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And You Thought Salem Was Bad...


Society & Culture  (tags: witchcraft, witches, colonial America, Connecticut, witch trials, hangings, execution, history, Puritans, Puritanism, devil, trials )

RC
- 455 days ago - query.nytimes.com
Americans are familiar with the horrors of the Salem, Massachusetts witch trials. Unhappily my home state, Connecticut, began hunting & hanging witches in 1647, 45 years before the witch hunts & trials in Salem. Great read on a sad chapter in our history.
Comments

RC deWinter (418)
Wednesday September 24, 2008, 3:20 pm
Connecticut actually declared witchcraft a capital crime in 1642, although Alse (also Alice, Achsah) Young is the first recorded person to be tried and hung. Here are some excellent links to more information on Connecticut's history of trying and executing witches. People Accused Of Witchcraft In Connecticut This list is about 2/3 of the way down the page, and is preceded and followed by more information about the state's history pertaining to witchcraft. If you really want to read or research even more, you can go to this site and download this entire e-book: The Witchcraft Delusion in Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) by John M. Taylor Happy browsing!
 

Barbara Liebowitz (904)
Wednesday September 24, 2008, 3:46 pm
very interesting sarah whats her last name p needs to be hung for going out of her way to kill animals
 

RC deWinter (418)
Wednesday September 24, 2008, 3:53 pm
Connecticut declared witchcraft a capital crime in 1642. The first recorded prosecution and hanging occurred in the Town of Windsor in 1647, when Alse (also Alice, Achsah) Young was found guilty of witchcraft and hung.

If you want to know more, here are some excellent links: People Accused Of Witchcraft In Connecticut This list is about 2/3 of the way down the page, and is preceded and followed by more information about witch hunts in Connecticut. If you really want to read and research, you can go here: The Witchcraft Delusion in Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) by John M. Taylor and download an entire e-book on the subject.

Happy reading!
 

RC deWinter (418)
Wednesday September 24, 2008, 3:54 pm
sorry for the duplicate post, I couldn't see the first one....sigh...
 

Barbarocat Kay (661)
Wednesday September 24, 2008, 3:55 pm
Wow...how interesting! The only two witches I loved were Samantha and Tabitha Stevens...and of course Sam's wacky family!! LOL

Not sure what happened but when I noted your post, there wasn't a number and it says NaN, Not a Number. Maybe the witches put a curse on your post, Cate, LOL =)
 

Clever Pseudonym (1)
Wednesday September 24, 2008, 3:56 pm
Cool. I'm number NaN to note this.
 

Barbarocat Kay (661)
Wednesday September 24, 2008, 4:00 pm
Now it's not even showing NaN, it's a blank note pad! I'm gettin' off here! LOL =)
 

Barbarocat Kay (661)
Wednesday September 24, 2008, 4:03 pm
I was NaN too, Clever P. Think the witches have put a curse on everyone who notes! LOL
 

Jim Phillips (2584)
Wednesday September 24, 2008, 4:07 pm
Witches were thought to have superhuman powers to harm other people...

Hmm... maybe we can try to find and secure the help of some good White Witches to rid of those responsible for the current financial disaster...

Noted with NaN.

TY, Regina.

 

Louise L. (48)
Wednesday September 24, 2008, 4:07 pm
Interesting post, and I was especially interested in the woman who took her husband down with her (LOL, guess he was no good in the sack), and the one who spoke in tongues (evil then, but considered "religious" now....go figure). Thanks, Cate.
 

Past Member (0)
Wednesday September 24, 2008, 4:07 pm
when i lived in stanford a woman wrote a book new england witchcraft she was a awsome lady,i forget her pen name,my book well lost over the years ty
 

Louise L. (48)
Wednesday September 24, 2008, 4:08 pm
Number NaN, run for your life! It's a witch! LOL.
 

Blacktiger P. (229)
Wednesday September 24, 2008, 4:26 pm
I'm NaN too, boohoo!!!!
 

Joycey B. (699)
Wednesday September 24, 2008, 4:57 pm
Very interesting read. I have saved this to read more. Noted with thanks Cate.
 

David Gould (146)
Wednesday September 24, 2008, 5:30 pm
Horrific what was and is still being done in the name of religion...why can't we have a more tollerant and respectful world where people can worship the divine in what ever way they wish...(Divine can be male or female depending upon your perception)

We are still hanging those that disagree with our limited religious outlook or is it my imagination that Guatmo is still full of Muslim brothers?
 

Carolyn T. (235)
Wednesday September 24, 2008, 6:16 pm
Noted. I have lots of wonderful friends who are witches. Thank you, Cate--I spent a fascinating two days in Salem several years ago, but did not realize Hartford's history as witchcraft is concerned. I will follow some of these links with interest.
 

JOSSIE ROSS (68)
Wednesday September 24, 2008, 7:26 pm
DIDN'T YA KNOW I WAS A WITCH, CATE...LOLLLLL......JOSSIE BUT I SURVIVED !!
 

Past Member (0)
Wednesday September 24, 2008, 7:35 pm
I don't know how that comment got there! CNN is having problems today.
Louise B.
 

Laurie W. (164)
Wednesday September 24, 2008, 8:00 pm
For those out there for an interest in how words have been placed in our language....A faggot was a term to describe the kindling used to start a fire...during the witchcraft trials men who were accused of being witches or suspects because of their actions were placed at the bottom when they started placing the wood up, with the woman usually tied to a post in the middle...The unfortunate men were then consumed as the fire started ( human kindling) Another fine time in history to show the insanity of mankind and over zealous religious fanatics.
 

Lyn Z. (269)
Wednesday September 24, 2008, 8:31 pm
Hmmm = I'm #39 noted = BUT = I am a "healer" & Precognative = Guess I'm considered a witch
 

Ann Sumpter (22)
Wednesday September 24, 2008, 9:07 pm
Noted.... Thank you Cate.
Very interesting read. I have saved this to read more.
 

Joan Mclaughlin (133)
Wednesday September 24, 2008, 9:39 pm
thanks cate,very interesting reading.I've been reading about science and now this.What a night!I'm never bored here.You guys are great.Why go anywhere else.At least I get quality info here.
 

Jason O. (0)
Wednesday September 24, 2008, 9:45 pm
what a shameful and terrible thing that happened to those people. The tortures to illict confessions are in themselves capital crimes. Family turning against it's own members... just a crying shame... and it still happens frequently in the world today.
 

Denice G. (45)
Wednesday September 24, 2008, 10:30 pm
It was a shameful time in our history. It was called the burning times in Europe, horrible. Many people were burned to death during those times. There is a book that was written on how to question a witch, and it's disgusting. I cant remember the name of the book, but I will find it and send it on to Cate. This is not a book for sensitive people. Man's inhumanity to man.
In the US the person who turned you in got your property. So a lot of it was for money, can you imagine being hanged because some one wanted your property?
This is a very interesting post Cate.
Thank You
 

Road LessTraveled (3203)
Wednesday September 24, 2008, 10:39 pm
Same thing happening now with Bailout and THEFT of close to 1 TRILLION... The poor and middle class are the bad, wicked witches, that get nothing but the shaft, debt and prison to fight over crumbs, while the crooks who accuse them of all the wicked things get all of the money and power.

Just different players, and more money, more power, but the same people are doing the same things... Fundamentalists are mostly in power, and are getting the money plus the power. Even the Moonies are getting government grants now... all of them are fundamentalist groups... all under our noses, in secret, and in the dead of night.
 

Goddess Lozz (213)
Thursday September 25, 2008, 12:17 am
When will people wake up and realise that we have all been brainwashed into thinking witches are bad people?! They were the pagans that the christians wanted to get rid of, they lived by nature, healed people and the christians did'nt like this, they wanted to convert everyone to christianity as a way of controlling the masses, we pagans are good, we do not harm, our law is to harm none or it will return back to us threefold.
 

Goddess Lozz (213)
Thursday September 25, 2008, 12:20 am
As for the devil, that is a christian concept, not in our religion so we do not believe in it so how can we worship it? Lol.
 

RC deWinter (418)
Thursday September 25, 2008, 4:39 am
Denise, are you referring to Malleus Maleficarium?
 

RC deWinter (418)
Thursday September 25, 2008, 4:39 am
Bingo, Lorraine!
 

Margaret B. (164)
Thursday September 25, 2008, 7:04 am
You are very right Lorraine, the devil is a so called christian concept, and I for one do not believe in the concept of a hell in the here after as we live it here on earth, if there is a here after! Oh No, will probably be burned at the stake using faggots for kindling...never ceases to amaze me how the human mind works and internalizes ideas and such...
 

Mick G. (117)
Thursday September 25, 2008, 8:38 am
Sorry my message was to deep so I refrain from replying my views as a pagan, for those Christians will pay or have paid the price for murder and they are in the place that they tried so send others,judgement is with its own soul by its own soul for what goes around came around and those that believe there is a hell? then there will be a hell, So mote it so. So mote it be
 

Sandra W. (42)
Thursday September 25, 2008, 8:41 am
hell is the one people have brought apon the earth themselves..
there is no evil in nature
 

Tsandi Crew (92)
Thursday September 25, 2008, 8:42 am
This is during the time when women were still considered not human. It really is a dangerous way to think of us. We might team together and put a massive hex on things.
 

Mick G. (117)
Thursday September 25, 2008, 8:53 am
maybe we should move the Governments to another planet! but then they not quite on this one
 

Mari Basque (1243)
Thursday September 25, 2008, 12:37 pm


I'm sure if Sarah Palin makes her way into our government this could happen again. A new and inproved Malleus Maleficarum?

I realise how important the past is and know what kind of histeria this can cause. I what happened all over the world before is important what about the here and now?

http://www.care2.com/news/member/577339509/889837

Is everyone waiting to see if it could happen to act on this type of hate? Maybe we don't believe it could happen again but are we really willing to take such a high risk when human lives are at stake?

Over 500 years and still the discrimination and hate exists?? How is this ok?





 

Merry Loscalzo-Stumpf (75)
Thursday September 25, 2008, 2:02 pm
AMEN ERIC! Cate I just watched a documentary on Witchcraft trials in Salem.
I think it was on National Geographic. So many "apologized" after falsely accusing others-that were dead! Guess I'm in that catagory as I was noted!
 

Jim Phillips (2584)
Thursday September 25, 2008, 2:18 pm
The Malleus Maleficarum was put out by the Catholic Church, a "Christian" organization.

From Wikipedia: The Malleus Maleficarum[2](Latin for "The Hammer of Witches", or "Hexenhammer" in German) is a famous treatise on witches, written in 1486 by Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, two Inquisitors of the Catholic Church, and was first published in Germany in 1487.[3] The main purpose of the Malleus was to systematically refute arguments claiming that witchcraft does not exist, refute those who expressed skepticism about its reality, to prove that witches were more often women than men, and to educate magistrates on the procedures that could find them out and convict them.[4]


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malleus_Maleficarum


 

Patricia McCaskill (146)
Thursday September 25, 2008, 2:19 pm
Some nine million women were burned at the stake as witches for being pagans or healers or merely wise or powerful women but the intent to wipe out the old religion and any women of energy and influence (as well, no doubt, as some who may have been merely bad-tempered). This attempt succeeded and we remain under the effects of its chilling of women's power
So true, so true. The fear of women of power remains with us today. Women are still being murdered or shunned for being "witches".
 

Dometria Lanauze (6)
Thursday September 25, 2008, 2:38 pm
A sad commentary on the early History of this Country and how it was brought over from Europe.where is was also rampant for hundreds of years. For those who remember their past lives, probably most of us, including myself, were subjected to this lunacy.
I clearly remember three of my past lives as a woman healer/herbalist, once in London, England and twice in Germany, Nuremberg and Salzburg where I know for sure that I'd been persecuted as a Witch. When I'd visited these three places in question, I became physically ill.
Even though I don't belong to a Coven and didn't in those times, all of us healers were and are still considered suspect, when coming up against the, repressive "Mother Church", run by highly dysfunctional men(yuck). What does that tell us? The Goddess principle has been under pressure and threat of destruction for the last two thousand years, all over th World.
Over the years, I've been given the name, most here in North America on several occasions because of my Holistic Healing practices and others' ignorance and fears..
God forbid that it should ever happen again, to anyone anywhere. But we must be diligent , stay true to the Power and Magic of Our Earth Mother. Bathe in the Light of Truth, fellow Sisters, Another time of Testing is coming I sense, and soon. Peace in Our Quest For Truth
 

Sandy V. (74)
Thursday September 25, 2008, 5:45 pm
thank you Cate, Interesting and sad how stupid the human can be
 

catherine g. (111)
Thursday September 25, 2008, 8:04 pm
margaret b ~ was "faggots" a pun? faggots as is "queers" and faggot ~ a bundle of wood? ~
 

Pete Conrads (91)
Thursday September 25, 2008, 10:52 pm
350 years ago, witchcraft was the crime most likely to result in a death sentence so we really should be proud of how far we have come in 350 years lol!!!

Just imagine how tolerant we will be in another 350 years :o)
 

John Davis (225)
Friday September 26, 2008, 8:39 am
It does not surprise me that Connecticut did this back then. Everyone was doing this except possibly Virginia. Even Maryland with its Article of Religious Tolerance hanged witches. The one thing we have forgotten that should have been learned by all in History class is torture does not work. If someone today did that to an individual, they would say anything to stop it. What am I saying? They ARE doing this today and I would trust the confessions coming from Guantanamo no more than I trust the confessions elicited from these people, the Salem defendants or the victims of the Spanish Inquisition.
 

Denise Tankha (24)
Friday September 26, 2008, 10:47 am
Come to India and see what happens to a woman of means when her husband dies. Salem though notorious, was written about. This is the wilds of India. Its only rarely that such incidents get reported. Its never stopped.
 

Mari Basque (1243)
Friday September 26, 2008, 2:00 pm

RE: The Malleus Maleficarum

http://www.care2.com/news/member/577339509/890318

 

serge vrabec (254)
Friday September 26, 2008, 2:39 pm
Its strange how my comments from other articles are showing up all over,
 

serge vrabec (254)
Friday September 26, 2008, 2:41 pm
Know they through you in prison or worse for knowing and applying the universal laws that are rightfully the property of ALL. They work whether you know it or not, "they" just like when they work in there favor, TO CONTROL. Thx Cate@!
 

Barry Seth (118)
Tuesday September 30, 2008, 10:15 pm
Thanks Cate.

My son went to a boarding school in Bethlehem CT for high school - close to Waterbury. The school is for kids who learn differently. Kids with ADD, ADHD, Auditory learners, kids who do complex math in their head, but can't write it down etc. Classes are 4:1 max. The owner of the school calls herself an Irish witch, and boy does she live up to it. When we met her for the first time she looked at my son's testing and told him things about himself that he knew to be true, but no other "expert" had ever mentioned before.

There must be something in the make-up of the landscape of New England to have so many witches running around!!
 

Kathy W. (301)
Tuesday September 30, 2008, 10:24 pm
Another great story Cate. Thanks!
 

Deborah Hooper (59)
Tuesday October 7, 2008, 3:32 pm
The killing of supposed witches just shows more ignorance and brain washing in religion.
 

NO FORWARDS PLEASE (125)
Friday October 31, 2008, 8:57 am
Bush uses the same tactics-
only substitutes "terrorist" for "witch".

Neighbors turn in the farmer next door as a terrorist because they want to take his land. The "terrorist' disappears into Bush's prison to be tortured, possibly killed or held forever with no trial...


help children accused of witchcraft

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/stop-liberty-foundation-gospel-ministries-from-hurting-anymore-precious-children-for-money
 
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