but instead, the book only briefly touched on the subject. The lack of depth and substance left me unsatisfied as a reader.

- Sarah - 1/5 - "What did witches wear in the 1600s" was a complete waste of my time. The book was poorly researched and seemed more like a collection of random facts rather than a cohesive study. I was hoping to gain some insight into the historical context and symbolism behind witch clothing, but the author failed to deliver. The writing style was dry and repetitive, and I found myself struggling to stay engaged throughout. I would not recommend this book to anyone interested in learning about the fashion of witches in the 1600s.

- Michael - 2/5 - While the title of "What did witches wear in the 1600s" sounded promising, the content of the book fell short of my expectations. The information provided was vague and lacked depth. I was hoping for a more comprehensive exploration of the subject, including illustrations and examples of actual witch garments. However, the book mainly focused on general historical context and did not provide any new insights into the topic. It left me wanting for more detailed and engaging content.

Beyond the Stereotypes: Breaking Down the Clothing of 17th Century Witches