Twelve years ago, I published my novel Daughters of the Witching Hill, drawn from the true story of the Pendle Witches of 1612. The story of these wisewomen and healers still haunts and enchants me to this day. Currently the… Read More ›
pendle witches
A Visionary History of Women: Part 3
The Pendle Witches As a spiritual person, I am fascinated with women’s experience of the sacred. We women, for the past five-thousand years of patriarchy, have been side-lined and marginalized by every established religion in the world. But in every… Read More ›
The Grace of Letting Things End by Mary Sharratt
Ms. Boo, aka Queen Boudicca, in the heart of Pendle Witch Country. Though I was born and raised in Minnesota, I have wandered the world as an expat writer nearly my entire adult life, living in Belgium, Austria, and Germany,… Read More ›
Embracing Darkness: All Hallows Eve in Old Lancashire
Come Halloween, the popular imagination turns to witches. Especially in Pendle Witch Country, the rugged Pennine landscape surrounding Pendle Hill, once home to twelve individuals arrested for witchcraft in 1612. The most notorious was Elizabeth Southerns, alias Old Demdike,… Read More ›
All Hallows Tide in Old Lancashire by Mary Sharratt
My 2010 video docudrama about the Pendle Witches. Fun fact: my Welsh pony makes a guest appearance here. Come Halloween, the popular imagination turns to witches. Especially in Pendle Witch Country where I have lived since 2002. This… Read More ›
Mother Demdike, Ancestor of My Heart, Part 1 by Mary Sharratt
Pendle Hill, seen from the back of my house, in May. The Soul of Gaia is the numinous earth beneath my feet, her soil cradling the bones and the stories of the ancestors who have died into the land… Read More ›
The Pendle Witches and Their Magic by Mary Sharratt
In 1612, in one of the most meticulously documented witch trials in English history, seven women and two men from Pendle Forest in Lancashire, Northern England were executed at Lancaster Castle. In court clerk Thomas Potts’s account of the proceedings,… Read More ›