ANCESTRAL SORCERY

According to my maternal grandfather (pictured at right with my grandmother and a dog named Dusty), there was a history of sorcery or witchcraft on his mother’s side back in 17th Century Italy. My great-grandmother’s maiden name was Ascolese, which appears to have been changed from D’Ascoli (same meaning). My mother (who snapped the photo of her parents and dog a few years before I was born) told me that my grandfather had told her, when she was a young girl, that long ago there had been a cardinal in the D’Ascoli/Ascolese line who had been considered for the papacy but who had been disgraced when one of his nephews was caught practicing witchcraft.

According to the 1928 introduction to a reprint of an ancient book called the “Malleus Maleficarum,” Cardinal D’Ascoli’s nephew, Giacinto Centini, was executed in 1634 (other sources say 1635).

Who are the “witches” in modern America? What group of individuals, capable of reciting powerful “magic words,” inspires fear and loathing among the masses? The lawyers, of course!