Salem

I had to visit Salem.  It's a Witch thing.

We drove into the town, and I wasn't sure how to react.  Salem, as we all know, was the site of one of the most awful and idiotic and frightening eras in American history.  On the other hand, "only" 19 people were murdered at Salem, against the uncounted thousands of Native Americans who were murdered.  On the other hand . . .

Anyway, I've always been angry about the Salem trials. The dichotomies and hypocrisy and utter idiocy are just too much for me.  None of the victims were Witches as I think of them today, but they've been adopted post-mortem by the Pagan community and are the biggest symbol of fear, oppression, and mob rule in America.  Note that Donald Trump (incorrectly) invokes the Salem Witches at every turn these days.

I maintain that if I were ever accused of Witchcraft in Salem, I would have told the judge to drop the whole thing, or I'd confess to Witchcraft and tell everyone that the judge signed the Devil's book along with me.  Then I'd howl and scream and writhe on the floor while begging the judge to stop sending his soul out to get me.  That would end the trials right quick.

At any rate, the outskirts of Salem are dumpy and ugly.  I threaded our way to a parking lot in the downtown area and we set out to explore.

Salem has a love-hate relationship with the trials.  When you walk around the place, you see lots and lots of signs and plaques that point out all sorts of historical events (none of which are recorded in any notable history books or taught in schools), and they rarely mention the trials at all.  "Hey, guys," the signs plead. "Salem isn't just about hanging Witches!  Really!  Lots of other stuff has happened here, too.  Guys?  Hello?"

But everyone knows the only reason anyone visits Salem is because of the trials.  And so they grudgingly set up a couple museums and a little Witch-themed shopping area that sells candles and psychic readings and statues of Witches and cheap stuff inscribed with pentacles.  The place manages to be both tawdy and pitiful, to tell the truth.

We found the old cemetery.  It was tiny, the size of a good-sized suburban yard, and like the one in Groton, it was crammed with the dead, even though not all of them had markers.  None of the accused Witches had markers.  The bodies of most of them were spirited away by their families and buried in secret, and the others were buried unmarked in the cemetery.  The city did put in a memorial, though.  It's a set of stone benches, each inscribed with the name of the accused Witch and the year in which he or she was hanged (or, in the case of Giles Corey, slowly crushed to death under a pile of stones).  People often put cut flowers on the benches.  A hefty crowd of visitors sifted through the grave markers.

One person related to the trials DOES have a stone: John Hathorne, the main judge in the cases.  He kept the trials going, sentenced innocent people to hang, and refused to listen even when the Witches' "victims" admitted they had lied about being attacked by magic.  When you were hanged for Witchcraft, your property was auctioned off by the town, and Hathorne bought property freed up by the executions he himself had ordered.

I hawked up and spat on his grave.

A huge, ancient oak tree that must have witnessed the trials and the hangings dominates one side of the graveyard.  It's so big that its lower branches have drooped down to rest on the ground.  It was covered in green acorns.  I picked three of them to take home for my altar--life out of death.

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