Witch Research Papers Samples For Students

Introduction

Hidden in mystery and practices that challenges human understanding through its complex relations, occultism is considered as the domain of obscure practices, defying science and religion. Being widespread in many African countries, occultism is believed to be practiced in secret within various circles, performed by witch doctors or other insiders of occult practices, as a solution for healing but also for generating certain benefits or advantages. This paper analyzes the influence of occultism and witch doctors in Africa, by examining if and how occult practices are used for healing or as a remedy for treating ailments or “magical illness” (such as ...

In our modern, sophisticated and highly secular world, the concept of witchcraft might seem ridiculous and anachronistic. Yet, even today there are many people in the world who believe strongly in the supernatural, including the power of witchcraft to influence the world around them. Despite 19th century mysticism and Romantic period interest in the Druids, Europe has largely abandoned any such traditions. However, belief in witchcraft is still quite common in much of Africa. However, even in Africa witchcraft has changed significantly from what it was in the distant past. The following essay will examine both European and African ...

Wondrous, magical, fantastic, wonderful, fascinating – those are the indications of fairy tales, narratives unusual and frequently irrational. Their world is grasped by one’s intuition, a world flourishing in liveliness, spirit and possibilities of role play, due to the fact that it brandishes a different kind of reality, a less arduous one, with an utterly positive outlook on life, in which life is reminiscent of a wonderful dream, but still not without its troubles and obstacles. Through imagery and potent symbolism, fairy tales express human life experiences and the potentiality of solutions to human troubles. According to Annette R. Federico, “fairy tale maidens ...

Introduction

The Salem Witch trials were a series of hearings in the Counties and these hearings were carried out with the aim of prosecuting people who were accused of engaging in witchcraft. Although they were known as the Salem trials, they were carried across different provinces in the counties of Essex, Suffolk and Middlesex. Most people believed in witches and there were probably practicing witches in Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1692. Witches have existed in Salem and Andover since 1692 until today. There were 58 cases of witchcraft in the England colonies from 1645 to 1662 (Buckland, 2002). The trials led ...

Introduction

In the 1996 movie entitled, The Craft, it portrays four troubled high school women who holds the power to control their own realities and the people around them by the practice of black magic. Each woman is having some negative issue within their own life, including low self-esteem, trouble fitting in with other classmates, lack of family dynamics and poor relationships. These problems temporarily go away when the teenagers all come together to call the four corners of East, West, South and North to their deity that will grant them unlimited power and control. Although the magic ritual worked ...

Salem Witch Trials

The events that transpired in Salem, Massachusetts occurred between the years of 1688 and 1693 constituted the most significant witchcraft outbreak in the history of the New England colonies. The entire event was quickly labeled as “colossal mistake” by the government after they had passed.(Ray, 2010) With this in mind the question remains; how did it get started and how did it get out of hand so quickly?
Salem is a town in Massachusetts that has unfortunately earned its reputation from these trials. It was founded in 1626 when settlers led by Roger Conant settled in Naumkeag after a ...

Paranoia is deeply entwined with the human psyche, and parallels can be seen across generations. This is made extremely clear with Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, written in 1953, which parallels the communist-hunting era, so characterized by Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy and his incessant search for communists, against the backdrop of the Salem Witch trials. There are indeed many parallels which can be made.
In both the anti-communist atmosphere of the Cold War and the paranoia of ultra-religious Salem in 1692, there was an element of “the enemy is among us”. It was, to an extent, taken ...

In the story of Ngeti, there are several rituals practiced by the traditional Taita community in Kenya as well as rituals practiced by the catholic community from the region. In addition, there are also rituals practiced by the Protestants1. This paper seeks to identify at least one particular ritual in Ngeti’s story that is similar to or different from the rituals identified by Emile Durkheim and understanding of rites passage.

With the myriad rituals in the story of Ngeti, the one that stands out especially with regards to traditional practices in the Taita community is the ritual to ...

The story of Samuel, the thirteenth judge in ancient Israel, overlaps with that of some of ancient Israel’s most famous and first kings: Saul, David and Solomon. The reason is that Samuel was the last of the judges-rulers who governed ancient Israel before the era of the Kings began. Some of the Bible’s most popular narratives revolve around him: including that of Eli and his own mother Hannah. Samuel’s father, Elkanah, had two wives: Hannah and Peninnah. Hannah was childless and apparently incapable of bearing, whilst Peninnah had children. Elkanah used to go to offer sacrifices ...

The Wizard of Oz is a musical fantasy film of the United States, which is produced by Goldwyn Mayer, and is also based on the famous and commercially unbeatable adaptation of the novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, written by Frank Baum in 1900. The film appeals the audience if something special is introduced or used (Lumet, 1995). The film is notable for using Technicolor, unusual characters, musical score, and dreamy storytelling. Because of these features the film has become a well-known film and the part of the popular culture of America. It, however, also featured in the cinema that can ...

The age of enlightenment took place in Europe between 1600-1700s, sparked by a number of philosophers including; John Loker, Isaac Newton, and Pierre Bayle. Majorly, this was the age of historical cultural and intellectual progress aimed at transforming the state of society in terms of knowledge. Also, it focused upon deductive and logic reasoning and rationality in the government system. The leaders responsible for academic movement regarded themselves as elite, and their role was to see the world towards progress. At this period, the world was still in the dark ages full of irrationality, superstitions, witch hunts and traditions. Therefore, ...

Witchcraft and Gender in Early Modern England

Witchcraft has long been a fascination of artists and authors throughout the world and in early modern England, this fascination was rife. Traditionally, witchcraft is closely associated with women and frequently, its presentation throughout art forms involves the image of the female form. However, it is clear that in doing this, we are deliberately ignoring half of the gender relationship and fundamentally misunderstanding the gender roles of men and women in early modern England (Apps & Gow 6). A common misconception is that witchcraft was a metaphor for the oppression of women by men but, in truth, this is most likely ...

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is one of the most famous novels by the American romantic writer. While the novel is well-known for its depiction of the relationships between the characters, and the romantic plots and subplots, the novel also has great value as a historical study of the Puritan period. Puritan society was a highly gendered society, with strict gender roles for men and women, and a well-established patriarchal society. Explorations of the novel, and of the depiction of Hester’s character, her punishment, and her actions in the novel can help reveal whether Hawthorne was realistically ...

The Class Name

Being the important part of the local culture, the exotic music of Bali is extremely vibrant, complex and various. Originally created to be a religious attribute of the land, it is usually accompanied by wayang theatres and special dances.It has animated the minds and souls of different musicians and composers from all over the world to compose their own new tunes. For example, a composer Bela Bartok named his creation No.109 “From the Island of Bali”. It is also claimed that Debussy met an orchestra from Bali performing in Europe; therefore, he was so affected and impressed by Balinese music and ...

Global Issues in Liberal arts

A class in liberal arts gives students a good foundation for understanding complex global issues. A Liberal Arts class can take advantage of any disciplines and type of knowledge necessary on a given subject. This paper presents the subject of violence as an example of how many disciplines are necessary to evaluate and learn about violence in American cultural. It also looks at the view from outside the United States and how people view American from so many violent events that take place in the country. The recent mass murder in a movie cinema in Aurora, Colorado is discussed. The tragic event ...

“In giving her existence, a great law had been broken; and the result was a being whose elements were perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but all in disorder, or with an order peculiar to themselves, amidst which the point of variety and arrangement was difficult or impossible to be discovered” (Hawthorne, Chapter 6 p. 98).
The quote above generalizes Pearl’s character. She was the daughter of Hester Prynne, a woman living in the standards of the Puritan society condemned by the people as ‘brazen hussy’ who bears the scarlet letter ‘A’ fantastically embroidered upon her bosom (Hawthorne, Chapter 2 p. 57). ...

“Young Goodman Brown,” “The Birthmark” and “Ethan Brand” are all notably published works from the dark romanticism sub-genre era published by Nathaniel Hawthorne that have lead characters embracing the concepts of morality and isolation. Hawthorne is an American author well-known mostly for his writings in this particular classification of stories from 1839 to 1860. Hawthorne typically incorporates such topic as isolation, sin, and the devil in his writings. These topics can generate and fester sinister feelings and ideas of alienation, guilt, and gloom. Hawthorn draws influence from multiple aspects of his life, for example, incorporating the use of his ...

The Cold War was a global confrontation between the two military and political blocs led by the Soviet Union and the United States, which did not come down to an open military conflict. The concept of the "cold war" appeared in journalism in 1945-1947 and gradually stuck in the political dictionary.
After the Second World War, the world was actually divided into the spheres of influence of two blocks with different social systems. The Soviet Union and the United States have sought to expand their spheres of influence. But the rough equality of forces between the blocks, and then ...

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. Oskar Wilde
Children have difficulty sharing, understanding and minding other people`s interests, especially young ones. This is a normal part of the development process. Knowing and accepting this is the first step in helping the child to grow up to be person, not a living being.
True sharing implies empathy, the ability to get into another’s mind and see things from the other points of view. Consequently, the question comes on: “How to teach the child to ...

Introduction

Cotton Mather was an influential Puritan minister of New England in USA. He was the son and grandson of two prominent Puritan ministers Increase Mather and Richard Mather. He was a prolific writer who had 468 publications to his credit. Some of the books written by him like 'Magnalia Christi Americana', 'Bonifacius' and 'The Angel of Bethesda' are very important for American history (GSU 2011). He completed his graduation at the age 16 from Harvard University, thereby becoming one of the youngest graduate ever from the institution. Mather like his father Increase Mather was a strong defender of Puritan orthodoxy and played ...

Diaz novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao starts with the narrators portrayal of a curse which is referred to as – a curse of doom (fuku americanus) distinctively that of a New World. In keeping with Diaz in the novel, the curse was taken to the island of Antilles at time when the Europeans arrived at has remained there ever after. In the novel, the narrator claims that dictator Rafael has a close relation with fuku. At the beginning, the novel details Oscar childhood, teenage and traumatic college years. He further informs the reader that he will be informing the reader about ...

Introduction

The Crucible is a historical motion picture released in 1996 and adapted from a play by Arthur Miller. The plot of the film is based on real events and these are the Salem Witch Trials which took place in 1692. Salem is a religious Puritan village located in modern day Massachusetts. The infamous Salem Witchcraft Trials occurred in 1692 after several girls fell victim to hallucinations and seizures. During this period, religion extremity in the lives of the local people caused them to attribute surprising activities to the cohorts of the devil, for example witches. This movie screenplay is filled with a lot ...

One of the foundational principles of modern anthropology is that cultural phenomena are not to be judged through the prism of cultural bias. In Madumo, A Man Bewitched, Adam Ashforth blurs the line between observer and participant but preserves the sanctity of cultural context. His book is a hybrid of sorts, a melding of fiction and ethnography, a story and an observation, but it does not seek to make the subject matter more palatable or comfortable for a Western reader. Ashforth lays the story before his audience and tells us that when it comes to spiritual matters, he is unquestionably a man of science, a ...