Witchcraft of New England Explained by Modern Spiritualism

Allen Putnam

Description

The late nineteenth century was something of a heyday for inquiries into the supernatural, replete with spiritualists, seances, mediums, and purported communications with the great beyond. In this volume, Allen Putnam attempts to project the tenets and beliefs of the spiritualism movement back onto the events that transpired in New England centuries before in order to gain new insight into the accusations of witchcraft that define that moment in history.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781776583607
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

WITCHCRAFT OF NEW ENGLAND EXPLAINED BY MODERN SPIRITUALISM

* * *

ALLEN PUTNAM

1

*

Witchcraft of New England Explained by Modern Spiritualism First published in 1880 PDF ISBN 978-1-77658-360-7 Also available: Epub ISBN 978-1-77658-359-1 © 2013 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved.

While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike.

Visit www.thefloatingpress.com

2

Con

t

*

e

nt

s

Preface References Explanatory Note Witchcraft Marvel-Workers Mather and Calef Cotton Mather Robert Calef Thomas Hutchinson C. W. Upham Margaret Jones Ann Hibbins Ann Cole Elizabeth Knap The Morse Family The Goodwin Family Retrospection Salem Witchcraft Tituba Sarah Good Dorcas Good Sarah Osburn Martha Corey Giles Corey Rebecca Nurse Mary Easty Susanna Martin Martha Carrier

3

Rev. George Burroughs Summary The Confessors The Accusing Girls The Prosecutors Witchcraft's Author The Motive Local and Personal Methods of Providence Appendix Endnotes

4

Pr

eface

*

"The nobler tendency of culture—and, above all, of scientific culture—is to honor the dead without groveling before them; to profit by the past without sacrificing it to the present."—EDWARD B. TYLOR,Primitive Culture.

Most history of New England witchcraft written since 1760 has dishonored the dead by lavish imputations of imposture, fraud, malice, credulity, and infatuation; has been sacrificing past acts, motives, and character to skepticism regarding the sagacity and manliness of the fathers, the guilelessness of their daughters, and the truth of ancient records. Transmitted accounts of certain phenomena have been disparaged, seemingly because facts alleged therein baffle solution by to-day's prevalent philosophy, which discards some agents and forces that were active of old. The legitimate tendency of culture has been reversed; what it should have availed itself of and honored, it has busied itself in hiding and traducing.

An exception among writers alluded to is the author of the following extract, who, simply as an historian, and not as an advocate of any particular theory for the solution of witchcraft, seems ready to let its works be ascribed to competent agents.

"So far as a presentation of facts is concerned, no account of the dreadful tragedy has appeared which is more accurate and truthful than Governor Hutchinson's narrative. His theory on the subject—that it was wholly

5

the result of fraud and deception on the part of the afflicted children—will not be generally accepted at the present day, and his reasoning on that point will not be deemed conclusive.... There is a tendency to trace an analogy between the phenomena then exhibited and modern spiritual manifestations."—W. F. POOLE, Geneal. and Antiq. Register, October, 1870.

While composing the following work, its writer was borne onward by the tendency which Poole named. Survey of the field of marvels has been far short of exhaustive—his purpose made no demand for very extended researches. Selected cases, representative of the general manifestations and subject treated of were enough. The aim has been to find in ancient records, and thence adduce, statements and meanings long resting unobserved beneath the gathered dust of more than a hundred years, and therefore practically lost.

The course of search led attention beyond overt acts, to inspection of some natural germs and their legitimately resultant development into creeds, which impelled good men on to the enactment of direful tragedy.

Examination of the basement walls—the foundations—of prevalent popular explanation of ancient wonders, forces conviction that they lack both the breadth and the materials needful to stability. Modern builders of witchcraft history have either failed to find, or have deemed unmanageable by any appliances at their command, and therefore would not attempt to handle, a vast amount of sound historic stones which are accessible and can be used. Lacking them, these moderns have let fancy manufacture for them, and they have builded upon blocks of her fragile stuff which are fast disintegrating under the chemical action of the world's common sense.

6

We proposed here an incipient step towards refutation of the sufficiency and justness of a main theory, now long prevalent, for explaining satisfactorily very many well-proved marvelous facts. Some such have been presented on the pages of Hutchinson, Upham, and their followers; and yet these have been either not at all, or vaguely or ludicrously, commented upon, or reasoned from. Very many others, and the most important of all as bases and aids to an acceptable and true solution of the whole, are not visible where they ought to have conspicuous position. Presentation and proper use of them might have caused public cognizance to topple over the edifices which it has pleased modern builders to erect.

It is not our purpose to write history, but to give new explanation of old events. The long and widely tolerated theory that New England witchcraft was exclusively but out-workings of mundane fraud, imposture, cunning, trickery, malice, and the like, has never adequately met the reasonable demand of common sense, which always asks that specified agents and forces shall be probably competent to produce all such effects as are distinctly ascribed to them.

Persons who of old were afflicted in manner that was then called bewitchment, and others through or from whom the afflictions were alleged to proceed, are now extensively supposed to have possessed organizations, temperaments, and properties which rendered them exceptionally pliant under subtile forces, either magnetic, mesmeric, or psychological, and who, consequently, at times, could be, and were, made ostensible utterers of knowledge whose marvelousness indicated mysterious source, and ostensible performers of acts deemed more than natural, and which, in fact, were the productions of wills not native in the manifesting forms. The special forces that produced bewitchment and are put in application now, do not become sensibly operative upon any other mortals than peculiar sensitives; and their action upon such is

7

often most easily and effectively manifested through aid obtained from other similar sensitives. Selections of both subjects and instrumentalities were of old, and are now, controlled by general law. Steel needles and iron-filings are not selected by the magnet's free will when it forces them to leap up from their resting-places and cleave to itself. Seeming levitation possesses them, and an invisible force takes them whither gravitation, their usual holder, would not let them go. It is upon steel, not lead—upon iron, not stone—that the magnet can execute its marvelous liftings. Nature's conditions fix selections. The organizations, temperaments, fluids, solids, and all the various properties, are, to some extent, unlike in any two human bodies whatsoever, and the range of the differings and consequent susceptibilities is very wide. A psychological magnet in either the seen or unseen may have power to draw certain human forms to contact with itself, and to use them as its tools, and yet lack force to produce sensible effects upon but few in the mass of living men. Where its action is most efficient, it controls the movements of what it holds in its embrace—takes a human form out from control by the spirit which usually governs it, and through that form manifests its own powers and purposes. Both the reputed bewitched and bewitching may severally have had but little, if any, voluntary part in manifesting the remarkable phenomena that were imputed to them. Where physical organs are used, the public is prone to deem the performances intentional acts by those whose forms are operated, while yet the wills of those whose forms are visibly concerned in marvelous works may have been formerly, as they often now are, little else than unwilling, and in many cases unconscious tools.

The afflicted—in other words, the bewitched ones—may have actually perceived,—they no doubt often did,—and also knew, that the annoyances and tortures they endured were augmented, if not generated, by emanations proceeding forth from the particular persons whom they named as being their afflicters; and these

8

afflicters may have been all unconscious that their own auras were going forth and acting upon the sufferers.

The chief non-intelligent instrumentality employed in producing miraculous, spiritualistic, necromantic, and other kindred marvels, is now generally called psychological force—force resident in and put forth from and by the soul—from and by the will and emotional parts of a living being; it is the force by which some men control with magic power not only many animals in the lower orders, but some susceptible members of their own species; it is a force deep- seated in our being, and may accompany man when he leaves his outer body, and continue to be his in an existence beyond the present.

The usurping capabilities of this force were strikingly set forth by the illustrious Agassiz in his carefully written account of his own sensations and condition while in a mesmeric trance induced upon him by Rev. Chauncy Hare Townshend. The great naturalist—the strong man both mentally and physically—says that he lost all power to use his own limbs—all power to evenwillto move them, and that his body was forced against his own strongest possible opposition to pace the room in obedience to the mesmerizer's will. Since such force overcame the strongest possible resistance of the gigantic Agassiz, it is surely credible that less robust ones, in any and every age, may have been subdued and actuated by it.—See page 385, inFacts of Mesmerism, 2d Ed. London, 1844, by Rev. Chauncy Hare Townshend.

Those who were accused of bewitching others were fountains from which invisible intelligences sometimes drew forth properties which aided them in gaining and keeping control of those whom they entranced or otherwise used. Also from such there probably sometimes went forth unwilled emanations that were naturally attracted to other sensitives, who perceived their source, and

9