#also also the basis for daemon is in a historical text

[meanqueens]

Daemon "love" is just like cersei's

https://www.reddit.com/r/HouseOfTheDragon/s/QfX1MKIgKi

What is your opinion on this post? Do you agree or disagree?

thank you for your ask, anon! this was a really interesting analysis to read! i can get behind OP's perspective on daemon's character, but besides the one statement, i'd like to see them explain just how cersei and daemon's "love" is similar.

but in my opinion, is daemon's "love" like cersei's? i think they come from wildly different circumstances that effect how they interact with the world (i.e. daemon's from the house that currently sits the throne, a dynasty of conquerors, rides a dragon, and was born male; cersei, born female, has no magic and comes from a wealthy and influential house, but could only get closer to the seat of ultimate power via marriage, and even then her sex still limits her). i think any comparisons between their relationships would stop at the superficial, as when we get to the nitty gritty, their worlds are just not the same and that carries over into their characters. i think it's fair to say that based upon what we know about westerosi society and the societal self-deification of the targaryens, daemon was awarded a lot more privilege than cersei, and that's not nothing for who they became as people.

[acaciapines]

I just had a thought: do you think that in a world where daemons are out & about as an everyday fact of life, societies would veer more towards largely pedestrian, just because a lot of settled daemons might not be able to fit into vehicles?

okay so i've been thinking about this nonstop since you sent it lol and i am. going to go on a very long answer. so um apologizes in advance??? i'm sure i'll answer the question somewhere. the short answer is do whatever you want forever, and likely in a real-world scenario it would be a sort of case-by-case basis on the local cultural values and historical patterns of settling.

my gut answer is "no," actually, for a few different reasons. i have a few different ways of writing worlds with daemons based on what i want to say with the story, but most of them are sort of based on interrogating the text of his dark materials because it presents a very interesting and incredibly unsatisfying picture of daemons, at least to me. and so because of that, i think a core concept is like, okay, what DO people settle as??

because, like, that's what this question is based on--this idea of, what do people settle as? i think probably early human societies would veer pedestrian, but i also think early human societies wouldnt actually settle young, or maybe even at all. bc of how hard survival is back then, the ability to change form is like, a premium. its sort of a privilege for a daemon to settle as a sparrow, and not, like, need to be a wolf sometimes to defend the town's sheep, or a horse to haul up the materials for building. i think actual animals would still be used for these tasks, but like, if you can turn into a horse, sometimes its easier to just do it yourself, rather than having to build trust with an animal, you know?

but blah blah blah, things keep developing. people want to go further, and keep pushing further. so, we are still going to get ships, because sea travel is still really hard even if half of you can turn into an orca whale. and i think as societies develop so too do like, humans put meanings onto the animals around them, and now settling SAYS something about a person, and i feel like you can come up with all sort of stigmas. like, if you settle as a working animal (think horses, oxen, etc) you're seen as inherently lower class than someone who settles as a lion. and now its a bit easier to keep the predators away, so people dont need to hold out on settling for so long, and now theres MEANING behind settling. and this means you can do it wrong.

so, like, what i'm getting as here is i think most people would end up settling pretty small anyways. like, big dog-sized being the larger end of things. if you look at hdm there's already a mammal bias, if you look at daemonfic as a whole there's a canine and feline bias, and i think this would hold true in a real world situations, too. settled form is (as i write it) influenced very much by what a kid is exposed to growing up--as time goes on the idea is you settle younger, and younger, and you settle as the RIGHT sort of animal, the sorts that are good and noble and say something good. you dont settle as, like, a sea cucumber. and an elephant, well--thats so BIG! you really like to take up space, dont you? how...interesting.

and so as things industrialize i think trains, cars, planes all still come to be. i think the expectation is you settle smaller to make up for it. lowkey i think something like the americans with disabilities act is passed for people with larger daemons, but i think the same sort of stuff happens--like, yeah, this school is accessible for people with bison-daemons! you have to call ahead so somebody can set up the fright elevator for you, and you can't go out in the main halls, and like, maybe it follows the law technically, but. like. its not great.

um. basically i think a world with daemons (if we base it off of HDM, which i do more often than not these days) has a lot of biases and discrimination regarding settled form that would lead to places not really being any better than they are today. because the assumption is you settle small. and if you dont settle small, well thats a you problem, isnt it? its not for the "normal" people to fix.

BUT ALL THAT SAID i think a society that is more pedestrian is also perfectly plausible. i think its just down to what sort of story you want to tell. and right now the most recent daemon au i wrote is my owl house daemon au, wherein the way i built out the human world was entirely based on my issues with hdm, and the entire central conflict on the story is around the idea of settling, so...this.

uh, i hope that answers things! feel free to send in followups lol i have Many Thoughts About Daemons.

[discipulusmaleficus]

(suffered a whim and drafted a new, wordier post for the fundamentals of my Weird Magic System Nonsense (1, 2) bc I never bothered convert pt. 1 from handwriting to text and it's ugly. I do not promise this is comprehensible, coherent or interesting.)

Magic is not a solved science. It's difficult enough trying to integrate the different models and techniques used by various magical traditions throughout the world even without trying to throw quantum mechanics into the mix. Furthermore, for historical and cultural reasons, much of the magical community remains reluctant to entertain certain investigations.

(Besides, wouldn't want to make yourself redundant, would you?)

I have vague and silly ideas about it, though.

RE: MATERIAL AND EXTRAMATERIAL SPACE

Magic, like material matter, most likely takes the form of particles and waves (which are the same thing ;) ). (No I do not have names and basic properties for the fundamental magical particles and I am not going to. I was considering charges of hot/cold and wet/dry despite these not meaning anything relevant to our macro understanding of these things, though.)

Now.

As a rule, material particles live in the mostly-flat three dimensional space we are familiar with navigating, and do not have the magical energy to leave it unless charged by an outside force.

As previously noted, magic takes place in six dimensions. Anything not on the material plane is on the astral plane, making it much larger and more confusing to navigate.

Similiarly, as a rule, pure magic exists Around the material plane and will only ever -- usually never -- be briefly visible or solid from our perspective. It can, however, bond with and influence both solid and magical particles -- in fact, essentially every molecule has magical elements. Magic is prone to loosely orbiting the material plane, though this effect peters out the further you get from it. (Have fun getting lost in the void.)

Purely or primarily magical entities include ghosts, curses, most daemons, and abominations such that how best to describe or categorise them is a lively debate.

RE: SOULS OR AURAS OR WHATEVER

All living things have some biological systems that extend into the astral plane. In intelligent species, this is what we call the 'soul'. Its anatomy is complex, fluid and poorly mapped, and can vary on an individual basis far more than our physical forms. Certainly, though, it is -- in most people -- capable of forming prehensile appendages, of absorbing and channeling magical energy, and of something resembling sight, touch and taste. Good passive defence against hexes correlates with less sensitivity.

Magic as an activity is, at its core, simply the ability to make use of said extramaterial Bits to achieve useful work. Our minds aren't really equipped to comprehend the full picture here, so anything sensed spiritually is generally subconscious or translated into an easier-to-digest form which varies person to person. This is also, of course, why mages are so often reliant on visualisation, symbolism and instinct.

Although they can naturally be pried apart temporarily, damage or extended separation is liable to cause brain damage and no doubt any other number of lovely things. Getting lost outside reality will generally render your body a vegetable, although there are some isolated reports of such examples going on to recover and develop new, different identities.

Typically, even when astral projecting, it's possible to maintain enough of an umbilical cord that this isn't a major issue. Total separation releases energy and requires energy to undo -- which is part of why one can harvest energy from animal and human sacrifice, as well as why young idiot mages occasionally need help getting back into their bodies.

[boonoonoonus]

This is no shade to OP, who I adore. Please note that now, its merely adding onto the very important points they made!

Increasingly, I'm seeing that the reason why people can't critique or specifically engage in critique with the Targaryen's and Valyria is because most people have been socialised into colonial white supremacist thinking and/or have delusions of grandeur inserting themselves into positions of power within the text.

What hooks calls the 'White Supremacist, Capitalist Patriarchy' - a system that underpins what we call the West. I think what hooks is speaking of can be seen in fandom when people write Pro-Targaryen and Targrayen restoration fanfic. The world is oriented to support and favour white supremacist capitalist patriarchy its the basis of all social ills at the moment. In fandom I would argue that the ability to slide by and ignore the atrocities of colonialism, slavery and rape that is a key part of Valyrian culture and history is evidence of commitment to that belief. Now, people always say its not that deep, however fantasy and sci fi has had a long tradition of exploring the here and now with an 'objective distnace to see whats up with the world at the moment. GRRM is critical in text of Valyrians, does he still favour Daemon, yes but he's an old white american man most of them are disappointing in one way or another. His bad taste in favourite characters does not prevent him not likening dragons to nukes and saying that these people ain't shit! The idea that fictional Aryans are supposedly the good people despite their adherance to gross violations of humanity is the most incorrect interpretation of the source material, its not up for debate. The issue is that alot of white Western people do not want to confront that they have been fed propaganda that has seeped into everything they consume and that they may be victims of a society that despises the underclass and that they aren't part of this blood sucking bourgeois but instead are the proletariat. Which is a better position for them than me whose a black person and historically the position of my people has been living means of labour, alongside the likes of horses.

When Said spoke of the optics of Orientalism and Fanon spoke of the psychosis of Whiteness they were speaking of a particular interaction non-othered people had with power and the ability to exert power. Audiences who can't critique the Targaryen's and Valyria are people unable to see the issue in their (Valyria's) actions fundamentally. They may say 'oh slavery is bad' but will later jokingly or mockingly say 'well maybe some people deserve it' and 'well I like to root for the bad guy'

Now, I'm all for rooting for the villain but slavery? Colonialism?

Partially, we're also experiencing what Bauldrillard coined as the Simulation/Simulacra because people genuinely see the acts of Targaryen's as liberatory and feminist and forget the original copy, they've obscured and corrupted the true images of the likes of Visenya and Rhaenys because of how they feel about Daenerys and Rhaenyra. There's also the element of obscuring the racial and gendered aspects of religion (in our world). The OP touched on this when they spoke of the Catholic Church being the Church for most of history. Most dont know that Peter was the first pope, or the methods employed by the apostles to spread Christianity, the knowledge most hold about religions tends to be very very modern and context dependent and alot of that is due to evangelicals in the US content and Anglicans in the UK context but I digress. Commitment to creating this idea around good feminist liberatory Targaryens is currently synonymous with a very virulent form of liberalism that sees equality and freedom in let's just all be friends and understand that we're all struggling together. Now hotd fandom is not the source of modern social ills but it marks a poignant spot in media literacy and trends and highlights the ability for propaganda to assume the language of liberation and sell that you as an audience. The use of the word feminist is an example, as is misogynist and they're used divorced of their context and academic understanding which is important. The matrices of power exist and they dominate all that we do.

Because people don't know key parts of history they fill it in with what makes sense in their limited scope of the world and recreate a world that suits what they think is right instead of engaing in the messiness and complexities of reality. They see a world where the medieval church wasn't the only thing holding Europe together and the source of much innovation in science and medicine but instead this fake world in which the modern science driven atheism they think is stearing modernity and change currently, is whats best for Westeros and the medieval peeps. (Its not, Capitalist propaganda and brain drain has you guys thinking innovation is occurring in the west when it's morally bankrupt and people have been remaking the wheel and selling it to you unabashed. See Uber not being profitable and remaking the taxi model as proof)

I'm a scholar of colonialism, negrophilia and non-normative bodies saying that with my chest. The Seven has its issues that is an in text fact, but they are specifically against Slavery and Incest and this was the key reason it was so widely adopted and are farrrrrrr better than the Catholic Church was at the time and yet every damn day is filled with you worshipping aryans without critical thinking. Thinking the gods of the people who held slaves in pits to power nukes are good people? Allah please send the flood!

Christianity can be a disease (see here the churches role in politics in Jamaica and rampant homophobia and human rights violations) and in many ways is a parallel to The Fourteen Flames worship but atleast we can readily admit that Christianity is fucked up for its role in colonialism and understand that syncretism has helped somewhat but it will always carry that stain. As will Islam and Hinduism, no religion is perfect and yet we cannot critique the fourteen flames? Valyria must get a pass? (I studied the history of Christianity, Islam and Hinduism in the context of empire and colonialism so I'm only commenting on them. I can speak on other religions and won't).

No condemnation, no idea that they need to get the fuck out Westeros? That the volcanic eruption was actually a good thing? That sometimes slave owners need to be dragged through the streets? Jesus wept! Blood in my eye!

No wonder the fat man won't finish the books you man don't READ, no common sense just shipping and uwu face. Also, the importance of that is because an inability to think critically as alot of you show is ripe for exploitation in an increasingly hostile and right wing, conservative world we're entering. People like to think media is a neutral zone, that of course its not infiltrated by corporate and government powers but if that was the case the US military wouldn't be helping fund and supply marvel movies to increase army recruitment. We wouldn't be inundated with TV shows like succession that glorify and humanise a type of capitalistic hell hole, or Severance, which is so absurdist it hides the true horrors of corporate industry life. The way any medieval drama frames the monarchy is a cause for concern, especially for me who currently lives in a country in which the monarchy's ability to use the house of Lords as an extension of their power and as a weapon of empire in order to ignore democracy is a threat to everyone in the country. These people are no one's friends, they're not good people, colonisers in any framing are bad people they need to be stomped out and I do mean by any means. Targaryens should have been killed, taken out the equation, as any other people who would weild nukes, practise subjugation and slavery and rape should be. Lastly, the framing of religion as other is blatantly a problem in a world which has been committing religious persecution left and right for thousands of years. Your ideas that support the eradication of the faith sound alot more like US policy in Iraq and Afghanistan and Palestine than it does the Liberal open minded politic you think it is. Religious persecution is the basis to many many genocides past and present as well as the dehumanisation associated with certain religions, regions, and people at this moment. We should all be critical of any media that implies that this is the case and doubly when that comes to a reprehensible place like Valyria. But what the fuck do I know I'm just a Black person on the Internet.

Is there anything support the populat interpretation that old valriya and valryians in general are more feminist, and progressive than the rest in Asoiaf?

Anon, thank you! I've been wanting to address this for awhile, so I'm going to actually answer this really fully, with as many receipts as I can provide (this ended up being more of an essay than I intended, but hopefully it helps)

I think there's in fact plenty of evidence to suggest that Valyria and the Valyrians in general were anything but progressive. Valyria was an expansive empire with a robust slave trade that practiced incest based on the idea of blood supremacy/blood purity. All of these things are absolutely antithetical to progressivism. There is no way any empire practicing slavery can ever be called progressive. Now, the Targaryens of Dragonstone have since given up the practice of slavery, but they certainly still believe in the supremacy of Valyrian blood.

And I'll see the argument, well what's wrong with believing your blood is special if your blood really is special and magic? Which is just-- if anyone catches themselves thinking this, and you sincerely believe that GRRM intended to create a magically superior master race of hot blondes who deserve to rule over all other backwards races by virtue of their superior breeding which is reinforced through brother-sister incest, and you've convinced yourself this represents progressive values, then you might want to step away from the computer for a bit and do a bit of self reflection.

And remember-- what is special about this special blood? It gives the bearers the ability to wield sentient weapons of mass destruction. It's also likely, according to the most popular theories, the result of blood magic involving human sacrifice. So there is a terrible price to pay for this so-called supremacy. Would any of us line up to be sacrificed to the Fourteen Flames so that the Valyrians can have nukes?

And if you are tempted by the idea that a woman who rides a dragon must inherently have some sort of power-- that is true. A woman who rides a dragon is more powerful than a woman who does not ride a dragon, and in some cases, more powerful than a man who does not ride a dragon, but that does not make her more powerful than a man who also rides a dragon. Dragonriding remained a carefully guarded privilege, and Targaryen women who might otherwise become dragonriders were routinely denied the privilege (despite the oft repeated "you cannot steal a dragon," when Saera Targaryen attempted to claim a dragon from the dragonpit, she was thrown into a cell for the attempted "theft,"words used by Jaehaerys). The dragonkeepers were established explicitly to keep anyone, even those of Targaryen blood, from taking them without permission. Any "liberation" that she has achieved is an illusion. What she has gained is the ability to enact violence upon others who are less privileged, and this ability does not save her from being the victim of gender based violence herself.

Politically speaking, it is also true that Valyria was a "freehold," in that they did not have a hereditary monarchy, but instead had a political structure akin to Ancient Athens (which was itself democratic, but not at all progressive or feminist). Landholding citizens could vote on laws and on temporary leaders, Archons. Were any of the lords freeholder women? We don't know. If we take Volantis as an example, the free city that seems to consider itself the successor to Valyria, the party of merchants, the elephants, had several female leaders three hundred years ago, but the party of the aristocracy, the tigers, the party made up of Valyrian Old Blood nobility, has never had a female leader. Lys, the other free city, is known for it's pleasure houses, which mainly employ women kidnapped into sexual slavery (as well as some young men). It is ruled by a group of magisters, who are chosen from among the wealthiest and noblest men in the city, not women. There does not seem to be a tradition of female leadership among Valyrians, and that's reflected by Aegon I himself, who becomes king, rather than his older sister-wife, Visenya. And although there have been girls named heir, temporarily, among the pre-Dance Targaryens, none were named heir above a trueborn brother aside from Rhaenyra, a choice that sparked a civil war. In this sense, the Targaryens are no different from the rest of Westeros.

As for feminism or sexual liberation, there's just no evidence to support it. We know that polygamy was not common, but it was also not entirely unheard of, but incest, to keep the bloodlines "pure," was common. Incest and polygamy are certainly sexual taboos, both in the real world and in Westeros, that the Valyrians violated, but the violation of sexual taboos is not automatically sexually liberated or feminist. Polygamy, when it is exclusively practiced by men and polyandry is forbidden (and we have no examples of Valyrian women taking multiple husbands, outside of fanfic), is often abusive to young women. Incest leads to an erosion of family relationships and abusive grooming situations are inevitable. King Jaehaerys' daughters are an excellent case study, and the stories of Saera and Viserra are particularly heartbreaking. Both women were punished severely for "sexual liberation," Viserra for getting drunk and slipping into her brother Baelon's bed at age fifteen, in an attempt to avoid an unwanted marriage to an old man. She was not punished because she was sister attempting to sleep with a brother, but because she was the wrong sister. Her mother, the queen had already chosen another sister for Baelon, and believed her own teenage daughter was seducing her brother for nefarious reasons. As a sister, Viserra should have been able to look to her brother for protection, but as the product of an incestuous family, Viserra could only conceive of that protection in terms of giving herself over to him sexually.

Beyond that, sexual slavery was also common in ancient Valyria, a practice that persisted in Lys and Volantis, with women (and young men) trafficked from other conquered and raided nations. Any culture that is built on a foundation of slavery and which considers sexual slavery to be normal and permissible, is a culture of normalized rape. Not feminist, not progressive.

I think we get the picture! so where did this idea that Valyrians are more progressive come from? I think there are two reasons. One, the fandom has a bit of a tendency to imagine Valyrians and their traditions in opposition to Westerosi Sevenism, and if Sevenism is fantasy Catholicism, and the fantasy Catholics also hate the Valyrian ways, they must hate them because those annoying uptight religious freaks just hate everything fun and cool, right? They hate revealing clothing, hate pornographic tapestries, hate sex outside of marriage, hate bastards. So being on Sevenism's shit-list must be a mark of honor, a sign of progressive values? But it's such a surface level reading, and a real misunderstanding of the medieval Catholic church, and a conflating of that church with the later Puritan values that many of us in the Anglosphere associate with being "devout." For most of European history, the Catholic church was simply The Church, and the church was, ironically, where you would find the material actions which most closely align with modern progressive values. The church cared for lepers, provided educations for women, took care of orphans, and fed the poor. In GRRM's world, which is admittedly more secular than the actual medieval world, Sevenism nevertheless has basically the same function, feeding the poor instead of, you know, enslaving them.

Finally, I blame the shows. While Valyrians weren't a progressive culture, Daenerys Targaryen herself held relatively progressive individual values by a medieval metric. She is a slavery abolitionist, she elevates women within her ranks, and she takes control of her own sexuality (after breaking free from her Targaryen brother). But Daenerys wasn't raised as a Targaryen. She grew up an orphan in exile, hearing stories of her illustrious ancestors from her brother, who of the two did absorb a bit of that culture, and is not coincidentally, fucked up, abusive, and misogynistic. He feels a sexual ownership over his sister, arranges a marriage for her, and even after her marriage, feels entitled to make decisions on her behalf. It is only after breaking away from Viserys that Dany comes into her own values. Having once been a mere object without agency of her own, she determines to save others from that fate and becomes an abolitionist. But because Game of Thrones gave viewers very little exposure to Targaryens aside from Daenerys, House Targaryen, in the eyes of most show watchers, is most closely associated with Dany and her freedom-fighter values. And as for Rhaenyra in House of the Dragon, being a female heir does not make her feminist or progressive, although it is tempting to view her that way when she is juxtaposed against Aegon II. Her "sexual liberation" was a lesson given to her by her uncle Daemon, a man who had an express interest in "liberating" her so that she would sleep with him, it was not a value she was raised with. In fact, she was very nearly disinherited for it, and was forced into a marriage with a gay man as a result of said "liberation." She had no interest in changing succession laws to allow absolute primogeniture, no interest in changing laws or norms around bastardy despite having bastards; she simply viewed herself as an exception. Rhaenyra's entire justification for her claim is not the desire to uplift women, bring peace and stability to Westeros, or even to keep her brother off the throne, it is simply that she believes she deserves it because her father is the king and he told her she could have it, despite all tradition and norms, and in spite of the near certain succession crisis it will cause. Whether she is right or wrong, absolutism is not progressive.

And let me just say, none of this means that you can't enjoy the Valyrians or think that they're fun or be a fan of house Targaryen. This insistence that Targaryens are the progressive, feminist (read: morally good) house seems by connected to the need of some fans to make their favorite characters unproblematic. If the Valyrians are "bad," does that make you a bad person for enjoying them? Of course not. But let's stop the moral grandstanding about the "feminist" and "progressive" Valyrians in a series that is an analogue for medieval feudalism. Neither of those things can exist under the systems in place in Westeros, nor could they have existed in the slavery based empire of conquest that was old Valyria.

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: North America’s Largest Witchcraft Collection Has Its First Major Exhibition

Image from the Cornell University Witchcraft Collection (courtesy Cornell University Library)

Cornell University’s cofounder Andrew Dickson White was a huge bibliophile. With his librarian George Lincoln Burr, he amassed a formidable collection of books, with a special concentration on those that highlighted historic persecution and the experiences of the downtrodden. Out of this personal library came the Cornell University Witchcraft Collection, which holds over 3,000 objects on superstition and witchcraft in Europe, mostly acquired in the 1880s.

“He was interested in people on the margin and the underside of history, so another big collection that he acquired was the anti-slavery collection,” Anne R. Kenney told Hyperallergic. Kenney stepped down as university librarian earlier this year, and said that she wanted to cap off her career at Cornell with an exhibition on the Witchcraft Collection and its connection to women’s history.

Image from the Cornell University Witchcraft Collection (courtesy Cornell University Library)

Kenney is the co-curator, with Kornelia Tancheva, of The World Bewitch’d, which opens on Halloween at Cornell’s Kroch Library. “This is the first major exhibition from the collection,” Kenney noted. In an article for the Cornell Chronicle, Melanie Lefkowitz, staff writer and editor for Cornell University Library, notes that the collection is “the largest of its kind in North America.” The Witchcraft Collection is open to the public for research, and its Digital Witchcraft Collection offers over 100 English-language books, yet this is a unique opportunity to view its centuries of material. It also places this material within a context of gender and theology.

“Prior to 1500, most sorcerers were men because they were seen as powerful agents — think of Merlin — but as the ecclesiastical leaders began to think of a new form of witchcraft, it was the more powerless people with whom the devil contacted to do his work,” Kenney said. “So they were not independent agents, but slaves of the devil. That powerlessness really became associated with women.”

Among the five featured books in The World Bewitch’d that were published before 1500 is the first written on witchcraft. Dating to 1471, it is still in its original binding. It was soon followed by the notorious demonology tome Malleus Maleficarum, first printed in 1487, of which Cornell has 14 Latin editions. “The book was second only to the Bible in terms of sales for almost 200 years,” Kenney explained. It not only served as a touchstone for subsequent treatises, it was used as the basis for how trials were conducted.

“It is mainly cited today for its misogyny in identifying women as being witches,” Kenney added. The text claims that women consort with the devil due to their uncontrollable carnal lust, and thus sex with the devil was a big part of supposed demonic pacts. Although there were exceptions, like Dietrich Flade, a city judge who spoke out against the barbarity of witchcraft trials in the 1580s (the minutes of his own trial are at Cornell), the majority of those accused and tortured were women. The World Bewitch’d uses its exhibition narrative to focus on seven individual women, and find their voices and stories in court records, depositions, and the surviving imagery.

Image from the Cornell University Witchcraft Collection (courtesy Cornell University Library)

These centuries-old manuscripts are joined by contemporary objects, including newly acquired film posters that show recent portrayals of witches, from the malicious figures in Rosemary’s Baby to the heroic wizards in Harry Potter. Familiars, the small animals that accompany witches, reappear in cinema through the forms of cats and owls, as does the trope of witches flying on broomsticks, which dates back to 1451.

“There’s the contemporary twist where witches in popular culture now are more powerful, whether they do good or bad things, whereas in the historical material, most of the women who were accused of being witches were powerless, they were victims of a mania that was occurring,” Kenney said. And that mania is difficult to comprehend without examining the religious, societal, and political forces at work in the 15th and 16th centuries. Estimates range from 50,000 to 100,000 for the number of people burned, hanged, and otherwise executed for witchcraft.

“Most Americans know about the Salem Witch Trials, and not to diminish the horrible aspects of that, but only 19 women were hanged,” Kenney stated. “There’s this whole bigger story of witchcraft that is not very well known.”

R. B. (1632?-1725?), The kingdom of darkness :or, The history of daemons, specters, witches, apparitions, possessions, disturbances, and other wonderful and supernatural delusions, mischievous feats and malicious impostures of the Devil. … (courtesy Cornell University Library)

Hartmann Schedel (1440-1514), image from Liber cronicarum (courtesy Cornell University Library)

Image from the Cornell University Witchcraft Collection (courtesy Cornell University Library)

Image from the Cornell University Witchcraft Collection (courtesy Cornell University Library)

Théophile Louïse, De la sorcellerie et de la justice criminelle à Valenciennes … (courtesy Cornell University Library)

John Webster (1611-82), Untersuchung der vermeinten und so genannten Hexereÿen :worinn zwar zugegeben wird, dass es an mancherley Betrug und Aeffereyen nicht fehle, auch, dass viele Persohnen von ihrer melancholischen Phantasie offt gewaltig hinters Licht geführet werden … (courtesy Cornell University Library)

Eberhard David Hauber (1695-1765), Bibliotheca acta et scripta magica :Gründliche Nachrichten und Urtheile von solchen Büchern und Handlungen, welche die Macht des Teufels in leiblichen Dingen betreffen … (courtesy Cornell University Library)

The World Bewitch’d will be on view October 31, 2017 to August 31, 2018 at Kroch Library’s Hirshland Gallery (Cornell University Library, 216 East Avenue, Ithaca, New York).

The post North America’s Largest Witchcraft Collection Has Its First Major Exhibition appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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