Witchcraft of New England Explained by Modern Spiritualism Part 21

Alas, that a man's own strong arm should prove his ruin!"

We shall show shortly that this commentator here overlooked an important point. Burroughs himself made statement, in his own defense, that an Indian stood by and lifted the gun; therefore the chief question is not whether Burroughs was himself strong enough to lift it as alleged, but whether he told the truth when he said that he had help. The chief question bears upon his veracity, not upon his strength. The Mathers believed him on that point.

The allegations in the indictment were for witchcrafts invisibly practiced upon members of the famous CIRCLE, and not for visible feats of strength.

All the girls testified to seeing and suffering from his apparition. Also some who confessed to having been _witches_ themselves (for some accused ones were over-persuaded to speak of their own clairvoyant observations and experiences as witchcrafts, and therefore of themselves as witches),--some such testified thus, as Mather says (p. 279, _Salem Witchcraft_). "He was accused by eight of the confessing witches as being head actor at some of their h.e.l.lish rendezvous, and who had promise of being a king in Satan's kingdom now going to be erected; he was accused by nine persons for extraordinary liftings, ... and for other things, ...

until about thirty testimonies were brought in against him."

Mather's account of the witchcraft at Salem was drawn up at the request of William Phips, then governor of the province; and two prominent judges at the trials indorsed it as follows:--

"The reverend and worthy author having, at the direction of his Excellency the governor, so far obliged the public as to give some account of the sufferings brought upon the country by witchcrafts, and of the trials which have pa.s.sed upon several executed for the same:

"Upon perusal thereof, _we find the matters of fact and evidence truly reported_, and a prospect given of the methods of conviction used in the proceedings of the court at Salem.

"Boston, Oct. 11, 1692.

"WILLIAM STOUGHTON, "SAMUEL SEWALL."

Manifestation of one cla.s.s of phenomena presented at those trials has not been noticed in the preceding pages; viz., the appearance of the spirits of particular departed ones to many of the accusing girls. It is obviously true that those clairvoyants were very much oftener beholders of the spirits of those still dwelling in mortal forms than of those who had escaped from thralldom to the flesh. Still there were then some cases in which the spirits of some who had been known in that vicinity, and whose bodies were moldering beneath its soil, were both seen and heard. Among others, two former wives of Burroughs were named. Mather says (p. 282), "Several of the bewitched had given in their testimony that they had been troubled with the apparitions of two women, who said they were G. B.'s two wives; and that he had been the death of them.... Now, G. B. had been infamous for the barbarous usage of his two successive wives, all the country over. (p. 286.) ... 'Twas testified, that, keeping his two successive wives in _a strange kind of slavery_, he would, when he came home from abroad, pretend to tell the talk which any had with them; that he has brought them to the point of death by his harsh dealings with his wives, and then made people promise that, in case death should happen, they would say nothing of it; that he used all means to make his wives write, sign, seal, and swear to a covenant _never to reveal any of his secrets_; that his wives had privately complained unto the neighbors about _frightly apparitions_ of evil spirits, with which their house was sometimes infested," &c.

Some of these allegations probably rested on firmer bases of facts than have generally been perceived. Though we regard Burroughs as having been one of the kindest and best of men, we do not entirely withhold credence from the general import of such allegations regarding him. They point both to extraordinary unfoldments within him, and to probable handlings and control of his outer form at times by some intelligence not his own.

"_Strange kind of slavery_" would naturally result, in those days, from a husband's telling his wife, on returning to his home, what conversation she had held with others during his absence, _if his statements were true_; but if not true, the wife would only laugh at his pretensions, and make no complaints to neighbors. If both true and oft repeated, such mysterious utterances might well enslave, worry, and bring close to death's door a sensitive wife; and the husband, however affectionate and kind, may at times have been as powerless to shape his course of procedure as is the dried leaf when whirled onward by strong autumnal breezes. Acts not his own the world would hold him responsible for; and no wonder that, in his age, a spiritualistically unfolded, an illumined man, and one also whose form might be moved, as was that of Aga.s.siz, by will not his own, should strive in all possible ways to prevent wives, and any other people who knew them, from revealing any of his peculiar and marvelous _secrets_; no wonder that he sought to make his wives "write, sign, seal, and swear"

never to do it; because the noising abroad of such powers as he possessed, and such performances as were attendant upon him, if publicly known, would be profaned, would destroy his usefulness, and endanger, if not take, his life. Thanks that, in our day, danger of a hangman's rope does not threaten one because of his high spiritual illumination.

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 sh.o.r.es of Cas...o...b..y, 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 s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.sociation 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.

The opinions of different writers as to the real character and worth of this man have been very diverse. While some have accounted him an hypocritical wizard, others have deemed him a man of beautiful and beneficent life. Mather regarded him with aversion, and says, "Glad should I have been if I had never known the name of this man." Afterward the same author charged Burroughs with "tergiversations, contradictions, and falsehoods." Sullivan, in his History of Maine, says, that "he was a man of bad character, and of a cruel disposition." Hutchinson a.s.serted, on insufficient grounds, that when under examination, "he was confounded, and used many twistings and turnings." But Fowler says, "All the weight of character enlisted against him fails to counteract the favorable impression made by his Christian conduct during his imprisonment, and at the time of his execution." Calef says, that, the day before execution, Margaret Jacobs, who had testified against him, came to the prisoner, acknowledging that she had belied him, and asking his forgiveness; "who not only forgave her, but also _prayed with and for her_." The same adducer of "_Facts_" states that, "when upon the ladder, he made a speech for the clearing of his innocency, with such solemn and serious expressions as were to the admiration of all present; his prayer (which he concluded by repeating the Lord's prayer) was so well worded, and uttered with such composedness and such (at least seeming) fervency of spirit, as was very affecting, and drew tears from many, so that it seemed to some that the spectators would hinder the execution. _The accusers said the black man stood and dictated to him._ As soon as he was turned off, Mr.

Cotton Mather, being mounted upon a horse, addressed himself to the people, partly to declare that he (Burroughs) was no ordained minister, and partly to possess the people of his guilt, saying that the devil has often been transformed into an angel of light; and this somewhat appeased the people, and the executions went on." His prayers, and his whole deportment and spirit during these last trying scenes, indicate his possession of a calm, strong soul, which bore him, on the wings of innocence and piety, into a region of serenity which his traducers and murderers were unfited to enter and knew not of. The brief account which Upham's researches enabled him to furnish of this man's life prior to the witchcraft mania presents still further evidences of his sterling worth.

That author says, "Papers on file in the State House prove that in the District of Maine, where he lived and preached before and after his settlement at the Village, he was regarded with confidence by his neighbors, and looked up to as a friend and counselor.... He was self-denying, generous, and public-spirited, laboring in humility and with zeal in the midst of great privations." Land had been granted to him, and when the town asked him to exchange a part of it for other lands, "he freely gave it back, not desiring any land anywhere else, nor anything else in consideration thereof."

Scanning Burroughs as well as accessible knowledge of him now permits, we judge that he was a quiet, peaceful, persistent laborer for the good of his fellow-men,--a humble, trustful, sincere servant of G.o.d,--a rare embodiment of the prevailing perceptions, sentiments, virtues, and graces which haloed the form of the Nazarene.

Why did the people of his time take his life? What were the accusations against him? In addition to the testimony that he was felt by many of the girls as a tormenting specter, he was accused of putting forth superhuman physical strength. Cotton Mather says,--

"He was a very puny man, yet he had often done things beyond the strength of a giant. A gun of about seven feet barrel, and so heavy that strong men could not steadily hold it out with both hands, there were several testimonies given in by persons of credit and honor, that he made nothing of taking up such a gun behind the lock with one hand, and holding it out like a pistol, at arm's end. In his vindication he was _foolish enough to say that an Indian was there, and held it out at the same time_; whereas, none of the spectators ever saw any such Indian; but they _supposed_ the black man (as the witches call the devil, and they generally say he resembles an Indian) might have given him that a.s.sistance."

That paragraph is very instructive. All subsequent historians, beginning back with Calef, have mentioned, what is no doubt true, that Burroughs was a small man, and yet was const.i.tutionally very strong--was remarkable for physical powers even in his college days; and they have fancied that on that ground they have satisfactorily accounted for his marvelous exploits; they seemingly overlook the fact that it was Burroughs himself, and not other people, who said that "an Indian," invisible to others, stood by and held the gun out. Historians have explained the good and true man's seeming physical feats at the expense of his _veracity_. Heaven help the innocent when in the hands of such traducing commentators. The question is not what Burroughs could have done unaided, but it is whether _he told truth_ when he said an Indian helped him. His whole character and life argue that he would not have spoken as he is alleged to have done, unless he had been conscious of the presence of an Indian within or by himself, putting forth, in part at least, the strength which raised and supported that heavy gun. He said that such was the fact. What though all spectators failed to see the Indian? It was a disembodied Indian--a spirit Indian--and therefore necessarily invisible by external eyes. The non-perception of him by other men standing by is no evidence that the spirit Indian was not there; for spiritual beings are discernible by the inner or spirit optics alone, and not by the outer; so taught Paul.

The fact that bystanders supposed the devil helped Burroughs, or performed the lifting feat through him, implies that they, as well as he, believed that something more was done than mere human strength accomplished. In the present day, when spirits are very often putting forth strength through forms of flesh which executes performances quite as marvelous as any which were alleged to have been enacted through Burroughs, his a.s.sertion that a foreign, hidden intelligence worked within and through his form, conjoined with the belief of beholders that some spiritual being was operating therein, any array of facts now, proving, even to perfect demonstration, that the little man was enormously strong, though it may indicate that he did not require foreign aid to lift and hold out the gun, does nothing toward impeaching his own veracity when he said he had help.

Surely one _can_ have help in the performance of what he could do alone.

If any man says he had help in a particular case, his ability to have performed the special feat alone affords no indication that his statement is untrue; and yet the spirit of witchcraft history implies that it does.

Prove Burroughs to have been const.i.tutionally as strong as the strongest mortal that ever lived,--yes, as strong as the strongest of all created beings,--ay, as strong as the Omnipotent One himself, and even then you have done nothing which shows or tends to show that another intelligent worker may not have co-operated with him in the performance of marvelous feats. We say again that the question raised by his statement is not whether he, in and of himself, was competent to his seeming feats, but it is whether an Indian spirit did or did not help him. Burroughs says he had help from such a one. Bystanders supposed that the devil helped him; but he who sensed the helper's presence called him an Indian; and he was a much more trustworthy testifier as to that helper's proper cla.s.sification in the scale of being, than a combined world of men devoid of spirit-vision, putting forth only their inferences regarding an unseen personage. Imputation of this man's liftings to his const.i.tutional strength solely is an imputation of false testimony to the truthful man himself, and historic arguments, if valid, make him a liar.

Who helped the little clergyman lift and hold the heavy gun? He says it was "_an Indian_." But Mather says, "none of the spectators ever saw any such Indian; but they _supposed the black man_ (as the witches call the _devil_, and they generally say he _resembles an Indian_) might have given him that a.s.sistance." That sentence illumines many a dark spot in our ancient witchcraft. The witches, or clairvoyants, whether accusers or accused, were not accustomed to speak of seeing _the devil_. It is fairly questionable whether any one among them ever spoke of seeing _the devil_, or of having any interview with _him_, or knowledge of _him_ obtained by personal observation. It was _man_ whom they saw. They spoke of the black _man_. Mather says that was their name for _the devil_. We doubt it. What they saw failed to present a semblance of Cloven-foot, with horns, tail, and hoofs, and did not suggest to them an idea of _the devil_. The subst.i.tution of devil for black man, or the regarding the two as synonymous, was Mather's work, and not that of the clairvoyants. And who was _the black man_? Mather informs us that those whose optics could see him "generally say he _resembles an Indian_." If he resembled an Indian, is not the inference very fair that he was an Indian? Yes. "Black man"

obviously was applied by clairvoyants to designate any Indian spirit, and spirits of human beings probably were the only spirits whom their inner vision ever beheld. Thanks to you, Mather, for recording that explanatory sentence. The devil you fought against was your brother man--was earth-born--and when seen and conferred with not very formidable. Your clairvoyants, or witches, saw and heard occult men, women, children, beasts, and birds, but never spoke of seeing your ecclesiastical devil.

The human beings whom they beheld varied in size from little children to tall men, and in complexion from black to white--even up to glorious brightness. Your informants never used the word _devil_ in their descriptions. You misreported them, as Cheever did t.i.tuba; Calef followed your lead, and subsequent historians have copied from both you and him.

You also state that Burroughs was "_foolish_ enough to say that an Indian"

helped him. Was it foolish in him to state the truth? Your own witnesses en ma.s.se say his helper _resembled_ an Indian--he said the a.s.sistant _was_ an Indian. Why didn't you take the words of your own witnesses as corroborative of the man's statement? They surely were so, and they give us a true presentation of the case. The reason of your course is obvious; the creed of your times deemed any spirit visitant or helper to be the devil himself.

A subsequent charge against "G. B." (George Burroughs) was, that "when they" (the accusing girls) "cried out of G. B. biting them, the print of his teeth would be seen on the flesh of the complainers; and just such a set of teeth as G. B.'s would then appear upon them." As in the case of little Dorcas Good, here we have it charged that indentations on the flesh of complainants corresponded to the size and shape of the teeth belonging to the person who was accused of biting. If G. B.'s spirit-form or apparition was made to approach and bite the accusers,--and it probably was,--his spirit-teeth would naturally, and, as we apprehend, necessarily have the exact size and form of his external ones.

Another charge is embraced in the following quotation:--

"His wives" (he had buried two) "had privately complained unto the neighbors about frightly apparitions of evil spirits with which their house was sometimes infested; and many such things had been whispered among the neighborhood."

We have previously quoted but did not comment upon the above which relates to the appearance of apparitions. That statement may as well indicate that the wives themselves, or any other persons resident in his house, were the attracting or helping instrumentalities for producing the "frightly"

sights, as that Burroughs himself was, provided only that some one or more of them were mediumistic. But the probabilities are, that the elements emanated from him which rendered such presentations practicable.

His telling the purport of talks held in the house during his absence indicates that his inner ears were opened to catch either the spirit of mundane sounds, or sounds made by spirits, as could those of Margaret Jones, Ann Hibbins, Joan of Arc, and many others. The same power in him is indicated in the following extract:--

"One Mr. Ruck, brother-in-law to this G. B., testified that G. B., and he himself, and his sister, G. B.'s wife, going out for two or three miles to gather strawberries, Ruck, with his sister, the wife of G. B., rode home very softly" (slowly) "with G. B. on foot in their company. G. B. stepped aside a little into the bushes. Whereupon they halted and hollowed for him. He not answering, they went homewards with a quickened pace without any expectation of seeing him in a considerable while. And yet, when they were got near home, to their astonishment they found him on foot with them, having a basket of strawberries. (Philip was found at Azotus.) G. B.

immediately then fell to chiding his wife on account of what she had been speaking to her brother of him on the road. Which when they wondered at, he said he _knew their thoughts_. Ruck, being startled at that, made some reply, intimating that the devil himself did not know so far; but G. B.

answered, My G.o.d makes known your thoughts unto me."

True and luminous fact! The humble, pious, intelligent, illumined Burroughs, far-looker into the realm of causes--an observer of things behind the vail which bounds the reach of mortal senses and pure reason--stated that _G.o.d_--not the devil--made known to him the thoughts of other and absent people. In other words, his intended meaning probably was, that G.o.d's worlds and laws provide for legitimate inflowings, to some minds, of knowledge of the thoughts and purposes of other minds, even though far distant in s.p.a.ce. The character, or rather the actual qualities of this man, if we read him correctly, were truthfulness, humility, and piety. When such a one deliberately said to a brother-in-law, under such circ.u.mstances as stated above, "_My G.o.d makes known your thoughts unto me_," he indicated his consciousness of possessing self-experienced knowledge of the existence of an instructive and momentous fact pertaining to human capabilities. Only few persons, relatively, have had proof by personal experience of the extent to which the inner perceptives of embodied mortals may reach forth and imbibe knowledge by processes common to freed spirits, and in the realms of their abode. What the unfoldings of Burroughs permitted him to do and know is possible with many others while resident in mortal forms. If he could, some others may, come into that condition in which thought itself shall be heard speaking itself out to them, in which they shall be listeners to "_cogitatio loquens_"--self-speaking thought--which Swedenborg says abounds in spirit spheres; in which thought from supernal fonts shall make itself known to the consciousness of an embodied man, and become matter of knowledge with him. Others, and more in number, may have the inner ear opened and hear the words of spirits.

With ears competently attuned, the meek and truth-loving Burroughs was occasionally able to receive not only knowledge of the thoughts of mortals in ways unusual, but also, as we judge, to receive spiritual truths copiously from purer fountains than his cotemporaries generally could get access to; and he thence obtained such truths as relaxed in him many credal bonds which firmly held most of his cotemporary preachers to the creeds, forms, ordinances, and customs common in the churches then. Many questions put to him at his trial were, obviously, designed to draw forth evidence of his lax regard for and inattention to the accepted ordinances of religion. He admitted both that it was long since he had sat at the communion table, and that some of his own children had not been baptized.

We presume that he was inwardly, wisely, and beneficently prompted to walk somewhat astray from the narrow and soul-cramping paths then trod by most New England clergymen. The spirit of the Lord was giving him more liberty than most of his cotemporaries felt privileged to exercise. Using his greater facilities than theirs for instruction in heavenly things, he probably advanced far beyond his brethren generally in sinking the _letter_, that is, sinking the forms, and ceremonies, and ordinances of religion beneath its divine spirit, and his less illumined brethren suspected him of an abandonment of religion itself, and of alliance with the great enemy of all goodness. Some among them apparently looked upon him as a combined heretic and wizard, withheld all sympathy from, and exulted over the doom of, this double culprit.

But this victim may have been, and probably was, as high above most of his crucifiers as freedom is above bondage, as the spirit above the letter, as light above darkness, as sincerity above hypocrisy. The blood of such as Martha Corey, Rebecca Nurse, Mary Easty, GEORGE BURROUGHS, and probably many others who in company with these took their exit from life shrouded in witchcraft's blackening mists, may go far toward making Gallows Hill a Mount Calvary--a spot on which zeal urged on the worse to crucify their betters in true G.o.dliness--betters in all that fits immortal souls for gladdening welcome into realms above.

SUMMARY.

1648. MARGARET JONES manifested startling efficacy of hands and medicines, consternating keenness of perceptives, predictions subsequently verified, and the presence of a vanishing child. Such was her witchcraft; and for this she was executed.

1656. ANN HIBBINS comprehended conversation between persons too distant from her to be heard normally, ... and was hanged.

1662. ANN COLE had her form possessed and spoken through by either the devil or other disembodied ones, and by them made both to express thoughts that never were in her mind, and to further the conviction and execution of the Greensmiths.

1671-2. ELIZABETH KNAP'S external form was strangely convulsed and agonized by an old man, and also spoken through by one who called himself a pretty black boy.

1680. WILLIAM MORSE, in his home, where lived his good wife, who had been called a witch, saw pots, andirons, tools, and household furniture generally, seem to take on wills of their own, and rudely play many a lively gymnastic game.

1688. JOHN GOODWIN saw four of his children subjected and tortured immediately subsequent to the scolding of one of them by a wild Irish woman; and the same one afterward was made to play the deuce in Cotton Mather's own house. Mrs. Glover was hanged for bewitching; and also she _continued to torture the same children after her spirit had left its outer form_.

The above cases occurred prior to the holding of "The Circle" at Salem, before the establishment of a school at which the arts of "necromancy, magic, and spiritualism" might be learned. Generally the performers named thus far had no visible confederates. If sole actors, their geniuses were vast, and the fonts of malice or of benevolence in some of them were both very capacious and copiously overflowing.

1692. t.i.tUBA, the slave, avowed having been forced by something like a man, and his four female spectral aids, to pinch the two little girls in her master's family at the very time when they were first mysteriously afflicted. She furnished strong evidence that a tall man with white hair and serge coat, invisibly to others, frequently visited her, compelled her aid, and kindled and long kept adding fuel to the fires of witchcraft at Salem Village. For this she was imprisoned thirteen months, and then sold to pay her jail fees.

SARAH GOOD was seen as a specter, was accused of hurting by occult organs and processes; became invisible by those standing guard over her; announced to the magistrates the great explanatory fact that none but the accusers and the accused, that is, none but clairvoyants, could see the actual inflictors of the pains endured. Also she fore-sensed a fact that occurred when Mr. Noyes died in an after year. She was hanged.