Magic and the Supernatural

Magic and the Supernatural

Sources

Folk Beliefs. Most colonists had little understanding or control over their natural environment and so looked for all of the supernatural help they could muster. Some employed magical techniques to solve particular problems that were too mundane for the notice of God. To Native Americans, Africans, and some Europeans, magic and religion were cut from the same cloth and often coexisted, shading into each other. Their religions included both benevolent and malevolent spirits, intermediaries between these spirits and humans, and manipulation of supernatural forces through prayer and ritual. What seemed to work for one belief system was often appropriated by another, so magical practices were quite similar.

Predicting the Future. Astrology was the most popular means of prediction among Europeans, and it was practiced widely. This entailed the belief that the Earth was a microcosm of the heavens, so that the motions of the stars affected all aspects of human life. Individual horoscopes were cast to reveal everything—when to plant, marry, sail, conceive, or bleed people as part of medical practice. Christian mystics, who believed that they were a part of all of the spiritual world, incorporated astrology into their mainstream belief systems. For instance, Johannes Kelpius and his hermit community of Rosicrucians, who migrated from Germany in 1694 and occupied caves along the Wissahickon Creek outside of Philadelphia, regularly used astrology to order their lives as they awaited the second coming of Christ. But there was also a wide variety of other fortune-telling devices such as “reading” the pattern of tea leaves, the shape of a raw egg white dropped into a bowl, the entrails of a fowl, or the arrangement of special pebbles cast on the ground. Almost everyone interpreted dreams as an entry into the spiritual world which encompassed the future. Among the Africans and Native Americans, priests or shamans were specialists in interpreting these dreams.

Charms. Particular objects used to ward off evil came in a bewildering array and occupied different levels of importance among the colonists. Talismans protected one in battle, be they verses from the Koran, a crucifix, bags of herbs, or magical stones. Horseshoes nailed over a threshold or stones hung over a stable rack protected both humans and livestock. Magic lines and circles kept evil from designated geographical areas. Divining rods found water, hidden treasures, or lost objects. One only had to hold the two ends of a freshly cut, forked branch, point the main branch away, and coax it with soothing requests. Bags of unidentified objects could unleash passion, promote fertility, or induce sickness.

Healing. Sickness or accidents, whether in humans or animals, were a horror to all before the days of modern medicine. The Africans were not alone in believing that illness and death came from spiritual as well as natural causes. Thus occult as well as natural remedies were seen as effective. Healers were often identified as “white,” or good, witches who used their charms and knowledge of medicinal roots, barks, and herbs to aid the healing process. But there was a variety of other practices seen to be equally as effective. If a cow were going dry, a Christian might pour the milk over a red-hot iron poker while repeating the names of the Trinity. To employ the sympathy technique one simply took a hair from a sick or injured person or animal and used it in a ritual that promoted health and healing in its owner. Freckles might be removed by washing one’s face with cobwebs.

Bewitchment. Spiritual possession of a person was viewed as either good or bad. Young Native American warriors welcomed the infusion of an animal spirit, which would serve as a protector. African religious ceremonies centered around evoking the possession of a worshiper by the spirit of a god who dictated the distinctive steps and voice of the human. Europeans believed that a “black,” or evil, witch could control the thoughts and actions of others (even those whom she did not know) for her own malicious satisfaction.

THE BEWITCHED

In a 1692 essay titled “A Brand Pluck’d out of the Burning,” Cotton Mather described the possession of a young woman named Mercy Short. Mather had taken her into his home and observed one of her fits and conversations with evil spirits:

Reader, If thou hadst a Desire to have seen a Picture of Hell, it was visible in the doleful Circumstances of Mercy Short! Here was one lying in Outer Darkness, haunted with the Divel and his Angels, deprived of all common Comforts, tortured with most cruciating Fires, Wounded with a thousand Pains all over, and cured immediately, that the Pains of those Wounds might bee repeated.

Her Discourses to Them were some of the most Surprising Things imaginable, and incredibly beyond what might have been expected, from one of her small Education or Experience. In the Times of her Tortures, Little came from her, besides direful Shrieks, which were indeed so frightful, as to make many people Quitt the Room. Only now and then any Expression of marvellous Constancy would bee heard from her; e.g. “Tho’ you kill mee, I’l never do what you would have mee.—Do what you will, yett with the Help of Christ, I’l never touch your Book.—Do, Burn mee then, if you will; Better Burn here, then [than] Burn in Hell.” But when her Torturer went off, Then t’was that her senses being still detained in a Captivity to Spectres, as the only object of them, Wee were Ear-witnesses to Disputacions that amazed us. Indeed Wee could not hear what They said unto her; nor could shee herself hear them ordinarily without causing them to say over again: But Wee could Hear Her Answers, and from her Answers Wee could usually gather the Tenour of Their Assaults.

Source: George Lincoln Burr, ed., Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases 1648–1706 (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1946).

Witchcraft. If no adjective was attached, the word witch usually meant an evil sorcerer or sorceress. Native Americans were more apt to blame evil spirits in general or an enemy in particular for their problems. Africans too were wary of evil witches whose spirits left them when they were asleep, entered the bodies of animals, and fled to a meeting of other witches where a human soul was consumed, thus killing that person. Europeans tended to single out a particular person, usually an old woman, who had made a covenant with the Devil, rather than with God, to cause all manner of trouble among good people. To them it seemed logical that if God were omnipresent in the world, then so was Satan. The American version of witchcraft was more staid than that of the Europeans, which involved witches flying through the air to engage in sexual orgies with the Devil and his minions. In the colonies it focused on a person who had signed a compact with the Devil just to get back at someone with whom there was an unresolved conflict. The witch was then empowered to cause the death of a child, crop failures, cream that could not be churned into butter, or the sterility of livestock. Witches could also bewitch others just for their malicious pleasure and enter the bodies of animals as “familiars” in order to prowl around undetected. Yet they could be discovered. A witch’s cake of grain, mixed with a part of the afflicted body, such as urine, baked in ashes, and fed to a familiar would lead the animal to reveal the name of the witch. A rag puppet or clay model of the victim stuck with pins was a sure sign of guilt, as was a teat found in an unusual place on the woman’s body with which she nursed her familiars. If such individuals confessed and repudiated their covenant with Satan, thus ceasing their harm and opening themselves to God, they were usually reaccepted into the community. The glaring exception was the witchcraft hysteria that erupted in Salem Village in Massachusetts.

Salem. In the winter of 1691–1692 some young girls were trying to read their future in the shape of a raw egg white dropped into a bowl. They watched in horror as it assumed the shape of a coffin! Elizabeth Parris, the daughter of the local minister who was well aware of the Puritan condemnation of attempting to divine the will of God through magic, began to experience inexplicable sensations of pinching, suffocating, and hallucinations. The others soon followed suit. Physicians, finding nothing physically wrong with the girls, suggested that the maladies were caused by witchcraft. A concerned neighbor finally asked Tituba, the South American slave of the Reverend Parris, to bake a witch cake so that they might learn the identity of the witch and stop her; it did not work. When they first confessed to their actions, the girls pointed to Tituba and some old women as witches. They, in turn, implicated others, and the contagion of accusations spread to cover suspects throughout the colony. By the time it was over, 156 suspects had been imprisoned; 19 were hanged as witches; and 4 died in prison, one of whom was crushed to death during questioning. The clergy then reasserted its spiritual leadership, became more particular about evidence, and eventually ended the proceedings, which were roundly condemned. Some say that this ended the age of magic and superstition in the colonies and ushered in an enlightened age of more rational religion, although sporadic cases of witchcraft surfaced until well into the eighteenth century.

Sources

Jon Butler, “Magic, Astrology, and the Early American Religious Heritage, 1600–1760,” American Historical Review, 84 (April 1979): 317–346;

John P. Demos, Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982);

Richard Godbeer, Devil’s Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992);

Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978).