Magic, Spirituality, and Witchcraft

A Botanist, a Butcher and a Body: Encountering an Eighteenth-Century Vrykolakas

by Lisa Smith October 30, 2012

By Lisa Smith, W&M Contributor From 1700-1702, French botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort journeyed through the Greek islands and Constantinople. The following tale is his account of a Greek revenant (vrykolakas) on the island of Mykonos (A Voyage into the Levant, vol. 1, 1718). The story begins with the unsolved murder of a local “ill-natur’d and [...]

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Imagining Vampires

by Lisa Smith June 30, 2012

By Lisa Smith, W&M Contributor Vampires were the flavour of the month, with two very different types of vampires on show: the staked skeletons of an archaeological discovery and the sexy beasts starring in a new season of a certain TV programme. The division of these two types can be traced to the eighteenth century. [...]

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The Merry Month of May?

by Lisa Smith May 1, 2012

I once wandered into a pagan festival in Edinburgh by accident. A friend and I had curiously followed the crowds and sound of drumming, ending up at Calton Hill Beltane. People painted blue or red danced past by torchlight, then a group of women in white. A marriage-like ceremony between a white-clad woman and a [...]

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All Hallows’ Eve and All Souls’ Day

by stephaniecowell October 7, 2011

by Stephanie Cowell Dusk which falls early, cooler winds which rise, dry leaves rustling around old gravestones. This last day of October, known as All Saints’ Eve or All Hallows’ Eve (now called Halloween), was a somber season, marking the very ending of the warmth of the earth and the long entry into a cold [...]

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One Knock for Yes, Two for No

by Holly Tucker September 1, 2011

By Saundra Mitchell It’s too simple to say that Spiritualism was popular in the 19th century because it was an excuse to behave badly, but it was certainly born from bad behavior. It was 1848, in Hydesville, New York when the Fox Sisters started “hearing” strange rappings at night. Their house had a reputation for [...]

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Royal Sparkly Things

by Holly Tucker November 26, 2010

By Carlyn Beccia Wearing this beautiful stone could be a real conversation starter. Not just because it was once worth a small fortune, but because you would basically be wearing a gigantic hairball around your neck. The above is not some ordinary sparkly thing, but a bezoar stone. Bezoar stones are made when undigested food, [...]

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Wild Lives, A Wilder Way of Life

by Holly Tucker November 18, 2010

By Susan Fletcher For over three centuries, up to the early 1700s, there were witch-hunts in Britain. Only in researching Corrag did I truly learn of the immense cruelty with which women – mostly elderly, out-spoken, intelligent or gifted – were treated. From pricking with pins to find ‘the witch’s mark’, to torture, to execution by fire, water [...]

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A Walk into Wales

by Holly Tucker November 2, 2010

By Kathleen Kent As my mother and I got off the train at Conwy, our bags trailing behind us, it began to rain. We heaved our suitcases over a bridge and through the main part of town, a beautiful collection of wood and stone houses, some dating from Elizabethan times. At the city walls, part [...]

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Secret Salem

by Holly Tucker June 9, 2010

By Katherine Howe Every year thousands of visitors throng into Salem, Massachusetts, appetites whetted for witches. And witches there are, for in Salem we are experts in witchery: witch hats, witch t-shirts, witch plays, even some real witches thrown in for good measure. Sometimes visitors are puzzled, however, that there aren’t more places to see [...]

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King James I: Demonologist

by Holly Tucker April 14, 2010

By Mary Sharratt Even by the standards of his age,” King James VI of Scotland, later James I of England, stood out as a deeply superstitious man, obsessed with the occult. Before his reign, witchcraft persecutions had been rare in Britain. But that all changed in 1590 when James personally oversaw the trials by torture [...]

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Witches Go to the Dogs

by Holly Tucker December 20, 2009

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Witches and Midwives

by Holly Tucker October 30, 2009

By Holly Tucker Witches can be nasty creatures…and doubly so anywhere near newborns. Just think about the evil fairies in Sleeping Beauty or Snow White. Nothing to trifle with! If witches and mean fairies seem to be circling baptisms and childbeds in fairy tales, it has a lot to do with the fact that–according to [...]

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Queen of Hell

by Holly Tucker October 14, 2009

By Kathleen Kent I was a child when I first heard from my maternal grandmother that I was the descendent of an accused Salem witch, Martha Carrier. When I asked if Martha had really been a witch, my grandmother laughed. There are no such thing as witches, I was told, merely ferocious women. Well she [...]

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National Library of Medicine’s Traveling Exhibit

by Holly Tucker October 9, 2009

By Elizabeth Bland The week before the July 21, 2007, release of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was an exciting one for fans all over the world, including some of the staff of the History of Medicine Division at the National Library of Medicine. To coincide with the release of the [...]

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Harry Potter’s World: A Traveling Exhibit

by Holly Tucker October 8, 2009

By Elizabeth Bland In 1997, British author J. K. Rowling introduced the world to Harry Potter and a literary phenomenon was born. Although a fantasy story, the magic in the Harry Potter books is partially based on Renaissance traditions that played an important role in the development of Western science, including alchemy, astrology, and natural [...]

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