Witchcraft of New England Explained by Modern SpiritualismPutnam, Allen
Religion
Witchcraft of New England Explained by Modern Spiritualism
Putnam, Allen
Spiritualism; Witchcraft -- New England
_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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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