The motive of Tituba’s “tall man with white hair,” whom we regard as prime mover in the most momentous witchcraft scene the world has ever witnessed, is difficult to comprehend satisfactorily. The deliberateness indicated both by his visit to Tituba five days in advance of practical operation, and by his then appointing a special time and place for entering upon his intended processes, bespeaks a definite and abiding motive of some marked quality. Judging from the earlier and more perceptible effects of his doings, the world must almost necessarily regard him as a deliberate tormentor of innocent children; as a disturber of domestic, social, religious, and civil peace; as an immolator of the innocent and the virtuous; as hell’s sovereign acting out his fiendish pleasure upon the inmates of a Christian fold. Infernal malignity, at the first glance, seems to have actuated this intruder at the parsonage. World-wide experience, however, has learned that many things are “not as they seem.” We have been taught to recognize One being, and there may be many others in spheres unseen, in whose sight “a thousand years are as one day.” Teachings of history and observation show that the overruling power is attended and guided by far—very far—reaching prescience; and also that many of man’s greatest blessings are educed from temporal evils of vast magnitude. The malice of man nailed Jesus to the cross. What wears every appearance of wicked motive is often used as helpful, if not needed, instrumentality in procuring man’s deliverance and redemption from debasement and oppression.
When John Brown made his raid across the border line of freedom, not only the invaded South, but a large portion of the North regarded him as a ruthless and malicious invader of the rights of our fellow-countrymen, and therefore worthy of a felon’s doom. A cannon soon sent to Fort Sumter the comments of the South upon what Brown had done, and war, carnage, and horrors of varied forms and vast dimensions soon spread over the broad nation, from the St. John to the southern gulf, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. John Brown was no felon, no malicious invader, but a philanthropic planner to strip the chains of slavery from four millions of his brother men; and his step, though a seeming evil then, led directly on to the emancipation of all for whose good he went forth in seeming malice.
When plagues of various kinds were invoked and brought upon the Egyptians by and through the mediumistic Moses and Aaron, what Egyptian would have deemed that the motives of the unseen intelligence who counseled and controlled them could be benevolent? Plague, pestilences, and sore afflictions for a long time, and finally death of the first born, were imposed upon each Egyptian household. The motive to those inflictions is deemed to have been deliverance of the children of Israel from bondage. Egyptians being judges, it must have been a shockingly wicked spirit who acted upon them through Moses and Aaron.
History, on most of its pages, shows that war—war,—that ruthless trampler upon the innocent scarcely less than upon the offending, has ever been a very common, if not the chief, instrument by which oppressed people have gained deliverance, and through use of which the depressed have come up to higher stand-points. If our world has, through all its past ages, been wisely and beneficently managed by some intelligence higher than man, then far-reaching wisdom—supernal wisdom—has often seen that the good of the many—nay, the good of all—required the coming of suffering, sacrifice, and anguish upon the few. Has the Great Permitter of the many sufferings which war has engendered been “shockingly wicked”?
The chains of old enslaving errors often become invisible and unfelt by those on whom they were early placed by a mother’s kindly hand, and the like to which all associates wear as supposed helps, and never as suspected hindrances, to expansion and health of mind and heart. Nothing short of a most strenuous conflict—nothing short of a struggle for life and all that makes life valuable and dear—is competent in some cases to awaken perception that such chains are and ever have been cramping their wearers, and holding them back from such expansion and freedom as their Maker fitted men to attain to and enjoy. We regard the witchcraft creed as having been such a chain.
Looking carefully at the methods by which the power that overrules all terrestrial affairs has almost invariably led man to break away from thralldom and oppression, can one reasonably entertain belief that any purely peaceful measures, any preachings, arguments, appeals to the reason of men, could have brought Christendom, at any time after the twelfth or thirteenth century, to perceive that its witchcraft creed was enslaving its mind, and thwarting its proper expansion heavenward? We apprehend not; and also we surmise that in 1602 supernal intelligence saw that opportunity and power existed, which, if then availed of, could put mortals into a conflict which would reveal to them the inherent falsity and barbarity of the witchcraft creed, and thus let such light into their minds as, in time, would lead them to cast off the chains in which they were bound, attain to clearer and more accurate views of their relations to God and the spirit-world, and rise to higher and freer manhood.
If such were the case, we can readily conceive that supernal wisdom and benevolence might permit and foster the oncoming of an appalling and terrific struggle which should bring into vigorous action man’s every latent energy, sweep away in its course many erroneous beliefs, hampering customs, and ruts of thought, and thoroughly overturn much which had long been deemed immovable truth. Such a course might be the most beneficent possible, even though it involved destruction of the comfort, peace, and lives of many innocent and most estimable inhabitants at the place and vicinity where the battle should be waged, and that, too, whether the war itself should be the ostensible offspring of revenge and malice, or a brave conflict for preservation of one’s altars and fireside in peace.
Some amusement, and little else perhaps, may be furnished by presentation of what a spiritualist’s fancy, prior to careful study of facts narrated by Tituba, had become accustomed to deem not only possible, but probable. She was a slave dwelling among oppressors of her kindred and race—oppressors of the negro, the Indian, and of those generally who were “guilty of a skin not colored like their own,” and of worshiping gods different from their own. What more natural than that departed ones, whom the whites had defrauded, injured, and oppressed while dwellers here, and whose surviving kindred were still being treated in like manner, should embrace an opportunity which the mediumistic qualities and the abode of Tituba furnished, for perpetrating retaliation whence woes had been received? True Christian morality may denounce such action as being “shockingly wicked,” but the more prevalent morality in the world—in the more resolute portions of it at least, and especially in the less enlightened—may be as ready to commend as to condemn it, and to applaud as to censure those whose fire and pluck induced and enabled them to pay over upon their oppressors wrong for wrong, even augmented with interest at the highest rates which their altered circumstances allowed. It having been discovered that Tituba’s form was a portal for spirit return, fancy saw the spirits of her ancestral race, and hosts of ascended aborigines of Massachusetts soil, eagerly coming back through her helping properties, disposed and eager to cast their impalpable arrows and tomahawks at any members of the wronging race who might be vulnerable by such weapons. Scouts swiftly and widely spread over the spirit hunting-grounds knowledge of the glorious opportunity for retaliation and revenge which had come, and hosts of volunteers rushed thence with lightning speed to the alluring scene. Quick havoc ensued, and the great consternation, bewilderment, devastation, slaughter, disturbance of peace, and agonizings of terror and awe, which the invasion produced, gave keenest pleasure, satisfaction, and joy to the assailants. Possibly Indian spirits might then begin to cherish hopes of expelling all whites from the land of their fathers, and of re-acquiring and leaving the whole a legacy to red men’s heirs.
But the whites, not less than the darker-skinned, were under the supervision of spirit guardians, friends, and helpers, who, though probably taken by surprise and at disadvantage, were by no means disposed to leave their wards, kindred, and loved ones to be long thus harassed and abused. Invisible hosts soon mustered, and warred against other invisible hosts over and around the Village; and when the struggle had been waged far enough to sever witchcraft’s chains, the laws of the Highest permitted the guardians of the Christians to conquer a lasting peace whose balm would heal the wounds inflicted, and whose fruits would be emancipation from cramping errors, and consequent expansion and elevation of mental powers.
As, perhaps, appropriate sequent to our fanciful views, we next present something which was not born in our own brain, and which may or may not be statement of ancient facts. We have devoted but little time to directly seeking information from spirits relating to the subject upon which we are writing, and yet have seldom entered into conversation with any good clairvoyant, at any time during the last year or two, without receiving description of one or more spirits then in attendance, and manifesting desire to have us recognize them. In most cases they have shown their names. In this manner Cotton Mather, more than any other one, signifies that interest in our present work draws him near to us. Mather’s mother, also Martha Goodwin, Rebecca Nurse, and others, have presented their cards through persons ignorant that individuals bearing such names ever lived. But Mather has done more. On two or three occasions, using a medium’s organs of speech, he has entered into conversation with us upon his connection with witchcraft. He is not now well pleased with his blindness when in his physical form, and urges us to be more severe in our criticisms upon his course than historic facts permit us to be.