Religious reality

[Jeffersons Ghost]

The Salem Witch Trials
This is a rewrite derived from an Undergraduate Course at the University of Virginia


Elizabeth Parris was only nine when witchcraft allegedly flew into Salem, Massachusetts on dark wings. She reportedly participated in its humble beginning. Elizabeth seemed to have difficulty coping with the sermons about damnation that her father, Reverend Samuel Parris, preached to her. Elizabeth lived during a period of economic uncertainty, which caused her grave concern about the future.

In the winter of 1691, Elizabeth and her cousin Abigail Williams began experimenting with fortune telling. They used a device called a Venus glass, which consisted of an egg white suspended in water that supposedly revealed shapes and figures. The girls reportedly focused on their future social status, and the jobs that their future husbands would have. They shared their fortune telling secrets with other girls. Once, the glass revealed the image of a coffin. Rev. John Hale reported in A Modest Inquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft (1702) that the image suggested "diabolical molestation."

Elizabeth's problems started in January when she began to forget errands, became unable to concentrate, and gained a fascination for the occult. She could not concentrate on prayers and barked like a dog when her father rebuked her. She screamed wildly when she heard the "Our Father" prayer. She even hurled a Bible across the room at one point. After episodes like these, she often sobbed and claimed that she was damned. She believed her damnation was inevitable. Because others in the community thought her fortune telling was a demonic activity she began to believe it herself. Her father felt that prayer could cure her: But his efforts were totally ineffective.

No one truly knows what Elizabeth and her friends experienced; but some scientists have suggested that they ate moldy bread, which contained an LSD-like compound. Physically the condition manifested as odd postures, ridiculous speech and dramatic fits. John Hale in A Modest Inquiry described the affliction by saying they appeared to be "bitten and pinched by invisible agents; their arms, necks, and backs turned this way and that way, and returned back again, so as it was impossible for them to do of themselves, and beyond the power of Epileptic fits, or natural disease to effect. Sometimes they were taken dumb, their mouths stopped, their throats choked, their limbs wracked and tormented so as might move a heart of stone to sympathize with them." A local physician, William Griggs, diagnosed Elizabeth as having an affliction he called the "Evil Hand," a diagnosis more commonly known as witchcraft. Her father the reverend thought the diagnosis was "a very sore rebuke and humbling providence that the Lord ordered the horrid calamity to break out first in his family." Because sufferers of witchcraft were thought to be the victims of a crime, at that time, the community began to seek out the perpetrators.

On February 29, 1692, under intense questioning, Elizabeth and her friends named Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba as their tormentors. Elizabeth testified at these trials that she had been tormented by spectral visions of the women. During their trials, Elizabeth would scream when the accused women moved their arms, legs, or head, as if they were injuring her from across the room. Elizabeth was also responsible for the conviction of Martha Corey. At that trial, the afflicted girls sat together, and whatever Martha did, the girls did. If she moved her arm, so did they. When the accused moved her feet, at one point, the girls began stamping their feet. When Corey nervously bit her lips, the girls yelled that she had bitten theirs, and showed the magistrates that their lips bled.

Understandably, Mrs. Parris was worried about her daughter's health and protested against the judge using her as a witch finder. At the end of March, Betty was sent to live with a distant cousin, Stephen Sewall, in Salem. This partial isolation stopped most of her symptoms, although she still had visions. On March 25, Elizabeth related that the "Great Black Man" came to her and said that if she would allow him to rule her, she could have her heart's desire and go to a "Golden City." Mrs. Sewall told Elizabeth that the Devil had approached her and "he was a Liar from the beginning, and bid her tell him so, if he came again."

In 1710, Elizabeth finally found an answer to the question she had sought much earlier in her homemade crystal ball. She married Benjamin Baron, a shoemaker from Sudbury and finally led an ordinary existence. She and her husband bore four children. Elizabeth Parris survived her husband by six years, before succumbing to an unknown illness.

[RandomThoughts]

1. Or they were framed.

How would you know?

Another reason to love your enemy, they could have been unjust persecutions.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

2. Your point is???

"She and her husband bore four children."

Nope. She did. Men do not bear children. At least not back then.

[dimbear]

3. The quality of mercy is not constrained, and so no witches were ever

burned by the government in the Colonies. This was because it was more merciful to hang them, or drown them, and also because burning was prohibited by the Crown. If any witches were burned, it was a purely private matter.

Nota bene.