Witches’ Dos and Don’ts - Salem, Massachusetts - Your Guide to the Witch City (2024)

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Witches’ Dos and Don’ts - Salem, Massachusetts - Your Guide to the Witch City? ›

Those who confessed—or who confessed and named other witches—were spared the court's vengeance, owing to the Puritan belief that they would receive their punishment from God. Those who insisted upon their innocence met harsher fates, becoming martyrs to their own sense of justice.

Those who confessed—or who confessed and named other witches—were spared the court's vengeance, owing to the Puritan belief that they would receive their punishment from God. Those who insisted upon their innocence met harsher fates, becoming martyrs to their own sense of justice.

In the 17th century, a witch was understood as a person who agreed to serve the devil in opposition to the Christian church. In 1692, several young girls in Salem Village reported that unseen agents or forces afflicted them, accusing their neighbors of causing these afflictions.

After the Court of Oyer and Terminer was dissolved, the Superior Court of Judicature took over the witchcraft cases. They disallowed spectral evidence. Most accusations of witchcraft then resulted in acquittals. An essay by Increase Mather, a prominent minister, may have helped stop the witch trials craze in Salem.

Contemporary dictionaries currently distinguish four meanings of the noun witch, including: a person (especially a woman) credited malignant supernatural powers; a practitioner of neo-pagan tradition or religion (such as Wicca); a mean or ugly old woman: hag crone; or, a charming or alluring girl or woman.

The Witch or Devil's mark was believed to be the permanent marking of the Devil on his initiates to seal their obedience and service to him. He is said to create the mark by raking his claw across their flesh, licking the skin to produce a death skull pattern, or using a hot iron to produce a blue or red brand.

However, in the Salem witch trials the youngest person was Dorothy Good who was killed at the age of four or five as her birth year is believed to have been either 1687 or 1688 and she was hung on 1692.

Today there are between 800 and 1600 witches in Salem. A number of the downtown shops are operated by Wiccans and sell herbs, charms, talismans, and other magical equipment. If you want to have your palm read or a spell cast to find a new love, there are plenty of people in Salem who can help you out.

Women alone, single women or widows, poor women, old women, foreign women, melancholic women, healing women, the spectrum could be varied. The women without men, single women and widows, older than forty, could easily be considered to be witches, but many were also married, young...

The trials began when several young girls in Salem, Massachusetts, fell ill and developed un- explained symptoms, including temporary blindness, skin lesions, con- vulsions, and hallucinations.

Why did the girls in Salem go crazy? ›

Modern theories about what was afflicting the girls have ranged from epilepsy to boredom to ergot poisoning. But most experts agree that these causes alone can't be attributed to the girls' anguish. Baker says it's possible that a few of the accusers were purposefully faking their symptoms.

September 22- Martha Corey, Margaret Scott, Mary Easty (sister of Rebecca Nurse and Sarah Cloyce), Alice Parker, Ann Pudeator, Wilmott Redd, Samuel Wardwell, and Mary Parker are hanged. This is the last date of execution during the Salem witch trials.

Two dogs also fell victim to the witchcraft hysteria in October of 1692. In Andover, one of the afflicted girls accused her neighbor's dog of trying to bewitch her. The dog was shot and killed almost immediately.

Enchantress (supernatural), a magician, sorcerer, enchanter, wizard; sometimes called an enchantress, sorceress, or witch if female. Enchantress (fantasy), a female fictional character who uses magic.

Deuteronomy 18:10-11 – Let no one be found among you who consigns a son or daughter to the fire, or who is an augur, a soothsayer, a diviner, a sorcerer, one who casts spells, or one who consults ghosts or familiar spirits, or one who inquires of the dead.

Within the Wicca religion, they embrace various symbols that illustrate either their unique beliefs or their worship of their deities, including the Triple Moon, the Horned God, the Witch's Knot, the Trinity Knot, the Ankh, the Elven Star, and the Pentagram.

Proctor is guilty of witchcraft because of his charge against Abigail and Mary Warren's accusation. He can refuse to plead guilty and be hung for witchcraft, or he can confess the crime and live. Either way the court declares him guilty, but the confession shows repentance for the crime and saves him from execution.

During the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, more than 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraft. Twenty of those people were executed, most by hanging. One man was pressed to death under heavy stones, the only such state-sanctioned execution of its kind.

In 1957, in Chapter 145 of the Resolves, a “Resolve Relative to the Indictment, Trial, Conviction and Execution of Ann Pudeator and Certain Other Persons for 'Witchcraft' in the Year Sixteen Hundred and Ninety-Two,” the General Court of Massachusetts issued a kind of apology to the descendants of some of the witches ...

When a person was accused of witchcraft an Indictment would be drawn up, then witnesses would be called, an examination of the accused would be carried out and sometimes a confession drawn out, possibly with torture. Those found guilty would be executed. Not all accusations of witchcraft were believed, however.