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Posts tagged: enlightenment europe

resurrecttheliving:

Scientific explanations of witch hunts/trials tho. Like, yeah, no, none of these weird, specific signs and symptoms have any cultural relevance worth uncovering and studying, we can just attribute it all to molds and ticks. You figured it out, science. Great job.

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I can’t speak more broadly to like, all witch trials ever, but like, Reginald Scot in the 1500’s basically was like “witches are either nuts, have convinced themselves of lies, catholic and thus stupid, or scammers. I am now going to go undercover and learn how to do every street magic known in england to prove it.” It resulted in a really cool first book of stage and street magic, but also, more relevant - people were totally saying it was BS from way back.

But- but like. Again, I have only really read up on Salem, but, some of that shit sounds just like modern UFO encounter stuff. Bright lights descending from the sky, slowly drawing people in, people feeling stuck in place, glowing balls of light that zoom into peoples bodies, floating cows… I mean, it was uncanny reading it because it was the same stuff that in the 1960’s people were like “this is obvious cold war paranoia”.

So I mean, I am not saying it is aliens, I actually think it is more likely to be this science stuff.

Which is not to say that science explains any of the little yellow birds or specific narratives from black slave traditions that got corrupted by a gaggle of girls or any possible folk or witchcraft that may or may not have been happening, or the sexualization of women’s bodies and the assumption that any abnormality on a women’s body was satanic and evil. Or the fact that a lot of the complaints sound like sexual fantasies/fears or illicit affairs or jealousies - that there is some element of Enlightenment masculine fear over the unknown working itself out here… these are probably still things worth looking at critically.

Like it is really a very shallow reading of social history to think that humans can’t be pushed by just social pressures to do something like this. I mean, even if maybe one or two cases in one or two places had something to do with ergot or something, that wasn’t the case in salem - where if you look at the documents is all about grievances and vengeance and a community that was all into knowing everyone’s business and also remaining all prim and proper about it.

I think things like sleep paralysis and migraine aura and maybe some fear hallucinations and the occasional bad wheat stalk might have added to the fury of it all or even been the spark in some places, but racism and religious passion and national fervor were more than enough kindling. I mean. The testimonies in Salem talk constantly about a “Black Man” in place of the word Devil, and the Black Man is also sometimes said to look like an Indian, and then the Witches fly off with the slaves to a pow wow in the woods. That is not ergot. 

All that being said, farmers’ reporting seeing weird shit* at night has sounded very similar for over 300 years and maybe there is science causes in there to.

Or aliens. Don’t despair Mulder, it could still be aliens.

*here is a sample, from Cotton Mathers contemporaneous reporting in Wonders of the Invisible World -

“John Pressy testify’d, That being one Evening very unaccountably Bewildred, near a field of Martins, and several times, as one under an Enchantment, returning to the place he had left, at length he saw a marvellous Light, about the Bigness of an Half-Bushel, near two Rod out of the way. He went, and struck at it with a Stick, and laid it on with all his might. He gave it near forty blows; and felt it a palpable substance. But going from it, his Heels were struck up, and he was laid with his Back on the Ground, Sliding, as he thought, into a Pit; from whence he recover’d, by taking hold on the Bush; altho’ afterwards he could find no such Pit in the place.”