Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
One aspect of the "witch crisis" that occurred in Salem in 1692 is the degree to which the environment in which the early settlers lived created an abnormal sense of paranoia.
It must have been a very daunting thing to have left England and set up the first settlements in North America. Not far from the ocean would have been miles of forest. The forest must have been dark and frightening. There was a believe among some early religious figures that the devil dwelt in the forest. Than, as others have mentioned there were the Indians and wild animals.
I suspect the colony was far from secure from famine and deprivation. A bad harvest could easily have lead to a crisis.
People who are living on the margins are more prone to hysteria that people who are secure are.
What happened in 1692 seems inexcusable to us today. However, we are so far removed from that era, I'm not sure we can talk intelligently about it.
i'm surprised the malleus maleficarum hasn't been mentioned in this thread. while it probably can't be classified as a motivation, it certainly seems to have had some influence and changed the playing field as it were.
it's a complex issue and it probably can't be pinned down to a single factor.
It wasn't the preteen girls who were mostly effected. Rather, the wackjob puritanical adults who did the witch hunts and the murders of innocent young women. Mass hysteria exacerbated by hallucinagenic poisoning. Fermented with religious fervor and ignorance. Those last two go together all the time!
Motivation for things centuries ago is always open to speculation. The McMartin Satanism trials went on for years. It was the longest and most expensive legal action in California history. The conclusion after $65 million in legal expense was that it was all based on one woman's delusions. The people involved are still living. You can interview the children to find out why they said what they did.
Religious obsession is a common symptom of mental illness. It happens all the time. Sometimes it makes it to court. Stir sexual obsession into the mix and you start killing people. It's not hard to find people who do things like that. They are all around us.
The Catholic Inquisition was directed by Dominicans at "political victims" such as Jewish Converts, Protestants, Freethinkers and "Heterodoxians". It was a political instrument.
Catholic Inquisition also burned witches at the beginning, but after the with burning of Zarragamurdi witches in 1610 in Navarre, the Inquisition prepared a very scientific, almost contemporary document stating that so called witches were histerical women that needed sex. From then on, witch burning moved to central Europe.
Well, there is the theory that the hysteria was caused by ergot fungus growing on their rye crops. Ergot is a psychoactive fungus that can cause hallucinations and paranoia.
However, I thought the "Satanic Panic" of the 1980's was not dissimilar in some ways. Wild accusations of satanic cults, satanic ritual abuse, satanic murder, satanic sexual abuse of children, and satanic mind control by heavy metal musicians were hurled about frequently and recklessly. These accusations were taken seriously; arrests were made and lives were ruined. Daytime talk shows featured "survivors" of ritualistic abuse, who often underwent "recovered memory therapy" (which has largely been discredited). Even night time news magazines took it seriously enough, and presented segments on satanism that treated the existence of satanic ritual-abuse cults as fact.
None of it was ever proven to be true. There is no evidence that any organized satanic ritual-abuse cults ever existed in America in the 1980's. It was all pure hysteria, in a modern age when one would have expected the public to be too sophisticated to believe in such nonsense.
So what set off that panic? It may well have parallels to Salem. I suspect the answer lies in overly fundamentalist religion, extremely conservative and strict social mores, and people within these communities who did not adhere to these strict mores or rejected them completely and were therefore seen as destabilizing and dangerous individuals.
Many colonial historians have explained it in terms of the rapid expansion of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the breakdown of the old social and religious order, unsettled times for which witches were blamed, not as a sign of disorder, but a cause, just as immigrants are blamed today.
Giles Corey was an 80 year old fart who would not confess to being a witch, so they killed him by stacking boulders on his chest. If I lived there back then I would have to get away from the looneys, " Go west young man " and live amongst the more civilized people.
IN the case of Germany, which was the place with more burnings, and medieval Catalonia.........Gossip, ignorance and hate towards non wed women that lived alone. Psicopatic hatred to a person, quite common in isolated towns. In many cases, the only thing that the woman had to do was to move.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
