Witchcraft of New England Explained by Modern Spiritualism

,

• Publisher: The Floating Press
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781776583591
• Topic: Theology & Religion

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.

Tituba

*

"Tituba, the Indian woman, examined March 1, 1692.

"Q. Why do you hurt these poor children? What harm have they done unto you?

"A. They do no harm to me. I no hurt them at all."

The first question by the magistrates implies the presence there of the afflicted children, and of their then seeming to be invisibly hurt. It also implies the magistrate's assumption that Tituba was hurting them. Her denial that either they had harmed her or that she was hurting them was distinct. But the magistrate seemingly doubted its truth or its sufficiency, for he next asked,—

"Q. Why have you done it?

"A. I have done nothing. I can't tell when the devil works.

"Q. What? Doth the devil tell you that he hurts them?

"A. No. He tells me nothing."

She conceded here that the Devil might be, and probably was, at work upon the children; but his doings were beyond the reach of her perceptive faculties. He made no communication to her. Thus early her words indicate that her knowledge of spiritual matters caused her to draw and adhere to a distinction between The Devil and either a Spirit, or bands of spirits, which distinction she and other mediumistic ones of her times adhered to, while the public lacked knowledge that facts required it, and ignorantly called all visitants from spirit realms The Devil.

When glancing at Cotton Mather's unpublished account of Mercy Short, we copied from it the following statement: "As the bewitched in other parts of the world have commonly had no other style for their tormentors but only THEY and THEM, so had Mercy Short." Clairvoyants and all who obtained knowledge of spirits through perceptions by their own interior organs seldom, if ever, have seriously spoken of either seeing, hearing, or feeling the Devil. Possibly, at times, some may have done so by way of accommodation to the unillumined world's modes of speech. But, as Mather says, they have, the world over, generally called the personages perceived, "They" and "Them." Such a fact demands regard. The personal observers of spiritual beings have never been accustomed to designate them by bad names. Fair inference from this is, that such beings have not generally worn forbidding aspects. It has been the reporters, and not the utterers, of descriptive accounts of spiritual beings who have made use of the terms "devil," "satan," and the like. Mather perceived the common "style" of the bewitched, and yet the warping habit of Christendom made him preserve continuance of inaccurate reporting; for he, like most others in his day, persistently wrote "devil," where that name was not announced, and ought not to have been foisted in. Tituba saw no one whom she ever called The Devil, though history has taught that she did.

"Q. Do you never see something appear in some shape? A. No. Never see anything."

This answer is not true if construed literally in connection with its question. She did, as will soon appear, sometimes see many things clairvoyantly, but never The Devil, who had just before been mentioned.

"Q. What familiarity have you with the devil, or what is it that you converse withal? Tell the truth, who it is that hurts them. A. The devil, for aught I know."

She persistently admits that the devil may be then and there at work, but asserts that she does not know anything about him.

"Q. What appearance, or how doth he appear when he hurts them?"

She makes no reply when asked how the Devil hurts. She ignores him.

"Q. With what shape, or what is he like that hurts them? A. Like a man, I think. Yesterday, I being in the lean-to chamber, I saw a thing like a man, that told me serve him. I told him no, I would not do such thing."

Devil had now been dropped from the question, and he substituted. What is he like? Then she promptly mentioned an apparition not only visible, but audible, who, if carefully scanned, may prove to have been chief author and enactor of Salem witchcraft. She who saw and heard him says he was "like a man, I think,"—was "a thing like a man." According to her perceptions he was not the devil. She did not know the devil. Others at that time and ever since have called her visitant the devil. But Tituba, who saw, heard, and thus knew him, did not and would not.

Next comes in, parenthetically, a summary of her sayings and doings, as follows:—

("She charges Goody Osburn and Sarah Good, as those that hurt them children, and would have had her done it; she saith she hath seen four, two which she knew not; she saw them last night as she was washing the room. They told me hurt the children, and would have had me gone to Boston. There was five of them with the man. They told me if I would not go and hurt them, they would do so to me. At first I did agree with them, but afterward, I told them I would do so no more.")

According to this summary, apparitions multiplied; for, besides the man, she saw four women around herself: that company threatened to hurt her if she would not unite with them in hurting the children. Two of these were apparitions of her living neighbors, Good and Osburn, then under arrest; the other three were strangers. We shall soon see that she believed, what is probably true, that apparitions of particular persons can be not only presented by occult intelligences to the inner vision, but put into apparent vigorous action, while the genuine persons thus presented in counterfeit have no consciousness either of being present at the exhibition, or of performing, either then or at any other time, the acts which they seem to put forth.

The conceptions which this simple mind held concerning the nature, powers, and purposes of those who came to her in manner strange to most mortals, are pretty clearly indicated. By her likening them to men and women, and by her protests against their forcing her to act cruelly, she justifies the inference that she failed to see in or about them anything very forbidding, awful, or satanic. She admitted the possibility that the devil might have hurt the children, but also asserted that, if so, his action was unbeknown to her. The "something like a man," together with these women and herself under compulsion, were the afflicting ones, so far as her vision or other senses could determine. She nowhere applies the term "devil" to her male apparition. No hoofs, horns, or tail, no sable hues or frightful form, are brought to view by this clairvoyant's description of her occult companions. They wore, in her sight, the semblances of a man and of women—not of devils.

How different would have been results had her simple words and instructive facts been credited and made the basis of judicial decisions! Could she have been calmly and rationally listened to by minds freed from a blinding and irritating faith that Christendom's witchcraft devil was her companion and prompter, her plain and definite exposition of the actors who generated troubles which were profound mysteries to her superiors in external knowledge and penetration, would have brought all the marvels of that day within the domain of natural things, and warded off the horrors which ensued.

"Q. Would they have had you hurt the children last night? A. Yes, but I was sorry, and I said I would do so no more, but told I would fear God. Q. But why did not you do so before? A. Why, they tell me I had done so before, and therefore I must go on. (These were the four women and the man, but she knew none but Osburn and Good only; the others were of Boston.")

If we get at what Tituba meant by the words just quoted, it was substantially this: "They wanted me, and forced me against my will, to join with them in hurting the children last night. I was sorry that I was forced to act cruelly, and told them that I would not be forced to it again, but would serve God. I did not take that stand before, because they told me I had already worked with them, and therefore must go on.

"Q. At first beginning with them, what then appeared to you? What was it like that got you to do it? A. One like a man, just as I was going to sleep, came to me. This was when the children was first hurt. He said he would kill the children and she would never be well; and he said if I would not serve him he would do so to me."

The witness was here apparently brought to describe her first interview with the author of Salem witchcraft. We see her now standing at the fountainhead of the devastating torrent which soon deluged the region far around with terror, anguish, and blood. Who first appeared to her? Who was the prime mover? And when was he first seen? Subsequent statements are soon to show that on Friday, January 15, 1692, six weeks and four days before the time when she gave in this testimony, one like a man, just as she was going to sleep, came to her and demanded her aid in hurting the children. The fact is clearly stated that five days before the Wednesday evening when the children were first hurt by spirit appliances, and supposed to be taken sick, "one like a man," when Tituba was about going to sleep, came to her and avowed his purpose, in advance, to torture and even kill the children. From that time forth she knew the source of the strange operations in her master's family.

"Q. Is that the same man that appeared before to you, that appeared last night and told you this? A. Yes."

Her visitor was the same person on these two different occasions, which were more than six weeks apart, and in her various clairvoyant excursions and feats he was frequently, if not always, her attendant.

"Q. What other likenesses besides a man hath appeared unto you? A. Sometimes like a hog—sometimes like a great black dog—four times."

"The man" probably assumed or presented those brutish forms. A frequent teaching of spirit visitants is, that they "can assume any form which the occasion requires;" they also have often given the impression that they cannot assume hues brighter than inherently pertain to their own intellectual and moral conditions, but of this we have yet no conclusive information.

"Q. But what did they say unto you? A. They told me serve him, and that was a good way. That was the black dog. I told him I was afraid. He told me he would be worse then to me."

Her dog could talk. She and the court obviously understood the dog to be the same being, essentially, as the "one like a man." For,—

"Q. What did you say to him, then, after that? A. I answer I will serve you no longer. He told me he would do me hurt then."

Can any one doubt that she conceived herself to be speaking to the same being, though in dog form, that she had yielded to before in form like a man? There is no indication that she had previously served a dog, and yet she says to this one, I will serve you no longer.

"Q. What other creatures have you seen? A. A bird. Q. What bird? A. A little yellow bird. Q. Where does it keep? A. With the man, who hath pretty things more besides. Q. What other pretty things? A. He hath not showed them unto me, but he said he would show them to me to-morrow, and told me if I would serve him, I should have the bird. Q. What other creatures did you see? A. I saw two cats, one red, another black, as big as a little dog. Q. What did these cats do? A. I don't know. I have seen them two times. Q. What did they say? A. They say serve them. Q. When did you see them? A. I saw them last night. Q. Did they do any hurt to you or threaten you? A. They did scratch me. Q. When? A. After prayer; and scratched me because I would not serve her. And when they went away I could not see, but they stood by the fire. Q. What service do they expect from you? A. They say more hurt to the children. Q. How did you pinch them when you hurt them? A. The other pull me and haul me to pinch the child, and I am very sorry for it."

The cats also as well as the dog spoke and commanded her obedience. She saw these the night before her examination. "When they went away," she says, "I could not see." Those words may admit of two distinct and different meanings. First, that the cats disappeared without her being able to notice their exit; or, second, that before they went she became spiritually blind—"could not longer see" clairvoyantly. In a subsequent statement she pleads a sudden obscuration of her internal vision. All clairvoyants are subject to sudden interruptions of their spiritual power to see.

She was pulled and hauled by "the other" with a view to force her to "pinch the child." Here again her obvious conviction was that the "other" was essentially more than mere brute. She did not think a cat pulled and hauled her, but meant that when the cats visited her, the "something like a man"—"the other"—was also present, and urged her on to mischief.

"Q. What made you hold your arm when you were searched? What had you there? A. I had nothing. Q. Do not those cats suck you? A. No, never yet. I would not let them. But they had almost thrust me into the fire. Q. How do you hurt those that you pinch? Do you get those cats, or other things, to do it for you? Tell us how it is done. A. The man sends the cats to me, and bids me pinch them; and I think I went once to Mr. Griggs's, and have pinched her this day in the morning. The man brought Mr. Griggs's maid to me, and made me pinch her."

By "the man" she obviously meant her frequent spirit visitor. He it was who brought the cats to her, and made her pinch them, and by so doing pinch the "maid," who physically was miles distant. Such is her statement. An inference from it is, that properties from Elizabeth Hubbard,—the maid in question,—who was among the afflicted ones, and was a member of the circle, were drawn out from her by "the man," and made component parts of apparitional cats formed by the man's thought and will powers, which seeming cats, being pinched by Tituba's spirit fingers, the Hubbard girl, some of whose properties were used for constructing those apparitional cats, felt the pinchings, first in her spirit, and thence in her flesh, though her body was two or three miles distant from the pincher. In that mode "the man" commanded the use of some properties in Tituba, by which he produced torture in a mediumistic physical organism then being far away. Another mode of spirit operation is indicated. Tituba confessed to a dim consciousness that once, by some process, her spirit-self had been got over to Dr. Griggs's, and pinched the maid at her home. Again, she believed that the same maid had been brought to her (Tituba's) abode and pinched there. Also it will be seen a little further on, that, Tituba being charged with having been over at the maid's home on a specified day, denied having been there at that particular time, but admitted that her apparition might, unconsciously to herself, have been seen there then, for she says, "may be send something like me."

We enter a distinct protest against stigmatizing such testimony as "incoherent nonsense." In response to a command to tell how the mysterious inflictions were brought about, this untaught, ignorant woman, calmly and with much distinctness, indicated four or five modes by which psycho...

Table of contents

• WITCHCRAFT OF NEW ENGLAND EXPLAINED BY MODERN SPIRITUALISM
• Contents
• 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
• Rev. George Burroughs
• Summary
• The Confessors
• The Accusing Girls
• The Prosecutors
• Witchcraft's Author
• The Motive
• Local and Personal
• Methods of Providence
• Appendix
• Endnotes