Why the Salem Witch Trials Still Matter

The re-emergence of Satanic Panic in the 21st Century

Published in

Crow and Caravan

7 min readJul 30, 2022

Religious zealotry and hysteria have been a part of American Culture since before its inception. Let’s revisit one of the first instances in our history, the infamous Salem Witch Trials: In the year 1692 within Salem, Massachusetts, three young girls experienced convulsions and evidence of what they deemed the work of the devil and his witches.

This led to the accusations of witchcraft against three women, Tituba, a Caribbean slave to the town’s reverend, Sarah Good, a homeless beggar, and Sarah Osborne, an old woman. This initial case led to 200 people, mostly women, being accused of witchcraft and being tortured or executed by hanging, drowning or by having stones laid upon their chests.

Why did this begin in the first place? During this time, the puritans within the colonies were under multiple strains, byproducts of the political atmosphere between England and France, and the hardships of living in a harsh environment. They clung to their religious zeal and blamed the surrounding conflict on the Devil.

The devil is intangible, so the towns’ people needed scapegoats. The perfect scapegoats being the undesirables or individuals within their communities that displayed otherness, or the townspeople perceived to be a strain on community resources.

Many people probably held deeply irrational fears of the Devil from their religious beliefs, while others jumped onto the chance to rid the community of disliked people or for the opportunity to acquire more land. Either way, they murdered innocent people for simply being different or not adhering to the strict, and extreme, religious conduct.

“Religious extremism is fatal to those who don’t conform to its values, or remold or submit themselves to its ‘principles’. It craves control and power — and power is the one tool that enables it to wreak its characteristic havoc, destruction and cruelty upon those it chooses to label as scapegoats. Giving in to extremists enables them and empowers them — and worse, it encourages them.”
― Christina Engela

Satanic Panic of the 1980s and 90s

Fast forward several centuries to the 1980s, and we find ourselves in similar circumstances: religious fundamentalists rallying behind the fear of the devil and his servants.

The Satanic Panic began with an autobiography called Michelle Remembers by Michelle Smith and Lawrence Pazder, her therapist and eventual husband, who retrieved memories of the alleged abuse during their sessions together. Smith claimed that a Satanic Cult abused her and indoctrinated her as a child, and that these groups were permeating American Society in plain sight.

This led to a widespread hysteria across the United States from the 1980s into the 1990s, with many people being accused and persecuted of taking part in Satanic Ritual and abusing children. This was an ideology that harmed many people and rewrote the narratives of many victims in the guise of a holy war to protect children from Satanic Cults.

One such victim was Damien Echols of the West Memphis Three case in 1994. The West Memphis police persecuted Echols and two other teenage boys, and wrongly accused the three of murdering and dismembering three young boys in their small town in what they thought to be a satanic ritual. Damien Echols, and his friend, Jason Baldwin, were delinquents who were into the occult, metal bands, and Stephen King novels.

If this seems familiar, the most recent season of Stranger Things modeled their character Eddie Munson on Damien Echols. The townspeople of Stranger Things accused Eddie Munson of murder and hunted him down based on the premise that he belonged to a Dungeons and Dragons Club dubbed The Hellfire Club. Therefore, he must be the dubious leader of a Satanic Cult.

They prosecuted and sentenced two of the boys accused in the Memphis Three trials to life in prison, Damien Echols being sentenced to death, based on botched evidence and general suspicion, that they were Satanists. By 2011, they released the three after a retrial, after they released information that the jury foreman knew the information of the case beforehand, and affected the decisions of the other jurors.

Upon retrial, they also found that there was insufficient evidence to condemn the Memphis Three. The Arkansas courts released the boys as guilty and as having time served. A gross injustice overall, and a blemish on the Arkansas Justice System.

On a side-note, Damien Echols is an established author and well-known occultist with an incredible story. He has written several informative books on the western occult tradition and is a treasure to the occult community of the 21st century.

“Someone sent me a letter that had one of the best quotes I’ve ever read. It said “What is to give light must endure burning.” It’s by a writer named Viktor Frankl. I’ve been turning that quote over and over in my head. The truth of it is absolutely awe-inspiring. In the end, I believe it’s why we all suffer. It’s the meaning we all look for behind the tragedies in our lives. The pain deepens us, burns away our impurities and petty selfishness. It makes us capable of empathy and sympathy. It makes us capable of love. The pain is the fire that allows us to rise from the ashes of what we were, and more fully realize what we can become. When you can step back and see the beauty of the process, it’s amazing beyond words.”
― Damien Echols, Life After Death

The Re-emergence of Satanic Panic in the 21st Century

Now we find ourselves in 2022 with the re-emergence of the Satanic Panic yet again. The political atmosphere has been volatile over the past two decades and extremist beliefs are becoming more commonplace.

With the rise of the internet, more fringe groups and subsequent conspiracy theories are on the rise. Most notably now is Qanon, an alt-right group that follows the conspiracy theory, and premise, that Satanic groups among the elite are leading the United States. That they control the government, or the world, and abuse children in Satanic Rituals and run elaborate children sex-trafficking rings.

At the beginning of this article, I posted a picture of Satan beset by pepperoni pizzas. One major theory that served as the precursor to Qanon goes by the name of Pizzagate, from the hacking and leaking of several emails of Hillary Clinton’s Campaign manager and a pizza shop owner during the 2016 presidential elections. The theory is that the democrats encoded the emails with references to child sex trafficking rings based at the Pizzeria.

I’m not going to go further into the specifics, but it is a lot of theories by the alt-right, primarily white supremacists and conservatives, that the democratic party is involved with these sex trafficking rings. That conservative party members and the republican elite are attempting to infiltrate these rings and put a stop to these egregious crimes, one such person being former president Donald Trump.

Now how does this relate to the sudden backlash of fundamentalist groups, pro-choice rights, and modern-day witchcraft?

Many Republican politicians are using Qanon to get votes and turn their political stance into a high moral ground of putting an end to these sex child trafficking rings while calling left-wing supporters pro-pedophile. Most noticeably is congress woman Marjorie Taylor Greene.

She has used this stance to promote pro-life legislation, refer to members of the LGBTQA community as pedophiles, and any other republican stance that is popular at the moment. She condemns many people as witches and Satanists as well. This puts a target on many people’s backs by extremists who use violence to put an end to these so-called horrible people.

This theory is being weaponized to radicalize voters and attack the democrat party, and people who do not fit the mold of white, male, heterosexual, and Christian. It is a witch hunt for anyone who is other and different, using fear-mongering, Christian Fundamentalism, the sexualization of children, and the rise of diversity to promote fascist ideologies.

As you can see, Fundamental Christian ideologies and beliefs are being used time and time again to persecute and harm innocent people whose only crime was trying to be themselves and live freely. This perpetuated rhetoric is harmful to our society and reaches some of our most vulnerable community members who are especially receptive to such outrageous ways of thinking. Leading to further divisiveness, and from recent events, large-scale violence.

References/Citations

Why the Salem Witch Trials Still Matter

The re-emergence of Satanic Panic in the 21st Century

Satanic Panic of the 1980s and 90s

The Re-emergence of Satanic Panic in the 21st Century

Written by Nicholas Nocturne