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She was a witch, and she cursed the girl who presently began to scream like a cat and bark like a dog. Murrell was called in. He placed in the fire a bottle containing hair and nail-clippings from the victim. He told everyone to keep absolutely silent while they awaited the arrival of the witch.
Dangers include, for example, a sorcerer or witch might acquire a lock of hair, nail clipping or scrap of clothing in order to facilitate a curse. Voodoo dolls resemble the victim and often incorporate hair or clothing from them. In cultures that practice sorcery individuals often exercise care that their hair or nails do not end up in the ...
Historically, the witch's bottle contained the victim's (the person who believed they had a spell put on them, for example) urine, hair or nail clippings, or red thread from sprite traps. Later witch bottles were filled with rosemary, needles and pins, and red wine. Historically and currently, the bottle is then buried at the farthest corner of ...
The Swedish cunning woman Gertrud Ahlgren of Gotland (1782–1874), drawing by Pehr Arvid Säve 1870. In Scandinavia, the klok gumma ("wise woman") or klok gubbe ("wise man"), and collectively De kloka ("The Wise ones"), as they were known in Swedish, were usually elder members of the community who acted as folk healers and midwives as well as using folk magic such as magic rhymes. [10]
The height of the witch-craze was concurrent with the rise of Renaissance magic in the great humanists of the time (this was called high magic, and the Neoplatonists and Aristotelians that practised it took pains to insist that it was wise and benevolent and nothing like witchcraft, which was considered low magic), which helped abet the rise of ...
In Hoodoo, personal concerns such as hair, nail clippings, bones, blood, and other bodily fluids are mixed with ingredients for either a positive or a negative effect. The items are placed inside conjure bags or jars and mixed with roots, herbs, and animal parts, sometimes ground into a powder or with graveyard dirt from a murdered victim's grave.
Historian D. Michael Quinn, in his book Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, suggests that the newspaper notice published by Smith Sr. is evidence that the "guardian," "spirit" or "angel" commanded Joseph to bring a piece of Alvin's body to the hiding place of the golden plates as a requirement for seeing them. [49]
In Britain in the Late Medieval and Early Modern periods, folk magic was widely popular. Many individuals knew of some magical charms and spells, but there were also professionals who dealt in magic, including charmers, fortune tellers, astrologers and cunning folk, the last of whom were said to "possess a broader and deeper knowledge of such techniques and more experience in using them" than ...