Janet Douglas (died after 1678), was a Scottish woman who claimed to have
second sight.
Life
During the 1670s, in the western islands of
Scotland, Janet began publicly "demonstrating" said ''sight'' by seeking out "images", objects allegedly made by
witches
Witchcraft traditionally means the use of magic or supernatural powers to harm others. A practitioner is a witch. In medieval and early modern Europe, where the term originated, accused witches were usually women who were believed to have use ...
. The phenomenon of second sight was often considered witchcraft itself.
By the time she moved to
Glasgow, traveling alone at the age of eleven, she was mobbed by people wanting to discover if witchcraft was the cause of their ill luck, given word already reached the city before her arrival. After she had told several members of the crowd where they could the images, the crowd stirred itself into such a frenzy that the
magistrates quickly put her under
protective custody
Protective custody (PC) is a type of imprisonment (or care) to protect a person from harm, either from outside sources or other prisoners. Many prison administrators believe the level of violence, or the underlying threat of violence within pri ...
.
Soon the
Privy Council of Scotland summoned her. Her arrival in Edinburgh in 1678 was as chaotic as her entrance into Glasgow — if not more so. She directly accused several members of the crowd of practising witchcraft. Judicial officials and other notables unsuccessfully interrogated her as to her background, parentage, and how she performed.
After Edinburgh, Janet's race disappeared. She was eventually released, and rumour holds that she fled to the
West Indies.
Witchcraft and Second Sight
The case of Janet Douglas combines the two phenomenon of witchcraft and
second sight. Janet claimed to use her skill of second sight in order to find out cases of witchcraft. The form that her 'second sight' typically took was to identify that a person's suffering was the result of an 'image' created by a witch. For example, George Hickes in his letter to Samuel Pepys in 1700 claims that Janet told a Goldsmith in Glasgow that his trade was not thriving because a witch had made an image against him.
[Hunter, p.175]
In the later seventeenth century the relationship between second sight and witchcraft was disputed by different writers. In his letter to Pepys, Hickes clearly suggests that witchcraft was related to second sight, whereas Robert Kirk in his classic text 'The Secret Commonwealth' argues that Second Sight was an entirely innocent skill.
References
Sources
* MacGowan, Douglas, ''The Enigma of Janet Douglas'', Volume 13, Issue 3, ''Dalriada'', pp. 34–36.
* Hunter, Michael, ' The Occult Laboratory', Woodbridge: The Boydell Press (2001).
{{DEFAULTSORT:Douglas, Janet
17th-century Scottish people
Clairvoyants
Cunning folk
17th-century occultists
Year of birth unknown