#Unveiled wife prayer for husband manuals
#Unveiled wife prayer for husband trial

Practitioners used their craft in efforts to heal the sick, help the lovelorn, locate lost people and objects, protect people from guns or arrows and guard livestock. While some of the accusations were clearly false, lodged out of malice, surviving records make it equally clear that many of the accused did enact the kinds of rituals and spells that their accusers charged. Occasionally spells called on Satan and вЂњhis many little satans,вЂќ or invoked saints and satans at once. Some spells invoked supernatural beings, from Jesus Christ and Mary to nature spirits and mythic figures from Russian legends, such as a golden fish or a wingless bird. They drew on the force of analogy вЂ“ вЂњas this, so thatвЂќ вЂ“ to activate their spells and curses: For example, вЂњas a log burns and withers in the fire, so may my masterвЂ™s heart burn and wither.вЂќ Their magic called on the forces of nature and the beauty of poetic diction. Witches employed spells and simple potions made mainly of herbs and roots, throwing in the occasional eagleвЂ™s wing, eye torn from a live chicken or dirt from a grave.

Here, men were the usual suspects, for reasons that highlight the frighteningly capricious ways power and hierarchy structured everyday life. This history вЂ“ the focus of three of books IвЂ™ve written as a scholar of medieval and early modern Russia вЂ“ shakes up understandings of who вЂњwitchesвЂќ were.

#Unveiled wife prayer for husband trial

Verbatim testimonies in trial records show fraught, often abusive relationships between husbands and wives, masters and servants, patrons and clients. These documents provide insights into the lives of ordinary people otherwise lost to history: in peasant homes and military regiments, on serf-owning estates and on barges on the Volga River.

#Unveiled wife prayer for husband manuals

In Orthodox Russia, however, accusers overwhelmingly blamed men for bewitching them and held different ideas of where the power of вЂњmagicвЂќ came from.Д®vidence about RussiansвЂ™ belief in witchcraft survives in all kinds of documents from the 12th to the 18th centuries: sermons historical chronicles and tales stories of saintsвЂ™ lives laws and decrees manuals of herbal healing and spell books and court records. Most of Catholic and Protestant Europe embraced the idea of magic as a satanic craft practiced by women, and strong, independent women were kept in line through such accusations. But that hasnвЂ™t always been the face of sorcery. (THE CONVERSATION) The word вЂњwitchesвЂќ makes many Americans think of women working in league with the devil.