The Halloween season is in full swing and what's one of first images that comes too mind
when you think of Halloween, ?..
For most people its a witch flying across the moon light sky ...
Witches to today are seen as one of the most iconic symbols of this holiday .
But in the past those unfortunate enough to be labeled as such often met with a gruesome end.
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Deep in the forest lies a cabin surrounded by tree's and often shrouded in the mist..this is where you find the woodwives or the forest witch...
In times long ago people sought out witches for versus reasons some for medicinal cures, others for potions and tonics and even curses.
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Some would shoot arrows into the forest with messages attached, hoping for the witches within too grant there wishes.
No matter where you go, witches exist is some form or another, In the UK the druids and Celts, in Europe before Christianity took hold those that practiced the old ways could be found all over the continent .
In modern times witchcraft / wicca is not viewed as poorly as it once was.
However witchcraft in many regions around the world is still largely views as evil do to the stigma placed upon it by the church.
However that was not always the case, witches at one point were healers and nursemaids, versed in herbal cures.
Some were said to have the ability of prophesy or divination foretelling events that have yet to occur..
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History and biblical accounts.....
Exactly when the term "witches" was first used in a historical scene is unclear, but one of the earliest records of a witch can be found in the Bible in the book of 1 Samuel, thought to be written sometime between 931 B.C. and 721 B.C.
It tells of a time when King Saul sought the Witch of Endor to summon the dead prophet Samuel’s spirit to help him defeat the Philistine army.
The witch was said to have brought forth Samuel, who then prophesied the death of Saul and his sons. The next day, according to the Bible, Saul’s sons died in battle, and Saul committed suicide.
Saul and the witch of Endor
Other Old Testament verses condemning witches, include the well known verse from Exodus 22:18, which says, “thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Additional Biblical passages caution against divination, chanting or using witches to contact the dead. basically if the church doesn't support it it's Eeeevvviiillll....
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============== The Malleus Maleficarum================
The Witches Hammer..Or Hammer of Witches depending on translation
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The Malleus Maleficarum was written by a Catholic clergyman named Heinrich Kramer (under his Latinized name Henricus Institoris) and submitted to the University of Cologne on May 9th, 1487 then then later published in the German city of Speyer shortly after.
Between the years 1500 and 1660, the witch hystaria claimed the lives of up to 80,000 suspected witches in Europe.
Roughly 80 percent of the victims were women thought to have formed a pact with the Devil. Germany had the highest witchcraft execution rate, while Ireland had the lowest.
The “Malleus Maleficarum" tells of ways to identify, hunt and interrogate suspected witches.
"Malleus Maleficarum" labeled witchcraft as heresy in the eyes of the church, and quickly became the go to source on information for Protestants and Catholics trying to flush out witches living among them.
For more than a century, this book out sold every other book in Europe with the exception of the Bible.
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Scoltland would go on to have it' own version of the Malleus Maleficarum Written by King James the first called Demonology.
One of the earliest Scottish witch trials was hat of Janet Boyman a local healer who was charged with sorcery, witchcraft and consorting with fairies.
Boyman, who was executed in 1572, predicted the death of the country’s regent, bore “five bairns” allegedly without feeling any pain and appealed to elvish spirits in hopes of curing a sick man.
Scotland experienced four major witch hunts between roughly 1590 and 1727.
Horne and her daughter were both arrested and imprisoned in Dornoch in Sutherland on the accusations of her neighbors. At the time Horne was showing signs of senility, and her daughter had a deformity of her hands and feet.
The trial was conducted very quickly; the sheriff had judged both her and her daughter guilty and sentenced them to death by means of being burned at the stake.
The daughter managed to escape, but Janet was stripped, smeared with tar, paraded through the town on a barrel and then burned alive. Nine years after her death the witchcraft acts were repealed in Scotland.
Janet Horne was the last person in Scotland to be executed for witchcraft, she was burned at the stake in 1727.
The Witch's Stone in Littletown, Dornoch, marks the alleged spot of Horne's execution.
During the Scottish witch craze as many as 4,000 people lost there lives..
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Britans Last Witch..
Helen Duncan a spiritual medium famous at the time for her séances, was arrested and tried and jailed for witchcraft... she is now best known as the last person to be imprisoned under the British Witchcraft Act of 1735
In November 1941, Duncan held a séance in Portsmouth when she claimed the spirit materialization of a sailor told her that the HMS Barham had been sunk.
Because the sinking of HMS Barham was revealed, in strict confidence, only to the relatives of casualties, and not announced to the public until late January 1942, the Navy took an interest in her activities as a possible thereat.
Soon after two lieutenants were seated among her audience at a séance on 14 January 1944. One was Lieutenant Worth who was not impressed as a white cloth figure had appeared behind the curtains claiming to be his aunt but he had no deceased aunt. In the same sitting another figure appeared claiming to be his sister but Worth replied his sister was alive and well.
Worth was disgusted by the séance and reported it to the police. This was followed up on January 19th, when undercover policemen arrested her at another séance as a white-shrouded manifestation appeared.
This proved to be Duncan herself, in a white cloth which she attempted to conceal when discovered, and she was arrested.
In 1944, Duncan was one of the last people convicted under the Witchcraft Act which made falsely claiming to procure spirits a crime. She was sentenced to nine months' imprisonment. When convicted, she cried out "I have done nothing; is there a God?"
On her release in 1945, Duncan promised to stop conducting séances, but she was arrested during another one in 1956. She died at her home in Edinburgh not long after
Duncan's trial almost certainly the main contributing factor to the repeal of the Witchcraft Act, which was contained in the Frauulaent Medium Act of 195, promoted by Walter Monslow, a Labour party Memmber of Parliament for Barrow-in-Furness However the campaign to repeal the Act had been led for the most part by Thomas Brooks another Labour MP, who was a spiritualist. Duncan's original conviction still stood, and it was the subject of a sustained campaign to have it overturne
Helen Duncan passed away on December 6th 1956.
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=====American Witch Hysteria ======
As the witch hysteria was slowly dying down in Europe, a new form was about to take hold in the New World...
The witch trials held in Salem Massachusetts in 1692 were arguably the most well know in the US but not the only one to take place here.
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In 1647 a woman named Alse Young from Windsor, Connecticut was the first person in America to be executed for witchcraft. Before Connecticut’s final witch trial took place in 1697, forty-six people were accused of witchcraft in that state and 11 were put to death.
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The Salem Trials.....
The Salem Witch Trials are one of Americas darkest moments in history it all began when 9-year-old Elizabeth Parris and 11-year-old Abigail Williams began suffering from strange fits, body contortions and uncontrolled screaming (today, it is believed that they were poisoned by a fungus that caused spasms and delusions).
As more young women began to exhibit symptoms, mass hysteria soon too root, and three women were accused of witchcraft: Sarah Good, Sarah Osborn and Tituba, an slaved woman owned by Parris’s father. Tituba confessed to being a witch and began accusing others of using black magic.
On June 10, Bridget Bishop became the first accused witch to be put to death during the Salem Witch Trials when she was hanged at the Salem gallows. By the time this all died down, roughly 200 people were accused and 20 were put to death. most of the accused were woman but there were also six men convicted in all over 200 were accused and jailed (Many died in jail before there trial) 19 were executed at the gallows and one has crushed to death with heavy stones.
Home of Judge Jonathan Corwin Corwin served on the Court hearings that ultimately sent 19 Innocent people to the gallows. -----
NOTE Bridget Bishop the first victim was sentenced under Judge Nathaniel Saltonstall, who resigned after her execution.
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In 1711, after judge Samuel Sewall and others involved in the Salem witch trials had admitted wrongdoing, the colony restored the good names of all accused and granted restitution to their heirs.
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Modern witch hunts....
Three woman were surrounded and beaten, in Gujarat in 2014, sadly this was one of thousands of witch hunts that take place in India on a regular bases .
More than 2,500 Indians have been chased, tortured and killed in these hunts between 2000 and 2016, according to India’s National Crime Records Bureau. Activists and journalists say the number is much higher, because most states don’t list witchcraft as a motive of murder.
Witch hunts primarily target women and exploit India’s caste system. The accusations of sorcery are used to oust women from there land Witches is also blamed for the rising infant mortality rates and deaths from malaria, typhoid and cholera.
Modern day superstiton and stigma can be just as harsh and violent as it was in the
midelages...
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