So, If She Weighs Less Than a Duck...

[happiestsadist]

As I was trying to fall asleep, I started wondering about witch hunts. Okay, specifically the Salem with trials of 1692-1693. Some people have claimed that there was in fact an outbreak of ergotism behind it, explaining the claims of the "bewitched" as a result of the hallucinations and physical sensations that ergot (so related to LSD) produce

Comments

[ludicrous]

By the power of the mighty SUGAR BEET you are all now BEWITCHED!!

[happiestsadist]

:D

[x_creepy_doll_x]

Logic and reason are comforting, so we try to find it in situations like this rather than having to say "Many people behaved fucking NUTS on their own initiative."

[poto_heart]

I agree completely. The ergotism theory has always seemed reaching for me, and in completely the wrong direction. TBH I live almost in the Salem area (it WOULD be a 15-minute drive if not for the terrible traffic...) and so it's a frequent topic of discussion...I've heard the theory thrown out there but nobody that I know seriously considers it.

What I think is really important when looking at incidents like this is considering the social pressures that led to the situation. Why were the accusations made, and why did the town react the way they did? I don't think the form of the accusations is the important part...I don't buy into the 'religious fervor' type of theories either. To draw a modern parallel, (some) fundies accuse queer people of trying to 'recruit'/brainwash children, which has no basis in fact at all...I am more interested in why they are making things up to accuse me of than what specifically they are accusing me of, once it becomes obvious they are just making things up.

[ms_daisy_cutter]

I don't buy into the 'religious fervor' type of theories either.

Why not? Religious fanatics in groups are extremely dangerous.

[poto_heart]

Yes, they can be...but so can other groups. I think blaming it on the religion itself is short-sighted. I think the main reason we see religion doing as much harm as it does is because it has simply been the most prominent social ideology to rally around in our history; I personally believe most of what could be seen as religious fanaticism would just as easily apply to any other kind of fanaticism, so it's more important to look at why people become fanatics at all.

[happiestsadist]

You have a lot of a point, however, religion does specifically involve an abandonment of critical thought and, in a lot of ways, the value of humanity as humanity, so it's perhaps particularly susceptible.

[charlycrash]

I've never heard of the ergotism theory - when it's strongly implicated to have happened it tends to be pretty obvious, such as the outbreak of St Anthony's Fire in France somewhere.

I think it's a heady brew of a lot of unpleasant sociological things swirled together: people taking hearsay as fact because they're not schooled to consider otherwise, social identity theory (sort of), the anxious need for an explanation for bad things that have happened and some feeling of control over them by killing the witches, misogyny, a means of maintaining social order by showing what happens to people who are decided to have breached it..

I don't think Salem was a million miles away from the Holocaust, in every sense.

eta Oh, apparently the Pont-Saint-Esprit group nuttiness was possibly not ergotism. Regardless, outbreaks of ergotism tend to look pretty different from Salem.

[happiestsadist]

I've seen way too much mention of the ergot thing. Maybe they just talked about it a lot in Canadian universities? IDK.

I think you're right, though, that it took a bunch of factors all at the right/wrong time. Norman Cohn's writing on both the with trials (though his focused on Europe) and the Holocaust did illustrate the parallels and the differences, though.

[charlycrash]

There's a few holes in the theory, listed on the Wiki entry for ergotism (if you haven't seen it already).

I think, depressingly, that sort of thing is fairly common human behaviour, and it's tempting to reduce it all to social identity theory, especially when it's manifested within a framework where group beliefs are held as much more important than individual ones. For one thing, people quelling their own beliefs in favour of that of the group provides a wonderful vector for very odd ideas to spread and be reinforced by their popularity.

[happiestsadist]

I saw it there, and (iirc) on Skepchick.

It is very common, as my obsession with historical societies doing absolutely batshit things has proven to me again and again. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds was an excellent read, as was Fads and Fallacies (Martin Gardner, definitely one of the best skeptical books I've read).

[flewellyn]

Honestly, I think it was more class backlash than anything. If you look at who the victims were, they were mostly wealthy people.

[ms_daisy_cutter]

It was far from uncommon for women who were already outcasts - poor, widowed or never-wed, "disagreeable" - to be accused.

As for the wealthy accused, recall that the church was then able to lay claim to their property, which means the clergy was strongly motivated to prosecute such cases.

[myrrhmade]

I think for some people it's simply more comfortable and "safe" to concoct a rational/scientific/whatever explanation for seemingly irrational events. Somehow it's less horrifying for them.