This sounds like an essay question for an English assignment.
I suggest you just answer the obvious … he’s got three witches cackling around a cauldron in Macbeth. Go read the text and see what it is the witches are doing and saying. Presumably they are doing and saying stuff that is sort of “evil” and “occult”.
Like boiling newts eyes and stuff.
Occult means hidden. In MacBeth, the witches were gathered around a cauldron at night so their actions remained hidden. Considering what happened during the burning times and King James re-writing the bible due to his witch phobia, anybody who practiced what was considered magic would have had to keep their practices hidden. Magic at that time would have included healing. Many of the terms used for medicinal herbs sounded much stranger than what they actually were.
First off, “occult” means “hidden” not “evil.”
Secondly, Shakespeare doesn’t “link the witches with ideas of evil.”
This sounds like an essay question for an English assignment.
I suggest you just answer the obvious … he’s got three witches cackling around a cauldron in Macbeth. Go read the text and see what it is the witches are doing and saying. Presumably they are doing and saying stuff that is sort of “evil” and “occult”.
Like boiling newts eyes and stuff.
Occult means hidden. In MacBeth, the witches were gathered around a cauldron at night so their actions remained hidden. Considering what happened during the burning times and King James re-writing the bible due to his witch phobia, anybody who practiced what was considered magic would have had to keep their practices hidden. Magic at that time would have included healing. Many of the terms used for medicinal herbs sounded much stranger than what they actually were.