Witch-hunts have not been consigned to the history books. An alarming number of witchcraft-related deaths are still happening each year across nearly every continent.
Set in 1990s suburban Australia, The Exact Dimensions of Hell is a theatrical exploration that unflinchingly examines themes of teenage girls, desire and power.
A group of witches offering wax effigies to the Devil in a 17th-century woodcut.
Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy
Early modern societies in Latin America and Spain saw a convergence of traditional medical knowledge and the professionalization of medicine. The resulting differences in access to care endure today.
One of the earliest depictions of flying witches is in a 15th-century text entitled “Le champion des dames,” or “The Defender of Ladies.”
Martin Le Franc/W. Schild. Die Maleficia der Hexenleut' via Wikimedia Commons
The iconic image of a witch on a broomstick has apocryphal origins. But whether they could actually fly didn’t stop Christian society from persecuting them.
Illustration of the devil pricking a woman with a pin and another of a girl vomiting pins from a history of witches.
Wellcome Collection
Practitioners of Pagan religions no longer need to go into a forest to find an object for their altars. Commercialization means that sacred objects are available online.
Mystic Meg in a promotional image.
Victor Watts/Alamy Stock Photo
These new witches are rarely comparable to traditional dirty hags. The new witch is often beautiful, at once dark, gothic, ethereal and wild.
The medical school of Salerno as it appears in a miniature of Avicenna’s Canon. The image represents the legendary story of Robert, Duke of Normandy. Mortally wounded by an arrow, he was heroically saved by his wife who sucked out the poison as prescribed by the physicians of Salerno.
Wikipedia
During the Middle Ages, women were steadily excluded from both the practice and the study of medicine by an overwhelmingly male-dominated, institutional and hierarchical system.
A teenage domestic servant showed signs of possession, and a miller was accused of witchcraft. Considering records of these events helps clarify what we can and cannot know about the past.
Wanda’s rage fuels her actions in ‘Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.’
(Shutterstock)
Associate Professor, TC Beirne School of Law, the University of Queensland; International Distinguished Fellow, the Burton Blatt Institute, Syracuse University., The University of Queensland