A Touch of Magick: Hex & History

A Touch of Magick: Hex & History

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A Touch of Magick: Hex & History episodes

  • The Salem Witch Trials (1692)

    The real story of Salem and the Witches.

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    Primary sources / archives

    • Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive (University of Virginia) — digitized court records, warrants, examinations, and biographies.

    • Robert Calef, More Wonders of the Invisible World (1700) — critical contemporary account; source of the Good curse and Noyes "firebrands" lines (use with the "non-eyewitness, 1700" caveat).

    • Cotton Mather, Wonders of the Invisible World (1693); Increase Mather, Cases of Conscience (1692).

    • Samuel Sewall's Diary (contemporaneous; "press'd to death for standing mute").

    • Bernard Rosenthal et al., Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt (Cambridge UP, 2009) — definitive modern edition of the documents.

    Academic historians / university-press books

    • Paul Boyer & Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft (Harvard UP, 1974) — land/faction thesis.

    • Mary Beth Norton, In the Devil's Snare (2002) — frontier-war thesis.

    • Emerson W. Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft (Oxford UP, 2014).

    • Bernard Rosenthal, Salem Story (Cambridge UP, 1993) — historiography/myth-busting.

    • Elaine Breslaw, Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem (NYU Press).

    • Elizabeth Reis, Damned Women (Cornell UP, 1999).

    • Marilynne K. Roach, The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-by-Day Chronicle (2002).

    Reputable institutions / reference

    • Salem Witch Museum (timeline; "Debunking the Moldy Bread Theory"; Cotton Mather essay).

    • Smithsonian Magazine; National Geographic; Encyclopaedia Britannica; Peabody Essex Museum; Library of Congress; Boston Public Library research guide; Congregational Library & Archives.

    • Snopes / Live Science / History.com (for myth confirmation, with Baker & Reis quotes).

    Science-debate sources (ergot)

    • Linnda Caporael, "Ergotism: The Satan Loosed in Salem?" Science (1976); Spanos & Gottlieb rebuttal, Science (1976).

    Culture/tourism

    • Stacy Schiff, The Witches: Salem, 1692; Smithsonian/WBUR/Boston Magazine on Bewitched and witch tourism; Westfield State's Historical Journal of Massachusetts; Destination Salem / Boston 25 News (2024 tourism figures); Margo Burns, "Arthur Miller's The Crucible: Fact & Fiction."

    57 min

About A Touch of Magick: Hex & History

From the publisher's feed

Everyone knows the Salem witch trials — or thinks they do. Hex & History is a twice-monthly deep dive into the true, documented history of witch trials, cunning folk, and dark folklore worldwide — separating the real record from centuries of myth and Hollywood.