HiddenMysteries: Woman branded a witch, stripped

MOTIHARI: She was just a poor widow minding her own business, but ended up being stripped, beaten, branded a witch and made to eat faeces.

All because a few villagers in a village in Bihar near the Indo-Nepal border blamed her for another woman getting intermittent hysteria attacks.

Residents of Valuahiya village in east Champaran district decided that she was under the "influence of a ghost". They then called in exorcists and necromancers to get rid of it, police said.

When the daughter-in-law of the villager — identified as Ramchandra Raut — showed no signs of improvement, some of the villagers came up with the idea that Shanichari Devi (name changed), a widow living in neighbouring Belwa village was responsible for the woman's plight.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com

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ARADIA
or
the Gospel of the Witches

By Charles G. Leland

For brief explanation I may say that witch craft is known to its votaries as la vecchia religione, or the old religion, of which Diana is the Goddess, her daughter Aradia (or Herodias) the female Messiah, and that this little work sets forth how the latter was born, came down to earth, established witches and witchcraft, and then returned to heaven.

Excerpt:

With it are given the ceremonies and invocations or incantations to be addressed to Diana and Aradia, the exorcism of Cain, and the spells of the holy-stone, rue, and verbena, constituting, as the text declares, the regular church-service, so to speak, which is to be chanted or pronounced at the witch-meetings.

Woman branded a witch, stripped

Wednesday, September 20 2006 @ 05:45 PM CDT