The importance of puppets in witch trials suggests something of what witches meant to people at the time. A witch had given up her soul so that she could command Satan's power. In that sense she was a puppet master. She could now use invisible forces to harm her victims. But by deadening her soul, she had also lost her humanity and made herself into a tool of evil. She was now a puppet herself. Either way, as powerful tormentor or as soulless pseudohuman, a witch was terrifying. Not only was she different in that she was a woman living an odd, inexplicable kind of life, not only was she a troublemaker because of her angry words and loud mouth, but a witch was the less-than-human more-than-human force in the village who was personally responsible for anything that went wrong. A witch subverted lives that should have been good. But that was only because God allowed her to do so, as a test of or a punishment for the faithful.