#New England witchtrails

[elminx]

There's a reality to being a New Englander and a witch that I get that a lot of other people will never really understand.

My ancestors were the Puritans. Two different lines in my lineage were in Salem during the witchcraft trials and another two were in Connecticut during the Connecticut witchcraft trials. (obvs not a point of pride, just a reality)

A lot of the things that the Puritans accused people of have made it into the popular witchcraft zeitgeist: consorting with the devil, pacts, and witch marks on the body...I could go on. It is all super cringy to me. That was Puritanical propaganda. It was made-up bullshit that became more about locking up or killing the area's undesirables than it ever was about anything related to magic.

It was just a bunch of settlers who were ill-equipped to live in their new environment who needed to claim every hardship was the act of the devil. Why do people actually want to emulate that?