The “Witchcraft, Counter Magic, and Archaeology in Salem and New England,” presentation is part of monthly series held in the Peabody Museum by leading history and archeology experts.īaker cited examples of countermagic in New England, ranging from the witch cakes of Salem Village in 1692 to the daisy wheels carved into houses for protection against evil. Essentially, there are all sorts of things you can do to try to reveal witches and try to protect yourself from witches…You can even use puppets, what we would call voodoo dolls, where you take the doll and you stab it with a pen, you put its feet over the flames, and the person is inflicted,” said Baker during the presentation. “In some ways, counter magic is closely related to apotropaic magic, which is the Greek word for turn away. The presentation focused on the ways in which people from the 1690s believed in countermagic, a form of protecting oneself against evil, and how they used it to expose witchcraft. Stories of warding off witches and magic echoed throughout the Peabody Museum of Archaeology on Tuesday night, when Emerson Baker ’76, author and Professor of History at Salem State University, gave his presentation called “Witchcraft, Counter Magic and Archaeology in Salem and New England.”
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