I say hello to October with a mighty hullaballoo and bid it
farewell with a big bang—Halloween. It’s a wonderful holiday and is there a spookier
place in America than Salem Massachusetts forever branded by the hysteria in
1692 that led to accusations of witchcraft? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_witch_trials.
Personally, I was drawn to the town and visited during my
time in New York. Throughout my walking tour, I couldn’t help but think of
short story writer and novelist, Nathaniel Hawthorne and lingering pirates, but
what stuck out in my mind most was not Salem’s literary connections or
Hawthorne’s writings on how tortured he was by his ancestor’s involvement with
witch’s condemnations, but of the city’s wicked past.
The trials, overwhelming fear and executions are fascinating. Beyond history, I wondered about the young women
who were accused and prosecuted; as a group together in death the purpose they
served. Did they put an end to the
rights and wrongs of people’s actions?
Of course not. But I’d like to
think that they helped the Puritans evolve out of their rigid morality of bad behavior is sinful, and to a place
of higher consciousness, one of humanity— to being very much in the
world, but not of it.
Have
a safe and bewitching Halloween.
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