Faeries and witches

The Church, trying to eradicate the old pagan cults, has relentlessly “demonized” the many creatures that populated the local mythologies. These creatures that were neither (or both) good and evil were brutally associated with all the pain, grievances, sufferings that fall on us.

According to King James I in his Daemonologie, Diana was both the goddess of witches and the Queen of Faerie. Oberon was both the Kind of Faerie and a demon summoned by magicians.

Both faeries and witches were believed to create fairy rings, circles of inedible mushrooms that grow in grassy areas in North America, Europe, and Britain. According to folklore, fairy rings are , magical circles in which faeries and witches meet to sing and dance at night.
 
In a similar fashion, many similarities exist between the so called  “powers” and activities of witches and faeries :

• cast and broke spells
• rode in the Wild Hunt
• healed people
• divined the future and the location of lost objects
• danced and sang beneath the full moon
• trafficked with the Devil
• shape shifted, levitated, or caused others to fly or change shape
• stole unbaptized children
• poisoned people
• stole horses and rode them to exhaustion during the night
• avoided salt
• were repelled by iron

 
Nevertheless there are some slight differences between these two races. Both Faeries and witches are said to be shapeshifter but while witches became mice, hares, cats, gulls, or black sheep, Fairy women prefered to assume the shape of deer. A running stream could not be crossed by evil spirits, ghosts, and apparitions, but made no difference to the Fairies. Witches took the milk from cows; the Fairies took away the cows themselves, i.e. the cow in appearance remained, but its benefit (the real cow) was gone. 

More about wiitches and witchcraft

Living with faeries