17th century witch chronicles published online
LONDON — A 350-year-old notebook which documents the trials of women convicted of witchcraft in England during the 17th century has been published online.
The notebook written by Nehemiah Wallington, an English Puritan, recounts the fate of women accused of having relationships with the devil at a time when England was embroiled in a bitter civil war.
The document reveals the details of a witchcraft trial held in Chelmsford in July 1645, when more than a hundred suspected witches were serving time in Essex and Suffolk according to his account.
“Divers (many) of them voluntarily and without any forcing or compulsion freely declare that they have made a covenant with the Devill,” he wrote. Read full story from msnbc.msn.com
Krause probes Renaissance witchcraft
“‘She confessed and was burned’ was a refrain,” Virginia Krause, an associate professor of French at Brown University, said during her lecture yesterday, titled “Under the Witch’s Spell: Demonology in Renaissance France.”
During the lecture, held in the Mandel Center for the Humanities and sponsored by the Mandel Center for the Humanities, the Romance Studies Department, the History of Ideas Program and the Comparative Literature Program, Krause focused on the intangible evidence that many courts required while prosecuting witches.
Her main focus was on Jean Bodin, the 16th-century French author, who wrote treatises advising the French courts to rely on auricular evidence rather than visual, believing that the auricular was more trustworthy than the visual.
Due to this belief, most witches were prosecuted with their own confessions, obtained after torture. Bodin wrote that a confession “must pass from the mouth of the witch to the ears of the judge.” Read full story from thebrandeishoot.com
Woman attacked for ‘witchcraft’
Dungarpur (Rajasthan), March 5 : Rajasthan police Saturday began probing an alleged attack on a woman by villagers who labelled her as a witch. Five villagers, including two women, have been charged in the case, an official said.
According to police, Kamla of Modar village in Dungarpur district complained that she was being tagged as a witch and was tortured by some villagers. Read full story from topnews.in
NASA scientist finds evidence of alien life
Aliens exist, and we have proof.
That astonishingly awesome claim comes from Dr. Richard B. Hoover, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, who says he has found conclusive evidence of alien life — fossils of bacteria found in an extremely rare class of meteorite called CI1 carbonaceous chondrites. (There are only nine such meteorites on planet Earth.) Hoover’s findings were published late Friday night in the Journal of Cosmology, a peer-reviewed scientific journal.
“I interpret it as indicating that life is more broadly distributed than restricted strictly to the planet earth,” Hoover, who has spent more than 10 years studying meteorites around the world, told FoxNews.com in an interview. “This field of study has just barely been touched — because quite frankly, a great many scientist would say that this is impossible.” Read full story from yahoo.com
A look at the ways the world could end
Think you’ve got a prediction for when and how the world will end? Get in line.
Throughout time, and across continents and belief systems, humankind has dished out enough end dates to fill a doomsday menu.
The backgrounds of the people who serve them up may differ, as might the details of what will unfold, but the general apocalyptic worldview is nothing original, says Lorenzo DiTommaso, an associate professor of religion at Concordia University in Montréal, Quebec and author of the forthcoming book, “The Architecture of Apocalypticism.”
“It’s a philosophy that explains time, space and human existence,” DiTommaso says. And by buying into this sort of outlook, a person can find comfort in a “comprehensive answer.”
Having studied apocalyptic movements for nearly 12 years, DiTommaso has strong opinions. He calls the apocalyptic worldview “adolescent” because it’s “a simplistic response to complex problems” and one that “places responsibility for solving these problems with someone else or somewhere else.” Read full story from cnn.com
The war that must be lost
In every religious domain, every geographical sector of the world, every culture and in every organised human endeavour, the ‘maximum patriarch’ has historically declared war on everyone who was privileged to be born with a vagina.
This unholy, cruel, oppressive, evil, anti-development, well-organised and systematically executed war has used every weapon in the patriarch’s arsenal to remove the inherent human rights and dignity of every woman in the global village.
Of course, the historical records of this universal war against the female of the species has been noted, documented and passed on in the religious tracts, the oral history, the artefacts, legal records and other documented facts from generation to generation.
In more recent times, the areas in which the women of the world have blunted the patriarch’s weapons have not only been documented but have set the stage for strategising around the female war plans in the continuing search for effective antidotes to relieve battle fatigue and the conservation of the positive energies to neutralise the enemy forces through love, compassion, determination and the best qualities of the human spirit. Read full story from jamaica-gleaner.com
Sex swap prisoners get right to bras and make-up
A detailed new policy document drawn up by Kenneth Clarke’s Ministry of Justice sets out the rights of sex change inmates, saying they must be allowed to purchase “gender appropriate” clothing from a home shopping catalogue.
Jail warders, who are already required to address inmates by courtesy titles such as Mister, must call transsexual prisoners “Miss” or “Ms” under the new mandatory guidelines, which come into effect later this month.
The document also offers advice on other problematic issues when dealing with transsexual prisoners – such as access to prison showers – and urges officers to contact the Ministry of Justice’s dedicated “gender recognition policy team” if they have questions about the policy.
The 20-page guidebook, issued to prison governors last week, says: “An establishment must permit prisoners who consider themselves transsexual and wish to begin gender reassignment to live permanently in their acquired gender.” Read full story from telegraph.co.uk
Deborah Harkness And A Discovery Of Witches
Once upon a time, science and the supernatural were pretty much the same thing. The stars, Haley’s Comet, eclipses, mysterious diseases, chemical reactions, it all seemed pretty paranormal to the wizards and monks and scholars who studied them.
Historian Deborah Harkness has thought a lot about the science and the supernatural. Now, she’s written her first novel, a fantasy about modern-day scholarly witches & research scientist vampires fighting great battles in our midst. And it has become a runaway best-seller.
This hour, On Point: Writer Deborah Harkness and A Discovery of Witches. Read full story from wbur.org
TheTrue Blood: Season 4 “Waiting Sucks” Eric (HBO) (soiurce Youtube – HBO)
Thanks for stopping by! Well wishes to you all, have a great Sunday!
Lisa
