Witchcraft of New England Explained by Modern SpiritualismPutnam, Allen
Religion
Witchcraft of New England Explained by Modern Spiritualism
Putnam, Allen
Spiritualism; Witchcraft -- New England
This subject of spirit control retained consciousness during her
entrancements, or during the times when her body was subject to a will not
her own, as many mediums do at this day. Consequently she would possess
more or less knowledge of whatever was said or done by her organs and
limbs, whoever controlled them. Being young, she could scarcely be
competent to make, and keep in remembrance, the broad severance of her
individual responsibility for what was done by others and what by herself,
through use of her own physical faculties. It was natural--almost
necessary--that she should become self-condemnatory for having had done
through her what gave distress and anguish to her friends, even though she
had lent no voluntary aid to the deeds, nor had power to prevent their
being enacted.
We presume her statement was true that Mr. Willard and the others then
accused were, though unconsciously, made to be contributors of aid to the
controllers of his pupil; true that she felt the workings of emanations
from them. Twenty years afterward an "afflicted" one in Salem Village
began to cry out upon this same man as being one of her afflicters. And
why? Because, probably, of constitutional properties in him which spirits
could avail themselves of as helps for entrancing or controlling
mediumistic persons. The laws which governed detection of tormentors of
the bewitched will come under more extended consideration in subsequent
parts of our work. Results indicate that Samuel Willard's system possessed
either material or psychic properties, or both, which exposed him to
accusation of bewitching some sensitives, whose perceptive powers could
trace back to their source any mesmerizing forces that entered into and
acted efficiently upon their own systems.
In his usual temper and judgment witchward, Hutchinson pronounced the
sufferings of Elizabeth Knap "fraud, imposture, and ventriloquism"! Shade
of Samuel Willard! How look you now, and how shall we mortals look upon
the man, who, ninety years after your day, casting a glance backward into
the darkened chambers of the long past, perceived yourself to have been a
credulous dolt and simpleton, unable, by eleven weeks' close study and
vigilant watch, to determine that the source of marvelous phenomena
manifested in your own domicile, before your own attentive eyes, was
exclusively mundane? From looking at the occurrences, as they lay dormant
and half buried under the dust which ninety full years had been throwing
over them, Hutchinson saw at a glance that they were nothing but frauds,
impostures, and ventriloquism. You, Rev. Sir, at first doubted their
supermundane source, but study of and deliberate reflection upon them for
weeks satisfied you that your doubts were untenable; you obviously was
devoid of such credulity as enabled Hutchinson to very promptly obtain
conviction that your Elizabeth was but an actor of fraud and imposture.
Alas for your sagacity, Samuel Willard!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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