FEARING THE FAMILIAR: WITCHCRAFT, GOD, AND THE POLITICS OF SUPERNATURAL POWER

This paper examines the paradoxical dynamic wherein communities that profess strong belief in divine justice often exhibit greater fear of witchcraft than of God's punishment. This study explores how fear operates differently across spiritual agents by drawing on various primary and secondary sources, including historical witch trial archives, contemporary African ethnographies, legal analyses, and literary narratives. While divine punishment is frequently abstract, delayed, and bound by moral doctrine, witchcraft is perceived as immediate, intimate, and unregulated by institutional or theological constraints. Through interdisciplinary and intercultural analysis, the paper theorizes that the fear of witchcraft arises not from irrationality but from culturally coherent logics rooted in relational proximity, epistemic immediacy, and institutional invisibility. This study advances several key arguments: first, that witchcraft’s perceived embeddedness within everyday social networks makes it a uniquely fearsome threat; second, that modern legal and religious institutions often fail to address spiritual harm in culturally resonant ways, thereby reinforcing informal and usually violent responses; and third, that witchcraft accusations serve as gendered and political tools of social regulation. The paper contributes to broader debates in anthropology, religious studies, postcolonial theory, and gender studies by offering a new conceptual framework for understanding spiritual fear and its role in shaping moral, legal, and communal life. It also outlines future research pathways that address the evolving dynamics of spiritual belief in digital, mental health, and hybrid justice contexts.