Types of Witches

This list comes from John Gaul in 1646:
1. The diviner, gypsy, or fortunetelling witch.

2. The astrologian, star-gazing, planetary,
procrastinating witch. (Me)

3. The chanting, canting, or calculating witch,
who works by signs and numbers.

4. The veneficial or poisoning witch.
5. The exorcist or conjuring witch.
6. The gastronomic witch.
7. The magical, speculative, sciential, or arted witch.
8. The necromancer.

"A witch must be a hagged old woman,
living in a little rotten cottage,
under a hill, by a woodside, and must
be frequently spinning at the door;
she must have a black cat,
two or three broomsticks,
an imp or two, and two or three
diabolical teats to suckle her imps."

Round About Our Coal Fire
(an English Christmas book, circa 1700's.)
This list comes from Wycliff's Apology for Lollard Doctrines.
arioler - soothsayer
augerer - diviner
enchantress
haruspex - prognosticator by entrails
phytoness - diviner
sortileger - fortuneteller
Aeromancer - Foretelling upcoming events by air.
Geomancer - by figures and lines
Hydromancer - by water
Pyromancer - by fire

Jordanes de Bergamo in 1470
catagorized the witch as:
bacularia - from riding on a broomstick
fascinatrix - from the evil eye
herberia - from her baneful herbs
maliarda - from the evil eye or mala she works
pixidaria - from her box of magic ointments

Binsfeld in 1589 gave these names for witches:
femina saga - wise woman
lamia - bloodsucking night monster
incantor - worker of charms
magus - wise man
maleficus - worker of evil against man and beast
sortiariae mulier - a woman who prophesies by lots
strix - nocturnal bird
veneficia - poisoner
vir sortilegi - magician.

Johannes Pott, circa 1400's,
gave these German words for witches:
Hexen
Töchter des Donners
Unholdinnen
Gabelreiterinnen (riders on pitchforks?!)
Wettermacherinnen
Zauberinnen
Truten
Wickhersen
Wicken - to foretell


SOURCES
The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology,
by Rossell Hope Robbins, 1959.

[Avalons_Rising]
kalimancha


Dance as if no one's watching,
sing as if no one's listening, and live
every day as if it were your last.
Irish proverb