#Witch Trial

[futuristicson]

[lifewithaview]

Sam Heughan in Outlander (2014– ) The Devil's Mark

S1E11

Geilis and Claire are imprisoned pending their trial for witchcraft. Geilis admits to Claire that she killed her husband Arthur, which isn't a surprise. She also admits that she is devoted to the Jacobite cause. The trial itself has all the makings of a one-sided affair but Ned Gowan arrives in time to provide both of them with something of a defense. The witnesses against them include Geilis' housemaid, a woman who bought a love potion from her and Laoghaire who claims Claire stole Jamie from her with magic. As the trial comes to an end, Ned tells the two women that the only solution is for Claire to save herself by denouncing Geilis. She refuses to do so but Geilis saves her - and reveals her great secret. Jamie takes Claire from the court and Claire tells him the truth about her past...

*The quote that Claire recites to Geillis, 'I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country', would be uttered 33 years later in 1776 by Nathan Hale, a spy who served in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. Geillis, upon recognizing this quote, looks shocked because this is the moment she realizes that Claire, just like herself, is from the future.

[jacksepticeye-simp]

Pyre

(Gift for @mothgodofchaos bc they've been working hard on their stuffs, I hope you like it!)

TW: Witch trials, mentions of fire/burning

"People of god! Look upon this wench, marked by their wicked deeds, has rejected the way of our lord and instead embraced the darkness that is the devil. There is no mercy for the likes of them. Do not be fooled by their cries and pleas of innocence. Their heart belongs to evi, and their suffering is just. THIS is the price of disobeying the Lord's will! Let this punishment be a warning to all: Those of you who consort with darkness shall be found and purged from the face of this world. Before the flames cleanse their soul, let us allow this witch to speak their final words. Tell us your lies." Tears threatening to spill while struggling in your binds.

"Please! I am no witch! I swear this upon my soul!" That was probably the biggest lie you'd ever told. You were most definitely a witch, But you weren't going to tell these assholes that. You tried to warn them about the oncoming storms so they'd have some time to prepare, but did they listen? NO. Instead they were going to burn you alive & for what?! TRYING TO HELP THEM!

"Do not burn me for a crime I haven't committed! My friends know my innocence!" You pleaded, your gaze sweeping through the crowd for even a glimpse of your coven. You locked eyes with the high priestess of your coven. "Please, you know I'm innocent!" The crowd looked towards her. "No. You are not. You are a soulless witch." She said blankly, staring you dead in the eye from the ground. THAT BACKSTABBING LITTLE-

"May the lord have mercy on you." The priest told you, approaching with a lit torch. Well, seems like it's curse time then. "Fine. Set me ablaze. But know this: My blood will not cure your hunger for righteousness, with every flame I-"

The sound of shrieking cut off your monologue. Hands made from rotting flesh rose from the ground and grabbed at the feet of the priest and other villagers. Absolute chaos ensued as everybody else started running back to their homes, you stood there in confusion wondering how dead people were interrupting your execution but you were grateful nonetheless. Suddenly a man draped in a cloak of deep violet appeared in front of you, he sat atop a skeletal horse and held a fancy staff you could only dream of touching. The staff was adorned with all types of magical sigils and on the top of it was a beautiful glowing crystal. The man grinned at you. "Well hello there, in need of assistance~?" He asked, dismounting his steed and approaching you. "So you're the cause of this interruption, hm?" You looked at his arms, a good portion of it was dark as charcoal. His fingers ended in incredibly sharp talons, he looked pretty strong too. The man rolled his eyes at your comment. "Would you like to be rescued or not?" You scoffed "Just unbind me, will you?" In a moments notice your ropes were cut and you were free. You gasped and quickly hugged the man, knocking his hood off. "Oh thank you so very much.." You gazed into his gorgeous eyes. They were the most beautiful shade of purple you'd ever seen. A blush coated his cheeks. "Of course, I couldn't let a beauty such as yourself go to waste." You then walked over to the priest who was frozen in place by the hands of the dead, taking the torch from his hands. "May the lord have mercy on you." You remarked mockingly before setting him ablaze. You then turned back to the man who cleared his throat and offered his hand to you. "Shall we leave this dreary village?" He asked, winking at you. "Of course." You took his hand and he helped you onto the horse. "Oh, did I mention I'm a necromancer?" You just smiled adoringly at him. "I love a powerful man~" If you didn't believe in love at first site before, you definitely did now.

"I think I'm in love with you."

[theomenmedia]

New Teaser For Agatha All Along Episode 5

Episode 5 of Agatha All Along teases epic witchy trials! Agatha's coven faces their most magical challenge yet. Ready for some classic witch stuff? Watch tonight at 6pm PT on Disney Plus.

Link to the full story: https://www.theomenmedia.com/post/agatha-s-coven-prepares-for-the-ultimate-witchy-trial-episode-5-teaser-drops

[godisarepublican]

[delightful-to-be-read]

Weyward - Emilia Hart

Three women, one in the 1600s, one the 1940s and one contemporary, in the same family with the family name of Weyward.

TW: domestic abuse, rape

Things to like

The characters are likeable and while there’s a thread of believable naïveté in the two more recent, they don’t tip over into being annoying and certainly not helpless. There’s a Recovery storyline that’s warm without being saccharine.

Animals, animals everywhere. Pro-spider!

The prose is easy to read, but not bland. I’d been too tired to do anything but re-read for a while - tiredness affects my ability to engage massively but I could engage with this.

Things I noticed

It’s never really occurred to me before that a novel about women being mistreated by men isn’t necessarily a feminist novel. Of course, to other people, it might be a feminist novel but to me, it was more like how a book about animals being mistreated is against the mistreatment of animals, but isn’t necessarily pro-vegetarian. I’ve always, without really thinking about it, had two categories - ‘feminist’ and ‘women-centric’ (the latter doesn’t include romance).

The witchcraft is very lightly handled.

This is another casualty of me watching Between the Covers and I sniggered as some man - I think maybe Nigel Havers, weirdly - had a moan about how all the men were bad guys and why did they all have to be bad guys. But, I mean, they really are, unless they’re dead or minor characters. This isn’t a complaint - I’m more than happy for the way women have been historically treated in literature to have some rebound and I think it’s eminently plausible that a high enough percentage of men treat women like shit that that would be the main experience of three women. But they really are.

[bloodybosom]

[runawaycarouselhorse]

[junkyarddemento]

REQUIEM

With HBO’s megahit THE LAST OF US having just wrapped up its immensely popular first season, Bella Ramsey is now a bona fide star. Talented and continuously working on and growing her craft, here Bella stars in a story about that nasty period in history about the witch trials. The infamous cruelty, hate, and ignorance shown during that dark period, draws parallels to what’s happening in current time with the  LGBTIQA+ community and the “puritans” who rot their religion in order to control others. 

[chthonicbeloved]

       zoey had been stalking the woman who’d accused her for a long time. hiding in the woods plotting her perfect revenge against the woman. she made her way towards the cabin knowing she would be alone. the door pushed open and she cocked her head as she looked around it. “now let’s discuss these accusations you’ve laid against me. i object to being called a witch.” she looked to sersei as she approached her hands gripping the chair before sersei could stand. “now let me show you what happens to bad girls who lie about things.” 

@arcaneloved​

[lauralot89]

The first white man to be executed in Connecticut was convicted of procreating with a pig

went to miami to recover father sotirios. and made some new friends.

these animals... they are wise. I recruited them to avenge my dear brother. I was then escorted out of the sea world.

[beggars-opera]

On the road leading into the center of Concord, Massachusetts, there sits a house.

It is a plain, colonial-style house, of which there are many along this road. It has sea green and buff paint, a historical plaque, and one of the most multi-layered stories I have ever encountered to showcase that history is continuous, complicated, and most importantly, fragmentary, unless you know where to look.

So, where to start? The plaque.

There's some usual information here: Benjamin Barron built the house in 1716, and years later it was a "witness house" to the start of the American Revolution. And then, something unusual: a note about an enslaved man named John Jack whose epitaph is "world famous."

Where is this epitaph? Right around the corner in the town center.

It reads:

God wills us free; man wills us slaves. I will as God wills; God’s will be done. Here lies the body of JOHN JACK a native of Africa who died March 1773 aged about 60 years Tho’ born in a land of slavery, He was born free. Tho’ he lived in a land of liberty, He lived a slave. Till by his honest, tho’ stolen labors, He acquired the source of slavery, Which gave him his freedom; Tho’ not long before Death, the grand tyrant Gave him his final emancipation, And set him on a footing with kings. Tho’ a slave to vice, He practised those virtues Without which kings are but slaves.

We don't know precisely when the man first known only as Jack was purchased by Benjamin Barron. We do know that he, along with an enslaved woman named Violet, were listed in Barron's estate upon his death in 1754. Assuming his gravestone is accurate, at that time Jack would have been about 40 and had apparently learned the shoemaking trade from his enslaver. With his "honest, though stolen labors" he was then able to earn enough money to eventually purchase his freedom from the remaining Barron family and change his name to John, keeping Jack as a last name rather than using his enslaver's.

John Jack died, poor but free, in 1773, just two years before the Revolutionary War started. Presumably as part of setting up his own estate, he became a client of local lawyer Daniel Bliss, brother-in-law to the minister, William Emerson. Bliss and Emerson were in a massive family feud that spilled into the rest of the town, as Bliss was notoriously loyal to the crown, eventually letting British soldiers stay in his home and giving them information about Patriot activities.

Daniel Bliss also had abolitionist leanings. And after hearing John's story, he was angry.

Here was a man who had been kidnapped from his home country, dragged across the ocean, and treated as an animal for decades. Countless others were being brutalized in the same way, in the same town that claimed to love liberty and freedom. Reverend Emerson railed against the British government from the pulpit, and he himself was an enslaver.

It wouldn't do. John Jack deserved so much more. So, when he died, Bliss personally paid for a large gravestone and wrote its epitaph to blast the town's hypocrisy from the top of Burial Hill. When the British soldiers trudged through the cemetery on April 19th, 1775, they were so struck that they wrote the words down and published them in the British newspapers, and that hypocrisy passed around Europe as well. And the stone is still there today.

You know whose stone doesn't survive in the burial ground?

Benjamin Barron's.

Or any of his family that I know of. Which is absolutely astonishing, because this story is about to get even more complicated.

Benjamin Barron was a middle-class shoemaker in a suburb that wouldn't become famous until decades after his death. He lived a simple life only made possible by chattel slavery, and he will never show up in a U.S. history textbook.

But he had a wife, and a family. His widow, Betty Barron, from whom John purchased his freedom, whose name does not appear on her home's plaque or anywhere else in town, does appear either by name or in passing in every single one of those textbooks.

Terrible colonial spelling of all names in their marriage record aside, you may have heard her maiden name before:

Betty Parris was born into a slaveholding family in 1683, in a time when it was fairly common for not only Black, but also Indigenous people to be enslaved. It was also a time of war, religious extremism, and severe paranoia in a pre-scientific frontier. And so it was that at the age of nine, Betty pointed a finger at the Arawak woman enslaved in her Salem home, named Titibe, and accused her of witchcraft.

Yes, that Betty Parris.

Her accusations may have started the Salem Witch trials, but unlike her peers, she did not stay in the action for long. As a minor, she was not allowed to testify at court, and as the minister's daughter, she was too high-profile to be allowed near the courtroom circus. Betty's parents sent her to live with relatives during the proceedings, at which point her "bewitchment" was cured, though we're still unsure if she had psychosomatic problems solved by being away from stress, if she stopped because the public stopped listening, or if she stopped because she no longer had adults prompting her.

Following the witch hysteria, the Parrises moved several times as her infamous father struggled to hold down a job and deal with his family's reputation. Eventually they landed in Concord, where Betty met Benjamin and married him at the age of 26, presumably having had no more encounters with Satan in the preceding seventeen years. She lived an undocumented life and died, obscure and forgotten, in 1760, just five years before the Stamp Act crisis plunged America into a revolution, a living bridge between the old world and the new.

I often wonder how much Betty's story followed her throughout her life. People must have talked. Did they whisper in the town square, "Do you know what she did when she was a girl?" Did John Jack hear the stories of how she had previously treated the enslaved people in her life? Did that hasten his desperation to get out? And what of Daniel Bliss; did he know this history as well, seeing the double indignity of it all? Did he stop and think about how much in the world had changed in less than a century since his neighbor was born?

We'll never know.

All that's left is a gravestone, and a house with an insufficient plaque.

[godisarepublican]

[lapin-selenophile]

ch. 98 // aka; Witch Trial

To say my part in this was embarrassing is a severe understatement.

Not due to cruelty as many would expect of my soul, but due to Zhū's outburst. Within the media of this world, Miss Diehl took the brunt of those words. The court's flustered and bewildered glares. But... as much as I despise the remembrance.... I'm sure any with an ounce of literary comprehension can see what I'm getting at.

Even my kith that had the allowance to come with had wide eyes. My mother covered her face with her fan; what part embarrassed her more I'm unsure. I had half a heart to assume I'd simply keel over and die, even before The Judge had a chance to assign me any form of repercussions. Leporids are in fact known to perish simply from stress. It would not have been out of the question.

And yet, despite what must have clearly been shock and mortification on my face, he continued. And... While the root of those next words were not entirely despicable, the arrogance that steamed off this boy... I swear, if man had naught, they would still have audacity.

[daemon-ai]

chatbot sharing: Father Fabio

(witch!user x priest!char) his goal is to convict you of witchcraft, your goal is seduce & damn him for eternity

c.ai 🍓 janitor 🍰 dream tavern 💌 joyland 🧸 dream journey 🌼 yodayo 🦋 rochat 🍄 figgs 🌷 charhub