Witchcraft of New England Explained by Modern SpiritualismPutnam, Allen
Religion
Witchcraft of New England Explained by Modern Spiritualism
Putnam, Allen
Spiritualism; Witchcraft -- New England
Thus Cheever makes her say that "_the devil_" came to her and bade her
serve him, while Corwin, reporting the same part of the examination makes
her say that "_the devil_" never told her anything. Further on, Corwin
makes her say, "A thing like a man told me serve him." Cheever says the
_devil_ told her thus. Tituba herself, and all the clairvoyants of that
age, preserved a distinction between the devil and the personages they
saw, heard, and talked with. But the recorders of their testimony, failing
to observe this distinction, often perverted the evidence. A comparison of
the two records throughout suggests the probability that Corwin, who is
most minute, gives the questions and answers in their original order and
sequences much more nearly than does Cheever, whose record, when compared
with the other, appears in some parts to be summings-up of several
minutes' talks into a brief sentence or two, and also gives evidence of
his taking it as obvious fact, that Tituba's "thing like a man" was the
veritable devil. This is probable, because his minutes make her say "_the
devil_ come to me, and bid me serve him," at a point in the examination
where, according to Corwin, she said _the devil_ "tells me nothing." Thus
the appearance is, that Cheever carried back in time words which _she_
subsequently applied to her "thing like a man," and on his own
authority--not hers--applied them to "the devil." In Corwin's account, her
conception of the separate individualities of "the devil" and her "thing
like a man" reveals itself clearly, and is nowhere contravened. But
Cheever, almost at the commencement of his record, and at a point where
she, according to Corwin, said the devil told her _nothing_, reports her
as then applying to _the devil_ what she a few minutes or hours afterward
applied to her "thing like a man." According to the more full and the more
trustworthy record, she at no time confessed to any interview with "_The
Devil_," though she did freely to many conversations with "the man." These
facts are important, very interesting, and instructive. As we interpret
them now, they indicate that Tituba never confessed to any intercommunings
with the devil, never charged Mrs. Good, Mrs. Osburn, or any one else with
being familiar with his Sable Majesty, but only with "a tall man, with
white hair," wearing a "serge coat."
The court before whom she was questioned, and the people around,
generally, no doubt, deemed her "thing like a man" to be the veritable
devil, as Cheever did. But the more exact recorder of her words furnishes
good grounds for belief that Tituba herself conceived otherwise. She who
was gifted with faculties which let her see, hear, and feel the actors,
apprehended that one of them at least was a disembodied human spirit;
while the spiritually blind, but physically and logically keen-eyed ones
around her, wrongfully inferred the presence of their Malignant and Mighty
Devil with her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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