Today I Discovered The Racist Origins Of The Pointy Witch Hat

Why do witches wear tall pointy hats? You’ve probably never questioned it through years of Harry Potter and Hocus Pocus, but it has to have come from somewhere, right? As it turns out, that hat’s probable origin, like a lot of human history, is pretty racist.

While witches and their aesthetic are pretty trendy these days, that wasn’t always the case. You don’t have to go back too far in history to reach a point where witches were associated with all things vile and despicable – most prominently the Prince of Darkness, Satan himself.
And, going back even further, witches were not the only group to be associated with Satan by the Christian church, either. Another group commonly accused of consorting with the devil during the Middle Ages were Jewish people.

During this time, a version of the ‘satanic panic’ of the 1980s existed in many European Christian countries, though at that time it was Jewish people who were considered the culprits. Starting around the 12th century it was a common belief that Jewish people possessed magical powers gained from deals with the devil.

Jewish people were often accused of murdering Christian children in grisly sacrifices that mocked the Christian Eucharist.

So what does this have to do with pointy hats? Before the more well-known yellow badge that denoted a person was Jewish in the Middle Ages, a type of cap called a judenhut or Jewish hat was often worn to signify someone was Jewish.

Read thea article by Hayley Williams on Lifehacker.