Before people start leaping in with claims about mystical, eternal origins of the witch and witchcraft, we would do well to remember that 'witches' never called themselves that and that 'witchcraft' was never a thing claimed to be practiced by anyone until relatively recently in the west - really just before Shakespeare's period.

We have no record of a person voluntarily referring to themselves as a witch who claims to practice witchcraft before the early modern period, and that's because the stable image of a witch did not exist before then. Only once an image of a witch and their arts entered public imagination, after it was crafted through the 13-15th centuries, could someone then claim to be a witch. This image of a witch was developed not by witches but by ecclesiastics (bishops, monks, clerics, abbots, popes, theologians and inquisitors) in the context of persecution of heterodox behaviour and belief, or being swept up in criminal or civil legal matters.

By the time of Macbeth's author, Shakespeare, a fully rounded picture of the classic witch had emerged. It was a recent creation.

None of this is to say that aspects of sorcery weren't referred to by ecclesiastics and secular government prior to the 13th century (see the Tempestarii and the various edicts of Charlemagne), but always as refutations of the very existence of sorcery; in fact prior to the late middle ages claiming someone was a witch or burning someone as a witch was forbidden.

Here is another post on the subject which may help shed some light:

• Sorcerers, Witches and Magicians - What did these people actually do?

We are left then with a specific image created in the late middle ages, one that was powerful enough and malleable enough to contain the anxieties dumped into it by the populations of western Europe who suddenly set about condemning people as witches, trying and burning them in the 15th and 16th centuries. By the 17th century the phenomenon had effectively died out.

The witch existed for only a time, and only in the imagination.

This is some tough academic material, but it's best for those who want to grab hold of this change through the early modern period in the way people actually thought about witchcraft:

• Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe, (Oxford University Press, 1999)

OP: I am concerned that the /r/askhistorians community has not served you very well. By using the terms "witch" and "witchcraft" you have enflamed a debate that is probably of little use to you. Restating your questions may serve to inspire posts that actually provide the information you need. What can we provide to you that will be of assistance?