50 Book Challenge 2022 - Witchcraft History

*Still need to Buy or Borrow

1) The Yorkshire Witch: The Life and Trial of Mary Bateman by Summer Strevens
2) Witches of Pennsylvania: Occult History & Lore and The Witch of the Monongahela by Thomas White
3) Witches and Witch Hunts: A Global History by Wolfgang Behringer
4) Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts by Anne L. Barstow
5) Witchcraft in France and Switzerland : the borderlands during the Reformation by E. William Monter
6) Witchcraft and Society in England and America, 1550-1750 by Marion Gibson
7) Salem-Village Witchcraft: A Documentary Record of Local Conflict in Colonial New England by Stephen Nissenbaum
8) Royal Witches: Witchcraft and the Nobility in Fifteenth-Century England by Gemma Hollman
9) The Last Witch of Langenburg: Murder in a German Village by Thomas Robisheaux
10) Judge Sewall's Apology: The Salem Witch Trials and the Forming of an American Conscience by Richard Francis
11) Jasmin's Witch by Ladurie Emmanuel LeRoy
12) In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692 by Mary Beth Norton
13) The History of Witchcraft and Demonology by Montague Summers
14) Highroad to the Stake: A Tale of Witchcraft by Michael Kunze
15) The Devil's Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England by Richard Godbeer
16) The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Enquiry into the Salem Witch Trials by Marion L. Starkey
17) A Delusion Of Satan: The Full Story Of The Salem Witch Trials by Frances Hill
18) The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson
19) The Witch's Trinity: A Novel by Erika Mailman
20) Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth Century New England by David Hall
21) The Bewitching of Anne Gunter by James Sharpe
22) Devils, Ghosts and Witches: Occult Folklore of the Upper Ohio Valley by George Swetnam
23) The Devil's Plantation: East Anglian Lore, Witchcraft & Folk-Magic by Nigel G. Pearson
24) Demonology by King James I and The Discoverie of Witchcraft by Reginald Scot
25) Deadly Powers: Animal Predators and the Mythic Imagination by Paul A. Trout
26) The Book of Magic: From Antiquity to the Enlightenment by Brian Copenhaver
27) Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain by Ronald Hutton
28) A History of Witchcraft: Sorcerers, Heretics and Pagans by Jeffrey Russell
29) The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present by Ronald Hutton
30) The Witch Hunts by Robert Thurston
31) In the House in the Dark of the Woods by Laird Hunt and The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent
32) Grimoires: A History of Magic Books by Owen Davies
33) The Superstitious Mind: French Peasants and the Supernatural in the Nineteenth Century by Judith Devlin
34) The Penguin Book of Witches by Katherine Howe
35) The Discoverie of Witchcraft by Reginald Scot
36) Instruments of Darkness by James Sharpe
37) Magic: A History: From Alchemy to Witchcraft, from the Ice Age to the Present by Chris Gosden
38) Witches: James I and the English Witch Hunts by Tracy Borman
39) The Fairy Tellers: A Journey into the Secret History of Fairy Tales by Nicholas Jubber
40) The Decline of Magic: Britain in the Enlightenment by Michael Hunter
41) The Secret History of Magic: The True Story of the Deceptive Art by Peter Lamont
42) Kepler's Witch by James Connor and Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch by Rivka Galchen
43) Salem Witch Judge: The Life and Repentance of Samuel Sewall by Eve LaPlante
44) The Last Witches of England: A Tragedy of Sorcery and Superstition by John Callow
45) Drawing Down the Moon: Magic in the Ancient Greco-Roman World by Radcliffe G. G. Edmonds III
46) The Possession at Loudun by Michel de Certeau
47) The Book of English Magic by Philip Carr-Comm & Richard Heygate
48) Yamamba: In Search of the Japanese Mountain Witch by Rebecca Copeland
49) Queens of the Wild by Ronald Hutton
50) Witches, Ghosts, and Signs: Folklore of the Southern Appalachians by Patrick W. Gainer

Wow

Awesome -- you stayed with your topic so well! I've have a stack of books about World War One and my goal is to finish them all, but I only manage 2-3 a year.

>3 janoorani24: thank you, but I tell you, if I didn't actually give myself dates to "finish" by, I would never finish. It's so difficult to stay on track!

Finished reading Witches and Witch-Hunts: A Global History by Wolfgang Behringer
Pages: 248
Words: isidliso, nagualism, strigae, strias, moloi, maqlu, charaez, studiltum, landtag, reichstag, "History of Dr. Johann Faust"
Notes: Too many for here.
Rating: 4 out of 5

Finished reading The Book of Magic: From Antiquity to the Enlightenment by Brian Copenhaver
Pages: 572
Words: ensorcellations, lamella; "Haunted House" by Plautus;
Notes: Too many for here.
Rating: 4 out of 5

Both of these sound interesting, especially the Copenhaver. I see you include novels -- have you read The Witch of Blackbird Pond, by Elizabeth George Speare? It was one of my favorites when I was younger -- read it several times.

>7 janoorani24: I normally don't read novels, but there are always some exceptions here and there. But no, I haven't heard of that one!

Finished The Secret History of Magic by Peter Lamont (January 17)
Pages: 319
Words: None.
Notes: None.
Rating: 3 out of 5

Finished Witchcraze by Anne Barstow (January 28)
Pages: 272
Words: None.
Notes: (will post later)
Rating: 2 out of 5

Finished The Penguin Book of Witches edited by Katherine Howe (Finished February 9)
Pages: 320
Words: venefick; pearmain; swounding;
Notes: "The first witchcraft act in England was passed in 1542, and the last antiwitchcraft statute was not officially repealed until 1736."

Thomas Rabbet said that his mother Ursula Kemp alias Grey, had four familiars, the one called Tyffin (a white lamb), the other Tittey (a gray cat), the third Pigeon (black toad), and the fourth Jack (a black cat.) She gave them beer to drink and a white loaf of cake to eat and they sucked blood from her arms.

A one Cocke's wife of Weley taught Ursula how to cure her lameness and unwitch herself. She was to take "hogs' dung and charcoal and put them together and hold them in her left hand, and to take in the other hand a knife, and to prick the medicine 3x, and then to cast the same into the fire. Then to take the knife and make 3 pricks under a table and to let the knife stick there. And after that to take 3 leaves of sage and as much of herb John and put them into an ale and drink it last at night and first in the morning."

From Dialogue Concerning Witches and Witchcraftes "...told him she had three or four imps, some call them puckerels, one like a gray cat, another like a weasel, another like a mouse."... "She never rested until she had got her husband out to the woman at R.H. and when he came home, they did but heat a spit red hot, and thrust into the cream, using certain words, as she willed him, and it came as kindly as any butter that ever she made."

"Witches, we are given to understand, differ from magicians in that the Devil enacts his will through them, and not the other way around."

"To some others at these times he teacheth how to make pictures of wax or clay. That by the roasting thereof, the persons that they bear the name of may be continually melted or died away by continual sickness."

"This corruption shows itself in two ways...First in man's outward estate, for he being naturally possessed with a love of himself and an high conceit of his own deserving, when he lives in base and low estate, whether in regard of poverty, or want of honor and reputation, which he thinks by right is due unto him, he then grows to some measure of grief and sorrow within himself... The second degree of discontentment is in the mind and inward man, and that is curiosity.."

"...connected to the gendered form of the witch's body...was the question of gendered labor. Witchcraft was perceived as harming families and household goods, the two primary engines under women's control for their economic security."

"The first English settler accused of witchcraft was Goodwife Joan Wright in Virginia. Wright was tried but not convicted but fined 100 pounds of tobacco."

"Jane James illustrates both the central role of gossip and reputation in the small colonial community...a portrait of behavior that was frowned upon in women..."

"...as many persons whom she stroked or touched were taken with deafness or vomiting or other violent pains or sickness...She practicing physick...In the prison there was seen in her arms a little child, which ran from her into another room and the officer following it, it was vanished...The same day and hour she was executed there was a very great tempest at Connecticut..."

"If we believe no witchcraft we must renounce the scripture of God and the consent of almost all the world; but that yet the apparition of a person afflicting another is very insufficient proof of a witch...a good name, obtained by a good life, should not be lost by mere spectral accusations."

"...trial of some Quakers who bewitched Mary Philips out of the bed, from her husband, and having transformed her into a mare, rode her from Dinton toward Cambridge, with the manner how she became visible again, in her own likeness and shape, with all her sides rent and torn, as if she had been spur-galled."

"I fear thee not nor all the devils in hell, and further deponent testifieth that two days after this she was taken with those strange fits with which she was tormented a fortnight together night and day and several apparitions appeared to the deponent in the night: the first night a humble bee, the next night a bear appeared, which ground the teeth and shook the claw."

"...that if witches were not kindly entertained the Devil will appear unto them and ask them if they were grieved or vexed with anybody and ask them what he should do for them and if they run out of the cellar and if they looked steadfastly upon any creature it would die and it were hard to some witches to take away life either of man or beast yet when they once begin it, then it is easy to them."

"She also declared that the Devil first appeared to her in the form of a deer or fawn, skipping about her...but by degrees he contrived to talk with her..."

Rating: 4 out of 5

Finished Deadly Powers: Animal Predators and the Mythic Imagination by Paul Trout
Pages: 269
Words: deisdaimonia; mysterium tremendum; phrike; whiro; uncegila; cheeroonear; unktehi; "Horse Mountain Ghost"; Tisiphone; The First Fossil Hunters
Notes: It was during the Pleistocene era that there were, by raw numbers, more carnivores than at any time before or since.

Animal predators existed in their own right, and their significance and meaning were not arbitrarily conferred by the developing human mind but reflected like and death realities our forebears could hardly afford to ignore...

In many myths, humans were not just hunted; they were threatened with being wiped out...The Smilodon went extinct only 9,000 years ago, so it greeted the first humans who migrated to the New World... Another, the Homotherium survived until a few thousand years ago and posed a dire threat to humans. But the cave lion was perhaps the largest felid that ever existed.

"The second effect of the evolutionary imperative was to select for humans who were able to imagine an image of the predator...this was crucial to the development of mimetic storytelling."

"One of the functions of early storytelling may have been to 'appease' the predator through symbolic enactment of prostration or sacrifice. Such enactments may have been the precursor of magic rituals meant to fend off a threat."

"Our ancient ancestors discovered that they could reliably and consistently control the emotions, and thereby the actions of others of their kind by evoking the releasing effects of stimuli."

"The imitation of predators could be thought of as cultural crypsis - the copying in self-defense of a trait of an aggressor...to drive away the fear evoked by actual predators."

"Mimetic storytelling was a form of sympathetic magic in which the predator could be lured into symbolic existence and so subjected to the will of its rebellious prey."

"The Agency-Detection Device is the way our brains detect anything that moves or appears to move by itself. This works unconsciously and as soon as ADD identifies an agent, the Theory of Mind Mechanism imbues that agent with feelings, desires and intentions."

"Our ancient ancestors imagined composite hybrid creatures to be fearful of, but not specific enough to trigger a potentially disastrous survival response...Animism is the belief that every object is alive and hence capable of being interacted with, for good or for ill."

"Metamorphism is the belief that a being or object can be transformed into an entirely different physical form, based on the assumption that the same substance is shared by all people and objects, without relinquishing their original nature."

The imagination also exacerbates the mind's natural bias to detect signs of predators even when none are seen. As a result of our imagination, we humans come to inhabit a demon-haunted world...Small groups struggling to exist within a dangerous environment cannot afford too much creativity, especially when it is directed at social norms that sustain the group...the more pressing the need to create cultural devices to deal with these imagined threats."

"Women had a strong incentive to use communication to manage predatory anxiety...and to transmit their fears to those they loved...and may have been the first storytellers."

"As soon as the guilty party is imagined to be somehow 'monstrous' it can be tormented, persecuted and killed. The scapegoat figure is another device we use to deal with our primal and continuing fear of being attacked and consumed."

"Spilling the blood of a sacrificial victim makes onlookers feel relieved that they have been spared...the human transition from prey to predator...Sacrifice originated not as an act of worship, but as an act of appeasement."

"Religion did not begin in the fear of the supernatural, but in the fear of the natural which became supernatural only after the human mind developed the ability to think imaginatively and mythically."

The idea of anthropomorphism as a fear-management strategy is that humans became confident that dangerous animals are constrained by the same social rules that inhibit aggression between family members...eventually predators became guardians and protective totems.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Finished The Last Witches of England: A Tragedy of Sorcery and Superstition by John Callow
Pages: 352
Words: None.
Notes: (will post later)
Rating: 4 out of 5

Finished The Witch Hunts: A History of the Witch Persecutions in Europe and North America by Robert Thurston
Pages:
Words:
Notes: "...there is no objective means of distinguishing 'superstition' from other types of belief and action. Superstitions are relative to time and place, and they refer merely to ideas and practices which reasonable people do not acceot at the moment as valid."

"Jews, heretics and lepers were the first three major categories to fall victim to the persecuting society...that there were vast conspiracies trying to destroy Christianity from within. The plotters were reputedly financed and abetted by an outside, evil force, often the Muslims."

"Delivering ideological support for the warrior societies, the Western religious hierarchy relied on affinities of upbringing; shared values...a mutual dedication to combating enemies from other faiths. This cohesion would assume vast importance for the witch hunts, which would not have occurred without intense cultural direction from the elite."

"The Byzantine Church became feared as yet another outside power dedicated to the destruction of Christian society. A perceived threat from the East now became personified in one of the first major heretical groups of the period, the Bogomils. By 1143, Bogomil infiltrators supposedly in league with Satan had arrived in Germany from Byzantium...the term 'bugger' came from the Middle Latin 'Bulgarus' literally a Bulgarian, originally used in the 11th c. to mean Bulgarian heretic."

"Clearly witches were not necessary to explain the plague; it seems that whatever group was already in the sights of the elite and common folk would serve."

"In the Old Testament 'Satan' could refer to any human being who played a role of an accuser or enemy...It is only in the New Testament that Satan becomes identified as the arch-enemy of God and mankind...To bring on large-scale attacks on heretics, which in turn provided images and attitudes all too easily applied to suspected witches, a more fearsome devil was required...The first known Western depiction of the devil is 6th c. mosaic in the Church of San Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna...It would require increasing fear in Europe...and the advent of the millennium to boost his status and visibility."

"In 1022, an execution of heretics took place at Orleans, France. A group of highly-placed churchmen and women were put to death on charges of holding orgies, killing infants and using their blood to make a potion that all participants drank, and worshiping the devil, who appeared among them as a large black cat or other animal...In 1063 the first known slaughter of Jews occurred, the work of French troops traveling through Spain to fight the Moors. By 1084, the first ghetto for Jews had been created, this time in Germany. By the First Crusade, Western Christianity had become a militant faith, as Christian soldiers would murder Jews on their way to the Holy Land."

"But the campaign against the Cathars became both cause and effect of a changed attitude. A papal bull was issued om 1184 instructed to seek out heretics and turn them over to secular authorities for punishment...However the regularization of investigations and the requirement of due process of law, brought the pyromania which had characterized lay attempts to suppress heresy...to an end. The Inquisition became a means to stop lynching...Where the Inquisition was the most powerful, notably in Spain and Italy, it played a significant role in keeping the witch hunts from becoming particularly large affairs."

"But to call witch hunts an attack on women or to point to misogyny as the pre-eminent factor in producing trials leaves several problems unexplained. First, there is the question of chronology. Misogyny has ancient roots in Jewish, Christian, Muslim and many other cultures...Such feelings existed long before and long after the persecutions themselves...Indeed, in the centuries just before the witch hunts began, women were featured in benign images as more pious, closer to God, more inclined to read and better child-rearers than men...It was not until the period of the 12th to the 14th century that portrayals of women began to harden into negative and dismissive ideas. In practice, most people, men and women, felt that women were more susceptible to the devil."

"As the warrior society faded and the persecuting society arose, women became limited to certain roles as they were ousted from a number of occupations or from the more lucrative and independent positions within other trades...Marriage was a partnership established for he purpose of continuing the timeless battle against hunger and solitude...The terms of Western marriage shifted in the direction of undermining women's financial worth...The dowry replaced brideworth. Brideworth was so called because it represented a transfer of wealth to the bride's family, the husband would contribute goods to the marriage, bringing value to the woman. Without financial value, the women's figurative value inevitably decreased as well...Such attitudes changed from the top of society down, and the elite views proved crucial in creating the preconditions for the witch hunts...The issue of bequeathing wealth became more important as each new generation of males could no longer raid and seize its own loot...The growth of towns from the 12th century onwards increased competition in trades, restricting women to low-paying, low status positions."

"The new emphasis on clerical celibacy created a fear of women's sexuality, and made the materialization of the witch virtually irresistible."

"Italians of in Friuli, for instance, considered that anyone born with a caul over the head had specific, limited connections to supernatural powers as well as a duty to use them for the good of the community. People of this group, called the Benandati, 'the good walkers' were not the devil's spawn or servants."

"Religion is usually distinguished from magic thus: the first involves requests for aid from the supernatural, help that may or may not be granted but that is never under the control of the supplicant. Magic, on the other hand, purports to give the one using it command of supernatural forces. Thus witchcraft was frequently called a heresy, since it was described as a cult of the devil; its practitioners asked him for assistance but by no means controlled him."

"Then the book 'Formicarius' written 1435-37, by Johannes Nedler, made a substantial contribution to implanting the idea that women were somehow naturally inclined to become the devil's helpers. He also introduced the idea that there were sects of people who not only used the old charms, but also ate infants and conjured up a demon in the shape of a man. He wrote of male and female witches.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Finished The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present by Ronald Hutton
Pages: 376
Words:
Notes: Too many for here.
Rating: 4 out of 5

Finished Witches: James I and the English Witch Hunts by Tracy Borman
Pages: 241
Words: boylynge
Notes: "Such events reaffirmed neighborly ties and the collective identity of a community...Anyone who refused to join in was immediately the subject of suspicion and hostility...There was an elaborate code governing the interaction...Everything was symbolic of status and position...Relationships were established and maintained within a very local context, and there were ample opportunities to identify and gossip about anyone who did not fit in...Those who stood out as troublemakers were swiftly punished, either by the community or the church courts...With a desire for conformity in village communities came a distinct lack of privacy..."

" The Reformation, which got under way in England in the early 16th c. sought to rid society of Catholic superstition, replacing them with idea of salvation through faith...The eroding of the clergy's 'magical' powers which were believed to keep evil at bay accounts for the sudden increase in witchcraft persecutions. Deprived of their traditional recourse to protect themselves against maleficent magic, people had no choice but to take legal action..." - However it is also mentioned that "the beginning of serious official action against witches was signaled by a papal bull issued in December 1484 by Pope Innocent VIII...It is no coincidence that the great witch hunt coincided with the Renaissance, a period in which the church's authority was severely threatened." But eventually the author follows with "Both movements sparked an increased awareness of the presence of the Devil in the world and a determination to wage war against him...the two were equally vociferous on the need to eradicate the evils of witchcraft."

"Such political turmoil tended to unsettle the ruling elite more than the lower echeons of society. Any perceived threat to social order could in turn prompt them to step up their persecutions of witches as a means of re-establishing authority."

Francis Manners' second wife, Cecilia, nee Tufton of Hothfield, had been also married previously. Her first husband, Sir Edward Hungerford's, father had been executed for sodomy and there had been rumors of involvement of witchcraft. This could have helped foster a fear and hatred of witches in Cecilia.

"The recusant gentry tended to intermarry with their co-religionists (Catholics)...which led to an inbred cousinage of landed families. Cecilia's sister Ann had married Francis Tresham, who had taken part in both the Essex rebellion and the Gunpowder Plot of 1605."

"On his travels through Denmark, James I met a number of intellectuals and philosophers, including leading Danish theologian Niels Hemmingsen. As well as being a staunch Calvinist, Hemmingsen was also a noted demonologist...Similarly influential was James' meeting with Tycho Brahe, a renowned astronomer. Brahe was a fervent believer in the existence of witchcraft, and attempted to convince James I of its dangers...It was during this visit that the seeds of his own witch hunting fervor were sown..." After a turbulent sea voyage back, the blame was placed on witches, and "a hundred suspected witches were arrested and examined, and their devilish plot to drown the Scottish king and his new wife was uncovered." One of the accused, Agnes Sampson, alleged that the plot had been masterminded by James I's enemy Francis Stewart, Earl of Bothwell, a Roman Catholic and potential heir to the Scottish throne...In Scotland, the first to confess was Geillis Duncan, a servant in the house of David Seaton. Seaton heard of her skill in curing diseases, tortured her into confession which included Agnes Sampson and 70 other conspirators.

"Inside every church was a wooden box or chest into which anyone could post a scroll of paper with the name of the person they suspected, together with a few cursory details of their crime. These chests were opened every 15 days by officials specially appointed to the task, and action would duly be taken against the persons named therein."

"The earliest known reference to witchcraft in civil law was in the time of King Wihtraed. Anyone found guilty of making an offering to devils' would simply be fined. Religious leaders, meanwhile recommended fasting for anyone found guilty of killing someone through witchcraft. The law did become progressively harsher towards suspected witches, however, and by the reign of King Ethelred in the late 10th c., it was decreed that they "be driven out of this county" or else totally perish...But it was during the reign of Henry VI when Margery Jourdemayne, the "Witch of Eye" was found guilty of conspiring with others to bring about the king's death through sorcery. She was burned at the stake at Smithfield...one of her co-conspirators, Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester, was found guilty of using witchcraft to supplant the king with her husband...Eleanor's sister-in-law Jacquetta was said to have used witchcraft ti ensnare Edward VI into secretly marrying her widowed daughter Elizabeth Woodville."

"Among the beneficiaries of the Earl and Countess of Rutland's generosity were Joan Flower and her two daughters...who were offered positions as daily house servants...Joan had been demoted from Mistress to Goodwife after the death of her husband John...The sources imply that they had never been popular with their neighbors, but their connection to the Manners family had ensured that they were at least tolerated...but they apparently failed to attend church."

Ch 5: "At the crux of the accusations was that Margaret Flower had begun to steal provision from the castle and hasten them to her mother's house late at night..Joan herself was said to have just as many lovers as her daughters. They included a Mr Peake or Peate, who was a long-term servant of the earl. When he wronged her in some way, she took up with Mr Vavasour...When he abandoned her company, Joan complained to the earl about her former lover Peake but he 'took not her part." It was Cecilia who took the matter at hand and dismissed Margaret Flower with a parting gift of 40 shillings.

"The fact that witches tried to harness such forces did not make them any more mentally unstable than their fellow men...in reality, witch hunts resulted from a series of complex social, religious and economic conditions which varied from country to country and region to region."

"Shortly after Margaret's dismissal..In late summer 1613, the elder son Henry, Lord Ros, suddenly sickened and died in September and was buried on the 26th....not long after their young son Francis fell sick and his sister Lady Katherine. To complete the catastrophe, the earl and his wife were also afflicted...the servants of Belvoir were quick to point the finger at Joan Flower and her evil daughters, but the earl and countess refused to listen to such allegations...They would also be blamed for the that the countess failed to become pregnant after the birth of her second son."

"Many witches were believed to be secret papists, which set them even further apart from the largely Protestant society of Jacobean England...Anne Baker and Joan Willimot, two wise women who were known to Joan Flower and her daughters, were alleged to have uttered 'Popish prayers' as part of their craft."

"The prevalence of women as victims of the witch hunt was not entirely due to misogynistic beliefs. Indeed, women played almost as active a part in the hunting down and prosecution of witches as they as as victims of the hunt...Many of the men who bore testimony were doing so at the prompting of their wives. Moreover, the majority of those who were employed as 'witch pickers' were women...Women also played a key role in generating accusations of witchcraft in the first place." Sharing the same social sphere..."Women were generally less tolerant of those of their sex who got above themselves or otherwise did not conform to strict village hierarchies."

The physician, Dr. Francis Napier, was outspoken in his belief that witchcraft was at the heart of many illnesses...but he was also known for treating women "disturbed by the deaths of infants...It is possible that it was the earl, concerned as much for his wife's grief over their eldest son's death as for the afflictions of their youngest, who had sought Napier's services...First, he employed divination to ascertain whether the patient had been the victim of witchcraft. He sometimes conjured the Archangel Raphael, beseeching him to reveal whether a bewitchment had taken place, and whether the patient could be cured."...After exhausting the service of several physicians, they sought the help of Joan Flower.

"It is easy to understand the appeal that the rumors about the Flower women held for the earl and countess. If Joan and her daughters had bewitched their young son, then there was always hope that the curse might be lifted. It transformed the boy's parents from helpless bystanders to active participants...Joan and her daughters were arrested either just after Christmas 1618 or at the beginning of 1619."

Fear made Joan desperate. When the party reached Ancaster, she demanded an ordeal that would prove her innocence straight away. She asked for blessed bread and butter, and said if she were guilty it would never go through her...Upon being presented with it, Joan put a piece into her mouth and then fell down and died as she was being carried to Lincoln Gaol.

"Thomas Cooper's The Mystery of Witch-craft was a popular work and, appearing so close to Margaret and Phillipa's arrest, may well have been consulted by the men appointed to luring a confession from them."...Margaret confessed on February 4 of conspiring with her mother to bring about the death of the Earl's elder son...the fantastical nature of their confessions and their striking similarity to those taken from other cases supports the fact that they were tortured and told what to say...Sir Edward Bromley had convicted the Pendle witches seven years earlier and now sat in judgement of Margaret and Phillipa.

Although they confessed, the evidence against Margaret and Phillipa was flimsy. After their deaths, the authorities continued to seek out co-conspirators. Anne Baker, Joan Willimot and Ellen Green were possibly named by the sisters under torture...Joan Willimot admitted to being a cunning woman and a confidante of Joan Flower. Anne and Ellen admitted to practicing witchcraft, but Ellen couldn't contribute any knowledge of the Manners' situation.

Ch 6: George Villiers, the King's favorite, has his eyes on Katherine Manner. Ch 13: Cecilia disapproves because he isn't Catholic, but with the death of all of her sons, this match is the only hope of continuing the family line. There is a theory that George Villiers had a hand in the last son's death and even commissioned the Belvoir Witches pamphlet, but nothing can be proven.

After the king's death, allegations that George had secured royal favor by witchcraft grew ever more insistent. That his former protege John Lambe had helped him bewitch the ;late king was an old rumor...He then retained the services of another cunning man, Pierce Butler who possessed 'strange faculties" and "generally believed to be a magician."

Rating: 3 out of 5

Finished The Decline of Magic: Britain in the Enlightenment by Michael Hunter
Pages: 256
Words:
Notes: Too many for here.
Rating: 4 out of 5

Finished Demonology by King James I
Pages: 84
Words: None.
Notes: In the preface, King James I calls out Reginald Scot by name. Scot’s “The Discoverie of Witchcraft” was published in 1584 and was controversial at the time with its argument that witchcraft did not exist. While this wasn't written specifically as a reaction Scot, it shows that James is very aware of other wicthcraft-related works.

James I mentions King Saul consulting the Witch of Endor to raise up the spirit of Samuel. James makes his own claim that Saul was so distracted by his own inner turmoil that what he saw wasn’t the ghost of Samuel, but the Devil in disguise. However, reading the KJV text itself, there is no deceit. This spirit merely proclaims what Saul already knows. It does not lie, and Saul himself recognizes the spirit, not the Witch.

James goes on to make the distinction between Magi/ Necromancy and Sorcery/Witchcraft. The former are “the Devil’s masters and commanders” usually motivated by curiosity. His observation that Magi often claim to know the future, contradicts his belief that “the Devil hath no knowledge of things to come."

The “Devil’s School” includes astrology, chiromancy, geomancy, hydromancy, arithmancy, and physiognomy. Henry VIII had outlawed it in 1530 and what’s more, physiognomy can be found in KJV in Isaiah 3:9. The Devil can appear to these individuals as a “Cat, a Dog, an Ape, or some such beast”.

James mentions that demons and the Devil deceive followers by “imprinting in them the opinion that there are so many Princes, Dukes and Kings…commanding Legions…”, saying there is no such thing in Hell. However, according to KJV Jesus himself casts out a “legion” from a man in Mark 5:1-42.

Witches “are servants only,” motivated by revenge or greed. James does not claim that all witches are women, only that women are more susceptible to the practice. However, “no man ought to presume impunity” and God may “use any kind of extraordinary punishment when it pleases him.” Thus God can allow mortals to be attacked by witches or tempted by the Devil.

James argues that melancholy cannot be blamed for the confession of witchcraft (nevermind under torture), as “some of them are rich and worldly-wise” or “merry”. However the vast majority of witches were elderly, poor, uneducated, or outcasts.

It is written that the Devil may allow Witches to leave their bodies to be “transported from one Country to another." I think he mentioned this specifically because it was thought that witches were the cause of the storm that prevented his fiancé from traveling to England from Denmark.

James claims that "man-wolves"may be suffering from extreme melancholy. There's a mention of nuns being burnt for laying with incubi but no source is provided.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Finished Grimoires: A History of Magic Books by Owen Davies
Pages: 283
Words: leechbooks; nigromancy; genizah; Grand Albert, Petit Albert, Witchcraft Detected and Prevented, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, Devil Worship in France, Book of Black Magic and of Pacts, The Complete Fortune Teller and Dream Book
Notes: Too many for here.
Rating: 5 out of 5

Finished The Book of English Magic by Philip Carr-Gomm and Richard Heygate
Pages: 509
Words: Green Man, Mythago Wood, Monumenta Britannica, ley lines, The Tain Bo Cuailnge, Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics, spagyric,
Notes: "...if you leave a silver coin at the entrance of Wayland's Smithy, your horse will be shod by a ghostly blacksmith; and if you travel on to the great white horse a mile along the track and make a wish beside its eye, it is said it will come true."

"The 18th c. saw the development of the 'cultural Druid', in 1792 Iolo Morganwg held a "gorsedd" or "gathering" which was eventually adopted by the Welsh National Eisteddfod..."

"Druids are divided into 3 classes: Bards, Ovates and Druids. The first being somewhat obvious, the second were the prophets and healers, and the third were the elite teachers and ceremonial veterans of the group."

"Ogam, said to be the secret language of the Druids, is the earliest written record of the Irish language. It emerged in the 4th century as a script of 20 letters, and a century later a further five were added. These were supposedly based on 25 woodland plants and trees, an important element to Druid lore."

"The birch tree, known as Beith in the tree-language of Ogham, is known as the pioneer tree. Traditionally it was used to make babies' cradles and maypoles, and is the first tree to plant if you wish to forest virgin land. The yew tree called Ioho in Ogham, is the tree of eternity and of reincarnation. They are associated with death since they are found in graveyards and the dark green spikes are deadly poisonous. The oak tree, Duir in Igham, signified strength, continuity of tradition and endurance. "

"Meadowsweet was used to flavor mead and was given in posies to bridal couples. It was used in marriages, funerals, coming of age and magical initiation...Mistletoe is gathered from oaks on the 6th day of the new moon and was considered a magical cure for many ailments, even though it is toxic. It can be a token of good luck and fertility...Woad produces a natural blue dye that is used in Druid robes."

"The Other World has 3 dimensions: Upper, Middle and Lower. The Middle World is famliiar and like amirror image of our own; the Lower World is the place of the ancestors and inherited knowledge. It is not the Underworld or Hell. The Upper World is the world of enlightenment and the beauty of vision...A gateway is something that you can visualize, which will help you gain entry to the Other-world. It will usually be some familiar spot that exists in nature, perhaps a favorite place from your childhood. A Lower World gateway may be a hole, a tunnel, a well, a spring. An Upper World gateway may be a tree, a mountain, a path."

Nine Herbs Charm: used to treat wounds and 9 different poisons or infections. Herbs included were mugwort, plantain (waybread), lamb's cress, attorlape (cockspur grass or betony), camomile, wergulu (nettle), chervil, fennel and crab apple.

The Lucky Hand is an amulet made from bracken. The fern is uprooted on Midsummer Eve, the fronds cut away to form a hand and it’s preserved in the smoke of the Midsummer bonfire. It can then be kept in the house for protection against bad luck."

"Runian, to rune, means to whisper or tell secrets; runcraeftig, rune-skilled, meant skilled in mysteries; runcofa, rune-chest, meant chamber of secrets or innermost thoughts; and runwita, rune-knower, meant counselor or adviser."

"The first and only reported sighting of the Grail and the Spear comes from Palestine in the 7th century. The Gaulish monk Arculf journeyed there and described what he saw to Adamnan, the abbot of the monastery of Iona. 'Between the basilica of Golgotha and the Martyrium, there is a chapel in which lies the chalice of the Lord, which he himself blessed with his own hand and gave to the apostles whilst reclining with them at Supper the day before he suffered...It is also said that Joseph of Arimathea, accompanied by 11 missionaries, brought the Grail with him to Glastonbury after the crucifixion...It is said that the Spear of Longinus was carried into battle by the Theban legion. Eventually it came to England and was owned by Ethelred, then to the court of Charlemagne.

In 1184, fire destroyed much of Glastonbury Abbey, which had taken 120 years to build. 6 years later, the abbey monks announced they had discovered the burial place of King Arthur and Guinevere! When they were reburied at the high altar in 1278, King Edward I and Queen Eleanor attended the service.

Wicca was created by Gerald Gardner, a historian of Eastern weaponry, and it was Doreen Valiente who gathered his rituals in poetic form. It is not the same as “the old ways” but sympathetic magic in general is the oldest form of magic.

The Celtic goddess Brighid was ruler of the forge and of the elements fire and water. She was also the goddess of healing, midwifery and poetry, all of which emerge from the “forge” of the body and soul.

Spagyrics is the art of producing plant elixirs. In the plant world, Mercury is represented by the natural alcohols that can be extracted, Sulphur by the plant oils or ‘personality’ of the plants, and Salt by that which remains after the plant has been burnt or evaporated.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Finished Magic: A History: From Alchemy to Witchcraft, from the Ice Age to the Present by Chris Gosden
Pages: 512
Words: asipu, Lamatsu, hemerology, gorytos,
Notes: "My definition of magic emphasizes...that people are open to the workings of the universe and the universe is responsive to us. Magic is related to, but different from, the other two great strands of history, religion and science."

"Three forms of participation can be distinguished: transcendence, transformation and transaction...A classic example of transcendence is astrology, where astral bodies shape human lives, but people do not influence the movement of the stars or planets. Alchemy is an example of transformation, or shamans can transform themselves. Divination is an example of a transaction...Apotropaic/Protective Magic is linked to relationship work above and seeks to protect...Foretelling the Future often concern relatively local or personal issues but can occur within a religious dimension...Understanding the Past with oracles to find of the cause of a death or misfortune...Dying/Death and the Dead such as communicating with the dead or making sure they do not bother the living...Medicine/Sickness often involves relationships with spirits or demons..."

"...in heightened or excited states people perceive what are known as entoptic phenomena..."

"Art...provides some control over the animals depicted and hence some species of sympathetic magic...Art helped to honor, maintain and manipulate these relations with animals that were of importance to life itself."

"The later Natufian Period saw a brief return to glacial conditions...However, bodies were still buried in old settlement sites...Quite a number were buried without their head...it is possible people took skulls with them as they moved..."

"A large site like Gobekli Tepe...Several hundred people at least made up such a workforce; each person consumed food and drink. It has been argued that concentrating people like this ona regular basis required farming...but there is no evidence of habitation, only a series of extraordinary structures...A greater stress was placed on the genealogy of the family and the creation of an intimate relationship between the dead and the living, with the former buried directly beneath the floors on which people walked, worked and slept."

"The first real evidence of the institutional nature of religion comes with the Ubaid Period (c. 5500-4000 BCE)."

"The asipu was highly trained and operated in the elite stratum of Mesopotamian society, but we can glimpse others, such as the snake-charmer (muslahhu, the essebu or 'owlman' and the qaditsu-woman, who offered their services in the streets."

"...in the Egyptian universe is heka, to which both gods and people are subject...heka is neither inherently bad: its effects depend on the intentions of those who wield it. There is a moral dimension to heka...The gods are more likely to misuse heka than are people."

"The stomach was the seat of the emotions, so things worn on belts to protect people's feelings were common; the pelvis for women was associated with pregnancy and birth, requiring special protection; headrests were sometimes decorated with magical images to ward off bad dreams and the demons who were active at night."

"The Shang, and all subsequent Chinese cultures, lived by primary reference to their dead. Ancestors from within the lineage guaranteed the well-being of the living...Five different types of sacrifices and feasts were offered to Shang royal ancestors: yi, ji, zai, xie and yong."

"The so-called Han synthesis brought together numerology, yin and yang philosophy, the workings of energy, and the Five Elements and Daoism...Whereas the Shang and the Zhou were positive about their dead, the Han cultivated a more distant relationship, both honoring the dead while being determined to keep them in their place. But the dead could also supply information, and the content of dreams was read by specialists for the benefit of the living."

"Chinese alchemy focused less on getting rich than on the creation of elixirs to promote health or eternal life...Daoism had a more esoteric, philosophical dimension, but also gave rise to many popular forms of magic, concerned with divination, alchemy and the promotion of harmony."

"The Ket had three elements of belief, centered first on an individual clan and the spirits protective of the household; then those to do with broader tribal lands and well-being; and lastly beliefs concerning the shaman. The term shaman comes from the Evenk language, itself a branch of the Tungus-language group."

"Animism is not primitive, either in the sense of being logically prior or because it is believed in by people whose societies have not developed. Animism is not best seen as internal, a state of belief, but as a mode of action, creating relationships between kinds."

"Several thousand khirigsuurs are known across Mongolia and into southern Siberia...many have an orientation just west of north, indicating that they were aligned on a celestial body rather than the local landscape. It is just possible that horses were sacrificed in late autumn as offerings to the rising Sun."

Deer Stones: representations of human figures, typically face-less, the circle at the top of the stone represents an earring, below a beaded necklace, and around the bottom of the stone a patterned belt."

"Bactrian camels were domesticated somewhere in Central Asia around 2500 BCE becoming important load-bearing animals, able to negotiate cold and arid areas and important sources of meat and milk."

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Finished reading The Yorkshire Witch: The Life and Trial of Mary Bateman by Summer Strevens
Pages: 256
Words: None.
Notes: "Screwed Down":A way of preventing harm from others by magically halting the enemy. Can also be used to stop husbands from wandering or from unpaid creditors from pursuing.

Pennyroyal is highly toxic and in small doses used in cooking and making herbal tea. Tansy was used to aid conception as well as induce abortions.

Southcottian: Followers of Joanna Southcott. She persuaded others that she had supernatural gifts and wrote and dictated prophecies in rhyme. She then announced herself as the Woman of the Apocalypse. In London she began selling paper "seals of the Lord" at prices varying from twelve shillings to a guinea. The seals were supposed to ensure a holder's place among the 144,000 people ostensibly elected to eternal life.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Finished reading Royal Witches: Witchcraft and the Nobility in Fifteenth-Century England by Gemma Hollman
Pages: 275
Words: nigromancy, vyaund ryalle: a white soup of almond milk, rice flour, milk and spices; sotelte: an elaborate sugar structure which aimed to impress;
Notes: "Kalmar Union: the name given to the single monarchy of Denmark, Sweden (including most of modern-day Finland), Norway and its territories (including Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands and the Northern Isles.)"

"During the winter of 1408 Henry IV's health continued to decline, so much so that towards the end of january he made a will - the first royal will made in English."

Rating: 4 out of 5

Finished reading Highroad to the Stake: A Tale of Witchcraft by Michael Kunze
Pages: 415
Words: socage, strappado, corpus delicti, morganatic, prigging, boar's wort, zcunrite, hagazussa,
Notes: Falkenturm or Falcon Tower was built around 1450 and originally part of Munich's defensive wall...it had served as a tsore for the implements the duke needed for falconry...Since about 1520 it became a cage for prisoners awaiting the gallows. "Ironmaster" was the title given to the warden...The cells were known as "keuchen" or "chokey."

"Alexander von Haslang, Captain of the Bodyguard, was a colonel and cavalryman. In 1601 he moved to Hungary as lieut-colonel, never to return to Germany. He died in 1620, at the beginning of the great war, as a prisoner in Bohemia."

After torture, the 10 year old Hansel said "he has seen the hands of seven children in his brothers' possession. In three cases they had cut them off beggar children. For the others, they had simply murdered big-bellied women who might give birth at any time, slit their bellies open and hacked off the children's hands. The hands were used for all sorts of magic. In the first place, you could heal sicknesses with the children's hands, but you could also inflict hard on other people. And finally they could be useful for murdering or stealing. He himself had seen Geindl giving his brothers dried and crushed children's hands to eat, hidden in a freshly baked roll. Not to make them ill, but so that they could murder people more easily."

Suspicious that his wife was cheating on him, "Paulus had seized an iron pan filled with red-hot coals that was standing by the hearth and had hurled it at his wife's head...Following this assault she suffered from sudden seizures...At the time of their arrest, the marriage had lasted for 37 years. Anna had borne 7 children and managed to keep three of them alive."

"Begging was a profession in those days, indeed many people called it "the golden trade." In 1574, 700 beggars were registered in Nuremberg...It was advisable to have an official document that certified the holder as a beggar."

"The first murder had been 3 years previously and it was a peasant they did not know, in broad daylight. Pappenheimer admitted to 12 murders under torture."

"Smallholders were called 'Blossshausler' or mere cottagers, simply because they possessed little more than their cottages, which were not called farmsteads, crofts or fiefs, like larger holdings, but simply plots."

"To save themselves from starving, the cottagers of Tettenwang baked a dough from oats, acorns and sawdust, mixed with water and animal blood."

"The bewitching of Maximilian's daughter-in-law made him all too aware of witchcraft. They destroyed crops and cattle, ruined harvests, brought pestilence and sickness into the country, wrought death and destruction but also an affront to God. Under his rule, there had been epidemic persecution of witches in Schongau and the Werdenfels area, with 114 convicted and burned at the stake."

"What was an approved practice for mercenary soldiers may not have seemed so reprehensible to those same men when they were discharged and roaming the country between wars. No way of supporting themselves other than plundering, they formed themselves intro troops and elected their own leaders."

"They had dried the hands in a pot in the oven and then ground them to a powder, using herbs...If you meant to kill a man, you had to treat the powder beforehand with salt, put it into a pan, cover it with a cloth, and then add salt on top of that. Anyone who walked over the powder treated this way was beyond human aid. If the spell was meant only to cause sickness, untreated powder was used."

Plague Virgin: A specter who flew through the air in the form of a bluish flame ,alighting at a place of her choice, where now in human form, she went from house to house, anointing doors and windows with the fiendish poison. Anyone who caught hold of her blood-red scarf would die, but he would preserve the town from plague. The "Three Virgins" were Einbett, Wollbet, and Vilbett, an unholy trinity and St. Ainpet and St. Sebastian were beseeched for protection against them.

Thieves Candle: Lighting it saved thieves and burglars from detection. It was generally a finger or the hand of a dead child, preferably a child that had not been baptized.

Sentenced to death are 6: Paulus "Pappenheimer" Pamb-Gamperl , Anndl Pamb-Gamperl, Michel Pamb-Gamperl, Gumpprecht Pamb-Gamperl, Ulrich Schaltzbauer, and Georg Schmalzl. Hansel was made to watch his parents' execution: "Look! Look! What a grand wedding for my father and mother!" Later, Hansel, Augustin, Baumann, Jack the Glazier, and Agnes and Anna were also burned alive.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Finished reading Witches of Pennsylvania: Occult History & Lore and The Witch of the Monongahela: Folk Magic in Early Western Pennsylvania by Thomas White
Pages: 96 and 116
Words: Powwowing Among the Pennsylvania Dutch, braucherei, hexerei, teufelsdeiner, trottenkopf, The Long Lost Friend; hexafoos; Hexenkopf: History, Healing, and Hexerei; The Realness of Witchcraft in America; The Red Church, or The Art of Pennsylvania German Braucherei
Notes: Too many for here.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Finished reading The Fairy Tellers: A Journey into the Secret History of Fairy Tales by Nicholas Jubber
Pages: 336
Words:
Notes:
Rating: 4 out of 5

Finished reading Devils, Ghosts and Witches: Occult Folklore of the Upper Ohio Valley by George Swetnam
Pages: 117
Words:
Notes:
Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Finished reading The Devil's Plantation: East Anglian Lore, Witchcraft & Folk-Magic by Nigel G. Pearson
Pages: 288
Words: Chronicon Anglicanum, hominem silvestrem (wodewose), Ancient Funerall Monuments, Holinshed's Chronicle, deosilwise, widdershins, chrism, casinomancy, cleidomancy
Notes: Too many for here.
Rating: 5 out of 5

Finished reading A History of Witchcraft: Sorcerers, Heretics and Pagans by Jeffrey Russell
Pages: 175
Words: benandanti
Notes: Too many for here.
Rating: 2 out of 5

Finished reading The Witch's Trinity: A Novel by Erika Mailman
Pages: 257
Words: None.
Notes: None.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Finished reading The Possession at Loudun by Michel de Certeau
Pages: 228
Words: soutane, thaumaturge
Notes: "The diabolical crisis has a double significance: it reveals the imbalance of a culture, and it accelerates the process of its mutation."

"Possession became great public trial: a confrontation between science and religion, a debate on what is certain and uncertain...It was gradually becoming profitable...The horror was transformed into a spectacle, the spectacle into a sermon...Possession is not the same as sorcery...Sorcery comes first. It extends from the last quarter of the 16th c."

"The first phantom-like apparitions took place in the convent at the same time as the last plague cases in he city are mentioned - at the end of September 1632. During the night the prioress Jeanne des Anges, the sub-prioress Sister de Colombiers and Sister Martha de Sainte-Monique, saw in the darkness the shadow of Prior Moussaut, the nuns' confessor who had died some weeks earlier." Later, the prioress "felt a hand, though seeing nothing, which, closing her hand, left in it three thorns of a hawthorn."

The "theater" of possession re-channels urban resentments, diverting them to great, formidable issues: the Devil, God, the natural or supernatural world, and so forth. It simplifies the choices."

Henri d'Escoubleau de Sourdis had two Ursuline nieces at Loudun...Many of the parents of the Ursulines, shocked at the news, ceased to pay the pensions they had pledged. The students began to leave.

On October 1, out of 17 nuns, 3 are declared 'possessed" In December there are 9 of them, and 8 are 'obsessed' the other nuns being healthy...The main difference between obsession and possession consists in the fact that in obsession, the Demon acts solely on the obsessed persons, though in an extraordinary manner, such as appearing to them often and visibly...Whereas in possession, the Demon takes advantage of the faculties and organs of the person in such a way as to produce actions that the person could not bring about themselves.

The public's reticence prompts them to a mystic one-upmanship...they can only throw themselves into the balance to tip the scales, calling down damnation upon themselves if what they say is untrue...They challenge heaven, creating the danger in order to give the fact of their being spared the force of a proof."

"The arrival of the Baron de Laubardemont in Loudun in September 1633 marks a turning point: the introduction of centralist politics...the situation with the Ursulines was in defiance of the jurisdiction of the royal authority."

Among the papers seized from Urbain Grandier's quarters, are 1) a certain writ in form of a treatise on celibacy, to prove that priests may marry. 2) Two leaves of verse and French rhymes, immodest 3) Two copies of a letter from the bailiff of Loudun to the prosecutor general of Paris, to persuade him that the possession of the Ursuline religious was a fakery 4) A response from the prosecutor general 5) Several dispensations granted by the bishop of Poitiers to a large number of families of the parish of Saint-Pierre from attending service under said Grandier 6) A discourse in the form of a remonstrance containing reasons, explanations and arguments intended to prove that he had no part in the supposed possessions.

The exorcisms are conducted simultaneously in the churches of Saint-Croix and Saint Pierre du Martray and in the chapels of Notre Dame du Chateau of the Ursulines and the Carmelites...Arriving to be exorcised, as soon as the "demon" appears, the girls are untied and left in complete freedom."

Jeanne des Anges: Posessed by Leviathan, Aman, Isacaron, Balam, Asmodeus, and Behemoth
Louise de Jesus: Caron and Easas
Jeanne du Saint-Esprit: Cerberus
Anne de Sainte-Agnes: Asaph, Asmodeus, Berith, Achaos
Claire de Saint-Jean: Pollution, Elimy, Sansfin, Nephtaly, Zabulon, Ennemi de la Vierge, Concupiscence
Elisabeth de la Croix: Allumette d'impurete, Castorin, Caph, Agal, Celse
Catherine de la Presentation: Penault, Caleph, Daria
Marthe de Sainte-Monique: Cedon
Seraphique: Baruch
Gabrielle de l'Incarnation: Baruch, Behemoth, Isacaron
Angelique de Saint-Francois: Cerberus
Marie du Saint-Sacrement: Berith, Caleph
Isabelle Blanchard: Maron, Perou, Beelzebub, Lion d'Enfer, Astaroth, Charbon d'Impurete
Francoise Fillastreau: Buffetison, Souvillon, Caudacanis, Jabel
Leonce Fillastreau: Esron, Lucien, Luther
Suzanne Hammon: Roth
Marie Beaulieu: Cedon
Marthe Thibault: Behemoth
Jeanne Pasquier: Lezear

Grandier is accused of being a sorcerer for the last nine years, having been received by Asmodeus in Bearn (the land of witchcraft, Laubardemont's estimation."

It does not mean that, speaking the same language, the traditionalist doctors and theologians understand one another. They have common interests, but they are competitors...The various therapies are chosen specifically for their demonstrative tactics. They are to force the body to attest to the science that organizes them.

Indolent Marks: Spots that do not bleed. The depth of these marks is approx. 3-4 fingers in the part that seems dead or insensitive, since all the iron of an awl that is plunged into it causes neither water nor blood to come out, nor causes pain to the sorcerer.

Rating: 2 out of 5

Finished reading The Superstitious Mind: French Peasants and the Supernatural in the Nineteenth Century by Judith Devlin
Pages: 230
Words: "vouivre": a kind of flying dragon; exempla; "patenotre blanche"; voyageuses; auscultation; coxalgia;
Annales de Notre Dame de Lourdes: 1858 and 1914;
Notes: Too many for here.
Rating: 5 out of 5!

Finished reading The Last Witch of Langenburg by Thomas Robisheaux
Pages: 338
Words: melissa (the herb of the black Christ); tormentil; fenstern: letting your lover in through the window; cachexia;
Notes: "Turk Anna. Only four years earlier the elderly cow maid had been discovered lacing her bread and cakes with poison. Before she was caught, however, she had murdered a number of children."

"Christmas was followed by Three Kings Day or Epiphany (Jan 6) and Lichtmess (Feb 2) or the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin."

"Fruit trees pruned on Shrove Tuesday were believed to bear more fruit. Peasant women avoided going out into the fields, and were to take particular care in cleaning the cattle stalls and closing the stall doors so that no harm would come to the animals."

"Not once did Gulchen consider suspending the ordinary law and its rules and treat the case as an exceptional crime...Not once this night did von Gulchen use the world "witchcraft" or "sorcery" as descriptions of what might have happened to Anna Fessler."

"With almost a week to think about the events and talk among themselves, the women could now embellish their original accounts with more details about Anna Schmeig's reputation for witchcraft. Yet all of them carefully avoided denouncing Schmeig outright for witchcraft. Instead they insinuated the accusation into their stories and let the court adviser draw his own conclusions."

"1634: In August a hostile imperial Catholic army marched into Hohenlohe...By the 1640s, Langenburg and many of the surrounding villages had lost between 40 - 60% of their populations..."

"Heinrich Friedrich instituted new village discipline courts aimed at punishing everyday infractions and bringing 'all the evil and cursing' under control. These courts also channeled local disputes and acts of revenge into the legal system, punishing villages for slander, violence and ordinary injuries of honor...At the court of the Duke of Saxony-Weimar, he was inducted into the Fruit-Bearing Society, a literary society, and given the name 'Der Ablenkende' meaning protecting against harm or even parried the blows of evil."

"...a ruinous inflation called the Kipper-und Wipperzeit came in 1622-23, the result of the debasing of the coinages of the Holy Roman Empire."

Miller: "The position brought with it suspicion, disrespect, and even dishonor. With an essential place in the agricultural economy, however, millers might also become big men in the village and accumulate a fortune...They were suspected of stealing grain, charging unfair prices, or violating the market ordinances during hard times and selling scarce food supplies out of the district at night..The notion of mills as safe havens and sanctuaries, a holdover from medieval customary law, also fed suspicions that they were dens of criminals, heretics and gathering places for strangers."

"On Feb 18, less than a week after Anna's arrest, Master Fuchs secretly went to the Langenburg court and accused Hans of sorcery...Hans wanted to take the head of a black cat and bury it under his door in the name of the devil. Custom had it that if you put a cat's head in earth beneath a door and then invoke God or the Devil, the charm would protect the house or barn from harm."

"There were 3 such categories of dishonorable people. All the fahrende leute, or traveling people (including Jews, Romani, beggars, peddlers, entertainers, prostitutes, cardplayers, charlatans, actors, singers, and musicians. Second, almost all lowest-level functionaries: executioners, gravediggers, street-cleaners, court lackeys, police flunkeys and skinners. Finally, occupations slightly polluted: shepherds, tanners, weavers, potters, bath masters, barbers and millers."

"When Anna Schmeig challenged the court to have Fuchs examine her, she was invoking the executioner's reputation as a seer who could look through a person and tell if she was a witch or not."

"While Reinhart denied having murdered men and women, she did confess to laming her enemies, giving them 'witches shots' to the arms, legs, feet, hands, breasts and sides. 62 people had been injured in this way. She claimed to have killed 20 cows and calves, 15 sheep, 3 horses, 8 pigs, and 2 oxen.

"Scattered round the barn, the black flowers of the hellebore and tormentil were commonly used to cure sick cows or to ward off harmful spirits."

Rating: 4 out of 5!

Finished reading Witchcraft in France and Switzerland: The Borderlands During the Reformation by E. William Monter
Pages: 200
Words: ascendenten, bailliages, vigneron, scapulary, prevote, poussenion, Pierasset (devil's name), hypericon, estriefe,
Notes: "...the equation between witches and heretics (precisely Waldensians) was first made in the Jura region by 1450...words for 'witch' were directly derived from words for heretic. In the diocese of Geneva the term was herege, in the diocese of Sion and most of the diocese of Lausanne it was vaudois, or Waldensian. In all three dioceses, these words remained more popular than the correct French word for witch, sorciere, through the 16th c...However in the County of Neuchatel, a 15th c. witch was more likely to be called a casserode than a vaudois. In the diocese of Besancon, it was genauche, a word rooted in sorcery rather than in heresy...The old Basque word for witchcraft was pozoerie, the old low-German name for it was toverie, which in the early 15th c. was used in places as far apart as Berlin and Utrecht which only gradually yielded to hexerei. Nowhere else than Jura did the laity decide to call a witch a heretic so early and so firmly."

"The vast majority of Inquisitorial suspects in the files at Lausanne were also men."

"In late medieval Europe, witchcraft was already viewed as a delictum mixti, a crime that could be judged by either lay or church courts, or by both...It became especially deadly when it was moved into the secular courts..."

"Sometimes, as in Geneva, suspected witches were banished for life; sometimes, as in Franche-Comte, they were banished only for a specified number of years from the whole province or else banished permanently from their local region; and sometimes, as in Neuchatel, they were 'banni a domicile', confined within their own homes."

"In Geneva, which was the nearest magnet for Savoyard emigration, it is even less surprising that many of the witches found after the Reformation were Savoyards...A conspiracy of plague-spreaders (engraisseurs or bouteurs de peste) was discovered in Geneva in 1530, involving the master of the plague hospital and his wife, the hospital barber and his family, and even the priest who served as almoner at the hospital."

"The confession of Jeanette Clerc, executed in 1539...She was arrested when her neighbor's cow died suddenly after eating an herb which Jeanette had cut on the eve of St. John the Baptist's Day. She gave a full description of the witch's gatherings or 'synagogues."

"Demonically possessed women and children first became a serious problem at Geneva in October 1607 when 17 of them had to be quarantined in a special room while pastors said special prayers for their recovery..."

"In 1641 Jussy's peasantry accused a widow of decimating their livestock through witchcraft. The magistrates decided to banish her, but the dissatisfied peasants petitioned the government to torture her instead; this was done, but she did not confess and was banished anyway. She was the last person accused of witchcraft in Jussy."

"The Les Verrieres commune was largely unaffected by the turmoil of the wars of religion and it had no known severe attacks of the plague during this period; yet the history of its witch trials reflects most of the features of the small panics elsewhere in French Switzerland."

"Clauda Runye, a 40 yr old vagabond was sentenced to be burned alive on Sept 16, 1568 after failing to cure the demonically possessed wife of a local chatelain."

"Plague-spreading panic was inevitably directed against the marginally-employed immigrants and vagabonds who took on the most dangerous public jobs during plague epidemics."
Rating: 3 out of 5

Finished reading Queens of the Wild: Pagan Goddesses in Christian Europe: An Investigation by Ronald Hutton
Pages: 197
Words: acerbot, nocticula, nachtwaren, hulden, unhulden, pilwitzen, maren truten, nachtvrouwen
Notes: Too many for here.
Rating: 5 out of 5!

Finished reading Salem Witch Judge: The Life and Repentance of Samuel Sewall by Eve LaPlante
Pages: 284
Words: jeremiads
Notes: Salt-Marsh Hay: "During the 17th c. North Shore men cut and dried hundreds of thousands of tons of salt-marsh hay and loaded it onto barges, which they poled through the marsh at high-tide to creeks leading to towns...it was used throughout the colonies for bedding and feeding livestock."

Those considered enemies by the Puritans included Native Americans, the French, the Catholic Church, Anglicans, royalists, witches, Quakers, Baptists, and Muslims...Quakers supported toleration of other faiths. They opposed the use of sung or intrumental music in services. Rejecting the need for ministers and formal church services, they believed women as well as men could lead worship. For all these reasons the General Court banished Quakers on pain of death in 1659. The court hanged several Quakers on Boston Common under this law...After 1660 the Crown revoked the 1659 law...In 1676 the General Court ordered constables to "search out and arrest all Quakers."

Bridget Hoar, the wife of the third president of Harvard, Leonard Hoar, was the daughter of John Lisle. John Lisle in 1649 was the President of the High Court of Justice and Lord Commissioner of the Great Seal of Cromwell, drew up the indictment and death sentence of King Charles I. 15 years later, Lisle was shot and killed by two Irishmen hoping for a reward from Charles II. His widow, Lady Alice Lisle, was later accused of treason for having hidden some of the Duke of Monmouth's soldiers. Nearing 70 years old, she was beheaded in the Winchester marketplace.

"The Indian Bible, one of the most important historic artifacts of 17th c. North America, remains an emblem of Puritan missionary zeal. Only 20 Indian Bibles exist today and each one is valued more than $2 million...Visiting Winchester College in England, startled by the quality of their collection, Sewall decided on the spot to leave his Indian Bible there. This text is now the most valuable object in their collection."

"Tituba later revealed that her master, the Reverend Parris, had flogged her before the hearing and ordered her to confess and implicate the other women named by the girls. Parris' goal was to deflect the blame for the devilish affliction, which so far affected only members of his family...After the trials Samuel Parris would pay nothing for Tituba's release, so the court sold her, as a slave, to someone else."

"In the process the judges studiously ignored the English common law principle that a crime must be observed by two credible witnesses..."

Sarah Good's last words were "Liar!" shouted at Noyes. "If you take my life away, God will give you blood to drink." Years later, Noyes suffered an internal hemorrhage and died choking on his own blood in 1717.

"Samuel voted with the court to convict and execute Burroughs, but he chose not to attend the execution. He may not have relished the spectacles at Salem of the hanging of a college friend and erstwhile dinner companion whom he had just sentenced to death."

"In English law a person who remained mute before a court received peine forte et dure, or a slow crushing under weights until a plea was forthcoming. Giles remained silent as he died and succeeded in protecting his land and possessions from the sheriff, who had ransacked the houses and barns of many other convicted witches. Without a plea from Corey, the sheriff had no legal justification for invading his property."

"In total, 185 people - 141 women and 44 men - were accused of witchcraft. Of the 59 people tried, 31 were convicted and 20 were executed. Of those executed, 14 were women and 6 were men."

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Finished reading Judge Sewall's Apology by Richard Francis
Pages: 356
Words: colostrum, "Cornish hug: an affectionate squeeze that leads to the collapse of the receiver."; purdah
Notes: "When Harvard's original charter was drafted in 1650, it contained a specific commitment to provide education for Native Americans as well as whites...but by the end of the 17th century only four natives attended Harvard."

"Three Native Americans were executed at the same time for burning Thomas Eame's house in Sherborn and killing his wife and some of their children...Dr. Brackenberry dissected the body of one of the executed natives for the benefit of several invited onlookers. This was probably only the second public dissection ever performed in America..."

"Nathaniel Saltonstall resigned from the court. He had refused to sign warrants against women accused of witchcraft in his own town of Andover, and also declared himself unwilling to conduct examinations of the accused Salem witches."

"Finding herself indicted for witchcraft, Margaret Jacobs had turned confessor, making accusations against her own grandfather, as well as George Burroughs ,John Willard and an accused witch called Alice Parker. Then she retracted her confession. She later explained that the afflicted had fallen down at the sight of her and told her that if she didn't confess she would be put in the dungeon and hanged. She had done as she was told, but "the very first night after i can made confession, I was in such a horror of conscience that I could not sleep for fear the Devil should carry me away for telling such horrid lies."

"Sewall tried to persuade the council to pass a bill removing the pagan names of the days of the week and calling them by number instead, since "the Week only, of all parcels of time, was of Divine Institution."

"Natives had killed the baby of Hannah Dustin, and carried her off into captivity, along with the child's nurse Mary Neff. The ended up as slaves of a family of twelve, along with a boy called Samuel Lennardson, who had been captured a year ago...One night, when the family was asleep, Hannah and Samuel stole hatches and killed ten of them, allowing only an elderly woman and a boy to escape. Then the three set off for home. After they can gone a short distance, Hannah stopped, realizing they could claim bounty if she had proof of what they had done. She went back and methodically scalped each of the bodies. Six of the natives that she and Samuel had killed were children."

Rating: 3 out of 5

Finished reading Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England: A Documentary History 1638-1692 edited by David Hall
Pages: 314
Words: double Indian mat; swonding; groat; bemoidered; warraneage,
Notes: - Sentences: Banishment: 3, Hanged: 38, Whipped: 3, Acquitted: 11, Fined: 1, House Arrest: 1, Escaped: 5
- Earliest Year: 1638
- Latest Year: 1692
- Accusations: "friends of Anne Hutchinson"; "a healer"; a great tempest blew when she died", "thievery," "bewitched child/children", "illicit sexual behavior", "infanticide", "invisible dog", "spoilt milk" "missing cow tongue", "will not speak ill of witches", "no grief for dead child", "ill-tempered", "froward discontented frame", "telling sundry things before they were known", "harming animals", "poltergeist activity", "refusing to name other witches," "lying", "sowing quarrels with neighbors", "shapeshifting," "apparitions", "paralyzing victims," "child out of wedlock," "missing animals," "black mouse familiar," "witches marks", "bad reputation," "bumble bee or controlling bees", "bear," "great noise as if many cats climbed up the walls", "a bird coming to suck a wife", "fall from a horse," "prescribing herbs", "causing fits," "possession," "adultery," "pinching," "burning maggots," "spoiling cheese," "difficult labor during birth," "fortune teller," "bloody nose on sight"; "projecting voice"

Rating: 4 out of 5

Finished reading The Devil's Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England by Richard Godbeer
Pages: 233
Words: "Precisionists"
Notes: "Yet ordinary people tended to focus on the effect of a ritual rather than the origin of its portentcy. For them, issues of causation had little or no significance."

"First, not all New Englanders were Puritans. Second, some members of the godly community were driven to magic by fears and uncertainties arising from predestinarian theology. And third, godly colonists who used magical techniques, for whatever reason, were generally disinclined to problematize their behavior."

"In 1637, a young woman, 'having been in much trouble of mind about her spiritual estate, at length grew into utter desperation, and could not endure to hear of any comfort, so as one day she took her little infant and threw it into a well, and then came into the house and said, now she was sure she should be damned for she had drowned her child."

"Puritans viewed all extraordinary events as providential in their expression of God's power and purpose...Puritans were eager to record and digest all supernatural incidents and to ponder their significance."

"Healing magic, the ministers argued, was just as reprehensible as divination...God responded to supplication, not command."

"Only one male healer, Dr. Roger Toothaker of Billerica, was accused of witchcraft in the 17th c New England."

"It was when Puritans sought to account for their spiritual deficiencies that Satan figured most prominently in their thoughts."

"Possession enabled people...to express sinful desires without having to accept full responsibility for their behavior...."

"Godfridus' almanac, "Here Beginnyth The Book of Knowledge of Things Unknowne," was first printed in England in 1530, was reissued in 1580, and went through no fewer than 13 editions in the 17th c. It was printed in America for the first time in 1760 and reissued in 1767 and 1772."

"Until 1675, Harvard College possessed the only printing press in the colonies..." (The first in Americas was in Mexico City in 1539.)

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Finished reading A Delusion Of Satan: The Full Story Of The Salem Witch Trials by Frances Hill
Pages: 218
Words: None.
Notes: Will add later.
Rating: 4 out of 5

Finished reading The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Enquiry into the Salem Witch Trials by Marion Starkey
Pages: 270
Words: bobby-soxers; salactmen;
Notes: None.
Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Finished reading In the House in the Dark of the Woods by Laird Hunt
Pages: 214
Words: None.
Notes: - Robin "Red"breast: symbolizes death of a loved one; harbinger of death; rebirth; spirit guides and messengers
- Crow: trickster; scavengers; bad omen; death
- Purple: courage; but a mourning color; patience; trust
- Owl: wisdom; helpfulness; witchcraft; prophecy
Rating: 4 out of 5

Finished reading Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch by Rivka Galchen
Pages: 271
Words: fat-kidneyed; pfennigs; plover; samovar, wolpertinger
Notes: None
Rating: 3 out of 5

Finished reading The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent
Pages: 332
Words: None.
Notes: None
Rating: 3 out of 5

Finished reading The Bewitching of Anne Gunter by James Sharpe (12/21/22)
Pages: 212
Words: The Most Strange and Admirable Discovery of the Three Witches of Warboys Arraigned, Convicted and Executed at the Last Assizes at Huntingdon
Notes: "We know that she could read...An unremarkable daughter in a solid country gentry family...Anne confessed that under pressure from her father she had agreed to 'feign' and counterfeit herself to be bewitched."

"Her parents told her of the superstition that if some thatch from the house of a suspected witch was burned, the afflictions suffered by the supposedly bewitched party were lifted."

"...from an early stage her father attempted to make her symptoms seem more compelling by keeping her drugged...brimstone burned under her nose...sack and sallet oil with some other mixtures...the girl was insensible until the effects of the drink wore off."

William Gunter tried to break up a fight between John Field and Richard Gregory after a football game, but was then attacked by Richard Gregory and his brother John. Then Brian Gunter "reached over the shoulders of the struggling men and, with the pommel of a dagger, struck the heads of the two young Gregorys." Both of them died later. The matter did not go to trial, but there was now bad blood between the two families.

"The integrated and co-operative pre-industrial village settlement turns out to be a myth. There was much greater mobility, and therefore greater turnover in the population of any village...there is no reason to suspect that North Moreton was an especially contentious or dispute-ridden village."

"Witches, in English popular belief of around 1600, were not often thought of primarily as agents of the devil; this notion was to become more entrenched during the 17th century, as the population at large became more aware of educated thinking on the subject."

Rating: 4 out of 5

Finished reading The Discoverie of Witchcraft by Reginald Scot
Pages: 320
Words: - That the types of "witches" condemned are not at all mentioned in the Bible, and that "he that attributeth to a witch such divine power (controlling the weather, disease, etc) is "in heart a blasphemer, an idolator, and full of gross impiety."

- That "condemned or infamous persons testimonie is good and allowable in matters of witchcraft" when they would not be admissable otherwise. (illegal procedures)

- "If more ridiculous or abominable crimes could have been invented, these poor women should have been charged with them." (against scapegoating)

- "The poor old witch is commonly unlearned, unwarned and unprovided of counsel and friendship...Christ did clearly remit Peter...therefore I see not but we may show compassion upon these poor souls..."

"But these old women being daunted with authorie, circumvented with guile, constrained by force, compelled by fear, induced by error and deceived by ignorance...are brought unto these absurd confessions." Later he says "confession in this behalf is insufficient to take away a life." (against torture)

That a witch might attack a king or "overthrowe an armie...I answer, that...princes disposed to battle...take unjust wars in hand, using other helps, devices and engines as unlawful and devilish as that" (the hypocrisy of kings)

That "our minds and soules are spiritual things," so if a demon comes in human form with greater powers than we, "does the devils handiwork exceed the handiwork of God?"

That women are accused of lying with an incubus and are condemned, but if a man lies with a succubus, a lie "that is practiced among many bad husbands, for whom it were a good excuse to saie they were bewitched." (against double-standard)

Scot comes very close to Deism, in that he argues that "in times past, it pleased God to shew miracles amongst his people, to strengthen their faith" but since then "no man could do such miracles" and for Scot that includes witches, kings, doctors AND saints.

4 out of 5

Finished reading Witches, Ghosts and Signs by Patrick W. Gainer
Pages: 177
Words: fernint, liever, shivaree, big brindle dog, murrain, The Divining Rod: A History of Water Witching
Notes: "To study the speech of the people, one must go into the field and get to know the people...One must not take the attitude that he is studying the illiterate speech of an ignorant people..."

"Probably the most distinguishing characteristic of the speech of the Southern Appalachian people is the slurring of the vowel so that it becomes a diphthong."

"By the beginning of this century the country school had become a center for community activities...It was a meeting of all the pupils of the school, their parents and friends, who came to participate in such activities as debates, dramatic skits, readings, recitations and spelling contests...Choral singing was also an important part of the literary."

"Dumb suppers were set at which girls sat in silence at a table where a chair was left vacant for a lover to occupy."

"Christmas was celebrated by 'Belsnickling' a custom unknown in other parts of the state. This custom was brought into that part of the state by German people from PA in the early part of the 18th century. The celebration started on Christmas Eve, when a small group disguised in costumes and masks started out under the leadership of 'Old Belsnickle to visit the homes in the community. Each home had a candle in the window to guide the visitors. Old Belsnickle would knock on the door and would be invited in and accompanying visitors would be inspected by members of the family. If the persons in the company could not be identified, the whole group was treated to good things to eat and drink."

"...the borderline between the spiritual world and the world of reality was a very thin one..."

"When these strange spiritual manifestations were being experienced in 1797, the Baltimore Diocese of the Catholic Church sent a young priest to Middleway to investigate. He was a Russian prince named Gallitzen, the first Catholic priest to receive all of his orders in America. He made a thorough investigation and wrote a report to his superiors. This priest became well known in the years after that and was called 'The Apostle of the Alleghenies.' He founded the town of Loretto, in PA and the town of Gallitzen, PA was named for him."

"Still another way to become a witch is to take your rifle to the top of the highest mountain just as the full moon appears over the horizon. Shoot your rifle at the rising full moon three times, each time swearing against God. Do this on three consecutive nights. On the third night the devil will appear with his book and pen with which you must sign your name in the book in your own blood."

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Finished reading Jasmin's Witch by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie
Pages: 179
Words: bocages; aiguillette
Notes: "While studying the witches of 1960-70...Favret-Saada sees witchcraft as a mortal combat waged by four actors: the person bewitched (A), who is a suffering victim; the witch (B), who is unaware of his maleficent nature, or who at least refuses to admit its existence, but who is considered to have produced A's misfortune; the announcer or denouncer (C), who undertakes to inform A of the presumed intrigues of B; and finally the un-bewitcher or counter-witch (D)."

"In 1842, Jasmin published a story, dated 1840 and put into verse by himself...He had found the plot of his story among the small farmers of the hamlet of Estanquet...It reflected some actual events and in reality they occurred between 1650 and 1700, perhaps in the 1660s."

"A pretty girl named Francouneto and all who dance with her are exhausted afterwards. The men are madly in love and they lose the strength of their arms and become incapable of ploughing. Pascal, one that she prefers, has a fight with another suitor and receives a deep wound that incapacitates him for six months...Pascal's mother accuses Francouneto of being a witch during the winter, a period associated with werewolves and witches...Another young man, Laurent, declares that she is of Huguenot birth on her father's side...Her father gave her to the Devil when she was born, in a pact that may have been signed with drops of blood...In rain or hail, the plot of land cultivated by Francouneto and her grandmother would flourish more than ever.

"She is blamed under four heads: (1) She takes away the strength of young men and eventually kills them, or tries to. (2) She strikes at the act of reproduction. (3) destructive attention to the wealth of other cultivators of the soil (4) she increases her own strength or wealth, and those of her lineage, at the same time as she reduces those of others."

"...the 'popish' community of Roquefort stands at the frontier of heresy, being close to the Protestant town of Nerac. Francouneto is therefore stigmatized by her fellow-villagers as a semi-Huguenot - here we perceive how they have been Catholicised."

"In the month of May, Francouneto takes part in the local pilgrimage to the shrine of the Virgin at Bon-Encontre...the celebrant presents the statuette for her to kiss, but as she's about to do so a violent storm breaks, with lightning and hail."

"In 1785-87, in the village of Montesquiou, a Gerarde Mimale nee Bonet is accused of possessing a mandrake...Jean Mimale and his father Pierre are accused along with her...Their accusers, the Lahille and Benac families, were persons either on the same social level or markedly beneath it...Francoise Lahille lost a cow in an accident for which the Mimales were responsible...one Joseph Benac, a small peasant of Montesauiou, whose arms had been 'satanically' weakened by the Mimales...he complained of a fire in his belly and of fits of madness, says that his bull's neck has been twisted, that vermin are eating up his farm animals..."

Rating: 4 out of 5