Tag Archives: witchcraft

Salem witches – Personal relationships

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I wonder what happened when officials stepped in from outside put a halt to the goings on in Salem. Think what it must have been like living there at this time. Actions have consequences. Salem ( a misnomer since the action really took place in a small town named Danvers and, later, Salem Village) was a small community. Those accused were friends, family and neighbors of their accusers. How could you forgive the ones who hanged one of your family members as a witch and terrorized the others? What kind of amends would be enough? Speaking for myself, I am not sure this is something I could ever forgive. I would guess that, despite the end of the witch hunts, this village remained troubled for years.

Some believe that the curses laid upon the accusers, the judges, and the ones who executed the alleged witches are in effect to this day. Giles Corey was pressed to death, the only one not hanged. He cursed all the Sheriffs to die before their time forever. Oddly enough, quite a few have died from various chest related illnesses.

Financial reparations were paid beginning in the early 1700s. Would this be enough to ease the grief? Many of those whose family members had been accused or hanged moved away to a new Village called Salem’s End. We can’t know what they are feeling but I would guess PTSD would be the least of it. How could one every trust anyone ever again? People on both sides: the accused and the accusers, changed their names. One of the hanging judges was a Hathorne; Nathaniel Hawthorne added the w. And the Nurse family, right in the thick of the storm, moved away and became Nourses.

And what about those who remained firm in their belief that the accusations had merit? That the hangings were valid?

Reverend Parris was one who continued to defend his actions, refusing to believe – or behave as though he believed – that he had been in the wrong. Right from the beginning he was a believer in the girls’ tales. He accepted the testimony of ‘spectral evidence’.  He remained in his post in the village. (Can you imagine what Sunday morning in church must have been like? All the hard looks and muttered comments and the minister who had really supported the crisis sermonizing from the pulpit.) It must have been a nightmare.

Anyway, those who opposed Parris (and I would guess there would be many) tried to force him to leave.  The battle went on for several years. Finally ministers and other important personages from Boston were called in to render an opinion. But it was not until 1696, four years later, that Parris finally stepped down.

Parrish had a very hard time finding another post. (Consequences, remember?) He finally ended up in a tiny town in western Mass, the frontier at that time and the target of regular Indian attacks. Salem had trouble finding a replacement. (Anyone surprised?) The village finally accepted a young man just out of school.

In the wider political world, the storm in Salem adversely affected the futures of both Cotton and Increase Mather, destroying their influence.  Admittedly, I am not as conversant with the politics of that time as perhaps I could be but in my view there was some duplicity in Cotton Mather’s behavior during the witch trials.  In any event, the witch trials and all the consequences stemming from them destroyed the hold of Puritanism on New England and the developing country.

 

More about the Salem witches

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A lot has been written about the Witch Terror in Salem in 1692. To a modern eyes, the easy belief in the veracity of a group of girls is incredible. (Obviously, mean girls have been around for a long time). In another post  I talked about the possibility of ergot poisoning (i.e. LSD) which I am sure would be terrifying, especially to a person who couldn’t explain to himself what was happening. But was this the whole story?

I think we all want to know what happened. It seems as though the town lost its collective mind.

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We know it was a superstitious age. But I can’t believe EVERYONE believed in the supernatural. In fact, one of the essayists of the time,  Robert Calef, believed that the trials had been engineered by Cotton Mather for personal gain. (I doubt that. Evidently fighting out different opinions in print is not a new phenomenon). And anyway, other motivations for accusing someone of witchcraft have been documented. It wasn’t only ergot poisoning or fear of the devil. Sometimes it was for gain:The old biddy hasn’t died and I want her little farm, for example. Sometimes it was to settle scores. Apparently at least part of the reason behind the accusations directed at the Nurse family had resentment and the desire for payback at the bottom.

I wonder about the girls. Clearly, once the excitement began, they kept upping the ante. I suspect they didn’t want to lose the attention. And, considering that girls were supposed to be docile and subservient then, one can understand why they would want to break out. Be the center of attention for once. Accusing half the town of consorting with the devil seems a tad extreme though. And if you look at their futures – what happens after the big crisis and the turn of the century – they pretty much disappear. Some are documented as getting married, several moved out of Salem. (No surprise there, right?)  Was there a leader among the girls with followers too frightened to say anything? I wouldn’t be surprised.

What happened to Tituba, the black slave whose stories of her past are widely credited with starting the whole witch craze. Since the stories she told about her life and her religion, voodoo, found fertile ground among the girls and seems to have served as part of the bedrock, it is surprising to me that Tituba wasn’t hanged. But although she went to jail she was not hanged.

Silly superstitions and more

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Here are some of the superstitions I find silly. If a cow moos after midnight, someone in the immediate family will soon die.  Since cows moo all the time I think we can all be glad this one isn’t true. Or maybe it is. Since a cow moos all the time, it’s bound to coincide with a death, right?

If someone places three chairs in a row, someone will die. (really?)

Opening an umbrella in the house means someone will die in six months.

If a young girl sleeps with an apple under her pillow, she will dream about the man she will marry.

If a cat sharpens his claws on a wooden fence there will be a heavy downpour later that day. In fact, there are quite a few involving cats. Perhaps this is so because cats were so often seen as witches’s familiars.

Many superstitions relate to unmarried girls seeing the face of their future husbands or superstitions guaranteeing a happy future marriage. The tradition of “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue” is one of these. Not following this prescription is supposed to result in an Unhappy marriage.

Silly or not, there are quite a few old beliefs that we still sorta kinda follow today, as with the above. Another one: it’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride right before the wedding.

Poor man’s fertilizer: A snowfall in April or May means a good harvest. This one is actually true: a late snowfall puts nitrogen into the soil which is good for plants.

Speaking ill of the dead will mean someone close to you dies within the year.

The one who gets the bigger piece of a wishbone will achieve their wish.

A black cat means bad luck.

13 is an unlucky number. Some hotels still do not have a thirteenth floor.

Here’s a big one: Halloween. It may have degenerated into a candy collecting orgy but the costumes and the connection with food have a long history back to times before the Romans.

The groundhog and his shadow. With all the furor around Puxatawney Phil one would think the rodent some form of royalty.

What I find so interesting about these old beliefs is their staying power.  My mother used to quote:

“Red sky at night, sailor’s delight

red sky in the morning, sailors take warning”

as a predictor of the next day’s weather. I still think of it when I see a particularly fiery sunset.

 

True, many of them have become celebrations for children or ones that adults enjoy with tongues firmly planted in cheeks. But  I know that there are many conversations about the groundhog and his shadow so there still is some belief.

Superstition and Disease

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The current furor over the Ebola outbreak prompted me to consider the role of disease in the past. During the Middle ages there was no conception of the role bacteria and viruses play in the transmission of disease so everything was ascribed to God, the Devil, or witchcraft. The birth of a deformed calf, destruction of crops, soured milk or ale or an outbreak of some disease could mean a witch had set a curse. As I mentioned in a previous post, witch hunts continued in the United States until the middle of the 1800s. (And belief in the supernatural did not end then. There was tremendous interest in spiritualism, attracting no lesser a personage than Arthur Conan Doyle, and belief in fairies encouraged by faked photographs. But I digress.) Paradoxically, it is believed that some of the worst incidents of witch hunts and trials were magnified by poor harvest (so people were hungry and scared) and by the growth of ergot on the grains (so people were also tripping). Talk about a perfect storm.

I suspect Granny medicine – the old wise women who knew treatments from trial and error – like that certain kinds of mold could cure infection also played a part in tarring these women with the taint of witchcraft.  A host of measures to counter spells were in use. Some of the measures employed to keep a witch out of a house: storing apples (really!), a bag of salt under the master bed, a horseshoe or a clove of garlic hung over each entrance. Of course, if a spell was cast upon you, you had to employ certain methods to counteract that spell. To counteract a spell one would put seven drops of vegetable oil in a dish of water with some iron and rub the outside of the dish clockwise for three minutes. Doing so seven days would completely break the spell.

Of course such treatments had no effect on diseases. Diptheria, cholera, smallpox, the list of diseases is long. Smallpox, although us moderns have never seen a case, has been around so long scientists are not sure when it began. The theory is, though, that this disease also came out of Africa (like Ebola) and spread via trade routes.. Mummies with smallpox scars have been found in Egyptian tombs so it has been around for millennia. By my character, Will Rees’s time, advances in treating disease were beginning. At the beginning of the 1700s, vaccination as a treatment for smallpox was spreading. ( Live smallpox virus from an infected person was used – Yipes!!) The death rate for vaccination was 2%, unvaccinated and infected naturally = 14%. Edward Jenner, an orphan, was vaccinated as a boy. He had heard tales that dairymaids infected with cowpox never got smallpox. A few experiments later and in 1796 vaccination with cowpox as a treatment for smallpox was born. Rees would have seen many people with the characteristic round scars left by smallpox.   Except for some vials that are in storage, smallpox has been eradicated. I suspect Ebola will be also, eventually.

Salem, witchcraft and religious freedom

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A visit to Salem offers numerous opportunities to see dramatizations of the witch hysteria.

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Numerous theories have been put forth to explain this frenzy, including one I mentioned in an earlier post – ergot.

However, I think it important to remember that the Puritans who came here for religious freedom, came out of a history of witch trials. In Europe there were recurring trials and burnings. Some of these outbursts seemed to have roots in ordinary human nature – heirs who accused a wealthy widow to obtain property for example. But the strong religious fervor clearly played a large part. One only has to look at the Spanish Inquisition to see to what lengths men will sink, convincing themselves all the way that they are operating for some higher purpose.

And magic was already a part of the culture. Witch balls, glass balls with elaborate designs inside to capture the witch’s essence, had been in use in Britain for years. I mentioned the witch cake in a previous post. But there was also other beliefs. an egg dropped in a glass of water could help determine one’s future husband. Dried apple faces were used to keep away evil spirits. An ear of corn on a woman’s belly as she gave birth would protect her and the baby.  The effect of spells could be lessened by dry apple seeds. Of, if one was in the woods, witches could be frightened away by the clacking to two sticks together. And so on.

 

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So the residents of Salem were already primed to believe in the existence of witches. When Tituba recounted stories and spells from her religion to the girls, they took root and helped inspire the hysteria.

Witch hunts and trials continued in the United States until well into the 1800s.

 

One last comment: I don’t think we can sneer at these poor superstitious fools from this earlier time – not when shows such as Ghost Hunter on the SYFY channel are so popular.

Witches of Salem

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October is an appropriate time to discuss this part of our nation’s past. In fact, when people think of Salem, they think of the witch trials in 1692. Salem has a much longer and interesting history. My character, Will Rees, visits Salem slightly more than one hundred years later. But the memory of those trials and the witches are present in physical reminders even today.

First, I want to note that reparations were made to the families in the early 1700’s. This does not mean that belief in witches and witchcraft ended. It did not. Accusations and trials continued to the early 1800’s. Mother Ann Lee, the spiritual force behind the Shakers, was arrested on a charge of blasphemy in the 1780’s and could have been hung as a witch. However, it was upstate New York, and almost exactly one hundred years later and she was eventually released.

What happened in Salem?

Well, it is believed the witch hysteria began in the household of Reverend Samuel Parris. A slave called Tituba told stories of her religion which featured voodoo and folk magic to the girls in the  household. One of the practices was the baking of a Witch Cake (one of the ingredients being the urine of the girls – yuck) that was then fed to a dog. Another ingredient was rye.

Since a fungus grows on rye during wet conditions and that fungus produces a toxin that is similar to LSD, rye has been implicated in not only the witch hysteria here but in Europe as well. Perhaps I am looking at it from the perspective of a twenty-first century woman but my first question when I was going on the tours was why these so called responsible adults were listening to a bunch to teenage girls. I’d be instantly suspicious I can tell you.

In any event, before it was over, 150 people were imprisoned and 19 people – and two dogs- were hanged. One man, Giles Corey, was pressed to death. He cursed all future Sheriffs of Salem to die of some chest (respiratory) illness. Apparently most have, but in an era without antibiotics (forget about good hygiene or healthy food) I don’t think that is surprising.IMG_2520 IMG_2555

Salem offers a number of dioramas and costumed reenactments of this period.

Salem and the scarlet Letter

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After my research journey to Salem this spring, I decided to reread both The Scarlet Letter and the House of Seven Gables. I read both but a long time ago – because they were on reading lists. Let me tell you, I missed a lot in The Scarlet Letter as a fourteen year old reader. I don’t know yet what I missed in The House Of Seven Gables – I haven’t read it yet. but I’ll be willing to bet I missed most of the important points.

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It was clearly owned by a wealthy family.

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There really is a house of the seven gables. Who knew?

 

 

 

This is one of the ceilings. and there was an attic for the servants and slaves to sleep in.

Puritanism and the witch trials are clearly part of the history – and not just the tourist parts either. We stopped at the Old Burying Point.

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There were a lot of small gravestones for little children. Some families lost five and six kids. Heartbreaking. But one of the most poignant were the large memorials to the people executed during the witch trials. Since they had been found guilty of witchcraft the victims could not be buried in consecrated ground. It is thought the families slipped out at night and found the bodies and gave them a decent burial. But no one knows for sure. And the graves of course cannot be located.

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Each memorial is inscribed with the name and date of execution of one of the nineteen victims. Sobering.

I read The scarlet Letter with an entirely different perspective.

Here’s a fun fact about Hawthorne. He did not want to be associated with the Judge who sent the accused to the gallows ( a direct ancestor) so he added a w to his name.