The Craft: Fear, Faith, and the Paradox of Women’s Power
History remembers its kings by their crowns and its witches by their scars. But somewhere between those extremes lived ordinary women, healers, mothers, midwives, who were feared for the very strength that kept their worlds alive.
In Episode 3: The Craft, I step back to 1590 Scotland, aboard a storm-tossed ship carrying King James VI and his new bride, Anne of Denmark. That storm ignited his obsession with witchcraft and ultimately shaped how an ocean away, Virginia’s settlers would come to see women like my ancestor, Eleanor Neale.
After surviving two violent voyages, James believed witches had conjured the winds to kill him. He ordered arrests, torture, and confessions in what became the North Berwick Witch Trials. When he later published Daemonologie (1597), he turned personal terror into national doctrine, a handbook teaching how to identify, prosecute, and punish witches.
In those pages, James called women “the Devil’s servants”, claiming their bodies bore secret marks of allegiance. He urged searchers to prick and pierce flesh in the name of proof. Fear became law. Law became precedent. And that precedent crossed the Atlantic.
By the 1640s, Eleanor Neale was living in colonial Virginia — a landscape still echoing with James’s words. The Act Against Conjuration, Witchcraft, and Dealing with Evil and Wicked Spirits of 1604 had made even suspicion a capital crime. The idea that a woman could be both fragile and dangerously powerful was woven into every sermon and statute.
What I still can’t understand, and what keeps me digging through archives, is this contradiction. How could women be called weak and easily led astray, yet be trusted to birth, feed, and raise every generation? How could they be unfit for judgment but indispensable for survival?
That paradox fueled centuries of persecution. The same hands that nursed a fever could be accused of summoning it. The same midwives trusted to bring life into the world could be stripped, searched, and condemned as servants of the Devil.
Colonial Virginia wasn’t a world of bustling cities but of scattered plantations and courthouse greens. Between 1626 and 1730, roughly two dozen witchcraft cases were recorded. Few ended in execution, yet every accusation left scars, reputations ruined, bodies punished, families shamed.
Researching this episode left me angry, awed, and honestly bewildered. The same culture that dismissed women as too emotional to testify in court demanded their strength to bear children, heal sickness, and sustain entire colonies. They were the backbone of society, yet the easiest scapegoats when that society trembled.
Maybe that’s why Eleanor’s story matters so much to me. She’s proof that survival itself can be an act of rebellion.
Primary Sources
Daemonologie (1597), King James VI of Scotland
The Acts Against Conjuration, Witchcraft, and Dealing with Evil and Wicked Spirits (1604)
Northumberland County Record Book 1658–1662 and 1666–1673 (Library of Virginia Microfilm Reels NCR 1 & 2)
Virginia Colonial Abstracts, Vol. 1–3, ed. Beverley Fleet
Minutes of the Council and General Court of Virginia (1622–1676)
Secondary & Contextual Sources
Levack, Brian P. The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe. Routledge, 2016.
Goodare, Julian. The Scottish Witch-Hunt in Context. Manchester University Press, 2002.
Sharpe, James. Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in England 1550–1750. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.
Norton, Mary Beth. In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692. Vintage Books, 2003.
Brown, Kathleen M. Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs. UNC Press, 1996.
Encyclopedia Virginia: entries on “Witchcraft in Colonial Virginia,” “Coverture in Colonial Law,” and “Women in Early Virginia.”
Library of Virginia Archives & Digital Collections (https://lva.virginia.gov)
Subscribe to the Legacy Lore newsletter, The Lorekeeper’s Ledger, for behind-the-scenes research updates, early episode previews, and new discoveries straight from the archives.
You can also follow @LegacyLorePod on Instagram and Facebook for episode announcements, visual artifacts, and historical extras.
Every listener, every reader, every shared story helps keep these forgotten lives remembered.
Thank you for being part of this journey — and for helping me bring Eleanor’s voice, and voices like hers, back into the light.
Ready to Start Building Your Legacy?
If you’re ready to start exploring your own family history, I’ve gathered a few tools to help.
Click HERE to see:
Recommended research materials and genealogical worksheets
The Formidable Genealogist, who will be joining me later this season on the podcast. She offers virtual genealogy classes and beautifully designed resource PDFs that can guide you through documenting your family history, one generation at a time. Her materials are thorough, approachable, and the reviews speak for themselves.
And just to be transparent - yes, there are a few products listed in the Linktree that I may receive a small commission from if you decide to purchase them. But no, these are not sponsored or affiliate links. They’re items I personally use and genuinely recommend because they’ve made a difference in my own research and storytelling process.re meant to help you begin your own legacy project because every family has stories worth telling, and sometimes all it takes is a single starting point.
