Word: witchcrafts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1920-1929
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...presence of certain illusive and indefinable likenesses between groups of men has been elevated into a faith which demands precedence over all others. Men have believed in oracles, in witchcraft, in "humanity." Now they believe in nationalism. That there should be communal and religious ties and obligations is justiflable and praiseworthy, but that an arbitrary, even absurd notion should be elevated into a fanaticism which may allow certain unscrupulous men to plunge the world into anarchy is tragic...
...sensitive Breeze, two of April's older boys; intelligent, defiant Sherry, his strongest boy, whose skull was hard enough to shock blood out the tyrant's nose in a murderous butting match they had; mumbling Maum Hannah, midwife, with her jumbled accumulation of animal sense and primitive witchcraft. The tragic quality of racial backwardness and superstition is developed with all possible force by treating it in natural minutiae instead of as a theme. To cut a girl's birth pains, a granny lays a whetted axe beside a plowshare under the bed. The moon's phases...
...Kittredge '83, Gurney Professor of English Literature, to secure originals or copies of manuscripts bearing on the History of Witchcraft in England and America...
They were to find a "native" theme. Indians? Witchcraft? Skyscrapers? No, the most native to U. S. spirit, decided Miss Millay, is the old Saxon legend. The Saxon is nearer than the redman; the turbulent warrior dearer than the Puritan, to our age. Theirs was a forthright, swaggering, romantic spirit. Mr. Taylor would write his music true to the hunt, the forest, the clash of sword, the misty superstitions, the feudal ideals of loyalty...
...HISTORY OF WITCHCRAFT AND DEMONOLOGY?Montague Summers?Knopf ($5). Witches and sorcerers were the starved souls and anarchists of their heyday?from the 12th Century to the 18th. They existed, feared by King and peasant, fought by Pope and priest?at first in furtive bands, then in leagues more potent for evil than the once dread Maffia. What were they? With a definition the author rips off the cloak of Devildom and leaves his subject naked as a pair of tongs: "A sorcerer (or witch) is one who by commerce with the Devil has a full intention of attaining...