The stone does not identify anybody. The operator identifies somebody, aloud, as he drops it. The water is only asked to agree.
What this is
This is an ordeal, and ordeals are the most consequential magic in the corpus. The waxen image threatens a person already chosen. An ordeal chooses the person.
The operator has to decide in advance who the suspects are. Everything after that converts a list of neighbours into one guilty neighbour, in front of witnesses, with a result nobody present can argue with.
What the text was understood to do
To identify a thief from among named suspects, by a sign the operator produces himself.
A note before the text. What follows is a historical document and a reading of it. It is recorded, not recommended.
The text, the reading of it, and where to find it.
The passage as Reginald Scot printed it in 1584, quoted in full and unaltered; the same passage in modern English; how the working was put together and what each part of it was for; the commentary; and the book, chapter and page it stands on.
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