Beschreibung:
A detailed look at the folk magic used by settlers in early New England.
Acknowledgments; Preface; Introduction; 1. 'Magical experiments': divining, healing and destroying in seventeenth-century New England; 2. 'The serpent that lies in the grass unseen': clerical and lay opposition to magic; 3. 'Entertaining Satan': sin, suffering, and countermagic; 4. 'Sinful curiosity': astrological discourse in early New England; 5. 'Insufficient grounds for conviction': witchcraft, the courts, and countermagic; 6. 'Rape of a whole colony': the 1692 witch-hunt; Epilogue; Appendices.