Critical thinking essay

 For my critical thinking essay, I had to combine three subjects and explain how they are connected. I’ve chosen witchcraft as my topic because I can consider the historical, geographical locations and religious factors. Witchcraft interests me because magic is an interesting topic, but obviously magic isn’t real so the whole witchcraft era is an insight into how people thought and behaved. I will focus on the classical period of witch hunts in early modern Europe and colonial America.

 

 The Salem witch trials of the 1690s have an iconic place in American lore, and the trials were at their most intense during the 1650s, during the same time as England's Puritan era. But before the Salem witch hunt, there was the “Great Hunt”: a larger, more prolonged European phenomenon between 1560 and 1630 that led to 80,000 accusations and 40,000 deaths. 80% of the “witches” were women mostly over 40 years old.

 

 In the past, scholars have suggested that bad weather, decreased income, and weak governments could have contributed to the witch trial period in Europe. But, according to a new theory, these trials were a way for Catholic and Protestant churches to compete with each other for followers.

 

Beginning in 1517, the Reformation split the church into two factions: Catholic and Protestant. Suddenly, these two churches had to compete with each other for followers, and they did so by using the attention-grabbing witch trials as perverse advertisements for their brand.

 

The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. More than 200 people were accused. Thirty people were found guilty, 19 of whom were executed by hanging (14 women and five men). One other man, Gileys Corey was pressed to death after refusing to enter a plea, and at least five people died in jail.

 

There were similarities between medicine and witchcraft which made lots of men accuse women of being witches, because those women would help people with herbal medicine, and men didn’t believe women could be doctors. That automatically gave men higher power over women, even though some men were also accused of being witches.

 

Over 450 years ago the Scottish Witchcraft Act came into force in 1563 and was not repealed until 1736. Under this Act, both the practice of witchcraft and consulting with witches were capital offences.

 

 Witches in Scotland were burned at the stake. As brutal as this is, the executors had at least some sympathy and strangled the accused to death first. The idea was that, even after death, the witches were still a threat, and their bodies could be possessed by the devil if they weren’t set aflame. Accused witches were also executed by placing them in wooden barrels studded with nails before pushing the barrels down the cobbled road of the Royal Mile. Once the barrel stopped, it would be lit on fire, ensuring the witch inside was definitely dead.

 

Mother Shipton was born Ursula Sontheil in 1488, during the reign of Henry VII, father of Henry VIII. Although little is known about her parents, legend has it that she was born during a violent thunderstorm in a cave on the banks of the River Nidd in Knaresborough. Her mother, Agatha, was just fifteen years old when she gave birth, and despite being dragged before the local magistrate, she would not reveal who the father was.

  With no family and no friends to support her, Agatha raised Ursula in the cave on her own for two years, before the Abbott of Beverley took pity on them and a local family took Ursula in. Agatha was taken to a nunnery far away, where she died some years later. She never saw her daughter again.

 

Ursula grew up around Knaresborough. She was a strange child, both in looks and in nature. Her nose was large and crooked, her back bent and her legs twisted. Just like a witch. She was taunted and teased by the local people and so in time she learnt she was best off on her own. She spent most of her days around the cave where she was born. There she studied the forest, the flowers and herbs and made remedies and potions with them.

When she was twenty-four she met a young man by the name of Tobias Shipton. He was a carpenter from the city of York. Tobias died a few years later, before they had any children, but Ursula kept his name, Shipton. The Mother part followed later, when she was an old woman. Mother Shipton was one of the lucky women who avoided death.

 

Many people today have a deep connection with nature. My family have learnt over the years what herbs and wild foods have health benefits and every Autumn, we forage for mushrooms as many are distinctive and edible. It’s likely that I would have been accused of witchcraft if I’d have lived in medieval times.

 

I have empathy for the women accused of being witches. I believe that the women accused were simply guilty of being female. They stepped outside of the boundaries imposed by men and were made to pay the price for mans sexism.