A Dispatch from Salem

 Greetings from Spring Break! 

I imagine that right now, y’all are lounging on a beach somewhere working on your tans, drinking age-appropriate beverages with little umbrellas through bendy straws, and generally being paragons of Puritan restraint and decorum.

I, however, am in Salem, MA. 

Morning, my family and I were in Plymouth, famous landing place of the Pilgrims, who had been kicked out of two countries for being too religious (and it took a LOT to get kicked out of Holland in the 1620s, let me tell you). They landed at Plymouth Rock. According to one very very very old guy. Decades after the fact. Who heard it from another guy who was supposed to have been there. The earliest mention of the rock in the historical record was as a big stone marking a boundary. But whatever, it’s a good story. Nobody warned us that the weather in Plymouth was going to be a recreation of the Pilgrims’ first winter, because it was h*cking freezing down by the water. Here is the rock:

It was fantastically good luck that the rock was stamped with the year when they got here, as calendars had not yet been invented. 

So, after we looked at the rock, I looked up the hill above the harbor and saw this brass statue of one of the indigenous people gazing out over the place where the Pilgrims landed:

I did not go up the hill to check, but I’m pretty sure the statue is titled “Oh, Shit.”

After Plymouth, we drove to Salem, about and hour and a half north. This is where the Pilgrims’ dream of killing a lot of innocent members of their own community finally came true.

Salem is goth Disneyland. 

We had an hour or so to kill before we were scheduled to meet friends of my parents for lunch, so we went to the final resting place of many of the instigators and (presumably) the victims of the famous witch hunts. The supposed witches were taken down after they were executed and put in shallow graves, but they were removed by family members presumably to this cemetery. 

The cemetery has a lot of New England charm, and you get a hint of it when you see the oldest cemeteries in Pennsylvania. The headstones are thin and very weathered so that the fronts look almost exactly like the backs. The cemetery was gated and locked (presumably because the markers there look so fragile), but you peer in over a low wall. Built into this wall are stone seats, each bearing the name and execution date of one of the accused witches. Some of them, like Bridget Bishop’s memorial, had lillies placed on them. 

For a town notorious for falsely convicting citizens for being witches, Salem sure does attract a lot of people who profess to be witches. The graveyard is bounded one side by a restaurant called “Casa Tequila” (I hear the Alamo is across from a Walgreens) and by a row of shops and mini museums on the other, all of them, I think, witch themed. I had to go in the one called Pentagram. Had to.

Had to. 

It was a fairly small shop with a large collection of gems and stones on the first floor (way more than anyone asked for on that later), books on the second floor, magic tchotchkes and divination tools throughout, and three booths with curtains drawn across them where psychics were giving readings. We arrived as one of the psychics was showing up for his shift, setting out his crystals on the little table. I really wanted to get a reading, but my family was waiting in the car and I had to be relatively quick. If I do get one, I’ll ask to film it. I did see one woman sign up for a walk-in reading.

The store sells all things “magick,” which is magic but is spelled with a “k.” 

This is a screencap of my phone. There is no movie.

There is a huge wall of herbs behind the register, I presume for spells and the types of preparations in these books:

 

I guess today is the day I learned about “plant magic.”

There also seems to be some cross pollination between Wiccan practices and other beliefs, including Jewish Kabbalah and the Golden Dawn (I am presuming that this is a reference to the offshoot of Freemasonry and the not the Greek fascist party):

They had a display with divining instruments of the type that my students might recognize:

The things that look like cookies are pendulums for divination, a type of dowsing.

And they had another thing. Among the gems and crystals. Which you would not have heard of in my class, at least not before I learned that it was a thing: a lot of amazing jewelry! 

I mean, why would you mix pewter jewelry in with the uncut gemstones and gigantic quartz peni….the hell?!! 

Like, you know me, I’ll ask anyone about anything, but not even I could screw up the courage to ask the woman behind the counter what these gigantic gizmos were in aid of. Luckily, they have a website which details everything that they sell in the shop, including the rose quartz phalluses. The text for the 8.5-incher explains: “The Phallus is a symbol of the divine masculine and fertility. Place on your Altar to bring abundance, growth and prosperity.” I kind of want to know if the 5.75-inch phallus has less potent magick. 

The website really does give you a sense of the subculture. They also sell experiences, including one that I absolutely would love to go see, a seance!

The description is: 

In a time honored tradition we will be celebrating the loved ones who have passed before us. In this small group setting we will be supporting one another as messages of love and healing are brought through. Come with an open.heart and leave with a sense of hope, love, and inspiration.

Not to be that guy, but how do they know what the departed are going to say ahead of time? Anyway, it would be interesting to see a modern take on the seance. Sadly, it’s in April. 

I saw half a dozen shops just like this in Salem, and we are going to hit some of them tomorrow. Also, I was not expecting this, but there seems to be a pirate theme running through the town as well. It’s like all of my grade school Halloween costumes come to life!