Lately I happened to read Washington Irving's famous story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," about Ichabod Crane and his terrifying steeplechase with the Headless Horsemen. It's a very well written and amusing story, well worth a look. Ichabod, who is depicted in less than flattering terms, is said to be "a perfect master of Cotton Mather's 'History of New England Witchcraft'." I was sufficiently intrigued to buy a digital version of one of Mather's many books on the subject and read it myself.
This particular book is known today as On Witchcraft, though the original title was Wonders of the Invisible World. Its relevance to the subject matter of this blog is twofold: First, it illuminates the attitude of the Puritan settlers of New England toward all manner of things that might be termed "paranormal" today. To be brief, that attitude was one of sheer superstitious terror and fanatical rejection. Second, it includes a fairly detailed and apparently well-attested account of what would now be called a "crisis apparition." This account has little or nothing to do with the main themes of the book, and seems to be included only because Mather found it so interesting.
Of course, it should be noted that Mather's book is crowded with strange portents and inexplicable occurrences, including the case of a bird that began speaking in a human voice and urging people to read Paul's letter to the Colossians and another case in which a cat (said to be a witch in feline form) attacked a man in his bed and was driven off only by his fervent appeals to the Holy Trinity. In other words, we can hardly take Mather as a wholly reliable narrator. Nevertheless, the crisis apparition story has a level of detail that makes it, to me, more credible than some of the other accounts.
Cotton Mather
Let's set the stage by looking at attitudes in New England circa 1692. This was at the tail end of the notorious witch hysteria that gripped Salem, Massachusetts, and surrounding villages, resulting ultimately in the execution of 19 people and two dogs. (The dogs were apparently guilty of witchcraft, as well.) Many others were arrested and held in prison for months, facing the very real possibility of death, only to be released when the tumult finally died down.
It was in this atmosphere that Cotton Mather took it upon himself to write a book defending the witch trials, which were beginning to attract criticism from people who felt the whole matter had gone too far. He was only 29 at the time, but had already made a name for himself after graduating from Harvard at 15 and following in the footsteps of his famous father, Increase Mather, by becoming a noted preacher. Though as far as we know he had no direct involvement in the trials themselves, he did have access to court records, and he knew many of the principals involved.
He informs us that,
I have indeed set myself to countermine the whole PLOT of the Devil against New England, in every branch of it, as far as one of my darkness can comprehend such a work of darkness....
We have been advised by some credible Christians yet alive, that a malefactor, accused of witchcraft as well as murder, and executed in this place more than forty years ago, did give notice of an horrible PLOT against the country by WITCHCRAFT, and a foundation of WITCHCRAFT then laid, which if it were not seasonably discovered, would probably blow up, and pull down all the churches in the country. And we have now with horror seen the discovery of such a witchcraft! An army of devils is horribly broke in upon the place which is the center, and after a sword, the first-born of our English settlements: and the houses of the good people there are filled with the doleful shrieks of their children and servants, tormented by invisible hands, with tortures altogether preternatural.
(Note: In all my quotations, I've modernized the spelling, punctuation, and capitalization for easier reading.)
An important theme of Mather's book is that there is not just one devil, but a horde of them – legions, in fact, as the New Testament itself assures us in the story of the man possessed by a "legion" of demons. These evil beings are everywhere; we are cribbed, cabined, and confined by them; they are with us in our homes, in our shops, even in our churches.
When we speak of the Devil, tis a name of a multitude; it means not one individual devil, so potent and scient, as perhaps a Manichee would imagine; but it means a kind, which a multitude belongs unto. Alas, the devils, they swarm about us like the frogs of Egypt, in the most retired of our chambers. Are we at our boards [= dining tables]? There will be devils to tempt us unto sensuality. Are we in our beds? There will be devils to tempt us unto carnality. Are we in our shops? There will be devils to tempt us unto dishonesty. Yea, though we get into the Church of God, there will be devils to haunt us in the very temple itself, and there tempt us to manifold misbehaviors. I am verily persuaded that there are very few human affairs whereinto some devils are not insinuated; there is not so much a journey intended but Satan will have a hand in hindering or furthering of it.
Mather was by no means unusual in holding this view; in New England in that era, almost everyone believed much the same thing. The atmosphere must have been stifling in its superstitious dread and omnipresent paranoia. He invites his readers to imagine that, even as they sit in their pews in church, they are surrounded by hundreds of invisible demons.
Contemporary woodcut of Mather, protected by a magic circle, confronting the Devil
"That there is a Devil," Mather writes, "is a thing doubted by none but such as are under the influences of the Devil. For any to deny the being of a Devil must be from an ignorance or profaneness worse than diabolical." Ergo, disbelief in the Devil proves that one is an agent of the Devil! It is not likely that many people expressed such disbelief publicly, even in the (unlikely) event that they had any private doubts.
Another theme of Mather's book is that New England has been singled out for a no-holds-barred attack by the devil and his minions. Here, in the unspoiled wilderness where a small band of faithful are attempting to build a new Jerusalem, the devil sees his infernal plans most at risk. He has brought his full wrath and his total arsenal of weapons to bear against the hapless New Englanders in a desperate attempt to derail their utopian project. Thus, it is only to be expected that New England will be a hotbed of demonic possession, hexes, pestilence, and other ills. And what do you know? All these things are happening! Crops have failed, cattle have died, winters have been harsh, plagues have devastated whole communities. Now witch covens are being uncovered by the score. It all points to the conclusion that, following the Book of Revelation, we are entering the last days, when our ordeals will be most severe.
Although in his later years, Mather was known for advocating inoculation against disease (an advanced and controversial position for his time), in 1693 he put the blame for illness squarely on the Devil. Here's a look at the state of medical science in New England in the late 17th century:
’Tis the destroyer, or the Devil, that scatters plagues about the world. Pestilential and contagious diseases, ’tis the Devil who does oftentimes invade us with them. ’Tis no uneasy thing for the devil to impregnate the air about us with such malignant salts as meeting with the salt of our microcosm shall immediately cast us into that fermentation and putrefaction which will ultimately dissolve all the vital ties within us; even as an aqua fortis, made with the conjunction of niter and vitriol, corrodes what it seizes upon. And when the devil has raised those arsenical fumes, which become venomous quivers full of terrible arrows, how easily can he shoot the deleterious miasms into those juices or bowels of men’s bodies, which will soon inflame them with a mortal fire! Hence comes such plagues, as that be some of destruction, which within our memory swept away such a throng of people from one English city in one visitation; and hence those infectious fevers, which are but so many disguised plagues among us, causing epidemical desolations.
As you might expect, Mather is suspicious not only of those accused of witchcraft, but also of those who practice other socially marginalized arts.
It was said in Deuteronomy 18 – 10, 11, 12, There shall not be found among you an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer; for all that do these things are an abomination to the Lord, and because of these abominations, the Lord thy God doth drive them out before thee....
Persons who have never made any express contact with apostate spirits yet may act strange things by diabolic aids which they procure by the use of those wicked forms and arts that the Devil first imparted unto his Confederates.… Some of them that have been cried out upon [as] employing evil spirits to hurt our land have been known to be most bloody fortunetellers; and some of them have confessed that when they told fortunes, they would pretend the rules of chiromancy and the like ignorant sciences, but indeed they had no rule (they said) but this, The things were then darted into their minds. Darted! Ye wretches; by whom, I pray? Surely by none but the devils; who, though perhaps they did not exactly foreknow all the thus predicted contingencies, yet having once foretold them, they stood bound in honor now to use their interest, which alas, in this world, is very great, for the accomplishment of their own predictions.
It's interesting that the so-called fortunetellers "confessed" that they didn't actually use any esoteric methods, but simply allowed relevant thoughts to enter their minds. In other words, they received psychic impressions, while the crystal ball, tarot cards, or whatever items they pretended to employ were merely props. I suspect that this is still true today; there is no power in crystals or cards and no meaning in the random distribution of creases on someone's palm, but concentrating on such things may free a sensitive mind to receive impressions via psi. Of course, to the Reverend Mather, it's all the work of that old trickster, the Devil.
1892 lithograph imaginatively representing a Salem witch trial
And what a monster the Devil is. Or at least, what a monster he became in people's minds, leading them to acts of self-destruction and the destruction of their loved ones. At the height of the witch hysteria, neighbors were accusing neighbors, prominent pastors and their wives were accused of consorting with demonic powers, and family members across New England were informing on each other. Children, the most suggestible of persons, confessed to their own heinous crimes while implicating their parents:
It would break an heart of stone to have seen what I have lately seen; even poor children of several ages, even from seven to twenty, more or less, confessing their familiarity with devils; but at the same time, in doleful bitter lamentations that made a little portraiture of hell itself, expostulating with their execrable parents for devoting them to the devil in their infancy and so entailing of devilism upon them!
All of it was enough to make a good Christian desire an end to earthly life. Despite the promise of better times to come, the 29-year-old Mather had a morbid preoccupation with the sweet release of death.
For, though when we call to mind that the Devil’s time is now but short, it may almost make us wish to live unto the end of it.… Yet when we bear in mind that the Devil’s wrath is now most great, it would make one willing to be out of the way.… We should not be inordinately loath to die at such a time. In a word, the times are so bad that we may well count it as good a time to die in as ever we saw.
This, then, was the world of Cotton Mather. It's a depressing place, and we should be glad to have left it behind. After all the above, it may be hard to take anything that Mather says very seriously. Clearly, despite his academic achievements and undoubted brilliance in some areas, he was led by his unbending theological dogmas to believe in all manner of superstition.
Accordingly, we should take his account of a possible crisis apparition with due skepticism. But since his report is similar in many ways to better attested and more recent accounts of the same type, and since it was recorded long before the idea of crisis apparitions was formalized by the Society for Psychical Research, it's at least worth considering, if only for its historical interest.
Here is the relevant passage in full:
It was on 2 May in the year 1687 that a most ingenious, accomplished and well-disposed gentleman, Mr. Joseph Beacon by name, about 5 o’clock in the morning, as he lay, whether sleeping or waking he could not say (but judged the latter of them), had a view of his brother then at London, although he was now himself at our Boston, distanced from him a thousand leagues. This his brother appeared unto him, in the morning about 5 o’clock at Boston, having on him a Bengal gown, which he usually wore, with a napkin tied about his head; his countenance was very pale, ghastly, deadly, and he had a bloody wound on one side of his forehead. Brother! says the frightened Joseph. Brother! answered the apparition. Said Joseph, What’s the matter, brother? How came you here! The apparition replied, Brother, I have been most barbarously and injuriously butchered by a debauched drunken fellow to whom I never did any wrong in my life. Whereupon he gave a particular description of the murderer, adding, Brother, this fellow, changing his name, is attempting to come over on to New England in Foy or Wild [transatlantic passenger ships]; I would pray you on the first arrival of either of these to get an order from the governor to seize the person whom I have now described; and then do you indict him for the murder of your brother: I’ll stand by you and prove the indictment. And so he vanished. Mr. Beacon was extremely astonished at what he had seen and heard; and the people of the family not only observed an extraordinary alteration upon him for the week following, but have also given me under their hands a full testimony that he then gave them an account of this apparition.
All this while, Mr. Beacon had no advice of anything amiss attending his brother then in England; but about the latter end of June following, he understood by the common ways of communication that the April before, his brother, going in haste by night to call a coach for a lady, met a fellow then in drink, with his doxy [= female companion, trollop, wench] in his hand: some way or other the fellow thought himself affronted with the hasty passage of this Beacon, and immediately ran into the fireside of a neighboring tavern, from whence he fetched out a fire-fork, wherewith he grievously wounded Beacon in the skull; even in that very part where the apparition showed his wound. Of this wound he languished until he died on 2 May, about five of the clock in the morning at London. The murderer it seems was endeavoring to escape, as the apparition affirmed, but the friends of the deceased Beacon seized him; and prosecuting him at law, he found the help of such friends as brought him off without the loss of his life; since which, there has been no more heard of the business.
This history I received of Mr. Joseph Beacon himself, who a little before his own pious and hopeful death, which followed not long after, gave me the story written and signed with his own hand, and attested with the circumstances I have already mentioned.
I really enjoyed this post Michael. Thank you. I really enjoy reading stuff like this as it offers insight into the views of people who lived in the past. While we might find it to be absurd the people of the Renaissance truly believed in witches and magic and they responded accordingly. Many people in second and third world countries have this belief still along with some people in first world countries. It seems magic and witches remain despite the wishes of some.
Have you ever read any of Ian Mortimer's time travelers guides by any chance? If not you probably would enjoy them.
Posted by: Kris | May 26, 2019 at 03:33 PM
Very interesting post, Michael!
To those Skeptics who would say that the account should be discounted based on Mather's other unpalatable beliefs, I would point out that the reality of crisis apparitions is determined not by one case or even multiple cases considered singly, but instead by the aggregate of cases.
It's quite interesting that such a (relatively) early account matches up with a wide variety of accounts since then so closely.
Posted by: Matt Rouge | May 26, 2019 at 09:53 PM
Kris wrote,
||Many people in second and third world countries have this belief still along with some people in first world countries. It seems magic and witches remain despite the wishes of some.||
I don't think we are too far from Salem, really. We had the Satanic Ritual Abuse nonsense in the 80s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_ritual_abuse) and a whole plethora of conspiracy theories these days.
Humans are pretty skilled at putting together alternate realities that truly *seem*, well, real to their believers. They can even be based on denying aspects of reality (e.g., Skepticism).
Thus, we should always monitor our own belief systems with true (small-s) skepticism.
Posted by: Matt Rouge | May 27, 2019 at 03:55 PM
Oh, and a secular version of the witch hunts were the purges in the USSR under Stalin and by the Khmer Rouge (no relation!) under Pol Pot. I saw a documentary on the latter, and in the end they were just dragging random people off the street, making them confess to crimes, and killing them. Certainly no more rational or any less murderous than at Salem back in the day.
Posted by: Matt Rouge | May 27, 2019 at 03:57 PM
C.S. Lewis once made a good point in this regard. He said that moderns congratulate themselves on being more morally advanced than their forebears, who burned witches. But, he noted, people stopped burning witches only because they stopped *believing* in them. It was a change in knowledge, not moral values. If we still believed that certain people were making our children ill, killing our crops, causing miscarriages, and committing murders via black magic, we would be prosecuting them today.
Manias are ever-present. The classic book "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" lists dozens of them. Some are economically destructive, like the Dutch tulip mania (recent parallels would be the dot-com bubble and the real estate derivatives bubble), and others are socially destructive, like the mania for dueling to the death which swept Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries (a modern parallel might be the misuse of social media to harass and "dox" people or to summon flash mobs).
I think all of us are probably a little bit crazy. Shirley Jackson had it right when she wrote, "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream."
Posted by: Michael Prescott | May 28, 2019 at 01:05 PM
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream."
Michael, I don’t know who Shirley Jackson is, but it occurs to me that she may not actually be saying that larks and katydids are “a little bit crazy” (as you suggest). Her point could be that, in order to stay sane in this challenging environment, even insects and birds need to re-connect periodically with the spiritual realm. So dreams *keep them* from going crazy.
Make sense?
In any case, that’s largely how *I* explain the role of dreams.
Posted by: Bruce L Siegel | May 28, 2019 at 02:34 PM
I suspect mass shootings would be a modern mania.
On the other hand we reject legalized slavery; unlike our forebears. We are also more religiously tolerant. We got that going for us I suppose.
Posted by: Kris | May 28, 2019 at 04:03 PM
Bruce, maybe I should have said that our hold on sanity is more precarious than we like to think.
Shirley Jackson was an author best known for her short story "The Lottery" and her novel "The Haunting of Hill House" (from which the quote is taken).
Kris, I wonder if we would reject slavery if we didn't have the labor-saving devices of the industrial era to do all the chores that slaves used to do. A cynical thought, I admit.
In terms of religious tolerance, we're not any better off than the pagan Greeks and Romans who accepted everybody's deities without demur.
Still, I like to think we’ve made *some* moral progress.
Posted by: Michael Prescott | May 28, 2019 at 07:59 PM
Michael
We rejected slavery before the industrial revolution greatly created labor saving devices. It does seem to have been a moral choice.
Did the Greeks and Romans do that?? The Jews, Christians and Druids would disagree
Posted by: Kris | May 28, 2019 at 08:09 PM
Bruce,
Great point. I agree!
Posted by: Matt Rouge | May 28, 2019 at 09:46 PM