The Penguin Book of Witches (33 page)

4
.
Medieval and early modern Europeans actually followed a rational system in their understanding of how magic worked. Just as the holy trinity in the Bible provided a template by which both the universe and the human body were organized, so too were like objects thought to affect like, and for small parts to stand in for a whole. This regression and expansion of scale appears in astrology, in fortune-telling, in folk medical remedies, and in many other realms of nondoctrinaire thought. For elaboration on poppet image magic, see Richard Kieckhefer, “The Specific Rationality of Medieval Magic,”
The American Historical Review
, vol. 99, no. 3 (June 1994), 813–36.

5
.
This account of the witches’ Sabbath, a perversion of the Christian sacrament of communion, appears frequently in witch-hunting manuals of the time, including James I’s
Daemonologie
.

6
.
Though the two examinations of Abigail Hobbs in prison are dated a month apart, they appear on the same document. Further, George Burroughs is not mentioned until the second examination, which takes place after the minister is arrested in Maine on May 4 and transferred back to Salem to stand trial.

7
.
The inquiry about whether George Burroughs used magic to bewitch the failed eastward military campaigns against the French and the Wabanaki further suggests that the authorities trying the Salem witches saw an explicit connection between the two phenomena. The Devil was trying to lay waste to their godly purpose and he was doing so from multiple different angles.

8
.
Abigail Hobbs provides a further connection between malefic witchcraft at Salem and the Indian wars in Maine. The Puritans believed that they were living by a divine mandate. Therefore, any opposition to the success of their settlements would have been seen, in their worldview, as a challenge to God’s will, and therefore a mark of diabolical influence. One possible reason for the public performance of the examinations, which so likely led to the growth and expansion of the trials rather than their swift containment, was for the religious edification of the community. Satan was subject to God’s will, and a common interpretation for why God permitted the Devil to interfere with the lives of people and to recruit them as witches was as a challenge to spur them on to greater faith.

SUSANNAH MARTIN AND HER POOR REPUTATION, MONDAY, MAY 2, 1692

1
.
Norton,
In the Devil’s Snare,
146.

2
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1 Samuel 28:7–8, “Then said Saul unto his servants, Seek me a woman that hath a familiar spirit, that I may go to her, and enquire of her. And his servants said to him, Behold, there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at Endor. And Saul disguised himself, and put on other raiment, and he went, and two men with him, and they came to the woman by night: and he said, I pray thee, divine unto me by the familiar spirit, and bring me him up, whom I shall name unto thee.”

3
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Transcribed from an image of the original document in the Univer- sity of Virginia’s online Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project. http://salem.lib.virginia.edu/archives/ecca/ medium/ecca1174r.jpg.

4
.
By this is meant, did Susannah Martin not give the Devil permission to go about in her shape.

5
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Martin is attempting to turn the tables on her accusers, suggesting that if they are bewitched, then it could be because the Devil is their master.

6
.
Martin references 1 Samuel 28:14–20, in which the witch of Endor raises a spirit for Saul that seems to be Samuel. In quoting this passage, Martin is appealing to the chief theological controversy of the Salem episode, namely, whether or not the Devil could assume the shape of an innocent person. If he could, then spectral evidence should not be admitted against accused witches.

7
.
It’s easy to wonder after the fact why more accused witches at Salem hadn’t confessed, since none of the confessing witches were put to death. However, such an outcome was unusual. By giving a false confession, Martin would both damn her immortal soul, and if the experience of previous witch trials was any example, could expect to be put to death as well.

8
.
Lying, Martin is saying, will not make her guilty of witchcraft.

9
.
Mercy Lewis is one of the afflicted teenage girls, a servant of the Putnams and a refugee from Maine. She is sassing Susannah Martin, suggesting that she took her time getting to court, but she flies on sticks and torments her in the night.

10
.
Probably an attempt at the touch test. The idea behind the touch test was that if a suspected witch touched the afflicted, then the afflicted person would be relieved of the bewitchment. It was used both as a means of relief for the afflicted and as a diagnostic tool. Occasionally the touch test was administered blind, with the afflicted having to guess the guilty party among several different suspects. Use of the touch test was controversial, however, as Cotton Mather suggested that it was a method liable to be “abused by the Devil’s legerdemains.” For that reason it is not often used in New England witch trials. That could be why, when none of the afflicted were able to approach Susannah Martin in the courtroom, she suggests that the Devil “bears [her] more malice than another.” See Richard Latner, “‘Here Are No Newters’: Witchcraft and Religious Discord in Salem Village and Andover,”
The New England Quarterly
, vol. 79, no. 1 (March 2006): 109–10.

STATEMENT OF ELIZABETH HUBBARD VERSUS GEORGE BURROUGHS, MONDAY, MAY 9, 1692

1
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Transcribed from an image of the original document in the University of Virginia’s online Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project. http://salem.lib.virginia.edu/archives/ecca/medium/ecca2030r.jpg.

ESTABLISHING THE COURT OF OYER AND TERMINER FOR SUFFOLK, ESSEX, AND MIDDLESEX COUNTIES, FRIDAY, MAY 27, 1692

1
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In 1688 the Catholic English King James II was overthrown by the Protestant William of Orange to secure the succession rights of his wife, Mary, over James II’s Catholic son; this permanently ended the possibility of a return to Catholicism in England.

2
.
Excerpted from
Governor’s Council Executive Records (1692)
, vol. 2, pp. 176–77, Massachusetts State Archives.

MARTHA CARRIER, QUEEN OF HELL

1
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Transcribed from an image of the original document in the Univer- sity of Virginia’s online Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project. http://salem.lib.virginia.edu/archives/ecca/ medium/ecca1311r.jpg.

2
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Here is a slippage of what is meant by “black.” The afflicted girls who claim to see a “black man” whispering in Carrier’s ear could be referring to his moral self or to his literal skin color. But Carrier turns the inquiry on the tribunal, referencing the clothing of her interrogators. A similar slippage occurs in Tituba’s account of the “black man,” when she specifies that the man who visited her wore black clothes and had silver hair.

3
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Carrier suggests that the afflicted girls are faking their symptoms, and that they will worsen if she looks at them.

4
.
It’s unclear if Carrier thinks that the afflicted are playacting, or if she thinks they are legitimately ill, but the implication that she thinks they are faking is strong.

STATEMENT OF SARAH INGERSOLL AND ANN ANDREWS REGARDING SARAH CHURCHILL, JUNE 1, 1692

1
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Transcribed from an image of the original document in the Univer- sity of Virginia’s online Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project. http://salem.lib.virginia.edu/archives/ecca/medium/ecca2113r.jpg.

AFTER SALEM

1
.
Frances Hill,
Hunting for Witches
(Beverly, MA: Commonwealth Editions, 2002), 65.

2
.
John Demos,
The Enemy Within: 2000 Years of Witch-Hunting in the Western World
(New York: Viking, 2008), 59–61.

THE APOLOGY OF SAMUEL SEWALL, JANUARY 14, 1697

1
.
Norton,
In the Devil’s Snare,
198.

2
.
A full account of Sewall’s apology and evolving political positions on such prescient issues as slavery and the equality of the sexes can be found in Richard Francis,
Judge Sewall’s Apology: The Salem Witch Trials and the Forming of an American Conscience
(New York: Harper, 2005).

3
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Transcribed from the University of Virginia’s online Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project. http://salem .lib.virginia.edu/diaries/sewall_diary.html.

THE APOLOGY OF THE SALEM JURY, 1697

1
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Excerpted from George Lincoln Burr,
Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases, 1648–1706
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1914), 387–88.

2
.
Satan.

3
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Deuteronomy 17:6, “At the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses, shall he that is worthy of death be put to death; but at the mouth of one witness he shall not be put to death.”

4
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2 Kings 24:4, “And also for the innocent blood that he shed: for he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood; which the Lord would not pardon.”

5
.
The word “delusion” would appear often in the aftermath of the Salem crisis. All individuals involved who ought to bear the brunt of blame instead disavowed their responsibility by claiming to have been deluded by Satan. At no point is there doubt that the Devil lay at the heart of the panic. The only question was how, precisely, he was able to work his will.

ROBERT CALEF,
MORE WONDERS OF THE INVISIBLE WORLD
, 1700

1
.
Excerpted from George Lincoln Burr,
Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases, 1648–
1706
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1914). Full text available from the University of Virginia’s online Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive and Transcription Project. http://xtf .lib.virginia.edu/xtf/view?docId=modern_english/uvaGenText/tei/BurNarr.xml;chunk.id=d57;toc.depth=1;toc.id=d57;brand=default.

2
.
Even Calef recognizes the relationship between the Salem panic and the Indian wars, though his interpretation of the significance will differ from that of the court.

3
.
Cotton Mather’s published account of the trials, which came out in 1693.

4
.
Jean Bodin, a sixteenth-century French jurist who wrote widely on demonology. His 1580 work “On the Demon-Worship of Sorcerers” advanced the theory of a pact being drawn up between a practicing witch and the Devil, and advocated loosened expectations for evidence in sorcery trials, on the grounds that rumors of sorcery were almost always true.

5
.
By “pagan and popish,” Calef does not mean pagan in the contemporary sense. Calef, like many religious Puritans, identified Catholicism with magic, as a false version of unreformed Christianity. He is not suggesting that witchcraft is a remnant of a pre-Christian religion; he is being critical of what he sees as the delusional, superstitious beliefs inherent in Catholic practice.

6
.
Calef spends much of his treatise exposing what he sees to be the logical inconsistencies of contemporary witch trials. He cites first the relative paucity of detail on the nature and mechanics of witchcraft found in the Bible, and goes on to say that an individual’s strength should be credited to God. Yet the accusations levied against George Burroughs, former minister of Salem Village, alluded to his supposedly preternatural strength. Calef points out that Burroughs had been known for unusual strength since he was in school, and as such his strength should be regarded as a gift from God, rather than a sign of his pact with the Devil.

7
.
Icarian, for Icarus, the young man of Greek mythology who flew too close to the sun on wings of wax and then plunged to his death.

8
.
Increase Mather.

9
.
William Perkins.

A CASE OF POISONING IN ALBANY, NEW YORK, 1700

1
.
A further account of English colonial thinking about Native American magic can be found in Alfred Cave, “Indian Shamans and English Witches,”
Essex Institute Historical Collections
128 (October 1992): 241–54. This account is excerpted from Samuel Drake,
Annals of Witchcraft in New England and Elsewhere in the United States from their First Settlement
(Boston: WE Woodward, 1869), 208–10.

2
.
A “sachem” is a term for the head of some North American tribes, especially the Algonquian. OED, 1909.

3
.
A seventeenth-century term for the Indian tribes in New England, New York, Quebec, and Ontario who converted to Christianity.