Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
White magic has traditionally referred to the use of supernatural powers or magic for selfless purposes. [1] Practitioners of white magic have been given titles such as wise men or women, healers, white witches or wizards. Many of these people claimed to have the ability to do such things because of knowledge or power that was passed on to them ...
The second law is offered as a simple observation in the same essay but its status as Clarke's second law was conferred by others. It was initially a derivative of the first law and formally became Clarke's second law where the author proposed the third law in the 1973 revision of Profiles of the Future, which included an acknowledgement. [4]
An 1562 [1] Act Against Conjurations, Enchantments and Witchcrafts (5 Eliz. 1.c. 16) was passed early in the reign of Elizabeth I.It was in some respects more merciful towards those found guilty of witchcraft than its predecessor, demanding the death penalty only where harm had been caused; lesser offences were punishable by a term of imprisonment.
The historian Ronald Hutton notes the presence of four distinct meanings of the term witchcraft in the English language. Historically, the term primarily referred to the practice of causing harm to others through supernatural or magical means. This remains, according to Hutton, "the most widespread and frequent" understanding of the term. [24]
The Pactus Legis Alamannorum, an early 7th-century code of laws of the Alemanni confederation of Germanic tribes, lists witchcraft as a punishable crime on equal terms with poisoning. If a free man accuses a free woman of witchcraft or poisoning, the accused may be disculpated either by twelve people swearing an oath on her innocence or by one ...
The Laws do not appear in earlier known Wiccan documents, including Gardner's Ye bok of Ye Art Magical, Text A or B, or in any of Doreen Valiente’s notebooks including one commonly referred to as Text C. [citation needed] The Laws have several anachronisms and refer to the threat of being burnt for witchcraft even though this did not happen ...
[32] [e] [f] Witches became heretics to Christianity and witchcraft became the greatest of crimes and sins. [35] Within continental and Roman Law witchcraft was the crimen exceptum, a crime so foul that all normal legal procedures were superseded. [36] During the Age of Enlightenment, belief in the powers of witches to harm began to die out in ...
However using the word 'magic' alongside 'religion' is one method of trying to understand the supernatural world, even if some other term can eventually take its place. [4] It is a postulate of modern anthropology, at least since early 1930s, that there is complete continuity between magic and religion. Robert Ranulph Marett (1932) said: