The Moodus Noises: Part II

This is my second post about the mysterious Moodus noises. You can read part one here.

Once the English settled in Connecticut they developed their own theories to explain the mysterious subterranean noises. They of course didn't believe in the Algonquin god Hobomok, although some thought he might really be a demon of some kind or perhaps just the Devil under another name.

But they did believe strongly in the Devil, who was often blamed for strange occurrences and misfortunes. And if the Evil One himself wasn't the responsible party, then perhaps it was witches, who were his earthly minions. And someone sinister just had to be behind the terrifying booming Moodus noises.

It was a strange mix of things in East Haddam: Indian legends, weird sounds coming from a mountain, religious beliefs about Satan and witchcraft. Strange but I suppose quintessentially New England, and from that mix emerged the following story, quoted here from Charles Skinner's Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (1896):

It was finally understood that Haddam witches, who practised black magic, met the Moodus witches, who used white magic, in a cave beneath Mount Tom, and fought them in the light of a giant carbuncle that was fastened to the roof...

If the witch-fights were continued too long the king of Machimoddi, who sat on a throne of solid sapphire in the cave whence the noises came, raised his wand: then the light of the carbuncle went out, peals of thunder rolled through the rocky chambers, and the witches rushed into the sky.

I love the idea of good witches battling it out with bad ones. It's a theme is found often in continental European folklore. The historian Carlo Ginzburg documents many variants of it in his book Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches Sabbath. Some cultures believe troops of good witches fight bad ones, while others think the fight is between packs of good werewolves (!) battling evil witches, or gangs of good shamans against evil spirits. Usually the benevolent supernatural beings live in the village of the person telling the story, while the bad ones live in the village next door. Funny how that always works out. It's kind of the supernatural version of Red Sox vs. Yankees, I suppose, except in these stories the fight is usually over the fertility of the land rather than the World Series.

 
In European lore these battles are often presided over by one dominant supernatural being, such as a goddess or mysterious military leader. That role is filled in Moodus by the "king of Machimoddi," who is the spirit of Machimoodus, the original Algonquin name for the area. But who is he? Is he Hobomok, the Devil, or someone else entirely? This king seems strangely ambivalent for the Devil, who I can't imagine would just sit idly by during a battle of good and evil.

I don't know where or when this story first originated. Perhaps it was brought to Connecticut by someone familiar with European lore, or perhaps it was developed independently by the people of Moodus.

It is significant that the cave was supposedly lit by a giant carbuncle. We don't hear that word often now, but it's an old terming meaning any red gemstone. This giant gem features prominently in the next legend about the Moodus noises.

In the 1760s an elderly man named Doctor Steel arrived in East Haddam, claiming he had been sent to Connecticut by King George to stop those pesky Moodus noises. He also claimed the cause of the noises was the giant carbuncle which, depending on the legend, either illuminated the cavern where the witches fought or blocked the entrance to the cave. Like a dentist removing a bad tooth, Doctor Steel was going to remove the bothersome gem.

After building a small house on Mount Tom the good doctor locked himself inside. Curious passersby noticed strange smells and sounds emanating from within. Several weeks after his arrival, Doctor Steel was seen to emerge from his house and make his way to the entrance of a cave that led deep into the mountain. Several hours later, people in the village saw a bright red light illuminate the mountain top. It was the glow of the carbuncle! Dr. Steel had successfully removed the giant gem.

In the morning the villagers went to congratulate the doctor, but found that he had already departed for England by ship, taking the giant gem with him. Unfortunately, he never arrived back in England. The carbuncle was filled with uncanny supernatural power, and a storm destroyed the ship and drowned all its passengers. The gem sank to the bottom of the Atlantic.

The gem carried with it an evil fate, for the galley sank in mid-ocean; but, though buried beneath a thousand fathoms of water, the red ray of the carbuncle sometimes shoots up from the sea, and the glow of it strikes fear into the hears of passing sailors. 

The Moodus noises stopped for a few years after Dr. Steel's operation, but eventually they began again. The local Indians nodded wisely. A new red gem was growing in the cave...

Geologists now claim the Moodus noises are caused by micro-earthquakes that occur underneath Mount Tom. I suppose that's a scientifically accurate explanation, but it's not as appealing as the earlier legends. I like idea of a cave deep beneath the earth, illuminated with a red glow, and presided over by a mysterious king. If you ever find that cave let me know.

******

Note: In addition to Charles Skinner's book, another good source for Moodus legends is David E. Philips's Legendary Connecticut.

The Witches' Sabbath in New England: Part 1

Imagine yourself walking through the New England forest on a moonlit night. You're lost in your thoughts, concentrating on the path so you can get home safely, when suddenly you hear the sound of voices off among the trees. 

You stop, and looking off into the woods you see a fire flickering. You see silhouettes of women and men gathered around it. A tall dark figure climbs onto a boulder. Holding a book in one hand he begins to speak in a deep, sepulchral voice. Is it the local minister holding a special outdoor service?

Curious, you leave the path and draw closer. As you get closer to the fire you realize the man on the boulder isn’t the pastor, and maybe isn’t even fully human. You’ve stumbled upon the witches’ Sabbath.

Ooops. Make sure you don't sign your name into that big book they're offering you...

That witches gather together to work evil magic communally is an idea appearing sporadically throughout history, but texts like the Compendium Maleficarium made it very popular in Europe beginning sometime in the Renaissance. Medieval Europe had previously been riven by conspiracy theories claiming lepers, Muslims or Jews were conspiring to overthrow Christianity, but with the witches’ Sabbath Europeans could now fear that their own neighbors were conspiring with the Devil to destroy society. Truly, the Renaissance was an age of progress!

Detail from a painting by Goya.

The historian Carlo Ginzburg gives a brief summary of what the Sabbath entails:

Male and female witches met at night, generally in solitary places, in fields or on mountains. Sometimes, having anointed their bodies, they flew, arriving astride poles or brooms sticks; sometimes they arrived on the backs of animals, or transformed into animals themselves. Those who came for the first time had to renounce the Christian faith, desecrate the sacrament and offer homage to the Devil, who was present in human or (most often) animal or semi-animal form. There would follow banquets, dancing, sexual orgies. Before returning home the female and male witches received evil ointments made from children’s fat and other ingredients.

Ginzburg is an Italian historian, and he writes mostly about continental Europe. The Sabbath was not as prevalent an idea in the British Islands, and since Englishmen originally colonized this area it was not at first prevalent here either. The earliest, pre-Salem witch trials don’t mention any Sabbath-like meetings, just solitary witches working alone.

The Salem trials changed that. So many people were accused of witchcraft it seemed obvious they must be working together. As the trials went on the image of the witches’ Sabbath began to appear in both the accusations and confessions. It was similar to what appeared in European trials, but with some significant differences.

It was not called a Sabbath, but instead was called a witch meeting. The Puritans called their Sunday religious service “Sunday meeting”, so it makes sense the witches would use a similar term for their gathering. Unlike the European version, the Salem witch meeting didn’t involve sexual orgies or ointments made from babies’ fat. Instead, the witches gathered to listen to the Devil or his earthly delegate (supposedly the Reverend George Burroughs) urge them to work harder and overthrow God’s kingdom in New England. The witches and their master wanted to found a social order where people could “live bravely, in equality, with no future resurrection or judgment, no punishment or even shame for sin.” Just as the witches’ meeting was a reversal of Sunday meetings, their social order was going to be a reversal of the Puritan one.

To drive home this point, the witches held their meetings not in a remote forest or hilltop, but in a meadow next to the home of Salem’s minister Samuel Parris. They also celebrated an unholy sacrament by eating “red bread” and red wine. Many witches allegedly signed their pacts with the Devil using a red liquid, and it is implied that human blood was an ingredient in the bread, wine and ink.

It’s important to note that the witches supposedly attended this meeting with their spectral bodies, not their physical ones. Even those witches who flew there astride poles did so in spirit form. No one could see the witch meetings except those who attended and those who were afflicted by their magic. It happened invisibly right in the middle of Salem Village. At least, that's what was said during the trials.

A photo from Rob Zombie's film The Lords of Salem.

The Salem witch trials lasted only a year before they fell apart under the weight of ever broader accusations. But the idea of a witch’s Sabbath in New England became imprinted into the folk consciousness and literature of our region.

Probably the most famous literary depiction of the witches’ Sabbath appears in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1835 story “Young Goodman Brown.” Maybe you haven't read this one since high school, so here's a refresher.

The title character leaves his wife (the aptly named Faith) alone in their Salem home one night to journey with a mysterious stranger deep into the forest. The stranger (who is clearly the Devil) is leading Goodman Brown to a witch meeting so he can sell his soul. Brown is hesitant to sign himself over to Satan, but as he walks he sees many prominent neighbors heading in the same direction, including the woman who taught him the Christian catechism and the church deacon.

Goodman Brown finally arrives at a clearing in the forest dominated by a large boulder shaped like a pulpit. Gathered in the clearing are hundreds of people including the prominent pious leaders of Salem, notorious sinners, and even the local Indians. Goodman Brown is amazed to see them all mingling together.

The Devil says,

“There are all who ye have reverenced from youth. Ye deemed them holier than yourselves, and shrank from your own sin, contrasting it with their lives of righteousness and prayerful aspirations heavenward. Yet here they are the all in my worshipping assembly. This night it shall be granted you to know their secret deeds; how hoary-bearded elders of the church have whispered wanton words to the young maids of their households; how many a woman, eager for widows’ weeds, has given her husband a drink at bedtime and let him sleep his last sleep in her bosom; how beardless youths have made haste to inherit their fathers’ wealth...”

The Devil prepares to baptize (with blood) Goodman Brown and a young veiled woman, but when the woman is revealed to be his wife Faith, Goodman Brown shouts for her to look to Heaven and resist Satan. The Sabbath vanishes in an instant, and Brown staggers into Salem as the sun rises. His neighbors and wife greet him warmly, never mentioning the Sabbath, but Brown recoils at their touch.

Had Goodman Brown really just spent the night asleep in the woods? Was it all really just a dream? Perhaps, but for the rest of his life Goodman Brown is aware of the miasma of evil surrounding humanity. When he dies his family “carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone; for his dying hour was gloom.”

I'm sorry to end on a grim note, but when you read Hawthorne you have to expect that. But don't be too sad. Next week I'll delve into the more folkloric aspects of the witches' Sabbath, which are a little more fun. 

My sources for this week's post: Carlo Ginzburg Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath; Marilynne K. Roach The Salem Witch Trials. A Day-By-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege; and Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown."

Witches Flying Over New Hampshire

John McNab Currier, a physician and amateur scientist, was born in Bath, New Hampshire in 1832. Dr. Currier was also a folklorist and contributed a couple interesting articles to The Journal of American Folk-Lore in the 1890s.

In one article, he relates how several neighbors visited his parents' house one winter night. "In the course of this rural visit, several ghost and witch stories were related, half to keep up the conversation, and half to make those stare who might take stock in their genuineness..."

A neighbor lady told the following story. One bright moonlit summer night she was out in her front yard collecting wood for the morning fire when she heard female voices, "talking and laughing merrily", coming down the road. She waited to see who was walking down the road so late at night, but when they came close to her house she realized they weren't walking, but were flying overhead.

"...I looked up and saw nothing but the bright stars. I could hear their talking and laughing as they passed along overhead. Their voices grew fainter and fainter as they passed off in an opposite direction from whence they came, until I could hear them no longer."

It's a beautiful passage. It makes me want to fly at night with those ladies!

Dr. Currier's neighbor went on to explain that the invisible women were witches, flying to some nearby abandoned house to dance and frolic. She believed witches could separate their spirits, which had flown down the road, from their bodies. Their spirits had strength equal or even greater than their physical bodies, and retained youthful vigor no matter how old the witch was physically.

Francisco Goya, Witches' Flight, 1798.

Throughout history there has been debate over how (or even if) witches were able to fly. Did they actually do it physically? Did the Devil just delude them into thinking they flew? Were they hallucinating from herbal salves they applied to their bodies?

My favorite theory is that witches were (are?) able to enter trance states, much like shamans around the world can, and send their spirits flying into the night. I wish I was brilliant enough to think of this theory myself, but I'm not. It was first stated by the Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg in his books The Night Battles and Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath. They're both great books, but very dense and academic. I'll leave the debate about the reality/unreality of spirit flights to another day...

I guess Dr. Currier's neighbor shared this theory as well, although she wouldn't have used the term "shamanism" in early 19th century New Hampshire. She went on to tell her listeners that the witches could disengage the spirits of people who were sleeping or unaware, and take those spirits with them to their revels. These captive spirits were firmly under the control of the witches, "and sometimes such stolen spirits were made the butt of fun at their evening's entertainments at some haunted house."

Clearly, don't mess with the witches, and stay away from haunted houses at night. Dr. Currier ends his story by wondering if these witches controlled the captive spirits by throwing a special bridle over the sleeper. The witch bridle has a long history in New England folklore which I've written about before.

I just found Dr. Currier's article this week, and I was really pleased to see someone from New England giving such a clear and cogent theory about the nature of witchery. It helps show the continuity of beliefs here with ancient beliefs from around the world. If you want to read the article yourself, it's in The Journal of American Folklore, vol. 2, No. 7 (Oct. - Dec. 1889).