ABSTRACT
By the later seventeenth century the number of witch trials throughout Europe had seriously declined, and the reality of witchcraft was increasingly questioned. The defense of witchcraft beliefs often became florid, as did the pictorial images created in support. The engraving served printers' interests well, for it appeared for the third time, and now as a frontispiece engraving, in Peter Goldschmidt's Witness to the Depravity of Witches and Sorcerers, published in Hamburg in 1705 by Gottfried Liebernickel. Goldschmidt was a Lutheran pastor from Schleswig and a stern defender of witchcraft trials. In the foreground a young female witch in a magic circle pours powder from a horn into a cauldron. Nearby sits a devilish beast with beady eyes, dragging on a pipe; and in the opposite corner are the woman’s tools of trade. The obscene kiss now became the central collective ritual; and it was a ritual exclusively involving women and children.
