Which Historical Witch Are You? Quiz
Before witchcraft was an aesthetic … it was a death sentence. The women who carried that word were real: they had names, neighbors, court dates . Some of them healed and some saw the future. These women refused to shrink and that was the crime enough for their accusers.
This quiz matches you to one of four women from the historical record.
Marie Laveau who ran New Orleans through influence and service.
Biddy Early the Irish healer the church denounced and the neighbors protected.
Mother Shipton the Yorkshire prophetess people are still quoting five centuries later.
Bridget Bishop, the first woman Salem killed, who told her accusers exactly nothing they wanted to hear.
Eight questions. At the end you'll know whose line you're standing in, what the record says about her and what her story asks of you.
Which Historical Witch Are You?
Before the aesthetic there was the record. Real women, real names, real consequences. Four of them are waiting at the end of this quiz: a queen of New Orleans, a healer of County Clare, a prophetess in a Yorkshire cave and the first woman Salem hanged. Answer honestly and find out whose line you're standing in.
Blog cover art: "Examination of a Witch" Thompkins H. Matteson, 1853.
Generally supposed to represent an event in the Salem witch trials, an earlier version of this painting was exhibited by the artist in New York in 1848 with a quotation from John Greenleaf Whittier's book Supernaturalism of New England, 1847: "Mary Fisher, a young girl, was seized upon by Deputy Governor Bellingham in the absence of Governor Endicott, and shamefully stripped for the purpose of ascertaining whether she was a witch, with the Devil's mark upon her." See, "A Study of the Life and Work of the Nineteenth Century Artist Tompkins Harrison Matteson (1813-1884), by Harriet Hocter Groeschel, M.A. thesis, Syracuse University, 1985, pp. 37-38.
Source: Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA