- Important to note that the girls accusing the witches were at the most nervous and uncertain period of their lives - they were exhausted, working too hard, physically growing, and these can easily result in hysteria or anxiety.
- In many novels, witches are accused by people who were suffering internally.
- In some, it was by a rejected suitor.
- The 1800s saw rise the importance of industrialization and rational thinking (the enlightenment era). This left no room for the aspects of the American psyche that could not be rationalized. Instead they found a relatable expression of their feelings in 'psychological terror, Gothic romance, ghosts, and witches'.
- This cast a Romantic view on witchcraft (personal, Gothic, as relating to individuality and insanity, etc) in which they were reduced to delusion and mental instability.
- There was also an interest in the potential of biological energies existing in the world. An 'electric fluid' or spiritual emanation, that could not be explained by science.
- Hawthorne was descended from a Salem judge omg. In his stories he presents America as haunted by witches, or uses witches as a metaphor for psychological ills because HE felt haunted by his family's ugly history. This is irrelevant but.. oh my.
- In one of Hawthorne's works, a family are seen to be falsely accused of witchcraft, but nevertheless have psychological powers - animal magnetism. 19th century opinion stated that animal magnetism gave a person the ability to hypnotize and compel others, even to their doom. Hawthorne supposes that one of these men can even will a woman to obey him without a speaking a word. Therefore, he still relies on the supernatural, rather than reducing obsession/possession to a response to 'animal magnetism'.
- Link between women's suffrage and an interest in witches goes back as early as the 1880s (Matilda Joslyn Gage). She was convinced by claims of animal magnetism, spiritualism, and theosophy (the practice of communing with God (or gaining knowledge of him) via spiritual ecstasy, direct intuition, special individual relations).
- She said 'for 'witches' we read 'women''. The focus on sex during the trials, despite men and women being capable of practicing magic, is undeniable.
- 'Gender is the most reliable of all predictors of who would be singled out and labeled 'witch'.' - David D Hall, 1985.
- During the mid 19th century, this connection was not really being discussed in the mainstream.
- She believed the witchcraft hysteria could be explained by two kinds of biological phenomenon: 1. Paranoia, and psychopathic cruelty from the inquisitors. 2) Genuine abilities on the part of the suspects.
- She was a genuinely very cool person it seems, and championed for equality for all. Significantly, she made the link between the oppression of women and other groups, because of their representation in Christianity. (I would argue it's also harmful for everyone for any group to be oppressed - if it can be done to them, it can be done to you. Some feminists believe the end of the meat industry is inextricable from female oppression for this reason).
- In 1878 she said, at a free thought convention, "the Christian Church is based upon the fact of woman servitude." The Church had been used to subjugate women, justify slavery, and promote 'ruthless western expansion'.
- This explains the draw she felt to witchcraft and spirituality, and similarly accounts for why the modern witchcraft culture is predominantly female.
- She prioritized women thinking for themselves above all - the original sin was a woman seeking knowledge.
- She considered the victims of the witch trials to be 'protosuffragists': forward thinking, talented, clever, and with special biological and mental powers linked to their femininity. (!)
- The Witch Hammer - written in the 1480s and notoriously misogynistic. Atypical for early modern demonologies, because it focuses relentlessly on women.
- These old texts merely express widely held beliefs: good versus evil, God versus Satan, clerics vs witches. It would be inaccurate to act as though this was a tactical action to oppress women - people believed what they were writing.
- Gage saw witches as early scientists, mesmerists and workers with plant extracts, elemental spirits and psychic forces not yet understood.
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