All Hallows Eve

“A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up.” Ecclesiastes 3:3

My brother and sister-in-law just returned from a week's vacation to New England. They saw Plymouth Rock, a replica of the Mayflower, and Salem, Massachusetts...where nearly 200 people were accused of practicing the black art of witchcraft.

Can you imagine? Two small children go into violent convulsions. Their bodies contort, and they utter strange sounds. There is no evidence of disease, their symptoms point to no known disabilities. Other children in the village become similarly afflicted. The obvious conclusion in a village driven by puritannical fever is witchcraft.

We surround what we don't understand with a cloud of superstition, sometimes to inhuman results.

Three women of impoverished and/or godless stature were accused of afflicting the children and taken to trial. One of them, Sarah Good, was pregnant - she later delivered in prison, awaiting her execution, and the infant died having never seen freedom.

Sarah's four-year old daughter was also accused of witchcraft and imprisoned for 9 months. This four-year old supposedly confessed to being a witch and to seeing her mother "consort with the Devil." The child was eventually released; she suffered psychological trauma the rest of her life. No freakin' duh...

When it was over, nineteen people had been hanged and one man crushed to death - his chest was piled with heavy rocks in an effort to convince him to "confess." He was 80 years old.

The accused also suffered excommunication. The were denied Christian burial, and they were deprived of all their worldly possessions and inheritance...based on the evidence provided by a group of teenage girls, one of whom was caught in a blatant lie - she received a scolding. The "witches" were still hanged.

Not one of humanity's finer moments, to be sure. Also not one of our worst, I'll admit.

Interestingly, the bible talks about witchcraft and demon-possession. Yet, when Jesus approached a man possessed, he did not string him up at the nearest Joshua tree. He wapped him on the forehead and called the spirit out, restoring the man to his right mind, or so the story goes. An interesting point, though - not that you should believe the story, but this from the very book the Salemites based their belief system on.

Now I'm not suggesting we walk around wapping crazy people on the head and calling Beelzubub out. First, I don't really like the thought of a bunch of Beetlejuices floating around all spectral and trying to find other "hosts" in which to live. I'm also not so sure I would be able to tell a possessed person from someone who just hasn't been taking their meds. The moral of the story is to help, though, not to condemn.

The Reverend Increase Mather, father to Cotton Mather and president of Harvard College, encapsulated this spirit and became part of the changing tide. “It were better,” he stated, “that ten suspected witches should escape than one innocent person should be condemned.”

To Sarah Good and her infant child. Rest in peace.