New magic sets are always exciting for enthusiasts and collectors alike. These sets typically include a variety of new spells, creatures, and enchantments that add depth to the game and provide new strategies for players to explore. One of the most anticipated aspects of new magic sets is the introduction of new card mechanics. These mechanics often introduce new ways to play the game, such as the ability to transform a card into a more powerful version, or the ability to interact with specific types of cards in unique ways. These mechanics can greatly change the dynamics of the game and force players to adapt their strategies. In addition to new mechanics, new magic sets also introduce new planes or worlds for players to explore.

The Salem Plant Witch

Meet Lulu Ayube, the visionary behind Salem Plant Witch. Established in August 2020, our business is a sanctuary for plant enthusiasts and novices alike. Lulu, a plant aficionado with over five years of experience, has curated a selection of unusual and “hard to kill” plants perfect for adding a touch of green magic to your living spaces.

Our Mission

Our mission is to make plant care accessible and enjoyable. Whether you’re new to the world of plants or a seasoned green thumb, we offer something for everyone. We specialize in e-commerce, educational resources, and personalized home consultations to help you cultivate your ideal indoor green space.

What Sets Us Apart

1. Local Foraging: Many of our products feature ethically sourced bones, minerals, and organic matter, all foraged from the Salem area.
2. Holistic Approach: Lulu’s background in Human Services has deeply influenced her approach to plant care, making it an integral part of her spiritual identity.
3. Community-Centric: Operating out of Salem, Massachusetts, we are a local business committed to enriching our community through education and sustainable practices.
4. Animal-Friendly: Our home-based business is a bustling ecosystem, complete with loved ones, five chickens, two dogs, one cat, and a small jungle of plants.

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• Education: We offer workshops, online courses, and free resources to help you become a more confident plant parent.
• Home Consultations: Looking for personalized advice? Schedule a home consultation with Lulu to get expert tips tailored to your space and needs.

Contact Us

Ready to add some unique and resilient plants to your home? Visit our website or reach out to us for a consultation. We’re here to help you cultivate the green space you’ve always dreamed of.

Did a plant disease play a role in the Salem Witch Trials?

Ergot is a fungal disease of small grains, particularly rye, caused by the pathogen Clavicepts purpurea. It enters the plant during pollination, infecting the ovaries and displacing the seeds with an “ergot” or sclerotium (a mass of fungal hyphal tissues that serve as the survival structure). The sclerotia contain numerous chemicals (one of which is lysergic acid, a precursor to the hallucinogenic drug LSD) that can poison animals or humans if consumed, resulting in a condition known as ergotism.
This is one of the few plant diseases that can also cause direct damage to humans.
Ergotism is characterized by a host of different symptoms, depending upon the specific chemicals involved. Some of the more common symptoms include tremors, delusions, prickling sensations on skin, convulsing seizures, hallucinations and violent muscle spasms.
The disease is favored by severely cold winters followed by a cool, wet growing season, and has historically occurred more commonly in areas highly dependent upon rye for sustenance. Although all cereal crops are vulnerable, rye is more susceptible than other cereals due to flowers being open-pollinated and staying open longer, thus remaining exposed for longer periods of time.
Ergot has been recognized since ancient times, and is now known to be responsible for the death of thousands of people. Its presence has also been correlated with dysfunctional human behavior and hypothesized to have altered or influenced certain historical events. One of the more provocative of these events involves ergot’s ties with the concentration of witchcraft trials in Europe and North America.
In early modern Europe, the locations of documented witch trials were clustered in central Europe (alpine France, southwest Germany) and the east coast of Scotland, all areas with cool, wet weather and a reliance on rye as a staple food. Recorded witchcraft persecution trials reached a peak between 1560 and 1660, one of the coldest centuries on record.

Behavioral psychologist proposes Salem Witchcraft Theory
The worst outbreak of witch persecution in recorded history was from colonial Massachusetts in a single year. In 1976, behavioral psychologist Linnda Caporael proposed the concept of ergot poisoning to explain the strange events that occurred in Salem, Massachusetts, in the fall of 1692.

The full article is available in our e-Edition. Click here to subscribe.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is based on material from these sources: Caporael, L. R. 1976. Ergotism: the Satan loosed in Salem? Science 192: 21-26. Christensen, C. M. 1975. Molds, mildews, and mycotoxins. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN, 264 pp. Matossian, M. K. 1989. Poisons of the past: molds, epidemics, and history. Yale University Press, New Haven CN, 190 pp.

Plant blamed for Salem witch trials found growing in Utah

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SPRING CITY, Sanpete County — In a remote part of Sanpete County, Hannah Stoddard picked up what looked like some wheat with some darker pieces of grain.

"In the process of working on our property (in Spring City), we found this plant," Stoddard said.

She said she thought maybe it was some wild rice, something they could grow, harvest and eat. Fortunately, they checked first.

Dean Miner, a professor with the Utah State University extension office in Provo, said what Stoddard found was a wheatgrass infected with a fungus called ergot of rye.

"Historically, it's been the cause of thousands of deaths," Miner said. "Consumption of grain that's got ergotism — is what they call it — can cause very erratic behavior in people."

Miner said some historians believe that effect may have led to the witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, back in the late 1600s.

"Part of their behavior, acting erratically, doing strange things that very easily could have been interpreted as witch-like behavior because they didn't have any other explanation for it," Miner said.

Luckily, the Stoddard family won't have to worry about that, even though Hannah said she did taste a bit of it before turning it in.

"One grain,” Stoddard said laughing.

But adding to the irony of this story, Stoddard teaches high school history and said she's studied the witch trials closely.

"The puritans actually based their entire civilization, their entire culture on The Bible, on the Old Testament,” she said. "One of the principles in the Old Testament is that you always have a system of witnesses; a trial.”

A Utah County family made a spooky discovery just before Halloween: a plant that has ties to the Salem witch trials. It's actually a fairly rare find in Utah, and it's now just one of a few ties that family has to that difficult time in history. (KSL TV)

Did we mention that the Stoddards live in Salem, Utah?

"A little humorous I guess you could say,” Stoddard said.

As far as the grain they found, having an eerie tie to Halloween, Stoddard points out that the puritans refused to celebrate Halloween.

“It was illegal,” she said.

And her family doesn't celebrate it either, but there is one more coincidence in this story.

“Our family ourselves, we actually go back to some of my ancestors were there at the Salem witch trials," Stoddard said.

Though aside from this history lesson, Stoddard said there's one more take away.

“You don't eat everything you find," she said. "Just because something looks good doesn't mean it's safe."

Contributing: Xoel Cardenas

How Rye Bread May Have Caused the Salem Witch Trials

While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.

Kathleen Lohnes was an editorial intern at Encyclopaedia Britannica in 2017 and 2018. She received her bachelor’s degree in philosophy and creative writing in 2020 at the University of Iowa.

Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors.

From Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, edited by Charles Dudley Warner, 1896

In 1692 the small Puritan village of Salem, Massachusetts, was plagued by a sudden and brief cloud of witchcraft accusations. After young girls Betty Parris and Abigail Williams exhibited severe convulsions and other strange symptoms, village doctor William Griggs diagnosed them as having been bewitched. Soon after, other townspeople began showing similar symptoms. That’s when the accusations started flying. The town quickly decided that they were going to search for, and execute, all the witches of Salem. By the end of the trials in May 1693, 19 people had been hanged, one had been crushed by stones, and four had died in prison—all accused of being witches. Three hundred years later, we’re still asking: Did witches really haunt the town of Salem? Or was another devil at work?

In 1976 Dr. Linnda Caporael of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute found evidence that supported the latter hypothesis. Caporael proposed that perhaps the brief and intense illnesses suffered by so many of the townspeople were not bewitchment but rather ergotism, a disease commonly contracted by rye. Later, other historians agreed: ergotism was not only an interesting theory but also had some footing. Could all of the crazy happenings in Salem really be explained by some rotted rye?

Surprisingly, a lot of them can. With the exception of a few events (which are typically attributed to groupthink and the power of suggestion), the behavior exhibited in 1692 fits the bill of rye-induced ergotism. Ergotism forms in rye after a severe winter and a damp spring—conditions that Caporael and other historians claim were present in 1691 and therefore affected the rye harvested for consumption in 1692. After the rye plant contracts ergot, the fungus grows and replaces shoots on the grain with sclerotia. Ergot sclerotia are purple-black growths that contain lysergic acid and ergotamine. Since medical knowledge was sparse, the presence of darker shoots on rye was probably thought to be the product of overexposure to the sun, so it was most likely eaten despite being poisonous.

Once contracted from rye bread, ergotism (also called St. Anthony’s fire) causes severe convulsions, muscle spasms, delusions, the sensation of crawling under the skin, and, in extreme cases, gangrene of the extremities. Severe hallucinations can also be a symptom, as lysergic acid is the substance from which the drug LSD is synthesized. These symptoms were the same as those shown by the accused in Salem: mostly young girls whose immune systems had not fully developed, leaving them susceptible to diseases such as ergotism. The village doctor, being religious and, so the theory goes, unaware of ergotism as a disease, attributed the strange symptoms to a known evil: witchcraft. He claimed that the girls had fallen victim to the evils of witchcraft, and the girls went along with it. The rest of the townsfolk fell victim to suggestibility, and thus the trials commenced, with accusations of witchcraft being targeted at the outcasts of society by those who were afflicted. According to this theory, the abrupt end of the witch trials in May 1693 happened, quite simply, because Salem ran out of ergot-contaminated grain.

There is, however, still much debate over whether or not this theory should be accepted. Many social psychologists insist that the actions of the girls can be attributed to social and political unrest and that ergotism doesn’t factor into certain social aspects that could explain what really happened. Such aspects include Reverend Parris’s possible ulterior motives and the immense amount of stress put on the population during 1692 due to a smallpox outbreak and a quickly expanding population. Unfortunately, we will probably never know exactly what happened in Salem during the witch trials. All sides of the argument agree, however, that there was probably nothing supernatural at work. According to some people, the real evil might have been on the supper table.

Learn More About This Topic

• What were the Salem witch trials?
• Why is ergotism called St. Anthony’s fire?

In addition to new mechanics, new magic sets also introduce new planes or worlds for players to explore. Each plane has its own unique theme and setting, which can greatly impact the art and design of the cards. These new worlds provide a fresh backdrop for players to immerse themselves in and can inspire new deck ideas and strategies.

New magic sets also typically include a large number of new cards, providing players with a wealth of new options to choose from when building their decks. This can be particularly exciting for players who enjoy deck building and experimenting with different strategies. With a wide range of new spells and creatures to choose from, players can tailor their decks to suit their playstyle and preferences. Another exciting aspect of new magic sets is the inclusion of rare and mythic rare cards. These cards are typically more powerful and sought after by collectors, and often feature unique or flashy abilities. Obtaining these rare cards can be a thrilling experience for players and can greatly enhance the power and versatility of their decks. Overall, new magic sets continue to captivate players by introducing new mechanics, worlds, and cards to the game. Whether you're an experienced player looking for new strategies or a collector searching for rare and powerful cards, these sets offer something for everyone. So gather your friends, crack open the booster packs, and prepare to dive into the exciting world of new magic sets..

Reviews for "The Evolution Continues: The Latest Advancements in Magic Sets"

1. John - 2 stars - I was really disappointed with the new magic set. The tricks were not as impressive as in previous sets and the prop quality was lacking. The packaging also seemed cheap and hastily put together. I expected more from this brand and it just didn't deliver.

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The Perfect Addition: Exploring the New Magic Sets for Your Collection