No Witchcraft For Sale Analysis

Gideon’s thoughts in feelings the way a normal high schooler would rather than a best

In the 1600’s New England started to encounter events of witchcraft, many where people were frightened to even go out of their homes.The New Englanders were willing to migrate to a different country because of the recent conditions that made the townspeople feel more mindful of who they would interact with. Stacy Schiff states,“ New England delivered greater purity but also introduced fresh perils.” Simply the migraters thought relocating would make their lives

(Many of the people who were persecuted as witches from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries were those of a seemingly inferior mindset, those who are blamed for problems in the community and those who were social outcasts.) This time period occurred throughout the Protestant, Catholic and Scientific revolutions. The victims of the witch trials were usually persecuted in Europe as a whole however focused on areas like South Western Europe.

The panic and hysteria of the lower class confessing started the witch-craze (Who were they). There was a strain on Salems resources, and the wealthy people wanted them for themselves (A Brief History). Along with wanting the resources, the rich people just wanted to rid their towns of the poor (The Salem, 1962). They thought that the poor didn’t contribute much to the village (A Brief History).

Doris Lessing wrote the novel “No witchcraft for Sale” and its highly reminiscent of George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” in that it can almost be seen as a critique of Imperialism. Unlike “Shooting”, “Sale” has what can be seen as an almost happy ending or rather, nothing terrible happens. Doris Lessing uses three messages in her novel “No Witchcraft for Sale” that really made me think about the spread of imperialism.

Witches have been feared by man since the 14th century in Europe when they believed women were given evil powers for loyalty to the devil. Although some others believed it was the result of consuming the fungus “Ergot” which was found in rye, wheat and other cereals. According to Jess Blumberg multiple people were caught using witchcraft as he mentions in her post “More than 200 people were accused of witchcraft and twenty were executed”. Later in colonial times there was a widespread of witchcraft throughout the new pioneer villages. People believe that it became worse from all the anxiety from the fear of death from disease, savages, smallpox and the after war effects of the British war with France. All this anxiety was driving the Puritans

more competence as an explanation due to evidence now being needed to prove someone guilty, there was still a aspect of psychological pressure towards obeying God and putting themselves forward for punishment in order to live a better afterlife.

During this time, there was no recorded witch craft going on, instead the true root of these problems started because of an issue between two families, the Putnam’s and the Porters. The Putnam’s were a family that was already living in the tow and used to own most of the area’s wealth, that was until, the arrival of the Porters. When the Porters moved into town they began gaining all the wealth and prestige from the people of the colony. Therefore, it was no surprise that the accusers of witchcraft were the Putnam family and the ones being wrongfully accused were the Porter family. The goal of the Putnam’s was to get rid of the porters all together in attempt to bring back wealth and prestige to the family name.

Those who claimed to know the future and weren’t prophets were convicted of blasphemy and witchcraft and were punished. It was considered witchcraft because fortune-telling required a direct relationship between a human or witch and unholy spiritual powers. During the Middle Ages, witchcraft in ecclesiastic or church courts was presided over by church-appointed officials. This may have caused biased opinions and also links to religion being a cause of the harsh punishment. In medieval judicial proceedings, torture was sometimes used as a means of extracting information concerning witchcraft, and confessions were not uncommon. Historical evidence states that many confessed out of fear of being tortured and not because they were truly guilty.

According to Davies (1999), legislature in the 1700s considered that the view of witchcraft is no longer meaning campaign appealing anything significant. However, it was not meant that the Witchcraft Act of 1736 brought the profound denials of witchcraft. While there was a fear against a danger of Satan and his vassal and criticism against the Act, most educated people believed that there was no existence of witches.

Unlike most religions thoughts on a divine ultimatum, Wiccans believe that the world shares the two alternatives of heaven and hell, in a glimpse of what was mentioned in the class group assignment, most Wicca’s believe that we have a shared space with heaven and hell. In Christianity and most other popular first world religions Heaven is the place where God dwells. It is a location that is a spiritual utopia in nature. That doesn’t seem to be the case with Wiccas,

Sometimes the world could be oblivious to anything like social media, and many other things but it is harder to sneak things past people now versus hundreds of years ago. For example witchery was very common with the puritans but nowadays it is not seen. The Crucible play by Arthur Miller is not relevant in today’s society because education, court systems, and common sense are present everyday. And with these present today no one would believe in witchcraft.

Racism is the main culprit for fighting among not only American citizens, but those in foreign countries. The issue has progressed but still has a great deal of improving to do. In recent years and months many have begun take stands against racism and the unfair ways they have been treated. Doris Lessing wrote novels and short stories that challenged the mainstream beliefs of those in Southern Africa and England. Mariam Berkley, a biographer explained, “Lessing's life has been a challenge to her belief that people cannot resist the currents of their time, as she fought against the biological and cultural imperatives.” Her literature was very controversial because the topics she discussed brought in many different perspectives to problems in society. Her thoughts mainly tie in with racism and sexism. In Lessing’s No Witchcraft for Sale she explains the messages of white people having control over blacks, the selflessness of the slave, and ways to deal with peer pressure.

I am not the author of this but received it from someone. I was just thinking of composing one and sending it too because I am getting pissed off by chain messages and their curses. God bless you as you read!

Witchcraft exists. Whether we choose to believe or not, its existence in worldwide cultures is undeniable. Its form takes many shapes that can be determined by the religion, economics, politics, and folk beliefs in each individual culture where it may take place. Its importance in our own, American, history should not go understated: Witches were a major dilemma for people who lived in 1692 Salem, Massachusetts, and as a result women (and men) were hanged due to undeniable belief in the power of Witchcraft. Today, belief in magic and witches has diminished with the increasingly secular nature of our culture, but we must accept there was a time when witches “existed”. While American culture has drifted away from ideas such as witchcraft, others have certainly not, with the primary example being Africa. Witchcraft in African culture accounts for many of the issues found within many of the continents communities. Correcting these issues, at least for a time, usually results in a community being “fixed” (examples are made in Adam Ashford’s account of witchery, Madumo, a Man Bewitched and the anthropological accounts being used for this essay). What is fascinating; however, are the parallels that can be made between witchcraft in different cultures. In a previous essay I touched on this topic by incorporating my definition of witchcraft as “a cultural means of being able to create particular moral boundaries by means of ‘magic’ thinking” (Brian Riddle, 2015). In this essay, I