Word: witchcraft
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Middle Ages, for instance, the left-hander lived in danger of being accused of practicing witchcraft. The Devil himself was considered a southpaw, and he and other evil spirits were always conjured up by left-handed gestures. Even today, language expresses the general prejudice against lefthanders. A lefthanded compliment is actually an insult, the Latin word sinister (left) has taken on a, well, sinister cast, and the French word gauche, which means left, is used to describe a socially awkward person. In Moslem societies, the left hand is considered unclean...
...Ching or shuffle tarot cards before setting dates for dinner parties. Hippies, with their drug-sensitized yen for magic, are perhaps the prime movers behind the phenomenon. Not only do they sport beads and amulets that have supposed magical powers; they also believe firmly and frighteningly in witchcraft. Some of the hippie mysticism is a calculated put-on-as when Abbie Hoffman and his crew attempted to levitate the Pentagon last October-but much of the new concern with the arcane is a genuine attempt to find enrichment for arid lives...
...Fulbright's query momentarily hexed Dr. John S. Foster Jr., the Defense Department's director of research, into an admission of ignorance. But in releasing Foster's testimony before a closed session of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, the Pentagon last week righted the record. Witchcraft, it contended, is part of modern warfare: the $522.50 study analyzed the key role of Congolese sorcerers in the 1964 Simba uprising, when U.S. aircraft dropped Belgian paratroopers to rescue foreign hostages in Stanleyville. Dawa (magic) concocted by tribal witch doctors induced Simba warriors to believe that enemy bullets turned...
...Anastasia. She is a being. All the others are characters, shadows of her illumination. I call her a witch, but she is not a promiscuous variation on Sinister Madonna (the Hunter girls?), classic marble zombie who ruled with an iron broomstick. No, Desire tells of human witches and the witchcraft of love. Strange fires burn here, and one could look a long time without understanding. Apparently Anastasia is destroying herself. Others come to pillage, sometimes to help, and lo! discover that they have been deceived. No warm sweets from the blaze. In this parable of bad love she takes...
...Olson property. He became deeply attached to Christina, marveling at her bedrock dignity and pride, enthralled-as perhaps only a painter could be-with the gothic romance of her witchlike features, piercing eyes, and scraggly hair. "To me," he once remarked, "she is the essence of New England-witchcraft. She rules like a queen, absolutely...