The Arrival of Rebecca Nurse and the Witch Doctor

A new character appears as Giles Corey, a muscular, wiry eighty-three-year-old farmer, joins the crowd in the room as Rebecca stands over Betty. Parris says that a witch-expert by the name of Reverend Hale is coming to examine Betty. Rebecca, John, and Francis try to convince Parris to send Hale back because it will cause speculation and more rumors to spread. Proctor gets fed up with Reverend Parris and actually insults him and the Puritan religion. He wishes that he could create a rebel group against Parris, and he ends up offending everyone; he even alarms Rebecca Nurse. However, he speaks his mind because he can’t help it, and he can’t stand Parris. Meanwhile, Reverend Hale, an intellectual man, arrives at Parris’s home with a heavy load of books. Hale asks Proctor and Giles if they have afflicted children. Giles says that Proctor does not believe in witches. Proctor denies having stated an opinion on witches at all and leaves Hale to his work.
Parris relates the tale of finding the girls dancing in the forest at night, and Mrs. Putnam reports having sent her daughter to conjure the spirits of her dead children. She asks if losing seven children before they live a day is a natural occurrence. Hale consults his books while Rebecca announces that she is too old to sit in on the proceedings. Parris insists that they may find the source of all the community’s troubles, but she leaves anyway.
Giles asks Hale what reading strange books means because he often finds his wife, Martha, reading books. The night before, he tried to pray but found that he could not succeed until Martha closed her book and left the house. (Giles has a bad reputation in Salem, and people generally blame him for thefts and random fires. He cares little for public opinion, and he only began attending church regularly after he married Martha. Giles does not mention that he only recently learned any prayers and that even small distractions cause him problems in reciting them.) Hale thoughtfully considers the information and concludes that they will have to discuss the matter later. Slightly taken aback, Giles states that he does not mean to say that his wife is a witch. He just wants to know what she reads and why she hides the books from him.

Portrait of reverend Hale

Date:1690s

Witches of Romania

Witches of Romania

 

Medieval Witchcraft

Witchcraft refers to the use of certain occult and spiritual practices to seek the assistance of the supernatural powers in resolving the problems whose solutions can not be achieved through the known rational means. The process involves reciting prayers and performing rituals in a certain specific format or craft. Prayers and rituals when performed with utmost sincerity and faith do quite often fructify into the desired results. Since there is no reasonable explanation for the manifestation of the result, they are termed miracles or magic. Witchcraft is therefore considered synonymous with magic.

Witchcraft has existed since man was born and he had to struggle for his survival against the unpredictable and unmanageable forces of nature such as famines, rains, floods, epidemics or some other occurrences at personal level  which could not be easily explained. Witchcraft had all the more reason to exist in the medieval times when human knowledge was still at a rudimentary stage and there appeared no other solution to day-to-day problems that confused and befuddled the people of those times.

In their desperation to seek the desired results, some times the practitioners of the witchcraft went out of the way of prayers and resorted to certain extreme practices and rituals such as the use of blood and so on or invoking evil spirits for help. Moreover witchcraft, like every other branch of knowledge, was manipulated and misused by vested interests. A few such cases here and there  gained  wide spread notoriety and provided the ecclesiastic powers, which commanded influence in formulating the secular policies of the kings and rulers of those times, an excuse to brand the witches or wizards as agents of  the evil or Satanic  powers. Now Satan is considered the greatest enemy of the Church and therefore God. Consequently any person who was suspected to be indulging in witchcraft was hounded out and persecuted with the punishment of death through hanging or burning at stake.
Persons accused of practicing the witchcraft were labeled as heretics. Once caught, the victim was coerced into confessing his crime through inhuman tortures and was either hanged or burnt alive during the inquisition. The law against the witchcraft was further exploited by the vested interests to score personal vendetta or to snatch the property or land of victims. Some influential persons in the society, in collusion with the priests, would manage to arouse suspicions against their targets as being witches or wizards. They victims were arrested, made to confess and killed.

Witches were generally portrayed as ugly old hags so as to make them the target of dislike and hatred, but the matter of fact is that they were and still are quite normal men and women and in some case witches were and are quite pretty and presentable ladies.

The witches used scrolls for witchcraft in those times. Some of them survive even today. Besides the spells, the witches also used some herbs and animal parts to make potions to cure some diseases and heal the wounds. Potions were brewed in cauldrons in order to combine them properly. Cauldrons were often made of wood, but other materials such as stones were also used. These potions, though denigrated as superstitious, were quite efficacious in those times as they are equally efficacious now.

THE MUSEUM OF WITCHCRAFT

THE MUSEUM OF WITCHCRAFT Nestled the harbour of the picturesque North Cornish village of Boscastle, is the world famous Museum of Witchcraft. This extraordinary museum houses the world’s largest collection of witchcraft related artefacts and regalia. The museum's history is as fascinating as its collection. It was first founded on the Isle of Man By Cecil H. Williamson in 1951. Cecil's lifelong interest in witchcraft and magic began with his first encounter with old West Country witchcraft as a child in the Devon village of North Bovey. He was befriended by the local witch, after defending the elderly woman from a group of thugs who suspected her of bewitching cattle. As an adult, he investigated the Craft of African Witchdoctors whilst working on a tobacco plantation in Rhodesia. He continued his fascination in Britain in the 1930's, mixing with leading experts of the day and even worked as an agent for MI6, collating the Occult interests of the Nazis. In 1951 Cecil first opened the museum in the ‘Witches Mill’ on the Isle of Man. Gerald Gardner, who he had first met in 1946, was employed as ‘Resident Witch’. Having very different ideas from one another about Witchcraft, and the direction in which the museum and its collection should be taken, their working relationship and friendship broke down. In 1954, Williamson sold the building and some of the collection to Gardner, who continued to run the Witches Mill as a museum until it was bequeathed at his death in 1964 to Lady Olwen (Monique Wilson), who unfortunately sold the collection in 1973 to ‘Ripley's Believe It Or Not’ in America. Wonderfully, a small proportion of this collection has recently found its way home to The Museum of Witchcraft – read details here. Following his parting of company with Gerald Gardner, Cecil moved his museum and its fascinating collection to Windsor, however Royal officials were not happy with the idea of a witchcraft museum in the area and suggested that perhaps it should be located somewhere else... So Cecil relocated again to the Cotswold village of Bourton-on-the-Water, where local Christians subjected him to death threats, strung dead cats up in his garden trees and repeatedly fire-bombed his museum. The final relocation took Cecil and his museum to Cornwall and in 1960 to Boscastle where it remains today.

Rebecca Nurse

Rebecca Nurse

Rebecca Nurse was an elderly and respected member of the Salem Village community. She was accused of witchcraft by several of the "afflicted" girls in the Village in March of 1692. Although a large number of friends, neighbors and family members wrote petitions testifying to her innocence, she was tried for acts of witchcraft in June, 1692. The jury first returned a "not guilty" verdict, but was told to reconsider, and then brought in a verdict of "guilty." Governor Phips pardoned her, but was later persuaded to reverse his decision by several men from Salem. She was excommunicated from the Salem church and hanged on July 19, 1692. Her house in Danvers, the former Salem village, still stands and is open to visitors. A large monument also marks her grave in the Nurse family cemetery on the grounds.

Elly Kedward

Elly Kedward 

n the winter of 1785, Elly Kedward was banished from the town of Blair after several local children accuse her of performing witchcraft. She was presumed dead from exposure, but the next year, all of her accusers have vanished. The residents of Blair fear she's cursed the area and abandon the town, vowing never to utter the name "Elly Kedward" again. 
In 1825, a year after the town was rediscovered and founded as Burkittsville, the villagers held the first annual Wheat Harvest Picnic. During the picnic, ten-year-old Eileen Treacle wandered off towards Tappy East Creek and drowned. Eleven eye-witnesses claimed to have seen a ghostly white hand reach up and pull her into the shallow water. Her body was never found, and for thirteen days afterward, the creek became contaminated with oily bundles of sticks, rendering the water useless. 

Townspeople noted the possible supernatural characteristics of the Treacle disappearance and were quick to blame the death on the Blair Witch.
In 1886, eight-year-old Robin Weaver alledgedly followed a woman who's feet didn't touch the ground into a house the woods. She took Robin into a house, where the woman locked her in basement and said she'd return later. Distressed, Robin escaped through a small window. A search party was dispatched, but while Robin later returned, the search party didn't. A second search party found the group disemboweled at Coffin Rock. When they returned to the site with help, the bodies had vanished without a trace. 

In late 1940, a hermit named Rustin Parr began abducting children from Burkittsville. He kidnapped eight children total and brutally murdered seven of them, letting Kyle Brody go. Parr confessed to the crimes in May of 1941, claiming he was doing what an old lady ghost told him. Parr was convicted and hanged later that year. 

Margaret Murray

Margaret Murray (1863-1963)

Why she’s on this list: If there’s a surprise inclusion on this list it’s Murray. Talking to friends the last 48 hours she was the one figure that everyone trying to figure out my “Top 5″ seemed to forget about. Murray was a well respected Egyptologist and mostly a serious academic (books like God of the Witches were obviously meant for a general audience) but is a major figure in the Modern Pagan Revival because of her books on Witchcraft and the Horned God.

It’s easy in retrospect to dismiss Murray’s Witch-cult in Western Europe (1921). Murray’s hypothesis that the innocents killed in Europe’s “Witch Trials” represented a secret underground pagan religion has been dismissed by a majority of scholars today, but the theory continues to hold a lot of power in Modern Paganism. Regardless of how factual the Murray hypothesis is, it became one of the founding myths of Witchcraft, and as a result Modern Paganism. In addition to providing a mythology, Murray provided the terminology that would become a part of many Pagan traditions. We use words like coven and esbat because they were words that Murray used.

Murray redeemed and legitimized the word “witch.” After reading Murray you want to practice Witchcraft and you want to be a Pagan. Her history of the Horned God in God of the Witches is everything you want a Pagan archetype to be. She traces the worship of Old Horny back to the Cave of the Three Brothers in France and its portrait of “The Sorcerer” to Pan and Cernunnos and then later Robin Hood. Murray’s Witch Religion is a faith of joy and exuberance and I’m certain that it influenced countless people to want to be Witches. She also endorsed Gardner’s version of Witchcraft writing the introduction to Witchcraft Today back in 1954.

Why she’s not higher: There’s only one person who could be number one on this list, but it’s important not to overlook Murray. Without Murray it’s possible that early Pagans might have all called themselves Druids or Heathens and the empowering mantle of witch would have never been worn in Contemporary Paganism. Certainly the influence of Murray’s “Witch-cult Hypothesis” will continue to fade in the coming decades, but her other contributions to Modern Paganism will continue. Besides even if Murray’s theory isn’t exactly true in the literal sense I think many of us will continue to feel a kinship with the women (and men) who were needlessly murdered in the name of religion centuries ago.

Gerald Gardner

Gerald Gardner (1884-1964)

Why he’s here: I don’t think there was any real suspense about the number one spot on this list. Even Gardner’s detractors (and there are many) can’t deny his accomplishments. To put it simply Gardner was the first person to share with the world what would become a long-lasting religious and/or magickal tradition that most of us today would recognize as Pagan. His “Wica” had four quarters, a magick circle, a Goddess, a God, and a High Priestess. All of those elements existed before Gardner, but had never endured together for decades until Gardner.

It also doesn’t matter if Gardner was initiated into a coven back in 1939 or completely made his Witch Religion up. If he was initiated and his faith tradition traces back to that group then he’s the great revealer, sharing a new religion with the rest of the world. If he simply assembled the various pieces that make up Modern Witchcraft then he’s the great architect, the creator of a religious tradition that has now taken a seat next to the other great religions of the world. If you were to ask my opinion, I think Gardner exists somewhere between revealer and architect, someone who was probably initiated into something back in 1939 and then added to it.

I know my Top 5 is rather “Wicca-centered” but that’s only because Wicca has been the most dominant branch of the Pagan tree for the last 70 years. If it makes any of you feel better, Gardner himself was no doubt influenced by Druids like Ross Nichols and most likely encountered New Orleans Voodoo when he visited the United States back in 1947-48. Gardner’s interests were wide-ranging and he absorbed influences from various spiritualities. Gardner’s version of Witchcraft was the first public and long-lasting religion Pagan religion of the 20th Century, as such it’s going to have a high place on lists such as this one.

Doreen Valient

Doreen Valiente (1922-1999)

Why she’s on this list: To put it simply Valiente is the most important liturgist in the history of Modern Pagandom. Sure not everyone recites her Charge of the Goddess but it’s familiar to just about everyone. Valiente took some of the rather rudimentary rituals of early Witchcraft and turned them into poetry. Her influence on how we speak the language of Paganism will still be felt in a hundred years, and that’s an amazing achievement.

Valiente is not on this list just because of her early work with Gerald Gardner, she’s here because she’s one of the unifying threads of Modern Paganism. She researched the beginnings of Modern Witchcraft with Stewart and Janet Farrar, and worked with Robert Cochrane. She was one of our first historians, when it comes to Pagan History Books Valiente’s The Rebirth of Witchcraft is an essential text (and a book I treasure and have re-read at least a dozen times). She was also a leading light in the attempt to build Pagan Community in Great Britain. When Valiente is called “The Mother of Modern Witchcraft” it’s not an exaggeration.

Why she’s not ranked higher: I don’t have a good answer for that, if anything Valiente is the soul of Modern Paganism; she’s what many of us aspire to. I have no doubt that Valiente would have been fully capable of creating her own Witchcraft Tradition had she chosen to do so, but she seemed to mainly refine and polish the Paganisms she encountered. I don’t mean that as an insult, because it takes real genius to make what was already good into something truly great.

Secrets of Helena Blavatsky

Secrets of Helena Blavatsky

n 2011, celebrated 180 years of the birth and 120 years since the death of Helena Blavatsky — one of the most controversial figures in world history. Her fame has long died down, yet she was still arguing. Who was she really? Distinguished thinker, writer and religious studies? Medium and psychic? Adventurer and a fraud?

Elena was born in Yekaterinoslav (now Dnepropetrovsk) August 12, 1831 in a family of nobles. Father, Peter Hahn, served in the military and moved permanently to the battery from place to place, the family wandered in after him. Elena's mother wrote novels and even the nickname Russian George Sand. From early childhood, Lena surprising people: heard voices, saw the strange dreams, communicating with invisible beings. Household frightened her fantasies and attributed their vivid imagination girls. She grew whimsical, capricious, not once was caught in a lie, but always bent his line. "My childhood? It pampering and pranks on the one hand, punishment and bitterness on the other "- so sparingly Blavatsky wrote of himself in one of his letters.

LOVE — Nightmare

At 17, the young lady jumped hastily married to the vice-governor of Yerevan Nikanor Vasilievich Blavatsky, who was more than twice her age. What prompted a grown man to marry anemone, wrote in his maiden diary: "Happiness is a woman — to gain power over otherworldly forces. Love is just a bad dream? " And from what she had to rush to the altar? Whether luck governess, who in the heat threw extravagant young mistress, with such a character that her marriage is not shining. Whether she wanted to become independent. Anyway, three months after the wedding, Helen ran from Yerevan to Tbilisi to her grandmother, where he announced that to commit suicide if her back.

Family decided to send a fugitive to his father in Odessa, but she sat on the other ship and left for Istanbul. There, she quickly ran out of money, and to make ends meet, she labored rider in a circus. More humiliating lessons for noblewoman not come up, but Elena has always been against the current. In Turkey, she met old friend Countess Kiselyov, who invited her to travel with his own expense. Why would such generosity? Blavatsky agreed to perform an extravagant whim Kiseleva and all the way done in costume. What follows from this, history is silent, but, we think, a curious reader himself everything guess.

Helen has traveled many countries: Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Greece, Germany, and France. In Cairo, allegedly met with some occult teachings derived from the old Copt. There's something, and came to the conclusion that attracts people all illicit and incomprehensible, and to get power over them, you become the owner of the secret knowledge.

Catcher and BEAST ON RUNS

In 1851, HPB was in London, which hosted the World's Fair. Her guests were delegations from different countries, including those from India. On his 20th birthday, Elena met the teacher — the great Mahatma named Moriah, who until then was constantly in her dreams. He gave the girl to realize that she had been chosen for a great mission and should now devote herself to the new case. Again, all this with the very words of Blavatsky, and what was in fact — a mystery. The next seven years — continuous gaps in the biography of Madame Blavatsky. She herself told me a little about this period, there is not no letters, no memories. Or it will destroy them? According to biographers, she traveled from country to country (Canada, USA, Mexico, India, Singapore, Japan), until he found himself in Tibet, where she had touched secret knowledge of Tibetan lamas. "I was like a dream! We were there for about two years, receiving a monthly cash (not having a clue on whom they are) and in good faith by following this path. " Finally, after ten years of absence Blavatsky returned to Russia in order to sow seeds in the native country of true knowledge.

But excuse me, this is a fairy tale, nothing more. Afford such a trip twenties? Yes, and how much money, because the journey — not a cheap pleasure. There is evidence that all this time inspired person does not leave Europe, and, moving from one city to another, engaged in dubious profession, earning a living.

Secrets come out

From 1858 to 1866 Blavatsky spent at home. General Blavatsky, the lawful husband, made no effort to return to his wife in the bosom of the family, and it was left to its own. That was visiting relatives near Pskov, then jerked to St. Petersburg, then waved to Tiflis. There, in Georgia, she allegedly had a hasty affair with Estland Baron Meyendorff, Nicholas, from whom she had a son George. At the birth of a boy was seriously injured and crippled. Later Blavatsky strongly deny any involvement in maternity, arguing that raising an adopted child. Moreover — and everywhere go on about their virginity, and even asked to provide help. Yet between her family and a crack, and she hurried away, as usual, at the border — for the secret knowledge … In fact, fled to Italy for the famous opera singer … Agard Mitrovic. Next in her biography again some white spots. In 1867, Yuri died, and, as if to escape the boredom, she joined the squad Garibaldi and even participated in battles where injured. Then, heal wounds, rushed to the East. After crossing the Himalayas, was in a Tibetan monastery, where, under the expert guidance of Buddhist teachers began to comprehend the esoteric knowledge. In late 1870, allegedly returned to Europe — to sow reasonable, good, eternal. But murder will out, detractors insisted on his version all the time Helena Petrovna and her Italian friend held in Ukraine — in Kiev and then to Odessa, which, as you know, has always been a haven of criminals. Lovers badly needed, and Helen made a living making artificial flowers and selling ink. Finally lucky, Mitrovic was invited to the Cairo Opera House. On his way to Egypt ship exploded — transported in the holds of a large quantity of gunpowder. The singer died Blavatsky miraculously survived. From Paris, she sent a letter very curious gendarmerie chief of Odessa, which clearly expressed its readiness to perform duties overseas secret agent. This information is quickly sold abroad, and esoteric career "Russian spy" could put a cross.

THREE WHALES

Blavatsky did not give up. Helena Petrovna moved to America, where he tried to restore the tattered reputation — has written a book "Isis Unveiled" and the famous "Secret Doctrine," and at the same time created the Theosophical Society. Blavatsky's doctrine was based on three pillars: the creation of universal brotherhood without distinction of race, religion, gender and race, the study of ancient and modern religions, philosophies and sciences, the study of unexplained laws of nature and psychic powers latent in man. The latter Blavatsky knew firsthand. From a young age involved in spiritualism, read the letter, without printing them, move things look, divined the thoughts of others. However, later it was discovered the note, in which it explained in black and white, how to arrange this or that "phenomenon".

However, the Theosophical Society was gaining momentum: the fanatics who want to find a spiritual guide's and stand under any, even the dubious banners, full at any time. Blavatsky talked about in the press, she has received many invitations. But she was not the same: tormented old wounds, because the chronic nephritis swelled and swollen hands and feet, knees were amazed arthritis, and every step was hard. She had, it does not provide a sophisticated manner, and in the last years of his life entirely to the waved her hand. Wear old clothes, somehow cleaned hair. Spoiled and character — was bile, poisonous, does not shun strong language. The portraits of the time we see a sick woman with tired extinct hard look. Blavatsky suffered not only physically: Russia does not accept it, the West rejected. And then there's the scandal followed scandal. Her former supporters suddenly made sensational, and it was a blow to the heart. His health was completely undermined, and in 1891, Blavatsky died.

Well, if Helena Petrovna and led a double life, the fate of revenge on her for everything.

The history of the witch of Ilhabela

Ilhabela

History

Ilhabela (Portuguese for Beautiful Island) is an archipelago and city situated 4 miles off the coast of São Paulo state in Brazil. The island is 205 km (127 mi) from the city of São Paulo and 340 km (210 mi) from the city of Rio de Janeiro. The largest island, although commonly called Ilhabela, is officially named Ilha de São Sebastião (St. Sebastian Island). It, the other islands (Búzios, Pescadores and Vitória) and the islets (Cabras, Castelhanos, Enchovas, Figueira, Lagoa and Serraria) make up the municipality of Ilhabela.
The islands in total cover 348 km² (134 sq mi). The population of Ilhabela in 2006 was 26,230,^[3] and in 2012 it was around 29,308, but during the holiday months, up to one hundred thousand people may be on the island,^[4] since it is a popular destination for tourists. To access the city, one must take a boat or ferry in São Sebastião, as there are no roads which reach it. During the summer, one may wait more than an hour to take the ferry boat. The ferry takes 15 minutes to cross the channel between the two cities.

Before Portugal colonized Brazil in 1500, an indigenous tribe called the Tupinambas, inhabited the island. They called the island 'Ciribai', which means tranquil place.
The island was named São Sebastião Island by Americo Vespuccio, on January 20, 1502. During the 16th century, the Portuguese set up military points on the shore of São Sebastião Island.
On September 3, 1805, the Governor of the Province of São Paulo, Antônio José da França e Horta, decreted the political-administrative independence of the county. The Island had already 3.000 inhabitants at that time. The new county was named Villa Bella da Princeza, paying homage to the princess of Beira.
On November 30, 1938, during the Getúlio Vargas' Estado Novo, an act altered the name of the county to Formosa. Six years later, on November 30, 1944, another act ultimately changed the name to Ilhabela.

The history of the witch 

The Mrs. Maria Perpetua Calafate de Souza was accused of witchcraft in 19th century, by the residents of Ilhabela. The case began after an incident with a black called Joana, slave Domingos captain, she would have sworn Joana and this in turn retaliated with a stone. Maria Perpetua would have sworn revenge. A few days later, Joana started vomiting pieces of cloth with blood and chicken feathers and soon after died. The population then accused Maria Perpetua of having cast a spell against the slave.

The Ilhabela authorities became aware of the incident and the Maria Perpetua's house was searched. In addition to many objects of magic, were found animal bones and a dry human ear. Later, she was charged again for several other cases involving witchcraft.
In 1817 the Captain General of Ilhabela decided to file a case against her. But Maria Perpetua was never arrested because she was murdered before the investigations are closed.