Empress Wang made the fatal error in summer 655 of listening to her mother, who suggested that desperate times called for desperate measures. The two women turned to sorcery, and were found to be casting spells against Wu herself – the precise nature of the act is not recorded, although it appears to have been some form of sympathetic magic not unlike the sticking of pins in a voodoo doll. A society that placed great value on religion and the spiritual world, whose very basis rested on the Emperor's divine power, also had space for witchcraft and witch-hunts – the casting of spells against the
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