Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The penalty for causing death by witchcraft was as a felony without benefit of clergy (that is, capital punishment), which was also the penalty for a second offence of causing injury or material loss by witchcraft; for a first such offence, the penalty was one year's imprisonment including six hours in the pillory once per quarter.
Moreover, the authors insist that the death penalty for convicted witches is the only sure remedy against witchcraft. They maintain that the lesser penalty of banishment prescribed by Canon Episcopi for those convicted of harmful sorcery does not apply to the new breed of witches, whose unprecedented evil justifies capital punishment.
Witchcraft is the use of alleged supernatural powers of magic.A witch is a practitioner of witchcraft. Traditionally, "witchcraft" means the use of magic or supernatural powers to inflict harm or misfortune on others, and this remains the most common and widespread meaning. [1]
Though Mosaic Law prescribed the death penalty to practitioners of necromancy (Leviticus 20:27 [20]), this warning was not always heeded. One of the foremost examples is when King Saul had the Witch of Endor invoke the spirit of Samuel , a judge and prophet , from Sheol to divine the outcome of a coming battle ( 1 Samuel 28:3–25 [ 21 ] ).
The occult is a category of supernatural beliefs and practices, encompassing such phenomena as those involving mysticism, spirituality, and magic in terms of any otherworldly agency.
Capital punishment for offenses is allowed by law in some countries. Such offenses include adultery, apostasy, blasphemy, corruption, drug trafficking, espionage, fraud, homosexuality and sodomy not involving force, perjury causing execution of an innocent person (which, however, may well be considered and even prosecutable as murder), prostitution, sorcery and witchcraft, theft, treason and ...
Saudi Arabia has continued to use the death penalty for sorcery and witchcraft. [34] In 2006 Fawza Falih Muhammad Ali was condemned to death for practicing witchcraft. [35] There is no legal definition of sorcery in Saudi, but in 2007 an Egyptian pharmacist working there was accused, convicted, and executed.
Witchcraft was blamed for many kinds of misfortune. By far the most common kind of harm attributed to witchcraft was illness or death suffered by adults, their children, or their animals. "Certain ailments, like impotence in men, infertility in women, and lack of milk in cows, were particularly associated with witchcraft".