Witchcraft In K. David Goss's The Salem Witch Trials

Introduction
During the early age of New England, there was a group of religious people which called the Puritans, come to settle down around the Boston. Claiming to be the “city upon the hills”, the Puritans were a group of “godly” people who upheld strict moral and religious principle. To enable the next generation to understand Bible, the teachings from the god, the Puritans also has a very modern and unique idea, they promote mandate school among the area, even founded the Harvard University, highly increased the literacy rate Yet such an open-minded and disciplined group of people also has its dark side. Striking to become a sacred group of people to achieve their religious goal, anything that they think has a relation to Paganism or

Witchcraft did not appear along with new England, in fact, it has been existing since long ago. Witchcraft was believed as an act of invoking spiritual power to accomplished a supernatural task (K. David Goss’s The Salem Witch Trials, a reference guide), including fight sickness, raising the fertility of crops and animals, show the future and punish enemies. It rooted in folk magic since prehistoric time, according to K. David Goss’s The Salem Witch Trials, a reference guide, around 150 BC, Mesopotamia period, witchcraft was already mentioned in the Hammurabi’s code. According to the Ancient law of Hebrew, Bible, it mentioned: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to

In the Dark Ages(500-900AD), they became Non-Christian. In the Middle Ages(1000-1300AD) the whole Europe accusation of witchcraft started, witches was the one who commerce with devil have the full intension of attaining his/her own end. Since 1490s, European church controlled the government to organized campaign of witch hunting, in the next 150 years, 50 thousand were hanged or burned. Torture is a type of way to extract information from the witch in the medieval time, confession of witches were uncommon. Those who cannot recite the Lord’s prayer were often regarded as a sign of being a witch. Most witches were accused harming neighbor when unexplainable tragic event took place. Trials and execution were public event, for example, in France (1460) thousand people were in attendance in a witch trial. Legal weapon were wielded by courts to prosecute witches, like the Malleus Maleficarum, Hammer of the witches (by Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, two Dominican