HUU Community Cafe

Presented by Elizabeth Ihle
19 October 2008

Well, Halloween has just about rolled around again, and I’ve bought Hershey’s miniature chocolates to give to my Trick or Treaters; that way I’ll have something good to eat if I don’t have many callers. It’s an appropriate time to talk about witches, and I am going to focus on the Salem witch trials, which caught my interest about a year ago.  I’d like to use what little about what I’ve learned to underscore the need for toleration and compassion in our daily lives.   Barbara Moore was kind enough to suggest the title for this service.  Witchcraft is divided into good and evil kinds, making it both sacred and profane.

I began thinking about this topic when my friend Ann was working at a college north of Boston and asked if I’d like to come along and explore the area while she worked.  Among the places I visited that week was Salem, Massachusetts, a location that, of course, piqued my interest because of the witch trials of just over three hundred years ago.

Witchcraft is often defined as practices that influence another’s mind, body, or property usually against his or her will or as practices that are believed by the person doing the labeling to undermine the religious or social order.[1] That would be black, profane, or evil witchcraft. The good stuff, the sacred, would be witchcraft that seeks to heal.  In a number of cultures these strains coexist.

On a separate note, we have witnessed the growth of Wicca over our lifetimes, and it’s even one of the spiritual streams of the Unitarian Universalist Association.  Wicca is too complex for me to get into this morning, but it is often associated with sacred witchcraft, and that’s a topic for another service.

I really didn’t know what to expect in Salem, but I was unprepared for a city with such a widespread and pervasive witch motif.  The logo of the Salem News, the local newspaper, sports a witch flying on a broom through a full moon.  There were plenty of ghost tours, the Spellbound Museum, the Salem Wax Museum, the Salem Witch Village, and numerous stores like Wicked Goods for Cool Stuff and The Broom Closet to supply all of a witch’s needs.  Apparently, the witch business thrives year round but goes into a real frenzy in late September and all of October.  Now, I’m not the Grinch Who Would Like to Steal Halloween, but I was quite frankly appalled by the commercialization of the Salem Witch Trails. Continue Reading »

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