America Bewitched

Download or read book America Bewitched written by Owen Davies and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2013-02-21 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first major history of witchcraft in America - from the Salem witch trials of 1692 to the present day.

Download or read book A Storm of Witchcraft written by Emerson W. Baker and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-09-08 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book New World Witchery written by Cory Thomas Hutcheson and published by Llewellyn Worldwide. This book was released on 2021-04-08 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore Nearly 500 Samples of Folk Magic, Stories, Artifacts, Rituals, and Beliefs One of the most comprehensive collections of witchcraft and folk magic ever written, New World Witchery shows you how to integrate folk traditions into your life and deepen your understanding of magic. Folklore expert Cory Thomas Hutcheson guides you to the crossroads of folk magic, where you'll learn about different practices and try them for yourself. This treasure trove of witchery features an enormous collection of stories, artifacts, rituals, and traditions. Explore chapters on magical heritage, divination, familiars, magical protection, and spirit communication. Discover the secrets of flying, gathering and creating magical supplies, living by the moon, working contemporary folk magic, and more. This book also provides brief profiles of significant folk magicians, healers, and seers, so you can both meet the practitioners and experience their craft. With New World Witchery, you'll create a unique roadmap to the folk magic all around you.

Download or read book Troubled by Faith written by Owen Davies and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-09-28 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The nineteenth century was a time of extraordinary scientific innovation, but with the rise of psychiatry, faiths and popular beliefs were often seen as signs of a diseased mind. By exploring the beliefs of asylum patients, we see the nineteenth century in a new light, with science, faith, and the supernatural deeply entangled in a fast-changing world. The birth of psychiatry in the early nineteenth-century fundamentally changed how madness was categorised and understood. A century on, their conceptions of mental illness continue to influence our views today. Beliefs and behaviour were divided up into the pathological and the healthy. The influence of religion and the supernatural became significant measures of insanity in individuals, countries, and cultures. Psychiatrists not only thought they could transform society in the industrial age but also explain the many strange beliefs expressed in the distant past. Troubled by Faith explores these ideas about the supernatural across society through the prism of medical history. It is a story of how people continued to make sense of the world in supernatural terms, and how belief came to be a medical issue. This cannot be done without exploring the lives of those who found themselves in asylums because of their belief in ghosts, witches, angels, devils, and fairies, or because they though themselves in divine communication, or were haunted by modern technology. The beliefs expressed by asylum patients were not just an expression of their individual mental health, but also provide a unique reflection of society at the time - a world still steeped in the ideas and imagery of folklore and faith in a fast-changing world.

Download or read book American Religious History [3 volumes] written by Gary Scott Smith and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2020-12-07 with total page 1243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A mix of thematic essays, reference entries, and primary source documents covering the role of religion in American history and life from the colonial era to the present. Often controversial, religion has been an important force in shaping American culture. Religious convictions strongly influenced colonial and state governments as well as the United States as a new republic. Religious teachings, values, and practices deeply affected political structures and policies, economic ideology and practice, educational institutions and instruction, social norms and customs, marriage, and family life. By analyzing religion's interaction with American culture and prominent religious leaders and ideologies, this reference helps readers to better understand many fascinating, often controversial, religious leaders, ideas, events, and topics. The work is organized in three volumes devoted to particular periods. Volume one includes a chronology highlighting key events related to religion in American history and an introduction that overviews religion in America during the period covered by the volume, and roughly 10 essays that explore significant themes. These essays are followed by approximately 120 alphabetically arranged reference entries providing objective, fundamental information about topics related to religion in America. Each volume presents nearly 50 primary source documents, each introduced by a contextualizing headnote. A selected, general bibliography closes volume three.

Download or read book Bewitched Playground written by David Rivard and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A kind of "public dreaming" takes place via the music of these poems--a music as likely to visit the long-dead ghosts of the Kwakiutl tribe as Gianni Versace, and as interested in the baby seat of a car as it is in a boxing ring. Building on the critical success of David Rivard's two earlier, award-winning books, Bewitched Playground widens both his emotional aperture and formal range. Rivard calls it "my book of domestic voodoo"--not a book about having a child, but written out of a life touched by a new intimacy, and tuned-in to an unwilled strangeness, a fluctuating gravity. Here, the unconscious forces of the imagination intersect with the everyday, in a crossroads at the bewitched playground. These stylistically innovative poems are full of the rediscovery that the world teems with "otherness," with freshness and surprise.

Download or read book The Pictorial Story of America written by Elia Wilkinson Peattie and published by . This book was released on 1895 with total page 1292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: