Salem witch trials Essay -- essays research papers

capital of Oregon glamour Trials Casting a spell on the batch Today, the idea of perceive a witch is almost inconsequential. Our Halloween holiday marks a festivity in which many will adorn themselves with pointy black hats and long fibrous hair, and most will embrace them as comical and festive. Even the present-day(a) witchery religious groups forming are being accepted with less criticism. to a greater extent recently, the Blair Witch movie craze has brought more fascination than fear to these colored and magical figures. So, it becomes no wonder that when our generations watch movies like the Crucible, a sanely accurate depiction of the Salem Witch Trials, we are enraged and obscure by the injustice and the mayhem that occurred in 1692. For most, our egocentric view of the prehistoric almost stops us from seeing what a dilemma was brew in that Puritan lifestyle. At that time, witches were far more than a generic costume for a casual holiday celebration, or a tolerate d religion, or a new form of Hollywood fascination, they were the work of an awful, vengeful, unseen power. In the seventeenth century, almost every one and only(a), even those with the best of educations, where under the belief that witch contrivance was evil and the control of the devil. Witchcraft had once, before the Middle Ages had been accepted as the powers of medicine and good deeds however, the church of that time had proclaimed the craft as the work of the devil and the actions of heretics. From then on witches were greatly dreaded. They believed that they had superfluous powers that allowed them to face harm to those that they had quarrels with they could read minds, tell the future, bring up ghosts of the perfectly and force the holy to perform unholy acts. There was only one way to save someone who sold their soul to the devil for the gifts of witchcraft, to hide them (Dickinson 4). People were branded witches for unrelated mishaps. If the farmers sheep all died fro m a virus in the water, then the neighbor who fought with him last week must arouse cast a spell. In a world where people are certain of witchcraft, nonhing is accidental. Consequentially, many people were unjustly condemned to death. In the seed of the century the targets for witchcraft were the poor, the elderly, the mentally ill, the rude and quarrelsome, barely as the century drew to an end those accused were chosen more democratically, even those as young as fou... ...ent theories of what the girls were afflicted with. Several researchers postulated that they were low-down from ergot poisoning from spoiled rye grain. Others thought that girls were enjoying the attention that they would have never received some otherwise being young females. Similarly, others thought that the cause of their symptoms are from a popular mental disorder from the 1970s called clinical hysteria or mass hysteria, referring to a condition experienced by a group of people who, through suggestio n, observation, or other psychological processes, develop similar fears, delusions, abnormal behaviors, or physical symptoms. (Trask 1 and Plotnik 520) The Salem witchcraft delusion became the street to what is now known as the road to Enlightenment. Although the trials in New England did not end there, Salem marked the beginning of and end to the horrible injustice. Witch-hunting is still an epidemic that plagues today in other forms. People are made to suffer for their beliefs. Religious and political persecution has stained every century since then. Perhaps, the greatest thing gained from the trials was the understanding that the majority is not always the voice of justice.