he did not understand that the strongest manifestations of dis-carnate entities come through mortal witches there are even some suggestions that he thought the talamasca was being archaic and silly in calling these women witches and it is very likely that though he accepted the seventeenth-century descriptions of deborah mayfair and her daughter charlotte , he could not 'relate ' this material to a clever , fashionable twentieth-century 'jazz baby ' like stella , who seemed to be beckoning to him across the atlantic with a smile and a wink .