Part 4

Biblical.

DEVIL, or SATAN. Any opponent or antagonist, whether seen or unseen.

WITCH. Employer of mysterious acquisitions in teaching heresy.

WITCHCRAFT. Using mysterious acquisitions in teaching heresy.

By Cotton Mather.

DEVIL. Heaven-born, fallen, mighty, malignant; and yet dependent on human help to act upon physical man or anything material.

WITCH. A covenanter with the devil.

WITCHCRAFT. Helping or employing the devil to do harm--either.

By Robert Calef.

DEVIL. Heaven-born, fallen, mighty, malignant; but independent of man in action upon this world.

WITCH. Seducer of men from worship of God "by any extraordinary sign."

WITCHCRAFT. "Maligning and impugning the word, work, or worship of God, and by any extraordinary sign seeking to seduce men from worship of Him."

By Thomas Hutchinson.

DEVIL. (None, as witchcraft enactor.)

WITCH. (By inference.) A woman possessing "a malignant touch," or "a crabbed temper," or being "a poor wretch" or "bed-ridden;" also, "a cunning child."

WITCHCRAFT. Producing "pains," "nausea," &c. Scolding, playing tricks.

By C. W. Upham.

DEVIL. (Not specially concerned in witchcraft.)

WITCH. (By inference.) Subject acted upon by a girl or woman trained in a school for practice "in the wonders of necromancy, magic, and spiritualism."

WITCHCRAFT. Suffering from the tricks and malicious purposes of girls schooled in magic.

By us.

DEVIL. (Not specially concerned.)

WITCH. A medium or a human being whose body becomes at times the tool of some finite, disembodied, intelligent being, or whose mind senses knowledge in spirit land.

WITCHCRAFT. The manifestation of supernal knowledge, force, and purposes through a borrowed or usurped mortal form; or the giving utterance to knowledge sensed in through one's spiritual organs of sense.

Our purpose is to adduce strong evidences from the primitive records of American marvels, that lesser beings than the devil of Mather and Calef, and more powerful ones than the operators designated by Hutchinson and Upham, were actual performers of the principal manifestations that have been known as witchcrafts. Those whom we shall present were earth-born, on either this planet or some other, had previously passed out from encasements of flesh, but obtained control of and actuated physical forms belonging to embodied children, women, and men. Such beings, graduates from earths, are as varied in character and purposes as the survivors on their native planets, as varied as mortals are to-day. They may have ranged in character from dark devils up to bright angels, and have come, and gone, and operated by natural, though occult, forces and processes; they being as free to use such as we are the forces and implements of external nature. Many of our positions will be based upon psychological powers and susceptibilities which are far from being generally known to pertain to man; and we may fail to keep always within the bounds of things credible to-day, but yet shall never consciously go further than observed or credited facts will sustain us. If successful, we shall show that benighted man formerly, in good conscience, made certain events fearful curses, which, when rightly understood and used, may become gladdening and rich boons to mortals.

WITCHCRAFT MARVEL-WORKERS.

Brief notice of several authors to whom the present age is indebted for knowledge of most of the facts and beliefs which will be presented in the following pages, may be appropriate here. Their competency, traits, and circumstances, as inferred chiefly from their writings pertaining to witchcraft, are all, or nearly all, which we propose to state.

Two of these who lived in witchcraft times, a third in an intervening century, and a fourth in our own age, viz., Cotton Mather, Robert Calef, Thomas Hutchinson, and Charles W. Upham, will severally be noticed, because their works have been specially instructive and suggestive, and have had very much influence in shaping public opinions and conclusions in reference to the mysterious matters under consideration. Each of the above-named authors either lacked, or failed to use, some light which is now available for disclosing contents in vailed recesses of nature--light beginning to shine in where darkness long brooded, and to elicit thence such knowledge as promises to show that the theories of most witchcraft expounders have been such as now may be, and should be, superseded by more broad, sound, and philosophical ones.