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Why paganism and witchcraft are making a comeback

On a recent trip to Salem, Massachusetts, I overheard the same question: Is magic really real? For me, the answer is yes.

Witches take part in the Witches' Magic Circle in Salem, Mass., on Oct. 31, 2018. Joseph Prezioso

Oct. 30, 2022, 7:00 AM EDT

By Antonio Pagliarulo, author of the forthcoming “The Evil Eye: The History, Mystery, and Magic of the Quiet Curse”

Two weeks ago in the run-up to Halloween, I visited Salem, Massachusetts, for the first time since the pandemic began. In renewing my annual Halloween pilgrimage, I was bowled over by what I found in the Witch City: bigger crowds, longer lines and a wider and welcome array of merchandise geared toward many different religious traditions and ethnic identities.

Amid the curious crowds in black capes and conical hats, bags overflowing with DIY spell kits and candles to enhance prosperity, I overheard the same question: Is magic really real?

Witchcraft, which includes Wicca, paganism, folk magic and other New Age traditions, is one of the fastest-growing spiritual paths in America.

For me, the answer is yes.

I am one of a million-plus Americans who — whether proudly, secretly or dabbling through the power of consumerism — practice some form of witchcraft. Witchcraft, which includes Wicca, paganism, folk magic and other New Age traditions, is one of the fastest-growing spiritual paths in America.

In 1990, Trinity College in Connecticut estimated there were 8,000 adherents of Wicca. In 2008, the U.S. Census Bureau figure was 342,000. A 2014 Pew Research Center study increased that projection several times over in assessing that 0.4% of Americans identified as pagan, Wiccan or New Age. (Most modern pagan worship, of which Wicca is one type, draws on pre-Christian traditions in revering nature.) By 2050, it said, the number of Americans practicing “other religions” — faiths outside Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism — would triple “due largely to switching into other religions (such as Wicca and pagan religions).”

The precise number of witches in America is difficult to determine because many practitioners are solitary and, either by choice or circumstance, do not openly identify as such. But the growth is evident, especially to those who’ve made it their life’s work to study the community.

“It’s clearly increasing,” said Helen A. Berger, who spoke to me on the phone last week. Berger is one of the foremost academic experts on contemporary witchcraft and paganism in America and draws knowledge about its appeal from surveys she’s co-conducted on the pagan community.

Wicca began to be practiced in America in the 1960s by feminists, environmentalists and those seeking a nonstructured spirituality, according to Berger. It was a largely underground movement, but commercial books about witchcraft published in the 1980s and 1990s productions like “Charmed” and “The Craft” created a surge of interest in youth. With the ability to find communities online and the decline in affiliation with traditional religions, witchcraft began its entry into the mainstream.

Opinion | Why paganism and witchcraft are making a comeback On a recent trip to Salem, Massachusetts, I overheard the same question: Is magic really real? For me, the answer is yes.

You reap what you sow.

Words from John Pavlovitz
(Christian pastor and author)

“Dear White Evangelicals,
I need to tell you something: People have had it with you. They’re done. They want nothing to do with you any longer, and here’s why: They see your hypocrisy, your inconsistency, your incredibly selective mercy, and your thinly veiled supremacy.
For eight years they watched you relentlessly demonize a black President; a man faithfully married for 26 years; a doting father and husband without a hint of moral scandal or the slightest whiff of infidelity. They watched you deny his personal faith convictions, argue his birthplace, and assail his character—all without cause or evidence.
They saw you brandish Scriptures to malign him and use the laziest of racial stereotypes in criticizing him. And through it all, White Evangelicals—you never once suggested that God placed him where he was, you never publicly offered prayers for him and his family, you never welcomed him to your Christian Universities, you never gave him the benefit of the doubt in any instance, you never spoke of offering him forgiveness or mercy, your evangelists never publicly thanked God for his leadership, your pastors never took to the pulpit to offer solidarity with him, you never made any effort to affirm his humanity or show the love of Jesus to him in any quantifiable measure.
You violently opposed him at every single turn—without offering a single ounce of the grace you claim as the heart of your faith tradition. You jettisoned Jesus as you dispensed damnation on him.
And yet you give carte blanche to a white Republican man so riddled with depravity, so littered with extramarital affairs, so unapologetically vile, with such a vast resume of moral filth—that the mind boggles.
And the change in you is unmistakable. It has been an astonishing conversion to behold: a being born again.
With him, you suddenly find religion. With him, you’re now willing to offer full absolution. With him, all is forgiven without repentance or admission. With him, you’re suddenly able to see some invisible, deeply buried heart. With him, sin has become unimportant, and compassion no longer a requirement. With him, you see only Providence.
And White Evangelicals, all those people who have had it with you—they see it all clearly. They recognize the toxic source of your inconsistency.
They see that pigmentation and party are your sole deities. They see that you aren’t interested in perpetuating the love of God or emulating the heart of Jesus. They see that you aren’t burdened to love the least, or to be agents of compassion, or to care for your Muslim, gay, African, female, or poor neighbors as yourself.
They see that all you’re really interested in doing is making a God in your own ivory image and demanding that the world bow down to it. They recognize this all about white, Republican Jesus—not dark-skinned Jesus of Nazareth.
And I know you don’t realize it, but you’re digging your own grave these days; the grave of your very faith tradition.
Your willingness to align yourself with cruelty is a costly marriage. Yes, you’ve gained a Supreme Court seat, a few months with the Presidency as a mouthpiece, and the cheap high of temporary power—but you’ve lost a whole lot more.
You’ve lost an audience with millions of wise, decent, good-hearted, faithful people with eyes to see this ugliness. You’ve lost any moral high ground or spiritual authority with a generation. You’ve lost any semblance of Christlikeness. You’ve lost the plot. And most of all you’ve lost your soul.
I know it’s likely you’ll dismiss these words. The fact that you’ve even made your bed with such malevolence, shows how far gone you are and how insulated you are from the reality in front of you. But I had to at least try to reach you. It’s what Jesus would do.”
John Pavlovitz
(Christian pastor and author)

The TikTok star who melds Catholic tradition and progressive politics As a young(ish), progressive Catholic, finding places where my deep love for tradition and desire for reform coexist peacefully is difficult. Unexpectedly, I found a space for this on TikTok.

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it's tougher than we'd often prefer...
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WITCHCRAFT AND CHARMS IN THE 1920’s

Arthur Robinson Wright was a prominent member of the Folk-Lore Society who championed the idea of recording modern folk-beliefs alongside those from the past. In 1928 he published a popular little book on “English Folklore” which included many folk-beliefs and practices that still existed in those days.

Today I thought I'd share some of the accounts in the book about contemporary witchcraft and charms:

“In 1915 the St. Albans Diocesan Gazette gave an account of a reputed witch in Essex, recently dead, whose ghost was laid in the traditional manner. A lady told the exorciser that before her death a neighbour had called and found her feeding her niggets, "those creepy-crawly things that witches keep all over them."

In November, 1922, the Kingston county justices had before them a quarrel between neighbours at Cobham. The complainant's daughter said that the defendant had tried to stop her wedding by accusing the betrothed couple of practising witchcraft.

In 1923, at the Yarmouth Police Court, in a case of trouble between two women, a woman gave evidence that ten shillings had been paid to a witch for a spell on her sister, and her brother had to pay a pound to have it taken off.

In 1924 a smallholder was charged at the Petty Sessions at Cullompton, Devon, with scratching a woman's arm so that it bled profusely, and with threatening to shoot her; the defence was that the woman had "ill-wished" him and bewitched his pig.

In 1926, at Glastonbury Police Court, an application was made by an almsman for a summons for witch- craft against another almsman, who was said to have bewitched the former and his clock.

In 1926 it was reported that a woman in Norfolk, who found her husband was attracted by another woman, was given, by a friend whom she consulted, the Lord's Prayer written backward, which she had to fasten under her blouse and keep there for three days each week until the husband changed; after a fortnight he would not recognize the other woman.

At Tipton in 1926 two men were bound over for threatening an old woman who lived in a van, against whom several witnesses appeared, to say that they were terrified when in her presence and believed her capable of putting a curse upon them. The men said that she had put a spell over the wife of one and the sister of the other, who had had to be removed to a lunatic asylum.

In September, 1926, a man was charged at Newton Abbot Police Court with wife desertion, and replied that he objected to her "witchcraft business." She had charged him with laying something on the rug to make his son ill, and when he went to sit in his chair he found it ringed by salt i.e., a precaution against witchcraft. She had put articles belonging to him near her photograph, so that she might work spells with him.

Finally, in 1927 a gipsy was charged at the Cornwall Assizes at Bodmin with obtaining £500 over a period of some years from a St. Mawes gardener to remove the effect of "ill-wishing,"

East Anglia and the West Country, from which come the majority of the above cases, may be looked on as the main strongholds of the faith witchcraft.”

At Nottingham Shire Hall in 1927 a sentence of imprisonment was avoided by the refund of £97 which had been paid for a love philtre (consisting of a mixture of boracic acid and baking powder) to be used to "cure" a husband of un-faithfulness which was only alleged by a fortune-teller.

Many charms involve spitting. The coster spits on his first takings of the day, and in Devonshire it is very lucky, if you find a piece of coal, to spit on it and throw it over your right shoulder. But the magical qualities of saliva are outside our present range.

Charming, especially for serious ailments, is generally the work of the white witch (most often a man) or wise-woman, who in a town would probably be called a "herbalist."

“The Times of 1920 tells us that in the East End of London a charm for scalds is for the herbalist to blow three times on the blisters, repeating the words:

Here come I to cure a burnt sore.
If the dead knew what the living endure,
The burnt sore would burn no more.

But there is also a great deal of family and private practice, for medical and other purposes. For toothache you should sit under an ash-tree and cut your toe-nails.

The Crediton Chronicle reported in 1914 that, when a Dorset auctioneer was on his way to have a tooth drawn by a dentist, a farmer friend begged him not to go, but to put his arms round a young ash-tree, make a slit in the bark where his fingers met, and then pull out some hair from the back of his head and put it in the slit.”

“In place of charming by a formula or by a symbolic or magical act, the end desired may be attained, more particularly if it is protection or the warding off of some sickness or other evil, by carrying on the person, or putting in the place to be affected, an amulet.

The amulet may be something supposedly powerful in itself or made so by magical art. Few people have any conception of the extent to which amulets are now worn. It is, perhaps, as great as it was a century or two ago, though the purpose may be a little more vague, being in many cases for luck in general rather than for anything specific.

Undoubtedly, if there is faith in them, they give the confidence which helps to success, and so strengthen belief. An East End doctor has estimated that 40 per cent, of the children at the schools which he attended wear some sort of amulet under their clothes - i.e., not as an ornament, but as a protection.

It is very difficult, however, to get direct information from the wearers, or even an admission of their presence. A very common amulet is a string of special blue beads worn as a preventive of chest ailments, both in London and in the country, and never under any circumstances removed.

My wife showed such a string to a charwoman and asked if she knew anything about it, to which the woman replied, "No," after the suspicious fashion of those who think that you are "getting at them" in some way. But later in the day she said, "My Gladys wears a string like that you showed me," and, when questioned further - "Do you ever take it off, say, when you wash her?" - replied, very promptly, "Oh no! Then she'd catch cold."

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INTERVIEW WITH A 19TH CENTURY HIGHLAND WITCH

Today, I thought I'd treat you to an interview with a real Highland witch, Jean Roy, from the end of the 19th century. It's borrowed from "Scottish Witchcraft Lore" by Alexander Polson, published in 1932:

"Nearly forty years ago the writer visited his native parish in a Highland county. When, after inquiry, he heard of a reputed witch, he visited her, and the interview he had is another proof of the fact that that women who get the witch reputation are generally above the average in intelligence and cuteness. They really know the absurdity of the belief in their powers, yet, on their part, they find the keeping up of the reputation quite a profitable affair. The following is the story of what actually took place.

Jean Roy (Red Jean) was a sensible, industrious old woman, and was by no means a bogey to anyone in the parish, yet she was, by all her neighbours regarded as 'uncanny,' and it was thought that it would be interesting to interview her ere the tribe, to which she believed to belong, became extinct.

As interviewers are supposed to know as much as possible of their subject and the person to be interviewed, I made enquiries as to her history and how Jean acquired her reputation. Neighbours quite readily told that Jean Roy's proper name was Jean Mackay, but, on account of her red hair, she was called Jean Roy from her girlhood. She grew up to be a good-looking lass, and at the age of twenty-one married a young crofter-fisherman.

It was noticed soon after his marriage that Jean's man was always successful at sea, and the stock of his croft did wonderfully well. After the villagers had debated the wonder of this, it was remembered that Jean was born at midnight on Hallowe'en, and of course should could not help growing up a 'wise woman.' Besides this, Jean and her husband had their home in the immediate neighbourhood of a fairy hillock, a place where others dare not live, because it was believed that such places are a favourite haunt of fairies.

But even to Jean misfortunes came. Her husband died; soon afterwards her cow was lost in a bog, but she struggled on, doing any odd jobs she could, and accepting help from neighbours rather go on the poor's roll.

One day Jean had no milk, and went to a neighbour's house to ask for some. The neighbour, who had heard all about Jean, curtly refused, as she believed the milk was asked for, not because it was really needed, but that Jean should get a 'fore-taste' of it, and then she would be able to bewitch the cow and get all of the milk for herself. Jean was indignant at the unexpected refusal and said,

'Weel, you cannot expect your cow to be a blessing to you when you refuse a drop of milk to a poor widow.' Within a week that cow was choked on a turnip.

A few days after this she asked a fisherman for a piece of rope, and he gave her thirty yards. When she measured it she said, 'You will bring thirty crans of herring in to-morrow.' He did, and Jean's reputation as a witch was established.

With all this knowledge of Jean, half a pound of tea and two pounds of sugar, I ventured to call on her. She had seen me coming and courteously met me at the door and invited me in. I followed her, muttering the usual Gaelic salutation, 'Peace be here.' When she got me seated, it was a case of being interviewed. I had to tell all I could of my forebears, where I had been since I left the parish, what I did, whether married, etc., etc.

She told me that her father and my grandfather were once nearly caught red-handed smuggling bothy, and that the two of them quickly jumped into a peat bog, and with blackened bodies and faces they chased away the excisemen, and that my grandfather lost his situation as precentor in the church because of the escapade.

All this and much more that she told me was news to me, and I felt it was about time that I should try to turn the tables and get her to talk about herself. I began by bewailing modern degeneracy, and suggested that it was due to too much tea-drinking and the eating of too much soft food. She demurred to my theory of tea-drinking, but greed with the soft bread theory, and suggested that it was the soft food that caused the foreshortening of the jaws which made the coming of the wisdom teeth so painful and caused no end of toothache!

'I am glad you like tea,' I said, 'as I have brought you some.'

'Now that was very kind of you.'

'Not at all,' I answered, 'because I wish to ask you a favour.'

'Weel?'

'I want you to cure my toothache.'

'O, poor man, do you suffer from that? I never thought you would come to me to do that.'

She then became cautious, and added,

'Weel, some people say that I can cure it, but perhaps yours is not of the kind that I can cure.'

After being assured that her cure would be tried, and that people had been telling me of cures wrought by her, she went 'ben' the house, and during the next quarter f an hour I could hear muttered spellings. At length she came out with a paper carefully folded, and told me it was to be worn over my heart and under my waistcoat for seven days. 'You must not tell that you got it or the toothache will be sure to come back.'

But I – heretic that I am – opened it ere I had been half-an-hour away from her, and this is what was written on it in a very shaky hand:-

'Petter sat on a marable ston weaping. Jesus cam by and said 'What ales ye petter?' Petter ansered and said 'Oh Lord the tuak.' Jesus ansered and said 'Be ye weel from the tuak Petter, and not only ye but all that believe on me.' May the Lord bless his own words and to him be the praise. Amen.'

'You can only do two or three other things,' I said 'Oh, well not much. People sometimes say that I can take things out of people's eyes, but it was my good father that told me how to to that; but I will tell you. I need to know the name and surname of the sufferer, and then after the sun sets, and before it rises, I go to a well opening to the north, and at the well mouth I say words in Gaelic which my father told me on his death bed. I then take a mouthful of the water and carry it back to the house, and when I put it out I always find the troublesome speck.'

'But how can that be,' I queried, 'when you haven't been near the sore eye?'

'Oh, well, I don't know; but I could give you names of three or four folk who will tell you that I took things out of their eyes, and I do it because my father said, 'Freely ye have received, freely give,'' and then she added with a trace of bitterness in her voice, 'Perhaps that is why so many people ask me to do this for them, but I never do any harm to anyone.'

'That is not what Effie Macleod says,' I ventured to say. 'She thinks you choked her cow on a turnip.'

'Oh, no, I didn't. How could she expect any good to happen to her when she wouldn't give a poor creature a drop of milk, and me a friend of hers? The cow wouldn't choke if she were not to lazy to cut the turnips as she ought to do.'

'But didn't you give thirty crans of herring to Sandy Macfarlane?'

'Oh, no, I didn't; but everyone wishes well to poor Sandy, as he would give a body anything. The fish were sent into his nets that he might have more to give to the like of me. It's those that give that get.'

'But you could give good luck, though. They all say that,' I contended.

'Oh, well, there are kind people to whom I wish well, and I wish them well openly, and it often happiness as I wish; that's how. Sometimes they wish some token of my good wishes, and I give them a threepenny bit with a hole in it, and they think if they put it in the bottom of the churn they will have more butter, or a fisherman ties it in his nets and thinks he will get on better, but it is only a sign that Jean Mackay wishes them well.

The old folk said that if this were done when the moon was growing it is better, and the old folks knew a lot.'

'Isn't it nonsense that they say about wise women taking the shape of cats and worrying their enemies?'

'Oh, indeed, yes. Did you ever hear of the man t Thurso who said he was worried by black cats, slashed right and left with his sword among them and cut off one of their hind legs, and the woman sent for the leg in the morning?

He gave it back, and the cats never bothered him after that.

Didn't the folk laugh at him when the minister asked what part of the body the woman would have sent for if he had cut off a cat's tail.'

The conversation then turned on the power attributed to some women of taking away the milk-giving properties of cows.

'Oh, I'll tell you how that happened, for I saw it myself. Once some travelling tinkers with their bairns came to stay in one of the small rooms in the 'broch' (Fairy Knowe) out there, and they spent all their money on drink, and had nothing for the bairns when they were crying.

Early in the morning they sent their oldest girl with a pail to the park where the cows were out all night, and asked her to milk any of the cows that would stand quietly for her.

She came back with a pailful, and next day I heard that Chirsty Dhu was complaining that myself or the fairies had taken the milk from her cow, and she came here with a present of cheese for me, and asked me about it.

I told her, but she would not believe me, and I then promised her that I would do my best. I told the tinkers that they were known to have milked the cows, and that a policeman would be after them. They went away, and Chirsty had plenty milk next day, and she gives me a drop ever since when I need it. It's a pity that it's me or the fairies that get the blame when anything goes wrong with the cows.'"

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Michael Steinhardt, Billionaire, Surrenders $70 Million in Stolen Relics

The hedge fund pioneer is barred for life from buying more antiquities. He turned over 180 stolen objects that had decorated his homes and office.

By Tom Mashberg | Dec. 6, 2021

Michael H. Steinhardt, the billionaire hedge fund pioneer and one of New York’s most prolific antiquities collectors, has surrendered 180 stolen objects valued at $70 million and been barred for life from acquiring any other relics, the Manhattan district attorney’s office said in a statement Monday.
The prosecutor’s office struck an agreement with Mr. Steinhardt after a four-year multinational investigation that determined that the seized pieces had been looted and smuggled from 11 countries, trafficked by 12 illicit networks and appeared on the international art market without lawful paperwork, the office said.
“For decades, Michael Steinhardt displayed a rapacious appetite for plundered artifacts without concern for the legality of his actions, the legitimacy of the pieces he bought and sold, or the grievous cultural damage he wrought across the globe,” District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said, adding: “This agreement establishes that Steinhardt will be subject to an unprecedented lifetime ban on acquiring antiquities.”
Mr. Steinhardt, a Brooklyn native who turns 81 on Tuesday, is a major contributor to New York University and to numerous Jewish philanthropies. There is a Steinhardt conservatory at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and a Steinhardt Gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The returned items include:

A ceremonial libations vessel, or rhyton, that depicts a stag’s head, purchased from the Merrin Gallery of Manhattan for $2.6 million in November 1991. Officials said the item, which dates to 400 B.C., first appeared on the international art market without provenance after rampant looting in Milas, Turkey. In March 1993, prosecutors said, Mr. Steinhardt lent it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it was when law enforcement officials seized it. It has since been repatriated.

A larnax, or small chest for human remains, from Crete, that dates between 1400-1200 B.C. Officials said the item, valued at $1 million, was purchased from a known antiquities trafficker and traced to Mr. Steinhardt through a financial institution based in Malta.

The “Ercolano Fresco,” purchased from Robert Hecht, who had faced accusations of trafficking in antiquities, “with no prior provenance” for $650,000 in November 1995. Dating to 50 B.C. and valued at $1 million, it depicts an infant Hercules strangling a snake sent by Hera to slay him. The fresco was looted in 1995 from a Roman villa in the ruins of Herculaneum, near Naples, officials said.

A gold bowl looted from Nimrud, Iraq, and purchased without provenance papers, officials said, for $150,000 in July 2020, at a time when objects from Nimrud were being trafficked by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Made of gold with a scalloped-flower design, the object surfaced in October 2019 when a Customs and Border Protection officer notified Mr. Vance’s office that someone on a flight from Hong Kong to Newark was hand-carrying the bowl for Mr. Steinhardt.

Three stone death masks that appeared to be encrusted with soil in photographs recovered by the Israeli authorities. They date to 6000 B.C. and were purchased by Mr. Steinhardt for $400,000 in October 2007.
Prosecutors said Mr. Steinhardt had owned and traded more than 1,000 antiquities since 1987, and his art collection was valued at about $200 million.

In a statement on Monday, his lawyer, Andrew J. Levander, said: “Mr. Steinhardt is pleased that the District Attorney’s yearslong investigation has concluded without any charges, and that items wrongfully taken by others will be returned to their native countries. Many of the dealers from whom Mr. Steinhardt bought these items made specific representations as to the dealers’ lawful title to the items, and to their alleged provenance. To the extent these representations were false, Mr. Steinhardt has reserved his rights to seek recompense from the dealers involved.”
According to prosecutors, 171 of the 180 seized antiquities first surfaced in the possession of accused antiquities traffickers, including two who have been convicted in Italy — Giacomo Medici and Giovanni Becchina. They said the investigation revealed that 101 of the items, all covered in dirt and encrustations, were visible and identifiable in photographs found in the possession of known traffickers.

Christos Tsirogiannis, an associate professor at the University of Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies in Denmark, who specializes in searching photographic archives seized from antiquities dealers, said traffickers use such photos to advertise their looted wares to small groups of wealthy collectors. Dr. Tsirogiannis is one of about 60 researchers, investigators and foreign law enforcement officials credited by the prosecutors’ office with assisting in the case.

As part of its inquiry, Mr. Vance’s office said, prosecutors executed 17 search warrants and worked with officials in 11 countries — Bulgaria, Egypt, Greece, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, and Turkey.

In explaining the agreement not to prosecute so long as Mr. Steinhardt abides by all its terms, Mr. Vance said the arrangement would allow for the items to be “returned expeditiously to their rightful owners” rather than being held as evidence. It would also help his office to “shield the identity of the many witnesses here and abroad whose names would be released at any trial.”
Nonetheless, the case and other recent seizures demonstrate that the office’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit is ready to reach far back in time to confiscate objects based on a New York state statute that allows prosecutors to return stolen property to its “rightful owners” regardless of when a theft might have occurred.

Mr. Steinhardt’s dealings with prosecutors over suspect antiquities date back to the 1990s. In 1997, a federal judge ruled that Mr. Steinhardt had illegally imported a golden bowl, known as a phiale, from Italy in 1992. The object, dating to 450 B.C. and costing $1 million, was seized from Mr. Steinhardt’s home in 1995. The judge rejected his contention at the time that he was an “innocent owner” with no knowledge of irregularities.
In 2018, investigators raided his office and Fifth Avenue home and took away several ancient works they said had been looted from Greece and Italy. That seizure came on the heels of a 2017 seizure of a marble statue stolen from a temple in Sidon, Lebanon, which Mr. Steinhardt relinquished and which has been returned.
The 2017 seizure led to the formation of the trafficking unit, which pressed the case that was resolved on Monday. Officials said the unit has recovered more than 3,000 items valued at $200 million, and that at least 1,500 have been returned to their owners and countries of origin. It said hundreds are ready to be repatriated “as soon as the relevant countries are able to receive them amid the pandemic,” and more than 1,000 objects are being held awaiting the outcome of criminal proceedings.

(Separately, in March 2019, Mr. Steinhardt was accused of a pattern of sexual harassment by several women who worked for the nonprofits he supported.)

The confiscated items, which decorated Mr. Steinhardt’s homes and offices, and which he often lent to major museums, came mostly from Italy, Greece and Israel, according to a list compiled by investigators.

They include:

A ceremonial libations vessel, or rhyton, that depicts a stag’s head, purchased from the Merrin Gallery of Manhattan for $2.6 million in November 1991. Officials said the item, which dates to 400 B.C., first appeared on the international art market without provenance after rampant looting in Milas, Turkey. In March 1993, prosecutors said, Mr. Steinhardt lent it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it was when law enforcement officials seized it. It has since been repatriated.

A larnax, or small chest for human remains, from Crete, that dates between 1400-1200 B.C. Officials said the item, valued at $1 million, was purchased from a known antiquities trafficker and traced to Mr. Steinhardt through a financial institution based in Malta.

The “Ercolano Fresco,” purchased from Robert Hecht, who had faced accusations of trafficking in antiquities, “with no prior provenance” for $650,000 in November 1995. Dating to 50 B.C. and valued at $1 million, it depicts an infant Hercules strangling a snake sent by Hera to slay him. The fresco was looted in 1995 from a Roman villa in the ruins of Herculaneum, near Naples, officials said.

A gold bowl looted from Nimrud, Iraq, and purchased without provenance papers, officials said, for $150,000 in July 2020, at a time when objects from Nimrud were being trafficked by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Made of gold with a scalloped-flower design, the object surfaced in October 2019 when a Customs and Border Protection officer notified Mr. Vance’s office that someone on a flight from Hong Kong to Newark was hand-carrying the bowl for Mr. Steinhardt.

Three stone death masks that appeared to be encrusted with soil in photographs recovered by the Israeli authorities. They date to 6000 B.C. and were purchased by Mr. Steinhardt for $400,000 in October 2007.
Prosecutors said Mr. Steinhardt had owned and traded more than 1,000 antiquities since 1987, and his art collection was valued at about $200 million.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/06/arts/design/steinhardt-billionaire-stolen-antiquities.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuonUktbfqohlSlUbBSbcR8Q86RGLnvnAxvsnmnL_KiicUzpeiu4UB4yB_EHEZLBuIsAv2DCWQppINqMuXeFz0u5SJAptVwys6NOiqagyHh8U-8i1T39kmNXER6w5-jvnKTnlIbtxz7Tu-k-POmL1XPfd1GlycwdnvZthcw77jSZYz_jOEfVnmYUrhYdXDZ9wQj4AbSWLrqOoX004YIPaG0mavgomWOhZWSXQnsqe7d8CdAZUDVHASRBv8Dp2qYMcaJ5MYvGJf1N3c9H-gL4SFmRoMIyqYpQ2TIXTnLhs2qXf9L2gE7PXVAEznygH10WjUw

Michael Steinhardt, Billionaire, Surrenders $70 Million in Stolen Relics The hedge fund pioneer is barred for life from buying more antiquities. He turned over 180 stolen objects that had decorated his homes and office.