WITCHES (Cop(e)rn(j)ice, babaroge, bahorice, bilfe, ceprnice, čaratanke, čarnice, černice, čarobnice, čarovnice, hrdroge, irudice, kamenice, kolere, kozlačice, kudlačice, kuge, luce, more/morice/morine, mure, nedobrice, noćnice, obrštarice, potvornice, rogulje, smrde, smrti, strige/štri(n)ge, sušenice, trovilice, tvarnice, upirine, uzme, vade/vadine/vidine, vešče/viješće/višće/viške, višćice/vištice/vještice, vihurendine, vijore, vjetrušnice, vjetruštine, vlhve/vuhve, vračilje, vračitelke, vragoduhe, vražarice, (v)ukodlačice, vukozlačice)

Mostly older women in a union with evil forces, such as rages, the Devil or Satan, etc. They are usually their mistresses and in return the lovers teach them their evil doings and help them to become evil.

Their helpers are also salamanders, snakes and bats. They are sometimes represented as dark hail clouds. They are born out of a balloon that bursts immediately. Their birthday is on 1st May. A girl born with the placenta wrapped around her is called ''morica''. When she turns twenty-one, she becomes ''mora''. When she gets married, she becomes a witch and in her old days or after her death, she becomes a she-werewolf. ''Mora'', or ''polega#269;'' as she is called in the northern part of Croatia, has a very flexible body. She has a strong desire to strangle people and driven by this desire she squeezes through the keyhole to get inside the house and then strangles and squeezes her sleeping victim.

Peasants used to say that women who were ugly (with a pointy chin, a hump, who were messy or cross-eyed, had red hair, etc.) were witches. The same was said of women who had hoof footprints in the ashes from ritual bonfires outside their house or the ones who had a bandaged leg after a peasant women threw the pitchfork on the spot where the cow urinated after she milked it, because it was believed that it was the spot from which an invisible witch was trying to poison the milk. Women who behaved strangely were also thought to be witches, for example if they borrowed something from their neighbour that they already had at home, or if they were heard howling into the bucket in which they milked the cow to get more milk on St. George's day, or if they refused to drink brandy from a cup made of ivy tree, or if they were fierce tempered, unfaithful to their husbands or stubborn.

Some medical conditions were also connected with witches like goitre, hysteria, melancholy, epilepsy, etc. Women were said to be witches sometimes simply because they were not married, or because a spark flew out of their house on Shrove Tuesday or on Christmas, or because they were visible when you looked through a sleeve turned upside down, or if they could not get out of a house in which there was a broom turned upside down next to the door, or if they sunk in water when they were tied down. They could get recognized in church during midnight service from a three-legged stool made by St. Lucy of Christmas herself. In order to trick the vengeful witch who was recognized, the owner of the chair would have to trick her and spill millet or poppy seed when he went home.

A priest can recognize them in church but he cannot disclose who they are because they are bounded by their holy sacrament. They could also be recognized by people who were born on Ash Wednesday, 1st April or 1st June, all of which were thought to be the days when the Devil, the witches' ally was thrown out Heaven. Those people were punished for it with early or violent death. There is evidence of their divine origin, the same as the Devil's. Divine is the dew which they drank on Good Friday and which is the source of their power, as well as the fact that ordinary women can become witches if they put some ointment on their armpits (this ointment is prepared from black pig faeces and flesh of the baby they conceived with the devil cooked in a black pot created by hitting the fire in the hearth with hot iron) and then ride a broom or a dragon (rarely mortar because it is difficult to fly on it). When they do this they have to say the following words: ''Not on the thorn, not on the bush, but on the threshing-floor!'').

Evidence of their divine origin can be established also because when they drink milk from a black cow, they can become invisible and because their dwellings are always near trees, because they drink from gold cups, because they sing their spells and dance in a circle, because a firelight always shines around them in the night, because mythical and ritual animals are connected with them and because they have bad eyesight or are cross-eyed (This holds true for all other old night or winter demons and nature gods. Eyes like these represent the low night-light).

In the north of Croatia in Medjimurje there is an old custom on St. Lucy's day on 13th December. A person wrapped in a sheet, called Baba Luca or Crna Luca (Old Luca or Black Luca), goes around the village frightening bad village children and threatening to eat them or to put out their eyes. With the arrival of Christianity this pagan winter goddess was pronounced to be a witch. So then it was the custom to make a wooden stool with three legs, the so-called ''Lucy's chair'', in the period between St. Lucy's day and Christmas. On midnight service the owner of the chair could climb on it and recognize witches from the village. Baba Luca and Crna Luca (Black Lucy) are also called Drvarica (wood gatherer) or Sumarica (forest woman) so people used to buy wood on St Lucy's day. A Christian legend from the 3rd century AD tells of a saint who was blinded because she accepted Christianity. It is no wonder then that during festivities in the honour of St Lucy, which is a combination of pre-Christian and Christian beliefs, light is celebrated and ritual candles and fires are lighted.

A witch is, basically, an old and ugly night fairy, i.e. a cruel stepmother, whose heart is cold because she causes hail and rain of meteorites used to punish people. She is also ''stara baba'' (an old woman), ''baba Jaga'' (old Jaga), ''baba Roga'' (and old and horned woman), ''Zima'' (Winter), ''jalova Zemlja'' (the waste land), ''Glad'' (Hunger), a brazing wind that sweeps everything in sight. That is why their most famous instrument is the broom. Sometimes they take the form of flies, butterflies, frogs, snakes, doves, geese, hen, cats, bitches, she-wolves, goats and mares. They change into their usual form only when you call them by their name or when you catch them, although that is very difficult.

You know that they are near when you hear the sound of horses hoofs in the night, when a log flies through the air with sparks flying from it, when there is a whirlwind of dust at a crossing (people in Medjimurje believe that whoever sees that whirlwind will die soon), when the wind howls near the roof, when the door bangs shut or a window opens during the night, when the furniture squeaks or the stove smokes. When a new witch dances in the circle with other witches for the first time they beat her with live snakes. They dance in a circle to grind the bones of the dead and a stormy wind helps them. They use these bones as well as hair, nails, faeces, herbs, etc. to boil different broths which they use to cast magic spells when they want to cause evil. For example, when they want to cause storm they blow into the devil's balloon and chant: ''Hail was, hail will be!''.