Witches didn't exist, and yet thousands of people were executed for the crime of witchcraft. Why? The belief in magic and witchcraft has existed in every recorded human culture; this podcast looks at how people explained the inexplicable, turned random acts of nature into conscious acts of mortal or supernatural beings, and how desperate communities took revenge against the suspected perpetrators.
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Witches didn't exist, and yet thousands of people were executed for the crime of witchcraft. Why? The belief in magic and witchcraft has existed in every recorded human culture; this podcast looks at how people explained the inexplicable, turned random acts of nature into conscious acts of mortal or supernatural beings, and how desperate communities took revenge against the suspected perpetrators.
The Witchfinder General faces humiliation on multiple fronts. His critics are uniting, his prosecutions are falling, and the ruinous cost of hiring him suddenly seems less worthwhile.
This episode primarily makes use of the following texts:
- Gaskill, Malcolm, Witchfinders: A Seventeenth Century English Tragedy, (2005)
- Levack, Brian, ‘State-Building and Witch-Hunting’, in Oldridge, Darren (ed.), The Witchcraft Reader, 2002
- Purkiss, DIane, The English Civil War: A People's History, (2007)
- Jackson, Louise, ‘Witches, Wives and Mothers: Witchcraft Persecution and Women’s Confessions in Seventeenth-Century England’, in Oldridge, Darren (ed.), The Witchcraft Reader, 2002
- Peter Elmer, Witchcraft, Witch-Hunting, and Politics in Early Modern England, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016)
- Gaskill, Malcolm, ‘Witchcraft Trials in England’, in Levack, Brian (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America, (2016)
For a full bibliography, please see the website: https://thehistoryofwitchcraft.co.uk/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/historyofwitchcraft/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/HistofWitch
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HistoryofWitchcraft
The Recorded History Podcast Network: www.recordedhistory.net
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The History of Witchcraft
Witches didn't exist, and yet thousands of people were executed for the crime of witchcraft. Why? The belief in magic and witchcraft has existed in every recorded human culture; this podcast looks at how people explained the inexplicable, turned random acts of nature into conscious acts of mortal or supernatural beings, and how desperate communities took revenge against the suspected perpetrators.
