Witchcraft of New England Explained by Modern SpiritualismPutnam, Allen
Religion
Witchcraft of New England Explained by Modern Spiritualism
Putnam, Allen
Spiritualism; Witchcraft -- New England
I know a man who once visited a married couple, both of whom are
intelligent and refined, both estimable in character, the husband being a
highly respected member of one of the learned professions. This couple,
at their own dining-table, where they and the visitor were the only
occupants of the room, united in stating that once, when they had just
finished taking their midday meal, and were sitting at the table opposite
to each other, the lady's chair, with herself sitting in it, was moved
back by some invisible power, and forthwith she, by palpable but invisible
arms, was taken from her seat, laid upon the carpet, and there made to
experience all the sensations of actual and pleasurable nuptial coition.
While such were her positions and sensations, her husband remained on the
other side of the table, and they two were the only flesh-clad persons in
the room. One accomplished and truthful lady had such experience while her
consciousness and all her mental faculties were fully alert. Nature
enfolds astounding possibilities. The human race, in coming times, may
possibly be improved rapidly and extensively, by designed infusions of
supernal elements into fetal germs.
No evidence has come to us, and no apprehension is entertained, that such
experiences ever eventuate in physical conception; yet there are seen, now
and then, glimmerings of evidence that supernal beings can and do inflow
some of their own properties into the very marrow of some susceptible
mortals of either gender, or of both simultaneously and conjointly, so as
to modify physical systems in such manner and to such extent, that their
offspring receive, at the very moment of conception, such properties as
will ever afterward render them either better or worse because of
injections through the parents by intelligences whose presence and
operations elude perception by our external senses. Possibly both the most
beneficent and the most malignant of our race--both those whose moral
hues most illumine, and those whose shades most blacken the pages of
history--were conceived while supernal beings held the parents either
under strong psychological control or in deep unconscious trance.
The mother of the rough, lustful, and murderous Samson was visited by a
spirit being "very terrible."
The mother of Jesus was visited by the bright and glorious Gabriel, and
enwrapped in an abnormally sound, helpful, or holy aura.
Far away from Charlestown and Boston, where the two women noticed in the
preceding pages had their homes and met their fate, Ann Cole was the
_unconscious_ mouthpiece through which invisible beings carried on
dialogues, partly in languages, or, at least, in tones, which she had
never learned. The manifestations through her were no imitations of
anything before known on this continent, so far as history shows. Her
reputed doings were unlike any for which Massachusetts had hanged two of
her daughters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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