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On Aug. 14, 2020, a rumor started to circulate on social media that the so-called Annabelle doll, the supposedly supernatural toy that inspired horror films such as "The Conjuring," had escaped from an occult museum in Connecticut:

The terms "Annabelle" and "Warren Museum" both started to trend on Twitter as social media users posted messages about the demonic doll that purportedly was on the loose. These fears, however, were for naught, as the Annabelle doll did not actually escape from the Warren Museum - it is, after all, an inanimate object.

For those unfamiliar, the Warren's Occult Museum was a real place and housed some of the artifacts collected by paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. The duo are perhaps most famous for investigating a haunted house in New York in 1975. That investigation inspired the book "The Amityville Horror" and several films of the same name. The pair also investigated reports about a Raggedy Ann Doll that was supposedly possessed by a young girl named Annabelle Higgins. This doll, which was later put on display at the museum, also inspired a number of horror movies.

Here's an image from the New England Society for Psychic Research Facebook page that supposedly shows the real Annabelle doll:

But the Warren's Occult Museum is no longer in operation. Both Ed and Lorraine Warren have passed away, and according to Atlas Obscura, the museum was closed in 2018. The Monroe Sun reported that the Warrens' son-in-law, Tony Spera, was looking for a new home for the museum (it was reportedly closed due to zoning issues), but the paranormal property has yet to reopen.

The status of the museum is a bit of a moot point, however, as this rumor did not start with any sort of police reports, ghoulish videos, spiritual sightings, or a frantic call from Spera to be on the look out for a demonic doll. In fact, Spera posted a YouTube video in which he disputed the "Annabelle escaped" rumors.

Spera said: "I'm here to tell you something, I don't know if you want to hear this or not, but Annabelle did not escape. Annabelle's alive - well, I shouldn't say alive - Annabelle's here, in all her infamous glory. She never left the museum."

This rumor appears to have originated with a mistranslation.

The rumor started circulating shortly after the Hollywood Reporter published an interview with Annabelle Wallis, the actress who played Mia in the "Annabelle" movie. Wallis talked about her new film, "The Silencing," as well as what it was like to work with Tom Cruise in "The Mummy." Wallis also talked about "running" in her interview, and the Hollywood Reporter included a video of some of the "escape" scenes from "The Mummy." As this news circulated on Chinese-language social media sites, the news about Wallis running appears to have been misconstrued as Annabelle (the doll) escaping.

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Did the Annabelle Doll Escape from the Warren Museum?

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On Aug. 14, 2020, a rumor started to circulate on social media that the so-called Annabelle doll, the supposedly supernatural toy that inspired horror films such as "The Conjuring," had escaped from an occult museum in Connecticut: The terms "Annabelle" and "Warren Museum" both started to trend on Twitter as social media users posted messages about the demonic doll that purportedly was on the loose.

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On a typical Wednesday, by the light of the waning moon, Kate Doucette joined several thousand strangers on the internet in casting a spell to "bind" Donald Trump.

Doucette - which is her married name, not her legal name - is one of the "resistance witches," an at least 13,000-strong umbrella group of internet neo-pagans, Wiccans, solo practitioners who self-identify as "hedge witches," longtime magical practitioners in various traditions, and committed activists. They've come together each month since Trump's inauguration with one goal: to perform a spell - equal parts quasi-religious ritual and activist performance - to "bind" the president, forming a collective known as the #MagicResistance.

The spell, a variant on a traditional "binding" spell found in many contemporary neo-pagan and other occult practices, involves channeling energy to limit Trump's power, "so that he may fail utterly/that he may do no harm." (Practitioners have the option to add, "You're fired.")

Some members, like Doucette, cast the spell alone at home, communicating with fellow activists by Facebook Messenger around each monthly ritual, which is timed to coincide with the waning moon, and exchanging photographs of home altars. Others like Magic Resistance NYC's moderator, known as Katherine Gojira, practice right in front of their stated enemy: casting the binding spell in front of Trump Tower.

But nearly all "resistance witches" share a passion for the collective aspect of their practice, allowing them to channel feelings of powerlessness about the current administration, while reviving a sense of community and ritual many report missing from their daily experience. Doucette was raised Catholic in a predominantly born-again Protestant Christian area. She said she left the church after finding its attitude toward sexuality and social issues regressive. She told Vox that for her, the binding spell was "very similar to prayer - which I've had no use for, for most of my life" - as well as to meditation, which she prefers.

Like many practitioners of the spell, Doucette was interested in the occult before. She'd signed up for classes at the online School of Witchery, but never cast a spell before she saw fellow interested witches post about the binding spell online. Yet the idea of joining an inclusive, welcoming community - and doing something to address her fear and anger in the wake of the election - motivated her to transform interest into practice. "I like the occult and I like activism," she said. The #MagicResistance offered her a chance to do both.

The practice, members say, reinforces a sense of community and identity much in the same way a more "traditional" Sunday morning church service might. At the same time, its roots in internet culture allow individuals and communities within the #MagicResistance to reimagine the binding spell to suit their own needs. The practice can satisfy a desire to meditate constructively alone or to make connections online with other activists who may not have as many anti-Trump allies on the ground. Whether or not the organization has any supernatural elements - either as religion or as magic - members have a space to simply counter a sense of powerlessness.

For practitioners, desperate times demand magical measures

Casting spells as a form of political protest might sound strange. But that, said Michel M. Hughes, one of the originators of the spell, is precisely the point.

"My thought from the beginning," he told Vox, "was that Trump's presidency was surreal and abnormal, therefore there was a need to counter him and resist his administration beyond the normal channels like public protests, petitions, emails, and calls to representatives." Hughes, likewise saw the spell's efficacy as, in part, granting a kind of power to its participants: "One very powerful element of the spell is its ability to allow participants to take back their power from the out-of-control administration."

Hughes is the only originator of the spell - he says it was co-created by a small community of like-minded occultists - to speak publicly about its genesis. It later went viral after being republished on Medium by Defiant's Matthew Gault.

The spell itself requires certain symbolic elements: a black candle, a white candle, a shorter orange candle to represent Trump. Participants can replace this with baby carrots, photos, or even Cheetos. They are encouraged to modify the spell in ways that feel meaningful to them. Doucette, who grew up near the woods, adds a chant of protection for the "wild places" she worries might be affected by Trump's environmental policies. Gojira said she likes to shower and put on makeup before rituals: "It makes me feel confident. I have something to say to the universe, and the universe is going to listen."

For some participants, the ritualistic aspect of spellcraft allows them to revisit what they valued in childhood religious traditions, often without the dogmatic elements that drove them away. Both Hughes and Gojira told Vox they were raised Catholic, and incorporate elements of that tradition into their practice. Gojira wears her St. Catherine of Alexandria medal every day. Hughes, who "always loved ritualistic aspects of religion" - from music to incense - incorporates Catholic imagery into his practice.

This willingness to mix and match elements of different faith traditions and pantheons, according to Gault - himself a longtime practitioner - is indicative of the wider tradition of "chaos magic" (sometimes spelled chaos magick), a tradition that arose out of the '60s and '70s counterculture (one sometime practitioner was experimental writer William S. Burroughs) that emphasized a pragmatic, personal approach to the occult, rather than working within rigid structures or pantheons. "You're not married to old, dusty books from the last century," Gault said.

That chaos magic should reach its zenith on the internet, Gault told Vox, is hardly surprising - it is, after all, the "spirit of the internet," which rewards "decentralized information spreading."

He pointed out the prevalence of various quasi-occult images and memes among the alt-right: the performance of Kek worship, for example (in which popular alt-right symbol Pepe the Frog is venerated by some in that community, albeit with no small degree of irony, as a chaos god), or professions of belief in meme magic, the notion that internet memes (such as the "Sick Hillary" meme prevalent during the 2016 election cycle) might affect real life. (When Clinton really did get ill at a 9/11 memorial, internet denizens joked that "meme magic" was behind it all.)There too, Gault noted, a kind of grounds-up, anarchic approach to ritual and religious imagery served a political aim: countering what he called the "top-down neoliberalism" that many on the political right objected to.

But with the (alt-)right seemingly in power, Gault said, the time was right for the left to reclaim the power of the internet, whether magical or otherwise. "Anger brings people together in ways hope sometimes can't," he said.

But that still leaves one question - does the ritual work? For Gault, as for many practitioners, it almost doesn't matter. He doesn't "rule it out." But he also pointed out that in his wider magic practice, the efficacy of spellwork could be as easily subscribed to its psychological impact - the way rituals informed his state of mind and gave him motivation to act - as to the supernatural.

AsDoucette put it: "I'm cynical. Much as I don't think my vote has an effect, I don't think my spell is binding anyone. But for me, the practice of a community getting together for a common goal ... it kind of filled something in me."

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Each month, thousands of witches cast a spell against Donald Trump

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On a typical Wednesday, by the light of the waning moon, Kate Doucette joined several thousand strangers on the internet in casting a spell to "bind" Donald Trump. Doucette - which is her married name, not her legal name - is one of the "resistance witches," an at least 13,000-strong umbrella group of internet neo-pagans, Wiccans, solo practitioners who self-identify as "hedge witches," longtime magical practitioners in various traditions, and committed activists.

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Lectures by Walter Lewin. They will make you ♥ Physics.

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For the Love of Physics - Walter Lewin - May 16, 2011

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Why people believe weird things | Michael Shermer

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UPI reports that Sabelo Dlamini, marketing and corporate affairs director for the Civil Aviation Authority in the tiny southern African kingdom, was addressing reporters about the case of a private detective arrested for flying a remote-control toy helicopter outfitted with a video camera. The accused faces charges of operating an unregistered aircraft and failing to appear before his tribal chief.

When asked to explain the applicable laws in the case, Dlamini replied that "a witch on a broomstick should not fly above the limit," that limit being legally set at 150 meters (492 feet).

The same statute also applies to remote-control toy aircraft and children's kites. Violators can be punished by imprisonment or a fine as high as R500,000, or about $55,000.

UPI reports that Swazi press had a hard time discerning whether or not Dlamini was serious, but belief in witches is very serious in the traditional African kingdom. In fact, in 2010 an albino girl was shot dead in front of her friends and then beheaded in what police said was a ritual murder. Witch doctors believe that the blood and body parts of albino children bring good luck when used in potions.

But in Swaziland, brooms consist of short bundles of sticks lashed together without handles, making them quite a challenge for witches to ride off into the moonrise. According to South Africa's Times Live, Swazi witches typically use their brooms to fling potions about, not for transportation.

Odd laws governing women periodically make headlines in Swaziland, where the authoritarian King Mswati III has ruled his million subjects by decree since 1986.

In 2002, the royal household decreed that women should not wear trousers, and that soldiers who spotted them doing so could tear them off.

More recently, it was the "rape-provoking" miniskirt that drew the king's ire.

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Swaziland official: 150m-altitude limit for witches on brooms

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UPI reports that Sabelo Dlamini, marketing and corporate affairs director for the Civil Aviation Authority in the tiny southern African kingdom, was addressing reporters about the case of a private detective arrested for flying a remote-control toy helicopter outfitted with a video camera.

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Scooby-Doo! | Unmasking Classic Villains Compilation | WB Kids

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Neil deGrasse Tyson Applied Science to the Tooth Fairy

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History 2D: Science, Magic, and Religion, Lecture 1, UCLA

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Medea of Greek Myth?

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The Curse of La Llorona - Official Trailer [HD]

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Teofilo Ruiz UCLA

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Children abused, killed as witches in Nigeria - CNN.com.mp4

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Then bad things begin to happen.  He must be a wi.

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African Children 's Aid Education and Development Foundation

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Child 's Rights and Rehabilitation Network

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Starving Child Abandoned because of "Witchcraft" Rescued by Aid Worker

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Lagos, Nigeria - The boy was abandoned by his family, who accused him of being a witch, according to the aid worker who found him in Uyo, southeast Nigeria. Danish aid worker Anja Ringgren Loven says the boy, whom she calls Hope, had been living on the streets and survived on scraps from passersby.

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Jewish Folklore

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A Serious Man: Yiddish dybbuk opening scene

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Witch or Saint?

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Rhonda Byrne and The Secret

The book is called The Secret, but it didn't remain a secret for very long. Already the book has sold more than three million copies, and there are nearly two million DVDs of the teaching. There seems to be no end to the public's interest in this message presented by Rhonda Byrne.

Some call The Secret a transformative message. Others see it as a popular combination of marketing that parallels the success of The DaVinci Code with the message found in Eastern religions and philosophies throughout the centuries. Whatever it is, it has exploded in our culture ever since Rhonda Byrne's first appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

The Secret has been promoted as "a feature length, historic and factually based account of an age old secret" which is said to be four thousand years in the making and "known to only a fortunate few." The DVD and the book reveal "this great knowledge to the world." Supposedly it is the secret to wealth, the secret to health, the secret to love, relationships, happiness, and eternal youth.

The basic premise of The Secret was borne from the troubles that affected Rhonda Byrne. She is a television producer and mother in her fifties. A number of years ago she "hit a rocky patch in her business and personal lives."{1} Her father died suddenly and her relationships with her family and work colleagues were in turmoil. It was at that moment of despair when she "wept and wept and wept" that she discovered a long-neglected book entitled The Science of Getting Rich.{2}

In the book she discovered how to let your thoughts and feelings give you everything that you desire. She then dedicated herself to sharing these principles with the world in the form of The Secret.

Many have called it marketing genius. After all, all of us want to be in on a secret. So why wouldn't we all want to know the secret to life? That is what Rhonda Byrne promised in her DVD. "Torchlights flicker on the 90-minute DVD and the soundtrack throbs portentously before it gets down to giving you the secret for getting your hands on that new BMW."{3}

Its success shouldn't be too surprising. After all, many self-help authors have become celebrities and quite financially successful by addressing American's desperate need for happiness and significance.

Several show up as contributors to The Secret. For example, Wayne Dyer has written nearly thirty books on the subject of self-help. His 1976 book, Your Erroneous Zones, has sold over thirty million copies. Jack Canfield is best known for his Chicken Soup for the Soul book series. There are currently over 115 titles and 100 million copies in print.

The Law of Attraction

Rhonda Byrne's book and DVD on The Secret supposedly bring together "the oral traditions, in literature, in religions and philosophies throughout the centuries."{4} These pieces are brought together to produce this life-transforming message.

While it is passed off as new and exciting, there are many other teachers who preceded The Secret with a similar message. Charles Fillmore, who founded the Unity School of Christianity, talked about "The Twelve Powers of Man," arguing that the causes of all things are "essentially mental." Norman Vincent Peale is best known for his The Power of Positive Thinking. Deepak Chopra talks about "The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success." Motivational speaker Tony Robbins believes "it's our decisions, not the conditions of our lives, that determine our destiny."{5}

Rhonda Byrne not only relies on people she calls the guardians of The Secret, but also upon a documentary released a number of years ago called What the Bleep Do We Know? The film makes all sorts of metaphysical claims based upon their particular interpretation of quantum physics.

According to Rhonda Byrne, the key element of The Secret is what is called "The Law of Attraction."{6} You can summarize the law with three words: "Thoughts become things." In other words, if you think hard enough about something, it will take place. Think good thoughts, and you will reap good things. Think bad thoughts, and bad things will happen to you. You create your own circumstances, and you can change those circumstances with your thoughts.

A central teaching of "The Law of Attraction" is that nothing can come into your experience unless you summon it through persistent thoughts. Thus, everything that surrounds you right now (both good and bad) has been attracted to you. As you focus on what you want, you are changing the vibration of atoms of that thing so that they begin to vibrate to you.{7} Ultimately, you determine the frequency or vibration so that you can best acquire wealth, health, and fulfillment.

Do you want something? Then you need to focus on it. In one segment in the DVD, a kid who wants a red BMX bicycle cuts out a picture of it from a catalog. He concentrates on it and even obsesses about it. He is rewarded with a bike.

Do you want to lose weight? Do the same thing. Rhonda Byrne talked about the weight she gained after her pregnancies. But once she applied "The Law of Attraction," she realized her error: "Food is not responsible for putting on weight. It is your thought that food is responsible for putting on weight that actually has food put on weight."

Do you want to get healthy? Visualize health. One woman in the DVD claims to have cured her breast cancer in three months without chemotherapy or radiation. She claims she did this by visualizing herself well and watching funny movies on television.

The Seductive Message

The incredible popularity of The Secret illustrates the spiritual hunger in our culture. But while people are hungry for spirituality, they are not willing to attend church to be fed spiritually. Instead they go to the bookstore and buy this book or DVD along with other books dealing with spirituality.

A buyer for West Hollywood's popular metaphysical bookstore, The Bodhi Tree, said that DVD of The Secret had "become the biggest selling item in the 30-year history of our store." Why has it become so successful? Here is what a writer for Time magazine concluded:

Mixing the ancient conspiracy hoodoo of The DaVinci Code with the psychic science of 2004's cult hit What the Bleep Do We Know?, it interweaves computer graphics, historical recreations and interviews with "experts" into a study of "intention-manifestation" - the philosophy that contends our emotions and thoughts can actually influence real-world events. In other words: if you really, truly believe you can beat the lottery and visualize scratching off a winning ticket, you can do exactly that.{8}

The appeal of The Secret is understandable. People want to be wealthy and healthy. But this false philosophy leads to death and destruction. In Colossians 2:8, Paul warns Christians: "See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of the world rather than on Christ."

There are countless examples that demonstrate that "The Law of Attraction" does not work. If you don't think so, try this simple experiment. Visualize that you have a million dollars in your checking account. Think lots of positive thoughts about all the money you assume is in your checking account. Then go to the bank and write a really big check. The cashier might even have positive thoughts about your account. But then you will come face-to-face with reality. The bank's computers don't have positive thoughts about your checking account, nor do they have negative thoughts about your checking account. They are just doing the math. Despite all the positive feelings you can muster, your check will bounce.

Even those who accept the metaphysical basis of The Secret are concerned with its seductive message that appeals to our materialism. After all, practitioners are using this supposed ancient wisdom to acquire material goods. One of the "experts" in the film says: " The Secret is like having the universe as your catalog."{9}

Many wonder if acquiring more possessions is what The Secret should be all about. " align=center href="text10″ ways.?{10}

Spiritually Dangerous

We have already shown that the premise of The Secret is false. You cannot alter reality simply with your thoughts. "The Law of Attraction" can essentially be summarized with three words: "Thoughts become things." That is not true.

But the teachings of The Secret are not only false; they are spiritually dangerous.

Rhonda Byrne makes this observation in her book: "So whatever way you look at it, the result is still the same. We are One. We are all connected, and we are all part of the One Energy Field, or the One Supreme Mind, or the One Consciousness, or the One Creative Source. Call it whatever you want, but we are all One."{11}

Essentially she is teaching that we can become gods. We are God in a physical body. We are the creative source and the have the cosmic power to manipulate the universe according to our own desires. We are creating our own reality and thus can manipulate that reality to our own ends.{12}

Contrast that with the temptation in the Garden of Eden where Satan tells Eve "you will be like God" (Genesis 3:5). Why is The Secret so popular? Because we are tempted to be "like God."

It is one of the enemy's oldest tricks in The Book. Satan knows that we are vulnerable to this desire to be "like God." Satan tempted Eve in the Garden with this tactic, and he is tempting millions today with the same tactic.

John warned us of the temptations in the world: "Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world" (1 John 2:15-16).

We must choose that which we love and worship. Are we going to love the world and all that is in the world? Or are we going to love God? We must choose what we will love and which view of reality we will accept.

We are admonished "to bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ" (2 Corinthians 10:5). The principles in The Secret are not biblical principles but pagan, worldly principles that have been around since the beginning.

The Secret calls upon us to use our thoughts for our own selfish desires. Paul, however, tells us in Romans 12:1-2 that we are to present our bodies as a sacrifice to the Lord. We are to be selfless, not selfish.

(For more information on the spiritual dangers of The Secret, see Russ Wise's in-depth analysis, which uncovers the occultic connection with several contributors to the project.)

The Secret and Science

To prove "The Law of Attraction," the foundational principle in The Secret, Rhonda Byrne's DVD presents physicists who imply that the latest scientific discoveries validate this metaphysical principle. One of the "experts" in the film is Fred Alan Wolf who apparently talked about the relationship between quantum mechanics and consciousness. Evidently, most of this wound up on the cutting room floor.{13}

The other "expert" on the film is John Hagelin, who is affiliated with Maharishi University. Both Wolf and Hagelin distanced themselves from the ideas in the DVD and acknowledged that "The Law of Attraction" does not seem to work in reality the way it is described in The Secret.

Some of the ideas in The Secret can also be found in the film, What the Bleep Do We Know? The documentary combines interviews along with a fictional narrative to bring together thoughts about the possible connection between quantum physics and spirituality. The interviews and computer graphics imply that the latest scientific discoveries (in neuroscience, psychology, physics, etc.) suggest that we can manipulate the universe with our mind.

The film even sets forth the principle that the universe is actually constructed from thought or mental images rather than some substance. It goes on to suggest that "empty space" is anything but empty. And it teaches that our beliefs about who we are and what is reality are influenced by our own thoughts and mental perspective.

The film may be interesting fiction and metaphysics; it is very poor psychology and physics. Scientists have rejected the ideas in the film as nothing more than pseudoscience with no relation to reality.

The message of The Secret also bears no relation to reality. It says, "Food is not responsible for putting on weight. It is your thought that food is responsible for putting on weight that actually has food put on weight." Science disagrees.

But the message is also dangerous. Karin Klein with the Los Angeles Times recounts the dangerous impact of The Secret on those who follow its prescription: "Therapists tell me they're starting to see clients who are headed for real trouble, immersing themselves in a dream world in which good things just come."{14}

It's not surprising that The Secret is popular. People are spiritually hungry, and the book and DVD partially feed that hunger. The message is seductive, but as we have also seen it is wrong, and more importantly, it is dangerous. It is one of the enemy's oldest tricks in The Book. We need to exercise spiritual discernment and realize the false teaching in The Secret.
Notes
1. Jerry Adler, "Decoding The Secret," Newsweek, 5 March 2007, 53.
2. Wallace Wattles, The Science of Getting Rich, 1910, www.scienceofgettingrich.net.
3. Adler, Decoding, 53-54.
4. Home page of The Secret, www.thesecret.tv/home-synopsis.html.
5. Adler, Decoding, 55.
6. Rhonda Byrne, The Secret (New York: Atria Books, 2006), 28.
7. Ibid., 156.
8. Jeffrey Ressner, "The Secret of Success," Time, 28 December 2006.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Byrne, The Secret, 162.
12. Ibid., 164.
13. Adler, Decoding, 57.
14. Karin Klein, "Self-help gone nutty," Los Angeles Times, 13 February 2007.

© 2007 Probe Ministries

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The False Teaching of "The Secret" - A Christian Evaluation

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The book is called The Secret, but it didn't remain a secret for very long. Already the book has sold more than three million copies, and there are nearly two million DVDs of the teaching. There seems to be no end to the public's interest in this message presented by Rhonda Byrne.

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NORTH BETHESDA, Md. (WJLA) - A handwritten journal could prove premeditation in the brutal stabbing death of a 67-year-old woman.

On Wednesday, Montgomery County Police arrested Rita Sanders-Campfield, 53, on a charge of first degree murder. Sanders-Campfield is accused of killing her roommate, Chong Park, 67, inside the North Bethesda condo the two women shared.

Silver Spring-based not-for-profit group, Housing Unlimited, Inc., owns the property. The group provides affordable housing for low-income adults with mental health disorders. Sanders-Campfield and Park were assigned to a two-bedroom unit in the White Flint Station condominium building, along the 11800 block of Old Georgetown Road.

According to charging documents filed in Montgomery County District Court, Park's daughter contacted Housing Unlimited, Inc., early Tuesday. She was concerned after not hearing from her mother for four days.

Around 10 a.m., an employee with Housing Unlimited, Inc., reported to the condo and knocked on the front door. When no one answered, he used a master key to gain entry. He used the same key to enter Park's locked bedroom. There he found the 67-year-old lying on the ground with a large butcher knife sticking out of her back. Police arrived within minutes and quickly determined Park was deceased. Investigators say she had multiple deeply penetrating stab wounds spread across her back.

Officers swept the condo and found Sanders-Campfield in the adjacent bedroom, squirming under the sheets of her bed. She had injuries, possibly bite marks, lining her right arm.

While executing a search warrant, crime scene technicians found a purple dress and shirt in Sanders-Campfield's closet. They also discovered scissors on her bed. All three items were covered in blood. Police later located Sanders-Campfield's personal journal. The diary allegedly included a handwritten passage about Park, which referred to the 67-year-old as "evil" and stated she "practiced witchcraft."

On Wednesday, Sanders-Campfield appeared via closed-circuit television in Montgomery County District Court for her bond review. She addressed the camera in an olive green jail suit, but did not utter a word. Her public defender stated she'd already visited the 53-year-old at the county lockup. She said Sanders-Campfield was speaking to herself and in an overall catatonic state. The judge postponed bond review until Dec. 10, allowing time for a court diagnostic study to be conducted.

In May, Sanders-Campfield spoke during an annual fundraising event for Housing Unlimited, Inc., where 300 people were in attendance. In fact, her five-minute speech is currently posted on YouTube.

"Today I live in a lovely beautiful home in North Bethesda with a roommate named Chong Park. Our two-bedroom condo is perfect for both of us. It has a party room, gym, and a grocery store right across the street," Sanders-Campfield said with a proud smile on her face.

The 53-year-old went on to discuss the sudden death of her husband in 1999, and the deep depression his passing put her in. But life appeared to be looking-up. Sanders-Campfield, who received a doctorate degree from American University, spoke about her two adult children's collegiate pursuits and her own push to rejoin the workforce.

"I have learned a lot about myself in the three years I have lived in my home. My independence has been terrific for me," Sanders-Campfield added. "With the support of the Housing Unlimited staff and my affordable housing, I know that I can take the next step."

Housing Unlimited, Inc., which serves 165 individuals in 58 homes throughout Montgomery County, called the homicide a horrible, yet stand-alone tragedy:

"We are deeply saddened by the death of our tenant Chong Park... Ms. Park had been our tenant since July of 2006. During these eight and a half years, she was a model tenant-caring, conscientious, warm, friendly, and well-liked by all... Housing Unlimited has served hundreds of individuals over the years. The death of Ms. Park is the only incident of this nature in our 20 years of operation," CEO Abe Schuchman said.

ABC 7 News visited a home along the 9100 block of Jones Mill Road in Chevy Chase. A woman answered the door and identified herself as Sanders-Campfield's relative. When informed about the criminal case against her loved one, the woman replied, "Oh my God!"

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Police: Murder suspect accused victim of being "evil" and practicing "witchcraft"

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NORTH BETHESDA, Md. (WJLA) - A handwritten journal could prove premeditation in the brutal stabbing death of a 67-year-old woman. On Wednesday, Montgomery County Police arrested Rita Sanders-Campfield, 53, on a charge of first degree murder. Sanders-Campfield is accused of killing her roommate, Chong Park, 67, inside the North Bethesda condo the two women shared.

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A gang reportedly burned seven men to death for allegedly possessing human bones intended for use in witchcraft.

The incensed mob in the Nsanje district of Malawi are said to have attacked the suspects then set them on fire using petrol.

According to the Nyasa Times reports, police officer Kirby Kaunga said: "We have not yet made any arrest, we are currently investigating the matter."

The region has seen a big increase in the trade of body parts, and those from albinos in particular are thought to possess special powers which can bring good luck.

According to the International Red Cross, a "complete set" of albino body parts - including all four limbs, genitals, ears, tongue and nose - can fetch up to $75,000 (£50,000) in neighbouring Tanzania.

Malawi's Inspector General of Police, Lexen Kachama, has responded to the ongoing crisis by ordering his officers to "shoot-to-kill those caught in the act of abducting or killing albinos", reports.

"We first heard of such horrible stories of albino abductions and killings in neighbouring Tanzania. The problem has now spilled to Malawi and hence it is important to fight against this criminality aggressively and professionally," he said.

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Villagers burn seven men to death for suspected witchcraft

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A gang reportedly burned seven men to death for allegedly possessing human bones intended for use in witchcraft. The incensed mob in the Nsanje district of Malawi are said to have attacked the suspects then set them on fire using petrol.

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Mrs Rookwood admitted the school owned sets of Harry Potter books, but said the governors, staff and herself had agreed they were not the sort of books they wanted to make freely available to their pupils.

She said pupils had studied The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis, but that that book was "not a problem" because it shows an evil witch who is overcome by the powers of good.

"I am not aware of any parents who disagree. Some have said they don't agree with my reasons but applaud the responsible stance we are taking," she added.

The National Secular Society reacted angrily to the ban.

NSS general secretary Keith Porteous Wood said: "Children's imaginations have been nourished for centuries with stories of wizards, witches and fairies.

"In this age of declining literacy, banning popular children's books is doing pupils a great disservice."

US complaints

Mrs Rookwood's decision follows complaints in the United States about the books.

Parents in a number of states have tried to get the Harry Potter books banned, saying they were unhappy at the way they depicted death, evil and hatred.

Last year, JK Rowling hit back at the complaints, saying the books were "very moral" in their representation of the struggle between good and evil.

She said the novels needed to include such ingredients to honestly tell their stories.

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bbc news world uk international foreign british online service

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BBC News | EDUCATION | School bans Harry Potter

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Mrs Rookwood admitted the school owned sets of Harry Potter books, but said the governors, staff and herself had agreed they were not the sort of books they wanted to make freely available to their pupils.

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BANGKOK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Police in Papua New Guinea vowed to find the men who axed to death a woman accused of using witchcraft to spark a measles outbreak in the country's remote jungle highlands, a missionary said on Wednesday after meeting authorities.

The woman, Mifila, was one of four women accused with 13 of their family members of using sorcery to cause measles deaths last November in the village of Fiyawena, in Enga province, said Lutheran missionary Anton Lutz.

Women are often accused and killed in witch hunts even though laws passed in 2013 make revenge killings over black magic punishable by death. Human Rights Watch earlier this year named Papua New Guinea as one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman due to gender based violence.

Lutz, an American who grew up in the South Pacific nation, led a group of about 20 missionaries and local police to Fiyawena in January to intervene and save the women's lives.

But last week about 10 men from a village across the river from Fiyawena, armed with homemade guns, axes and machetes, attacked two of the women and killed Mifila in front of her family, witnesses from the village told Lutz.

"Police have promised to move in and take action," Lutz told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by telephone after meeting with local and provincial police in Enga's capital Wabag.

"The villagers are still scared that the men will come back. It's still a tense situation for the community," he said, adding that the only access to the village is by walking for several hours or getting a plane to a local landing strip.

"It's deep jungle out there ... This is a big piece of jungle for people to hide in."

Police could not immediately be reached for comment.

Papua New Guinea is one of the poorest countries in the world with the majority of its 7 million people living in traditional societies.

People in the country are deeply superstitious and accusations of sorcery are commonly used to explain deaths caused by disease or to kill rivals or enemies.

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Woman accused of witchcraft axed to death in PNG: missionary

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BANGKOK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Police in Papua New Guinea vowed to find the men who axed to death a woman accused of using witchcraft to spark a measles outbreak in the country's remote jungle highlands, a missionary said on Wednesday after meeting authorities.

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Two months ago Hope was living on the streets of Nigeria, riddled with worms, on the brink of starvation and cast out from his community accused of being a "witch".

Now, new pictures shared by the aid worker who adopted him reveal the extraordinary transformation he has undergone in a matter of weeks.

An image of Danish philanthropist Anja Ringgren Lovén giving water to Hope was shared around the world at the end of January.

The boy's story has since sparked an awareness campaign, led by the African Children's Aid Education and Development Foundation (ACAEDF), which Ms Lovén founded with her husband David.

In an update on her Facebook page, Ms Lovén informed Hope's supporters the boy was due to undergo corrective surgery to treat hypospadias, "an inborn condition in which one has an incomplete developed urethra".

The surgery is expected to take place next week, but "this is an operation the doctors have performed many times, so [he] will be fine", Ms Lovén said.

"As you can see on the pictures Hope is really enjoying his life now having 35 new brothers and sisters who ALL take such good care of him, play with him, study with him, and make sure he is safe and is getting a lot of love," she added.

Ms Lovén has previously spoken about how she gave up everything she had in Denmark to set up a foundation for Nigeria's so-called "witch children".

She said she first saw the problems created by superstition in rural Nigeria when she travelled there alone three years ago and met children "who had been tortured and beaten almost to death because they were accused of being witches and therefore left alone on the street".

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What the starving 'witch' boy looks like now, just 8 weeks after he was saved

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Two months ago Hope was living on the streets of Nigeria, riddled with worms, on the brink of starvation and cast out from his community accused of being a "witch". Now, new pictures shared by the aid worker who adopted him reveal the extraordinary transformation he has undergone in a matter of weeks.

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Calls have been made for authorities in Papua New Guinea to prevent the killing of women accused of sorcery after a woman was reportedly hacked to death.

The woman, known as Misila, was accused of black magic and reportedly killed in a remote part of the highlands by attackers from another village last week.

Human rights group Amnesty International said that authorities in Papua New Guinea needed to offer more protection to two other women also accused of sorcery.

Kate Schuetze, Amnesty International's Pacific Researcher, said: "The vicious killing of Misila highlights the Papua New Guinean government's persistent failure to address the wave of attacks against those, mainly women, accused of 'sorcery'. The government must act immediately to ensure that the perpetrators of such attacks are brought to justice."

"The fact that two other women who only narrowly escaped death last week are at imminent risk means that the government must act now."

Schuetze said protection needed to be given to these women and that police needed to be given resources to travel to remote communities to ensure that attacks were investigated.

Perpetrators, she said, needed to be brought to justice in fair trials.

In January, Misila was one of four women who were saved from death by police and missionaries. They were accused of sorcery after several people died from a measles outbreak in Enga province last year.

Police deputy commander Epenes Nili of Enga province took part in the intervention.

He told Guardian Australia: "The lady, she was accused of performing magic resulting in the death of several people in the village. With this total lie, just because of the strong belief in [sorcery] there, she was murdered. Not by a relative but by another group of people."

"I was so frustrated and so angry at what really happened, I am now compiling a full report."

Nili said: "What I will be doing is asking everyone to make a submission and request to the parliamentarians and the leaders if they can fund my trip to fly about 10-12 policemen including a medical doctor to exhume the body and conduct a post-mortem and immediately arrest the suspects, those who are aiding the suspects and those who took part in the murder..."

The 1971 Sorcery Act, which gave reduced sentences for those who committed assault or murder if they believed their victim had committed acts of sorcery, was repealed by the Papua New Guinean government in 2013.

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Villagers hack woman to death for being a sorceress

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Calls have been made for authorities in Papua New Guinea to prevent the killing of women accused of sorcery after a woman was reportedly hacked to death. The woman, known as Misila, was accused of black magic and reportedly killed in a remote part of the highlands by attackers from another village last week.

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Witchcraft beliefs and the erosion of social capital: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa and beyond

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This paper examines the relationship between witchcraft beliefs, a deep-rooted cultural phenomenon, and various elements of social capital. Using nove...

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Here's another chapter of the little book / long essay I wrote in 2008, called Everything Is Full of Gods, about the connection between comics, animation, and animism. In this chapter, I talk about Renaissance magic, and how it influenced contemporary comic culture.
Florence 1463 AD. In the library of the Villa Careggi, Marcilio Ficino, the greatest scholar of the age, is hard at work. He has recently been made head of a new Platonic academy, based in the Villa Careggi and sponsored by Cosimo De Medici, the ruler of Florence and one of the richest and most powerful men in Europe. Ficino is bent over his desk, translating manuscripts of Plato's lost works, which have recently been re-discovered and brought over from Byzantium.

But then the door of the library flies open. It is Cosimo De Medici himself. The boss. He is almost 80 years old, frail and sick, but his eyes are shining like a young boy's, and in his quivering hands is an old and dusty manuscript.

De Medici is an avid book collector, and he has a vast network of scouts sent out across the known world, like so many Indiana Joneses, to discover lost and ancient manuscripts, magical texts that promise superhuman powers to those who find them.

No manuscript has been more sought after than the one he now, finally, holds in his hands - the Corpus Hermeticum, which contain the secret teachings of the great Hermes Trismegistus, the ancient Egyptian prophet, the mightiest magus of them all. He hands over the manuscript to Ficino and tells him to get to work translating it immediately. Plato can wait.

Somehow, for a century, Renaissance magi managed to disseminate such heretical notions under the eyes of the Vatican. Man, briefly, became a superman. But it was inevitable that there would be a backlash, and when it came, thousands of witches, and even some scholarly magi, were burnt at the stake.

Until the 15 century, the Catholic Church had exercised a ruthless monopoly on magic. Only Christian magic was allowed, such as the Eucharist, exorcism, or the Cult of Saints, and these accepted forms of magic were only allowed to be practiced by official representatives of the Church. Other, more illicit, forms of magic were still quietly practiced in rural communities by the village witch or cunning man. But they were considered vulgar and plebeian by the intellectual elite.

But when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Empire in 1453, a steady stream of ancient manuscripts arrived in Europe by the likes of Plato, Porphyry, even the great Hermes Trismegistus himself, and these texts were far from vulgar. Their discovery and translation during the Renaissance gave a huge amount of intellectual credibility to magic, so that it captured the minds of leading scholars like Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, or Giordano Bruno.

What gave the Corpus Hermeticum such great intellectual credibility was its supposed antiquity. It was generally believed to be the words of Hermes Trismegistus, a magical Egyptian prophet thought to have lived in Egypt in the time of Moses.

The authority for this dating was, chiefly, the third century Church father, Lactantius, who wrote of the powerful and prolific Hermes Trismegistus, who lived many years before Plato and Pythaogoras, and who managed to prophesy the coming of Christ.

Hermes was thus seen by scholars like Ficino as being a very early source for ancient wisdom and magic - earlier than Plato, earlier than Christ, perhaps even earlier than Moses. And this seemed to be borne out by the similarity between the Corpus Hermeticum and Christian, Platonic and Neoplatonic texts, which suggested that Hermes had indeed prophesized Christ's coming, and had also been the original source of many of the ideas of Plato.

That is why it is so full of Neoplatonic and Gnostic ideas - not because it anticipated and influenced Plato, but because it was written centuries after him, and after Christ, in the heady mileu of the second and third century AD, the golden age of Gnosticism, Neoplatonism and magic.

Still, Ficino and other Renaissance magi did not know this, and fully believed that the Corpus Hermeticum was almost as holy and ancient a text as the Bible. The Egyptian magus rose quickly to the status of an honorary prophet of Christianity, on a par with Moses. He appeared on a mosaic in the centre of Sienna Cathedral, and even (scholars believe) in a mural on the walls of the Vatican itself.

This animate universe was filled with symbols, secret messages and hidden correspondences. Images, words, musical notes and objects here on Earth held mysterious connections to planets, demons and angels in Heaven. 'As above, so below', as the alchemical saying put it.

The wise magus could, with the help of his magical texts, learn these hidden correspondences and manipulate them, thereby drawing down spirits from the heavens above into material objects below, or even into his own person. He could marry heaven and earth together, and the offspring of this marriage would be the super-empowered magus himself.

If the magus could unite his mind with the divine mind, then he could travel anywhere he wanted, as fast as the speed of thought. Thus in the Corpus Hermeticum we read: "Command your soul to be in India, to cross the Ocean; in a moment it will be done. Command it to fly up to heaven. It will not need wings; nothing can prevent it. And if you wish to break through the vault of the universe and to contemplate what is beyond - if there is anything beyond the world - you may do it."

This particularly impressed Ficino. He was a great believer in astrology, and was terrified by the malevolent influence of the planet Saturn, which was supposed to bring bad luck and depression to those under its influence, particularly bookish scholars like him.

The Hermetic texts claimed that the bad emanations of Saturn could be counter-balanced by the more positive influence of other planets, such as the Sun, Jupiter, Mercury and Venus. The magus could draw down the powers of these planets by using certain plants, colours, metals and songs. He could also inscribe images of the planets onto objects, and use these as talismans to "capture the stars" as Ficino put it.

Thus the magus was like the Greek hero, who gained his superpowers through the favour of Jupiter, Venus or Neptune. But while the Greek hero gained the favour of these planet-gods through his genes, the magus was much more in control. He could manipulate the planets as and when he wanted, using his astral magic.

Venus, for example, was a good counterbalance to the bad vibes of Saturn. Ficino recommended singing and playing certain Orphic hymns to bring her influence down, as well as surrounding oneself with green objects (Venus was attracted to the colour green) and invoking her using a talisman engraved with the image of "a woman with her hair unbound riding on a stag, having in her right hand an apple and in her left, flowers, and dressed in white garments", as the Medieval text the Picatrix describes it.

Astrological talismans, we note in passing, would play a major role in the symbolism of comics half a millennia later. For example, in the DC universe, bored playboy Ted Knight invents a gravity rod that can draw down 'powerful infra-rays from distant stars', transforming him into the superhero Starman. The schoolgirl heroines of Sailor Moon, the very successful manga series, transform into Zodiac forces - Sailor Moon, Sailor Mercury, Sailor Mars and so on. Lili, the heroine of the manga comic Zodiac PI, uses astrological forecasts and her magic 'star-ring' to solve crimes. And the family at the centre of the manga series Fruit Baskets are possessed by the animal spirits of the Chinese Zodiac.

While Ficino was content to try to use astral magic to avoid the depressive influence of Saturn, his bold young apprentice, Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola, had altogether grander ambitions for his magic. In 1486, at the tender age of 23, Pico set off for Rome with 900 theses he had written, which he thought would synthesize all knowledge, combine all magical systems, and possibly trigger the second coming of Christ.

The 900 Theses, and the introductory Oration on the Dignity of Man, are an incredible assertion of confidence: both the young Pico's confidence in himself, and his confidence in the potential of man, and above all his confidence in the power of magic. Indeed, the leading historian of Renaissance magic, Frances Yates, called his Oration "the great charter of Renaissance magic".

Like a true Gnostic, Pico thought that man was capable of attaining "divine perfection" in this life, and the surest way to do that, he believed, was through the Jewish magic of Kabbalah. This was, for Pico, the essential ingredient in the caldron of Renaissance magic. As he declared in his Theses: "Nothing really effective is possible in magic, unless you add the work of Kabbalah..."

However, like the Hermetic works, it may not have been as ancient as was generally believed. The great scholar of Kabbalah, Gershom Scholem, points out certain telltale signs in the Zohar that suggest it was written much later than the 2nd century, such as the text's lack of knowledge about the geography of Israel, and some references to events which happened long after the second century. He believes that Moses de Leon himself is the most likely author.

For Scholem, medieval Kabbalah was actually something relatively new in Jewish history, something that first appeared in Provence in the twelfth century, and then flowered in Spain in the thirteenth century. A new mystic and magical strain suddenly appears in Jewish thought, and Scholem believes the source of it was Gnosticism - either the Gnostic ideas circulating in the south of France before the Albigensian Crusade, or from some other source not yet recognized.

In Kabbalah, then, we have similar Gnostic ideas as we meet in the Corpus Hermeticum: the idea that nature is a living, animate being, which is full of hidden symbols and connections if the observer is wise enough to perceive them. Kabbalah also shared with Hermeticism the radical Gnostic idea that the human soul could rise up from its material prison, ascend through the orders of demons and angels, and attain ecstatic union with the Divine in this life, through mystical meditation, and through magic.

This Medieval version of Gnostic magic and mysticism, refined by the learned Jewish community in Spain, was then introduced into the mainstream of western ideas following the expulsion of the Jews from Spain by the Spanish Inquisition in 1492, though Kabbalah was at that point already known to a few Hebrew specialists such as Pico.

What supernatural powers did Kabbalah promise? One form of Kabbalist magic, used to tell the future, involved the manipulation of concentric circles, on each of which was written the 22 letters of the sacred Hebrew alphabet. The Kabbalist would then ask a question of the device, and turn the circles at random to see what mystical response it would give.

Kabbalists such as the 13th century scholar Abraham Abulafia used this technique, known as the ars combinatoria, to achieve mystical states of consciousness and to predict the future. A similar sort of device, using letters on two or three concentric wheels, was used by the Christian mystic, Ramon Llull, who also lived in 13th century Spain.

This sort of magical device was the inspiration for the Golden Compass, or alethiometer, which Lyra can magically use to discover the truth in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. The alethiometer, like Llull's device, has 36 symbols on its perimeter. Pullman said in an interview with the literary magazine 'textualities': "the alethiometer came out of my interest in the Renaissance, the world described so vividly by Frances Yates in The Art of Memory and The Rosicrucian Enlightenment. During the Renaisssance there was a rediscovery of Greek philosophy, and a fascination with what we now call the occult, astrology and alchemy."

Another form of Kabbalist magic involved the incantation of names, both of angels, and of God Himself. The universe was angels (301,655,172 of them, to be precise), and the magus can invoke them by name, and through them approach the sacred tree of life which Kabbalists, like Shamans, believed connected Earth and the Heavens.

The Kabbalist magus would solemnly invoke the names of angels in the celestial hierarchy, and if the magus' heart was pure and his incantation correct, he could bring the spirit of the invoked angel down into his being. Pico refers to this magical practice when he says in his Oration: "we invoke Raphael, the celestial healer... In us, now restored to good health, will dwell Gabriel, the force of the Lord, who...will present us to Michael, the high priest..."

Kabbalists 'discovered' the existence of hundreds of other angels they could invoke, whose names usually ended in '-el' (which means God in Hebrew), as in Raphael, Michael, Gabriel or Tzadkiel. The creators of Superman, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, would draw on this tradition when they gave Clark Kent the secret name Kal-el.

This beautiful idea in Kabbalah, of the almost domestic proximity of angels to humanity, and the ability of the artist-magus to bring them down to earth, is perhaps one key to the wonderful images in Renaissance art of angels stepping into the rooms of Renaissance homes, like Superman calmly appearing on the balcony of Lois Lane.

The Kabbalist magus could also use angels and demons as functionaries, if he had the cheek. The late sixteenth century magician Johannes Trithemius believed he could use a network of angels for telepathy, to transmit messages from himself to others, as well as to inform him of "everything that is happening in the world". As in The Matrix, Gnostic magic seems to have combined with information technology.

And the Kabbalist can also use the many sacred names of God as spells, such as the all-powerful Shemhamphorasch, the 72-letter name of God, which Kabbalists believed that Moses had used to part the Red Sea and defend the Jews from the Egyptian army.

Moses's use of magic to defend the Jewish community from persecution was typical - Kabbalah magic was only supposed to be used for self-defence, never for attack. There were many legends of Kabbalist wonder-workers, called Ba'alei Shem, or masters of the names, using their powers to protect their communities from Christian persecution.

Of particular interest for our history are the tales of the Tzadikim Nistarim, or 'hidden saints'. The legend grew up in Kabbalist circles that there are 36 hidden superheroes, possessed of great supernatural power, who are in special favour with God, and on whose continued existence the world depends.

It seems to me possible that this idea influenced the development of the modern superhero, who hides his identity beneath the appearance of being a nebbish like Clark Kent or Peter Parker. We note that there are 36 hidden heroes on Mohinder Suresh's list in the NBC show Heroes, though not all of these heroes are particularly saintly.

Thus, armed with the power of Hermes and the power of Kabbalah, we see before us the Renaissance magus in all his glory: he was a healer and doctor, who could use astral magic to overcome depression, or use the images of alchemy and astrology as archetypes to guide the sick mind back to health, as Jung would do 500 years later. He was a chemist, working in sooty laboratories to discover the essence, or 'spirit' of substances in his search for the fabled Philosopher's Stone. He was an advisor to princes and Popes, telling them what the angels and the stars had told him of the good and bad luck that would befall their kingdoms.

And he was above all an artist. One cannot have a theory of magic that is not at the same time a theory of art, of the power of art to change the world, and of the supreme dignity of the artist-magus.

Thus, in Ficino's natural magic, the magus' astrological images have the power to draw down beneficial energies from the planets. This idea, believes Frances Yates, was behind some of the finest Renaissance paintings, and their timeless depiction of classical figures, such as Botticelli's Primavera.

Renaissance music was considered to have magical powers, like the Orphic hymns that Ficino would sing to the planets to draw down their benevolent influence. The Renaissance writer was also a magus, whose sacred words were able to command angels and demons, as Prospero, Shakespeare's alter-ego in The Tempest, is able to command Ariel and Caliban.

And the Renaissance magus was also a master of animation, in the original sense of one who can introduce a soul into an inanimate object. He was a god-like creator, able to channel the spirits and give them a form on earth. Thus Shakespeare describes the poet:

"The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to Earth, from Earth to heaven.

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen

Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name."

The most secret and illicit teaching of both Hermetic philosophy and Kabbalah was the idea that it was possible to draw down spirits from the ether and use them to animate statues, or to create artificial beings.

Thus the Hermetic text, the Aesculapius, tells us that the magus is God-like in that he can himself make gods. The magus could evoke "the souls of demons or angels", and then introduce them into statues or idols, "so that the idols had the power of doing good and evil".

This old magic idea of animating inanimate objects and then using them to do your bidding has a long history in western art. It appears in the 2nd century AD in a comic fable by Lucian called the Philopseudes, which tells of the hapless friend of a priest of Isis, who overhears the priest saying a animating spell and decides to try it for himself. He animates a pestle, but can't control it and the pestle goes on the rampage.

The story was picked up and adapted many centuries later by Goethe in his poem The Sorcerer's Apprentice. And it eventually appeared in animation, appropriately enough, in Walt Disney's Fantasia, where Mickey the sorcerer's apprentice casts a spirit into some brooms, who then go beserk and fill a bath until it overflows. In Fantasia, the priest of Isis is called Yensid - Disney backwards. So Disney was directly linking the new art of animation to the ancient and magical tradition of the magus as animator.

The idea of the magus as animator played a deep role in Kabbalist legends as well, in the myth of the Golem, or artificial man. This legend was particularly attached to the famous chief rabbi of Prague, Judah Loew ben Bezalel. Prague was, at that time, probably the centre of Renaissance magic, thanks to the enthusiasm for the occult felt by the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolph II, who lived in Prague Castle, and devoted a whole wing of the castle to alchemical experiments.

We know that Rudolph II asked for a private meeting with the rabbi in 1592. It is not known what they discussed, though we do know that rabbi Loew was not a great advocate of magic. Nonetheless, this meeting of a rabbi with the most powerful man in Christendom, taking place as it did on the centenary of the Jews' expulsion from Spain, was taken by the Jewish diaspora as a confirmation of the rabbi's wondrous and magical powers.

One particularly popular legend surrounding the rabbi was that he had constructed a man out of clay, a Golem, and then animated it by writing one of the names of God, EMETH, or Truth, on its forehead. The Golem then worked as a domestic menial - we hear the story of how it was ordered to fill a bath and then went beserk and over-filled it.

But the Golem was also, according to some legends, used by the rabbi to protect the Jewish community from anti-Semitic persecution. This doesn't quite fit with the fact that Jews had a relatively safe existence in Rudolph's Prague, compared to other parts of Europe. However, Jews in other, less safe parts of the world, such as Poland, seemed to draw much comfort from these tales of the supernatural protection of the Golem.

It has been suggested that the tales of the Golem also helped to influence the modern creation of the superhero. There are some direct examples of the Golem's influence on comics - the Golem was a superhero in Marvel Comics in the 1970s, a member of the Howling Commandoes, and enemy of the evil 'Kabbala the Unclean'. Wonder Woman was also supposedly made out of clay by her mother, Hippolyta.

Others have argued the figure of the Golem has underlined the whole concept of the superhero, invented as it was by east European émigrés whose families had fled European anti-Semitism. Superheroes were also magical animated beings who would fight anti-Semitic persecution in legendary tales.

Thus in the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon, the hero is a young artist from Prague who escapes the Nazis in a coffin, accompanied by the remains of the Golem. He then moves to New York, becomes a comic book artist, and invents a superhero called the Escapist who battles the Nazis in the comics he writes. By the end of the book, the artist realizes how he is unconsciously drawing on Jewish folklore, and begins a graphic novel about the Golem.

Kabbalist magic had its dangers, however. In some versions of the Golem legend, the monster goes on the rampage, and even kills its creator. Kabbalist spells were also risky. If you uttered the Shemhamphorasch and weren't sufficiently pure of heart, you could die instantly - this is the premise of the film Pi, by the director, comic book writer and Kabbala-enthusiast Darren Aronofsky. The film tells of a maths and computer genius who discovers the Shemhamphorasch, but almost kills himself in the process.

Kabbalah could connect you to angels, but it could also confront you with demons. If you got your spells wrong, you could become possessed or even devoured by a demon or fallen angel, such as Azazel, Ba'al, or the fearsome Lilith. We are reminded here of the superhero comic, 'Dial H for Hero', about a boy who discovers a mysterious dial with letters round the edge, rather like Abulafia's Kabbalah device. If he spells out H-E-R-O, he is transformed into any one of a thousand superheroes. But if he spells out V-I-L-L-A-I-N, he is possessed by evil spirits.

The greatest risk for a Kabbalist was to be confronted by the King of the Jewish demons, Asmodeus. Alan Moore, the famous writer of comics and also a practicing Kabbalist magus, claims that Asmodeus once appeared to him in the form of a multidimensional red spider, though Moore describes him as witty and slightly smug rather than the embodiment of evil.

This negative view of magic as demonology existed as far back as Simon Magus, who was supposed to have attained his superpowers by making a pact with devils.

And as the 16th Century progressed, more and more magi found themselves accused of Satanism and demonology. There was Cornelius Agrippa, for example, who was supposedly followed around by a black dog that was really the Devil in disguise. There was Paracelsus, the great alchemist, who was nick-named 'the Devil's doctor', and was frequently kicked out of towns for practicing his dark arts. There was the great English magus, John Dee, who was accused by the Church of being a spy and a Satanist, and who narrowly avoided being sent to the Inquisition when he visited the Holy Roman Emperor in Prague.

There were the legends of the magus Faust, another resident of Prague, which were printed in 1587 and became very popular in the late years of the 16th Century. The tales told of a magus who, in his hunger for fame and knowledge, signed a contract with the Devil giving him supernatural powers for a few years, until his soul is dragged down to hell.

Even the magic-loving emperor himself, Rudolph II, was suspected by the Vatican of having made a deal with Old Nick. Cardinal Filippo Spinelli wrote to Pope Clement VIII in 1600: "It is generally agreed among Catholics in Prague that the Emperor has been bewitched and is in league with the Devil. I have been shown the chair in which His Majesty sits when holding conversations with the Prince of Darkness himself."

The ugly fate of the hapless emperor seemed to spell out only too clearly the dangers of dabbling in the occult. First his son Don Guilio went mad, and was locked up for raping and mutilating a barber's daughter. Then the emperor himself went crazy, hiding himself away for weeks in Prague Castle, running through the darkened corridors screaming that his back had changed place with his stomach. He was eventually forced off the imperial throne by his brother, Matthias, who claimed Rudolph spent so much time delving into magic, he was neglecting the affairs of the empire.

Even if you were sceptical that magi could really converse with, command or make deals with devils, it is still easy to see why the Vatican perceived them as a dangerous threat.

Firstly, magi were politically dangerous. They were sometimes spies with Protestant sympathies (as John Dee probably was) and were frequently Messianic revolutionaries as well. Thus Pico believed his Theses would help bring about a cosmic revolution, when all religions would be synthesized into one uber-religion and peace would reign among men.

John Dee believed a similar cosmic revolution was on the way, which would bring about the reconciliation of Catholic and Protestant Europe and a new era of amity and concord.

Giordano Bruno, an outspoken and ecstatic Italian magus who wandered around Europe spreading his Hermetic theories towards the end of the 16 century, believed a new age of love was dawning when the Egyptian mysteries would reign once more, and occult priests like himself would rule the world.

The magi might sound like fun-loving anarchist Gnostics, but there was a darker side to their political beliefs. Many of them saw in Hermeticism not just a way to reach God, but a way to rule the world as well. They were drawn to passages in the Corpus Hermeticum that spoke of a perfect city that Hermes Trismegistus had founded, called Adocentyn, which were watched over by statues, magically animated with the spirits of demons.

These magic statues would make sure that everyone in the city was virtuous. Indeed, they would have no choice but to be virtuous, because the magic would control all their actions, turning them into little marionettes. This Utopian dictatorship appealed greatly to magi like Bruno or Tommaso Campanella. In the idea of a elite of artist-intellectuals manipulating the dumb masses through art and propaganda, it would foreshadow perhaps the dictatorships of the 20th Century.

But, besides their politics, the magi's religious beliefs were, of course, deeply heretical. The official Church doctrine was that man could not reach God except through Christ, and only in the afterlife. And yet the magi seemed to be claiming the ability to achieve divine perfection in this life, not through the grace of Christ, but through all sorts of other means - star-demons, planets, talismans, Chaldean oracles. Some imprudent magi even suggested that Jesus Himself was, basically, a magus.

This was the rash claim made by Giordano Bruno, who may be the prototype for Lord Asriel in Philip Pullman's Northern Lights. Bruno, like Asriel, visited Oxford in 1582, and there engaged in furious debate with the Oxford scholastics (or 'pedants' as he insisted on calling them) about the possible existence of multiple worlds, just as Asriel would do.

This idea of multiple worlds, which one also finds in the Kabbalah, would have a deep impact on fantasy literature and on comics. It is a key feature of American superhero comics, with a famous DC comic being called Crisis on Multiple Earths.

It also plays a key role in Philip Pullman's Northern Lights, where Lord Asriel is imprisoned by the Church for heretically asserting the existence of multiple worlds. Eventually, Asriel manages to escape and kill God. Giordano Bruno's fate was rather more grisly - he was arrested by the Inquisition, kept in prison for eight years, and then burnt at the stake in 1600. His crimes included claiming Jesus was a magus, and "claiming the existence of a plurality of worlds".

When Bruno was burnt at the stake, it marked the nadir of the fortunes of the artist-magus in European society. It was downhill all the way from there. For 100 years or so, the magus had been an all-powerful, superhuman figure. He had enjoyed audiences with queens, Popes and emperors. He had combined the prophet, the courtier, the healer, chemist and artist, and all these disciplines had assumed a sacred character in his person.

Sadly, the cosmic revolution that many magi believed they were helping to bring about did not happen. The Age of Love failed to materialize. Instead, Europe tore itself apart in a century of bloody religious violence, in which magic itself would be a victim, with thousands of 'witches' being burnt at the stake during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. And out of that violence, as we shall see in the next chapter, was born the modern world, one ruled by rational theories of science, physics, economics and statecraft

Ironically, magi like Giordano Bruno may have helped bring about this new rational age, because their natural philosophy, as strange and occult as it may have been, was still experimental, and thus helped to bring down the Catholic Church's purely speculative Scholasticism. Modern chemistry grew out of Renaissance alchemy, and modern astronomy grew out of Renaissance astrology. So perhaps, like Lord Asriel, the magi really did help to kill God, although this was far from their intention.

With the 17 century clampdown on magic and the coming of the age of rationalism, the idea of an animate universe that could be controlled by magi was gradually pushed to the margins of popular belief. But a few wild souls still cherished this idea, and many of them would end up working in comics.

Some of the most magic-inspired comic and fantasy writers, such as Alan Moore, John Crowley or Neil Gaiman, would often look back to the Renaissance magi for inspiration. Thus Gaiman's graphic novel 1602 takes Marvel superheroes like the X-Men and Spiderman, and re-imagines them as figures in the court of Queen Elizabeth, with Doctor Strange becoming a John Dee-like magus to the Queen. And Moore has told me that he sees himself as a magus "in the European tradition of Agrippa, Paracelsus, and Giordano Bruno".

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Here's another chapter of the little book / long essay I wrote in 2008, called Everything Is Full of Gods, about the connection between comics, animation, and animism. In this chapter, I talk about Renaissance magic, and how it influenced contemporary comic culture. Florence 1463 AD.

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How the medieval witch image has evolved over centuries

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The gendered stereotype of the witch that we see in Halloween costumes can be traced back as far as the 11th century, explains Jennifer Farrell

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READ THE GRAPHIC NOVEL: Lost childhoods: Nigeria's fear of 'witchcraft' ruins young lives.
From a distance, the children look like scarecrows as they slowly scour the waist-high piles of rubbish for plastic bottles.

Their ragged clothing hangs loosely from their emaciated frames, their gaunt shrink-wrapped faces are deadened by the drugs they took at dawn.

It is hard to believe that these children are "witches".

And yet this is exactly why several hundred skolombo - or street children - are now living at the Lemna dumpsite on the outskirts of Calabar in southeastern Nigeria.

"My grandmother was sick and her leg became very swollen," says Godbless. "She said I was the one responsible, that I was a witch."

The 14-year-old boy is sat in the makeshift hut at Lemna that he now calls home.

He shares this stuffy wooden hovel with half a dozen other boys who are now outside, smoking the cannabis that will get them through the day.

Godbless was taken to the family's local church where a pastor confirmed his grandmother's worst fears - he was indeed a witch, the pastor claimed.

His relatives demanded he leaves the house, but he refused.

Godbless rolls up the leg of his shorts to reveal a long, blackened scar on his upper thigh.

"This is what my auntie did to me when I did not go," he whispers. "She heated up a knife in the fire and put it on me."

Two years after he ran away, Godbless and his gang make money by recycling plastic soda bottles and cans.

These are weighed, and if he is lucky, he says, he can make a couple of dollars a week to buy food, clothing and medicine.

"When relatives throw these children out of the house, it's as good as killing the child," says Adek Bassey.

Bassey is a student who helps run Today for Tomorrow - a small Nigerian volunteer organisation that once a week meets the children near the dump to feed them, and address any health concerns.

She complains that the state's Ministry of Sustainable Development and Social Welfare is not doing anything despite apparently having a pot of money with which to tackle the skolombo issue.

"Nobody from the Cross River government is coming out to feed these children, nobody is coming to send these kids to school, nobody is teaching them trades."

"I don't know if it's corruption, or intentional negligence," she says. "Or whether they have just given up on these street kids, that they think they will never change."

Bassey alleges she has also received anonymous phone calls after a colleague posted photos on Facebook of their work at the Lemna dump.

"'Who gave you the right to snap in that place?', one person said," recalls Bassey. "You better pipe yourself down before you get into trouble."

"Someone even told me that they would arrest me for child trafficking."

Her mother has pleaded with Bassey to stop her work, but she has refused to do so.

"They can lynch or kill me," she says. "But I won't stop."

Manipulating fears

In the Niger Delta, where an extreme form of Christianity has taken root and blended with indigenous beliefs, an alarming number of children have been accused of practising witchcraft with malicious intent.

The accusations have created a generation of outcasts who live at the mercy of a system ill-equipped to protect them.

It is a relatively recent phenomenon that exploded across the region in the 1990s, fuelled partly by popular films and self-professed prophets looking to manipulate people's fears to make a quick buck.

The epicentre of these accusations is in Nigeria's southwestern states of Akwa Ibom and Cross River.

A report in 2008 estimated that 15,000 children in these two states had been accused.

And while there is no definitive figure for the number of skolombo in Calabar, a 2010 survey found that in one region of Akwa Ibom state, 85 percent of street children like Godbless had been accused of witchcraft.

The consequences for many of them were severe.

Children and babies who have been branded as witches have been chained up, starved, beaten, and even set on fire. Cases of parents attempting to behead their children with saws have also been reported.

These accusers typically use witchcraft as a means to scapegoat vulnerable children for acts ranging from unruly behaviour and absenteeism from school to a failed harvest or mechanical problems with the family motorbike.

"We have the laws to address witch-branding," says Nigerian lawyer James Ibor. "But the problem is not the laws - the problem is implementing these laws."

"And until we begin to implement these laws, our children are not safe."

Ibor, who runs a local organisation in Calabar called Basic Rights Counsel Initiative (BRCI), says both the country's criminal code and 2003 Child Rights Act outlaw not only degrading treatment but even accusing someone of being a witch.

But only about three-quarters of Nigeria's states have domesticated the federal version of the Child Rights Act, and to date, only the state of Akwa Ibom has included specific provisions concerning the abuse of alleged child witches.

Their 2008 law made witch-branding punishable by a custodial sentence of up to 10 years.

And 10 years on, courts have yet to successfully prosecute a single perpetrator.

Ibor says his state of Cross River has not amended its own domestic version of the Child Rights Act to explicitly criminalise witch-branding.

But Oliver Orok, the minister of sustainable development and social welfare, says his ministry is working with UNICEF to address this legislative shortcoming.

"This has been an aged long practice particularly bothering on customs and traditions, and you know habits die hard," he says. "The ministry is working assiduously to eliminate and curtail these practices."

"Ample provisions have been made in the 2018 budget to build a new home for children at risk, and those who are in conflict with the law."

The Calabar lawyer blames this partly on a lack of political will but says the lack of action primarily boils down to a lack of resources.

"The police are poorly funded, and not equipped to carry out these kinds of investigations," he says. "Often, we have to push for investigations, and sometimes you just have to pay police as they don't have the fuel they need to travel and collect evidence."

Ibor adds: "They also don't have the resources to run forensic analysis - and so most times you have to fund it yourself."

"But even if I had the money, I can't do it. The prosecution would argue I'd had the lab results altered."

Ibor also claims police often fail to act because they believe in witches, and outing them.

The lawyer gives an example of three children aged between seven and 13 who were recently branded as witches by their father.

He locked them up in a poorly ventilated storeroom without food for several days.

Ibor claims police have taken no action against the father despite the case having been reported late in May.

And in another recent episode, a man who accused his three-year-old of being a witch before giving her second-degree burns was released by a court despite confessing to the crime.

The lawyer's organisation BRCI specialises in legal cases concerning child rights abuse and runs a safe house for children accused of witchcraft.

Resources are a problem for Ibor's organisation, which partly relies on volunteers.

Lack of staff results in a triaging of reported cases, with only the most serious complaints being investigated.

Ibor is disappointed that the Ministry of Sustainable Development and Social Welfare recently asked him for 20,000 nairas ($55) to approve their shelter - an initiative he feels they should be funding.

Cases have also stalled for years due to suspects absconding when on bail, or the mandatory number of court assessors not turning up in protest over several months' unpaid wages.

"In the last eight years we haven't got one conviction in spite of the series of reports we ' ve made to the police about perpetrators and churches - it means something is fundamentally wrong."

Ibor believes the failure to convict anyone so far will lead people to believe they can make accusations and attack children with impunity.

He blames the so-called "propheteers" - or religious conmen - for manipulating people's fears of the supernatural.

In the Niger Delta - a particularly poor part of Nigeria where the average daily wage is little more than a dollar - congregants are more likely to swallow prophecies that explain their hand-to-mouth existence and ill fortune.

"Nigeria is one of the worst places to raise children because of the so-called religions of peace which are responsible for 80 percent of our problems," says Ibor.

"They [the churches] have inhibited and undermined our laws, and we have placed these religious books above our laws."

Diana-Abasi Udua Akanimoh, who works for a local faith-based organisation called Way to the Nations, explains that many churches and their congregants take a passage from the King James Bible literally - namely, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."

"Being Christians ourselves we felt we could challenge people's belief in witchcraft," she says. "For, we believe in God just like they do, but we do not believe that the Bible was written to be used to hurt people.

"We tell them, 'we understand the scriptures just as much as you think you do, but you must have misunderstood certain facts, and have used them against young people to hurt them'."

The role of the church

Pentecostalism spread throughout Nigeria in the 1970s.

The Niger Delta region is said to have more places of worship per square mile than anywhere else on earth.

This form of Christianity adopts the idea that if you are not successful in life, then pernicious entities may be the cause.

Such a belief system should not be dismissed as antiquated African superstition - pentecostal churches also operate within the United States and the United Kingdom.

Indeed, these Nigerian Pentecostal leaders have emulated their American televangelist counterparts.

Many Pentecostal churches in the Niger Delta offer to deliver people from witchcraft and possession - albeit for a fee.

Joy is one of those people.

Like a boxer on the ropes, she raises her trembling hands to protect her face.

Three pastors surround the young girl and take turns slapping her head, pinching her earlobes and stomach.

The 15-year-old has been accused of being a witch, and tonight she has been brought to a ministry in Calabar for an exorcism.

One of the pastors clutches the iridescent sarong tightly knotted behind the child's back.

It acts as an anchor to keep her from getting away and ensure she does not hurt herself.

One child, undergoing a simultaneous deliverance, has already knocked over the church's glass lectern this evening.

"Your clothes are on fire, your head is on fire, your belly is on fire," the pastors yell in Joy's face as they twirl her around the church hall.

Joy tries to twist free, but there is no escape.

It is Pastor Eunice Emmanuel who had identified the four children - the youngest is eight years old - to be exorcised this evening.

"God helps me identify the kids that are possessed," she explains before the evening's deliverance begins. "We then conduct deliverance on them whereby the evil spirits that dwell in them, leave them, and the children become new creatures.

"The child becomes like a madman who has recovered his sanity."

Pastor Eunice says a deliverance can last up to 10, 20 or even more minutes, depending on the type and strength of the possession or witchcraft.

But in Joy's case, it is over half an hour before the spirit within her is compelled to speak.

Pastor Eunice asks the spirit what she has made the girl do.

"Destroy," it says, according to Joy.

Joy is doubled over, hands over her face, crying.

The "spirit" is peppered with further questions by the pastor.

"How do you destroy? Do you go to a coven? Are you a witch? Do you drink blood? Do you eat flesh? Do you kill?"

"I have destroyed one person," Joy finally cries.

Only when the child finally collapses onto the floor is the deliverance considered a success.

As she lies in a motionless heap on the floor, alone, the group of pastors look down at her grinning.

Many prophets in Calabar can charge up to a year's wages - over $500 - to perform such a ceremony.

"But we don't charge here," claims Pastor Eunice. "I don't have a price tag."

She adds however that the ministry does welcome tokens of "appreciation" to help pay for generator fuel and rent.

But lawyer James Ibor says this is the exception and not the rule.

"It is backward that in the 21st Century churches are set up for economic reasons but they are spreading wickedness and ignorance," he says.

"The government should be responsible for protecting our society from people who have set up businesses to destroy our children - but it is doing nothing."

But minister Oliver Orok says that "currently the state government is not aware of such issues".

"However, if such practices come to the fore, we would move against such churches and their founders and prophets."

Ibor says that to date the government has yet to investigate several churches recently brought to their attention and Orok ignored repeated requests for updates on these investigations.

Ebe Ukara, a desk officer for the Child Rights Implementation Committee in Akamkpa, adds however that not all churches are out to hoodwink their congregants.

"Even in the case of HIV, these fake prophets will tell a person, 'No, that it is family witchcraft that is attacking you, so don't go to hospital, come to my church'."

Ukara says that 60 percent of the child abuse cases that cross her desk are witchcraft-related and often prompted by a pastor's declaration.

She claims that a profit has been made by scapegoating children, easy and vulnerable targets to blame.

"Even if nothing has happened to me, they will quickly tell me that something is attacking me," says Ukara. "The next thing he will use oil on me, and beat me."

"It is from the beating that they force the children to confess what they don't know."

The Nollywood effect

It is perhaps unfair to place all the blame for this epidemic of child witchcraft allegations on Pentecostal churches.

As with the assassination of JFK, and the falling of the Twin Towers on 9/11, it seems many still remember where and when they first saw End of the Wicked.

For Patience Itoro it was in 2001 in the town of Eket in Akwa Ibom state.

The film focuses on the Amadi family which is living with the father's mother - who we find out is a witch in a coven.

Amadi's children end up joining the cult, and in the movie are shown eating human flesh and plotting to murder their parents.

In another scene, the children laugh as a man's eyes are gouged out.

Produced by the Liberty Gospel Church, the 1999 film also starred the church's leader Helen Ukpabio as the pastor who ends up heroically exposing and destroying the witches.

The film was hugely controversial and at the time was blamed for the surge in witchcraft accusations against children in the 1990s and 2000s.

The movie has been criticised for blurring the line between fact and fiction.

But Itoro says she knows better.

"I found it scary," she says as she dusts the floor of her compound. "But I know it wasn't real."

Three of her neighbours who are sat around the courtyard say they have heard about the movie but have yet to see it.

When offered the chance to watch a clip they are curious.

They huddle around the laptop, and tut and grimace as they witness the actions of the child witches in the film.

"That was very scary," says Unwana Nse. "But for me, that really confirmed that there's child witchcraft."

Sat next to her, Esther Friday says she's now confused.

"I don't know whether that was real, or acting," she says.

Peter Itoro says it is proof that such things can happen in the world.

"It's just clothes covering people," he says. "We don't really know who they are."

And now his wife Patience has changed her mind.

"That film now confirms to me that there's witchcraft."

Known colloquially as Nollywood, the Nigerian film industry is second only to Bollywood in terms of the number of films it pumps out year after year.

These most common themes are romance, comedy and the so-called "hallelujah" category - films with strong religious messages.

Nigerians have criticised the industry for proliferating negative stereotypes about the continent - including the focus on witchcraft.

But paradoxically one of the main reasons for the films' popularity is that they provide a platform for Africans to tell their own stories.

One Nollywood producer, Orok Atim, says that however "negative" the theme of witchcraft may be, this is an issue that affects the lives of Nigerians - so they expect to encounter them when watching Nigerian films.

His next movie will be about a deceased friend's experience of the supernatural.

"Witchcraft exists in our society today," he says. "People want to see what they know, to hear what they know, they want to feel and actually understand.

"That doesn't mean we should be scared, no, there's hope."

Atim maintains that his movies allow Nigerian audiences to face their fears.

"[It is actually the] churches today are using that witchcraft to deceive some families, destroy some children, and using it as a means of extortion," he says.

Basil Ngene, a film producer and video shop owner in Calabar, said the film industry was not to blame.

"Nollywood movies only highlight what already exists," he says as he places new stock on the shelves. "Film did not create witchcraft or witchdoctors."

He says that he knows that witchcraft is real because he read about it in the Bible.

Ngene also challenges the Western notion that it is only "gullible" Nigerians who believe in, and are fascinated by, the supernatural.

"In the West, you watch films like 'Black Panther' and 'Infinity War'," he says. "All these focus on African magic, witchcraft and superpowers."

But Ebe Ukara believes that rather than reflecting culture, these movies are creating a new one.

"People watch these movies and imitate what they see these advanced prophets doing."

"Movies today are teaching a lot of things that were never practised before," she says.

And James Ibor argues it was movies like End of the Wicked that not only popularised the notion that children could be witches, but that people could easily become witches by eating tainted food.

"And movies like End of the Wicked are not shown as fiction like Harry Potter - it is shown as a religious tool for evangelism, it is shown as a compliment to the Bible."

The fallout

Whatever is behind these beliefs, children like Godbless can attest to one thing: once you're on the streets, it is hard to go back.

However while many have fallen through the cracks, there are people fighting for them.

A handful of Nigerian organisations like BRCI and Way to Nations attempt to do more than just rescue those accused of witchcraft - they try to reunite them with the very relatives who have ostracised them.

But their efforts are rarely successful, even with extended family members.

Emmanuel has been at BRCI's emergency shelter since December 2017.

The nine-year-old was kicked out of his stepfather's house after having been accused of witchcraft at his local church.

His stepfather, Udong Umoren, threatened to kill him with a machete should he try and come home.

He slept rough for several months before BRCI took him in.

The organisation says it had to pay the police 5,000 nairas ($14) to arrest the stepfather, but he is now out on bail.

Attempts to reunite Emmanuel with his family have been fruitless.

Udong recently fled, mistaking BRCI staff for police officers.

Despite being against her child being thrown out onto the streets, Emmanuel's mother, Theresa Umoren, tipped Udong off.

"My son sleeps in the road and I'm not happy about it," Theresa said. "But I must respect my husband because of our other children.

"There's nothing I can do - you should keep him away where he is safe."

Theresa's inner turmoil is evident when she gets to speak to Emmanuel on the phone for the first time in five months.

Across the state line in Akwa Ibom, Jehu Tom has had a little more luck.

The Way to Nations staff member has managed to track down the grandmother of a child living at their safe house in Eket - and she has agreed to talk about Precious.

The seven-year-old was abandoned at a Mobil petrol station in Eket, where he lived for a month.

The grandmother had been forced to take the boy in when both his parents died and blamed her subsequent ill-health on Precious.

But even getting to this stage has been a challenge - the organisation's vehicle has been unreliable and fuel here is expensive.

When they are able to locate Mercy Campbell, Tom brings Precious with him to see his grandmother.

It is an odd reunion; there are no hugs, greetings, or even a smile.

Tom insists that Precious sit beside his grandmother.

He acquiesces, clearly unhappy to do so, but sits at the opposite end of the wooden bench.

Tom asks her why she thought her grandson was a witch.

"He was very stubborn," she says. "He disobeyed me, and he didn't listen to my advice."

Campbell adds that he also used to play truant from school, and that he would sing strange songs at home.

"They say actions speak louder than words - even though I don't believe in witchcraft," she adds hastily.

Tom explains that the right place for Precious is not at the safe house, but with family.

But Campbell says she cannot afford to take him back.

"I took care of him for one year," she explains. "I can ' t take care of him any more - his paternal family should take him in."

Tom asks what she feels when she looks at Precious. Love? Fear? Sadness?

The grandmother seems to find it difficult to answer.

Thinking she has not heard him, Tom asks the question a second time.

"I do not hate him," Campbell says finally.
READ THE GRAPHIC NOVEL: Lost childhoods: Nigeria's fear of 'witchcraft' ruins young lives. Names of the children have been changed to protect their identities. This article was made possible by funding from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

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How Nigeria's fear of child 'witchcraft' ruins young lives

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READ THE GRAPHIC NOVEL: Lost childhoods: Nigeria's fear of 'witchcraft' ruins young lives. From a distance, the children look like scarecrows as they slowly scour the waist-high piles of rubbish for plastic bottles. Their ragged clothing hangs loosely from their emaciated frames, their gaunt shrink-wrapped faces are deadened by the drugs they took at dawn.

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IT STARTED about three weeks ago, when about 20 children from the Elsa Perea Flores School in Peru became violently ill.

They displayed the same terrifying symptoms; muscular convulsions - some developing into full blown seizures - fainting, vomiting, delirium and frothing at the mouth.

The children, all aged between 11 and 14, shared another unsettling trait - a shared hallucination involving being chased by a "tall man in black with a beard" who was trying to kill them.

Since then, between 80 and 100 children from the school have been affected by what education officials are calling a mass case of "contagious demonic possession or interference".

Video footage recorded at the school shows screaming children being taken by trucks to nearby hospitals. Other children are seen lying on school desks surrounded by classmates and teachers who switch between comforting and restraining them as they wait for medical help to arrive.

"It's disturbing for me to think about it. It's as if someone kept on chasing me from behind," one affected student, 12, who has since recovered, told reporters.

"It was a tall man all dressed in black and with a big beard and it felt like he was trying to strangle me. My friends say I was screaming desperately, but I don't remember much."

A 13-year-old girl, who also wanted to remain anonymous, citing fears of being laughed at or attacked, told TV Peruana of several children from different classrooms fainting at the same time.

"I got nauseous and started vomiting," she said. "I heard voices. A man in black chased me and wanted to touch me."

Another schoolgirl said she had trouble breathing and was desperately holding her neck as if someone was strangling her. According to friends who say they witnessed the event, she kept screaming: "Take it out".

Initial reports suggested the children had been playing with a ouija board in an effort to call up spirits said to haunt the school, which is rumoured to have been built on land once used as a mass grave by the Mafia.

School authorities have called in a string of doctors, holy men and even exorcists since the outbreak began. Several masses have been carried out by Catholic priests at the school at the request of parents but so far nothing seems to have worked.

"We don't understand how this has kept on going on", Dr Antony Choy told national network Panamericana TV. "We know it started on April 29 and now it is still happening. Now there are more than 80 pupils (still affected)."

Elsa de Pizango, whose 12-year-old daughter was one of those who became "possessed" told reporters: "She fainted in school. They didn't say anything at the hospital. She just fainted. She keeps on spitting froth from her mouth."
SOMETHING SIMILAR JUST HAPPENED IN A MALAYSIAN SCHOOL
The incident has chilling echoes of a bizarre event which occurred some 10 days earlier, at a school thousands of kilometres away.

On April 18, a small group of students at the SKM Pengkalan Chepa 2 in Malaysia started claiming they'd seen a "black figure" lurking around the school.

Word spread and before long as many as 100 people, mostly students but also some teachers, reported having seen the figure or felt a "supernatural" or "heavy" presence near them.

One teacher told authorities she had felt a "black figure" trying to enter her body.

"Our students were possessed and disturbed (by these spirits)," a senior staff member at the Malaysian school told the UK Telegraph.

"We are not sure why it happened. We don't know what it is that affected us. But the place is a bit old, and these children can be disobedient and sometimes throw their rubbish around the school grounds. Perhaps they hit some djinns (local word for ghosts) and offended the spirits."

The hysteria lasted three days, during which screaming could be heard coming from inside the school, according to the Star Online.

The reports were taken so seriously that authorities shut the institution down and sent everybody home. They called in experts - including witch doctors to do prayer sessions and exorcisms. On Sunday, the school reopened and things have since gone back to normal.
FAMOUS INCIDENTS OF MASS HYSTERIA
Between 2011 and 2012, more than a dozen students - all girls - from Leroy High School in New York suddenly began exhibiting symptoms of Tourette's Syndrome.

Their tics became so extreme that their parents became convinced some sort of environmental poisoning was to blame, even calling in celebrity whistleblower Erin Brockovich. However, studies on air and water quality and other environmental factors came up negative.

Eventually, a New York neurologist, Laszlo Mechtler, concluded the girls were suffering from conversion disorder, a kind of hysteria that produces real symptoms but with no known physical cause.

"The physical symptoms they're (the students) having are real. The patient isn't faking it," Dr Mechtler said at the time.

Perhaps the most notorious case of all happened on January 30, 1962 when three girls in a mission-run girls boarding school in Kashasha, Tanzania suddenly began laughing uncontrollably.

Within minutes the "laughing sickness" had spread to 95 of the 159 students enrolled at the school.

The affected children were aged between 12 and 18 and experienced symptoms lasting between a few hours and 16 days. Though the teaching staff remained mysteriously unaffected the school was forced to close down on March 18, 1962.

Bizarrely, the laughing epidemic spread to the municipality of Nshamba, where a few of the girls from Kashasha lived. By May 1962, 217 people, most of them young adults and schoolchildren, were reported to have suffered from the attacks of uncontrollable laughter.

Things went downhill from there. By June, the hysteria had spread to hundreds of people in nearby schools and towns. Then, 18 months later, the epidemic stopped as suddenly as it had started, but not before shutting down 14 schools and striking down 1000 Tanzanians with fits of giggles.

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'They see visions of a man in black trying to kill them'

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IT STARTED about three weeks ago, when about 20 children from the Elsa Perea Flores School in Peru became violently ill. They displayed the same terrifying symptoms; muscular convulsions - some developing into full blown seizures - fainting, vomiting, delirium and frothing at the mouth.

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In other cases, the guidance said, magic or witchcraft is used "to create fear in children to make them more compliant when they are being trafficked for domestic slavery or sexual exploitation".

Examples include the superstition that calling a wrong number can bring malevolent spirits into the home.

Children can also be scapegoated for misfortune which has befallen other members of the family, such as unemployment or poverty.

The guidance came about following concerns raised about belief in witchcraft among "migrant African communities in England", the document said.

The action plan included the establishment of a working group meant to tackle the issue but Mr Humphreys said it was not receiving enough attention.

The Government had "pretty much withdrawn any tangible support" for implementing the plan, he said.

A Government spokesman said: "Children must be kept safe, and no belief system can justify the abuse of a child.

"The Department for Education is investing up to £1.5 million to tackle child abuse and support charities such as Barnardo's in their work to tackle abuse linked to faith or belief.

"Those responsible for child abuse linked to faith or belief would be subject to prosecution. Our statutory guidance is crystal clear that anyone who has concerns about a child's welfare should report this to children's social care or the police."

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Belief in witchcraft and demonic possession linked to 1,500 child abuse cases

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In other cases, the guidance said, magic or witchcraft is used "to create fear in children to make them more compliant when they are being trafficked for domestic slavery or sexual exploitation". Examples include the superstition that calling a wrong number can bring malevolent spirits into the home.

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(Photo: Reuters/Ahmed Jallanzo/UNICEF)Girls look at a poster, distributed by UNICEF, bearing information on and illustrations of best practices that help prevent the spread of Ebola virus disease, in the city of Voinjama, in Lofa County, Liberia, in this April 2014 UNICEF handout photo. deaths.

The spread of the deadly Ebola outbreak throughout West Africa is leaving hundreds of children orphaned, and a number of them are reportedly marginalized by some tribal communities due to the fear of witchcraft and black magic.

"There's a strong belief in witchcraft that Ebola is contracted through a curse or in some cases that it is a white man's fabrication," said Jamie Bedson, charity Restless Development's Sierra Leone country director, according to The Financial Times.
Related
"There is a mistrust of foreigners, and in one place everyone threw away soap given out by the government because they thought it was poisoned."

Fides News Agency reported on Thursday that the health systems are in danger of collapsing in the hardest-hit countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. The Liberian government, with the help of NGOs, has so far registered 310 orphaned children who were not infected but who's parents died from Ebola, while another 600-700 remain in quarantine.

The children are faced not only with coping with the loss of family members, but also the preconceived notions of witchcraft.

Indigenous beliefs are spread throughout West Africa, and according to the CIA World Factbook claim 30 percent of the population in Sierra Leone. Liberia has a majority Christian population of over 85 percent, but indigenous beliefs are sometimes mixed in with the larger religions.

Over 3,800 people have died due to Ebola throughout West Africa, and the disease has infected a number of westerners who have returned to their home countries.

Five major American airports are starting examining passengers for Ebola from the three West African countries in the wake of the death of Dallas man Thomas Eric Duncan, who had travelled and returned from Liberia.

Speaking at the World Bank headquarters in Washington on Thursday, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Thomas Frieden said that the Ebola outbreak is the biggest world health crisis since HIV/AIDS, Voice of America reported.

Sylvia Burwell, the American cabinet secretary for health, added that "the nation is frightened, and people are frightened of this disease."

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon underlined that the world needs a "twentyfold resource mobilization" to deal with the Ebola crisis. He said that the "surge in assistance" should include mobile labs, vehicles, helicopters, protective equipment, trained medical personnel, and medical evacuation capacities.

The U.S. has responded to the outbreak overseas by sending over 3,000 medical troops to West Africa. The American personnel are tasked with building treatment tents and helping educate the local population on Ebola prevention measures.

More than 500 troops from the 36th Engineer Brigade, 1st Medical Brigade and 85th Civil Affairs Brigade stationed at Ft. Hood in Killeen, Texas, are expected to deploy to Liberia by the end of this month. Approximately 200 troops stationed at Ft. Bliss, in El Paso will also deploy. Their mission, according to Texas Gov. Rick Perry's office, will be constructing facilities to be used in the housing and care of Ebola patients. The servicemen and women are part of a larger deployment recently announced by the U.S. Department of Defense that will send more than 3,000 troops to West Africa.

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Ebola Children Survivors Accused of Witchcraft, Black Magic in West Africa

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The spread of the deadly Ebola outbreak throughout West Africa is leaving hundreds of children orphaned, and a number of them are reportedly marginalized by some tribal communities due to the fear of witchcraft and black magic.

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Eighty mainly elderly people recently jailed in Malawi for up to six years for practising witchcraft should be freed, campaigners say.

George Thindwa from the Association of Secular Humanism told the BBC the convictions were illegal as there was no law against witchcraft.

He said the problem was that many officials were "witchcraft believers".

The justice minister disputed the allegations, saying the justice system was "reputable".

But the BBC's Raphael Tenthani in Blantyre says the widespread belief in witchcraft led the government to set up a committee last year to consider criminalising it.

Under the law as it stands, it is illegal to accuse someone of being a witch.

Speedy convictions

The public prosecutions office told the BBC that there had been 11 cases brought under the witchcraft act in the last month across the country.

The courts were wrong 100% to actually accommodate cases
George Thindwa, Association of Secular Humanism

According to their records, this led to the conviction of 61 elderly women, seven elderly men and 18 younger relatives of the other accused. They received sentences of between four and six years in prison for practising witchcraft.

Justice Minister George Chaponda told the BBC that a person could only be found guilty of practising witchcraft if they confessed to being a witch.

But our reporter says the records showed all the suspects had pleaded not guilty.

"We are intervening in this matter because we are concerned we still have prisons in Malawi [with] people being accused of being witches," Mr Thindwa told the BBC's Network Africa programme.

"The courts were wrong 100%, [and] the police, to actually accommodate cases."

Most of those recently sentenced were women usually accused by children of teaching them witchcraft.

Mr Thindwa said they were vulnerable, given no support and the accusations and convictions took place very quickly.

He appealed to the chief justice and inspector general of police to inform their staff that witchcraft cases "should not be entertained".

"The problem is that our police and our courts most of them are witchcraft believers and this belief is very strong here in Malawi."

But Mr Chaponda said as far as he was aware, there was not a problem, and he urged those with complaints to come forward.

"I'm happy the minister has invited anybody with evidence to come forward. We have a complete dossier of the cases we are disputing," Mr Thindwa said. "We'll take the dossier to his office immediately."

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Eighty mainly elderly people recently jailed in Malawi for up to six years for practising witchcraft should be freed, campaigners say. George Thindwa from the Association of Secular Humanism told the BBC the convictions were illegal as there was no law against witchcraft. He said the problem was that many officials were "witchcraft believers".

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Accused of witchcraft by parents and churches, children in the Democratic Republic of Congo are being rescued by Christian activists.

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Angola: Papal envoy calls for end to witch child accusations | ICN

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The outgoing papal nuncio in Angola, Archbishop Angelo Becciu, has called for an end to witchcraft accusations against children. During a Mass marking the 124th anniversary of the Santa Ana Church in Caxito, the Nuncio said: "the charges are a frequent practice on th...

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Witchcraft belief is a curse on Africa | Jean La Fontaine

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Jean La Fontaine: Kristy Bamu was killed because his sister thought him a witch. In Africa, Christianity has only added to the toxicity of such beliefs