Witchcraft of New England Explained by Modern SpiritualismPutnam, Allen
Religion
Witchcraft of New England Explained by Modern Spiritualism
Putnam, Allen
Spiritualism; Witchcraft -- New England
George Burroughs was graduated at Harvard College in 1670; had been a
preacher for many years prior to 1692, and, during some of them,
ministered to the people at Salem Village. But before the outburst of
witchcraft there, he had found a home far off to the north-east, on the
shores of Casco Bay, in the Province of Maine, where he was then humbly
and quietly laboring in his profession, but not in impenetrable seclusion.
Clairvoyants are masters of both seclusion and space to a marvelous
extent. Throughout a region far, far around, wherever the special light
pertaining to the mediumistic or illuminated condition revealed its
possessor and put forth its attractions, there the opened inner vision of
the accusing girls might make them practically present. Emanations from
one residing at Falmouth or at Wells might readily meet and blend with
those from sensitives at their home in Salem. Thought flies fast and far.
With equal speed, and quite as far, can the unswathed inner perceptives of
an entranced or illumined mortal be attracted. Old memories and
undissolved psychological attachments may have operated in this case. One
of the accusing girls had lived for a time in the family of Burroughs
while he resided at the Village. Chains of association are never broken
and rendered forever unusable, though they often become exceedingly
attenuated, and cease to retain recognition in our ordinary conditions.
Several of the accusing girls alleged that Burroughs was one, and a
leading and authoritative one, in the band of apparitional beings from
whom their torments came. He was "cried out upon," arrested, tried,
condemned, and executed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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