The Witch’s Sabbat: Folklore and Facts
What Is the Witch’s Sabbat? The Witch’s Sabbat is the imagined nocturnal gathering at which European witches were said to feast, dance, copulate with demons, and renounce Christ. The image is largely a construction of late medieval and early modern demonology, layered onto older folkloric strata of nocturnal goddess processions and ecstatic agrarian rites that […]
The Salem Witch Trials: Profiles and Stories
What Were the Salem Witch Trials? The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. More than two hundred people were accused of witchcraft. Nineteen were hanged, one was pressed to death under stones, and at least five more died in jail. The episode […]