Linked with the witch’s essential outsiderhood, witchcraft builds on a recognition, unique among humans, of other minds just like our own combined with a countervailing conviction that other people are not exactly like us, and are indeed ‘others’.

‘Inversion’, where witches do things in a way opposite to what is proper or normal, is another idea found just about everywhere. European witches were supposed to plant crosses upside down, perform rituals backwards, dance counterclockwise (the inauspicious direction), and do things with the left hand that should be done with the right – just as la