Shucks

I've really been happy with this one inference about First Turnings, that they are a time for witch hunts, "metaphorical and literal." The Jews are expelled from Spain in 1492. The Alien and Sedition Acts target aliens "dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States." The Hollywood Ten were called to Congress in 1947, and McCarthy pushes it further starting in 1950. It's one of the ubiquitous events in First Turnings: Using the available organizational structure from the Crisis to find other enemies, often within the nation.

But the great part about it was always that literal witch hunt, the Salem Witch Trials, in 1692. Which, in a wholly unplanned coincidence, was going to be a Grid posting this Halloween weekend. Until I double checked the dates and found that Strauss & Howe now have that First Turning starting in 1704 and ending in 1727.

The Trials are therefore in the Fourth Turning, instead. I checked my copy of Generations to find that, while the dates are different, they were still part of that Crisis, the one associated with King Philip's War and the Glorious Revolution, albeit at the very end - 1675-1692. The section on what's called the Colonial Cycle - post-Spanish Armada Crisis, through the end of the Glorious Revolution - begins with an imagining of who was at the trials, ending the Crisis. I must have flipped that, somehow, to being the start i.e. the First.

It still makes sense that enemies will be sought while there is an organization to seek them. After a Crisis, even when a major war has finally resolved, there will not always be a consensus that every problem has been solved. A post-Crisis era is often evident by a search for new enemies, and conversely such a search may mean the Crisis is past. So it will continue to be a useful marker.

I will have to stop referring to "literal witch hunts" as being a part of it, though.