A Storm of Witchcraft

A Storm of Witchcraft PDF Author: Emerson W. Baker
Publisher: Pivotal Moments in American Hi
ISBN: 019989034X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 415

Book Description
Presents an historical analysis of the Salem witch trials, examining the factors that may have led to the mass hysteria, including a possible occurrence of ergot poisoning, a frontier war in Maine, and local political rivalries.

A Storm of Witchcraft

A Storm of Witchcraft PDF Author: Emerson W. Baker
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199385149
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 415

Book Description
Beginning in January 1692, Salem Village in colonial Massachusetts witnessed the largest and most lethal outbreak of witchcraft in early America. Villagers--mainly young women--suffered from unseen torments that caused them to writhe, shriek, and contort their bodies, complaining of pins stuck into their flesh and of being haunted by specters. Believing that they suffered from assaults by an invisible spirit, the community began a hunt to track down those responsible for the demonic work. The resulting Salem Witch Trials, culminating in the execution of 19 villagers, persists as one of the most mysterious and fascinating events in American history. Historians have speculated on a web of possible causes for the witchcraft that stated in Salem and spread across the region-religious crisis, ergot poisoning, an encephalitis outbreak, frontier war hysteria--but most agree that there was no single factor. Rather, as Emerson Baker illustrates in this seminal new work, Salem was "a perfect storm": a unique convergence of conditions and events that produced something extraordinary throughout New England in 1692 and the following years, and which has haunted us ever since. Baker shows how a range of factors in the Bay colony in the 1690s, including a new charter and government, a lethal frontier war, and religious and political conflicts, set the stage for the dramatic events in Salem. Engaging a range of perspectives, he looks at the key players in the outbreak--the accused witches and the people they allegedly bewitched, as well as the judges and government officials who prosecuted them--and wrestles with questions about why the Salem tragedy unfolded as it did, and why it has become an enduring legacy. Salem in 1692 was a critical moment for the fading Puritan government of Massachusetts Bay, whose attempts to suppress the story of the trials and erase them from memory only fueled the popular imagination. Baker argues that the trials marked a turning point in colonial history from Puritan communalism to Yankee independence, from faith in collective conscience to skepticism toward moral governance. A brilliantly told tale, A Storm of Witchcraft also puts Salem's storm into its broader context as a part of the ongoing narrative of American history and the history of the Atlantic World.

A Storm of Witchcraft

A Storm of Witchcraft PDF Author: Emerson W. Baker
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199890358
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Book Description
Beginning in January 1692, Salem Village in colonial Massachusetts witnessed the largest and most lethal outbreak of witchcraft in early America. Villagers--mainly young women--suffered from unseen torments that caused them to writhe, shriek, and contort their bodies, complaining of pins stuck into their flesh and of being haunted by specters. Believing that they suffered from assaults by an invisible spirit, the community began a hunt to track down those responsible for the demonic work. The resulting Salem Witch Trials, culminating in the execution of 19 villagers, persists as one of the most mysterious and fascinating events in American history. Historians have speculated on a web of possible causes for the witchcraft that stated in Salem and spread across the region-religious crisis, ergot poisoning, an encephalitis outbreak, frontier war hysteria--but most agree that there was no single factor. Rather, as Emerson Baker illustrates in this seminal new work, Salem was "a perfect storm": a unique convergence of conditions and events that produced something extraordinary throughout New England in 1692 and the following years, and which has haunted us ever since. Baker shows how a range of factors in the Bay colony in the 1690s, including a new charter and government, a lethal frontier war, and religious and political conflicts, set the stage for the dramatic events in Salem. Engaging a range of perspectives, he looks at the key players in the outbreak--the accused witches and the people they allegedly bewitched, as well as the judges and government officials who prosecuted them--and wrestles with questions about why the Salem tragedy unfolded as it did, and why it has become an enduring legacy. Salem in 1692 was a critical moment for the fading Puritan government of Massachusetts Bay, whose attempts to suppress the story of the trials and erase them from memory only fueled the popular imagination. Baker argues that the trials marked a turning point in colonial history from Puritan communalism to Yankee independence, from faith in collective conscience to skepticism toward moral governance. A brilliantly told tale, A Storm of Witchcraft also puts Salem's storm into its broader context as a part of the ongoing narrative of American history and the history of the Atlantic World.

The Salem Witch Trials

The Salem Witch Trials PDF Author: Marilynne K. Roach
Publisher: Taylor Trade Publications
ISBN: 9781589791329
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 758

Book Description
The Salem Witch Trials is based on over twenty-five years of archival research--including the author's discovery of previously unknown documents--newly found cases and court records. From January 1692 to January 1697 this history unfolds a nearly day-by-day narrative of the crisis as the citizens of New England experienced it.

The Devil of Great Island

The Devil of Great Island PDF Author: Emerson W. Baker
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0230606830
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 221

Book Description
In 1682, ten years before the infamous Salem witch trials, the town of Great Island, New Hampshire, was plagued by mysterious events: strange, demonic noises; unexplainable movement of objects; and hundreds of stones that rained upon a local tavern and appeared at random inside its walls. Town residents blamed what they called "Lithobolia" or "the stone-throwing devil." In this lively account, Emerson Baker shows how witchcraft hysteria overtook one town and spawned copycat incidents elsewhere in New England, prefiguring the horrors of Salem. In the process, he illuminates a cross-section of colonial society and overturns many popular assumptions about witchcraft in the seventeenth century.

Forbidden Mysteries of Faery Witchcraft

Forbidden Mysteries of Faery Witchcraft PDF Author: Storm Faerywolf
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide
ISBN: 0738756644
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Book Description
Draw on your inner darkness and unlock the secrets of the Hidden Kingdom Whether your demons are ancient spirits or demons of your own making, you must confront them in order to reclaim the power they have stolen. Guiding you through enchantments, demonic rituals, divine possession, necromancy, and occultus maleficum, this book helps you cultivate and explore your forsaken shadows. When you peer behind the veil of comfort and face your most powerful fears, you can truly begin to refine and strengthen your own magical will. In Forbidden Mysteries of Faery Witchcraft, you will learn how to: Summon primal underworld goddesses of the elemental powers Walk the bone road and help trapped spirits cross over Become a worthy vessel for divine possession Perform as an oracle, speaking the wisdom of the gods on earth Cast and break curses, the dark art of offensive magic The powerful techniques of the Faery Tradition of Witchcraft await. Through these rituals, you will glimpse the secret inner workings of nature herself and open the doorway to unimagined sources of energy.

Salem Possessed

Salem Possessed PDF Author: Paul Boyer
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674282663
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
Tormented girls writhing in agony, stern judges meting out harsh verdicts, nineteen bodies swinging on Gallows Hill. The stark immediacy of what happened in 1692 has obscured the complex web of human passion, individual and organized, which had been growing for more than a generation before the witch trials. Salem Possessed explores the lives of the men and women who helped spin that web and who in the end found themselves entangled in it. From rich and varied sources—many previously neglected or unknown—Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum give us a picture of the events of 1692 more intricate and more fascinating than any other in the already massive literature on Salem. “Salem Possessed,” wrote Robin Briggs in The Times Literary Supplement, “reinterprets a world-famous episode so completely and convincingly that virtually all the previous treatments can be consigned to the historical lumber-room.” Not simply a dramatic and isolated event, the Salem outbreak has wider implications for our understanding of developments central to the American experience: the breakup of Puritanism, the pressures of land and population in New England towns, the problems besetting farmer and householder, the shifting role of the church, and the powerful impact of commercial capitalism.

The Mercies

The Mercies PDF Author: Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316529222
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
The women in an Arctic village must survive a sinister threat after all the men are wiped out by a catastrophic storm in this "gripping novel inspired by a real-life witch hunt. . . . Beautiful and chilling" (Madeline Miller, bestselling author of Circe). When the women take over, is it sorcery or power? Finnmark, Norway, 1617. Twenty-year-old Maren Magnusdatter stands on the craggy coast, watching the skies break into a sudden and reckless storm. All forty of the village’s men were at sea, including Maren’s father and brother, and all forty are drowned in the otherworldly disaster. For the women left behind, survival means defying the strict rules of the island. They fish, hunt, and butcher reindeer—which they never did while the men were alive. But the foundation of this new feminine frontier begins to crack with the arrival of Absalom Cornet, a man sent from Scotland to root out alleged witchcraft. Cornet brings with him the threat of danger—and a pretty, young Norwegian wife named Ursa. As Maren and Ursa are drawn to one another in ways that surprise them both, the island begins to close in on them, with Absalom's iron rule threatening Vardø's very existence. "The Mercies has a pull as sure as the tide. It totally swept me away to Vardø, where grief struck islanders stand tall in the shadow of religious persecution and witch burnings. It's a beautifully intimate story of friendship, love and hope. A haunting ode to self-reliant and quietly defiant women." (Douglas Stuart, Booker Prize winning author of Shuggie Bain)

Six Women of Salem

Six Women of Salem PDF Author: Marilynne K. Roach
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 0306822342
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 474

Book Description
The story of the Salem Witch Trials told through the lives of six women Six Women of Salem is the first work to use the lives of a select number of representative women as a microcosm to illuminate the larger crisis of the Salem witch trials. By the end of the trials, beyond the twenty who were executed and the five who perished in prison, 207 individuals had been accused, 74 had been "afflicted," 32 had officially accused their fellow neighbors, and 255 ordinary people had been inexorably drawn into that ruinous and murderous vortex, and this doesn't include the religious, judicial, and governmental leaders. All this adds up to what the Rev. Cotton Mather called "a desolation of names." The individuals involved are too often reduced to stock characters and stereotypes when accuracy is sacrificed to indignation. And although the flood of names and detail in the history of an extraordinary event like the Salem witch trials can swamp the individual lives involved, individuals still deserve to be remembered and, in remembering specific lives, modern readers can benefit from such historical intimacy. By examining the lives of six specific women, Marilynne Roach shows readers what it was like to be present throughout this horrific time and how it was impossible to live through it unchanged.

A World of Darkness: Cotton Mather and the 1692 Salem Witchcraft Trials

A World of Darkness: Cotton Mather and the 1692 Salem Witchcraft Trials PDF Author: David W. Price
Publisher: Koehler Books
ISBN: 9781646630202
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 310

Book Description
Salem Village, Massachusetts, winter 1692. Two young girls, Betty Parris and Abigail Williams, use magic to foretell who they will marry. Within days, both girls display the telltale signs of witchcraft possession. For the next fifteen months, witchcraft accusations, trials, and executions spiral out of control. Nineteen "witches" are hanged, and one is pressed to death. At the eye of the storm stands Cotton Mather, a prominent Boston pastor. During the trials he advises the Salem judges. Afterwards he defends them in his book, The Wonders of the Invisible World. It will be Mather's consummate theological explanation of Salem's dark hour, and it will seal his historical fate. Contemporaries will attack him; subsequent historians will castigate him, largely ignoring his theology in Salem trial studies. A World of Darkness is the first work to utilize Mather's theological beliefs as a lens to interpret the Salem witchcraft trials. It asks the question, "What can Mather's seventeenth-century Puritan theology tell us about the Salem witchcraft episode?"
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