Were There Really Witches in Salem?

Were there really any witches involved in the Salem witchcraft trials?

I think most people would answer "No!" Rational folks know the 19 people executed in 1692 were innocent victims of a warped judicial system in a theocratic Puritan society. But I also think that for other people the question lingers unanswered. Maybe, just maybe, there was something behind those trials other than just land-grabs and simmering small-town grudges? Maybe (just maybe) something uncanny occurred in Salem Village 350 years ago...

Witch is a word with several different meanings. It can mean people who get magical powers from the Devil and use them to harm people. It can mean practitioners of a nature-focused religion like Wicca. And sometimes it can even just mean people who use folk magic. Were any of these present in 1692 Essex County?

DIABOLIC WITCHES

The Puritans of Salem believed the Massachusetts Bay Colony was under assault by a conspiracy of witches. These witches looked like ordinary members of colonial society but secretly had sold themselves to the Devil. In return the Evil One gave them magical powers they used to torment their neighbors with illness, convulsions, nightmares, and even death. Testimony from the Salem trials contains terrifying accounts of demons, Satanic gatherings in the woods, and murderous magic. Surprisingly, dozens of women and men from all levels of society confessed to being witches in league with the Devil.

The Lords of Salem

A scientific worldview claims all of this is false. Witchcraft simply doesn't exist and neither does the Devil. There's no evidence that any kind of magic exists but diabolic witches still remain a persistent theme in pop culture. The 1960 film Horror Hotel featured a coven of Devil-worshipping witches in a small New England town, as did the 2014 TV show Salem, which showed diabolic witches in 1692 Salem. Rob Zombie's 2012 film The Lords of Salem did the same. Netflix's Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is also about a secret society of Satanic witches in New England, and was just renewed for two more seasons. Clearly viewers like watching devilish witches cause trouble.

The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

This idea is not just confined to pop culture. Some Christian denominations still believe in the literal truth of the Devil and his witchy minions. But hopefully even the most fundamentalist modern Christian knows you can't prove there were any Devil-worshipping witches in Salem. Why? Because the Puritans, who were the original fundamentalists, ultimately came to that very same conclusion. 

Governor William Phipps ended the Salem trials when he realized they were getting out of control - and after his own wife was accused of being a witch. Once the trials were over Massachusetts Puritans did a lot of soul-searching. They realized the huge number of confessions had been elicited under torture and because the only way to avoid the gallows was to confess and accuse others of being witches. Ann Putnam, one of the leading witnesses, confessed in 1706 that her testimony was false and had sent innocent people to their death. Reverend Samuel Sewall, who served as a judge during the trials, also confessed to wrongly convicting innocent people.

These confessions didn't mean the Puritans stopped believing in witches. Hardly. Many of them still did, and also in the machinations of Satan. They simply realized it was impossible to prove someone was a witch. The Reverend John Hale examined this problem in his 1697 book A Modest Enquiry into The Nature of Witchcraft. He concluded that evidence supporting claims of witchcraft was probably trickery caused by the Devil himself. Satan was behind the Salem witchcraft trials after all, but he used fake evidence to divide the community and kill innocent people. The Devil caused all the trouble, not witches.

PAGAN WITCHES

I think if the Puritans realized there weren't any diabolic witches 350 years ago we can accept the same thing today. But perhaps, though, there were pagan witches? You know, the kind who practice ancient fertility religions and dance around Maypoles? There are plenty of them in modern Salem so perhaps they were around in 1692 as well?

The idea of witchcraft as a pagan religion was popularized by the anthropologist and Egyptologist Margaret Murray in her 1921 book The Witch Cult in Western Europe. According to Murray, an ancient pagan fertility cult survived in Western Europe until the 17th century when it was finally eliminated by the dominant Christian culture. Cult members worshipped an ancient horned god similar to Pan that their Christian persecutors thought was the the Devil. The cult's rituals, intended to bring fertility to the land, were misinterpreted as demonic ceremonies and black magic by its enemies. In short, Murray believed there really had been witches but they had actually been misunderstood and oppressed pagans.

Margaret Murray

Murray's book received a lot of criticism from her fellow academics when it was published. One complaint was that she assumed testimony from the European witch trials was an accurate reflection of reality instead of realizing it was elicited through torture and shaped to provide judges what they wanted to hear. For example, Murray claimed testimony about the Devil appearing to witches was really about a cult member wearing a horned mask. Testimony about cursing a farmer's field was really a misinterpretation of a fertility ceremony.

You get the idea. Murray had a conclusion she wanted to reach and shaped the evidence to support it. Still, despite all the criticism Murray's hypothesis was influential for much of the 20th century. Academics didn't give her much credence but her work was influential on pop culture. For example, horror writer H.P. Lovecraft mentions her work in several stories, and he personally felt there may have been some pagan elements at work in Salem:

“For my part – I doubt if a compact coven existed, but certainly think that people had come to Salem who had a direct personal knowledge of the cult, and who were perhaps initiated members of it. I think that some of the rites and formulae of the cult must have been talked about secretly among certain elements, and perhaps furtively practiced by the few degenerates involved… Most of the people hanged were probably innocent, yet I do think there was a concrete, sordid background not present in any other New England witch case.” (H.P. Lovecraft, Selected Letters, 1929 – 1931, 1971, p. 181, edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei)

The idea of pagan witches hasn't influenced pop culture the way the idea of diabolic witches has, possibly because it is newer. However, you can find it in (spoiler alert) Thomas Tryon's 1973 novel Harvest Home, which features a pagan cult in a small rural Connecticut town and also Robin Hardy's 1973 film The Wicker Man, although it is set in England, not New England. I guess '73 was a banner for pagan witches in pop culture!

Some Wiccans have claimed there were actual pagan practitioners in 17th century Salem. The late Gwen Thompson, an important New England Wiccan leader in the 1970s, used to say "The real Witches in Salem were never caught or arrested because they were busy sleeping with the judges." She may have been joking, but she did trace her ancestry back to the 17th century Salem and hinted that her family practiced Wicca even before they immigrated to Massachusetts from England in the 1600s.

In 2005, Robert Mathiesen (a professor of Slavic and Medieval studies at Brown University) and Andrew Theitic (a Wiccan high priest initiated by Gwen Thompson) co-authored The Rede of The Wiccae: Adriana Porter, Gwen Thompson and The Birth of A Witchcraft Tradition. Thompson said she inherited her witchcraft from her grandmother Adriana Porter, and in their book Mathiesen and Theitic analyze a piece of ritual poetry attributed to Porter to see if it originated in the 17th century or even earlier.

Scene from The Wicker Man (1973)

Their textual analysis showed that parts of the poem had been written in the 20th century but parts of it incorporated older folklore. However, Mathiesen and Theitic didn't find anything to support Thompson's claim that her version of Wicca was practiced in the 17th century. They did find that Thompson had ancestors in Salem during the trials and that members of her family had later studied esoteric topics like Spiritualism. It seems likely that Thompson had inherited some occult lore from her grandmother but it was probably not older than the 19th century.

Finally what would a discussion of pagan witchcraft be without a mention of Tituba, the Parris family's female slave? She was an important figure in the Salem trials, being one of the first accused and one of the first to confess. Some older histories (like Marion Starkey's The Devil in Massachusetts) state that Tituba practiced Voudoun, a non-Christian religion with African roots, and that she terrified Betty Parris and her cousin into hysteria by demonstrating traditional African magic to them. 

There is no evidence for this. Trial records only show that Tituba made a witch-cake (a type of English folk magic) at the urging of Mary Sibley, an English Puritan neighbor of the Parrises. There's no record of her practicing any type of Voudoun. Folklorist Samuel Drake and the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow are probably responsible for the idea that Tituba practiced Voudoun and it continues to spread today through Arthur Miller's play The Crucible and Ryan Murphy's TV show American Horror Story. Some historians think that Tituba was an Arawak Indian, not African, which makes it unlikely she would be familiar with an African religion. 

FOLK MAGIC

While there probably weren't any diabolic or even pagan witches in Salem there was still a lot of magic being practiced. For example here are more details about witch-cake Tituba made. It was made from flour and urine from an allegedly bewitched girl at the behest of the Parris's neighbor Mary Sibley. The cake would have been fed to a dog to see if the witchcraft symptoms (convulsions, fits, uncontrolled vocalizations, etc.) were transferred to the animal. If they were it meant the girl was bewitched. 

Mary Sibley did not think this was witchcraft, although I think a lot of modern people might. She was just trying to be a helpful neighbor. Historians know that people from all levels of New England society practiced magic or consulted people who did. Ship captains met with astrologers to determine the best date to embark on a voyage. Young women examined egg whites to learn the career of their future husband. Homeowners nailed horseshoes above doors to keep out witches.

Various types of magic are mentioned in the Salem trial documents and in the sermons of New England's Puritan ministers, who exhorted their congregants to abandon magic and turn to God. The ministers thought that all types of magic came from the Devil, but the average person in colonial New England had a different view. Magic wasn't good or evil, it was just a tool to get things done. They weren't witches - they were just normal 17th century colonial English people.

Some forms of magic were probably passed on through oral tradition, like the witch-cake or using a horseshoe to protect your home. Others were learned from books. Accused witch Dorcas Hoar practiced palm-reading, which she said she read about in a book. Perhaps that's also how she learned to examine the veins in someone's eyes to foretell their longevity. Some of these magical techniques are still practiced today and you can get your palm read in Salem only a few block from where alleged witches were interrogated. 

So were there really any witches in Salem? Probably not, but there were a lot of people practicing magic and it's amazing that we know so much about what they did. Sometimes history can be just as weird as any legend or myth. 

Tom Cook and the Devil: Be Careful What You Say

Many years ago out in Western Massachusetts there lived a man named Tom Cook.

Tom was not popular in town. He was a "rough sort of customer and it was commonly believed that he was in league with the Devil."

This belief was indeed true. Many years ago Tom had sold his soul to the Devil for material success and had been reaping the benefits ever since.

Well, one cold morning Tom was getting dressed next to his fireplace when he heard someone knocking at the door. When he opened it he was horrified to see the Devil standing there.

"Tom," the Devil said, "You've had a good run but now it's time to pay the price. I'm here to take you down to Hell."

The Devil grabbed Tom's arm as he said this. His grip was firm like iron and burned like hot coals.

Tom gulped. Things didn't look too good, but as the Devil began to drag him out the door he had an idea.

Tom said, "Sorry, can you hold on a moment? I need to put on my suspenders."

The Devil chuckled. What did it matter? Tom's soul was his. "Sure," the Devil said. "I'll wait until you put your suspenders on."

Tom ran to where his suspenders were and threw them into the fire.

"Ooops, sorry, Mr. Devil," he said. "My suspenders are gone. You'll have to wait until I get some new ones!"

The Devil gnashed his teeth, realizing that he had been tricked. With an angry shout he disappeared in a cloud of sulfurous smoke. 

Tom escaped the Devil's grasp, but he was never able to wear suspenders again as long as he lived.

*****

This little story comes from Clifton Johnson's excellent book What They Say in New England (1896). 

Literature is full of stories about people who sell their souls to Satan. Probably the most famous one is Faust, whose story has been told by Christopher Marlowe, Johann von Goethe and even Thomas Mann. Literary stories about deals with the Devil usually end with a human being dragged to hell, and are heavy on the morality.

Folklore is also full of stories about people selling their soul to the Devil, but the folk tales tend to focus less on morality and more on how the bargain is either fulfilled or thwarted. Someone usually gets tricked.

For example, in this story a Connecticut man named Rufus Goodrich sells his soul to the Devil. Rufus wants to be famous. The Devil says, "Sure, you'll be so famous thousands will attend your funeral." Shortly after signing away his soul Rufus falls from a hayloft and dies. When his neighbors finally find his body they notice that it's covered with thousands of flies.

It's a gross story, but illustrates one of the key principles in these folk tales. The language used in the bargain is taken very literally. A person's true intention doesn't matter as much as what they sat. The Devil never actually told Rufus that thousands of people would attend his funeral, did he?

Usually the person who gets tricked is the Devil, as in the story about Tom Cook and his suspenders. The Devil probably meant to say "I can wait a minute or two before I drag you to Hell," but instead he said he'd wait for Tom to put on his suspenders. Again, the literal words are more important than anyone's intention.

You can see some other examples of literalism in this story about the Devil building a barn, or even this Native American story about a dwarf who grants wishes. Be careful what you agree to, and be careful what you say.

Movie Review: The Witch, A New England-Folktale (2015)

So last night Tony and I saw The Witch, director Robert Eggers highly praised horror film set in early Puritan New England. As we walked home along the Muddy River (where the estate of executed witch Anne Hibbens was located) and rabbits frolicked around us in the moonlight, I thought: how am I going to write about this movie? 

I've been a horror movie fan for most of my life, and I've been writing about New England folklore for many years. I saw The Witch from this dual perspective, so I'm going to first write about it as a film, and then about its folkloric aspects.

I really, really enjoyed The Witch. It's been getting a lot of hype as being incredibly scary, which I think does it a disservice. It's more of an art film with horrific aspects than a straight up horror film. Don't go into it expecting screaming teenagers being chased through the woods by an axe-wielding maniac. Yes someone does wield an axe, and teens do indeed scream, but it's not Friday the 13th. Rather than terrifying, I found it spooky, unsettling, and morally icky, but also emotionally resonant and thought-provoking.

If you want to be surprised about this movie don't read any further. In other words, SPOILERS AHEAD.

The premise is relatively simple. In 1630s New England, a family is banished from a Puritan settlement for being too religiously strident. Exiled but unbowed, Mom, Dad and their five children carve out a small farm a day's journey away from the settlement. Things go well at first, but by the fall their crops are failing, and one day when oldest daughter Thomasin is playing peek-a-boo with her baby brother Samuel he suddenly disappears. The parents suspect a wolf took him, but the name of this movie isn't The Wolf.

That all happens within the first ten minutes. Things only get worse for the next eighty. The narrative is a twisty mix of family psycho-dynamics and mythic imagery. The tight-knit pious family is realistically dysfunctional. Did they really think settling on the edge of an unknown continent would be easy? Dad is successful only at splitting logs, the children tell vicious stories about each other, Mom is getting cold feet about the whole pioneer thing, and their oldest daughter is reaching the peak of puberty. At times the movie implies the supernatural shenanigans are just the imaginings of a stressed out family in a bad situation, but then shifts to show powerful, archetypal images that indicate the supernatural forces menacing the family are quite real. A woman in a red cape in a tangled forest. A rabbit that can't be killed. Baby Samuel's real fate...

My favorite scenes in the film involve the young twins Mercy and Jonas, who are simultaneously cute, bratty and creepy, like the Olsen Twins of Full House mixed with Rob Zombie's Lords of Salem. They spend a lot of time frolicking with the family goat Black Phillip. The twins say he talks to them, but maybe they're just playing a game. Or maybe not.

Robert Eggers is from New Hampshire, and says as a child he thought the New England woods were haunted. He's trying to capture an Olde Tyme New-Englande vibe in this movie, and I think he succeeds in capturing what we know or imagine the early Puritan era looked like. The colors are muted, the homes are dark, and the landscapes have a familiar Northeast gloom. The family's home is festooned with bunches of drying diseased corn, making it look like the grimmest Thanksgiving you've ever imagined. The brief scene of the family leaving the Puritan settlement was filmed at Plimoth Plantation here in Massachusetts, so I think that comparison is apt.

Now onto the folklore in the film. The movie's full title is The Witch: A New-England Folktale. Although is is not based on any actual witchcraft cases or particular folk stories, Eggers did a lot of research into 17th century life and folk beliefs. Much of the movie accurately reflects authentic New England folk stories.

There are bewitched children pinched and tortured by unseen attackers. There are ghosts. There is Protestant prayer, both fearful and ecstatic. There are bewitched farm animals, and familiar spirits suckling on human blood. The Devil appears as a man in black with a book awaiting signatures. There is the overwhelming sense of being a sinner in the hands of an angry God and the accompanying fear of damnation.

Ultimately though this is a movie by a modern American aimed at a modern audience. Traditional New England witch stories are usually about societal issues. Accused witches were seldom family members but were usually shunned members of the community. The stories often follow this pattern: a poor person asks a wealthier person for food or money. The wealthier person refuses, and the poor person mutters threats. Shortly thereafter bad things happen to the wealthier person. Cattle don't give milk, children sicken, crops fail. The poor person is suspected of witchcraft.

Eggers' film does not follow this classic pattern, but instead focuses heavily on psycho-sexual issues. To support this focus, many of the film's later images are drawn not from New England witch narratives but instead from continental European myths and narratives, which had more sexual content. Continental witch stories were quite lurid, full of orgies, infanticide and cannibalism. The New England witches, malevolent though they were, were demure Puritans at heart. Their nocturnal gatherings didn't involve naked gyrating hags, but rather fully clad people standing around listening to the Devil lecture them. They were an inverted version of the Puritan Sunday meetings, not a crazed bacchanalia. At their wildest they sometimes had fiddle music and square dancing. Square-dancing witches wouldn't make for a very scary movie.

And though I love the goat in this movie, the Devil seldom appears as a goat in New England witch stories. Most often he appears as a man richly dressed in black, but when he does take animal shape he appears in a variety of forms, including a cat and a hog. Modern people tend to think of Satan as goatish, though, so I understand why this makes sense for the film.

Finally, many traditional New England witch stories are actually about how to defeat a witch. They describe the witch's predations only to relate how they can be stopped. They are instructional tales told to help younger generations manage malevolent forces. They are not grim or pessimistic.

Witches were bad, but their magic could easily be foiled by simple measures. Keeping urine in a jar full of nails. Hammering a horseshoe above the door. Placing bay leaves around the window. Burning the hair of a bewitched child. All of these could effectively stop a witch's attack. The world was full of evil forces, but the early settlers were optimistic that ultimately they could be defeated.

I think the ending of The Witch is morally ambivalent, but is it optimistic? Probably not, but then again, much like square-dancing witches, it's probably not what a modern audience is looking for. 

Mary Toothaker and the Devil's Protection

Although it is warm and sunny out I am in the mood for witchcraft stories. Honestly I am always in the mood for witchcraft, but this month is always the busiest period at my day job, and I think I crave tales of the bizarre and supernatural as an antidote.

So here's a story, which is lurid, upsetting, and weirdly ironic. It comes from the Salem witch trials. The more I read about those dark days the more strange stories I find. This particular one is about a woman named Mary Toothaker, a woman whose life was saved by her confession.

Mary Toothaker lived in Billerica with her husband Roger and daughter Martha. Roger had a reputation as a folk-healer and bragged that he could fight witches with magic. When the witch trials broke out he was naturally accused of witchcraft - it's a fine line between white and black magic, after all - and eventually died in jail. In the summer of 1692 Mary was accused of witchcraft as well.

In addition to being accused of tormenting the usual gaggle of afflicted Salem girls, Mary was also accused of bewitching Timothy Swan of Andover. There was bad blood between Swan and Mary's family. In 1687 he had been accused of raping her relative Elizabeth Emerson, holding his arm against her throat so she could not cry out for help. He was acquitted of rape, but the court still ordered him to pay child support for the child Emerson conceived after his assault.

Swan later contracted a mysterious illness (which eventually killed him in 1693). During her trial, Mary Toothaker confessed that she had hurt Swan using witchcraft, and in particular that her specter had "squeezed his throat." An eye for an eye, I suppose. But revenge (according to her confession) was not the sole reason she had become a witch. The Devil had promised her safety.

It's hard to imagine now, but in 1692 Massachusetts consisted primarily of small rural villages. The colony was merely decades old, and its future was uncertain. The biggest threat came from the local Indians, who were allied with the French. Indian raids were a constant concern for English settlers in Massachusetts, and this concern was only magnified in the 1690s when Essex County was flooded with refugees fleeing Indian attacks in Maine. Billerica is now a cute bedroom community, but when Mary Toothaker lived there in the 1600s it was a frontier settlement whose residents feared for their lives.

So when Mary gave herself to the Devil, she asked for safety from Indian attacks for her and her son, a war veteran who had been wounded in a skirmish with Indians. The Devil, who appeared as a man with a dark complexion, agreed. Mary signed away her soul on a piece of birch bark.

At least that's what she confessed. No one who confessed during the Salem trials was executed, so it was the smart thing to do on Mary's part. After hearing her initial testimony the judges sent her to Salem's jail until they determined her sentence.

Two days later, on August 1, 1692, an Indian raiding party attacked Billerica. Most of Mary's neighbors were killed. It's very likely that if she had been home she would have died as well. Several days later the Indians returned and burned down the Toothaker farm, which was unoccupied.

In 1693 Mary was declared innocent of witchcraft and released from jail. She returned to Billerica with her 12 year old daughter Margaret. A few years later, on February 1, 1695 another Indian raiding party attacked Billerica. Mary was killed. Her daughter taken away as a captive and disappeared from the historical records.

I found this story in historian Emerson Baker's new book A Storm of Witchcraft. Baker speculates that Mary may have actually thought herself a witch. Her family did practice magic, and perhaps she thought Timothy Swan's suffering was caused by her own hatred of him. That's hard to determine, but her fear of Indian attacks was shared by most English settlers, and it's interesting that the Devil appeared to her as a dark-skinned man and that she signed a piece of bark rather than the more traditional European style book that is mentioned in other accounts. It makes sense to ally yourself with what you fear. Her confession provides a good window into the mindset of the time.

I don't think there was any unusual supernatural agency at work here, but it's odd that Mary was safest when she was locked up in jail. She got her wish for protection, even if only for a while.

The Proof Is In The Pudding - Proof of Satan!

Small things go wrong in my life all the time. My computer at work does something weird, the Facebook app on my phone stops working, my waffles come out burned, or I miss the bus. I just take these things for granted and don't usually read anything into them.

If I lived a couple centuries ago I wouldn't be so sanguine in the face of these minor misfortunes. Thing often went wrong for our New England ancestors. Butter wouldn't churn, cattle got sick, the loom malfunctioned while weaving, a blight killed the corn. Some people would just take these things for granted, but others would find a supernatural cause. Maybe it was God, but maybe it was Satan and his followers...

John Brown of Lynn, Massachusetts was one of those people. In the late summer of 1692 John got a hankering for Indian pudding.

He desired an Indian puding to be made, which was done, and the flour and suet were white and good when put into the pot, but when (it ) came out (it) was red like a blood pudding...

That's right! His Indian pudding, instead of coming out golden brown, came out blood red. John Brown almost immediately knew who was at fault. It was Sarah Cole, a woman he had argued with over religion (she said all church-goers were devils) and also over some hogs. He had gotten ill after their spat about church-goers, and after they argued about hogs his Indian pudding turned blood red. John was fed up, and accused Sarah of witchcraft. He even testified in front of the magistrates at Salem about the Indian pudding.

Some things we might consider minor inconveniences were actually a big deal for the early settlers. If butter didn't churn, you had no way to preserve your milk. If your cow got sick, you probably wouldn't even have milk. If the loom broke you might have to go naked, and if a blight killed your corn your family could starve. These were were major problems. I can understand how someone might have blamed a witch for these things, even if I disagree with their logic.

But a discolored Indian pudding doesn't seem that important to me, and I really love Indian pudding. Was it really worth blaming Satan and his minions?

Apparently in New England it was. Here is something from a 1722 edition of the New-England Courant:

We are at present amus'd with a very odd Story from Martha's Vineyard, which however is affirm'd for a Truth by some Persons lately come from thence, viz. That at a certain House in Edgar Town, a Plain Indian Pudding, being put into the Pot and boil'd the usual Time, it came out of a Blood-red Colour, to the great Surprise of the whole Family. The Cause of this great Alteration in the Pudding is not yet known, tho' it has been Matter of great Speculation in the Neighborhood.

And here is another story, from the May 25, 1767 issue of the Boston Evening-Post, provides a possible and specifically Satanic explanation for unusual puddings.

They write from Plymouth, that an extraordinary Event has lately happen'd in the Neighborhood, in which, some say, the Devil and the Man of the House are very much to blame. The Man, it seems would now and then in a Frolick call upon the Devil to come down the Chimney; and some little Time after the last Invitation, the good Wife's Pudding turn'd black in the boiling, which she attributed to the Devil's descending the Chimney, and getting into the Pot, upon her Husband's repeated Wishes for him. Great Numbers of Peoples have been to view the Pudding, and to enquire into the Circumstances; and most of them agree, that the sudden Change must be produc'd by a Preternatural Power. But some good Housewives of a Chymical Turn assign a Natural Cause for it...

Three years ago I actually wrote briefly about those two newspaper articles, but I thought the topic was worth revisiting after I found the story about John Brown.

I think these stories are entertaining and illuminating examples of how people try to make sense of the world, particularly misfortune. Why do bad things happen to good people - or good puddings? When is it acceptable to invoke a supernatural cause, like God, Satan, black magic, or Mercury retrograde? When is the cause considered natural?

I don't think most contemporary New Englanders would blame the Devil or a witch if their pudding came out an odd color. Like the "good Housewives of a Chymical Turn" we would find a natural cause. And as the two newspapers indicate, even in the 1700s people were divided over the line dividing the natural and the supernatural. Maybe most early New Englanders only blamed the supernatural for really bad things, like mysterious deaths or unexpected calamities such as famines or epidemics. Many modern people don't invoke supernatural causes at all, blaming bad things on a random mechanistic universe.

Happily for Sarah Cole, it seems like the magistrates in Salem didn't share John Brown's concerns over the Indian pudding. On February 1, 1693 she was found not guilty of witchcraft and set free.

Once Again, Harvard Students Plan to Raise Satan

Once again some Harvard students are planning to raise Satan on campus. It's not the first time it's happened, and probably won't be the last. 

So, here's the story. Tomorrow evening some students at Harvard University's Extension School will be participating in a Satanic Mass. The students are part of the Extension School's Cultural Studies Club, and are holding the devilish rite as a way of learning about other religions.

The Boston Archdiocese is outraged, saying the Black Mass mocks Catholicism and is contrary to "charity and goodness." The school's administrators responded to the church and said they support the club in this educational endeavor. The club is also planning to perform rituals from other religious traditions like Shinto and Buddhism.

The Black Mass will be led by the Satanic Temple of New York. Temple spokesperson Lucien Greaves says they will base their Mass on La Bas, a 19th century novel by the French Decadent Joris-Karl Huysmans. Greaves is an atheist and a Harvard alumnus, and claims the ritual is more political than religious in intent.

“This is not a supernatural ritual,” Greaves told the Daily News. “We don’t believe in the supernatural. And I don’t think belief in the supernatural should give you any privilege, since any deeply held belief should be protected."

"...There’s no stronger cultural symbol for the revolt against the general idea of arbitrary authority and revolt against ultimate tyranny,” Greaves said of Satan. “There’s no better a construct that can act as a narrative for our works and goals.”

The Satanic Temple of New York is no stranger to publicity. They've been in the news recently with their efforts to erect a statue of the goat god Baphomet in front of the Oklahoma state capital building. Last summer, Greaves and the Temple performed a Pink Mass at the grave of Christian fundamentalist Fred Phelps's mother with the intent of making her lesbian in the afterlife.

Lucien Greaves (center) celebrating the Pink Mass

The Satanic Temple seems like a group of political pranksters more than serious Satanists, but their presence on campus still indicate how things have changed at Harvard University. Harvard was founded in 1636 to train Puritan ministers and they took the Devil quite seriously.


The last time Harvard students tried to raise the Devil things didn't go the way they expected. That story goes something like this. One day, way back in the 1640s, Harvard's president Henry Dunster was called away to Concord on business. A group of student took advantage of his absence to experiment with some black magic. After all, Harvard had an extensive occult library, so why not use it?

Harvard's Dunster House, named after Henry Dunster, the school's first president.

The student's did succeed in raising Satan, but unfortunately were not able to control him. The Evil One proceeded to run amok on campus. In a panic, the students sent a message to Dunster that he needed to come back to campus immediately. Dunster mounted his horse and galloped back to campus to handle the rampaging demon. He was a well-trained minister and knew just what to do.

When he arrived at Harvard he poured the contents of his gunpowder horn onto the ground and told the Devil to appear. Satan obeyed, apparently drawn by the familiar, sulfurous smell of the gunpowder. Dunster ignited the gunpowder and the Devil disappeared in a fiery explosion, leaving behind only a foul smell. There's no word on whether the students were expelled or were given extra credit for successfully applying what they found in the library.

I'm all for youthful occult experimentation, but I do think caution is required, particularly if you're summoning Satan. Let's hope Greaves or one of the students brings a horn of gunpowder in case their ritual is more effective than they think.

(The story about Henry Dunster and the Devil was first told by one of his descendants in Proceedings of The Centennial Celebration of The One Hundredth Anniversary of The Incorporation of The Town of Mason, N. H., August 26, 1868 and has since been repeated in various folklore books.)

Raising Hell

Did you ever want to summon Satan? You know, maybe become rich and famous overnight without any hard work? Just make sure you read the fine print on that contract Old Scratch is handing you...

Apparently it's not that hard to call up the Devil. According to Clifton Johnson's book What They Say in New England, if you simply say the Lord's Prayer backwards the Devil will appear. I don't know if this charm really works, and I'm not going to experiment.

This superstition appears in other New England lore, like the story about two young ladies looking for love who accidentally summon a demon. I don't think it originated in New England, though, since similar beliefs are found around the world. For example, in Newfoundland saying the Lord's Prayer in reverse will summon a terrible hag that gives your enemy nightmares, while Scotsmen who want to meet the Devil trace a circle of chalk and recite the Pater Noster backwards.

It's a belief that has persisted into the present, as a quick search of the Internet will show. It's also related to the Satanic music scares of the 1970s and 1980s when rock stars allegedly backwards messages into their music. Even as late as 1991 a band with the charming name Cradle of Filth put a backwards Lord's Prayer on an album.

In his classic of 1970s occultism, Mastering Witchcraft, Paul Huson recommends reciting the Lord's Prayer backwards as the first step to becoming a witch or warlock. Not that it will really summon Satan, Huson claims, but rather it will clear the nouveau witch of all that pesky Christian conditioning. Huson is obviously skilled in the ways of magic, since he wrote several successful TV shows, including The Colbys, a spinoff of night-time soap opera Dynasty.

The images for today's post were painted by Thomas Deas and John Quidor in the 19th century, and are illustrations for Washington Irving's story "The Devil and Tom Walker."  Tom Walker is a greedy Yankee who makes a deal with Satan and becomes Boston's most successful loan and mortgage broker. As you can tell from the paintings things don't end well.

One interesting thing about Irving's story is that Satan is summoned in an abandoned Indian fort in the woodsy wilderness of Brighton, Massachusetts. How our landscape and traditions have changed! These days Brighton is a dense Boston neighborhood full of Boston University and Boston College students, who do their hell-raising primarily with kegs and red plastic Solo cups.

The Horned Boy of Bangor

After last week's post about Pamola I got a hankering for more Maine folklore. Here's a great story from Horace Beck's 1957 book The Folklore of Maine.

Many years ago near Bangor a family had two sons. The older boy was always mischievous and getting into trouble. He was so poorly behaved that his neighbors said he had the Devil in him. The younger boy, however, was quiet and well-behaved.

One day the older boy found out his younger brother would be walking home after dark. "Aha!" he thought. "The perfect occasion for a prank."

He covered his body with a cow skin, put a cow skull on his head, and hid in the bushes near the road. When his little brother walked by, he jumped from his hiding place, howling and waving his arms. He expected his brother to run all the way home!

The surprise was on him. His younger brother picked up a large branch and hit the horned monster soundly on the head. Then he ran home.

When he told his parents what happened they ran down the road. Their worst fears were confirmed - their oldest son was dead, killed with a single blow.

His parents pulled off the cow skin, but no matter how hard they tried they were unable to remove the horns from his head. They asked neigbhors and friends to help, but to no avail. The horns wouldn't budge. It was if they were fused to his head.

A few days later the boy was buried with the horns still attached. At the funeral all the neighbors whispered, "We always knew he had the Devil in him."

Satan, the Pope and a Cross Dresser: Guy Fawkes Day

This week I have the post Halloween blues, so I'm writing about another raucous holiday. Halloween wasn't really celebrated in New England until the 19th century, when Irish and Scottish immigrants brought it to this area. However, before that people here did have a holiday with costumes, door-to-door begging, and even jack-o-lanterns: Guy Fawkes Day.

Guy Fawkes was an English Catholic who plotted to blow up the predominantly Protestant British parliament on November 5, 1605. Unfortunately for him, he was seen leaving the basement of the Parliament building, and officials soon discovered the gunpowder kegs he hoped to ignite. He and his co-conspirators were executed. November 5 became a holiday in England known as Guy Fawkes Day or Bonfire Night - it celebrated the foiling of the gunpowder plot.

Guy Fawkes Day didn't become popular in New England until the late 1600s. As I've mentioned many times, the area's Puritan leaders frowned on nearly all holidays, but surprisingly tolerated this one. I think its anti-Catholic tone supported their own theocratic agenda.

To celebrate gangs of boys and men would create one or more effigies, usually of Guy Fawkes, the Pope, and sometimes Satan. Once night fell they'd get drunk, put on costumes and parade around town with their effigies asking for money. At the end of the night they'd burn the effigies and set off fireworks. (It's not expressly documented, but the next morning everyone probably nursed a really bad hangover.)

A 1769 woodcut showing a Boston wagon with Satan and the Pope.

In large cities the celebrations were be quite elaborate. For example, in Boston gangs of lower-class men and boys pulled their effigies around town on large wagons. The gang members also wore matching devil or choirboy costumes and hired musicians to accompany them. Engravings from the 18th century show these wagons topped with large effigies of the Pope and Satan. What they don't show is that one gang member often dressed in drag and danced on the wagon while lasciviously caressing the effigies.

In addition to the anti-Catholic bigotry, Guy Fawkes Day celebrations usually involved violence. Gang members would sometimes abuse people who didn't give them money, and rival gangs often battled to destroy each others effigies. In Boston, the North End and South End gangs were notorious rivals and frequently ended the night clubbing each other senseless. Innocent bystanders often got injured or worse during the festivities - in 1764 an infant in the North End was killed when it fell under the wagon's wheels. That year the constables dispersed the marchers, but they regrouped a few blocks away and continued.

After the American Revolution Guy Fawkes Day celebrations started to fade away. One theory is that New Englanders didn't want to offend their Catholic French allies who helped them in the war against the British, but a more plausible reason is that they no longer wanted to celebrate a holiday commemorating the salvation of the British government.

Guy Fawkes Day was still celebrated as late as 1893 in Newburyport, Massachusetts where boys paraded around an effigy while blowing horns and carrying jack-o-lanterns. (Jack-o-lanterns, which we now associate exclusively with Halloween, were originally used at any autumn party or celebration.) But by this time Halloween was popular in the U.S., and it eventually absorbed the costumes and general mischief of Guy Fawkes Day. The door-to-door begging for money became our modern practice of trick or treat.

I got most of this information and from an essay by Peter Benes in New England Celebrates: Spectacle, Commemoration and Festivity.

October Horror Mania: Rufus Goodrich's Funeral

The Beckley Tavern in Berlin, Connecticut. From Catherine North's History of Berlin Connecticut (1916).

Well it's October, and October means Halloween. And Halloween means scary stuff. Stuff even scarier than my usual posts about ghosts, phantom hitchhikers and Bigfoot hiding in the barn.

Last October I blogged about New England monsters, both well-known and obscure. This year I thought I'd start the month with one of the more gruesome tales I've read recently. Apparently it's true.

This story comes from Catherine North's 1916 book History of Berlin, Connecticut. It's an innocuous title for a book that a tale of such ... supernatural evil! (Insert your own maniacal laughter here if you choose.)

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Back in the mid-nineteenth century, the hard-working men of Berlin, Connecticut liked to gather at the local cider mill. Why a cider mill? Because back then most cider was alcoholic!

One night while the men were imbibing and talking about work Rufus Goodrich came in. No one paid him any notice. Although he came from a prominent local family, Rufus was lazy and had never amounted to anything. He was a joke around town.

As the other men drank and talked, Rufus sat in the corner silently sipping his cider with a smirk on his face. But the more he drank the less silent he became. First he began to mutter. Then he started to giggle. The other men still ignored him. But when he started to cackle wildly, the conversation in the room stopped.

"What's your problem you lazy idiot?" a prominent farmer finally shouted.

He said, "No problems, not anymore. I'm just laughing because I'm going to be famous while you're all stuck in this miserable little hamlet."

"Famous? For what?! Being an idiot?" The men laughed drunkenly.

Rufus ignored them and continued talking. "This evening I was walking through the woods when I encountered a man dressed all in black. But he wasn't an ordinary man... he was the Dark Man himself. The Devil!"

Some men laughed, but a few remembered their grandmothers' old stories and grew quiet.

"He asked me how much it would cost to buy my soul. 'I don't want to be rich', I said, 'I want to be famous. How famous can you make me?'"

"The Devil said, 'What if I told you that thousands would attend your funeral? Would that be famous enough?' I said 'Thousands at my funeral? You bet! Where do I sign?'"

Rufus drained his glass and slammed it down. "So I sold him my soul. And now gentleman, good night. Fame awaits!"

The next day word spread quickly through Berlin that Rufus Goodrich had sold his soul. People assumed he had left town to find fame because no one had seen him since he left the cider mill.

A few days later a farmer noticed a loud buzzing sound coming from inside one of his barns. He also could smell something awful inside.

When he went into the barn he found the source of the terrible odor. There was Rufus Goodrich's body, wedged between two hayposts. It looked like he had fallen and broken his neck, and had been there a few days.

The buzzing was caused by the fat black flies that crawled over Rufus's bloating corpse and swarmed through barn. The farmer had never seen so many flies! At first he thought there must be hundreds of them.

But then he realized there were even more. The Devil had kept his word. Rufus's funeral was indeed attended by thousands... of flies.