The Big Idea: Nancy Kress

Spooky season may be over, but you can still be in the spirit with author Nancy Kress’s newest novel, The Queen’s Witch. Take a peek through the veil of magic and into the Big Idea to see some historical truths about these “witches.” NANCY KRESS: Forget Halloween witches, pock-marked and flying on broomsticks. Forget Shakespeare’s weird sisters, boiling and toiling and bubbling. Forget even modern Wicca. Think pagan worshippers who throughout medieval and Renaissance eras performed both healing with plants and minor magic—or so everyone believed. In England, they were called “cunning women,” and they predated Christianity. They also co-existed with it, especially in East Anglia and the North. Until Henry VIII decided otherwise, England was Catholic, and Catholicism was already comfortable with mysteries, miracles, and special people set aside from the ordinary. Even today in England you can see old churches whose beams are still carved with both angels and pagan symbols like the Green…

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