A Storm of Witchcraft
A Storm of Witchcraft

Author: Emerson W. Baker

Publisher: Pivotal Moments in American Hi

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 415

ISBN-13: 019989034X

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Presents an historical analysis of the Salem witch trials, examining the factors that may have led to the mass hysteria, including a possible occurrence of ergot poisoning, a frontier war in Maine, and local political rivalries.

Encounters with Witchcraft
Encounters with Witchcraft

Author: Norman N. Miller

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2012-04-26

Total Pages: 243

ISBN-13: 1438443595

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Encounters with Witchcraft is a personal story of a young man's fascination with African witchcraft discovered first in a trek across East Africa and the Congo. The story unfolds over four decades during the author's long residence in and many trips to Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. As a field researcher he learns from villagers what it is like to live with witches, and how witches are seen through African eyes. His teachers are healers, cult leaders, witch-hunters and self-proclaimed "witches" as well as policemen, politicians and judges. A key figure is Mohammadi Lupanda, a frail village woman whose only child has died years before. In her dreams, however, she believes the little girl is not dead, but only lost in the fields. Mohammadi is discovered wandering at night, wailing and calling out for the child. Her neighbors are terror-stricken and she is quickly brought to a village trial and banished as a witch. The author is able to watch and listen to the proceedings and later investigate the deeper story. He discovers mysteries about Mohammadi that are only solved when he returns to the village three decades later. Today, witch-hunting and witchcraft-related crimes are found in more than seventy developing countries. Epidemics of violence against alleged witches, mainly women, but including elders of both genders, and even children is on the increase in some parts of the world. Witchcraft beliefs may lie behind vigilante murders, political assassinations, revenge killings and commercial murders for human body parts. Through African voices the author addresses key questions. Do witchcraft powers exist? Why does witchcraft persist? What are its historic roots? Why is witchcraft-based violence so often found within families? Does witchcraft serve as a hidden legal and political system, a mafia-like under-government? The author holds up a mirror for us to think about religious beliefs in our own experience that rely heavily on myth and superstition.

The Witches
The Witches

Author: Stacy Schiff

Publisher: Little, Brown

Published: 2015-10-27

Total Pages: 512

ISBN-13: 0316200611

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The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Cleopatra, the #1 national bestseller, unpacks the mystery of the Salem Witch Trials. It began in 1692, over an exceptionally raw Massachusetts winter, when a minister's daughter began to scream and convulse. It ended less than a year later, but not before 19 men and women had been hanged and an elderly man crushed to death. The panic spread quickly, involving the most educated men and prominent politicians in the colony. Neighbors accused neighbors, parents and children each other. Aside from suffrage, the Salem Witch Trials represent the only moment when women played the central role in American history. In curious ways, the trials would shape the future republic. As psychologically thrilling as it is historically seminal, THE WITCHES is Stacy Schiff's account of this fantastical story-the first great American mystery unveiled fully for the first time by one of our most acclaimed historians.

Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England
Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England

Author: Alan MacFarlane

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-09-10

Total Pages: 382

ISBN-13: 1134644663

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This is a classic regional and comparative study of early modern witchcraft. The history of witchcraft continues to attract attention with its emotive and contentious debates. The methodology and conclusions of this book have impacted not only on witchcraft studies but the entire approach to social and cultural history with its quantitative and anthropological approach. The book provides an important case study on Essex as well as drawing comparisons with other regions of early modern England. The second edition of this classic work adds a new historiographical introduction, placing the book in context today.

Lectures on Witchcraft, Comprising a History of the Delusion in Salem, In 1692
Lectures on Witchcraft, Comprising a History of the Delusion in Salem, In 1692

Author: Charles Wentworth Upham

Publisher: Theclassics.Us

Published: 2013-09

Total Pages: 50

ISBN-13: 9781230357300

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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1831 edition. Excerpt: ... to witness the operations of the human imagination. It will be regarded by intelligent and judicious persons, as a circumstance of importance in reference to the view now given of the transaction, in which the witch of Endor acts the leading part, that Hugh Farmer, beyond all question, the most learned, discreet and profound writer on such subjects, is inclined to throw the weight of his authority in its favor. His ample and elaborate discussion of the question is to be seen in his work on Miracles, chap. iv. sec. Ii. Among the heathen nations of antiquity the art of divination consisted to a great degree in the magical use of mysterious charms. Many plants were considered as possessed of wonderful virtues, and there was scarcely a limit to the supposed power of thos*e persons who knew how to use and apply them skilfully. Virgil in his eighth eclogue thus speaks of this species of sorcery-- ' These herbs did Mccris give to me And poisons pluckt at Pontus, For there they grow and multiplie And do not so amongst us; With these she made herselfe become A wolfe, and hid hir in the wood, She fetcht up souls out of their toome, Removing corne from where it stood.'* In the fourth iEneid, the lovesick Tynan queen is thus made to describe the magic which was then believed t o be practised. ' Rejoice, ' she said, ' instructed from above. My lover I shall gain or lose my love, Nigh rising Atlas, next the falling sun Long tracts of Ethiopian climates run; There a Massylian priestess I have found, Honored for age, for magic arts renown'd; Th' Hesperian temple was her trusted care, 'Twas she supplied the wakeful dragon's fare. She, poppy-seeds in honey taught to steep, Reclaim'd his rage, and sooth'd him into sleep; She watch'd the golden fruit. Her...

The Last Witches of England
The Last Witches of England

Author: John Callow

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-10-07

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 1350196142

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"Fascinating and vivid." New Statesman "Thoroughly researched." The Spectator "Intriguing." BBC History Magazine "Vividly told." BBC History Revealed "A timely warning against persecution." Morning Star "Astute and thoughtful." History Today "An important work." All About History "Well-researched." The Tablet On the morning of Thursday 29 June 1682, a magpie came rasping, rapping and tapping at the window of a prosperous Devon merchant. Frightened by its appearance, his servants and members of his family had, within a matter of hours, convinced themselves that the bird was an emissary of the devil sent by witches to destroy the fabric of their lives. As the result of these allegations, three women of Bideford came to be forever defined as witches. A Secretary of State brushed aside their case and condemned them to the gallows; to hang as the last group of women to be executed in England for the crime. Yet, the hatred of their neighbours endured. For Bideford, it was said, was a place of witches. Though 'pretty much worn away' the belief in witchcraft still lingered on for more than a century after their deaths. In turn, ignored, reviled, and extinguished but never more than half-forgotten, it seems that the memory of these three women - and of their deeds and sufferings, both real and imagined – was transformed from canker to regret, and from regret into celebration in our own age. Indeed, their example was cited during the final Parliamentary debates, in 1951, that saw the last of the witchcraft acts repealed, and their names were chanted, as both inspiration and incantation, by the women beyond the wire at Greenham Common. In this book, John Callow explores this remarkable reversal of fate, and the remarkable tale of the Bideford Witches.