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Clueless or confounding? Good question. I came across that reference to a Witch's Cradle being used to torture witches, but think about it.... if the witches had been using the device to induce altered states, then how could that be torture to them? It might be torture to a non-witch (one man's torture is another man's ecstasy, you know). Even more alarming, if the torture device was called a "witch's cradle" because it was used to torture witches... well, why wasn't it used to torture other people? Surely a torturer would not forgoe the use of a nifty instrument of pain and reserve it only for one class of prisoner, eh?
So we must (I say) assume that some idiotic history buffs became confused over this issue and now "everybody knows" that a witch's cradle is a terrible instrument used to torment witches.
I still want to make one and I am not going to experiment and improvise when this thing as already been invented. What about it causes the altered state. Surely not just swinging to and fro, as in a sack tied over the tree limb. John Lilly claimed he'd used a U-Joint (universal joint), which must have added a serious element of unpredictability as to in which direction the thing would twitch next. But are there other influences involved?
For all the talk here lately about rigging up some old phonograph to perform some feat rendered nearly impossible by the touchiness of the calibration measurements and cuts needed to make the damn thing work, I'd think more people would be interested in something a little bit easier to make (probably) that might do the same thing.
So what say ye? Dig deep and see if you can come up with the instructions for rigging up the old(e) Wytches Cradle. Plz. Thanks in advance. |
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