Witch Trials

From SkepticWiki

Contents 1 Definition 2 History 3 The witches 4 The accusers 5 The complicit 6 The evidence 7 The skeptics 8 Skeptical arguments 9 Quotations 10 Links 11 Note on sources

[edit] Definition

The witch trials refers to the craze for identifying, and executing, people as witches which affected Europe, and to a lesser degree the Americas, between about the fifteenth and the eighteenth century.

[edit] History

The original view of the Church on witchcraft is contained in the Canon Episcopi which makes it heretical to believe in witchcraft: the orthodox view it expressed was that the Devil had the power to delude and mislead people, and that sometimes he misled people by illusion into thinking that they could perform or had performed magic. In the words of the canon:

“It is also not to be omitted that some unconstrained women, perverted by Satan, seduced by illusions and phantasms of demons, believe and openly profess that, in the dead of night, they ride upon certain beasts with the pagan goddess Diana, with a countless horde of women, and in the silence of the dead of the night to fly over vast tracts of country, and to obey her commands as their mistress, and to be summoned to her service on other nights. But it were well if they alone perished in their infidelity and did not draw so many others into the pit of their faithlessness. For an innumerable multitude, deceived by this false opinion, believe this to be true and, so believing, wander from the right faith and relapse into pagan errors when they think that there is any divinity or power except the one God. Wherefore the priests throughout their churches should preach with all insistence to the people that they may know this to be in every way false, and that such phantasms are sent by the devil who deludes them in dreams”[1]

In the middle ages, the Canon Episcopi was attributed to the Council of Ancyra (314 AD) although it should be noted that modern scholars do not endorse this attribution. A council of such an early date was equally acceptable to Protestants as to Catholics, and this document, and the particular arguments which it puts forward, would be much cited by Protestant and Catholic skeptics alike during the witch hysteria.

The first recorded judicial burning of a witch took place in Toulouse in 1275. However, the start of the witch craze proper is usually dated to the issuing of the Papal bull Summis desiderantes affectibus by Pope Innocent VIII in 1484, which officially reversed the Canon Episcopi in affirming that witches genuinely had magical powers conferred on them by the Devil. The bull appointed the Dominicans Kramer and Sprenger to stamp out witchcraft in Germany. Within two years they had produced their handbook to witch-hunting, the Malleus Malificarium [2] arguably the wickedest book ever written ---- and the stage was set for atrocities which would not be equaled in Europe until the Holocaust.

The witch craze died out in different ways and at different times in different countries: in England, it was slowly laughed to death, for example, whereas in Spain it was suddenly abandoned after an internal enquiry by the Spanish Inquisition. Often the witchcraft laws would remain on the statute books as a “dead letter” for some time after the witch craze had lost its credence.

[edit] The witches

“Witch”, in English, is a pre-Christian word and concept referring to one who practices magic. A self-described “white witch” would offer to locate missing objects (like today’s Psychic Detectives); to charm wounds and diseases (like today; they often had a knowledge of midwifery and of herbal medicine; for example, the use of foxgloves to treat dropsy was communicated to an English doctor by an unnamed witch; the active ingredient is still in medicinal use in modern times). A “black witch” was one who could lay a curse upon her enemies, or, for a fee, the enemies of others. In this usage, the word “witch” is usually gender-specific. The male equivalent would be called a “cunning man”.

To the Church, however, the definition of a witch, after the publication of the bull Summis desiderantes affectibus (1484) was rather different. Theologically, a witch was held to be a person who was granted magical powers by the Devil in exchange for a compact making his or her soul over to the Devil. These powers would include shape-shifting, the power of flight, and maleficia --- the ability to do harm to others at a distance.

It is not to be supposed that the witch trials were a persecution of people who claimed to be witches in the first sense. Undoubtedly black and white witches were burnt, but so were hundreds of thousands (at the least) of other people who had no pretensions whatsoever to magical powers.

The image we have of a witch as being an elderly, poor, socially marginalized woman is most accurate for England. In other countries --- in Germany, for example --- it was quite possible for whole villages to be discovered to be witches, and to be wiped out to the last man, woman, and child; in German cities, the wealthiest male citizens were just as likely to be found guilty as were poor uninfluential women. In France and Scotland in particular a witchcraft accusation could be used as a form of judicial assassination against people who were extremely wealthy and well connected, as in the case of the Earl of Mar.

[edit] The accusers

The accusers had various motivations and rationales. The most common motivation seems to have been the Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc fallacy, as sumarized here by the skeptic Thomas Ady:

“Such an old man or woman came lately to my door, and desired some relief, and I denied it, and God forgive me, my heart did rise against her at that time, my mind gave me she looked like a Witch, and presently my Child, my Wife, my Self, my Horse, my Cow, my Sheep, my Sow, my Hogge, my Dogge, my Cat, or somewhat was thus and thus handled, in such a strange manner, as I dare swear she is a Witch, or else how should those things be, or come to pass?”

“White witches”, strange though it may seem, often prompted people to make witchcraft accusations. In her role as a psychic healer, one of the functions of a white witch was to identify when an illness had been caused by a “black witch”, and to identify the witch.

It was not unknown for a black witch to bring an accusation against one of her professional rivals: such a dangerous game could lead both parties to the gallows.

Qualified and educated physicians were also not above giving a diagnosis of witchcraft, though it was not considered part of their profession to identify the witch:

“Seldom goeth any man or woman to a Physician for cure of any Disease, but one question they ask the the Physician is, Sir, do you not think this Party is in ill handling, or under an ill tongue? or more plainly, Sir, do you not think the party is bewitched? and to this many an ignorant Physician will answer, Yes verily; the reason is, Ignorantiæ pallium maleficium & incantatio, a cloak for a Physicians ignorance, when he cannot finde the nature of the Disease, he saith, the Party is bewitched.”

Some accusations were made out of cold-blooded malice; in the case of the numerous accusations made by children, the malice seems to have been entirely idle: that is, the person accused was not particularly an enemy of the accuser, but simply a convenient victim chosen at random by a fraud seeking attention.

There were also, remarkably, people who were self-accused --- who voluntarily came forward to confess to the most disgusting of Satanic crimes, which they could not have committed. Such confessions, though rare, must have lent a good deal of credence to the witch craze.

However, the most common source of accusations were those wrung by torture out of those who had themselves confessed to being witches. Witches, according to the Malleus Malificarium met at ceremonies known as sabbats. Hence, having tortured a person into confessing to witchcraft, it was then necessary to torture them some more until they named names of the other witches who attended sabbats with them.

[edit] The complicit

To hold a witch-trial required the cooperation of all elements of society:

The monarchy. It was necessary for witch-hunts to be legal and the penalties sanctioned by the State. Without this sanction, there were no witch trials. For example, in Scotland during the whole of Oliver Cromwell’s dictatorship (1649 – 1660) there were no witches burnt; with the restoration of the Stuarts, 120 witches were burnt in Scotland in 1661 alone.

The church. Whether Catholic or Protestant, some sort of religious sanction was required for a witch-trial, ranging from the issuing of a Papal bull down to blessing the instruments of torture. Without the sanction of the church, there could be no witch trials: for example, when the Spanish Inquisition lost faith in the methods of witch-hunting, that put an end to the practice in Spain.

The middlemen. Supposed witches were not, after all, persecuted directly by folks in ermine and mitres (with the exception of that disgusting fanatic King James VI of Scotland). Hence, someone had to do the actual witch-hunting; someone had to carry out the torture (they were paid, incidentally, per act of torture, not by the hour); someone had to provide the wood for a burning; someone had to lash the witch to the stake.

The freelance witch-hunters, who charged per witch found, were a particular menace. The case of the infamous Matthew Hopkins, self-styled Witchfinder General, is a case in point: during just fourteen months during the English Civil War, he found more than two hundred witches --- much more than all the other witchfinders put together.

The judiciary. The judges bear a particular share of the blame. The progress of a witch trial would depend very much on whether the magistrate was a skeptic or a believer. In is noteworthy that when the skeptic Thomas Ady wrote his books against the witch mania, he addressed them not to the general public nor the legislature, but specifically as “Advice to Judges, Sheriffes, Justices of the Peace, and Grand-Jury-men, what to do, before they passe Sentence on such as are Arraigned for their Lives as Witches”; in the same way, von Spee’s Cautio Criminalis declares itself on its frontispiece to be addressed “AD MAGISTRATUS” [3] : without the compliance of magistrates, there would have been no successful witch trials.

Senior legal figures had proportionally more weight: a case in point is given by comparing the progress of witch trials in England under the aegis of the believer, Chief Justice Sir Matthew Hale, and his successor, the skeptic Chief Justice Sir John Holt, whose example in securing acquittal after acquittal in cases over which he personally presided was invariably imitated by the lower judiciary.

The community at large. It was certainly not common to successfully prosecute a witch without the compliance of the wider community. In particular, a witch trial required an accuser or accusers, and these accusations did not come direct from a kingly or a cathedral throne, but usually from the same sort of people who were the subjects of accusations of witchcraft. In many cases, a witch trial also required a jury; for a conviction, they and the magistrate had to be of one mind.

In the case of people with relatively little power, we must wonder whether they were genuine witchburning fanatics, or whether they simply found it prudent to shout along with the mob --- for fear of drawing attention to themselves, and perhaps being next on the bonfire. This is usually the case in any time of terror: those who spoke out against Stalin’s show-trials were invariably discovered (on inquisition) to be traitors themselves; those who suggested that Robespierre was having too many people guillotined found that they were up for the chop; and those who questioned the witch trials were accused of atheism at best and witchcraft at worst. A case in point is the minister at Salem, George Burroughs, who flatly denied that witchcraft was possible, and was hanged for his pains.

[edit] The evidence

Given that the witches were accused of a crime, namely making a compact with the Devil, for which there could in the nature of things be no evidence even if this were possible, it was necessary to find other methods of identifying witches.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc. In the superstitious atmosphere of the Middle Ages, if you did someone wrong, and at some later time you fell ill, or your cow fell ill, or one of your chickens sneezed, this was taken as good evidence that that person had bewitched you. This was especially the case when the supposed witch had uttered a curse (in legal jargon, a damnum minatum) which was followed by any unpleasant event (malum secutum).

Unusual symptoms. A person exhibiting any out-of-the-way set of medical symptoms was supposed to have been bewitched. A common symptom amongst fraudulent accusers was to “vomit” pins or other small items; one ingenious hoaxer found a method to turn his urine blue, which was discovered after prolonged investigation by a convinced skeptic.

Spectral evidence. The victims of the witch might claim to see ghosts or phantoms emanating from the witch, and this was proof positive of witchcraft --- or, in the light of modern reason, proof positive that the accusers were lying or mad.

The Devil’s marks. According to the Malleus Malificarium, the Devil set his mark on his followers, which could be any blemish or imperfection; the skeptic Thomas Ady gives accounts of people condemned for verrucas and for haemeroids.

Pricking of witches. This involved searching the bodies of witches for a spot which, when pricked, did not bleed.

Swimming of witches. This is the test with which everyone is familiar: a witch would float if cast into water; a good Christian would sink. The skeptic Thomas Ady pointed out that this test could be rigged, and often was:

“Then they cast them into the water, to see whether they will sink or swim, a meer Jugling delusion to blinde peoples eyes, for he that hath been used to the Art of Swimming may know, that few men or women being tied hand and feet together can sink quite away till they be drowned, or if he lay them flat on their back, and hold up their feet with a string, their fore-part will not sink, and therein they can use Jugling to blinde the peoples eyes for difference sake; for when they will save any man or woman, they will let loose the string which they hold in their hand, and let their feet sink first, and then all their body will sink, then they cry one to the people, Look you now, and see the difference betwixt an honest man or woman, and a Witch, take her out, she is an honest woman, yea verily, for sometimes she is one of their own confederates.

Some again are Women cast into the water, with their Coates tied close toward their feet, and Men with their apparrel on (and for this they pretend modesty) but who knoweth not that their apparrel will carry them above water for a time?”

The swimming of witches was a pre-Christian practice; indeed, it was in use in ancient Babylon.

Torture. It is not necessary, we hope, to detail the exact use of the thumbscrews, the choke-pear, the strappado, et cetera: it is sufficient to note that these expedients were sufficient to induce innocent people to confess to the most absurd and loathsome crimes.

We may note that the torturers knew exactly what answers they wished to receive. They knew what witches did --- it was all written down in the Malleus Malificarium. It was therefore only necessary to torture witches until their confession agreed with the text. So stereotyped were the inquisitions that the recording clerk would not write out in full the question being asked, but rather record it by number.

We have noted the importance of torture, not only in securing a confession, but in securing false accusations against others. It is the absence of this factor that makes the English witch-trials something of a special case; in other European countries where torture was permitted the number of witches discovered was much greater, and they were much more evenly distributed amongst all strata of society, and between the sexes.

The skeptic Friedrich von Spee, writing of the German witch-hunts, alleges that magistrates would often order that the record should show that no torture was used even though it had been, and that certain practices which we should consider to be torture were routinely omitted from the records:

“There is a frequent phrase used by judges, that the accused has confessed without torture and thus is undeniably guilty. I wondered at this and made inquiry and learned that in reality they were tortured, but only in an iron vice with sharp-edged bars ... and this is technically called “without torture”, deceiving those who do not understand the phrases of the Inquisition.”

Torture lite. The expedients which have recently been christened “torture lite”, were available to the English witch-hunters. They found such methods as sleep deprivation most effective in persuading people to confess to impossible crimes which they had not committed; this would also, centuries later, be the favored methods of Stalin’s torturers in securing confessions of treason from millions of innocents. Here is Thomas Ady’s account of the practice:

“These poor accused people were watched day and night, and kept from sleep with much cruelty, till their Fancies being hurt, they would confess what their Inquisitors would have them, although it were a thing impossible, and flat contrary, to sense and Christian understanding to beleeve...

A poor Wench was executed at the Assizes at Chelmsford, who was compelled by the Inquisitor (by keeping her from sleep and with promises and threatnings) to confess that she was married to the Devil, and that he lay with her six times in a mans shape.”

[edit] The skeptics

Thomas Ady (floreat 1656 -1674). Ady was a physician; very little else is known of his life. From his books, it is evident that he was a deep admirer of the earlier English sceptic Reginald Scot (see below); that he had considerable knowledge of Hebrew and the classical languages; that he combined savage indignation with a pungent sense of humor.

His first book, A Candle in the Dark [4] (1656) was a pugnacious attack on the entire doctrine of witchcraft, and on the conduct of witch trials. It was re-issued in 1661 as The Perfect Discovery of Witches. In 1674 Ady followed it with The Doctrine of Devils [5], a critical look at the whole notion underlying witchcraft --- the idea that devils had the power to perform miraculous acts.

The title of Ady’s book A Candle In The Dark was reused by the modern skeptic Carl Sagan as the subtitle to his book The Demon-Haunted World.

Robert Calef (? - ?1723). When the conduct of the Salem witch trials was defended in a book by Cotton Mather and his camp, entitled Wonders of the Invisible World, the Bostonian Robert Calef responed with the sarcastic volume More Wonders of the Invisible World. His enemies responded with Some few Remarks upon a Scandalous Book [6], and Calef was run out of Boston.

George Gifford (? – 1620). A Nonconformist preacher, he was one of the earliest English voices against the witch mania, denying the possibility of malificient witchcraft and of acquiring occult powers from Satan. His two books on the subject were A Discourse of the Subtle Practices of Devils by Witches and Sorcerers (1587) and A Dialogue Concerning Witches And Witchcraft (1593).

Francis Hutchinson (1660 – 1739). Bishop of Down and Connor. Having been a vicar in Suffolk, England, he had collected testimony from those inhabitants who could remember the plague of witch trials which had swept that county. On this basis he published a book, Historical Essay Concerning Witchcraft (1718), exposing the cruelty and absurdity of the proceedings: this effectively put a stop to British witch trials.

Alonzo de Salazar y Frias (floreat 1611). In 1610, Alonzo de Salazar y Frias was appointed as an inquisitor to look into a mass trial of Basque witches in the Logrono region which had been carried out by the secular Spanish authorities. He submitted a minority report: his colleagues recommended mass burning, and this was done. The next year, with increasing concerns that an injustice had been done, he was reappointed to examine witchcraft in Logrono. His report was scathing: the evidence was worthless, torture was useless, and:

“I have not even found indications from which to infer that a single case of witchcraft has really occurred, whether as to going to sabbats, being present at them, inflicting injuries, or other of the asserted facts.”

His report was accepted by his superiors, who must, indeed, have been hoping that he would write such a report when they sent him to Logrono the second time. His success may be gauged by the fact that after 1611, there were only isolated witch trials in Spain --- and no trials which resulted in execution.

Reginald Scot (1538 – 99). One of the earliest and most influential of English witch-skeptics, Scot was a Kentish squire (that is, he was the largest landholder in his village, and would have been a magistrate for the region) who had attended Oxford University. His book Discoverie of Witchcraft [7] so infuriated the witch-crazed King James I that he had most copies burnt by the public hangman; nonetheless, the later skeptic Thomas Ady (see above) writes that Scot’s book: “did for a time take great impression in the Magistracy, and also in the Clergy”.

Friedrich von Spee (1591 – 1635). A Jesuit priest and professor at Cologne University, Spee had been appointed as confessor to countless German witches. The experience is said to have turned his hair grey; at all events, it certainly convinced him that the accused were innocent of the charges against them. He expressed his scepticism in his book Cautio Criminalis [8] , a blistering, stinging attack on every aspect of the witch trials and everyone who participated in them.

He died as a result of tending to plague victims in Trier. Some sources suggest that he was deliberately appointed to this post by Church authorities to get rid of him.

Although he is best remembered for his opposition to the witch trials, Spee is also noted as a poet and hymnist; some of his lyrics were set to music by Brahms.

Christian Thomasinus (1655 – 1728). Initially an apologist for witchcraft trials, and supporting the use of torture, his mind was changed by studying a number of notorious cases, and he came to deny the possibility of a pact with the devil and to be a strong opponent of torture: he expressed his arguments in his influential work, De Crimne Magiae (1701).

Johan Weyer (1515 – 88). A German physician who wrote books such as De Praestigiis Daemonum (1563), explaining many of the supposed symptoms of possession and witchcraft as what they were --- hysteria.

[edit] Skeptical arguments

When we describe people such as Reginald Scot or Friedrich van Spee as “skeptics”, we do not mean that they were agnostic in religion or that they doubted the possibility of the supernatural. On the contrary, they believed that they were upholding the correct Christian doctrine and the orthodox interpretation of the Bible. When Ady entitled his book A Candle In The Dark, the light he was referring to was Scripture.

Religious men in a religious age, it was therefore necessary for the skeptics to justify their stance theologically.

In the first place, they argued that the theology of the Canon Episcopi (see the section on “History”, above) was correct: God could break the laws of nature, either off his own bat or to oblige the prayers of the pious; no-one else could; the Devil has no power save to deceive. To accept the stories of witchcraft was to ascribe to Satan more miracles, and more startling, in a day, then Jesus Christ had managed in a lifetime. The whole doctrine of demonic power tended to make God merely one supernatural being among many, derogating his godhead.

The supposed antiquity of the Canon Episcopi was a useful piece of ammunition: if, as supposed, it originated with the Council of Ancyra, then it had been orthodox Chistian doctrine for more than a thousand years before Pope Innocent VIII issued Summis desiderantes affectibus. Nor was it lost on staunch Protestants such as Scot and Ady that whereas the decisions of the Council of Ancyra belonged to the Primitive Church and were acceptable to all Christians, the new doctrine was an invention of the hated Papacy.

A further argument was that, though words appeared in the Bible which had been translated as “witch”, yet there was nothing whatsoever in the Bible to support the definition of a witch, or specific beliefs about witchcraft, set out in the Malleus Malaficarium:

“And where do we read in Holy Writ (or common History that saver of truth) that men by Devils could do such things really? and to uphold such errours contrary to Scripture, what is this but meer prevarication with the truth, and resisting Gods holy Spirit of truth? Where do we finde any such thing in Scriptures, or any such description of a Witch, or that a Witch was such a one as hath made a League with the Devil, and sealed it with his bloud, or hath Imps sucking him, or Biggs, or privie Marks, or that lyeth with Incubus, or Succubus, or any such phrase or expression in all the Scriptures? What least inkling have we of these things in all the Scriptures?”

Since a word, commonly translated as “witch”, did appear in the Bible, the sceptics could not deny that “witches” in some Biblical sense, must exist, or at least be possible: it was therefore necessary for them to explain what the Bible meant by it. Their explanation was that a witch is one who uses trickery to pretend to have magical powers, in order to lead people into heresy:

“He that will have any further description of a Witch, let him take this description; A Witch is as like a Prophet as can be, and yet a deceiving false Prophet.”

Thus it was necessary that the various witches and sorcerers in the Bible should be charlatans, for example, the witch of Endor who supposedly summoned the ghost of Samuel for King Saul:

“It is plain in the History, he saw neither Samuel, nor his likeness, for he said to the woman in vers. 13, 14. What sawest thou, and what form and fashion is he of? where it is plain, he was only too credulous, and beleeved that she had seen some apparition, for if he had seen any thing himself, why did he say, What sawest thou? She answered, I saw an old man cloathed in a mantle, making a true description of Samuel, because she knew that he was the man that Saul desired, then Saul acknowledged that it was Samuel, only from her describing of him, vers. 14. and therefore bowed himself with his face to the ground in honour to Samuel, whom he expected should answer him out of the earth.”

So much for the nature and scope of the theological arguments. Besides these, the skeptics were faced with the usual nonsense which is scraped together when people wish to provide evidence for things which don’t actually exist. Here is Ady on unverifiable anecdotal evidence:

“[They] betake themselves to their leggs, runing into some vain story taken out of Bodinus or Bat. Spineus, or some such popish vain writer, and report that it was done in Lancashier, or in Westmerland, or in some remote place farre off; and that they heard it credibly reported from men of worth and quality, and so they ingage me to answer to a story, which they would compell me to beleeve, or else to goe see where it was done..."

Here he deals with the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy:

“Some men will Object, and say, If Witches have not power to afflict, and torment, and kill People and Cattel, how cometh it to pass that after the angring of such an old man or woman, or such a lame man, or woman, that came to my House and desired relief, and I rated her away, and gave her no relief, or did not give her that which she desired; such and such crosses and losses came upon me, or such a Childe was taken in such a manner, with such a Sickness, presently after, or within few days after his or her coming to my door?

They that make this Objection must dwell very remote from Neighbours, or else must be known to give very little, or no relief to the poor, if it can be said at any time when a cross cometh upon them, that one poor body or other hath not been at their door that day, or not many days before, let it happen at any time whatsoever; shall this then be laid to the charge of him, or her that came last begging to their door? then by that reason no man in England can at any time be afflicted but he must accuse some poor body or other to have bewitched him; for Christ saith, The poor ye shall have always; and I think no man of ability is long free from poor coming to his door.”

Here, he answers the argumentum ad populum:

“What though there be no murthering, nor afflicting Witch mentioned in the Scripture, nor any command given to put Witches to death for Murthers, may not this common opinion of all men go for current, unless we can prove it by Scriptures? what shall one or two mens opinions be preferred before the common tenent of all men?

To this I answer, It was the common tenent of all the Heathen, that Idols were gods, and ought to be worshipped; it was the common opinion of all the Scribes and Pharisees that it was a sin to eat with unwashen hands, and yet the Scripture telleth us that these things were false.”

And here he deals briskly with a complete non sequitur:

“Oh gallant! as the Wheel-Barrow goeth ramble the Ramble; so Peter Sherk owes me Five shillings.”

[edit] Quotations

"With the same, in fact with even greater indifference do I regard torturing you than I do bending this reed out of my path with my stick, for by doing so I earn nothing. But when I have you tortured, and by the severe means afforded by the law I bring you to confession, then I perform a work pleasing in God's sight; and it profiteth me." --- Heinrich von Schultheis, witchhunter

[edit] Links

Skeptical

• The Canon Episcopi
• Thomas Ady: A Candle in the Dark
• Thomas Ady: A Perfect Discovery of Witches
• Thomas Ady: The Doctrine of Devils
• “BB, a Protestant Minister”: The World Turned Upside Down
• Robert Calef: More Wonders of the Invisible World
• George Gifford: A Discourse of the Subtle Practices of Devils
• Francis Hutchinson: An Historical Essay Concerning Witchcraft
• Reginald Scot: The Discoverie of Witchcraft
• Skeptical Enquirer on Spee’s Cautio Criminalis

Believers

• King James I’s Daemonologie
• The Malleus Malificarium (in English)
• The Malleus Malificarium (in Latin)
• A BRIEF and TRUE NARRATIVE Of some Remarkable Passages Relating to sundry Persons Afflicted by Witchcraft, AT SALEM VILLAGE

[edit] Note on sources

Where not otherwise referenced, information in this article is taken from Cassell’s Dictionary of Witchcraft.