Part 36

WITCHCRAFT'S AUTHOR.

What personality or persons, and of what rank in the scale of being, was or were primal and chief in originating and enacting the famous Salem Tragedy? If, as the generation then living believed, it was a specially great controller and commander of all invisible foes to God, Christ, and Christians everywhere, and who, having been effectually baffled in Europe, resolved to keep America from passing into the control of his enemies, God and Christ, and to thoroughly banish the hated intruders from these his more exclusive and prized domains; if it was that being, his strategy seemingly was to "beard the lion in his den," to make bold and fierce attack on one of the strongest fortresses of Christians, presuming that capture of such a post would lead to easy expulsion of all trespassers from the whole of his broad lands on this side the Atlantic. His apparent policy, judged of by the place and circumstances of attack, was to subdue the strongest first, and thus so intimidate as to frighten all others back to their former homes or the homes of their fathers. But such a devil was not there. Many beliefs prevalent two centuries ago are now obsolete. Such a devil as witchcraft was imputed to, and who was believed to put forth greater power over all Indian and heathen lands than God exercised there, receives cognition in few brains to-day. Nevertheless, faith in the presence, power, and malignity of such a being, present and at work among them, was the main force that enabled his contestants to unwittingly put an end to faith in the existence of any one special foe to all goodness, whose power and dominion over the earth and its inhabitants very nearly rivaled those of the Omnipotent One, and whose malice was a near counterpoise to complete supernal benevolence.

Reason demands that the creature shall be inferior to its creator, that devil shall be less than God; and she in most persons refers all things and all events, in the ultimate analysis of causes and agents, back to One Great Over-Soul--one God.

If an all-wise and omnipotent One, being full of mercy too, proposed to subject an erroneous and enslaving human creed to a strain which should shatter it past restoration to strength, and thus to set its subjected holders free, highest wisdom may have seen that bright intellect, true courage, firm nerves, unfaltering devotion to sense of duty, and strong faith heavenward, were needful instrumentalities for best accomplishment of the design. The abode of people than whom none elsewhere were better prepared, more able, or more willing to fight the devil himself promptly, unfalteringly, and persistently, may have been a spot where supernal prescience saw that men, as blinded instruments, could best be made to effect their own and the world's emancipation from a time-hardened and disastrous public error. The mental and moral strength, and other good fighting qualities of its occupants generally, may have caused the Village to be fixed upon as the most favorable battle-ground available for the projected struggle.

Neither God nor the devil, however, was author in any sense pertinent to the present inquiry. Our ifs, and the sentences which follow them, cannot meet the demands nor the needs of modern readers. Faith, in direct personal action upon either individual human beings or communities and nations by any incomprehensibly vast and ubiquitous intelligent being either malignant or benevolent, is not as prevalent now as it was in many generations past. God, or a mighty devil either, as constant, immediate, and personal performer on humanity's stage of operations, is not extensively recognized by the deep thinkers of our age.

Indeed, modern thought has come very low down in its search for witchcraft's author. Turning from God and the devil, the reputed workers of great marvels in ages long past, our interpreters of America's earlier wonders have fancied that they find the former existence of little girls whose powers to sway the human mind and agitate a land, so approximated those of omnipotence, and whose malignities so perceptibly equaled his of Cloven Hoof, that they of their own wills concocted and enacted scenes of simulated pains, distortions, losses of sight, hearing, and speech; and also mimicked the movements of birds and beasts, and performed such impositions and tricks innumerable as made their homes and neighborhood a horrid pandemonium; in doing which they manifested such prodigious power, skill, and perfect acting, that these little untaught and untrained ones outled in skill, all the world's most expert tricksters, and, in malignity, the most devilish human monsters our world ever contained, in any age or land.

Somewhere between the extremes of strength and weakness, of benevolence and malignity, we perhaps can find beings more likely to have directly produced the marvels in question than either God, devil, or little girls. Consciousness and experience indicate to most persons that an all-dominating power exists, and bounds and hedges in the spheres of freedom and ability which are occupied by finite beings. Something above and beyond all finites says to each of them, "Thus far, but no farther, canst thou go." Within spheres thus limited there abide many grades of intelligent and affectional beings, ranging in differences of powers and dispositions as widely as any mortal's thoughts can conceive. Vast, countless hosts of intelligences, though vailed from our outer vision, may be, and evidences are very strong that such ever are abiding dwellers above, below, around, and in the midst of earth's corporeal inhabitants. Within their unperceived abodes such ones may actuate the forces which evolve many less marked events, as well as all special providences, special judgments--miracles so called, and such marvels generally as were formerly imputed to either God or the devil as immediate author. We have no faith that either of the two had any closer or more special connection with witchcraft matters than with the ordinary doings of man.

The undefinable source of all things which are contained in the vast creation, emitted all forth subject to laws, and surrounded and infiltrated by forces which enable the world's progressing inhabitants, visible and invisible, to purchase, through study, toil, absorptions from enfolding auras, and other furnished helps, both knowledge and powers just as fast and great as their advancements and growing needs from time to time call for more light and for augmented powers.

Finite beings naturally gravitate to where every instrumentality needful to their highest well-being can be obtained by the co-operative efforts and aspirations of finites, seen and unseen, for learning laws and manipulating forces which pervade their places of residence. Generations upon generations, whose mortal forms long centuries ago moldered away, may still be active laborers in and about the men of to-day, and may be, and may always have been, the immediate manifesters of all supernal intelligence and marvelous force issuing from regions which the eye of flesh lacks power to scan. One of the old prophets of a prior generation made known to John the Revelator what he recorded; and agents of like nature, that is, departed human spirits, may have been the only revealers of supernal truths, facts, and visions to man, and the only workers of the signs or extra-marvelous manifestations of force and knowledge which have been deemed credentials from the Omniscient and Omnipotent. We believe in God and in the issuance of knowledge and force from him to man, but have not faith in his immediate personal putting forth of either, in accomplishment of such events as are often called special providences. Such events occur--they often come both uncalled for and in response to prayer--to yearnings "uttered or unexpressed;" but the prayers and yearnings reach, stimulate, and help both ambient forces and ascended spirits to let in or to confer the needed protection or restoration. The air all around us is alive with hearers of prayer, and no humble and fervent aspiration for help to come forth from the mystic abodes of spiritual beings and occult forces ever fails to bring aid and elevation. The purer and humbler the aspiration, the nearer does it penetrate toward the Great Source of being, life, and bliss, and the more powerful and beneficent are those whose responses and emanations can reach and aid the petitioner.

The same forces and laws which permit the sensible action of good spirits among men, just as freely and extensively permit the presence and action of malicious ones. God aids the good and restrains the wicked just as much and no more on the other side of the grave than on this. Freedom, whether to comply with or to contend against either natural or moral law, is as great in spirit spheres as in our midst on earth. Any spirit, either benevolent or malignant, is as free to use the forces and laws which permit spirit manifestations, as any navigator is, be he morally good or bad, to avail himself of winds, currents, tides, and the like, for passing over seas to a land not his own, and acting out his characteristic purposes there.

Our position, fortified by the facts and reasonings in the preceding pages, is, that spirits--departed human beings--generated and outwrought Salem witchcraft. That is our answer to the question of its authorship.

THE MOTIVE.

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.