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Which Witch( Craft Act) is Which?

In 1541, King Henry VIII, passed an act against the Conjurations, Witchcrafts, Sorcery, and Inchatments, magical practices which were disruptive or caused harm to the realm and its subjects. It was a crime punishable by death.

The 1562 Act against Conjurations, Enchantments, and Witchcrafts amended the terms of punishments of witchcraft between minor and capital offences. The punishment for a minor offence of witchcraft included one year of prison, six hours of confessions to the priest, and public humiliation in the square market.

The Witchcraft Act of 1603, moved witchcraft prosecutions from the church to the commonlaw courts. It also defined the relationship with witchcraft practices to the devil.

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Tabitha Stanmore is a social historian of magic and witchcraft at the University of Exeter. In her novel, "Cunning Folks: Life in the Era of Practical Magic" she tells that most people in the early modern England believed in practical magic. These people were called cunning folk or magical practitioners. They would be your local priest or respectable men and women in the community. They would create healing spells or love potions. They would help people find missing or stolen items, such as cows, spoons, money, and valuable linens.

A person would go to the priest and tell him about an stolen item in the home. The priest would tell the person to leave their window open. The priest would threaten the crowd on Sunday that he would "summon" a demon if the thief would not return the stolen item back. Out of fear, the thief would return the missing item in the person's window. Tadah Magic!

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Tabitha Stanmore on Practical Magic in Shakespeare’s England | Folger Shakespeare Library

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Folger Shakespeare Library is the world's largest Shakespeare collection, the ultimate resource for exploring Shakespeare and his world. Shakespeare belongs to you. His world is vast. Come explore. Join us online, on the road, or in Washington, DC.

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King James I wrote Daemonologie in 1597, the book offers an in depth discussion of the origins and practices of witchcraft. The justification of prosecution of witches under the Christian law. It is divided into three parts:

1. magic and necromancy

2. witchcraft and sorcery

3. spirits, ghosts, and spectres

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The first text presented here, written by James I of England, is a wide-ranging discussion of witchcraft, necromancy, possession, demons, were-wolves, fairies and ghosts, in the form of a Socratic dialogue. The second text is a sensational historical account of Scottish witch persecution. The English used is old style English which makes for rather hard reading, but it’s a fascinating book if you can get used to that.THE Dæmonologie of King James, the Sixth of Scotland and First of England, was written, as the Royal author states in his Preface, to prove that ‘the assautes of Sathan are most certainly practized, & that the instrumentes thereof, merits most severly to be punished.’ Such a work has more than a passing interest. It gives the student of history and literature a brief and authoritative guide to the darker beliefs of our ancestors; there is, too, much to interest the theologian and the psychologist, whilst the philologist will find the book a mine of rare and curious phrases.

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"Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible/ To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but/ A dagger of the mind, a false creation/ Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?" ( Macbeth: Act 2, Scene 1, Lines 48- 51)

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"When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, and in rain? " ( The Witches: Act 1, Scene 1, Lines 1-2)

"Foul is fair and fair is foul, hover throughout the fog and filthy air" The Witches (Act 1, Scene 1, Lines 12- 13)

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In this video Robert Simpson, an English teacher and art illustrators analyzes how Shakespeare uses the Supernatural Power in Macbeth. He defines the Supernatural as " events, powers, or creatures that cannot be explained through science often related to magic, fortune-telling, casting spells, and speaking with ghost.

There are three elements of the Supernatural presented in Macbeth:

1. Witches and Witchcraft

2. Apparitions, Ghosts, and Strange visions

3. The Disruption of Nature

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The Supernatural in Macbeth | Theme Analysis

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1. The bloody dagger pointing at King Duncan's chambers.

2. Banquo's ghost at the dinner table

3. Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking and bloody hands

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The Witches or The Wierd Sisters: "Wierd"

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The Witches or The Wierd Sisters: "Wierd"

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1a. The principle, power, or agency by which events are predetermined: fate.

1b. magical power, enchantment

2b. One pretending or supposed to have the power to forsee and to CONTROL future events; a witch or wizard, or a soothsayer.

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weird, n. meanings, etymology and more | Oxford English Dictionary

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weird, n. meanings, etymology, pronunciation and more in the Oxford English Dictionary

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"The Devil often tells us half-truths to win us to our harm." Banquo (Act 1, scene 3, line 131)

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"Come you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top full of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood. " Lady Macbeth (Act 1, scene 5, lines 47- 50)

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Jeremy Cornelius offers an eco-materialist reading of Macbeth with social understandings of witches and witchcraft connection between the conceptions of ecology. He explains how the three witches embodies and controls the weather. Cornelius uses the monologue of the Thane of Ross and the old man accounts of unnatural occurrences to illustrates the downfall of the ecosystem and mankind. For example the night of King Duncan's murder an owl killed a falcon, King Duncan's horses ate each other.

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The Elements of Ecological Style: Poetic Contagion and Epidemiological Witches in Macbeth. | EBSCOhost

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Discover this 2019 paper in Journal of the Wooden O by Cornelius, Jeremy

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Macbeth is set in 11th century Scotland. In John Martin's interpretation of the witches' meeting with Macbeth and Banquo it shows the landscape as dark, cold, and dreary. The witches appear as supernatural figures from the air. Macbeth and Banquo are isolated and become an target for the witches' manipulation.

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1. Macbeth would become the Thane of Cawdor

2. Banquo's heirs will become kings

3. Macbeth will become King of Scotland

4. Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane

5. "No man born of woman" can harm Macbeth

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Brian Chalk's essay explores how the tragedy of the play is surrounded by the present and absence of sleep. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth makes horrible decisions throughout the play during vulnerable sleeping moments of other characters. For example, Lady Macbeth persuades Macbeth to stay awake while others fall asleep to kill King Duncan. She also drugs the chamberlains to induced deep sleep. When King Duncan's body is discovered, Macbeth kills the chamberlains while they are still asleep. When King Macbeth sees visions of Banquo at the celebration dinner, Lady Macbeth insists that he needs sleep to feel better. Last example, Lady Macbeth found at her demise in her bed.

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"Me thought I heard a voice cry 'Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep' the innocent sleep."

Macbeth

(Act 2, scene 2, lines 47 - 48)

"Still it cried 'Sleep no more!' to all the house. 'Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor/ Shall sleep no more. Macbeth shall sleep no more.'

Macbeth

(Act 2, scene 2, lines 54 -57)

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The voices that Macbeth could have been hearing are the witches?

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The voices that Macbeth could have been hearing are the witches?

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Scholar Frank McGuinness believes that the three witches' prophecies are ambiguous. The witches are able to manipulate Macbeth's fate by appealing to his own weaknesses as a human to know more information. The witches feeds on his desire and his eagerness.

McGuinness argues that Macbeth becoming the Thane of Cawdor is a bad omen. It is a military promotion they may have happen without the witches' prediction.