The Salem trials were largely the result of a combination of personal animus, avarice, and cruelty within a deeply occultist culture. New England courts executed nineteen witches and subjected many repented convicts to purifying torture. One thing only ended the feverish trials: accusers gradually turned on the affluent and influential after using up the easier targets of marginalized and poor women.
Further Readings/References:
Godwin’s Lives of the Necromancers series
Marshall, Peter. William Godwin: Philosopher, Novelist, Revolutionary. PM Press. 2017.
Miller, Perry. The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century. Boston: Beacon Press. 1954.
Trevor-Roper, H. R. The European Witch-Craze of the 16th and 17th Centuries. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. 1969.
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