Bronze Age to Elphaba: The centuries-old origins of the witch's hat

20 November 2025

Scarlett Harris

Alamy Illustration of a witch wearing long cloak and black pointed hat, with a small black cat next to her (Credit: Alamy) — (Credit: Alamy)

As Wicked: For Good is released, what are the historic meanings of conical headwear, and how has it evolved – from its origins in the ancient world, the Middle Ages and the Spanish Inquisition, to the empowered Elphaba?

What's the first image you associate with the witch? Might it be the broomstick, which was first linked to sorcery and heresy in 1342 when Irishwoman Lady Alice Kyteler was accused of witchcraft? An investigator, on searching her home, found the offending item, "upon which she ambled and galloped through thick and thin". Or perhaps it's the cauldron, where potions were brewed in William Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Macbeth "Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble" was the witches' now iconic incantation.

Tall pointy hats – otherwise known as capirotes or corozas – were used in history as a tool of persecution (Credit: Getty Images)

Getty Images Tall pointy hats – otherwise known as capirotes or corozas – were used in history as a tool of persecution (Credit: Getty Images) — Tall pointy hats – otherwise known as capirotes or corozas – were used in history as a tool of persecution (Credit: Getty Images)

But perhaps the most enduring image of the witch is the conical hat, seen in Frank L Baum's 1900 classic children's novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; in 1939 film The Wizard of Oz and Margaret Hamilton's frightening depiction of the Wicked Witch of the West; in the opening cartoon credits of 1960s sitcom Bewitched; in the Harry Potter films; and of course Cynthia Erivo's portrayal of Elphaba in the Wicked film adaptation, set to defy gravity once again when the concluding instalment, Wicked: For Good lands in theatres on 21 November.

Some of the earliest examples of conical hats are majestic, gold, tapered headpieces decorated with astronomical symbols from the Bronze Age, when it was said that the priests who likely wore them had divine knowledge and power. Pointy hats were found on the heads of Chinese mummies from the 4th to 2nd Centuries BC, earning them the modern nickname "The Witches of Subeshi" when their graves were unearthed in 1978.

During the Spanish Inquisition victims were accused of heresy and witchcraft, and were forced to wear tall, tapered caps

So just how did the pointy hat become synonymous with the witch? There are a number of theories. Mandatory conical headwear has been used in history as a tool for forced identification and persecution. Those who held a belief or opinion contrary to the orthodox religions, especially Christian doctrine, were labelled heretics and forced to wear the distinctive hat. Jewish men in the 13th Century were forced by the Roman Catholic Church to wear a cone-shaped, horned skullcap called a Judenhut.

During the Spanish Inquisition – which began in 1478 – those accused of heresy, apostasy, blasphemy and witchcraft, among other crimes, were forced to wear tall, tapered caps or hoods called capirotes or corozas as a form of identification. The capirote is still worn as at religious festivals in Spain, particularly in Holy Week. Was this chapter in history a factor in the pointy hat's later emergence as a witch motif? Opinions vary.

Witches' Flight by Francisco Goya (1798) portrays three floating figures in tall, conical hats carrying a man aloft (Credit: Alamy)

Alamy Witches' Flight by Francisco Goya (1798) portrays three floating figures in tall, conical hats carrying a man aloft (Credit: Alamy) — Witches' Flight by Francisco Goya (1798) portrays three floating figures in tall, conical hats carrying a man aloft (Credit: Alamy)

Several centuries later, artist Francisco Goya appeared to reference the coroza in his painting Witches' Flight (1798) in which three female witches carry a man as they float in the air. The artwork is thought to be a satirical critique of superstition and ignorance. Created during the Enlightenment era, the airborne witches with grotesque features wear high, conical hats – resembling either the Ecclesiastical mitre or perhaps the caroza as worn by heretics – alongside a donkey symbolising ignorance. Below, two men, considered by some commentators to represent fear and delusion, react to what they perceive as a demonic or supernatural event. Art historians have interpreted the painting – and the coned hats depicted – in various ways.

Witches' brew

In the Middle Ages, pointy hats were worn by alewives – medieval beer brewers – whose knowledge of herbology strengthens the connection to cauldrons being used to mix up potions.

"'Wise women', herbalists and old women have been looked on with suspicion in many cultures throughout millennia, so brewsters [female brewers] joined this group… superstitious, uneducated people considered such people to be 'the other'," alcohol expert Jane Peyton tells authors Tara Nurin and Teri Fahrendorf in their book A Woman's Place Is in the Brewhouse: A Forgotten History of Alewives, Brewsters, Witches, and CEOs.

The earliest known depiction of a witch in a black pointed hat is from 1693 (Credit: Getty Images)

Getty Images The earliest known depiction of a witch in a black pointed hat is from 1693 (Credit: Getty Images) — The earliest known depiction of a witch in a black pointed hat is from 1693 (Credit: Getty Images)

Dr Laura Kounine, associate professor in early modern history at the University of Sussex believes that the alewife associations with witchcraft are "a bit of a myth", and that the connection has been created in hindsight. In the 16th Century, she tells the BBC, "Everyone had a cauldron – that's what people were using to cook. Everyone had a broomstick, and everyone wore a hat – not [necessarily] a pointy hat, just any hat. A variety of bonnets and hats would have been worn by all women, depending on their social and marital status."

If you look at images [from the 1500s] witches are depicted with no head-covering at all – their free and wild hair is flowing – Laura Kounine

Kounine, who lectures on the history of witchcraft, contends that what actually differentiated alleged witches from the rest of the population in the early modern period was the fact that they didn't wear a hat.

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"If you look at images from that time, in the really striking ones like Albrecht Dürer's Witch Riding Backwards on a Goat (1501–02) or Hans Baldung Grien's The Witches' Sabbath (1510), witches are depicted with no head-covering at all. Their free and wild hair is flowing, which signifies their unbridled passions and that they are the inverse of the moral social order. You would not have had loose hair in the early modern period – that meant you were sexually depraved."

The invisible world

The earliest known example of the conical hat in tandem with a witch is in Cotton Mather's 1693 book The Wonders of the Invisible World, which depicts a witch riding a broomstick alongside the devil.

In the 17th Century, tall black pointy hats were everywhere – shown here, Portrait of Mrs Salesbury with her Grandchildren (Credit: Getty Images)

Getty Images In the 17th Century, tall black pointy hats were everywhere – shown here, Portrait of Mrs Salesbury with her Grandchildren (Credit: Getty Images) — In the 17th Century, tall black pointy hats were everywhere – shown here, Portrait of Mrs Salesbury with her Grandchildren (Credit: Getty Images)

However, Kounine is still sceptical that Mather meant to indicate that a pointy hat denotes a witch. "That's just because lots of people were wearing pointy hats at the time. There's nothing significantly witchy about it," she says. Seventeenth-Century paintings such as Portrait of Esther Inglis by an unknown artist and Portrait of Mrs Salesbury with her Grandchildren Edward and Elizabeth Bagot by John Michael Wright depict women – neither of them with any connections to witchcraft – simply wearing the fashionably tall, conical hats of their era.

The pointy hat's relationship to witches was a later motif that emerged in artworks and children's fairytales of the mid-to-late 17th Century through to the 18th and 19th Centuries.

It's quite possible that the image of a conical hat, fashionable in the 17th Century, is one that we've latched on to throughout the centuries that lingers today – rather than any explicit connotation of the occult during that era.

As Kounine says, many women donned strobiloid hats throughout history, including the heroines in fairytales such as Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, whose candy-coloured headgear was based on the hennin – the tall conical headdress worn from the 1400s by European noblewomen.

Portrait of Esther Inglis (1571-1624) by an unknown artist depicts the fashionable headwear of the time (Credit: Alamy)

Alamy Portrait of Esther Inglis (1571-1624) by an unknown artist depicts the fashionable headwear of the time (Credit: Alamy) — Portrait of Esther Inglis (1571-1624) by an unknown artist depicts the fashionable headwear of the time (Credit: Alamy)

So maybe it's the hue of the hat that telegraphs evil then? Kounine agrees, pointing to the 1621 play The Witch of Edmonton by William Rowley, Thomas Dekker and John Ford, where a witch talks to the devil in the form of a black dog named Tom. Throughout history the devil is often said to be dressed in black.

"A lot of it was the fact that the artworks of the time were woodcuts so they had to be in black, but [also] witches were often said to meet in the darkness of night, so there is an association between the dark arts, nighttime and it being hidden", she says. "You don't know who the witch is, under the cloak of darkness. Black becomes the symbol of evil and darkness."

Reclaiming the witch

The modern perception of the witch as a hideous crone is largely indebted to Baum's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Then his children's book about the adventures of Dorothy Gale and her group of misfit tagalongs in Oz was adapted into Technicolor and released as the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. It burned Hamilton's green-skinned, hook-nosed, cackling Wicked Witch of the West into the nightmares of generations of children with each television replay.

In The Ingoldsby Legends (1907) Arthur Rackham's illustrations portray the sorceress in black cloak and tall black hat (Credit: Alamy)

Alamy In The Ingoldsby Legends (1907) Arthur Rackham's illustrations portray the sorceress in black cloak and tall black hat (Credit: Alamy) — In The Ingoldsby Legends (1907) Arthur Rackham's illustrations portray the sorceress in black cloak and tall black hat (Credit: Alamy)

However, waves of feminism have emboldened women to reclaim traits and lifestyles previously associated with those accused of witchcraft in history – from strong female solidarity, holistic healing and independence from men to ecofeminist values and sexual autonomy. A more nuanced understanding of the archetype of the witch has emerged – she is now seen by some as a radical embodiment of the battle against misogyny and patriarchal oppression, as exemplified by the popular epithet emblazoned on everything from Instagram captions to cushions: "we are the daughters of the witches you couldn't burn". As Kounine puts it: "The witch is now a symbol of self-empowerment, subversion of patriarchy and feminism."

With Gregory Maguire's 1995 novel Wicked, on which the successful Broadway musical and now duo of feature films are based, The Wicked Witch of the West was given a name – Elphaba – and a backstory that elicits empathy for an outcast who was branded a villain for standing up for those less fortunate. In reclaiming the witch as a misunderstood character and, along with aspirational pop cultural representations such as Bewitched's Samantha and Prue, Piper, Phoebe and Paige Halliwell of the 1990s series Charmed, the conical hat becomes a lot less sinister.

It's also partly thanks to Academy Award-winning Wicked costume designer Paul Tazewell, who has reinterpreted the "hideodeous" hat, as Glinda calls it, to better reflect Elphaba's relationship to the Earth. "It is reflective and nostalgic of a silhouette that we recognise, but it is made into its own thing with how it spirals," Tazewell told The Cut.

Costume designer Paul Tazewell has reinterpreted the "hideodeous" hat for the new film Wicked: For Good (Credit: Universal)

Universal Costume designer Paul Tazewell has reinterpreted the "hideodeous" hat for the new film Wicked: For Good (Credit: Universal) — Costume designer Paul Tazewell has reinterpreted the "hideodeous" hat for the new film Wicked: For Good (Credit: Universal)

As Wicked reexamines the wicked-witch trope, it can be greatly credited with softening the scariness of the conical hat. After all, as Kounine contends, there's nothing inherently horrifying about it. It's just an object open to interpretation that we imbue with meaning through centuries of mythology passed down through art and stories – and the meanings of these myths change over time.

Some contemporary pagans see the hat as a conductor of energy, while children still clamour for it during the spooky season. In fact, the witch's hat was Google's most popular Halloween costume in 2021 – before Wicked mania set in. Just as woodcuts, portraiture and fairytales have influenced the modern material culture of the conical hat, so too will today's iteration inform future generations' understanding.

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