-
In Entry XIII, the Archivist examines the Würzburg witch trials of 1625 to 1631, when torture and forced denunciations under Prince-Bishop Philipp Adolf von Ehrenberg sent perhaps nine hundred people, including clergy, nobles, and young children, to the fire, and traces their logic back to the Kilkenny case of 1324.
-
In Entry XII, the Archivist studies Hel, the Norse realm and goddess of the dead, through Snorri Sturluson’s Edda: her half-dark body, her hall of Hunger and Sickbed, the golden bridge over the river Gjöll, and her terrible condition for Baldr’s return, weighing what is ancient belief against medieval invention.
-
With a quick wash of burnt sienna, the woodland spirit begins to warm beneath the shadows. This transparent layer prepares the surface for the next stage: painting the hair and cloak. As these details take shape, the fairy’s character will emerge more clearly, deepening the atmosphere of this mysterious realm.
-
In Entry XI, the Archivist traces the Devil’s changing colors: the blue angel of Ravenna, the black of medieval demonology, the green of Gothic fiends, and the red of Revelation, hellfire, and Gounod’s Faust. Each color carried meanings of darkness, corruption, or fire, revealing more about painters than about Satan.
-
Deep in the woods of my imagination, a new inhabitant is emerging. Using only black and sienna brown, I am carving out the essence of a woodland spirit. Each stroke brings the shadows to life. As I prepare to introduce a new color palette, this fairy realm begins its descent.
-
It is a saying in the hills, older than the coal companies: that every creek in the Blue Ridge, every spring that weeps out of a rock face, drains at last not to the sea but to a house in the low wet country where the maps go quiet. The saying is wrong about the…
-
In Entry X, the Archivist examines clippings about Exeter, Rhode Island, where in 1892 a family exhumed Mercy Brown and burned her heart to save her dying brother. The entry places the episode within New England’s struggle with tuberculosis, and asks how the word “vampire” came to replace her name.
-
In Entry IX, the Archivist separates the Bamberg witch trials of the 1620s from Trier’s earlier persecution, examining Prince-Bishop Fuchs von Dornheim, the Witch Burner, his purpose-built Drudenhaus with its Vergilian inscription, and the deaths of Georg Haan, Johannes Junius, and Dorothea Flock, while warning against the blended popular retellings.
-
Between 1626 and 1631, Prince-Bishop Fuchs von Dornheim of Bamberg executed hundreds of accused witches, confining them in the purpose-built Drudenhaus. This companion to Journal Entry IX traces the frost that sparked the trials, the machinery of torture and naming, the deaths of Haan, Junius, and Flock, and imperial intervention.
-
Companion to Journal Entry VIII, this field study examines the Trier witch trials of 1581 to 1593: the hungry years, the village committees, the burnings at St. Maximin, the execution of judge Dietrich Flade in 1589, Peter Binsfeld’s doctrine of confession, and the forced silencing of the dissenter Cornelius Loos.