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were Christians. Some followed the Old Religion and sought freedom to practice their beliefs in a new land. Evidence suggests that some of these people joined Indian tribes whose ideas were compatible with their own.
    The slave trade introduced the traditions of African witches to the Americas. Followers of voudon (voodoo), Santería, macumba, and other faiths carried their beliefs and rituals with them to the Caribbean and the southern states of the United States, where they continue to flourish today.
Witchcraft in Salem
    When William Griggs, the village doctor in colonial Salem Village (now Salem), Massachusetts, couldn’t heal the ailing daughter and niece of Reverend Samuel Parris, he claimed the girls had been bewitched. Thus began the infamous Salem witch hunt, which remains one of America’s great tragedies. Soon girls in Salem and surrounding communities were “crying out” the names of “witches” who had supposedly caused their illnesses.
    Between June and October 1692, nineteen men and women were hung and another man was crushed to death for the crime of witchcraft. Authorities threw more than 150 other victims into prison, where several died, on charges of being in league with the devil.
    Religious and political factors combined to create the witch craze in Salem. A recent smallpox epidemic and attacks by Indian tribes had left the community deeply fearful. Competition between rivals Rev. James Bayley of neighboring Salem Town (now Danvers) and Rev. Parris exacerbated the tension as both ministers capitalized on their Puritan parishioners’ fear of Satan to boost their own popularity.
    The hysteria also enabled local authorities to rid the community of undesirables and dissidents. Economic interests, too, played a role in the condemnation of Salem’s “witches”—those convicted had their assets confiscated and their property was added to the town’s coffers. A number of the executed and accused women owned property and were not governed by either husbands or male relatives, which didn’t sit well with the male-dominated society of the time. Putting these independent women in their place may have been part of the motive behind the Salem witch trials.
    Today, Salem commemorates the victims of the Salem Witch Trials with engraved stones nestled in a small, tree-shaded park off Derby Street, near the city’s waterfront and tourist district. Visitors can walk through the memorial and remember Salem’s darkest hour.
    Hallucinating Witches
    One theory suggests that the people supposedly afflicted by witchcraft in Salem were actually “high” on a fungus called ergot that grows on rye bread. The hallucinogen LSD was first derived from ergot. Therefore, the strange behavior exhibited by the “victims” was probably due to eating this psychedelic substance, not demonic possession.
WITCHCRAFT’S REBIRTH
    Despite centuries of persecution, witchcraft never died. It just went underground. Witches continued to hand down teachings from mother to daughter, father to son, in secret. Through oral tradition, rituals, codes, and symbols, magickal information passed from generation to generation, at every level of society.
    Some parts of the world, of course, never experienced the witch hysteria that infested Europe and Salem, Massachusetts. But even in those places where persecution once raged, witchcraft and magick reawakened during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Magick in the Victorian Era
    Interest in magick, mysticism, spiritualism, and the occult in general blossomed toward the end of the nineteenth century, perhaps as a reaction to the Age of Reason’s emphasis on logic and science. The magicians of this era had a strong impact on the evolution of contemporary witchcraft and magick.
    One noted figure of the time was Charles Godfrey Leland, a Pennsylvania scholar and writer who traveled widely studying the folklore of numerous cultures. His most famous book,
Aradia, or the Gospel of the