Week 1: On Witchcraft

Cotton Mather’s On Witchcraft

I really did not understand too much of Mather’s language. His references and long-winded sentences made it difficult to follow closely. But what I did understand from it, I’ve written about here.
I’ve always been interested in the Salem witch trials. There is just something about the fact that these people could not defend themselves against something that was so far beyond anyone’s own power. They were only fighting themselves, to a point. To the people of New England in the 1620s it was beyond horrible to think that the devil could be walking among them, trying to convert them to his dark and evil ways. What fueled all of the hysteria was fear; fear that their way of life is under attack. The people of Salem were, as Cotton Mather said, “People of God” (14), good people. This was why they believed the devil chose to attack them. Just like any other war, this was a war against the devil. But how do you fight the devil? Pray, pray, pray, hang people, pray. You know, the usual way of fighting. Except this was a holy war. God chose them to fight this.

What gets me is how people who are so called "good" can kill other people because they are "bad". What does that make the good people? Why do they get to be "let off" for doing bad things? Just because they think they are doing “good”? Who says?
History repeats itself many times over. Thus why Arthur Miller wrote “The Crucible” in the 1950s. We cry: “Witch, Witch, she’s a witch!”; “Communist, Communist, he’s a communist!”; “Muslim, Muslim, he’s a Muslim!” Can’t really learn, can we?

In high school, I lived in Massachusetts for two years. Salem is kind of a non-thing to New Englanders. Just a sort of, “oh yeah it’s there”. Maybe you take a field trip in 8th grade. And go at Halloween for some fun horror shows, but not much else. To someone who had just moved there and heard of it all her life, well, then it’s a bit different. Salem, the town, is very touristy. Full of museums and gift stores where you can buy witch’s hats and all types of pentagrams. All of course for $50 and your first born. No one has forgotten though. The area is still eerily sacred. Along with all of the costumed reenactments and wax figures, you can still tell something happened there.

There was a shift here in Salem, after the trials any everything were finished, where people started to see past fear and started using intelligence to see understanding and tolerance. Yet, even today, fear still sends people to the same conclusion: burn the witch. Will it ever stop? As long as there are two sides to anything, there will be conflict. One side will be good, one side will be bad. Where they fall on the spectrum of good and evil is another story. Fear of losing what one has will always cause conflict as well. Preemptive strikes and there goes another war. I don’t think we can have good without bad, because there always has to be the anti. Unless everything is the same, then we will have conflict. Can there ever be peace? I’m not sure yet.