REPREZENTAREA VRĂJITORULUI/ VRACIULUI ȘI A ÎNȚELEPTULUI ÎN LITERATURĂ ȘI SOCIETATE
THE REPRESENTATION OF WITCH(DOCTOR) AND SAGE IN LITERATURE AND SOCIETY

Summary/Abstract: Establishing a relationship between the witch or witchdoctor and the sage is not immediately evident. To most modern men the witch is simply a wretched wight devoid of knowledge and insight of modern life, whereas the sage or the intellectual is the great thinker, a custodian of Western ideologies and theories who supposedly does not believe in witchcraft and even questions the existence of God. The word sage is derived from the Latin verb sapere whose other meaning is “to have a good taste”. On the contrary, when one goes back in space and time to the period referred to as “once upon a time” in fairy tales, one discovers that the witch and the sage were indivisible; in fact they were one and the same person. This is clearly evinced in the etymology of some words of Indo-European origin. In fact, the distinction between witch and sage is flimsy and transparent, sharing the same semantic area with the following words: wizard, druid, fili, wicca, sorcerer, juggler, powwow, lamia and lilith. To the modern mind it strains belief to hear that the span of the word witch has roots in the sacred domain, that of priesthood, shamanism and sainthood for example. The truth is that the sage and the witch emerged from a common past. For example, the early pre-Socratic philosophers were shamanic practitioners first and wise men second. The parting of the ways is not as clear-cut in Arabic cultures where the ulana are learned in sacred scriptures and at the same time, learned in science, thus harking back to the past when the duality between sacred and secular did not exist. The medieval alchemist, forerunner of today’s scientist, is another case in point; and of course it is well-known that in many old cultures the priest class or caste were not only repositories of religious authority and initiated into sacred mysteries, but living repositories of all forms of specialised knowledge, including the art of writing. Acknowledged philosophers and writers among which Virgil, Shakespeare, Hugo, Apollinaire also write about it.

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