Witches.
Before Harry Potter hit the scene and made being a witch the coolest career choice I
will never get to make, witches were not very popular.
As in… there were a lot of executions.
Some of the most famous being the Salem Witch Trials, which left over 20 people dead in
about a year…
But what could’ve caused this tragedy?
Magic?
Mania?
Or was it one really bad drug trip?
Hello, welcome to nerdyandquirky, here’s some cool history.
So let’s talk about context because it is a massive player in this event.
On a large political scale, the trials took place in the 17th century which means pre-revolutionary
America.
The thing you need to know about the colonies is that they were a mess.
Just imagine if you had a drunk toddler design a political system…
Needless to say, there was a severe lack of judicial regulation.
On a smaller scale, the events were focused in a cluster of small towns fuelled by their
own rivalries and land disputes.
And religiously, the region was composed of religious refugees who weren’t really into
of a separation of church and state.
And superstitiously, witch hunts were all the rage.
Europe was hunting witches every decade or so and that anxiety had spread to the New
England, primarily through Cotton Mather, a pamphleteer.
He believed that witches were “among the poor, and vile, and ragged beggars upon Earth”
So Salem was a powder keg and in January of 1692… it exploded.
The daughter and niece of Salem’s local minister began to exhibit strange symptoms:
They had violent convulsions “beyond the power of Epileptic Fits”
They had loud outbursts
And so they were diagnosed with bewitchment…
Which is an actual diagnosis that used to exist.
And suddenly, more and more young girls in Salem began to show these symptoms.
Fingers were pointed to Tituba, the minister’s slave, Sarah Good, a beggar, and Sarah Osborne,
a widower.
While the Sarahs claimed innocence, Tituba confessed to being a witch and claimed there
were more in town.
But this was after days of interrogation and probably because she thought that she would
gain leniency…
She didn’t.
More women were called into question.
Including Martha Corey, a regular church go-er who was like…
“Hey…
This all seems kind of sketchy”
Sadly… being anti-witch trial apparently meant being pro-witch.
Now, this broke the floodgates as it meant that anyone could be a witch… even the good
people, not just the poor and outcast.
So… no one was safe.
Reverends, children, men, and women began to populate the town jail.
And with this flood of allegations, the governor of Massachusetts established the Court of
Oyer and Terminer , or, the court to hear and to determine.
One tool used to identify witchcraft was a Witch Cake which…
Is just a desecration of cake.
It was made of rye flour and the urine of the bewitched person which was then fed to
a dog, who if they got the same symptoms… witchcraft.
Which would be hilarious if it wasn’t used as an excuse to kill people.
Another form of evidence was spectral evidence which meant what people saw in dreams were
considered true.
Even Cotton Mather, the dude who helped start the fear campaign was like “do not lay more
stress upon pure specter testimony that it will bear… it is very certain that the devils
have sometimes represented the shapes of person not only innocent but very virtuous” in
other words, “Whoa.
Too far.”
And it went… far.
While the trials slowed to a halt by May 1693…
The damage was done.
19 people had been hanged, 1 pressed to death, and several more died in jail.
All in one year, in one little town.
So… what could’ve caused this?
Putting aside any belief in all these people actually being witches…
Linnda Caporael has come up with the most popular theory.
Ergot.
Which contains the primary ingredient of LSD.
So, ergot is a parasitic fungus that blossoms into large blackened grains on grass plants,
including rye.
Now… farmers were aware of its existence, they called it cockspur…
BUT they didn’t know it was bad.
They just figured it was grains that had been cooked in the sun.
Not a poison.
A poison which consumed can result in convulsions, hallucinations, and painful contractions of
the muscles.
Sounds like a good explanation for those bewitchment symptoms.
But how’d they ingest it?
Well, Salem’s primary grain was rye.
A common target of ergot.
And in 1691, a rainy warm growing season promoted heavier fungus infestations for grain to be
consumed in 1692…
When the first victims began to appear.
But in 1692, there was a drought which likely killed out all of the ergot… which explains
why the trials slowed to a halt by 1693.
And if this is true, it wouldn’t be the first time a “plague” was caused by ergot.
In 857 AD, a disease known as St. Anthony’s Fire plagued Germany, causing people to suffer
from tremors and hallucinations.
In fact, a lot of possessed behaviour can be ascribed to ergotism.
It’s a pretty good reason, imperfect only because… why would it only affect girls?
So others say it may have been fraud.
Just young women bored of small town life, seeking some excitement in lies.
Or being forced to lie to push their family’s greater agenda in the town’s pre-existing
rivalries.
But it’s important to remember that the illness was just a catalyst for the trials.
The original victims, Tituba, Sarah Goode, Sarah Osbourne were not suffering from ergotism,
they were suffering from prejudice.
Prejudice against the poor, the alien, the unwanted.
And witchcraft was just a catchall blame.
And we can write off the Salem Witch Trials as one freakish overreaction caused by drugs…
OR we can recognize that it only could’ve happened with an unchecked government and
prejudice allowed to run free.
So, that was just some cool history on the salem witch trials.
Now what about you guys?
There are other theories as to what caused the trial… from mass hysteria to fraud…
What do you think happened?
Tell me down below.
If you this was interesting or you just want to support the show, liking and sharing would
help out so much.
But either way, have a lovely day!
Was it a political video?
Who knows???
HAHAHAHAAHAHAHA.
I've also included links to Linda Caporael's actual like report on the whole ergotism thing cuz it's interesting.
Also, shoutout to JSTOR