The first thing that grabbed my hand and dragged me to study history was the story of the Scottish witch trials during James VI’s reign (late 16th century, before he inherited Elizabeth’s throne and united Scotland and England). He had just come back from retrieving his new bride in Denmark, where he had been entranced with the witch hunts gripping her nation.
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“The Old Weaver’s House on Canterbury’s High Street overlooks the River Stour. The building dates back to the 1100s, and was the site for witch trials in later centuries. Behind the structure sits a dunking stool; a chair the accused would be tied to before being dunked into the river. If she survived, she was a witch. If she drowned, she was innocent…but dead. The building is now a restaurant, boasting traditional English fare and a cozy, old-time interior.
On Witchcraft & Messiness
The first thing that grabbed my hand and dragged me to study history was the story of the Scottish witch trials during James VI’s reign (late 16th century, before he inherited Elizabeth’s throne and united Scotland and England). He had just come back from retrieving his new bride in Denmark, where he had been entranced with the witch hunts gripping her nation.
Upon his return, James was convinced that the storms that had hindered his safe passage back to Scotland were the work of witchcraft. What ensued was a finger-pointing fiasco, pitting neighbor against neighbor with hearsay accounts of dances with the devil and enchantments for murder.
Women who had been revered as healers were suddenly charged as witches, and they soon discovered that an accusation alone was enough to mean their execution. Many decided not to fight their charges, resigning themselves to their fates; it was easier to accept a quick death than to endure torture designed to elicit a confession (no matter how false that confession may be).
For the accused, death by execution was coming anyway; why prolong it?
I told this story to my high school literature students before we embarked on studying fairytales (the real, gruesome ones—not the happy endings crafted by Disney and friends). I wanted them to think about what they’ve come to expect of their lives and their futures. And then I asked each class this simple question:
“Who here, if you were in this position, and you found yourself tied to a stake, a flame ready to set you alight, would honestly believe that you’d be saved before the deed was done?”
Women who had been revered as healers were suddenly charged as witches, and they soon discovered that an accusation alone was enough to mean their execution
Almost every hand rose in response. They would be saved, they thought. There is no way their lives could end in such an unjust way.
Most of Western society is living in this strange culture of polished fantasy; on a deep level, we truly believe that our lives are meant to be blissful ones; if things are bad now, they will inevitably improve and we will attain our happy endings.
This is a new phenomenon, conditioned and fed with carefully crafted and formulaic storytelling. We are exposed to the same stories with the same pacing every time we plop down to watch a film. I dutifully learned this formula in film school.
Just like Pavlov’s dogs, we drool for that 20-minute mark in a film as the hero is thrust into a new situation, or for the moment the third act begins as he makes a decision he was unable to be make at the beginning of his journey. We lean forward in our seats and we whisper to those around us that we’ve figured it out; we know what’s going to happen next. And we smile because we are so smart and we are so special.
But true history has a vastly different story to tell. History—like humans in general—is grey and messy and complicated. The majority of humans who have walked the Earth before us—and most still today—have nothing on their minds save survival. They have had no delusions of fame or fortune, or of a Prince Charming who will whisk them from their plight and into the leisure of palace life.
Hell, they’d be ecstatic with a job as a servant in said palace if it meant they could afford shelter and enough food for their families.
When I realized that I too had been living in this fantasy, I halted. For nearly thirty years, I’d carefully built an ideology with single bricks, each engraved with images of Disney princesses, trophies won for playing casual sports, kitchen cabinets stocked consistently with food, new shoes simply because I had tired of the old ones, and phrases such as, “you can be anything you want to be” or “the sky’s the limit, dear.”
History—like humans in general—is grey and messy and complicated
In reality, there is nothing special about me. My little bundle of cells and chromosomes got lucky. It’s that simple, and it’s that terrifying. Had I been born in 16th-century Scotland—and if I’d been lucky enough to survive infancy—I may have met my end on a fiery bundle of twigs.
This could have been anyone’s story, just as it was the story of many.
Nobody is entitled to a happy ending. No one is inherently good just as no one is inherently bad. We’re all just big, steaming blobs of messy grey-ness with an overabundance of emotion and complexity mixed in for good measure.
We’re all still just trying to survive in the best ways that we know how.
So, it seems rather suitable that I’ve ended up in a city known to have witnessed witch trials of old, and that I now find myself pouring over accounts of medieval herbal healing, all the while dealing with my own beautiful, human messiness.
I wonder what would happen if we, like those accused of witchcraft centuries ago, resigned ourselves to the trials of our lives. What if we stopped chasing an ideal that doesn’t actually exist and chose instead to accept the mess? We would probably feel more deeply and forgive others more readily. We would certainly appreciate and live in the now rather waiting for the better that the future may (or most likely will not) decide to bestow upon us.
Plus, we might just realize that the real stories history has to tell, rather than the shiny versions packaged and sold along with merchandise and popcorn, have greater lessons.
