the salem witch trials

Wanna hear the most outlandish tale I have heard about the witch trials?

A man by the name of John Todd (an Illuminati conspiracy theorist) was a witch turned Christian and after his conversion he went around preaching his nonsensical conspiracy throries about the Illuminati.

Well, he claimed to be a descendant of the first witches to move to America and claimed that the Salem trials were actually the opposite. He claimed that the witches were the ones conducting the trials and that all of the executed women were actually Christians they had targeted (with the exception of one prostitute).

Since he is a pathological liar I'd not even bother to debunk his claim but it was an interesting one.

Here's to hoping the next person who responds digresses less and helps more than I have.

do yer own "swotting" . . .

Any reference to political factionalism is ludicrous, beyond a discussion of personal rivalries within the community. And that's all you'll get from me, you need to write your own paper.

You'll have to do your own research on it but there is a disease (fungus) that affects wheat(? grain anyway) and it has a toxic effect on the body, causing hallucinations etc

Ricin???? not sure if that is right - you'll need to research

I saw a programme, quite convincing, some time ago that thought this was responsible. Maybe some of the medical members can help.

yeah...ergot....see i do know things...its a wheat fungus with 1/10th the effects of LSD
and as for setanta's incredibly friendly comment-i have researched, i have made my own descisions and i dont particularly need or as for help....HOWEVER i do think it is an interesting topic which should be talked about...and should i read anything i didnt know before then ill have learned something...that being the point of able2know - am i right?

Yes, and don't mind the people who like to put others down about "homework".

It's so common among this crowd that I have seen self-important people telling 80 year olds who want to discuss something to "do your own damn homework".

yes trixabell that's it - I just couldn't bring the name ergot to mind.


Good luck with your project

Maybe you could tell us all a bit about the witches and the history? I'd find it interesting

This is an area of interest to me, and one of my former profs has written a book "Salem Story" (by Bernard Rosenthal). You might want to seek it out.

I also recently read a book, "Hellfire Nation", which has to do with various episodes in US history in which the concept of sin was employed by the powers-that-be to gain more control over the populace. The Salem witch trials are a good example of that. Trumped-up charges to keep women in place and to reassert the authority of men to sort things out.

Anyhow, any idea that those poor women and girls were really witches or influenced by the devil is, IMHO, absolute BS.

I have some short notes on John Proctor since he was my 7th great-grandfather and some on Susannah Martin (North) since she is a relative too.

Proctor was none to political but he wasn't a push over when it came to things that didn't sit well with him and wasn't willing to go with the flow to save his own neck. He was hung, basically, for insisting the entire mess was a farce.

Trixabell, the standard work on the subject of your question is:

Salem Possessed;The Social Origins of Witchcraft
by Paul Boyer and Steven Nissenbaum

cheers guys -xxxxxx-

My apologies . . . your suggestion that we "swot up" on the subject seemed to me an incredibly arrogant remark suggesting not only that we do your homework for you, but that you expected a great deal from us in that regard.

In general, i don't make that kind of remark, and don't mind giving people information about a topic for which they have an assignment, as i don't usually provide references, and they will still need to do the research to support the contention if they use the information i've provided.

Again, my apologies, my remarks were based upon a misapprehension of your meaning.

By the way, it might be very instructive to you to do some research on Cotton Mather. He was the minister at the Old North Church in Boston, and instigated an investigation and a trial for witchcraft in 1688. When the Salem trials convened in 1692, three of the five judges were friends of Mather, and members of his congregation. Mather was so convinced that the evil of witchcraft was a real threat in Massachusetts, that he wrote that he intended to "never use but one grain of patience with any man that shall go to impose upon me a Denial of Devils, or of Witches."

Crazy old coot . . .

Mather wrote "The Wonders of the Invisible World" re the events in Salem. He may have been more than a "crazy old coot," though. In "Hellfire Nation", James Morone opines that Mather (and many latter-day foes of evil in this country) fought the devil and his followers to consolidate their own temporal power.

Take John Ashcroft, please!

And do take him very, very far away . . .

Hi, trixabell. Welcome to A2K. Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible which concerned itself with the witch trials in Salem, but it was really a guise to remind Americans about "witch hunts" in general. The play was designed to expose Joseph McCarthy's reign of terror as he accused everyone of being communists. Here's a link to the play:

http://summarycentral.tripod.com/thecrucible2.htm

You will be able to find lots of info on McCarthy. As to the "ergot" theory, I think it was Dean Koontz who wrote a work of fiction (can't remember the name of his book) suggesting that this was the cause of the young girls apparent possession. Good luck.

I've heard of four prominent theories:
1- The Gender Intereperetation view: Early Modern attituteds toward women encouraged the violence toward and killing of women to ensure the continuation of an ordered society.

2-The Ergotism theory: Ergot infected grain produced hallucinations (probably the weakest of the theories).

3- The Social Competition theory: Social competiton between families in Salem Township and Salem Village were manifested in the accusations and hangings.

4-The King Phillip's War theory: The onslought of violence unleashed during King Phillip's wars led to the increased demonization of Native Americnas (Tituba) and hostility towards the Mass. government by those forces to flee from the Maine Colonies (the Families of the accusers).

Of the four, I prefer an amalgamation of 1,3, and 4. Number two has too many flaws and ignores the widespread phenomenon of witch persecutions that existed in Europe from teh 14th through the 18th Cneturies.

Hobitbob. drop number one also, feminist interpretation often add insight into social processes, but not this one. Males were just as likely to be accused and if women were more often hung it was because the accused was marginal and vulnerable (see John Demos's study of New England witchcraft accusations). Number four is only half right, King Philips War led to the intervention of the Royal Government and Massachusetts lost it's Charter and it's independence. At the time of the Salem Witch Trials it was without a legitimate government and no one knew what form the London imposed government would take. But they did know that it was no longer an independent Puritan society. The result was massive anxiety. This is the context in which number 3, local social competition, got out of control.

First of all, it is not a WHEAT argot but a RYE argot and rye was more commonly grown as a bread grain in that time and place than wheat.

As for that theory being weak, it surfaced in the late 60s and then again more recently. Has some pretty sound foundations, inmo, in fact, I thought I originated it way back when.

Some contend that it was a property hassle but a public television show called The History Detectives (shown last night in the Boston market) might have accidentally debunked that train of thought. People ask questions of the show, generally because they own something which they suspect has historical significance. In this case, a couple asked if their Salem home was part of the property struggle. While the land on which it was built may have been, dendrochronology determined that the house itself was built in 1710 or 1711, long after the witchcraft panic.

The American witchcraft panic occurred after witchacraft prosecutions were a thing of the past in Europe. Such persecutions began as early as the 14th century and ebbed and flowed throughout time, being stronger on the Continent than on the British Isles. Interestingly, only one case of witchcraft was ever tried in England and the woman was English and not Irish.

could it be they really were witches?