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Steps for fashioning a mystical amulet: Creating a mystical amulet is a fascinating and ancient practice that has been used by various cultures around the world. These amulets are believed to possess magical properties and bring protection and good fortune to the wearer. Here are the steps to fashion a mystical amulet: 1. **Select the right materials:** The first step in creating a mystical amulet is to choose the right materials. Different materials are associated with different types of amulets and their intended purposes. Common materials used for amulets include gemstones, metals, herbs, and animal parts.

Common materials used for amulets include gemstones, metals, herbs, and animal parts. 2. **Choose a design:** After selecting the materials, it is important to choose a design for the amulet.

Witnesses and testimonies in the witchcraft trials

This guest post was written by Marguerite Most, Reference Librarian and Senior Lecturing Fellow.

People were accused and executed for witchcraft throughout the colonies during the seventeenth century, but especially in Massachusetts. Today dressing in a witch's costume on Halloween is a way to make merry. But in the 17th-century Massachusetts Bay Colony, Puritans, who followed strict religious rules in their daily lives, lived in a pre-science era. Witches were real, and their doings explained what could not be otherwise explained. In the years preceding the Salem witchcraft trials Puritans ministers warned from the pulpit about demonic possessions and visits from Satan. Everyday reality mingled with an invisible world inhabited by these spirits, and religious values permeated every aspect of society. Satan was said to appear as a “black rogue,” or an Indian or an animal called a witch's familiar. For the Puritans, the devil and his witches affected the world in very serious ways.

Within a four-month trial period in the spring of 1692, 156 people from 24 Massachusetts villages were prosecuted as witches. Nineteen were hanged and one was pressed to death after refusing to confess. The trials began and were concentrated in Salem town. The evidence presented in the Salem witchcraft trials included confessions under torture, supposed eyewitness testimony, and physical inspections of the accused for moles and other blemishes, said to be marks of the devil. However, the scarcity of eyewitnesses and direct physical evidence made proving witchcraft difficult, and the most damning proof came from the admission of spectral evidence based on visions of the accusers.

Specters or spirits were visible to alleged victims of witchcraft, but only to the victims. The accusers, all young girls, alleged that some Salem residents had contracted with the devil and afflicted them. "The afflicted," as they were called, testified that a specter or ghostly apparition of the accused had appeared in the shape and likeness of the accused and tormented them. Since Puritans believed that the physical body of a witch could appear in one place while the witch's specter was in another, and since the devil could not assume the specter of an innocent person, the accused witch had no defense against this kind of proof.

Judge Samuel Sewall, a judge at the trials, is said to have reported the death of Giles Corey in this way: "About noon, at Salem, Giles Corey was press'd to death for standing mute."

I will not plead
If I deny, I am condemned already,
In courts where ghosts appear as witnesses
And swear men's lives away. If I confess,
Then I confess a lie, to buy a life,
Which is not life, but only death in life.
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

According to several accounts, the events leading to the trials began with fortune-telling sessions by two girls ages nine and eleven, one of whom was badly frightened by the sessions. The girls began to exhibit strange symptoms and to claim they were being bitten and pricked. When doctors could find no other explanation, one doctor concluded the girls were "under an Evil Hand." They insisted they saw the accused witch's specter tormenting them or others. In a deposition of April 11, 1692, one of the girls testified that the apparition of Elizabeth Proctor '. most grievously afflicted me by biting, pinching, and almost choking me. . .' Her evidence was accepted as valid.

A defendant who confessed and named other witches was allowed to live. And so, the accusations spread. For over seven months the jails filled with more and more accused. By September the witch hunt was slowing as respected citizens were executed, and the well-connected, including the wife of Massachusetts Governor William Phips, were accused of witchcraft. The educated elite of Boston began questioning the reliability of specter evidence. In October Harvard President Cotton Mather delivered a sermon to clergymen titled Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits Personating Men. Speaking of spectral evidence Mather said "It were better that ten suspected witches should escape, than one innocent person be condemned."

The use of spectral evidence in the Salem trials has drawn the attention of scholars interested in how evidentiary standards have evolved over time and in the use of expert testimony, as well as the attention of social scientists interested in crowd memory and mass hysteria. The Salem trials were conducted by lay magistrates with no legal training. Guilt was assumed. If a guilty verdict was not delivered, the jury was instructed to reconsider – and a guilty verdict would be forthcoming.

By the time of the Salem witchcraft trials, witches were no longer hanged in England. Nevertheless, magistrates in Salem found precedent for the admission of spectral evidence in the writings of Sir Matthew Hale, the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales. Thirty years before the Salem trials, Hale presided at a 1662 witchcraft trial in Bury St. Edmonds, England, and his record of the trial, A Tryal of Witches at the Assizes, was cited by Massachusetts magistrates as a model for allowing spectrum evidence in the Salem trials. At the same time magistrates did look for other kinds of evidence, and the court did follow set courtroom procedures. In Judge Sewall's Apology, a biography of the only one of the nine witch trial judges to apologize for harm to innocent victims, Sewall is noted as explaining that the specter of the defendant would attack the accusers during the preliminary examination in front of those at the hearing, thereby guaranteeing the two witnesses required for a guilty verdict at trial.

Historians today have several explanations for the hysterical outbreak in 1692 Salem including class conflict in the Salem congregation, and the First and Second Indian Wars on the frontier of the New England settlement. Many of the accused were women from the "lower classes," and several scholars have suggested that charges of witchcraft were a way to control women who threatened the existing economic and social orders.

Probably the best known twentieth-century dramatization of the trials is Arthur Miller's 1953 play The Crucible, which Miller is said to have written as an allegory of McCarthyism, when the excesses of the House Un-American Activities Committee and Senator Joseph McCarthy's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations blacklisted accused communists. Cold War, Cool Medium: Television, McCarthyism, and American Culture is one of many books in the Duke libraries that examines McCarthy and his witch hunting crusade. At least one writer has suggested that the Salem witchcraft trials have "disquieting the resonances in a post-9/11 world of extraordinary rendition and practices such as waterboarding."

Stop by the Riddick Room display cabinet on the main floor of the Goodson Law Library to learn more about the Salem witch trials and their English precedent.

--Marguerite Most, Reference Librarian and Senior Lecturing Fellow

According to several accounts, the events leading to the trials began with fortune-telling sessions by two girls ages nine and eleven, one of whom was badly frightened by the sessions. The girls began to exhibit strange symptoms and to claim they were being bitten and pricked. When doctors could find no other explanation, one doctor concluded the girls were "under an Evil Hand." They insisted they saw the accused witch's specter tormenting them or others. In a deposition of April 11, 1692, one of the girls testified that the apparition of Elizabeth Proctor '. most grievously afflicted me by biting, pinching, and almost choking me. . .' Her evidence was accepted as valid.

The design will depend on the intended purpose of the amulet, such as protection, love, or luck. Symbols and images are often incorporated into the design to enhance its mystical qualities. 3. **Cleanse and purify the materials:** Before crafting the amulet, it is essential to cleanse and purify the materials. This ritualistic step removes any negative energies or impurities from the materials, allowing them to be infused with positive energies. 4. **Assemble the amulet:** Once the materials are cleansed, it is time to assemble the amulet. This involves arranging and combining the chosen materials according to the chosen design. This step requires precision and attention to detail to ensure the final amulet has the desired effect. 5. **Infuse the amulet with intention:** The next step is to infuse the amulet with intention. This involves focusing and directing one's thoughts and energy towards the purpose of the amulet. Whether it is protection, love, or luck, the intention is an important element in activating the amulet's mystical powers. 6. **Bless the amulet:** To further enhance the mystical properties of the amulet, it is customary to perform a blessing ritual. This ritual involves invoking higher powers or deities, asking for their assistance in charging the amulet with positive energy and divine protection. 7. **Empower the amulet:** The final step in fashioning a mystical amulet is to empower it with personal energy. This can be done through meditation or other energetic practices. By infusing the amulet with one's own energy, it becomes a more personalized and potent tool. Remember, the process of creating a mystical amulet is deeply personal and should be approached with respect and reverence. Each step contributes to the amulet's unique qualities, making it a powerful tool for the wearer. With the right materials, intention, and energy, a mystical amulet can bring protection, good fortune, and spiritual guidance..

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