Avada Kedavra - Carson Alfonzo

Anachronism: an act of attributing a custom, event, or object to a period to which it does not belong (Oxford Languages). I had to look up that word online after reading it in Witchcraft: A Short Introduction . This word does a great job of encapsulating our efforts as a class in terms of our analysis of witchcraft from a 21st century perspective. Our goal is to study some of the seemingly crazy events from the past without reducing its validity from a given time period. I find it remarkably easy to apply our modern research and ideologies to the texts we have read; therefore, I have been making significant mental efforts to refrain from this practice of anachronism. Overall, it is difficult to not accidentally engage in anachronism. After all, how thoroughly can one constantly monitor their thoughts as they happen, while also digesting the text itself. However, it would be foolish to pretend like these types of relatively nonsensical stories / legends do not occur in society to this d...

I found several concepts interesting in the first 44 pages of Witchcraft, A Short Introduction. The author demonstrates a solid understanding of the human mind throughout history, which is expected after 20 plus years of study. One thing mentioned in the first few pages is how humans prefer clear-cut concepts instead of ambiguous ones. This made me think about how children’s books and movies usually only provide binary situations; good and evil, night and day, etc. There is always an obvious good character (protagonist) and bad character (antagonist), which makes sense because children wield developing minds and need to understand the basics before tackling the infinite space in between such opposite forces (depending on a given situation / story). However, my next thought was in regard to the vast development of the human species over thousands of years. If people from the past were much more willing to accept / limit themselves to binary concepts to navigate their lifestyles, wouldn’...