How do you spot a witch? This notorious 15th-century book gave instructions – and helped execute thousands of women

  Books have always had the power to cast a spell over their readers – figuratively.

  But one book that was quite popular from the 15th to 17th centuries, and infamously so, is literally about spells: what witches do, how to identify them, how to get them to confess, and how to bring them to swift punishment.

Women used to dominate the beer industry – until the witch accusations started pouring in

  What do witches have to do with your favorite beer?

  When I pose this question to students in my American literature and culture classes, I receive stunned silence or nervous laughs. The Sanderson sisters didn’t chug down bottles of Sam Adams in “Hocus Pocus.” But the history of beer points to a not-so-magical legacy of transatlantic slander and gender roles.

  Up until the 1500s, brewing was primarily women’s work – that is, until a smear campaign accused women brewers of being witches. Much of the iconography we associate with witches today, from the pointy hat to the broom, may have emerged from their connection to female brewers.

Toil and trouble: The myth of the witch is no myth at all

  Witches are usually relegated to the realm of fairy tales and sometimes explained as the manifestation of subconscious fears. They populate picture books, appear in fantasy-based films and television series, and their stereotypical features inspire Halloween costumes.

  But history provides numerous accounts of real witches. These were flesh-and-blood women who either seriously practiced magic and believed in its efficacy, identified as witches or, perhaps more fascinating, enacted certain stereotypical behaviors that, whether they liked it or not, aligned them with the frightening witches of fairy tales.