15 Most Powerful Witches in Folklore and History, Ranked

From ancient myth to real-world trial records, witches appear in stories as healers, spirit-summoners, shapeshifters, and formidable keepers of secret knowledge. This list gathers figures from global folklore and history and presents them in a descending sequence, moving from lesser-known or locally focused practitioners to near-mythic beings and deities associated with witchcraft. You’ll find biblical necromancers, aristocratic poisoners, prophetic seers, and the spellcasters of Greek epic and Arthurian legend. Each entry highlights what sources say they did, how they were described, and why their reputations endured.

Tituba

Tituba was an enslaved woman in 1692 Salem whose testimony ignited the Massachusetts witchcraft crisis. In court examinations, she described signing a devil’s book and seeing animal familiars, shaping the sensational narrative that followed. Her statements—likely extracted under pressure—named other supposed practitioners and introduced details that spread through the community. After months in jail, she was ultimately released and sold to pay fees, and her ultimate fate is uncertain.

Biddy Early

Biddy Early was a 19th-century Irish folk healer from County Clare known for curing illnesses and offering counsel. Local accounts describe her “blue bottle,” a charm through which she divined causes of misfortune and remedies. Clergy and authorities sometimes accused her of sorcery, yet many neighbors sought her help and defended her. Her cottage and stories became part of Irish folklore on cunning folk and wise women.

Mother Shipton

Mother Shipton, born Ursula Southeil in 16th-century England, became famous as a prophetess linked with pamphlet prophecies. Printed collections attributed to her circulated predictions about politics, disasters, and natural wonders. Her legend grew in the centuries after her death, with caves at Knaresborough and a petrifying well tied to her story. While many “prophecies” were later forgeries, she remains a staple of English folk tradition.

Agnes Sampson

Agnes Sampson was a respected midwife and healer implicated in the North Berwick witch trials in Scotland (1590–1591). Under interrogation, she gave detailed confessions about charms, storms allegedly raised against King James VI, and sabbath gatherings. Contemporary pamphlets and records portray her as central to a supposed conspiracy of magic and malefice. She was executed, and her case influenced the king’s views on witchcraft and subsequent Scottish prosecutions.

Isobel Gowdie

Isobel Gowdie’s 1662 confessions in Auldearn, Scotland, are among the most elaborate first-person accounts of early modern witchcraft. She described spells for cursing crops, flying, and transforming into animals, reciting incantations that have been widely studied by historians. Her statements also mention encounters with the “Queen of Elphame,” blending fairy lore with diabolism. The records do not definitively document her execution, but her testimony shaped later understandings of Scottish witch belief.

La Voisin

Catherine Monvoisin—known as La Voisin—was a central figure in the Affair of the Poisons at the court of Louis XIV in the late 17th century. Investigators connected her to a network that sold poisons, arranged black masses, and supplied alleged love philtres to high-ranking clients. Testimonies implicated noble patrons and occult rites led by renegade clerics. She was executed in 1680, and the scandal prompted extensive royal investigations into criminal sorcery.

The Witch of Endor

The Witch of Endor appears in the Hebrew Bible (1 Samuel 28) as a medium consulted by King Saul. She is described as summoning the spirit of the prophet Samuel, delivering a message that foretold Saul’s defeat. This episode is one of the earliest narrative depictions of necromancy in Near Eastern literature. The account influenced later religious debates on divination and spirit communication.

Marie Laveau

Marie Laveau was the most renowned Voodoo practitioner in 19th-century New Orleans. Parish records, newspapers, and oral tradition portray her as a hairdresser, healer, and community leader who organized public rituals and private consultations. She merged Catholic symbols with West African–derived practices and maintained networks across social classes. After her death, a second Marie Laveau—likely her daughter—sustained the name, keeping the Voodoo Queen’s reputation alive.

Morgan le Fay

Morgan le Fay is a powerful enchantress of Arthurian literature, first appearing in medieval Latin and French sources. Texts portray her as a healer of Avalon, a shape-changer, and a learned practitioner of complex magical arts. Later romances describe her crafting deceptive illusions and magical items that influence the fates of Arthur and his knights. Her character evolves across manuscripts, but she consistently embodies formidable knowledge and sorcery.

Medea

Medea is a sorceress in Greek myth, granddaughter of Helios and priestess of Hecate. In the Argonautica, she uses pharmaka—potent drugs and enchantments—to help Jason obtain the Golden Fleece, including spells that subdue a serpent guardian. Other traditions credit her with rejuvenation rites and lethal charms against rivals. Ancient sources emphasize her mastery of both herbal magic and ritual craft learned from divine or semi-divine kin.

Circe

Circe is a mythic enchantress in Homeric tradition who dwells on the island of Aeaea. In the ‘Odyssey’, she transforms Odysseus’s companions into animals and later instructs the hero on navigating dangers like the Sirens and Scylla. Classical authors attribute to her deep knowledge of baneful herbs and metamorphosis. Her lineage—often as daughter of Helios—reinforces her status among the most potent spell-workers of Greek myth.

Baba Yaga

Baba Yaga is a fearsome witch of Slavic folklore who lives in a hut on chicken legs and flies in a mortar with a pestle. Tales depict her as a guardian of the forest’s liminal thresholds, setting impossible tasks and rewarding or devouring visitors depending on their conduct. She commands supernatural servants, manipulates night and weather, and controls enchanted objects. Story variants cast her as both helper and adversary, but always as an overwhelming, otherworldly force.

Lilith

Lilith emerges in Jewish folklore and medieval demonologies as a night-wandering figure associated with storms and harmful spirits. The Alphabet of Ben Sira and later traditions depict her as independent from Adam and empowered to afflict the vulnerable. Amulets, incantation bowls, and texts reference her by protective names to ward off her influence. Across centuries, she stands as a potent symbol of dangerous autonomy and uncanny power.

The Weird Sisters of ‘Macbeth’

Shakespeare’s Weird Sisters are prophetic figures whose riddling greetings steer Scottish destiny in ‘Macbeth’. Drawing on older British and continental witch tropes, they mix charms, harvested “ingredients,” and incantations to conjure visions. Their paradoxical prophecies shape political decisions, battlefield outcomes, and the play’s tragic arc. Stage directions and speeches depict ritualized spell-casting that became foundational to later English-language images of witchcraft.

Hecate

Hecate is an ancient Greek deity associated with crossroads, liminality, necromancy, and protective magic. Hymns and inscriptions present her as a torch-bearing guardian invoked at doorways and in night rites, often linked to spirits of the dead. In literary sources, she presides over spell-work, grants occult knowledge, and empowers mortal practitioners like Medea. Her cult spread widely in the classical world, securing her place as a transcendent patron of witchcraft.

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