La Voisin
Catherine Monvoisin, or Montvoisin, née Deshayes, known as “La Voisin” (c. 1640 – 22 February 1680), was a French fortune teller, commissioned poisoner, and professional provider of alleged sorcery. She was the head of a network of fortune tellers in Paris providing poison, aphrodisiacs, abortion, purported magical services and the arranging of black masses, with clients among the aristocracy, and became the central figure in the famous affaire des poisons. Her purported organization of commissioned black magic and poison murder was suspected to have killed 1,000 people, but it is believed that upwards of 2,500 people might have been murdered.
| Born | c. 1640 Catherine Deshayes
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|---|---|
| Died | 22 February 1680 (aged 39–40) Paris, France
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| Occupation | French fortune teller · Sorceress · Poisoner |
| Spouse(s) | Antoine Monvoisin |
| Criminal status | Executed |
| Children | Marguerite Monvoisin |
| Motive | Profit |
| Criminal charge | Witchcraft |
| Trial | Affair of the Poisons (17 February 1680 – 19 February 1680) |
| Penalty | execution by burning |
| Details | |
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Span of crimes
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1660–1679 |
| Country | France |
| Location(s) | Paris |
| Killed | Unknown. Provided poison for people who wished to commit murder. |
| Weapons | Poison |
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Date apprehended
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12 March 1679 |
| Imprisoned at | 12 March 1679 |
La Voisin apparently started to include abortions, illegal at the time, for profit within her services as a midwife, and her clients eventually included wealthy members of the aristocracy. She had a network of abortion providers working for her, notably Catherine Lepère, who stated that she received her clients from La Voisin, who referred clients to her and took the majority of the profit as fee.
Marie Bosse claimed that fetuses, who had been aborted late in the pregnancy, were burned in a furnace at the house of La Voisin and buried in the garden of her house. However, as Louis XIV gave the order that the part of La Voisin’s enterprise which had to do with abortions should not be pursued further, this part of her business is the least investigated and unknown one, and the claims of Marie Bosse therefore remain unconfirmed.
La Voisin later said that as a fortune teller she had merely used and developed what God had given her. She stated that she was taught the art of fortune telling at the age of nine, and that after her husband became ruined, she decided to profit by it.
She developed her art by studying the modern methods of physiology, and the art of reading the client’s future by studying their face and hands.
She spent a great deal of money in order to provide an atmosphere which would make her clients more inclined to believe her prophecies: for example, she had a special robe of crimson red velvet embroidered with eagles in gold made for a price of 1,500 livres to perform in.
In 1665 or 1666, her divination was questioned by the Congregation of the Mission at the Saint Vincent de Paul’s order and she was called for questioning, but La Voisin defended herself successfully before the professors at Sorbonne University and was allowed to continue her business as a fortune teller.Her business as a fortune teller gradually developed into a business of professional alleged black magic. During her activity as a fortune teller, she noticed similarities among her clients’ wishes about their future: almost all wanted to have someone fall in love with them, that someone would die so that they might inherit, or that their spouses would die so that they might marry someone else
Her business as a fortune teller gradually developed into a business of professional alleged black magic. During her activity as a fortune teller, she noticed similarities among her clients’ wishes about their future: almost all wanted to have someone fall in love with them, that someone would die so that they might inherit, or that their spouses would die so that they might marry someone else.
La Voisin finally took the step from purported magical potions, amulets and rituals, to selling aphrodisiacs to those who wished for someone to fall in love with them, and fatal poison was given to those who wished for someone to die.
The art of poisoning had become a regular science at the time, having been perfected, in part, by Giulia Tofana, a professional female poisoner in Italy, only a few decades before La Voisin. La Voisin provided a large variety of poisons for her clients and had a network of poison providers working for her, notably the apothecary Catherine Trianon.
The most important client of La Voisin was Madame de Montespan, official royal mistress to King Louis XIV of France. Their contact was often performed through the companion of Montespan, Claude de Vin des Œillets. Montespan was alleged to have hired La Voisin in 1667 to arrange a black mass. This mass was celebrated in a house in Rue de la Tannerie. Adam Lesage and abbé Mariotte officiated, while Montespan prayed to win the love of the king.The same year, Montespan became the official mistress of the King, and after this, she employed La Voisin whenever a problem occurred in her relationship with the King.
In 1673, when the King’s interest in Montespan seemed to wane, Montespan again employed La Voisin, who provided a series of black masses officiated by Étienne Guibourg. On at least one occasion, Montespan herself acted as the human altar during the mass. La Voisin also provided Montespan with an aphrodisiac, with which Montespan drugged the King. During the King’s affair with Madame de Soubise, Montespan used an aphrodisiac provided by Voisin’s colleague Françoise Filastre and made by Louis Galet in Normandy.
In 1677, Montespan made it clear that if the King should abandon her, she would have him killed. When the King entered into a relationship with Angélique de Fontanges in 1679, Montespan called for La Voisin and asked her to have both the King and Fontanges killed.La Voisin hesitated, but was eventually convinced to agree. At the house of her colleague, Catherine Trianon, La Voisin constructed a plan to kill the King together with the poisoners Trianon, Bertrand and Romani, the last being the fiancé of her daughter. Trianon was unwilling to participate and tried to make her change her mind by constructing an ill-fated fortune for her, but Voisin refused to change her mind. The group decided to murder the King by poisoning a petition, to be delivered to his own hands.
On 5 March 1679, La Voisin visited the royal court in Saint-Germain to deliver the petition. That day, however, there were too many petitioners and the King did not take their petitions, which foiled her plan. Upon her return to her home in Paris, she was castigated by a group of monks. She handed the petition to her daughter Marguerite Montvoisin and asked her to burn it, which she also did. The next day, she made plans to visit Catherine Trianon after mass, to plan the next murder attempt upon Louis XIV.
The death of the King’s sister-in-law, the duchesse d’Orléans, had been falsely attributed to poison, and the crimes of Madame de Brinvilliers (executed in 1676) and her accomplices were still fresh in the public mind. In parallel, a riot took place where people accused witches of abducting children for the black masses, and priests reported that a growing number of people were confessing to poisoning in their confessions.
At the arrest of La Voisin, her maid Margot stated that the arrest would mean the end of a number of people in all levels of society. La Voisin was imprisoned at Vincennes, where she was subjected to questioning. On 27 December 1679, Louis XIV issued an order that the whole network should be exterminated by all methods regardless of the rank, sex, or age. The arrest of La Voisin was followed by the arrest of her daughter Marguerite Monvoisin, Guibourg, Lesage, Bertrand, Romain and the rest of her network of associates.
La Voisin was executed in public on the Place de Grève in Paris on 22 February 1680. On her way to her execution, she reportedly pushed away the priest, and when fastened on the stake, she desperately pushed away the hay which was piled up around her.[2]
In July, her daughter Marguerite Monvoisin revealed her connection to Montespan, which was confirmed by the statements of the other accused. This caused the monarch to eventually close the investigation, seal the testimonies and place the remaining accused outside of the public justice system by imprisoning them under a lettre de cachet
Alice KytelerDame
Alice was born to wealthy Norman parents in 1263.
Kyteler was born in Kyteler’s House, County Kilkenny, Ireland, the only child of a Flemish family of merchants settled in Ireland since the mid-late thirteenth century.
She was married four times, to William Outlaw, Adam le Blund, Richard de Valle, and Sir John le Poer.
- First husband c.1280–85 – William Outlaw, merchant and moneylender of Kilkenny. Son: William Outlaw, was mayor of Kilkenny in 1305. Daughter: Rose?
- Second husband (by 1302) Adam Blund of Callan, moneylender
- Third husband (by 1309): Richard de Valle, a landholder of County Tipperary. After de Valle’s death c.1316 Alice took proceedings against her stepson, Richard, for the recovery of her widow’s dower.
- Fourth husband (c.1316–24) John Poer.
In 1302, Kyteler and her second husband were briefly accused of killing her first husband. She incurred local resentment because of her vast wealth and involvement in moneylending. When her fourth husband, John le Poer, fell ill in 1324, he expressed the suspicion that he was being poisoned. After his death, the children of le Poer and of her previous three husbands accused her of using poison and sorcery (maleficarum) against their fathers and of favouring her first-born son, William Outlaw.
In addition, she and her followers were accused of:
- denying the faith of Christ and the Church
- cutting up animals to sacrifice to demons at crossroads
- holding secret nocturnal meetings in churches to perform black magic and undermine/overpower the church
- using sorcery and potions to control Christians
- possession of a familiar, Robin Artison, a lesser demon of Satan
- murder of husbands
Alice and her accomplices were accused of and investigated on seven accounts:
- Committing heresy
- Sacrificing to demons
- Communing with demons
- Magically excommunicating/usurping the church
- Making love and hate potions to corrupt Christians
- Murdering her past husbands
- Engaging in a sexual affair with a demon
Isobel Gowdie
Gowdie testified the Devil handmade elf arrows that were then enhanced by small roughly-spoken “elf-boys”.[45][f] The Devil allocated a number of arrows to each coven member with instructions they were to be fired in his name; no bows were supplied so the arrows were flicked by thumb.[45] The witches were not always accurate when they fired the arrows but if the intended target, whether it was a woman, a man or an animal, was touched by the implement, she claimed they would die even if wearing a protective armour.[45] Spells used to inflict illness and torment on Harry Forbes, the minister, were also described.[51]
On 15 May 1662 Gowdie was brought before her interrogators for a third time.[52] Like her first and second confessions, and in common with many other Scottish witchcraft testimonies, the transcript begins by detailing her pact with the Devil after she encountered him and agreed to meet him at Auldearn kirk.[53] Taking the information she provided previously about the elf arrows a step further, she revealed the names of those killed,[52] expressing regret for the deaths she caused[54] and supplied names of other coven members with details of who they had murdered too. She gave an account of the Devil sending her on an errand to Auldearn disguised as a hare. Her narrative went on to describe how while in that form she was chased by a pack of dogs; she escaped from them by running from house to house until eventually she had the opportunity to utter the chant to transform herself back into a human.She added that sometimes the dogs would be able to bite a witch when she took the form of a hare; although the dogs could not kill the shape shifter, the bite marks and scars would still be evident once the human form was reinstated.
Descriptions of dining with the Devil and his beating of coven members and their responses to it are recounted.Salacious details concerning sexual relations with the Devil together with broad characteristics of his genitalia are chronicled.Continuing on from the tale in her first testimony about the methods undertaken to kill any male children of the Laird of Park, the verse the Devil had taught them to chant while burning the effigies was relayed.
The fourth and final confession, dated 27 May 1662,is, according to the historian Robert Pitcairn who first reproduced Gowdie’s testimonies in 1833, basically to confirm the three previous testimonies coupled with an attempt to elicit more information about the members of the coven to enable charges to be brought against them.Forty-one people were arrested as the result of Breadhead and Gowdie’s statements.
Records provide no information on Gowdie before her marriage to John Gilbert, who had no involvement in the witchcraft case.Wilby speculates that she would have been brought up in the Auldearn region as she alluded to locations in the area. Likewise no detail is available concerning her age; at the time of her trial in 1662 she may have been aged anywhere from fifteen – although this is unlikely as she claimed to have participated in sexual activities fifteen years before her confession – to well into her thirties or fifties but she was certainly of child-bearing age despite there being no records of her having any children.
Gowdie and her husband lived in the area around Loch Loy,about two miles north of Auldearn. In the 17th century, the sea loch was larger than it is now and was surrounded by woodland, hills and sand dunes. Gowdie’s husband was a farm labourer, possibly a cottar, hired by one of the tenants of the Laird of Park; in return for his labour he would have been provided with a cottage and the use of a small parcel of land.According to Wilby, their lifestyle and social status could be compared with present-day developing countries. Unable to read or write, Gowdie possessed a good imagination and the ability to express herself eloquently. Her daily life was spent in basic household chores and tasks such as milking, making bread, weaving yarn or weeding.Her first confession described an encounter with the Devil after she arranged to meet him in the kirk at Auldearn at night. Naming several others who attended including Janet Breadhead and Margret Brodie, she said she renounced her baptism and the Devil put his mark on her shoulder then sucked blood from it.Other meetings took place at several locations, for instance Nairn and Inshoch. She touched on having sexual intercourse with the Devil who she described as a very cold “meikle, blak, roch man”. He had forked and cloven feet that were sometimes covered with shoes or boots. Details were given of taking a child’s body from a grave and spoiling crops together with information about covens and where they danced.She explained that brooms were laid beside her husband in his bed so he would not notice she was absent. The coven ate and drank the best of food at houses they reached by flying through the air on magical horses and entered via the windows.They were entertained by the Queen of the Fairies, also known as the Queen of Elphame, in her home at Downie Hill which was filled with water bulls that frightened her.Gowdie claimed to have made clay effigies of the Laird of Park’s male children to cause them suffering or death and that she had assumed the form of a jackdaw and, with other members of the coven who had transformed into animals like cats and hares, visited the house of Alexander Cumings. Some parts of her testimony, like her description of the king and queen of fairies, has been cut short when the notaries have just noted et cetera, a frequent occurrence when the material was deemed irrelevantor, if it did not comply with the inference the interrogators intended, it was abruptly ended.
Gowdie testified the Devil handmade elf arrows that were then enhanced by small roughly-spoken “elf-boys”. The Devil allocated a number of arrows to each coven member with instructions they were to be fired in his name; no bows were supplied so the arrows were flicked by thumb. The witches were not always accurate when they fired the arrows but if the intended target, whether it was a woman, a man or an animal, was touched by the implement, she claimed they would die even if wearing a protective armour.Spells used to inflict illness and torment on Harry Forbes, the minister, were also described.
On 15 May 1662 Gowdie was brought before her interrogators for a third time. Like her first and second confessions, and in common with many other Scottish witchcraft testimonies, the transcript begins by detailing her pact with the Devil after she encountered him and agreed to meet him at Auldearn kirk.Taking the information she provided previously about the elf arrows a step further, she revealed the names of those killed, expressing regret for the deaths she caused and supplied names of other coven members with details of who they had murdered too. She gave an account of the Devil sending her on an errand to Auldearn disguised as a hare. Her narrative went on to describe how while in that form she was chased by a pack of dogs; she escaped from them by running from house to house until eventually she had the opportunity to utter the chant to transform herself back into a human. She added that sometimes the dogs would be able to bite a witch when she took the form of a hare; although the dogs could not kill the shapeshifter, the bite marks and scars would still be evident once the human form was reinstated.
Descriptions of dining with the Devil and his beating of coven members and their responses to it are recounted. Salacious details concerning sexual relations with the Devil together with broad characteristics of his genitalia are chronicled.Continuing on from the tale in her first testimony about the methods undertaken to kill any male children of the Laird of Park, the verse the Devil had taught them to chant while burning the effigies was relayed.
The fourth and final confession, dated 27 May 1662, is, according to the historian Robert Pitcairn who first reproduced Gowdie’s testimonies in 1833,basically to confirm the three previous testimonies coupled with an attempt to elicit more information about the members of the coven to enable charges to be brought against them.[60] Forty-one people were arrested as the result of Breadhead and Gowdie’s statements.
Moll Dyer
Moll Dyer (died c. 1697?) is the name of a legendary 17th-century resident of Leonardtown, Maryland, who was said to have been accused of witchcraft and chased out of her home by the local townsfolk on a winter night. Her body was found a few days later, partially frozen to a large stone
Stories say her spirit haunts the land, looking for the men who forced her from her home. The land near her cabin is said to be cursed, never again growing good crops, and an unusual number of lightning strikes have been recorded there. A white dog is mentioned as causing accidents on Moll Dyer road.
One interviewer reported that while hunting along Moll Dyer’s Run around 1970 he saw a “very dense fog patch, cylindrical in shape, with the light emanating about eight inches down from the top…. It crossed the stream and went east … moving across the wind instead of with the wind … then turned and went south…. But what made it really strange was that it did it twice! … I’m not saying that it was the spirit of Moll Dyer. I just don’t know what it was.”
Marie Laveau Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans
| Born |
Marie Catherine Laveau
September 10, 1801 New Orleans, Louisiana (New France)
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|---|---|
| Died | June 15, 1881 (aged 79) New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.
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| Resting place | Saint Louis Cemetery No. 1 |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Occultist, voodoo priestess, midwife, nurse, herbalist |
| Known for | Voodoo Queen of New Orleans |
| Spouse(s) | Jacques Paris, Christophe Glapion |
| Parent(s) | Charles Laveau and Marguerite Henry (known as D’Arcantel) |
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Marie Laveau
|
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|---|---|
| Voodoo Queen of New Orleans | |
| Born | September 10, 1801 New Orleans, Louisiana (New France) |
| Died | June 15, 1881 (aged 79) New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S. |
| Venerated in | Louisiana Voodoo, Folk Catholicism |
| Major shrine | International Shrine of Marie Laveau , New Orleans Healing Center circa 2015 |
| Feast | June 15th, September 10th |
| Attributes | Water, Roosters |
| Patronage | Mothers, Children, Fevers, Love, Volunteerism |
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Tradition or genre
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Folk Catholicism Louisiana Voodoo |
Marie Catherine Laveau (September 10, 1801 – June 15, 1881) was a Louisiana Creole practitioner of Voodoo, herbalist and midwife who was renowned in New Orleans. Her daughter, Marie Laveau II, (1827–c. 1862) also practiced rootwork, conjure, Native American and African spiritualism as well as Louisiana Voodoo. An alternate spelling of her name, Laveaux, is considered by historians to be from the original French spelling.
Thursday, September 10, 1801. She was the biological daughter of Charles Laveau, and her mother was Marguerite Darcantel.
On August 4, 1819, a young Marie Laveau married Jacques Paris, a free person of color from Haiti, at St. Louis Cathedral. Her father, who never married her mother but signed documents declaring to be Marie’s father, stood at her wedding and signed the marriage contract on her behalf on July 27, 1819. Her wedding gift from her father was property that he owned on Love Street (now North Rampart). But documents show that by 1822 Marie and Jacques were living on Dauphine Street between Dumaine and St Philip. The city directory lists Jacques as a cabinet maker.
Most researchers say that Marie and Jacque did not have any children, however, Baptismal records from St. Louis Cathedral show entries for two daughters. Marie Angelie Paris baptized in 1823 and Felicite Paris baptized in 1824 are both listed as the daughters of Marie Laveau and Jacques Paris. Felicite’s records state that she was seven years old at the time of her baptism, which would mean that she was born in 1817, two years before Marie and Jacque’s marriage. Unfortunately, the records on Marie Angelie and Felicite stop there.
The mysteries that surround Marie Laveau started early in her life. The disappearance of her first two daughters is similar to the disappearance of Jacque Paris. There is no documentation of his death, though the baptismal record of Felicite declared him to be deceased. What we do know for certain is that Marie called herself “the Widow Paris” for the remaining years of her life.
In around 1826, Marie found love again with Louis Christophe Dumensnil de Glapion. Glapion came from a prominent New Orleans family, a wealthy white gentleman that would spend his last thirty years in a common law marriage with Marie Laveau – interracial couples were common in New Orleans, but forbidden to marry by law.
Catherine, Marie’s grandmother passed away in 1831. A creditor surfaced and claimed that Catherine was indebted her home and an additional lump sum. Her cottage on St. Ann, that Marie had grown up in, was put up for auction. Glapion came to the rescue and purchased her childhood home. The Creole cottage on St. Ann would continue to be the home of Marie Laveau, Christophe Glapion, and their family until the end of the 19th century.
Christophe Glapion died in June of 1855, after being Marie Laveau’s common-law husband and devoted father to their children for almost thirty years. There is no evidence of Marie ever taking up with another man after Glapion’s death. One can only assume she knew it would be impossible to replace a love so big.
There are stories out there that say Marie started having babies with Glapion immediately and that they had 15 children over the course of 20 years. However, what is actually recorded is that they had seven children from 1827 – 1839. Three of these children died in infancy. Marie Philomene Glapion, born a “free quadroon” in 1836, lived the longest of the children. She would eventually be who many assumed the infamous Marie II.
Marie Laveau was a dedicated practitioner of Voodoo, as well as a healer and herbalist. “Laveau was said to have traveled the streets like she owned them” said one New Orleans boy who attended an event at St. John’s. Her daughter, Marie Laveau II displayed more theatrical rubrics by holding public events (including inviting attendees to St. John’s Eve rituals on Bayou St. John). It is not known which (if either) had done more to establish the voodoo queen reputation.
Marie Laveau took a short time to dominate voodoo culture and society in the New Orleans area, then she became the queen of voodoo. During her decades as queen, she had been asked questions about her family disputes, health, finances, and more. In addition, she performed her services in three main places as queen: Her Home on St. Ann Street, Go Square, and Lake Pontchartrain. She was the third female leader of Voodoo in New Orleans（the first is Sanité Dédé, she ruled for a few years before being usurped by Marie Salopé, and she maintained her authority throughout her leadership. Although there was an attempt to challenge her in 1850. Due to her strong influence, New Orleans Voodoo lost a large number of adherents after her death.
Marie Laveau I started a beauty parlor where she was a hair-dresser for the wealthier families of New Orleans. Of Laveau’s magical career, there is little that can be substantiated, including whether or not she had a snake she named Zombi after an African god, whether the occult part of her magic mixed Roman Catholic saints with African spirits and Native American Spiritualism, or whether her divinations were supported by a network of informants she developed while working as a hairdresser in prominent white households. She excelled at obtaining inside information on her wealthy patrons by instilling fear in their servants whom she either paid or cured of mysterious ailments.
Laveau was also known as a female religious leader and community activist. Her community activities included visiting prisoners, providing lessons to women of the community, and doing rituals for those in need
Marie Catherine Laveau Paris Glapion died on June 15, 1881, aged 79. The different spellings of her surname result from many different women with the same name in New Orleans at the time, and her age at death from conflicting accounts of her birth date.
On June 17, 1881, it was announced in the Daily Picayune that Marie Laveau had died peacefully in her home.According to the Louisiana Writer’s Project, her funeral was lavish and attended by a diverse audience including members of the white elite.Oral tradition states that she was seen by some people in town after her supposed demise. News of her death was featured in a number of newspapers, including the “Stuaton spectator” in Virginia, the “Omaha daily bee” in Nebraska, as well as several newspapers published in Minnesota.
At least two of her daughters were named Marie, following the French Catholic tradition to have the first names of daughters be Marie, and boys Joseph, then each use middle name as the common name. One of her daughters named Marie possibly assumed her position, with her name, and carried on her magical practice, taking over as the queen soon before or after the first Marie’s death.
Laveau’s name and her history have been surrounded by legend and lore. She is generally believed to have been buried in plot 347, the Glapion family crypt in Saint Louis Cemetery No. 1, New Orleans,but this has been disputed by Robert Tallant, a journalist who used her as a character in historical novels.Tourists continue to visit and some draw X marks in accordance with a decades-old tradition that if people wanted Laveau to grant them a wish, they had to draw an X on the tomb, turn around three times, knock on the tomb, yell out their wish, and if it was granted, come back, circle their X, and leave Laveau an offering.
In 1982, New Jersey-based punk rock group The Misfits were arrested and accused of attempting to exhume Laveau from her grave after a local concert. The arrest took place in nearby Cemetery No. 2 and there are conflicting accounts of the incident.
The tomb in Saint Louis Cemetery No. 1 was vandalized by an unknown person on December 17, 2013, by being painted over with pink latex paint. The paint was removed because the structure is made of old plaster and the latex paint would seal in the moisture that would destroy the plaster. Some historical preservation experts criticized the decision by officials of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, who maintain the cemetery, for their decision to use pressure washing rather than paint stripper to remove it.
As of March 1, 2015, there is no longer public access to St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. Entry with a tour guide is required because of continued vandalism and the destruction of tombs. This change was made by the Archdiocese of New Orleans to protect the tombs of the Laveau family as well as those of the many other dead interred there.
Although some references to Marie Laveau in popular culture refer to her as a “witch,” she has also been called a “Voudou Priestess”, and she is frequently described as a ‘Voodoo queen’. At the time of her death, The New York Times, The New Orleans Daily Picayune, the Daily States and other news sources describe her as “woman of great beauty, intellect, and charisma who was also pious, charitable, and a skilled herbal healer
.Mary Oneida Toups (April 25, 1928 – September 1981) was an American occultist. As the founder and high priestess of the Religious Order of Witchcraft, she was known as the “Witch Queen of New Orleans”. Her order was the first coven to be chartered as an official religious organization in the state of Louisiana. In 1975 she published an instructional occultist book titled Magick High and Low
Toups was born on April 25, 1928 in Meridian, Mississippi to Arthur Hodgin and Mary Ellen Killing. She moved to New Orleans in 1968. Toups was married to Albert Toups, a Cajun who was a high-ranking Freemason and ran a bar on Decatur Street.
On February 2, 1972 she chartered the Religious Order of Witchcraft, the first coven to be registered as an official religious organization within the state of Louisiana.The order, which often gathered at Popp Fountain in City Park, practiced Western ceremonialist magic, not Afro-Caribbean rooted practices like voodoo and hoodoo that are commonly associated with New Orleans.Later in 1972, Toups caught the attention of writer Howard Jacobs, who wrote about her in his column Remoulade, after she publicly defended witchcraft when the practice had been blamed for a murder in Opelousas.She ran two witchcraft shops in the French Quarter, opening her first store on September 1, 1970.Toups also published the occult text Magick High and Low in 1975.
Toups died in September 1981 of stomach cancer.
Dion Fortune
Dion Fortune (born Violet Mary Firth, 6 December 1890 – 6 January 1946) was a British occultist, ceremonial magician, novelist and author. She was a co-founder of the Fraternity of the Inner Light, an occult organisation that promoted philosophies which she claimed had been taught to her by spiritual entities known as the Ascended Masters. A prolific writer, she produced a large number of articles and books on her occult ideas and also authored seven novels, several of which expound occult themes.
Fortune was born in Llandudno, Caernarfonshire, North Wales, to a wealthy upper middle-class English family, although little is known of her early life. By her teenage years she was living in England’s West Country, where she wrote two books of poetry. After time spent at a horticultural college she began studying psychology and psychoanalysis at the University of London before working as a counsellor in a psychotherapy clinic. During the First World War she joined the Women’s Land Army and established a company selling soy milk products. She became interested in esotericism through the teachings of the Theosophical Society, before joining an occult lodge led by Theodore Moriarty and then the Alpha et Omega occult organisation.
She came to believe that she was being contacted by the Ascended Masters, including “the Master Jesus”, and underwent trance mediumship to channel the Masters’ messages. In 1922 Fortune and Charles Loveday claimed that during one of these ceremonies they were contacted by Masters who provided them with a text, The Cosmic Doctrine. Although she became the president of the Christian Mystic Lodge of the Theosophical Society, she believed the society to be uninterested in Christianity, and split from it to form the Community of the Inner Light, a group later renamed the Fraternity of the Inner Light. With Loveday she established bases in both Glastonbury and Bayswater, London, began issuing a magazine, gave public lectures, and promoted the growth of their society. During the Second World War she organised a project of meditations and visualisations designed to protect Britain. She began planning for what she believed was a coming post-war Age of Aquarius, although she died of leukemia shortly after the war’s end.
Fortune is recognised as one of the most significant occultists and ceremonial magicians of the early 20th century. The Fraternity she founded survived her and in later decades spawned a variety of related groups based upon her teachings. Her novels in particular proved an influence on later occult and modern Pagan groups such as Wicca.
Fortune was a ceremonial magician. The magical principles on which her Fraternity was based were adopted from the late nineteenth century Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, with other influences coming from Theosophy and Christian Science. The magical ceremonies performed by Fortune’s Fraternity were placed into two categories: initiations, in which the candidate was introduced to magical forces, and evocation, in which these forces were manipulated for a given purpose.
The Fraternity’s rituals at their Bayswater temple were carried out under a dim light, with Fortune claiming that bright light disperses etheric forces. An altar was placed in the centre of a room, with the colours of the altar-cloth and the symbols on the altar varying according to the ceremony being performed. A light was placed on the altar while incense, usually frankincense, was burned. The senior officers sat in a row along the eastern end of the room, while officers—who were believed to be channels for cosmic forces—were positioned at various positions on the floor. The lodge was opened by walking around the room in a circle chanting, with the intent of building a psychic force up as a wall. Next, the cosmic entities would be invoked, with the members believing that these entities would manifest in astral form and interact with the chosen officers.
Fortune was particularly concerned with the issue of sex. In her early works she displayed a prudish attitude regarding sexuality, warning her readers about the perceived perils of masturbation, extra-marital sex, same-sex sexual activity, abortion, and free love. The only form of sexual expression that she considered appropriate was that between a heterosexual married couple,and she promoted a form of ‘psychic masturbation’ to quell any sexual urges that a celibate individual may have. According to Richardson, she was “a prude, at least by today’s standards”. In her later works she exhibited a more positive attitude toward sexuality, describing the sexual union between a man and woman as the most powerful expression of a “life-force” which flows throughout the universe. She believed that this erotic attraction between men and women could be harnessed for use in magic.She urged her followers to be naked under their robes when carrying out magical rituals, for this would increase the creative sexual tension between the men and women present.Although sex features in her novels, it is never described in graphic detail. Nevertheless, her later occult novels entail depictions of heterosexual sex outside of marriage, suggesting that by this point Fortune no longer believed that sex must be restrained to wedlock.The scholar Andrew Radford noted that Fortune’s “reactionary and highly heteronormative” view of “sacralised sexuality” should be seen as part of a wider tradition among esoteric currents, going back to the ideas of Emanuel Swedenborg and Andrew Jackson Davis and also being found in the work of occultists like Paschal Beverly Randolph and Ida Craddock.
Fortune was among those who popularised the idea of a division between the left-hand path and right-hand path which had been introduced to Western esotericism by the Theosophist Helena Blavatsky. In doing so Fortune connected her disparaging views on what she considered to be the left hand path to the moral panic surrounding homosexuality in British society. Her works contained commentaries in which she condemned the “homosexual techniques” of malevolent male magicians, and she claimed that the acceptance of homosexuality was the cause of the downfall of the ancient Greek and Roman civilisations.The manner in which she sought to demonise the left hand path has been compared to that found in the work of English novelist Dennis Wheatley.
Tituba
| Born | before 1680 Tibitó, South America
|
|---|---|
| Died | after April 1693 |
| Nationality | Kalina |
| Other names | Tituba the Witch |
| Occupation | Slave |
| Known for | Accused of witchcraft during the Salem Witch Trials. She confessed for survival. |
| Criminal charge(s) | Witchcraft |
| Criminal penalty | Imprisonment |
| Spouse(s) | John Indian |
| Children | Violet |
Tituba (fl. 1680-1693) was an enslaved woman who was the first female to be accused of practicing witchcraft during the 1692 Salem witch trials. Although her origins are debated, historical research has suggested that she was a Kalina woman from Tibitó who eventually ended up in Barbados, where she was purchased by the Puritan priest Samuel Parris, who brought her to colonial Massachusetts. Little is known regarding Tituba’s life prior to her enslavement. It is said she was named after the tribe or town she came from. She became a pivotal figure in the witch trials when she confessed to witchcraft while also making claims that both Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne participated in said witchcraft. She was imprisoned and later released by Samuel Conklin.
Tituba’s husband was John Indian, an Indigenous man whose origins are unknown, but he may have been from Central or South America. Tibitó Colombia to be precise. It is said she was named for her town or tribe. Tituba may have originally been from Barbados. The often unreliable records of the enslaved persons origins makes this information difficult to verifyThere are historians such as Samuel Drake who suggest that Tituba was African.Her husband went on to become one of the accusers in the Witch Trials.They appear documented together in Samuel Parris’s church record book.
Tituba was the first person to be accused by Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Williams of witchcraft. It has been theorized that Tituba told the girls tales of voodoo and witchcraft prior to the accusations.She was also the first to confess to witchcraft in Salem Village in March 1692. Initially denying her involvement in witchcraft, Tituba later confessed to making a “witch cake”, due to being beaten by Samuel Parris with the intention of getting a confession. When questioned later, she added that she knew about occult techniques from her mistress in Barbados, who taught her how to ward herself from evil powers and how to reveal the cause of witchcraft. Since such knowledge was not meant for harm, Tituba again asserted to Parris she was not a witch, but admitted she had participated in an occult ritual when she made the witch cake in an attempt to help Elizabeth Parris. Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne were sent to jail in Boston to await trial and punishment on March 7, 1692. Despite these confessions, there is no proof that she did the things to which she confessed.
Other women and men from surrounding villages were accused of witchcraft and arrested at the Salem witchcraft trials. Not only did Tituba accuse others in her confession, but she talked about black dogs, hogs, a yellow bird, red and black rats, cats, a fox and a wolf. Tituba talked about riding sticks to different places. She confessed that Sarah Osborne possessed a creature with the head of a woman, two legs, and wings. Since it mixed various perspectives on witchcraft, Tituba’s confession confused listeners, and its similarities to certain stock tropes of demonology caused some Salem Village residents to believe that Satan was among them.
After the trials, Tituba remained in jail because Samuel Parris refused to pay her jail fees. In April 1693, Tituba was sold to an unknown person for the price of her jail fees.[In an interview with Robert Calef for his collection of papers on the trials, titled More Wonders of the Invisible World: Being an Account of the Trials of Several Witches, Lately Executed in New-England, Tituba confirmed that Parris had beaten a confession out of her and then coached her in what to say and how to say when first questioned.
Malin Matsdotter
Malin Matsdotter or Mattsdotter, also known as Rumpare-Malin (1613 – 5 August 1676) was an alleged Swedish witch. She is known as one of few people in Sweden confirmed to have been executed by burning for witchcraft, and the only one to be executed by this method during the famous witch hunt Det Stora oväsendet (‘The Great Noise’) in Sweden during 1668–1676, which ended with her execution.
Malin Matsdotter was of Finnish heritage: she herself later stated in court protocol that she originally learned her prayers in the Finnish language. She married Erik Nilsson, who worked in the manufacture of nails and other metal threads, and they had two daughters: Anna Eriksdotter and Maria Eriksdotter.
In 1668, her husband was executed for having intercourse with a cow. He had been reported by their 13-year-old daughter Anna, after she and her sister had been brought home after running away to escape being beaten by their father, then by their mother at their father’s command. During the beating, Anna reportedly said to her father: “God knows mother beat, and You beat, and I shall no longer remain silent, such a sin You have committed, all the time standing on a chair over our black cow like a roster over a hen.
In July 1676, Malin Matsdotter was reported for witchcraft by her nineteen-year-old daughter Maria Eriksdotter. Her reported stated:
- “The true daughter of Rumpare Malin, Maria Eriksdotter age nineteen, were called upon and confessed that she had the same night been abducted by Anna Wife of Staffan, who sells beer at Dalarö, to whom she had been lost at games by her mother […] Last Easter Evening her mother allegedly said to her: My daughter do you wish to follow me and we will make people out of you […] thereafter she began to take her every night [to Blockula] […] the second time [she travelled to Blockula] upon a man. Confessed aside that her mother had always had a bad language, cursed and used ugly words, particularly on great holy days.”
In 16 July 1676, Malin Matsdotter was judged guilty as charged by a unanimous court on the testimonies of her daughters and sentenced to be executed. The method of execution was the subject of debate in the royal witchcraft commission, who was to decide between three alternatives; the first was the customary execution by decapitation followed by public burning of the corpse; the second was that she would be subjected to torture prior to the first alternative; and the third alternative was that she would be executed by being burned alive. The last alternative was given the majority vote. The clerical commissioner Carolinus stated in his vote that the honor of God should be regarded before the personal pain of Malin and that she should be given a taste of what was awaiting her in Hell after having seduced so many souls to Satan; commissioners Ivar and Noreus motivated their vote by the deterring effect such a method would have upon the public and her accomplices, and commissioner doctor Urban Hjärne suggested that she be tortured with hot iron prior to the execution, which would make her unconscious and unable to feel pain, because her death would otherwise be too cruel,but the suggestion was revoked with the view, expressed by a priest, that the honour of the name of God was more important than Malin’s personal experience of pain; the method was also deemed necessary as an example to the public and to her accomplices.She was instead to have a bag of gunpowder secured around her neck to make her death quicker. Because the court was convinced of her guilt, her refusal to admit guilt made her position worse on the eyes of the court. One suggestion was, that at the place of execution, she would be given a last chance to confess her sin; if she did so, she would be decapitated before she was burned.
The method of execution make the case of Malin Matsdotter unique in Sweden. She was the only person of the almost 300 people executed during the great Swedish witch hunt of 1668–76, to be executed by being burned alive instead of by decapitation followed by public burning of the corpse, which was the normal execution for sorcery in Sweden. Though several crimes formally allowed for public burning as method of execution, this actually meant that the condemned be “executed and burned”, which meant that they were first executed by decapitation or hanging, after which their corpse was publicly burned: the method of burning someone still alive is only known to have been used in the country a very few times before, and the verdict was therefore controversial. Malin Matsdotter was the last person to be executed by burning in the capital of Stockholm, and the second to last to be executed by burning in Sweden. No other person executed for sorcery in Sweden is confirmed to have been burned alive. Because of this, she has sometimes also been regarded the only one in Sweden to be executed by burning for sorcery altogether. However, though decapitation was the customary method, they were likely at least some cases in the early 17th-century were this method may have been used. The method of execution by burning had been debated by the commission in Stockholm previously during the Catharina witch trial of 1675–76 and actually given to an earlier condemned, Anna Lärka, for her refusal to admit guilt, but it was retracted when she finally did so. In the case of Matsdotter, the sentence was to be carried out.
The execution was performed in the square of Hötorget in Stockholm the 5 August 1676. Malin Matsdotter was to be executed alongside Anna “Annika” Simonsdotter Hack, known as “Tysk-Annika”, who had also been accused and sentenced to death on the testimony of her own children, but was to be executed the normal way by decapitation before burning. The contrast between the behavior of the two have been noted. Anna Simonsdotter was described as full humility and respect and behaved as was expected by her, and though she did not directly say that she was guilty, she behaved as was expected of her, and “by her remorse, by her psalms, and by falling on her knees and lifting her head and her hands to the sky, confirmed the justice in the verdict and the justice in the world”.According to contemporary witnesses, Malin Matsdotter behaved with great dignity and courage during her execution. When asked to take the hand of her daughter to make peace with her before death, she refused. She “did not seem to fear death much, courageously mounting the stake”,and even the official execution protocol noted that she “was very tough”. She spoke calmly with the executioner, “allowing him to fasten her with iron by her hands and feet”, and the bag of gunpowder was placed around her neck to hasten death. She talked back to the priests with her head held high when they pleaded with her to acknowledge her sin, maintaining her innocence. When her daughter cried out and appealed to her to admit her crimes “Malin delivered her daughter in the hands of the Devil and cursed her for eternity”. The daughter in question would have been Maria Eriksdotter, as Anna Eriksdotter was herself in arrest as the time. The execution in itself was described:
- “But though all of this was both horrifying and pathetic to look upon, those who suffered death did not shed one tear but stood by their standpoint of innocence with an unnatural courage”.
Tradition claims that Malin Matsdotter did not scream but died in silence, in accordance with contemporary view that witches felt no pain.
Few people had been executed for this crime since Malin Matsdotter in 1676, and Anna Eriksdotter was to be the last one. Guilty verdicts for witchcrafts did occur however, even if they did not result in the death penalty. In 1724, several women in Södra Ny socken, Värmland who confessed to have abducted children to Satan was sentenced to be whipped, which was the last time anyone was judged guilty of sorcery in Sweden.In 1757, the last witch trial occurred Ål in Dalarna, where thirteen women and five men were accused of child abduction to Satan, but the witch trial was stopped when Catherine Charlotte De la Gardie made it known in the capital that a witch trial was taking place in the provinces. Formally, the law of witchcraft remained until it was abolished in 1779.
Bridget Bishop
| Born |
Bridget Magnusc. 1632
England
|
|---|---|
| Died | 10 June 1692 (aged c. 60) Salem, Colony of Massachusetts
|
| Cause of death | Execution by hanging |
| Other names | Wasselbe, Wasselby, Waselby, Wasselbee, Wesselbee, Magnus, Magnes, Hayfer; Goody Oliver, Goody Bishop, Bridget Playfer |
| Occupation | Housewife |
| Criminal charge(s) | Witchcraft (overturned), conspiracy with the Devil (rehabilitated) |
| Criminal penalty | Death |
| Criminal status | Executed (10 June 1692) Exonerated (31 October 2001) |
Bridget Bishop (c. 1632 – 10 June 1692) was the first person executed for witchcraft during the Salem witch trials in 1692. Nineteen were hanged, and one, Giles Corey, was pressed to death. Altogether, about 200 people were tried.
She married her first husband Captain Samuel Wesselby on 13 April 1660, at St. Mary-in-the-Marsh, Norwich, Norfolk, England. She had two sons and one daughter from her first marriage: John, Benjamin and Mary. Her first Husband died shortly after marriage in 1666.
Her second marriage, on 26 July 1666, was to Thomas Oliver, a widower and prominent businessman. She had another daughter from her marriage to Thomas Oliver, Chrestian Oliver (sometimes spelled Christian), born 8 May 1667.She was earlier accused of bewitching Thomas Oliver to death, but was acquitted for lack of evidence.
Her third marriage c. 1687 was to Edward Bishop, a prosperous sawyer, whose family lived in Beverly. Her third husband, Edward Bishop, is also one of the founders of the First Church of Beverly. He was 44 at the time of the trials.
Bridget ran two taverns alongside Edward. Bridget Bishop was always seen by friends, family, and guests wearing exotic clothes and bright colors, both far from the standard clothes associated with the devil.During her sentencing, a jury of women found a third nipple upon Bishop (then considered a sure sign of witchcraft), yet upon a second examination the nipple was not found. In the end Mather states that the biggest thing that condemned Bishop was the gross amount of lying she committed in court. According to Mather, “there was little occasion to prove the witchcraft, it being evident and notorious to all beholders.”Bishop was sentenced to death and hanged.
Karin Svensdotter
Karin Svensdotter was a 17th-century Swedish woman who claimed to have had children with the King of the fairies.
In 1656, Karin Svensdotter, who worked as a maid, was put on trial at Västra Härad in Sävsjö in Småland. She was put on trial because she claimed that she had a sexual relationship with a male fairie with whom she claimed to have issue. Karin Svensdotter told the court that she had met a beautiful man in golden clothes in a mountain called Grönskulle (Green Hill), where they had sung and danced with others. The man called himself Älvakungen (King of the fairies), or Älven (Fairy), and he gave her gifts and had intercourse with her. Seven times she had given birth to their issue, and every time he had come and taken the children away to the land of the fairies. She stated that these births had taken place during her reoccurring attacks and fits, after which she was very tired. Her fits had been witnessed by many, and Karin’s employer testified that he had often heard her searching for her faerie children in the forest.The case of Karin Svensdotter was unusual and caused much consternation, and there were much debate within the authorities as to how it should be treated. In the 17th century, the existence of mythical creatures of nature such as fairies was acknowledged by the church, who regarded consorting with them as a grave crime. Although there were no specific laws against sexual intercourse with nature-spirits, the authorities usually treated such cases under the law of sodomy, or more specifically bestiality, as the mythical creatures were considered non-human beings and often had animal features on some part of their bodies. According to theologians, such beings were shapes which the Devil and his demons assumed in order to seduce humans. In 1658, a male thief was sentenced to death after having confessed before the court that he had survived his days in the wilderness by his sexual relationship with skogsrået, (a forest-nymph; a mythical female creature of the forest), and as late as 1691, a man, Sven Andersson, was sentenced to death after having confessed to a sexual relationship with a bergrå (a mountain-nymph; a mythical female creature of the mountain).Death sentences by the local courts were common in such cases, but normally, the death sentence was revoked by the higher court. The case of Peder Jönsson, who received a death sentence in 1640 after having confessed to sex with a sjörå (a water-nymph; a mythical female creature of the lake or sea), is one of few such cases where the death sentence was not revoked and an execution is completely confirmed and documented to have taken place. In the case of Karin Svensdotter, Göta hovrätt decided – based on the expert advice of two church chapters – that she had become insane by the magic of Satan, and her congregation was ordered to pray for her recovery. She was given a silver cross by her relatives as protection, and after this, it was reported that the faerie man no longer came to her.
Enten Gillis
She was a Dutch midwife, who admitted to have killed newborn babies and fetuses during the Roermond witch trials which took place in the year 1613. Gillis along with many other women were arrested for the fact that their black magic had caused miscarriages, diseases and sudden deaths of newborns. 63 witches were rounded up in this trial as an emergency measure by the church. All 63 women were sentenced to death with executions taking place within a short period of time.
Kael Merrie
- 1581 – Kael Merrie was suspected of witchcraft: a child had fallen ill, a pig was paralysed, the milk of a cow could not be churned into butter, etc. She kept denying the charges and was convicted to be banished. Just outside Roermond she was intercepted by mercenaries and drowned in the Maas river. Two more women suspected of witchcraft had come to Roermond to plead their innocence (a good idea as it increased the chance of acquittal): they, too, were drowned by the Spanish mercenaries in the Maas.
The justices tried to remain sceptical to the peasants’ accusations but were powerless against the lynchings in which the mercenaries played a big part. From then on the accused were forced with torture to admit they were heretics who had closed a pact with the devil and had even had sexual intercourse with him and danced during witch’s sabbaths together with other witches.
Angele de la Barthe
Angéle de la Barthe (c. 1230–1275) was allegedly a woman from Toulouse, France, who was tried for witchcraft and condemned to death by the Inquisition in 1275. She has been popularly portrayed as the first person to be put to death for heretical sorcery during the witch persecutions.Recent scholars have proven that her story, and trial, were fabricated by a 15th-century writer.Angéle de la Barthe was accused by Inquisitor Hugues de Beniols (the supreme chief of the Toulouse Inquisition) of having habitual sexual intercourse with the Devil and giving birth, seven years prior at age 53, to a monster with a wolf’s head and a serpent’s tail. The monster’s sole food consisted of babies, which were either slain by Angéle de la Barthe or dug up from their graves in remote churchyards.She confessed to having fed it babies for two years, before the monster ran away in the middle of the night.She also boasted of having had commerce with the Demon, and of being a constant attendant at the Sabbat.Hugues de la Beniols did not inquire if it was true that for two years a large number of babies had disappeared. Angéle de la Barth was found guilty and burned alive at Place Saint Stephen, in Toulouse.
Born around 1230, a noblewoman of Toulouse, France, de la Barthe was an adherent of Catharism, a Gnostic Christian sect deemed heretical by the Catholic Church. She was allegedly accused in 1275 by Inquisitor Hugo de Beniols of having sexual intercourse with the Devil (or an incubus) and giving birth to a flesh-eating monster with a wolf’s head and a serpent’s tail, whose sole food consisted of babies and young children. De la Barthe was accused of having either kidnapped and killed these children or of digging them up from graves, and was held responsible for the disappearance of many infants over the previous two years. Under torture, she confessed to having had sexual relations with Satan, and she was found guilty and burned alive.
Mother Shipton
Ursula Southeil (c. 1488–1561; also variously spelt as Ursula Southill, Ursula Soothtell or Ursula Sontheil), popularly known as Mother Shipton, is said to have been an English soothsayer and prophetess.
She has sometimes been described as a witch and is associated with folklore involving the origin of the Rollright Stones of Oxfordshire, reportedly a king and his men transformed to stone after failing her test. William Camden reported an account of this in a rhyming version in 1610.
Mother Shipton was born Ursula Sontheil, in 1488 to the 15 year-old Agatha Soothtale, in a cave in North Yorkshire outside of the town Knaresborough. The earliest sources of the legends of her birth and life were collected in 1667 by author and biographer Richard Head and later by J. Conyers in 1686.
Both sources – 1667 and 1686 – state that Shipton was born during a violent thunderstorm, and was deformed and ugly, born with a hunchback and bulging eyes. The sources also state that Shipton cackled instead of crying after having been born, and as she did so, the previously raging storms ceased.
The sources report Ursula’s mother Agatha as a poor and desolate 15 year-old orphan, left with no means to support herself; having fallen under the influences of the Devil, Agatha engaged in an affair, resulting in the birth of Ursula. Variations of this legend claim Agatha herself was a witch and summoned the Devil to conceive a child.
The true origin of Ursula’s father is unknown, with Agatha refusing to reveal him; at one point, Agatha was forcibly brought before the local magistrate, but still refused to disclose his identity.The scandalous nature of Agatha’s life and Ursula’s birth meant the two were ostracized from society and forced to live alone, in the same cave Ursula was born, for the first two years of Ursula’s life.Rumors that Agatha was a witch and Ursula the spawn of Satan were perpetuated, due to the cave’s well-known skull shaped pool, which turned things to stone.The cave is known today as Mother Shipton’s Cave; though the effects of the cave’s pool are not those of true petrification, they closely resemble the process by which stalactites are formed, coating objects left in the cave with layers of minerals, and in essence hardening porous objects until they become hard and stone-like.
As Ursula grew so did her knowledge of plants and herbs and she became an invaluable resource for the townspeople as a herbalist. The respect she earned from her work gave her the opportunity to expand her social circle and it was then she met the local carpenter Toby Shipton.
When Ursula was 24 years old she and Toby Shipton were married. From this point on Ursula adopted her husband’s surname and became Mother Shipton. The people in town were shocked at their union and whispered of how he must have been bewitched to marry her.
About a month into her marriage a neighbour came to the door and asked for her help, saying she had left her door open and a thief had come in and stole a new smock and petticoat. Without hesitation Mother Shipton calmed her neighbor and said she knew exactly who stole the clothing and would retrieve it the next day. The next morning Mother Shipton and her neighbour went to the Market-cross. The woman who had stolen the clothing couldn’t stop herself from putting the smock on over her clothes, the petticoat in her hand, and marching through town. When she arrived at the Market-cross she began dancing and danced straight for Mother Shipton and her neighbour all the while singing “I stole my Neighbours Smock and Coat, I am a Thief, and here I show’t.”When she reached Mother Shipton she took off the smock, handed it over, curtsied, and left.
Two years later, in 1514, Toby Shipton died, and the town believed Ursula to have been responsible for his death. The grief of losing her husband and the harsh words of the town prompted Ursula Shipton to move into the woods, and the same cave she had been born in, for peace. Here she continued to create potions and herbal remedies for people. Mother Shipton’s name slowly became more and more well known, and people would travel far distances to see her and receive potions and spells.
As her popularity grew she grew bolder and revealed she could see the future. She started by making small prophecies involving her town and the people within, and as her prophecies came true she began telling prophecies of the monarchy and the future of the world. In 1537 King Henry VIII wrote a letter to the Duke of Norfolk where he mentions a “witch of York”,[14] believed by some to be a reference to Shipton.
Prophecies
“Water shall come over Ouse Bridge, and a windmill shall be set upon a Tower, and a Elm Tree shall lie at every man’s door”.
The River Ouse was the river next to York, and Ouse Bridge was the bridge over the river. This prophecy meant nothing to the people of York until the town got a piped water system. The system brought water across Ouse Bridge in pipes to a windmill that drew up the water into the pipes. The pipes they used were made out of Elm trees and the pipes came to every man’s door delivering water throughout the town.
“Before Ouse Bridge and Trinity Church meet, what is built in the day shall fall in the night, till the highest stone in the church be the lowest stone of the bridge.”
Not long after Mother Shipton uttered this prophecy did a huge storm fall on York. During the storm the steeple on the top of Trinity Church fell and a portion of the Ouse Bridge was destroyed and swept away by the river. Later when making repairs to the bridge, pieces that had previously been the steeple of the church were used as the foundation of the new section of the bridge. Effectively making Trinity Church and the Ouse Bridge what was built in the day and fell in the night, and the steeple from Trinity church, the highest stone, be the foundation of the bridge, the lowest stone of the bridge
Prophecy of Henry the Eighth
“When the cow doth ride the bull, then, priest, beware the skull. And when the lower shrubs do fall, the great trees quickly follow shall. The mitered peacock’s lofty cry shall to his master be a guide. And one great court to pass shall bring what was never done by any king. The poor shall grieve to see that day and who did feast must fast and pray. Fate so decreed their overthrow, riches brought pride, and pride brought woe”.
“When the cow doth ride the bull, then, priest, beware the skull.”
Often when Mother Shipton would have visions of specific people she wouldn’t see faces or names, but their family heraldry. The cow mentioned represents the heraldry of Henry VIII, and the bull similarly represents Anne Boleyn. Mother Shipton is marking the beginning of her prophecy to the marriage of King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Once they are wed the priests need to beware. This is because their marriage marks the beginning of the Dissolution of Monasteries, where King Henry VIII demobilized all monasteries, priories, and convents in England. Many priests, both religious and secular, lost their lives for pressing against the laws made to limit the Catholic Church’s power.
“The mitered peacock’s lofty cry shall to his master be a guide.”
The man who was the controlling figure in matters of state was the King’s chief advisor Thomas Wolsey. Thomas Wolsey was the son of a butcher, who rose up and became Chancellor, and then a Cardinal of the Catholic Church. He was the King’s chief advisor and a controlling figure in all matters of state, and Henry VIII’s policies. Wolsey was even often depicted as an alter rex (other king) because his influence was so absolute in both political and religious spheres. In her prophecy Mother Shipton refers to him as a “mitered peacock”. as he came from the lowly state of being the son of a butcher to controlling and guiding King Henry VII and all his policies for England.
“And one great court to pass shall bring what was never done by any king. “
This portion of the prophecy refers to King Henry VIII seizing power from the Catholic Church and his creation of the Church of England, which had never been done by any king before.
“The poor shall grieve to see that day and who did feast must fast and pray. Fate so decreed their overthrow, riches brought pride, and pride brought woe”.
King Henry VIII wanted to take control of all the land and property owned by the Catholic Church. He believed the governing bodies, heads of monasteries, were corrupted. When he seized these resources the money going into these institutions stopped. The monks had so much wealth before the seizure, and then it was all taken away and they no longer had all the wealth and luxury as before. The poor were ultimately the ones that suffered though because the monasteries that were feeding and giving alms to the poor either no longer had the resources to do so, or they kept any resources they had for the monastery.
Mother Shipton then says this fall of the church was inevitable; as the church became more wealthy they became more prideful. They had become a threat of power over the country and it was this that ultimately led to their downfall.
Prophecy of the end of times
The most famous claimed edition of Mother Shipton’s prophecies foretells many modern events and phenomena. Widely quoted today as if it were the original, it contains over a hundred prophetic rhymed couplets. But the language is notably non-16th-century. This edition includes the now-famous lines:
The world to an end shall come
In eighteen hundred and eighty one.The booklet The Life and Prophecies of Ursula Sontheil better known as Mother Shipton (1920s, and repeatedly reprinted) predicted the world would end in 1991. (In the late 1970s, many news articles were published about Mother Shipton and her prophecy that the world would end – these accounts said it would occur in 1981).
Among other well-known lines from Hindley’s fictional version (often quoted as if they were original) are:
A Carriage without a horse shall go;
Disaster fill the world with woe…
In water iron then shall float,
As easy as a wooden boat
The Mother Shipton moth (Callistege mi) is named after her. Each wing’s pattern resembles a hag’s head in profile
Morgan Le Fay
| In-universe information | |
|---|---|
| Species | Human, fairy or goddess (depending on the source) |
| Gender | Female |
| Occupation | Enchantress, queen |
| Spouse | King Urien |
| Significant other | Various, including Accolon, Guiomar, Lancelot, Merlin, Ogier the Dane, Sebile |
| Children | Yvain, sometimes others |
| Relatives |
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| Home | Avalon, Camelot, Gorre, Brocéliande |
In Arthurian legend, Morgan le Fay (/ˈmɔːrɡən lə ˈfeɪ/, meaning “Morgan the Fairy”), alternatively known as Morgan[n]a, Morgain[a/e], Morg[a]ne, Morgant[e], Morge[i]n, and Morgue[in] among other names and spellings (Welsh: Morgên y Dylwythen Deg, Cornish: Morgen an Spyrys), is a powerful enchantress. Early appearances of Morgan do not elaborate her character beyond her role as a goddess, a fay, a witch, or a sorceress, generally benevolent and related to King Arthur as his magical saviour and protector. Her prominence increased as legends developed over time, as did her moral ambivalence, and in some texts there is an evolutionary transformation of her to an antagonist, particularly as portrayed in cyclical prose such as the Lancelot-Grail and the Post-Vulgate Cycle. A significant aspect in many of Morgan’s medieval and later iterations is the unpredictable duality of her nature, with potential for both good and evil.
Morgan le Fay is, in Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, Arthur’s half sister, the daughter of Arthur’s mother Igraine and her first husband, the Duke of Cornwall. She is also presented as an adversary of Arthur’s: she gives Excalibur to her lover Accolon so he can use it against King Arthur (a story retold in Madison J. Cawein’s poem Accolon of Gaul) and, when that plot fails, she steals the scabbard of Excalibur which protects Arthur and throws it into a lake.
In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight she is presented as the instigator of the Green Knight’s visit to Arthur’s court, partly motivated by her desire to frighten Queen Guinevere. Her enmity towards Guinevere has its origin in the Vulgate Lancelot, where Morgan is having an affair with Guiomar, Guinevere’s cousin, and Guinevere puts an end to it. Despite the motif of Morgan’s enmity towards Arthur and Guinevere, she is also presented as one of the women who takes Arthur in a barge to Avalon to be healed. This view of Morgan as healer has its roots in the earliest accounts of her and perhaps to her origin in Celtic mythology. In the Vita Merlini (c. 1150) Morgan is said to be the first of nine sisters who rule The Fortunate Isle or the Isle of Apples and is presented as a healer as well as a shape-changer. It is to this island that Arthur is brought (though Morgan awaits him and heals him rather than actually fetching him herself).
Aradia
Aradia is one of the principal figures in the American folklorist Charles Godfrey Leland’s 1899 work Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches, which he believed to be a genuine religious text used by a group of pagan witches in Tuscany, a claim that has subsequently been disputed by other folklorists and historians.In Leland’s Gospel, Aradia is portrayed as a messiah who was sent to Earth in order to teach the oppressed peasants how to perform witchcraft to use against the Roman Catholic Church and the upper classes.
The folklorist Sabina Magliocco has theorised that prior to being used in Leland’s Gospel, Aradia was originally a supernatural figure in Italian folklore, who was later merged with other folkloric figures such as sa Rejusta of Sardinia.
Since the publication of Leland’s Gospel, Aradia has become “arguably one of the central figures of the modern pagan witchcraft revival” and as such has featured in various forms of Neopaganism, including Wicca and Stregheria, as an actual deity.Raven Grimassi, founder of the Wiccan-inspired tradition of Stregheria, claims that Aradia was a historical figure named Aradia di Toscano, who led a group of “Diana-worshipping witches” in 14th-century Tuscany
Grigori Rasputin
Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin (; Russian: Григорий Ефимович Распутин 21 January [O.S. 9 January] 1869 – 30 December [O.S. 17 December] 1916) was a Russian mystic and self-proclaimed holy man who befriended the family of Nicholas II, the last emperor of Russia, and gained considerable influence in late Imperial Russia.
Rasputin was born to a peasant family in the Siberian village of Pokrovskoye in the Tyumensky Uyezd of Tobolsk Governorate (now Yarkovsky District of Tyumen Oblast). He had a religious conversion experience after taking a pilgrimage to a monastery in 1897. He has been described as a monk or as a “strannik” (wanderer or pilgrim), though he held no official position in the Russian Orthodox Church. He traveled to Saint Petersburg in 1903 or the winter of 1904–1905, where he captivated some church and social leaders. He became a society figure and met Emperor Nicholas and Empress Alexandra in November 1905.
In late 1906, Rasputin began acting as a healer for the imperial couple’s only son, Alexei, who suffered from hemophilia. He was a divisive figure at court, seen by some Russians as a mystic, visionary, and prophet, and by others as a religious charlatan. The high point of Rasputin’s power was in 1915 when Nicholas II left St. Petersburg to oversee Russian armies fighting World War I, increasing both Alexandra and Rasputin’s influence. Russian defeats mounted during the war, however, and both Rasputin and Alexandra became increasingly unpopular. In the early morning of 30 December [O.S. 17 December] 1916, Rasputin was assassinated by a group of conservative noblemen who opposed his influence over Alexandra and Nicholas.
Historians often suggest that Rasputin’s scandalous and sinister reputation helped discredit the tsarist government and thus helped precipitate the overthrow of the Romanov dynasty a few weeks after he was assassinated. Accounts of his life and influence were often based on hearsay and rumor.
| Born | 21 January [O.S. 9 January] 1869 Pokrovskoye, Tyumensky Uyezd, Tobolsk Governorate (Siberia), Russian Empire |
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| Died | 30 December [O.S. 17 December] 1916 (aged 47) Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire |
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Praskovya Fedorovna Dubrovina(m. 1887)
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| Children | 3, including Maria Rasputin |
On 12 July [O.S. 29 June] 1914 a 33-year-old peasant woman named Chionya Guseva attempted to assassinate Rasputin by stabbing him in the stomach outside his home in Pokrovskoye. Rasputin was seriously wounded, and for a time it was not clear if he would survive. After surgery and some time in a hospital in Tyumen, he recovered.
Guseva was a follower of Iliodor, a former priest who had supported Rasputin before denouncing his sexual escapades and self-aggrandizement in December 1911.A radical conservative and anti-semite, Iliodor had been part of a group of establishment figures who had attempted to drive a wedge between the royal family and Rasputin in 1911. When this effort failed, Iliodor was banished from Saint Petersburg and was ultimately defrocked.Guseva claimed to have acted alone, having read about Rasputin in the newspapers and believing him to be a “false prophet and even an Antichrist”.Both the police and Rasputin, however, believed that Iliodor had instigated the attempt on Rasputin’s life. Iliodor fled the country before he could be questioned, and Guseva was found to be not responsible for her actions by reason of insanity
A group of nobles led by Prince Felix Yusupov, Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, and right-wing politician Vladimir Purishkevich decided that Rasputin’s influence over the tsarina threatened the empire, and they concocted a plan in December 1916 to kill him, apparently by luring him to the Yusupovs’ Moika Palace.
Rasputin was murdered during the early morning on 30 December [O.S. 17 December] 1916 at the home of Felix Yusupov. He died of three gunshot wounds, one of which was a close-range shot to his forehead. Little is certain about his death beyond this, and the circumstances of his death have been the subject of considerable speculation. According to historian Douglas Smith, “what really happened at the Yusupov home on 17 December will never be known”.The story that Yusupov recounted in his memoirs, however, has become the most frequently told version of events.
Aftermath
News of Rasputin’s murder spread quickly, even before his body was found. According to Douglas Smith, Purishkevich spoke openly about Rasputin’s murder to two soldiers and to a policeman who was investigating reports of shots shortly after the event, but he urged them not to tell anyone else.An investigation was launched the next morning.The Stock Exchange Gazette ran a report of Rasputin’s death “after a party in one of the most aristocratic homes in the center of the city” on the afternoon of 30 December [O.S. 17 December] 1916.
Two workmen noticed blood on the railing of the Petrovsky Bridge and found a boot on the ice below, and police began searching the area.Rasputin’s body was found under the river ice on 1 January (O.S. 19 December) approximately 200 meters downstream from the bridge.Dr. Dmitry Kosorotov, the city’s senior autopsy surgeon, conducted an autopsy. Kosorotov’s report was lost, but he later stated that Rasputin’s body had shown signs of severe trauma, including three gunshot wounds (one at close range to the forehead), a slice wound to his left side, and many other injuries, many of which Kosorotov felt had been sustained post-mortem.Kosorotov found a single bullet in Rasputin’s body but stated that it was too badly deformed and of a type too widely used to trace. He found no evidence that Rasputin had been poisoned.According to both Douglas Smith and Joseph Fuhrmann, Kosorotov found no water in Rasputin’s lungs, and that reports Rasputin had been thrown into the water alive were incorrect.Some later accounts claimed that Rasputin’s penis had been severed, but Kosorotov found his genitals intact.
Rasputin was buried on 2 January (O.S. 21 December) at a small church that Anna Vyrubova had been building at Tsarskoye Selo. The funeral was attended only by the imperial family and a few of their intimates. Rasputin’s wife, mistress, and children were not invited, although his daughters met with the imperial family at Vyrubova’s home later that day. His body was exhumed and burned by a detachment of soldiers shortly after the Tsar abdicated the throne in March 1917, so that his grave would not become a rallying point for supporters of the old regime.
Gerald Gardner
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Gerald Brosseau Gardner
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| Born | 13 June 1884 Blundellsands, Lancashire, England
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| Died | 12 February 1964 (aged 79) aboard ship, en route to Tunis
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| Spouse(s) | Dorothy Rosedale |
| Parent(s) | William Robert Gardner Louise Burguelew Ennis |
Gerald Brosseau Gardner (13 June 1884 – 12 February 1964), also known by the craft name Scire, was an English Wiccan, as well as an author and an amateur anthropologist and archaeologist. He was instrumental in bringing the Contemporary Pagan religion of Wicca to public attention, writing some of its definitive religious texts and founding the tradition of Gardnerian Wicca.
Born into an upper-middle-class family in Blundellsands, Lancashire, Gardner spent much of his childhood abroad in Madeira. In 1900, he moved to colonial Ceylon, and then in 1911 to Malaya, where he worked as a civil servant, independently developing an interest in the native peoples and writing papers and a book about their magical practices. After his retirement in 1936, he travel led to Cyprus, penning the novel A Goddess Arrives before returning to England. Settling down near the New Forest, he joined an occult group, the Rosicrucian Order Crotona Fellowship, through which he said he had encountered the New Forest coven into which he was initiated in 1939. Believing the coven to be a survival of the pre-Christian witch-cult discussed in the works of Margaret Murray, he decided to revive the faith, supplementing the coven’s rituals with ideas borrowed from Freemasonry, ceremonial magic and the writings of Aleister Crowley to form the Gardnerian tradition of Wicca.
Moving to London in 1945, he became intent on propagating this religion, attracting media attention and writing about it in High Magic’s Aid (1949), Witchcraft Today (1954) and The Meaning of Witchcraft (1959). Founding a Wiccan group known as the Bricket Wood coven, he introduced a string of High Priestesses into the religion, including Doreen Valiente, Lois Bourne, Patricia Crowther and Eleanor Bone, through which the Gardnerian community spread throughout Britain and subsequently into Australia and the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Involved for a time with Cecil Williamson, Gardner also became director of the Museum of Magic and Witchcraft on the Isle of Man, which he ran until his death.
Gardner is internationally recognised as the “Father of Wicca” among the Pagan and occult communities. His claims regarding the New Forest coven have been widely scrutinised, with Gardner being the subject of investigation for historians and biographers Aidan Kelly, Ronald Hutton and Philip Heselton.
Gardner also came into contact with Cecil Williamson, who was intent on opening his own museum devoted to witchcraft; the result would be the Folk-lore Centre of Superstition and Witchcraft, opened in Castletown on the Isle of Man in 1951. Gardner and his wife moved to the island, where he took up the position of “resident witch”. On 29 July, the Sunday Pictorial published an article about the museum in which Gardner declared “Of course I’m a witch. And I get great fun out of it.” The museum was not a financial success, and the relationship between Gardner and Williamson deteriorated. In 1954, Gardner bought the museum from Williamson, who returned to England to found the rival Museum of Witchcraft, eventually settling it in Boscastle, Cornwall. Gardner renamed his exhibition the Museum of Magic and Witchcraft and continued running it up until his death.He also acquired a flat at 145 Holland Road, near Shepherd’s Bush in West London, but nevertheless fled to warmer climates during the winter, where his asthma would not be so badly affected, for instance spending time in France, Italy, and the Gold Coast.From his base in London, he would frequent Atlantis bookshop, thereby encountering a number of other occultists, including Austin Osman Spare and Kenneth Grant, and he also continued his communication with Karl Germer until 1956.
In 1952, Gardner had begun to correspond with a young woman named Doreen Valiente. She eventually requested initiation into the Craft, and though Gardner was hesitant at first, he agreed that they could meet during the winter at the home of Edith Woodford-Grimes. Valiente got on well with both Gardner and Woodford-Grimes, and having no objections to either ritual nudity or scourging (which she had read about in a copy of Gardner’s novel High Magic’s Aid that he had given to her), she was initiated by Gardner into Wicca on Midsummer 1953. Valiente went on to join the Bricket Wood Coven. She soon rose to become the High Priestess of the coven, and helped Gardner to revise his Book of Shadows, and attempting to cut out most of Crowley’s influence.
In 1954, Gardner published a non-fiction book, Witchcraft Today, containing a preface by Margaret Murray, who had published her theory of a surviving Witch-Cult in her 1921 book, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe. In his book, Gardner not only espoused the survival of the Witch-Cult, but also his theory that a belief in faeries in Europe was due to a secretive pygmy race that lived alongside other communities, and that the Knights Templar had been initiates of the Craft. Alongside this book, Gardner began to increasingly court publicity, going so far as to invite the press to write articles about the religion. Many of these turned out very negatively for the cult; one declared “Witches Devil-Worship in London!”, and another accused him of whitewashing witchcraft in his luring of people into covens. Gardner continued courting publicity, despite the negative articles that many tabloids were producing, and believed that only through publicity could more people become interested in witchcraft, so preventing the “Old Religion”, as he called it, from dying out.
Agnes Sampson
Agnes Sampson (died 28 January 1591) was a Scottish healer and purported witch. Also known as the “Wise Wife of Keith“,Sampson was involved in the North Berwick witch trials in the later part of the sixteenth century.
Sampson lived at Nether Keith, a part of the Keith Marischal barony, East Lothian, Scotland. She was considered to have healing powers and acted as a midwife. The indictment against her indicated that she was a widow, with children.
In the spring of 1590, James VI returned from Copenhagen after marrying Anne of Denmark, daughter of the King of Denmark-Norway. The Danish court at that time was greatly perplexed by witchcraft and the black arts, and this must have impressed King James. The voyage back from Denmark was beset by storms. In the following months a witch hunt began in Denmark, the Copenhagen witch trials, started by the Danish admiral Peder Munk. One of its victims was Anna Koldings, who gave the names of five women, including Malin, who was married to the burgomaster of Helsingor. The women confessed they had been guilty of witchcraft in raising storms that threatened Anne of Denmark’s voyage, and sent devils to climb up the keel of her ship. In September 1590 two women were burnt as witches at Kronborg. James decided to set up his own tribunal in Scotland.
The story of the arrest, trial and confessions of Agnes Sampson and the others accused of witchcraft is known from versions found in a pamphlet printed in London in 1591, the Newes from Scotland, and from contemporary letters and trial records.
James VI had not been convinced of Sampson’s guilt prior to this last confession, but afterwards changed his mind. On 27 January 1591 the charges of witchcraft against her were drawn up with fifty three points or “articles of dittay”.
Agnes Sampson was taken to the scaffold on Castlehill, where she was garroted then burnt at the stake on 28 January 1591.
Edinburgh Burgh treasurer’s accounts itemise the cost of Agnes Sampson’s execution, giving the date of the purchases as the 16 January 1591 and the cost as £6 8s 10d. Scots. Robert Bowes wrote that her execution took place on 28 January 1591.The naked ghost of a Bald Agnes, stripped and tortured after being accused of witchcraft, is said to roam the Palace of Holyroodhouse
Laurie Cabot
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Laurie Cabot
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| Born |
Mercedes Elizabeth Keersey
March 6, 1933 Wewoka, Oklahoma, U.S.
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| Occupation | Occultist (Witchery priestess) |
| Years active | 1949–present |
| Children | 2 |
Laurie Cabot (born March 6, 1933) is an American Witchcraft high priestess, and the author of several books. She founded the Wiccan Cabot Tradition of the Science of Witchcraft and the Witches’ League for Public Awareness to defend the civil rights of witches everywhere. She lives in Salem, where she owned a shop. Cabot claims to be related to the prominent Boston Brahmin Cabot family.
Laurie Cabot was born Mercedes Elizabeth Kiersey. She grew up in California and came east to New England as a teenager. She maintains that her interest in the occult began in childhood. She developed this interest in Boston through time she spent as a young woman in the halls of the Boston Public Library.
During the 1950s, Cabot worked as a dancer in a Boston nightclub called “The Latin Quarter” owned by Lou Walters, father of TV journalist Barbara Walters. Cabot was asked by Mr. Walters to open his Las Vegas Latin Quarter, but she declined.[citation needed]
Cabot married and divorced twice, with each marriage producing a daughter. Cabot chose to raise her daughters as Witches, and she began appearing in black robes and black eye-makeup in her everyday life. She identifies herself as a Witch, in other words one wiccan. The kind of Witchcraft that Cabot practices focuses on the Religion, Art and Science of Witchcraft. 1970 TV’s sitcom Bewitched visited Salem for a series of episodes with location filming.Laurie Cabot opened the town’s first “Witch Shoppe” in Salem in 1971, which became a tourist destination thanks to the national TV exposure.
In 1986, after the release of the film version of The Witches of Eastwick, John Updike’s novel about single suburban women venturing into the occult, Cabot established the Witches’ League for Public Awareness to counter negative images of her religion in popular culture and the media. “Here are three women who have nothing better to do, because they are so frustrated sexually, than to get involved with witchcraft,” Cabot said of the movie. “They are not witches. If they are anything, they are weekend Satanists. They don’t do one witchy thing in the whole film.”
Cabot’s shop sold herbs, jewelry, Tarot decks, and other items used in witchcraft. She later moved her shop to an old gambrel-roofed house on Essex Street. This new shop was named “Crow Haven Corner”. The physical store is still open, but is no longer owned or managed by any member of the Cabot family (formerly, her eldest daughter Jody owned and ran it). Cabot’s final shop in Salem, The Cat, the Crow and the Crown on Pickering Wharf, later renamed The Official Witch Shoppe, closed its doors in February 2012.Cabot still maintains an online business and sells her hand-crafted magic products at Enchanted, a witch shoppe on Pickering Wharf in Salem .
In March 2008, Cabot celebrated her 75th birthday at a surprise birthday party that was attended by hundreds of witches, including Sully Erna of the band Godsmack, for whom Cabot had appeared in the band’s “Voodoo” music video, shot at Hammond Castle.
Books by Laurie Cabot
Power of the Witch: The Earth, the Moon, and the Magical Path to Enlightenment Laurie Cabot
The Witch in Every Woman: Reawakening the Magical Nature of the Feminine to Heal, Protect, Create, and Empower Laurie Cabot
Celebrate the Earth: A Year of Holidays in the Pagan Tradition Laurie Cabot
Love Magic Laurie Cabot
Laurie Cabot’s Book of Shadows
Laurie Cabot’s Book of Spells & Enchantments
Merga Bien
Merga Bien (late 1560’s–1603, in Fulda) was a German woman convicted of witchcraft and perhaps the most famous of the victims in the Fulda witch trials in 1603–1605.
Bien was born in the city of Fulda. She was married three times and was the heiress of her first two husbands, which later played an important part in accusations. In 1588, she married Blasius Bien and moved from the city, but returned after a conflict with her husband’s employers.
At the time, prince abbot Balthasar von Dernbach, who had returned to power in 1602 after a long exile, ordered an investigation of witchcraft in the city. Over two hundred people were executed for witchcraft in witch trials that lasted until his death in 1605.
In March 1603, the investigations resulted in the first wave of arrests in the city. On 19 June, Merga was arrested and put in jail. Her husband protested before the Reichskammergericht in Speyer and pointed out that she was pregnant. In jail, she was forced to confess to the murder of her second husband and her children with him and one member of the family of her husband’s employers, and that she had taken part in a sabbath of Satan. Her pregnancy was considered an aggravating circumstance; she and her husband had no children although they had been married for fourteen years. She was forced to confess that her current pregnancy was the result of intercourse with the Devil.
Bien was judged guilty of witchcraft and was burned alive at the stake in Fulda in the autumn of 1603.
Scott Cunninghan
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Scott Cunningham
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| Born | June 27, 1956 Royal Oak, Michigan, United States
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| Died | March 28, 1993 (aged 36) |
| Alma mater | San Diego State University |
| Occupation | Writer |
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Scott Douglas Cunningham (June 27, 1956 – March 28, 1993) was an American writer. Cunningham is the author of several books on Wicca and various other alternative religious subjects.
His work Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner, is one of the most successful books on Wicca ever published; he was a friend of notable occultists and Wiccans such as Raymond Buckland, and was a member of the Serpent Stone Family, and received his Third Degree Initiation as a member of that coven.
Scott Cunningham was born at the William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan, USA, the second son of Chester Grant Cunningham and Rose Marie Wilhoit Cunningham. The family moved to San Diego, California in the fall of 1959 due to Rose Marie’s health problems. The doctors in Royal Oak declared the mild climate in San Diego ideal for her. Outside of many trips to Hawaii, Cunningham lived in San Diego all his life.
Cunningham had one older brother, Greg, and a younger sister, Christine. Scott was openly homosexual for much of his life.
He studied creative writing at San Diego State University, where he enrolled in 1978. After two years in the program, however, he had more published works than several of his professors and dropped out of the university to write full-time. During this period he had as a roommate, magical author Donald Michael Kraig and often socialized with witchcraft author Raymond Buckland, who was also living in San Diego at the time.
In 1980 Cunningham began initiate training under Raven Grimassi and remained as a first-degree initiate until 1982 when he left the tradition to pursue a solo practice of witchcraft.
Cunningham practiced a fairly basic interpretation of Wicca, often worshiping alone, though his book series for solitaries describes several instances in which he worshiped with friends and teachers.
He also believed that Wicca, which had been a closed tradition since the 1950s, should become more open to newcomers.
Cunningham was also drawn to Huna and a range of new age movements and concepts that influenced and colored his spirituality.In 1983, Scott Cunningham was diagnosed with lymphoma, which he successfully overcame. In 1990, while on a speaking tour in Massachusetts, he suddenly fell ill and was diagnosed with cryptococcal meningitis. He suffered from several infections and died in March 1993. He was 36.
Books
- 1980 – Shadow of Love (fiction)
- 1982 – Magical Herbalism: The Secret Craft of the Wise
- 1983 – Earth Power: Techniques of Natural Magic
- 1985 – Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs
- 1987 – The Magical Household: Spells and Rituals for the Home (with David Harrington)
- 1987 – Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Crystal, Gem, and Metal Magic
- 1988 – The Truth About Witchcraft Today
- 1988 – Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner
- 1989 – The Complete Book of Incense, Oils & Brews
- 1989 – Magical Aromatherapy: The Power of Scent
- 1991 – Earth, Air, Fire, and Water: More Techniques of Natural Magic
- 1991 – The Magic in Food
- 1993 – Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Wicca in the Kitchen
- 1993 – Divination For Beginners
- 1993 – Living Wicca: A Further Guide for the Solitary Practitioner
- 1993 – Spell Crafts: Creating Magical Objects (with David Harrington)
- 1993 – The Truth About Herb Magic
- 1994 – The Truth About Witchcraft
- 1995 – Hawaiian Magic and Spirituality
- 1997 – Pocket Guide to Fortune Telling
- 1999 – Dreaming the Divine: Techniques for Sacred Sleep
- 2009 – Cunningham’s Book of Shadows: The Path of An American Traditionalist – A rediscovered manuscript written by Cunningham in the late 1970s or early 1980s.
Rebecca Nurse 
Rebecca Nurse (February 13, 1621 – July 19, 1692) was accused of witchcraft and executed in New England during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. She was fully exonerated less than twenty years later.
She was the wife of Francis Nurse, with several children and grandchildren, and a well-respected member of the community. She was tried, and convicted, in the spring and summer of 1692 and executed on July 19.
This occurred during a time when parts of the government and people of the Province of Massachusetts Bay were seized with witch-phobia. Her married sisters Mary Eastey and Sarah Cloyce were also accused. Mary was convicted and executed, but Sarah managed to survive.On March 23, 1692, a warrant was issued for her arrest based upon accusations made by Edward and John Putnam. Upon hearing of the accusations, the frail 71-year-old Nurse, often described as an invalid, said, “I am innocent as the child unborn, but surely, what sin hath God found out in me unrepented of, that He should lay such an affliction on me in my old age.”At age 71, she was one of the oldest accused. The examining magistrates, John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin, who normally regarded the guilt of the accused as self-evident, took a notably different attitude in Rebecca’s case, as they also did in the case of her sister Mary Eastey. They told Rebecca openly that if she was innocent, they prayed that God would show her innocence, for “it is a sad thing to see church members accused”. Hathorne was no doubt influenced by the fact that his sister Elizabeth Porter was a close friend of Rebecca, and one of her staunchest defenders.
Her trial began on June 30, 1692. In accordance with the procedures at the time, Mrs. Nurse, like others accused of witchcraft, represented herself since she was not allowed to have a lawyer. By dint of her respectability, many members of the community testified on her behalf, including her family members. Often the “afflicted” would break into fits and claim Nurse was tormenting them. Such so-called “spectral evidence” was allowed into the trial to show that Satan was afflicting others in the community at the behest of the accused. In response to their outbursts Nurse stated, “I have got nobody to look to but God.”
In the end, the jury ruled Nurse not guilty. Due to the public outcry and renewed fits and spasms by the “afflicted”, the judges reviewed her case with the jury. One particular point was emphasized, and the jury requested a second chance of deliberation (a legal practice used in those days). The jury asked Rebecca to explain her remark that another accused witch, Deliverance Hobbs, was “of her company”, the implication being that they had both signed a pact with the Devil. Fatally, Rebecca, who was hard of hearing, did not hear the question: she later explained to her children that she was referring to this woman as a fellow “accused” witch. However the jury had changed their verdict and sentenced Nurse to death on July 19, 1692.In view of the urgent pleas of her family, and the abundant evidence of her good character, including a moving letter from the foreman of Nurse’s jury, the Governor of Massachusetts, Sir William Phips, granted a reprieve, only for it to later be rescinded.
Many people described Nurse as “the woman of self-dignity”, due to her collected behavior on the gallows. As was the custom, after she was hanged, her body was buried in a shallow grave near the execution spot. They were considered unfit for a Christian burial in a churchyard. According to oral tradition, Nurse’s family secretly returned after dark and dug up her body, which they interred properly on their family homestead. Although her exact resting place has never been confirmed her descendants erected a tall granite memorial in the family plot in 1885 at the Rebecca Nurse Homestead cemetery in Danvers (formerly Salem Village), Massachusetts. The inscription on the monument reads:
Rebecca Nurse, Yarmouth, England 1621. Salem, Mass., 1692.
O Christian Martyr who for Truth could die
When all about thee owned the hideous lie!
The world redeemed from Superstition’s sway
Is breathing freer for thy sake today.
(From the poem “Christian Martyr,” by John Greenleaf Whittier)
Alison Device
The trials of the Pendle witches in 1612 are among the most famous witch trials in English history, and some of the best recorded of the 17th century. The twelve accused lived in the area surrounding Pendle Hill in Lancashire, and were charged with the murders of ten people by the use of witchcraft. All but two were tried at Lancaster Assizes on 18–19 August 1612, along with the Samlesbury witches and others, in a series of trials that have become known as the Lancashire witch trials. One was tried at York Assizes on 27 July 1612, and another died in prison. Of the eleven who went to trial – nine women and two men – ten were found guilty and executed by hanging; one was found not guilty.
The official publication of the proceedings by the clerk to the court, Thomas Potts, in his The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster, and the number of witches hanged together – nine at Lancaster and one at York – make the trials unusual for England at that time. It has been estimated that all the English witch trials between the early 15th and early 18th centuries resulted in fewer than 500 executions; this series of trials accounts for more than two per cent of that total.
Six of the Pendle witches came from one of two families, each at the time headed by a woman in her eighties: Elizabeth Southerns (a.k.a. Demdike), her daughter Elizabeth Device, and her grandchildren James and Alizon Device; Anne Whittle (a.k.a. Chattox), and her daughter Anne Redferne. The others accused were Jane Bulcock and her son John Bulcock, Alice Nutter, Katherine Hewitt, Alice Grey, and Jennet Preston. The outbreaks of ‘witchcraft’ in and around Pendle may suggest that some people made a living by traditional healers, using a mixture of herbal medicine and talismans or charms, which might leave them open to charges of sorcery. Many of the allegations resulted from accusations that members of the Demdike and Chattox families made against each other, perhaps because they were in competition, both trying to make a living from healing, begging, and extortion.
The Pendle witches were tried in a group that also included the Samlesbury witches, Jane Southworth, Jennet Brierley, and Ellen Brierley, the charges against whom included child murder, cannibalism; Margaret Pearson, the so-called Padiham witch, who was facing her third trial for witchcraft, this time for killing a horse; and Isobel Robey from Windle, accused of using witchcraft to cause sickness.
Some of the accused Pendle witches, such as Alizon Device, seem to have genuinely believed in their guilt, but others protested their innocence to the end. Jennet Preston was the first to be tried, at York Assizes
Sybil Leek 
Sybil Leek (née Fawcett; 22 February 1917 – 26 October 1982) was an English witch, astrologer, occult author and self-proclaimed psychic. She wrote many books on occult and esoteric subjects, and was dubbed “Britain’s most famous witch” by the BBC.
Sybil Leek was born on 22 February 1917 in the village of Normacot in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England to a comfortable, middle-class family. She claimed to have been descended from the historical Molly Leigh, who had been accused during the witch hunts. In her book The Complete Art of Witchcraft, pg 21, she calls this 800 year family beneficial relationship with ‘our ancient Celtic form of Witchcraft’ and occultism. At the age of 16 she married her music teacher, though he died two years later, whereupon Leek returned to live with her grandmother, quitting the Witchcraft research association. She later stayed with an acquaintance in Lyndhurst, in the New Forest, and claimed to have spent some of the following years living amongst the New Forest gypsies. When she was 20, Sybil returned to her family, who had now moved to the edge of the New Forest. She opened three antique shops; one in Ringwood, one in Somerset, and one in the New Forest village of Burley. She soon moved to Burley herself, into a house behind the shop Lawfords of Burley.
Her eccentric habits as a self-described witch soon resulted in problems. Media interest grew, and Sybil became tired of the attention from news reporters and tourists. Chris Packham, in a BBC article about her, quoted a contemporary saying, “people either thought she was a bit of a joke or a fraud.” Although the village itself benefited from the extra tourism and visitors, some were unhappy with the extra traffic and noise. Her landlord eventually refused to renew her lease, prompting Leek to move away from the area and emigrate to the United States of America
Strong in the defence of her beliefs, Leek sometimes differed and even quarrelled with other witches. She disapproved of nudity in rituals, a requirement in some reconstructed traditions, and was strongly against the use of drugs, but she was at odds with most other witches in that she did believe in cursing. She also claimed to have had an out-of-body experience.
Her student Christine Jones stated that Leek “mixed truths with untruths liberally, causing great harm as she went.”She died of cancer on 26 October 1982 at the Holmes Regional Medical Center in Melbourne, Florida.
Alex Sanders, Famous Witch and Founder of Alexandrian Wicca
Alex Sanders, in full ritual garb
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| Born |
Orrell Alexander Carter6 June 1926
Birkenhead, England
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|---|---|
| Died | 30 April 1988 (aged 61) Sussex, England
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| Occupation | Wiccan Priest |
| Spouse(s) | Doreen Stretton; Arline M Morris; Gillian Sicka |
| Children | Paul and Janice (with Doreen); Maya Alexandria and Victor Mikhael (with Maxine); Natasha (with Gillian) |
| Parent(s) | Hannah Jane Bibby; Orrell Alexander Carter |
Alex Sanders (6 June 1926 – 30 April 1988), born Orrell Alexander Carter, who went under the craft name Verbius, was an English occultist and High Priest in the modern Pagan religion of Wicca, responsible for founding, and later developing with Maxine Sanders, the tradition of Alexandrian Wicca, also called Alexandrian Witchcraft, during the 1960s.
Raised in a working-class family, Alex, as a young man, began working as a medium in the local Spiritualist Churches before going on to study and practise ceremonial magic. In 1963, he was initiated into Gardnerian Wicca before founding his own coven, through which he merged many aspects of ceremonial magic into Wicca. He claimed to have been initiated by his Welsh-speaking grandmother, Mary Bibby (née Roberts), as a child, though recent research has disproven this,with Bibby dying in 1907, some 19 years before Sanders’ birth.
Throughout the 1960s, he would court publicity in the press, appearing in a number of documentaries, marrying the 20 years younger Maxine Sanders, and was elected as “King of the [Alexandrian] Witches” in 1965s he “[was] directly descended from witches, and equipped with knowledge that outstrips [his witches]…[we formally acknowledge you] as the foremost authority on witchcraft,“ something that led to other prominent Gardnerian Witches, such as Patricia Crowther and Eleanor Bone, attacking him in the press. In the late 1970s and 1980s and prior to his death, he went on to found and work with a ceremonial magical group known as the Ordine Della Luna.
Sanders died on 30 April 1988 at St. Mary’s Hospital at Hastings of cancer of the bronchus with bone metastasis.
Raised in a working-class family, Alex, as a young man, began working as a medium in the local Spiritualist Churches before going on to study and practise ceremonial magic. In 1963, he was initiated into Gardnerian Wicca before founding his own coven, through which he merged many aspects of ceremonial magic into Wicca. He claimed to have been initiated by his Welsh-speaking grandmother, Mary Bibby (née Roberts),as a child, though recent research has disproven this,with Bibby dying in 1907, some 19 years before Sanders’ birth.
Throughout the 1960s, he would court publicity in the press, appearing in a number of documentaries, marrying the 20 years younger Maxine Sanders, and was elected as “King of the [Alexandrian] Witches” in 1965 as he “[was] directly descended from witches, and equipped with knowledge that outstrips [his witches]…[we formally acknowledge you] as the foremost authority on witchcraft,“ something that led to other prominent Gardnerian Witches, such as Patricia Crowther and Eleanor Bone, attacking him in the press. In the late 1970s and 1980s and prior to his death, he went on to found and work with a ceremonial magical group known as the Ordine Della Luna.
Sanders died on 30 April 1988 at St. Mary’s Hospital at Hastings of cancer of the bronchus with bone metastasis.
Around the mid 1940s, he began working for a manufacturing chemist’s laboratory in Manchester. He married a co-worker, nineteen-year-old Doreen Stretton, in 1948 when he was 22, using the name Alexander O. Sanders. They had two children, Paul and Janice.Sanders wanted more children but Doreen didn’t; she also disapproved of the supernatural. The marriage quickly deteriorated and Doreen took the children and left Sanders when he was 26. According to Maxine Sanders, Sanders was grief-stricken and cursed Doreen with fertility; she remarried and had three sets of twins.
Whilst working in a pharmaceutical company, Sanders became friends with Maxine Sanders’ (née Morris) mother, however, they lost contact for a while, probably due to the “intense dislike” that Maxine’s father had for him (being convinced Alex was homosexual).Sanders and Arline M. Morris (Maxine) married in June in 1968 in Kensington.
After his divorce from Maxine, Sanders married for a third and final time to Gillian Sicka in December in 1982 in Hastings and Rother
Another group which Sanders operated in London during the 1960s was the Order of Deucalion, a focus for Atlantean magical research and inner contacts, as Sanders taught that Merlin was an important leader of the last Atlantean migratory wave into Western Europe.The Order of Deucalion existed as an inner cell of the Ordine Della Luna.
Sanders died on May Eve in 1988 after suffering from lung cancer.
At Lammas 1998, ten years after his death, a New England Wiccan coven claimed to have contacted Sanders in spirit. The group alleged that the communications continued until 2003
Maxine Sanders (born Arline Maxine Morris; 30 December 1946, in Cheshire) is a key figure in the development of modern pagan witchcraft and Wicca and, along with her late husband, Alex Sanders, the co-founder of Alexandrian Wicca.
Raised a Roman Catholic, Maxine was educated at St. Joseph’s Convent School in Manchester. In 1964, whilst a student at Loreburn Secretarial College, she first met Alex Sanders.They met through his friendship with her mother who had a range of esoteric interests but their accounts of her introduction to witchcraft vary. Alex’s memoir describes her as “shy and inexperienced,” with her potential being awoken only through her contact with him. Maxine’s memoir gives a very different account, describing her experiences of witchcraft as already having been initiated at the age of 15 into a magical lodge in rituals performed in Alderley Edge, Cheshire, England. By the following year, she and at least one other person had been initiated and the coven was up and running. Maxine was quickly taken through the system of three degrees and by the age of 18 was a third degree Witch Queen although one source suggests that at that time her role was a somewhat passive one.It was said that at Alex’s lectures all Maxine had to do was to “sit there in her finery.” It is alleged that Alex said, “All I want you to do is sit there and look beautiful and represent the Goddess.”
Maxine’s early career as a witch was not free from difficulties. In 1965, a midsummer ritual was attended by a newspaper photographer, unbeknown to some of those present, Maxine included. The subsequent report in a local newspaper published recognisable photographs of her and she was thus “outed” as a witch without her permission. Maxine’s unconventional spiritual path led to strife with her mother, who she was reconciled with close before her death. Soon after Maxine’s mother’s death members of her mother’s neighborhood chased Maxine, throwing stones, and the windows of the house which had been her mother’s were smashed.
Maxine and Alex were handfasted at Alderley Edge in 1965 and continued to initiate new witches in Manchester. In 1967, they moved to London where they lived and practised witchcraft in a basement flat in Notting Hill Gate, attracting much publicity and initiating many would-be priests and priestesses. At Beltane 1968, the couple married in a civil ceremony in Kensington London. Alex and Maxine had two children: Maya, born in 1967, and Victor, born in 1972.
Over the next few years until 1972, Maxine and Alex trained and initiated new members of their coven, initially within a framework consistent with older traditions but subsequently incorporating more of the couple’s own unique characteristics, preferences, and innovations. In 1971, Stewart Farrar, recently initiated by Maxine, gave their brand of witchcraft the new name of “Alexandrian”, partly honouring its leaders and also referencing the greatest city of the Hellenistic world and the library of magical texts which it housed, the library of Alexandria.
In 1971, Alex and Maxine had acquired a second home outside of London in the village of Selmeston, Sussex. There Maxine became a “fanatical gardener”while she and Alex set up a second coven and started to train people locally. Maxine, however, became concerned that the standards and expectations of training were not so high as they once had been in London, and that there was an awkward atmosphere. The couple found the cost of running two homes was too much, and they returned to London in 1972. Maxine declared that she no longer wanted to bear the responsibilities that came with the title “Witch Queen” and ritually destroyed the ritual robes and other items she had acquired. Shortly thereafter, Alex moved back to Sussex, and Maxine remained in London with their children.
From early 1970 onwards, both Alex and Maxine gained media attention due to their openness about practicing witchcraft, appearing in a number of films, such as ‘Legend of the Witches’ (1970), ‘Witchcraft ’70’ (1970), ‘Secret Rites’ (1971), and numerous documentaries.
After Maxine and Alex separated, Maxine remained in their London flat where she ran her own coven, “The Temple of the Mother”, continuing to initiate and train people in Alexandrian Witchcraft. Members of the Temple of the Mother also trained in the art of healing and became well respected for it and other charitable works in the community.
Maxine remained in close contact with Alex until his death in 1988 and shortly before his death, he named Maxine as his next of kin.
In 2000, Maxine moved to Snowdonia, Wales, until 2010, but returned to Abbey Road, London. Today, Maxine teaches in the Coven of the Stag King in London, which holds monthly soirées. She continues to travel, giving talks to those interested in witchcraft.
Jinx 
