Witchcraft of New England Explained by Modern Spiritualism Part 1

Witchcraft of New England Explained by Modern Spiritualism.

by Allen Putnam.

PREFACE.

"The n.o.bler 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 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 a.n.a.logy 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 un.o.bserved 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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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.

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 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 ma.s.s 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 p.r.o.ne 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 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 ill.u.s.trious Aga.s.siz 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 even _will_ to 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 Aga.s.siz, it is surely credible that less robust ones, in any and every age, may have been subdued and actuated by it.--See page 385, in _Facts 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 p.r.o.nounced it diabolical, because the influx thence was annoying. Impersonal natural forces to some extent, and at times, probably designated the victims who were immolated on witchcraft's altar.

Citations of evidences and proofs from early historic records, that other agents and forces had chief part in producing New England witchcraft than such as modern historians generally have recognized, together with exposition of legitimate and forceful biases proceeding from articles in old-time creeds, will exhibit our forefathers in much better aspects than they wear in intervening history; will halo in innocence some of their wives and daughters, around whom historians have cast hues appropriate only to most villainous culprits; and also will manifest sadly misleading oversights, short-comings, and sophistries by some whose writings have done much in forming the world's existing erroneous and harsh views and estimates.

Certain operative, world-wide, and daily occurrences in the present age, unaccounted for, and often sneered at, by adepts in prevalent sciences and philosophies, seem to have fair claims for general, candid, and most rigid scrutiny. Even if despised and contemned of men, they nevertheless are widely and most efficiently working for the world's good or for its harm.

Testimony to their positive existence is vast in amount, and much of it comes from witnesses whose words upon any ordinary matters would be absolutely conclusive.

Something more than twenty-five years ago, mysterious raps on cottage walls and furniture were traced to cause which, while invisible and impalpable, could count TEN. A trifle, was that? No; for its teachings and influences have gone forth widely, and have worked efficiently. They have broadened nature's domain as conceived of by man, have opened up to him new fields of study, and have furnished him with a vast amount of new views and speculations, which are permeating creeds, philosophies, sciences, explanations of history, and most things appertaining to the welfare of civilized society. Well may they have thus efficiently operated, for they have claimed to be, and their potency indicates that they have been, moved onward by forces greater than pertain to incarnate men.

Raps by invisible rappers; liftings of tables, pianos, &c., by invisible lifters; music flowing forth from pianos, harmonicons, and other instruments having no visible manipulators; pencils writing legibly, instructively, eloquently, when no visible hand held and moved them; levitations of tables and human forms; transfer of books and other objects from one side of rooms to the opposite by invisible carriers; hands of flesh grasping and holding live coals of fire with impunity; raisings of human forms from floor to ceiling overhead, and holding them there by invisible beings; impressions of recognized likenesses of departed mortals upon the plates of photographists; presentation of moving and palpable hands and arms where no body is present for their attachment; materialization of entire forms of the departed, and the speaking and moving of the re-clad ones so exactly as in life as to be distinctly and unmistakably recognized by their surviving relatives and familiar acquaintances;--these phenomena, and many others kindred to them, admit of being, and we ask that they may be, viewed apart from any and all verbal or written communications by spirits, and apart from the character, standing, and habits of spiritualists. Such presentations as have just been specified may be looked upon as a cla.s.s by themselves, and as being worthy the attention and closest scrutiny of devotees to the physical sciences and all logical minds. Even though they have emerged into view from a modern Nazareth, the obscurity of their place of issuance is not conclusive against their virtue to enlighten man, and broaden the extent of human knowledge.

When, in days to come, some abler and more polished pen shall apply, in the solution of witchcraft marvels, a theory that shall be based on the cla.s.ses of agents, forces, &c., which are now evolving modern marvels, its fitness and adequacy will attract wide attention, and command general acceptance. Our work, of course, will fall far short of such results, for he who here writes possesses no commanding powers,--never had much taste for historical and antiquarian researches,--has for many years last past found himself much, very much, more p.r.o.ne to be seeking for mental and moral wealth in oncoming than in receded times,--possesses only moderate skill and less than moderate facility in literary composition,--has spent the greater part of adult life in pursuits which debarred him not only from much perusal of books either historical, literary, or scientific, but also from much converse with well-cultured society. Therefore, necessarily, his whitened locks and waning forces find him consciously deficient in nearly every qualification for either a good historian or good expounder and applier of any theory pertaining to profound and intricate subjects involving occult agents and forces.

Then why write? Perhaps vanity is strong among our motives. Nearly as far back as memory can take us, we heard from a grandfather's lips accounts of what his grandfather and others did and suffered when witchcraft raged in our native parish, and threatened trouble to those occupying the house in which we were born and reared. From boyhood onward the subject has never been new to us. We received an early impression, and since have ever felt, that works more than mortals could perform had transpired there. But who the workers could have been was long a doleful mystery. Their doings made them far from pleasant objects of contemplation. In common with most other natives of the place, we formerly were very willing that the dark matter should slumber in obscurity--were indisposed to draw attention to its aspects and character.

But not so in later years. Most people on the spot, however, now are probably averse to its consideration. Less than three years ago, a parish committee of arrangements were very solicitous that this dismal subject should receive very little notice at their bi-centennial celebration.

Their wishes and ours differed widely. What courtesy withheld them from forbidding, courtesy withheld us from doing extensively. We just opened there; and now, in continuance, here say that we longed then, on the spot where he was born, to wash off from their most notorious child much black dye-stuff in which the world has dipped him, and let them look upon a fairer complexioned and more estimable personage than they have deemed that far-famed native. We are vain enough to hope, that, in this continuance of our speech, we shall adduce facts and views which will present Salem witchcraft in new and less dismal aspects, and dispel what seems to dwellers where it transpired a "cloud of darkness." Aside from vanity, we have been moved by definite desire to give both the people of Danvers and many others, opportunity to learn facts and truths as yet perceived by only a few, which give a character to the great witchcraft scene, vastly less disreputable to those concerned in it than does such as has been presented by prior expounders, and extensively accepted as plausible by the public. Teachings of spiritualism have luminated the places where witchcraft has been sent to slumber; and facts now come into view which reveal beneficent results where none but baneful ones have been apparent. Perhaps willingness to show that spiritualism has been an illumining force to us, and may be so to others, has place among our motives.

Opportunities for studying spirit manifestations came in the writer's way more than twenty years since, and have been recurring quite steadily down to the present hour. Release, long ago, from cramping mill-horse rounds of professional life and thought, and consequent freedom to live and move relatively aloof from annoyances and fears which known or suspected attention to unpopular and tabooed matters is apt to bring, permitted him to be a more open, avowed, persistent, and studious observer of these marvelous works than could most other persons _comfortably_, who had spent early years in academic and collegiate halls. Unhampered by dread of slurs, innuendoes, hints, or growls from either paris.h.i.+oners, patients, or clients, he sought, found, and strove to use thoughtfully, critically, and religiously, extensive and many varied and often very favorable opportunities for estimating the force and value of alleged evidences and proofs that we, all of us, are ever living in the midst of agents, forces, conditions, faculties, powers, and susceptibilities, acting upon or residing in ourselves and our neighbors, which common observation and science have not generally recognized. Thus, as he judges, clews have been acquired to such knowledge as promises, in days not distant, to furnish not only a solution of ancient witchcraft that will stand the tests of time and common sense, but cause human physical science to bring within its embrace agents and forces which have heretofore escaped its recognition. The varied phenomena of spiritualism, witchcraft, and miracle are all _within_ nature.

Modern spiritualism, fraught, and all alive, as it is, with evidences, and some sensible _proofs positive_, of a future life, is to-day more efficient in retaining faith among thinking men that a life beyond awaits them, than any and all other forces in operation, or that man can apply.

Science--yes, an advanced _science_, based on observed, proved, and provable facts of spiritualism, ancient and modern--is the only power we see that can stay the hope-crus.h.i.+ng inroads of the bald materialism which is now d.o.g.g.i.ng the advancing steps of physical science and liberal culture throughout enlightened Christendom.

Perception of strong indications, more than twenty years ago, that keen intelligence wielding strange power was evolving before human senses, raps, table-tippings, and the like,--which intelligence, if properly invoked and treated, might become one's helpful teacher,--induced the author to use as well as possible each occurring opportunity for increasing his acquaintance with the strange visitants, not doubting that in the end he should gain wherewith to instruct and benefit both himself and his fellow-men, enough, and more than enough, to richly compensate for whatever loss of caste, favor, or reputation his course might occasion.

During his well-meant, protracted, and reverential searchings along the faintly twilighted borders of spirit-land, ever and anon he has been catching glimpses of laws, forces, conditions, and agents, which earth-born beings--the embodied and the disembodied--can, and limitedly now do, conjointly use for reciprocal communings, and for mutual helps toward improvement, elevation, and bliss--for social, intellectual, moral, and religious growth. He means _mutual_; for those who have escaped from the flesh are helped by intercommunings with mortals. The reward is ample.

His immediate topic is only witchcraft; but light which he seeks to make bear on that, penetrates below all perceptible phenomena, down to the question which underlies all others pertaining to man's highest interest, viz., Does _animism exist_? Or, in other words, is there in nature, or in G.o.d, or anywhere, an animating principle, which, having had individualizing connection with an organized material form, will retain its consciousness and individuality after that connection shall have been dissolved? Who but visible or audible spirits, proving themselves to be such, can give decisive response to that momentous question? Who but they can stop the advance of and effectually cripple that growing materialistic faith which laughs at and tramples over everything save _demonstration_,--demonstration either scientific or sensible,--but is at once and permanently palsied when it encounters that? Man knows of none else who can.

The world as yet is little conscious of the real nature, power, and worth of spiritualism, or of its own need of help obtainable from no other perceptible source. Therein lies enfolded not only charity and justice for our remoter fathers, and correction for later commentators upon them, which may be brought forth and applied in the present work, but also PROOFS of man's survival beyond the tomb.

Threescore years and twelve are saying, Spend no more time in general preparation for your labors, because dangers yearly thicken that your peris.h.i.+ng outer man must forever leave undone what it fails to accomplish soon. Your future "footprints on the sands of time" will be but few; therefore now start in right direction, and, as best you can, mark the path you travel, and thus give some guidance to future wayfarers journeying toward the goal at which you aim, but lack power to reach.

ALLEN PUTNAM.

BOSTON, 426 Dudley Street

REFERENCES.

The princ.i.p.al works quoted from and referred to in the following pages, are--

SALEM WITCHCRAFT, edited by S. P. Fowler, of Danvers; H. P. Ives and A. A.

Smith, Salem, 1861. This furnished the citations from Calef, and most of those from Cotton Mather. References are to this edition.

HUTCHINSON'S HISTORY OF Ma.s.sACHUSETTS. Boston edition 1764 and 1767.

UPHAM'S HISTORY OF WITCHCRAFT AND SALEM VILLAGE. Boston, Wiggin & Lunt, 1867.

WOODWARD'S HISTORICAL SERIES, embracing Annals of Witchcraft in New England by Samuel G. Drake, furnished the citations from Drake.

NEW ENGLAND GENEALOGICAL AND ANTIQUARIAN REGISTER, October, 1870, p. 381, was the source of extracts from W. F. Poole.

EXPLANATORY NOTE.