Thus far questions pertaining to the character of the main motives
operating in the authors of acts called witchcraft, have purposely been
avoided. The actors and their doings have been sought for, irrespective of
morality. But the _cui bono_, the what good? must have been asked over and
over again by the reader. Why did any intelligent being, whether mortal or
spirit, thus woefully invade and disturb the homes of able, honored,
worthy Christian men? and especially why perpetrate such agonizing
cruelties upon bright, lovely, and promising children?
The spirit-world, as well as ours, holds inhabitants differing widely one
from another in character, tastes, propensities, and occupations--it
contains yearners to recommune with surviving kindred at the old material
home--contains its rovers, its explorers, its scientists, its seekers
after novelties, facts, and principles; after new places, scenes, and
peoples to visit; after new routes and appliances for travel, and after
new applications of known powers and forces. The motives for acting upon
and through mortal forms may vary from worst to best, from best to worst.
The moral character of motives can neither invalidate nor confirm what has
been adduced. The motives, having been either good or bad, may be ascribed
to spirits as well as mortals, and to mortals as well as spirits, for both
good and bad beings dwell in mortal forms now, and both classes have left
their outer forms behind, and passed into the abiding-place of
spirits--have become spirits, and that, too, without necessary alteration
of their moral states. Motives in different cases and with different
operators were doubtless quite varied. Correct presentation of their
qualities in connection with the several cases adduced in the preceding
pages is obviously beyond our power. Though conscious that we must
probably be mistaken in some instances, we yet are willing to state some
of the thoughts which facts and appearances have suggested.
Perhaps no unseen intelligences aided or acted through either Margaret
Jones or Ann Hibbins; and, if any did, their performances in and of
themselves were never perceptibly harmful to the public. We apprehend,
however, that if the whole truth were known, man would now see that kind
physicians, who had bid farewell to earth, continued to practice the
healing art through the brain and hands of Margaret Jones.
The users of Ann Cole's vocal organs furnished no distinct indication that
they were either specially benevolent or the reverse. We are constrained
to regard them as having been low, ignorant, willing to excite
consternation among men, and very willing to help the lewd Greensmiths on,
by the halter's use, to speedy entrance into conditions in which
themselves could confer with these debased ones more familiarly than was
possible while they remained encased in flesh. Such a view need not imply
that they were malicious. Desire to hold closer connection with one's
affinities is natural, and not necessarily bad. Communicators from the
other side of death's portals generally decline to call any spirits _bad_;
they speak of many as being low, ignorant, benighted, undeveloped, &c.,
but seldom call any one bad. They seem to regard many much as we do green
fruits. One omits to call the half-grown apple bad, however sour or
crabbed, and says only that it is immature, unripe, &c., implying that,
though in its present condition not good to eat, time may come when it
will be palatable and nutritious.
Elizabeth Knap's visitant--the one to whom she said, "What cheer, old
man?"--who presumably was the chief operator through and upon her form,
and lingered about her for at least three years, we regard as a sort of
recluse spirit, who kept mainly aloof from other disembodied ones, and
found his chief enjoyment in retaining or resuming as close alliances as
possible with the outer or material world, and from a selfish desire to
secure permanent possession of this instrument, strove through torturings
to reduce her to subjection; and this, perhaps, without desire to injure
her, but mainly with a view to gratify his own selfishness. The other
one--the pretty black boy--of a more lively disposition, found pleasure in
playfully bantering the grave clergyman, and probably strove, in playful
mood, to teach the honest and good man some lessons in charity and
demonology. We see no reason why he may not be regarded as a genial good
fellow, desiring to make some gloomy portion of mankind more cheerful and
happy.
At Newbury there possibly was nothing more than a playful and
self-gratifying exercise of constitutional powers by a band of spirit
gymnasts--not malicious, but playful and rude; curious also, it may be, to
see how far they might be able to frighten mortals and arouse
consternating wonder, while they should be pleasurably exercising their
own faculties. We view them as neither specially good or bad, but as
heedless and rude in their frolic.
Appearances are different when we look at the Goodwin family. There an
embodied old wild Irish woman's spirit was the first to put forth
psychologizing power over the children. She was moved by anger, or
resentment, or both; her guardian or kindred spirits no doubt helped her,
and from motives like her own. Perhaps we may properly call both her and
her aids bad. Yet we hear no call to apply that word emphatically. Little
Martha had just charged the old woman's daughter with having stolen some
of the clothes which the latter was employed to wash; and, if that charge
was false, or even presumed by the old woman to be false, she, who was
obviously fiery and ignorant, may not have been excessively diabolical in
using any process of mental or emotional retaliation which was at her
command. Perhaps ignorance and instinctive retaliation were quite as
operative in her as malice.
Martha's form, subsequently, when she was residing with Cotton Mather, was
often used by one or more spirits who seem to have been bent upon showing
the learned man that sport might exist and be enjoyable beyond the
confines of mortal life, and that denizens there were disposed to make
some at his expense. They soon showed him that linguists unseen could
comprehend his meaning, whatever the language he might use for expression
of his thought; and also thumped the sectarian by disdaining to read books
which he approved, and by reading with ecstatic delight such as he
condemned. Nor was this all; they exhibited in his presence feats of
strength and agility, and many marvelous antics, which were suited to
cause a thinker and scholar to hold on to his belief that others than the
guileless miss took part in the performance of such marvels. While amusing
themselves, they were exhibiters of instructive facts. Nothing bad in
their purposes becomes apparent.
The case of most special interest and chief importance pertains to Salem.
Upham, vol. ii. p. 429, says, "If there was anything supernatural in the
witchcraft of 1692, if any other than human spirits were concerned at all,
one thing is beyond a doubt; they were shockingly wicked spirits." _Beyond
a doubt?_ Perhaps not in some minds. But if any disembodied spirits
whatsoever, even _shockingly wicked ones_, were mainly performers of the
convulsing operations at Salem, the historian's theory of explanation is
not only baseless, but is lamentably cruel and unjust toward the human
instruments through whom the spirits acted. If specific doings prove their
authors, if spirits, to have been shockingly wicked, the same having
mortal authors, would prove the latter to have been just as shockingly
wicked. We do not like to apply that defamatory phrase to all those girls
and women who are set forth as the chief accusers. Were all those youthful
females shockingly wicked? We hope not, and think not. God rules alike in
the invisible and visible world, and often moves in mysterious ways for
executing benevolent designs.
The motive of Tituba's "tall man with white hair," whom we regard as prime
mover in the most momentous witchcraft scene the world has ever witnessed,
is difficult to comprehend satisfactorily. The deliberateness indicated
both by his visit to Tituba five days in advance of practical operation,
and by his then appointing a special time and place for entering upon his
intended processes, bespeaks a definite and abiding motive of some marked
quality. Judging from the earlier and more perceptible effects of his
doings, the world must almost necessarily regard him as a deliberate
tormentor of innocent children; as a disturber of domestic, social,
religious, and civil peace; as an immolator of the innocent and the
virtuous; as hell's sovereign acting out his fiendish pleasure upon the
inmates of a Christian fold. Infernal malignity, at the first glance,
seems to have actuated this intruder at the parsonage. World-wide
experience, however, has learned that many things are "not as they seem."
We have been taught to recognize One being, and there may be many others
in spheres unseen, in whose sight "a thousand years are as one day."
Teachings of history and observation show that the overruling power is
attended and guided by far--very far--reaching prescience; and also that
many of man's greatest blessings are educed from temporal evils of vast
magnitude. The malice of man nailed Jesus to the cross. What wears every
appearance of wicked motive is often used as helpful, if not needed,
instrumentality in procuring man's deliverance and redemption from
debasement and oppression.
When John Brown made his raid across the border line of freedom, not only
the invaded South, but a large portion of the North regarded him as a
ruthless and malicious invader of the rights of our fellow-countrymen, and
therefore worthy of a felon's doom. A cannon soon sent to Fort Sumter the
comments of the South upon what Brown had done, and war, carnage, and
horrors of varied forms and vast dimensions soon spread over the broad
nation, from the St. John to the southern gulf, and from the Atlantic to
the Pacific. John Brown was no felon, no malicious invader, but a
philanthropic planner to strip the chains of slavery from four millions of
his brother men; and his step, though a seeming evil then, led directly
on to the emancipation of all for whose good he went forth in seeming
malice.
When plagues of various kinds were invoked and brought upon the Egyptians
by and through the mediumistic Moses and Aaron, what Egyptian would have
deemed that the motives of the unseen intelligence who counseled and
controlled them could be benevolent? Plague, pestilences, and sore
afflictions for a long time, and finally death of the first born, were
imposed upon each Egyptian household. The motive to those inflictions is
deemed to have been deliverance of the children of Israel from bondage.
Egyptians being judges, it must have been a shockingly wicked spirit who
acted upon them through Moses and Aaron.
History, on most of its pages, shows that war--war,--that ruthless
trampler upon the innocent scarcely less than upon the offending, has ever
been a very common, if not the chief, instrument by which oppressed people
have gained deliverance, and through use of which the depressed have come
up to higher stand-points. If our world has, through all its past ages,
been wisely and beneficently managed by some intelligence higher than man,
then far-reaching wisdom--supernal wisdom--has often seen that the good of
the many--nay, the good of _all_--required the coming of suffering,
sacrifice, and anguish upon the few. Has the Great Permitter of the many
sufferings which war has engendered been "shockingly wicked"?
The chains of old enslaving errors often become invisible and unfelt by
those on whom they were early placed by a mother's kindly hand, and the
like to which all associates wear as supposed helps, and never as
suspected hindrances, to expansion and health of mind and heart. Nothing
short of a most strenuous conflict--nothing short of a struggle for life
and all that makes life valuable and dear--is competent in some cases to
awaken perception that such chains are and ever have been cramping their
wearers, and holding them back from such expansion and freedom as their
Maker fitted men to attain to and enjoy. We regard the witchcraft creed as
having been such a chain.
Looking carefully at the methods by which the power that overrules all
terrestrial affairs has almost invariably led man to break away from
thralldom and oppression, can one reasonably entertain belief that any
purely peaceful measures, any preachings, arguments, appeals to the reason
of men, could have brought Christendom, at any time after the twelfth or
thirteenth century, to perceive that its witchcraft creed was enslaving
its mind, and thwarting its proper expansion heavenward? We apprehend not;
and also we surmise that in 1602 supernal intelligence saw that
opportunity and power existed, which, if then availed of, could put
mortals into a conflict which would reveal to them the inherent falsity
and barbarity of the witchcraft creed, and thus let such light into their
minds as, in time, would lead them to cast off the chains in which they
were bound, attain to clearer and more accurate views of their relations
to God and the spirit-world, and rise to higher and freer manhood.
If such were the case, we can readily conceive that supernal wisdom and
benevolence might permit and foster the oncoming of an appalling and
terrific struggle which should bring into vigorous action man's every
latent energy, sweep away in its course many erroneous beliefs, hampering
customs, and ruts of thought, and thoroughly overturn much which had long
been deemed immovable truth. Such a course might be the most beneficent
possible, even though it involved destruction of the comfort, peace, and
lives of many innocent and most estimable inhabitants at the place and
vicinity where the battle should be waged, and that, too, whether the war
itself should be the ostensible offspring of revenge and malice, or a
brave conflict for preservation of one's altars and fireside in peace.
Some amusement, and little else perhaps, may be furnished by presentation
of what a spiritualist's fancy, prior to careful study of facts narrated
by Tituba, had become accustomed to deem not only possible, but probable.
She was a slave dwelling among oppressors of her kindred and
race--oppressors of the negro, the Indian, and of those generally who were
"guilty of a skin not colored like their own," and of worshiping gods
different from their own. What more natural than that departed ones, whom
the whites had defrauded, injured, and oppressed while dwellers here, and
whose surviving kindred were still being treated in like manner, should
embrace an opportunity which the mediumistic qualities and the abode of
Tituba furnished, for perpetrating retaliation whence woes had been
received? True Christian morality may denounce such action as being
"shockingly wicked," but the more prevalent morality in the world--in the
more resolute portions of it at least, and especially in the less
enlightened--may be as ready to commend as to condemn it, and to applaud
as to censure those whose fire and pluck induced and enabled them to pay
over upon their oppressors wrong for wrong, even augmented with interest
at the highest rates which their altered circumstances allowed. It having
been discovered that Tituba's form was a portal for spirit return, fancy
saw the spirits of her ancestral race, and hosts of ascended aborigines of
Massachusetts soil, eagerly coming back through her helping properties,
disposed and eager to cast their impalpable arrows and tomahawks at any
members of the wronging race who might be vulnerable by such weapons.
Scouts swiftly and widely spread over the spirit hunting-grounds knowledge
of the glorious opportunity for retaliation and revenge which had come,
and hosts of volunteers rushed thence with lightning speed to the alluring
scene. Quick havoc ensued, and the great consternation, bewilderment,
devastation, slaughter, disturbance of peace, and agonizings of terror and
awe, which the invasion produced, gave keenest pleasure, satisfaction, and
joy to the assailants. Possibly Indian spirits might then begin to cherish
hopes of expelling all whites from the land of their fathers, and of
re-acquiring and leaving the whole a legacy to red men's heirs.
But the whites, not less than the darker-skinned, were under the
supervision of spirit guardians, friends, and helpers, who, though
probably taken by surprise and at disadvantage, were by no means disposed
to leave their wards, kindred, and loved ones to be long thus harassed and
abused. Invisible hosts soon mustered, and warred against other invisible
hosts over and around the Village; and when the struggle had been waged
far enough to sever witchcraft's chains, the laws of the _Highest_
permitted the guardians of the Christians to conquer a lasting peace whose
balm would heal the wounds inflicted, and whose fruits would be
emancipation from cramping errors, and consequent expansion and elevation
of mental powers.
As, perhaps, appropriate sequent to our fanciful views, we next present
something which was not born in our own brain, and which may or may not be
statement of ancient facts. We have devoted but little time to directly
seeking information from spirits relating to the subject upon which we
are writing, and yet have seldom entered into conversation with any good
clairvoyant, at any time during the last year or two, without receiving
description of one or more spirits then in attendance, and manifesting
desire to have us recognize them. In most cases they have shown their
names. In this manner Cotton Mather, more than any other one, signifies
that interest in our present work draws him near to us. Mather's mother,
also Martha Goodwin, Rebecca Nurse, and others, have presented their cards
through persons ignorant that individuals bearing such names ever lived.
But Mather has done more. On two or three occasions, using a medium's
organs of speech, he has entered into conversation with us upon his
connection with witchcraft. He is not now well pleased with his blindness
when in his physical form, and urges us to be more severe in our
criticisms upon his course than historic facts permit us to be.
February 9, 1875, he was in control of a medium, and we inquired as to his
present views of George Burroughs. At once and cordially he described
Burroughs as one of the brightest of all spirits whom he had seen, and as
"illumining whatever sphere he enters." We asked Mather if he had ever
learned who the spirit was that came to Tituba and started Salem
witchcraft. He had not. Had he met Tituba? "Yes." "Can you not," we asked,
"find him through her?" "Probably," was his response; "and will try, if
you wish it." "Well, then," we said, "two weeks from this day and hour we
will meet you at this place." This was arranged through an _unconscious_
medium, who never receives into her consciousness any knowledge of what
her lips utter while she is entranced, and she was on that occasion. We
did not inform her, nor did any other mortal than ourself know, that we
arranged for a subsequent meeting with Mather.
We called upon the medium February 23, when forthwith, in her normal and
conscious state, she said that she was then seeing at our side two spirits
of very strange aspect, and of race or races unknown to her. One of them
she described as a male, uncouth in aspect, having large piercing eyes, a
very wild look, and as being clothed in a sort of blouse, beneath and
below which were short pants tucked into the shoes; also his teeth were
very large. The other was a female of unknown race, and of a race
different from that to which the male belonged; her complexion was dark,
but she was neither negro nor Indian, and exhibited the letter T.
This medium may have known, and probably did, that we were engaged in
writing upon witchcraft; but she is not conversant with its history, nor
did she know the names of individuals concerned in it, nor the parts any
had severally performed.
Very shortly after having given the above description, the medium was
entranced; soon Cotton Mather, speaking through her, signified that he had
brought with him both Tituba and her nocturnal visitant when she was slave
of Mr. Parris; also, he stated, that, since they were not accustomed to
giving utterance through borrowed lips, he proposed to speak for and of
them. The statement relating to the man was substantially as follows:--
"His name was Zachahara; he was of Egyptian descent, but a Ninevite, or
dweller in Nineveh. His time on earth was somewhat before that of Moses.
Not long after his death, he, a spirit, observed that a spirit by the name
of Jehocah--not Jehovah--was working strange marvels, and enacting
cruelties among the race from which himself had sprung, through one Moses,
and was thereby acting out a spirit's purposes toward man through a
mortal's form. At once he, Zachahara, felt strong inclination and desire
to exercise his own powers in the same mode. The desire clung to him
tenaciously, and ever kept him alert, to find a mortal whom he could use
with efficiency rivaling that which Jehocah manifested through Moses. No
one of his many trials, however, was very successful until he put forth
his skill and power upon and through Tituba. His ruling motive was desire
to ascertain how far he, being a spirit, could get and keep control of a
mortal form, and what amount and kinds of wonders he could perform with
such an instrument. The motive was devoid of either malice or benevolence;
it essentially was that of the scientist seeking new knowledge of nature's
permissions. To keep Tituba in good humor with himself, he freely made
promises to bestow upon her many fine things; and, to please her, he would
say and do anything he thought might add to his power over her, and,
through her, over other mortals."
Such was the account; and, while it was coming upon our ears, it carried
us back to familiar accounts of marvels of old, and we felt that the acts
of Jehocah through Moses, and those of Zachahara through Tituba, bespoke
motives so much alike in apparent barbarity, that, if either actor was
blameworthy, it might be difficult to see why equal blame should not be
meted out upon the other.
Mather, speaking of and for Tituba, said, that "when the man first came to
her and sought her service and aid, he was very bright and pleasant; but
that, when she declined to comply with his wishes and demands, he became
awfully dark and terrible." Briefly, Tituba herself managed the medium's
vocal organs, furnished a simpering confirmation of Mather's statement,
and said, with a shrug and shiver, "he was awful! awful!"
Subsequent conversation at the same seance elicited from spirits their
belief, that, as soon as a door of access to men through Tituba was
discovered, numerous Indian spirits were able and eager to rush through
and lend a helping hand to the old Ninevite, and were devoid of any strong
desire to help gently; indeed, they were very willing to molest the whites
on their own responsibility. Soon, when unimpassioned search for knowledge
of what ability spirits possessed or might acquire to revisit and again
act amid terrestrial scenes was too much attended by agents willing to
enact, and actually enacting, havoc too severe to be longer tolerated,
wise and compassionate spirits brought power to bear which soon put a stop
to what was producing most agonizing consequences. Spirits claim that they
did much in the way of changing the views of mortals, and preventing a
renewal of prosecutions at the next term of court. Perceiving that enough
cruelty had been enacted to make mortals ready to ask whether both
humanity and God were not belied by the creed Christians were enforcing,
they turned the minds of men to more rational and humane views.
Some time during the winter of 1874-5, Rev. G. Burroughs having poured
out, through a medium's lips, a few sentences redolent with charity and
heavenly grace, we asked him what he now deemed the motive which primarily
induced some spirit to inaugurate the operations which brought himself and
many others to untimely end? His response was, "I suppose it was the
natural and proper desire of some spirit to resume communion with its dear
ones on earth." No spirit has ever indicated to us a suspicion even that
the spirits whose acts evolved witchcraft were either malevolent,
censurable, or in any sense _shockingly wicked_.
Did supernal prescience select and post agents peculiarly fitted to
perform the witchcraft tragedy? Perhaps so: and possibly Sir William Phips
was not governor by mere chance. Some statements by Calef indicate that
Sir William when young, perhaps while but a learner of ship-carpentry in
Maine, received a written communication which led him to go to Europe and
obtain means whereby to seek for a wreck, the finding of which brought him
fortune and title. He long and carefully preserved the prophetic paper,
and, when flush in means, paid the writer of it more than two hundred
pounds. From the same or a similar source he fore-learned his becoming a
commander, governor of New England, and other events of his life.
Information of that kind usually comes to such as are mediumistic enough
to be susceptible of guidance, or at least of swayings, by the
intelligence from whom the prophecy issues. Sir Phips may have been
himself mediumistic. The probable fact that the accusing girls named the
governor's wife as one from whom they received annoyance bespeaks
probability that she too had place in the class of impressibles.
Therefore, one inclined to prosecute such speculations is here furnished
with a basis on which to argue that the Infinite Prescience which
permitted the advent of Salem witchcraft, also embraced fit instruments in
fit position for controlling its course, and also for putting a stop to it
as soon as it should have outwrought enough of seeming evil to beget the
good which Infinite Benevolence purposed to bestow upon mortals. Spirits
take to themselves much credit for the part they performed in changing the
opinions and course of the authorities and people here in the autumn of
1692, and the early months of the following year.
The adjournment of the court, and no law permitting another session for
months, gave opportunity for reflection. Also the actual and contemplated
arrests of many of high standing and most estimable character were matters
of sobering influence, so that reason resumed its sway; no more were tried
for witchcraft, and all prisoners were set free. This may have occurred
either with or without special action of spirits upon the public mind.
We now regard the primal motive as nearly or quite devoid of moral
quality. It probably was either a natural and proper desire to get access
to dear ones left on earth, or some experimental or some scientific
impulse to test the power which a spirit could exercise over those encased
in mortal forms. When, before the days of ether, good Dr. Flag had fixed
his forceps firmly on our raging tooth, and given a long, strong pull till
out of breath, our pains, our agony, our heavy blows upon his hand and
arms, failed to make him let go. He was shockingly wicked at that moment,
for he not only held on and kept us in torture, but pulled again without
success; and even then he would not let go, but pulled yet once more, and
the tooth came out. Spirits, getting access to mortals, may have judged
that only through transient evils and sufferings could man get relief from
severe chronic maladies, and that, when opportunity occurred, their
kindest possible treatment of men was homoeopathic--was the curing like
with like--curing evil by inflicting evil. They may have been so
shockingly wicked as to do that.
Spirits may often, and generally explore and operate from motives not
perceptibly different from such as actuate their human counterparts. The
devoted vivisectionist seldom shrinks from entering upon, or gives up
pursuit of, knowledge because the scalpel agonizes his living subject. So,
too, a spirit in pursuit of knowledge--if, either casually or by intended
experiment, finding himself controlling the will and organs of Tituba or
some other impressible mortal, and thus opening up a new field for
exploration--might be strongly inclined to see how far and efficiently he
could wield forces of nature so as himself to sway the forms and affairs
of embodied men. Each gain in power or skill for acting amid terrestrial
beings, scenes, and objects, would naturally thrill him with pleasure, and
incite him to follow up researches in the spirit of science. That spirit
is prone to look upon sufferings which its own processes occasion, as but
temporary incidents, and of little account in comparison with the
beneficent results which its triumphs will procure. Extension of their own
fields of knowledge and influence was perhaps among the chief motives
which prompted spirits to perform the wonders that startled, frenzied, and
agonized the subjects and observers of their operations in 1692. Another
may have been self-gratification by revisiting well-known scenes; and yet
another, beneficence to man by opening for his use a new source of
knowledge and wisdom.
Realms unseen are the abodes of sympathetic as well as of scientific
beings; and as soon as a false creed had been forced to disclose its
falsity, the former may have seen occasion to dissuade the latter from
acting further upon benighted dwellers in mortal forms, until time should
bring man to calm reflection and retrospection, and to possession of such
mental freedom as would embolden him to meet unawed, strange visitants
from unseen realms, and extend to even such a friendly hand. The lapse of
a hundred and fifty years brought such mental freedom to us, purchased by
the sufferings of our fathers, that, undeterred by fears of the halter, we
now can invite to our earthly homes the loved and saintly ones who have
passed on to realms above, hold blissful and uplifting communings with
them, and learn their justification of the wonderful ways of God both to
and through the children of men and in all nature.
Whatever the ruling motive of the chief direct producer of Salem
Witchcraft may have been, the resistless power which moves all things,
including malignant motives, onward toward the production of ultimate
good, caused the fierce conflict we are considering to soon put an
effectual stop to prosecutions for witchcraft throughout all Christian
lands, and shattered to fragments a pernicious creed which had long
enslaved the Christian mind. Costly as that struggle was in pains,
sicknesses, tortures, anguish, physical exhaustions, domestic distresses,
social alienations, church discords, languishments in prison, fears,
frenzies, and even life, the price may not have been high for the
wide-spread and abiding blessings of mental freedom which it obtained.