why do witches have pointy hats?

Answer 1

I think it's all to do with aerodynamics. The point cuts through the wind better when they're flying on their broomsticks.

Answer 2

Pointed hats were actually a visual representation of the Cone of Power that witches drew upon during their rituals. While this puts a nice, witch-friendly spin on the image, I find it to be rather unlikely. People in previous centuries who were creating woodcuts of witches tended to paint a very unkind picture and did not include positive aspects of true witchcraft as it existed at the time. Witches were portrayed dancing with devils and participating in all varieties of heinous rites, not drawing down the moon and healing the sick. It is unlikely that someone projecting a witch in such a light would bother to represent a Cone of Power, which is typically a positive force.

There is another, commonly held belief that the pointed hat originated with another persecuted group in Europe, the Jews. While Jews did wear pointed headgear, most scholars now believe these hats were not a likely source for the witch's pointed hat. After all, pointed hats were fairly common throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

This fact leads us to the source I find to be most believable, and most mundane, for the Pointy Hat Look. During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, commoners in Wales and England often wore pointed hats. As fashions changed, the last to retain the old styles were the rural and peasant folk, who were considered "backward" by higher society and were usually the ones accused of heresy and witchcraft. Much as we today have stereotypes of the sort of student who might commit violence at a high school, so did the medieval people have their ideas of what sort of person might be a witch.

Along these lines, Gary Jensen, a professor of sociology at Vanderbilt University, postulates a connection between the persecution of Quakers in America and the stereotypical appearance of witches in our folklore. Quakers did wear pointed hats, and the negative image of witches wearing conical hats in America became common about the same time anti-Quaker sentiment was at a peak. Quakers were thought by some to consort with demons and practice black magic, things also associated with the early American view of witches. Once again, an easily recognized symbol of an oppressed minority may have become generalized to a group equated with them.

In the final analysis, it's likely that more than one of these issues came into play to ingrain the pointy hat into the mainstream idea of what a witch looks like. After all, the ideas that stick most firmly in the mind are the ones repeated from different sources, and many things in history can't be traced to a single root cause or moment.

Answer 3

The concical hat myth actually came about as a "shaming" device. In Europe, during the middle ages, many women wore this type of hat. However, they didn't have the internet, or television. There was no Cosmo, no Vogue. Consequently, when fashion trends changed in the metropolitan areas, it often took months, or even years, for those trends to reach rural areas. Since the majority of pagans and Wiccans did live in rural areas, the conical hat was associated with them (long after it fell out of fashion in the cities), most often in illustrations from church literature, as a way to make pagans look backwoods, backwards, and generally ignorant, as a way of discrediting their beliefs. It would be akin to portraying all Americans as flannel-wearing, tractor-driving, belt-buckle-the-size-of-a-pie-plate-owning yokels, in order to convince people in London that we were undesireable, and so was resembling us in any way.

Answer 4

it fits the shape of their heads. Honest take the hat off and their head is all long and pointy!

Answer 5

To cover their pointy heads.

Answer 6

To match their pointy shoes

Answer 7

It has to do with flow of invisible energy. Pointed top in any structure (or person's head gear), helps to conserve energy without dilution or scattering. Hence spires and sloping roof tops, in shape of cone.

Answer 8

to fit their pointy heads

Answer 9

to match their pointy nose

Answer 10

Cos a pink velvet beret would not have quite the same effect