Witch hat
A witch hat (), in popular culture, is the style of hat characterized by a conical crown and a wide brim (like akubras and gats).
The origins of the witch hat as displayed today is disputed. A common theory is that it is an exaggeration of the edgeless hats associated with the Welsh and later the Puritans, or an exaggeration of the conical hats believed to stimulate the brain of the wearer. These "thinking caps" are the precursors to the modern dunce cap. Church despised pointy hats given that the points were often related to those of the devil's horns. The witch hat is a more brimmed version of the cone-shaped hats commonly worn by male-gendered wizards and magicians, as the hat was more brimmed for it to be female-appropriate. As of the Victorian era, fairy tales began depicting black-colored conical hats and crones as symbols of wickedness in their illustrations. Another possibility is that in Luna, a town of the Etruscan civilization, there were coins on one side depicting a goddess commonly associated with witches, named Diana, wearing a brimless, cone-shaped hat.
Witch-cult hypothesis
Describing this witch-cult as "a joyous religion", she claimed that the two primary festivals that it celebrated were on May Eve and November Eve, although that other dates of religious observation were 1 February and 1 August, the winter and summer solstices, and Easter. She asserted that the "General Meeting of all members of the religion" were known as Sabbaths, while the more private ritual meetings were known as Esbats. Murray claimed that these Esbats were nocturnal rites that began at midnight, and that they were "primarily for business, whereas the Sabbath was purely religious." At the former, magical rites were performed both for malevolent and benevolent ends. She also asserted that the Sabbath ceremonies involved the witches' paying homage to the deity, renewing their "vows of fidelity and obedience" to him, and providing him with accounts of all the magical actions that they had conducted since the previous Sabbath. Once this business had been concluded, admissions to the cult or marriages were conducted; ceremonies and fertility rites took place; and the Sabbath concluded with feasting and dancing.
Deeming Ritual Witchcraft to be "a fertility cult", she asserted that many of its rites were designed to ensure fertility and rain-making. She claimed that there were four types of sacrifice performed by the witches: blood-sacrifice, in which the neophyte writes their name in blood, the sacrifice of animals, the sacrifice of a non-Christian child to procure magical powers, and the sacrifice of the witches' god by fire to ensure fertility.
She interpreted accounts of witches' shapeshifting into various animals as being representative of a rite in which the witches dressed as specific animals which they took to be sacred. She asserted that accounts of familiars were based on the witches' use of animals, which she divided into "divining familiars" used in divination and "domestic familiars" used in other magic rites.