March Greetings
Dear Salem Oracle Members,
WELCOME to March! This month we celebrate Women’s History Month and enter into springtime. We also begin the month with the Tibetan New Year. I know what you’re thinking… wasn’t the Chinese New Year in February? Aren’t these both lunar new year holidays? Yes. BUT Tibet actually operates on a slightly different calendar, which sometimes places the new year on a different day or month. In any case, it’s always great to embrace an opportunity to reflect, reset, and refresh.
We are entering the year of the Water Tiger, so perhaps we can take the time to contemplate the qualities associated with this element and animal. In Tibetan Astrology, Philippe Cornu writes, “The Year of the Tiger is an unpredictable year. Many dramatic developments can be expected: explosions, coups d'etat, political unrest, catastrophes, heroic deeds, sudden and daring attacks, all are characteristic of this year. It is turbulent but hides its surprises well, whether they are good or bad, and a certain caution should be observed in all undertakings.” Wow. Haven’t we had enough turbulence the last couple of years? Perhaps not. We may still have to ride that wave of change and bring in the quality of water to help guide us through.
Cornu explains that, “Water gives openness of mind, suppleness, reflection, communication, and intuition. The animal sign [i.e. Tiger] associated with Water becomes more thoughtful, lucid, and sensitive, but also more passive. Water years are auspicious for change and communication.” OK, I’ll take it. Rather than fighting whatever potential upheavals might arise, let’s see how we can adapt and go with the flow.
Looking at the happenings in Salem, January set the stage for the coming year with the initial afflictions and in February everything intensified as witchcraft was blamed for the fits and torments of the afflicted girls. As a reminder, here are some of the major events that happened last month:
Fasting, prayer, and home remedies were embraced in an attempt to ease the suffering of Abigail and Betty, but to no avail.
Sarah Good visited the Parris household, seeking charity. She walked away muttering and the afflictions grew worse after her departure.
A copy of the new charter arrived in the Province of Massachusetts Bay.
A local physician visited the afflicted girls and diagnosed them as being “under an evil hand.”
Neighbor Mary Sibley called on the girls while Reverend Samuel and Elizabeth Parris were out of the day. She instructed Tituba and John Indian to bake a “witch cake” in an attempt to ease the afflictions and reveal the witch.
The symptoms only grew worse and spread to two neighboring girls—Ann Putnam Jr. and Elizabeth Hubbard.
The four girls collectively accused Sarah Good, Sarah Osborn, and Tituba for their torments. Warrants were issued for the arrest of these three women.
Buckle up because the ride is only going to grow more wild in the coming weeks and months. As you may have already seen in the Salem Oracle social media daily posts and heard on the podcast episodes, the first examinations take place as we enter March and we have a significant confession from Tituba.
I hope you enjoy this month’s newsletter. In honor of Women’s History Month, all of our selections were created by women. While we know, of course, that men were also victims of the witch trials in both Europe and the American colonies, women were more likely than men to be targeted as witches. Our highlights include a new Spotify playlist to capture the energy of March, a peek into Matilda Joslyn Gage’s Woman, Church, and State, an analysis of a recantation of a confession signed by several women, and an exploration of artistic depictions of Tituba by Kenyatta A. C. Hinkle.
Thank you as always for your support! If you ever need me, I’m just an email or a DM away.
~Maya
March 8, 2022
In March 1692, all hell breaks loose…
…it seems that witches are everywhere in Salem Village. Afflictions turn to accusations, arrests, examinations, imprisonment, and confessions. Specters abound and imaginations run wild.
I’ve curated a special Salem Oracle March 1692 Spotify playlist to capture the energy and mood of this wild month. All the songs were created by female artists. Listen here and feel free to share with others.
Woman, Church, and State
“When for ‘witches’ we read ‘women,’ we gain fuller comprehension of the cruelties inflicted by the church upon this portion of humanity.”
~Matilda Joslyn Gage
IF YOU’VE BEEN to any of my talks on the history of women, you know how much I love Matilda Joslyn Gage. I will use any excuse to talk about this incredible person. Today I want to take a look at her life and most significant book Woman, Church, and State: A Historical Account of the Status of Woman Through the Christian Ages, with Reminiscences of Matriarchate, originally published in 1893. We’ll also how this work connects to one of the most influential depictions of witches in popular culture—that of the Good and Wicked Witches in The Wizard of Oz.
Born in 1826 in Cicero, NY, to an abolitionist family, Gage would become a prolific writer, editor, orator, activist, and suffragist. She was the youngest speaker at the 1852 National Women’s Rights Convention in Syracuse and co-founded the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) in 1869 with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
As an advocate for women’s rights, throughout her life she was also highly critical of the organized religion of Christianity as she strongly believed that the Church played a central role in the oppression of women throughout history. Gage rejected the Church for these reasons and was instead drawn to the burgeoning ideas of Theosophy—a spiritual philosophy based off eastern traditions, positive thought, and belief in the ability to communicate with spirits. She formally joined the Theosophical Society in 1888 and celebrated that this philosophy had no claim of original sin, no gender dominance, no conflict between God and nature, and no duality that appeared in Christianity.
Gage also fought for the rights of Native Americans and spent time among the women of the Haudenosaunee in western New York. She found a community with these women toward the end of her life and was even initiated into the Mohawk Wolf Clan, receiving the name Ka-ron-ien-ha-wi, meaning "she who holds the sky," upon her initiation in 1893. The Haudenosaunee admitted Gage into the Council of Matrons, which meant that she was able to participate in voting within the community. Gage wouldn’t live to see the passage of the 19th Amendment in the United States, but she was able to gain the right vote and exercise that freedom with the Haudenosaunee.
In 1893, Gage published Woman, Church, and State where many of her beliefs culminated as she highlighted restrictions of women by both the Church and state with the intensity of the witch trials and persecution of women. This was perhaps her most important work in which she attacked religious customs that served to oppress women. One of Gage’s central tenets was that churches and governments had long oppressed women by targeting them as heretics and witches. The Church taught that women were inherently wicked and responsible for original sin, which was rooted in the biblical story of Adam and Eve. In Gage’s opinion, traditional organized religion curtailed the emancipation of women.
She spent an entire chapter of this book examining the witch trials of both Europe and America, in which the majority of people arrested, tried, and executed were women. She wrote, “Those condemned as sorcerers and witches, as ‘heretics,’ were in reality the most advanced thinkers of their ages.” Throughout the witch trials, authorities promoted the idea that if a woman’s power in any way challenged the Church, they should be severely punished. Gage recognized that nearly anything could be interpreted as evidence of witchcraft, such as unique knowledge of homeopathic and herbal remedies, a mole on the body being identified as a “witch mark,” and even mental illness. Gage believed that such “wicked” witches identified by the Church never really existed, but instead were simply imaginative creations of authorities who wished to stifle women’s power.
One of the most fascinating ways that Gage influenced American culture and society was through The Wizard of Oz as she was L. Frank Baum’s mother in law. Over the years, Gage and Baum formed an admirable relationship and shared many ideals. She had a particularly strong influence on him when it came to women’s rights and spirituality. Gage often shared her research and thoughts with the Baum family while she lived with them in Chicago. Her discussions of witches and witchcraft may have influenced Baum’s incorporation of such themes in his creation of Oz. Rather than all witches being evil, as believed in traditional Christianity, some witches in Oz possess the power of good and use their magic to heal, protect, and support others. Ultimately, this dualistic presentation of witches and witchcraft indicates that the wicked witches of the east and west in the Wizard of Oz are relics of stereotyped evil witches that were fabricated by witch hunters. These figures are juxtaposed with the good witches of the north and south who hold wisdom and power, the same types of female figures celebrated by Gage in Woman, Church, and State.
The sentence that stands out to me above all others in this influential work is: “When for ‘witches’ we read ‘women,’ we gain fuller comprehension of the cruelties inflicted by the church upon this portion of humanity.” Before Gage’s work, this kind of statement simply had not been made before and we cannot overestimate just how powerful of a message this was for the world and our understanding of the intersection between gender and the witch trials.
Gage, Matilda Joslyn. Woman, Church, and State: A Historical Account of the Status of Woman Through the Christian Ages, with Reminiscences of Matriarchate. Chicago: C. H. Kerr, 1893.
Six Women Recant.
A letter from Mary Osgood, Deliverance Dane, Sarah Wilson, Mary Tyler, Abigail Barker, and Hannah Tyler.
WHILE THIS SOURCE jumps us ahead in time to September 1692, I wanted to utilize a primary source this month that really highlighted the experience of women through the voices of women. When we look at many original documents from the Salem Witch Trials, we primarily see the experiences of women only through the lens of men. This letter from Mary Osgood, Deliverance Dane, Sarah Wilson, Mary Tyler, Abigail Barker, and Hannah Tyler offers a glimpse into the female perspective as they collectively recanted their confessions even in the face of great danger. Unfortunately, I do not have a copy of the original document, but you can read a transcript of the letter in its entirety above.
These women all hailed from Andover and “confessed” to the crime of witchcraft during their examinations. However, they would later recant the statements they made to the court. Following their recantations, a petition was written by loved ones to request their release from prison, which stated the women, “declared to such as they had confidence to speak freely and plainly to, that they were not guilty of what they had owned, and that what they had said against themselves was the greatest grief and burden they laboured under.” Increase Mather also issued a report that detailed the specifics of each woman’s recantation. All six women would eventually be set free.
In this letter, the women describe the process of being accused, performing the “touch test” by laying their hands on the afflicted, being arrested, and resorting to confession in order to save their own lives.
The part I wanted to focus on in the letter is this passage: “And indeed that confession, that it is said we made, was no other than what was suggested to us by some gentlemen, they telling us that we were witches, and they knew it, and we knew it, and they knew that we knew it, which made us think that it was so; and our understanding, our reason, our faculties almost gone, we were not capable of judging our condition; as also the hard measures they used with us rendered us incapable of making our defence, but said any thing and every thing which they desired, and most of what we said was but in effect a consenting to what they said.”
This section tells us much about their experiences of the examinations and imprisonment, and we can see why they would feel there was no other option but to confess. It reveals that the confessions did not really come from the women themselves, but rather were suggested by the men who interrogated them. We see this occurring in many of the leading questions when we investigate nearly any examination of the trials. Often the examiners paint a broad picture of what they expect the accused to say, and the “confessors” add the details, telling the court what they want to hear.
In this passage we see how the examiners told the women they were witches. As so many other examples from the trials, the examinations began with this presumption of guilt. It is also clear that the examiners used psychological tactics to get inside their minds and convince the women they must confess: “they knew it, and we knew it, and they knew that we knew it, which made us think that it was so.” Additionally, with their “faculties almost gone” and subjected to “hard measures,” these women were most likely hungry, sleep deprived, and abused. Would you not also confess in this situation? Just to make it stop?
Below I’ve included a brief clip from a virtual event I offered in September 2021, WTF? History: Salem Witch Trial Confessions where we discussed this particular section of the letter. It includes commentary from participants as well. You might even spot a Salem Oracle member in the audience!
On a personal note, I have family ties to Mary and Hannah Tyler. A member of the Bradstreet family married into the Tyler family, and I am a direct descendant of that union. So these women are part of my extended family tree as well. One of my neighbors is also a direct descendant of Mary Osgood. My neighbor bore the name Mary Osgood as well for most of her life until she changed her last name upon marriage. Interestingly, she seemed to have no knowledge of the actual historical figure Mary Osgood or her recantation, but only that of legend. There is a strong belief in her family that the women in her lineage hold supernatural and psychic powers, and she told me many stories of this around a campfire last summer. They believe that perhaps Osgood was indeed a witch.
A transcript of the letter can be located in The Witchcraft Delusion of 1692 by Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, From an Unpublished Manuscript (An Early Draft of his History of Massachusetts) in the Massachusetts Archives, With Notes by William Frederick Poole. https://salem.lib.virginia.edu/texts/tei/HutPool/
Tituba in Art.
Kenyatta A. C. Hinkle’s Tituba Series
INSPIRED BY Maryse Condé’s novel I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem, artist Kenyatta A. C. Hinkle created several large black-and-white drawings composed mainly with ink, charcoal, and pastel for her Tituba series in 2014. Condé’s novel is a piece of historical fiction that imagines Tituba’s experience through her own eyes. Fascinated by the novel’s depiction of Otherness, racism, gender, sexuality, as well as cultural and religious hegemony, Hinkle created abstract depictions of Tituba that merge with her own experience of being a black woman and mother.
In the brief artist’s talk below, Hinkle speaks of reading the book, going to the studio, making an “essence” on the blank page, adding more, and then allowing the image to emerge, as well as incorporating in her own experience as a pregnant woman and later as a breast-feeding mother. She describes the process of creating art, stating “I really listen to what the work is trying to tell me to do instead of trying to dictate what it should be doing.” As she worked on the art for the Tituba series she found “the piece just kind of created a life on its own.” Not only does the historical figure of Tituba speak through the images, but also all the interpretations of Tituba that have emerged over the years, both true and false.
In Tituba Becomes the Night (2014), seen above, we watch as a a multi-eyed woman materializes out of black smoke. A single eye replaces her mouth and Medusa-like hair waves up into the air. As one reviewer noted, this image and the others in the collection “are more evocative of goddesses than witches. These representations underscore the complexities of the historic Tituba, who was fearsome in her confessed conspiring with the devil yet the victim of a Puritan mob, escaped the witch hunt with her life, and has become something of a mythical character in her own right.”
While these artistic depictions may not be a historically accurate reflection of the figure Tituba, as we know from our research that Tituba was actually an indigenous person from South America, they offer something different as they capture an essence and a meaning that speaks through time. Both Condé’s novel and Hinkle’s series present an opportunity to reclaim the image of Tituba as a black woman that was created over centuries and often used as a means to limit her agency in the telling of Salem. Although we know that Tituba was not actually a woman of African descent, she has still been depicted this way countless time. So if that’s the case in our popular imagination, can we take that particular image and instead empower it? I believe that is exactly what the work of Condé and Hinkle accomplish, and there is a special place for this historical fiction and these artistic pieces in the narrative of Salem in popular culture that offer new meaning to the ever shape-shifting figure of Tituba.
View all the drawings in the series here.
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