The Salem Witch Trials Wasn’t About Witches.

That’s right: the Salem Witch Trials wasn’t about saving the good Puritans from the influence of witchcraft. It was about persecuting women in general and people who didn’t fit in. The victims were people who didn’t fit in for some reason, or people who stuck out and didn’t quite do what they were told.

While history mostly rewards the daring, the present often punishes them. No one remembers the well-behaved women of the America colonies. Ann Hutchinson, for example, broke away from the staunch patriarchal Puritan establishment. Her punishment? Banishment. Of course, many went with her.

She was lucky, perhaps. It was probably because she was so popular that she was not put to death for heresy or witchcraft.

No Witches Died During the Witch Trials.

This is my theory. Any witches in Salem used their powers to hide in plain sight. Even the most eccentric of psychics and seers can cover their tracks if needed. The people who died were just odd in some way, and they didn’t have or use any power to stop the trial or save their own lives.

I also think that deep down, no on wanted to kill the real witches anyway, if there were any. After all, every society — whether they know it or not — needs it’s psychically sensitive people.

We Used to Have a Dignified Place in Every Society.

“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” didn’t mean to literally kill them. This Bible quote just told the Hebrews not to support them financially by patronizing them. Of course, many say this literally means to kill them, but this doesn’t makes sense given the entirety of the Gospel. After all, if we are all God’s children, and if we can all be redeemed, why should some of us in particular be killed?

It has nothing to do with the Gospel, actually. Cutting off witches from society, like in the Salem witch trials, is cutting off our history. Witches, psychics, shamans, spiritual healers, and the like have always been a part of our lives until empires took over and placed churches atop them.

However, even in the Middle Ages, we were not nearly persecuted so much as we were in the 17th and 18th centuries by Protestant religious fanatics. In fact, many respected astrologers worked for kings and other royalty. Most doctors were also astrologers. Every village witch or medicine man still had work. The people went to church, or did what the church said, but in times of real trouble, they came back to the edge of the village to their own healers and seers.

This is because we have always been a part of society. We were the priests, the monks, the doctors, the peacemakers, the weathermen, and the judges.

The only problem was that we couldn’t be controlled by a church.

The church is controlled by men. The universe, however, is in control of itself, and that, truly, is what scared the witch hunters the most: some people are closer to God than others.

And God speaks to us.