Throughout history, there have been accusations of witchcraft and occurrences of witch trials around the world. Of course, the most famous here in the U.S. are the Salem Witch Trials that occurred in Massachusetts in the late seventeenth century. I think most everyone who has ever taken an American History class is pretty familiar with what happened, so I thought I would just do a brief description. Basically, around the 1690s, the Puritans in Salem had a strong belief that Satan was acting in their world. They had recently experienced difficult times and already believed in an "invisible world", which apparently made this seem more plausible. Evidently, they thought that Satan recruited people, mainly women, to work for him and these women were the so-called "witches" responsible for any misfortune that occurred in the town. Eventually, the situation snowballed and turned into a mass hysteria type occurrence. By the end of it, nineteen people had died after being publicly executed, mainly by hanging. Now I know this isn't really a funny subject, but I think I should lighten the mood a bit by sharing a clip from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I referenced earlier when I blogged about Gregorian Chants, but it works just as well for witchcraft. Enjoy!
http://youtu.be/zrzMhU_4m-g
I can't get the video to embed correctly, but this link should take you to the video!
No comments:
Post a Comment