Possibly, and only possibly, that devil was only an influx of auras which found entrance to Ann’s inner perceptives, put in abeyance her outer consciousness and outer senses, and let her inner ones sense and give expression to the thoughts and purposes of some low-lived and lewd mediumistic persons in her neighborhood, whose inner selves, she, as a relatively freed spirit, could thoroughly read. Occult intelligences sometimes actuate the physical organs, while yet the mortal’s consciousness fails to perceive either the action or the will that prompts it.
The account of her life makes it apparent that Ann, as a woman, had no affinity with the base and lewd, but, being mediumistic, was caused, either by design or by the out-workings of unconscious natural forces, to disclose the baseness and lewdness of others. She apparently experienced entrancement to absolute unconsciousness, so that she became, for the time being, literally a tool—no more self-acting, and therefore no more responsible, than a pen, a pencil, or a speaking-trumpet. Condition like hers in that respect is experienced by many persons at the present day.
Some utterances made by her lips when she was entranced were successfully used in court, either as proofs, or as helps for obtaining proof, that certain other persons in her neighborhood were in league with Satan—were the devil’s familiars. Presentation in court of accusations that had come forth from her vocal organs brought a woman, then on trial for witchcraft, to prompt confession that the allegations were true, and both she and her husband were condemned and executed.
Similar resorts for obtaining clews by which to trace crimes to their authors are extensively resorted to now, and frequently with success; but the statements of the entranced and the clairvoyant are not adduced in court, nor should they be, because our world has not yet attained to reliable skill for testing their accuracy; nor are high-minded and trustworthy spirits often willing to expose any guilty mortals to punishment by this world’s tribunals and executioners.
How far the novel annunciation of their names and some of their practices contributed to the condemnation of the Greensmiths, husband and wife, or whether it did at all, is only matter for conjecture. But that either some influences went out from them and acted upon Ann, or that some went forth from Ann and acted upon them, or that there was reciprocal action back and forth, is only a fair inference from what is stated above, taken in connection with that foot-note of Hutchinson, which is credited to “Goffe the Regicide’s Diary,” and reads thus: “After one of the witches was hanged, the maid was well.” No mention has been met with of any sickness about Ann, excepting the strangely induced fits in which she was used as the mouthpiece of the strange occupant or occupants of her form. Her becoming well may mean no more than a cessation of her fits, or obsessions. That these should cease after the execution of a person or persons with whom she had been in distressing and uncongenial rapport, was perhaps only a natural result from the action of universal laws. Drafts may have been made from her system by forces not her own, which helped invisible beings to act upon the condemned Greensmiths for good or for harm. Occasion for such use of her elements or properties may have ceased as soon as the gallows had finished its work. The fits ceased, perhaps, solely because drafts of special properties from her were discontinued. “After one of the witches was hanged, the maid was well.” The execution of one person and the restoration of health to another were viewed by Goffe as cause and effect.
The Greensmith woman’s confession of the use of her form by her familiar—revolting as the isolated fact would be to us, and will be to the reader—was the controlling reason which influenced us to adduce the case of Ann Cole. We get from the old woman Greensmith an ancient indication, which is paralleled by many unproclaimed modern ones, that astounding possibilities reside within the scope and sway of forces interacting between the realms of matter and of spirit, which possibly and probably may be availed of for elevation as well as for debasement of the human race. Many whispered facts of human experience are to-day indicating that the old woman may have made true statement of her personal experiences. If degradation and fatuity permit the leaking out of some momentous facts of human experience which conscious vessels of fair soundness and delicacy will retain within themselves, and hide from a profaning world’s knowledge, that world, nevertheless, may be entitled to hints at the existence of occult, though only rarely perceptibly operative forces and permissions of nature, through the only channels which have let them flow forth for the world’s free observation. The Greensmith woman’s fact may be regarded as representative of very many others of a like nature.
I know a man who once visited a married couple, both of whom are intelligent and refined, both estimable in character, the husband being a highly respected member of one of the learned professions. This couple, at their own dining-table, where they and the visitor were the only occupants of the room, united in stating that once, when they had just finished taking their midday meal, and were sitting at the table opposite to each other, the lady’s chair, with herself sitting in it, was moved back by some invisible power, and forthwith she, by palpable but invisible arms, was taken from her seat, laid upon the carpet, and there made to experience all the sensations of actual and pleasurable nuptial coition. While such were her positions and sensations, her husband remained on the other side of the table, and they two were the only flesh-clad persons in the room. One accomplished and truthful lady had such experience while her consciousness and all her mental faculties were fully alert. Nature enfolds astounding possibilities. The human race, in coming times, may possibly be improved rapidly and extensively, by designed infusions of supernal elements into fetal germs.
No evidence has come to us, and no apprehension is entertained, that such experiences ever eventuate in physical conception; yet there are seen, now and then, glimmerings of evidence that supernal beings can and do inflow some of their own properties into the very marrow of some susceptible mortals of either gender, or of both simultaneously and conjointly, so as to modify physical systems in such manner and to such extent, that their offspring receive, at the very moment of conception, such properties as will ever afterward render them either better or worse because of injections through the parents by intelligences whose presence and operations elude perception by our external senses. Possibly both the most beneficent and the most malignant of our race—both those whose moral hues most illumine, and those whose shades most blacken the pages of history—were conceived while supernal beings held the parents either under strong psychological control or in deep unconscious trance.
The mother of the rough, lustful, and murderous Samson was visited by a spirit being “very terrible.”
The mother of Jesus was visited by the bright and glorious Gabriel, and enwrapped in an abnormally sound, helpful, or holy aura.