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