Word: witchcrafts
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Comely, black-haired Martha Minnen kept no peacocks, but she had other eccentricities. To her neighbors in the tiny village of Witgoor in the Kempen region of Flanders they smacked strongly of witchcraft. There were her cats, for instance. "It's just beyond belief," said one Witgoor villager, "the number of black cats you see around Martha's house at night." Then there were the sparrows. Why should a woman want to give a neighbor's children a nest of baby sparrows...
When the trial began in the crenelated, moated courthouse of nearby Turnhout, Witgoor's constable was called to testify. He shuddered violently and protested that witchcraft was not a policeman's business. Then Judge Boone took a moment to clear his throat. In that moment the constable fled through the doorway to freedom. A court attendant hurried after him, but there was no sign of the fugitive. "Witchery," murmured the court spectators...
...Woman's Charms. In Wilmington Del where Mrs. Helen Evans had beei arrested for selling charms guaranteed to "lift curses," the police thought & thought finally found a statute that seemed to fit her case: the charge lodged against Seeres Evans was practicing witchcraft...
...while Author Bridges thought his savage friends believed in the spirits they imitated in their crude rituals; but the Ona opened his eyes by initiating him into the tribe's all-male lodge. There he heard that once upon a time the women had ruled the tribe with witchcraft, until the men, in desperation, had banded together and killed all the women. To forestall any attempt by growing girls to reestablish female tyranny, the men had "invented a new branch of Ona demonology: a collection of strange beings . . . who would take visible shape" and scare the women into submissiveness...
...Boston, State Representative Daniel Rudsten asked the Massachusetts legislature to reverse the conviction of 20 men & women convicted of witchcraft and executed in Salem...