As All Hallows Eve approaches it seems an appropriate time to discuss witches; More especially the witches of Salem Village in 1692-93. Humans have always been fascinated (afraid) of that over which (pun intended) they have no power. Such conditions have always been considered within the sphere of good and evil. Prayers were lifted to unseen deities for farmers’ rains and abundant harvests or to quell the violent storms or to keep evil things at bay. “From ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night, Good Lord deliver us.” read the Episcopal Prayer book until 1973. Those ghosties and ghoulies were in from the realm of the devil and the Puritan settlers in Salem Village believed in them as powerful forces as much as they believed in the grace of God intervening in everyday life.
Part of the devil’s company were witches. Men and women who worshipped Satan and did his bidding. Men and women who moved among the Puritans seeming to be just ordinary folk but able to curse those with whom they fell out or just, perhaps, because they wanted to create chaos. Whatever, witches and warlocks were a very real part of life in seventeenth century America. If you could not explain it then it was probably done by someone outside your kin of understanding and that would make it evil.
So, when two young girls began experiencing convulsions the Puritans prayed for their souls and looked for an explanation. The girls themselves, nine and eleven pointed the finger at the three least powerful people in the village. A homeless woman, a slave and a old woman known to be unpleasant. These people had few or no defenders and when the slave confessed to practicing witchcraft, well, the floodgates opened and before the governor of the colony put an end to the tribunals twenty-four people would die. Nineteen would be hanged, one would be crushed under stones applied to his chest and three from illnesses contracted while being held in the stockade.
Much has been written about the Salem witch trials. Keep in mind that Salem Village was not Salem Town; rather it was a small farming village ten miles inland from Salem Town. As such it was isolated and full of animosity between families competing for power as well as as having gone through a number of ministers for its church, because the village was loath to pay per the ministers’ contracts.
So, two very young girls point their fingers at three women and accuse those women of afflicting them. Then suddenly other young girls are being afflicted but not by the original three witches, no, they are being afflicted by people they don’t like or who have in some way wronged their families.
Salem village was not the only place witch trials were going on, for on the continent there were a plethora of witches being burned. Not much had changed in two hundred years since Jeanne Darc (it isn’t d’Arc, look it up) was burned by the English for being a French witch. How else could she have defeated the mighty English force at Orleans. For centuries accusing someone of witchcraft had been a way of removing rivals. Today an accusation of being a witch would be welcomed by some. Politicians are constantly making false claims about their opponents.
There is a condition known as mass hysteria and it is generally thought that while the initial accusations might have been calculated attempts at exerting power over adults the latter might have been a result of a mass hysteria overtaking a small isolated group of people steeped in the belief that evil had entered their village and it had to be rooted out. On the one hand you had the hysterical accusations and on the other the hysterical belief. You can find thousands of references to violence visited upon people and property through the hysterical response to an emotional appeal.
Let’s take a couple of examples; black men were hanged when white females, afraid to admit they had had sex with their boy friends, accused the nearest black man of rape. Buildings were burned when people accused the government of not taking what those people thought was the correct action in a particularly tense situation. People foam at the mouth with vitriol raging against one side of an argument or another. They poke you with their signs or perhaps hit you over your head. But the paradoxical thing is that when you separate them out individually and ask them to explain their position they have little understanding of the actual issue. They simply have become part of the hysteria generated by those who are pointing the finger at supposed oppressors.
Remember what I said about politicians: Today’s accusations are no less spectacular than those of the girls of Salem Village. There is no tangible evidence of intent only accusation and trials ensue, whether in court of the court of public opinion. Evidence of history of the individual is discarded and speculation based on false information is broadcast as fact. I always have wondered just how many people would have died in Salem Village if today’s media had been covering the events. Certainly more than twenty-four.
But once again back to Salem Village. Those must have been either some very courageous or perhaps very unthinking judges. Let’s say for argument sake that one or more of these people really were witches. Could they not have cursed the entire village? Would you not be afraid of such happening? Remember in “Romeo and Juliet” when Mercutio is pierced by Tybalt’s blade, he curses both houses and in the end his curse is carried through as both Romeo and Juliet die. Think about it.