Witch's mark

Folklore suggests that on the 7th day of the 7th week of consecutive feeding upon the teat, the cambion would grow to adulthood immediately and begin wreaking havoc with a range of demonic powers inherited from its supernatural father.

[7] The violence used against accused witches in order to discover the witch's mark included torture; "To try to force a confession, priest applied hot fat repeatedly to Catherine Boyraionne's eyes and her armpits, the pit of her stomach, her thighs, her elbows, and 'dans sa nature' – in her vagina.

"[8] During the witch-trials in early modern Europe, individuals were employed to help aid in the discovery and conviction of witches.

Hopkins's writings reached the height of their popularity during the English Civil War (c. 1645), and contributed to the use of the witch's mark as evidence of guilt.

The first camp, sometimes called "Murray-ists", supports British anthropologist Margaret Murray's theory of the witch's mark.

Her writings argue strongly that Devil's marks were in actuality tattoos that identified members of an organized pagan religion that she believed flourished in the Middle Ages.

[10] After the publication of her work, the historical community became divided between Murrayist and non-Murrayist scholars: "When the Witchcult in Western Europe appeared in 1921, it broke this deadlock; yes, said Murray, witches had indeed been up to something of which society disapproved, but it was in no way supernatural; they were merely members of an underground movement secretly keeping pagan rituals alive in Christian Europe.

English Literature professor Deborah Willis, who writes from a feminist perspective, asserts that the witch-hunts resulted from a societal fear of maternal power.

The appearance of the witch's mark in Europe is only noted after Columbian contact with the New World in 1492 and may be the result of the transfer of a virulent form of borrelia infection from America into Europe, especially in areas under the control of the Spanish Empire, including parts of the Rhine River Valley that are now in Germany.

[14] This theory is an expansion of the idea first proposed by Laurie Winn Carlson that the bewitched in Salem suffered from encephalitis.

[15] Lyme disease is probably the only form of mild or acute encephalitis that is accompanied by a round red mark or bull's eye rash on the skin, which can appear after tick attachment.