King James Demonology

It is often difficult to understand the thought process that other people’s might have had many years ago. A college professor and writer, Richard Godbeer attempts to explain the thought process of the people who were involved in witch trials in the year 1692 in his text “How Could They Believe That?”. He often tells students in college and high school that we can relate to how society was in 1692 and how their views on life, and specifically the supernatural forces, are completely justifiable. In this article he explains the social atmosphere, the environment in which the settlers lived in, as well as how thorough the process of persecution was.

The devil at the dawn of Christianity bore little resemblance to the ruler of hell, the antichrist and agent of evil that he is known as in present day. Satan makes few overt or implied appearances in the Old Testament. For the important role of God’s greatest adversary, early Christians had to flesh out great parts of Satan’s story in order to develop him into his present, fearsome persona. The Christian story of the Devil is heavily influenced by earlier Greek mythology, and early Christian writings about the Devil co-opted local mythology in order to gain new converts and discredit popular pagan beliefs.

In this primary document, Cotton Mather, a Puritan theologian, writes about his fears of losing the entire country to the devil and his minions as the Christian religion, in his mind, is being slowly eradicated from the entire country due to witchcraft. In 1693 Cotton Mather wrote a literary piece called The Wonders of the Invisible World a year after questionable events in defense of the persecutions of those accused and convicted in Salem for witchcraft.

The supernatural has always fascinated and continues to intrigue mankind. In many of Shakespeare’s plays, he uses the supernatural to strengthen a particular scene or to influence the impression the audience has about someone or something. This was not strange or uncommon in Shakespeare’s time. In fact, during the 1500s, many people still believed in witches and witchcraft. Even in today’s society, with such advanced science and technology, many people are still influenced, if not dictated by the supernatural. For example, religious people have the belief that their saviour, Jesus Christ was a man of many miracles; one of which was he turned water into wine. Despite the fact that it

The Puritan belief in witchcraft extends as far back as early Mesopotamia, as Hammurabi’s Code expresses the death penalty for any convicted witch (Goss 1). Judaism as witchcraft as a means to “place a curse upon a neighbor or telling the future”, to which the latter was seen as “strictly restricted to the realm of God who only spoke through His holy prophets”; “any other type of prophesying or fortune-telling...necessitated the establishment of a relationship between a human and an unholy spirit” (Goss 1). As Judaism and Christianity spread, so did the fear of witches and alliances with unholy beings. Christianity looked to the Old Testament law for teaching on what witches were and how to deal with them. The expansion of Christianity lead

Furthermore, another cause for the witchcraft frenzy was religious uncertainty (Spielvogel 439). There were numerous witchcraft trials in the region where “Protestant-Catholic” arguments still fumed (Spielvogel 439). According to Spielvogel, “[a]s religious passions became inflamed, accusations of being in league with the devil became common on both sides” (Spielvogel 439). Additionally, another contributing factor to the widespread witchcraft hysteria was the escalating amount of trials and executions of alleged witches (Spielvogel 437).

In 1692, the British colony of Massachusetts endured abnormal accusations of witchcraft against more than 150 people (Prentice Hall Literature, p. 1087). Many factors caused the witchcraft hysteria to come alive during the 1600’s. Two important factors were: Daemonologie, written by England’s King James I, and the bewildering behavior of the accusing teenage girls. While Arthur Miller explains that the accusations could have been made over the lust for land, there are also reasons not explained: how the role of women and children during the 17th century may have affected their behavior and the theory of Ergot fungus poisoning the girls’ minds.

Around the time of “The Crucible”, people had a lot of superstitions. They believed anything, including witchcraft, and especially books on

Witch craze in Europe during: the period of the Protestant Reformation, Catholic Counter-Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, and the consolidation of national governments from about 1480-1700

People often fear things they do not understand. In Nigeria, churches are accusing defenseless children of witchcraft; a boy’s “family pastor had accused him of being a witch, and his father then tried to force acid down his throat as an exorcism ” (The Boston Globe para. 2); permanently impairing the boy. The boy’s father did not understand why or how what his son was and tried to kill him out of fear of the consequences. Pastors were accusing either orphaned or children from poor families as witches because they could not fight back, as way to establish their credentials. Hysteria made the townspeople actually believe and fear witchcraft in both Nigeria and Salem. In the case of “The Dying Girl that No One Helped” one person did not get involved because the police” might have picked [him] up as suspect” he feared the outcome and did not understand the importance of the situation.

The evidence of witchcraft and related works has been around for many centuries. Gradually, though, a mixture a religious, economical, and political reasons instigated different periods of fear and uncertainty among society. Witchcraft was thought of as a connection to the devil that made the victim do evil and strange deeds. (Sutter par. 1) In the sixteenth, seventeenth, and twentieth century, the hysteria over certain causes resulted in prosecution in the Salem Witch Trials, European Witchcraft Craze, and the McCarthy hearings. These three events all used uncertain and unjustly accusations to attack the accused.

The 1486 Malleus Maleficarum set up the precedent for the witchcraft craze, which came to its prime in the mid 16th century, during the Renaissance period. Though the Malleus was not the only factor in this craze, as Margaret Sullivan notes, ‘it made no discernable impact… for nearly half a century’ , it, with a number of other social factors, provided a wealth of information to witch hunts and hunters. This treatise further established several of the basic ideas essential to the identification of witches such as the identification of witches as largely women; through the treatise’s continual argument that women were of gullible and carnal nature the text further advocated ideas of fear and hatred in regards to women.

The witchcraft crisis through colonial New England is visualized through the work of Mary Beth Norton and Carol F. Karlsen. The scholars demonstrate deep understanding in the subject, and both present valid information through their overall theses. In order to understand the complete story of witchery in the seventeenth-century, these two books intrigue the reader in what the authors want to present. Although, their research seems bias, both historians similarly delve into the topic with an open mind, and successfully uncover information that has not be presented before. Not only does Norton’s In the Devil’s Snare and Karlsen’s The Devil in the Shape of a Woman both represent the study of witchcraft through feminist ideals, Karlsen’s

Let us first start by evaluating a writing related to the events described above, The Wonders of the Invisible World. In this publication, Mather makes many references to accounts of eyewitness testimonies and confessions of the accused; not only to justify, but also to prove that the Salem witchtrials were a God sanctioned attack against Satanic works. Mather says, “He (the devil) has wanted incarnate legions to persecute us, as the people of God have in the other hemisphere been persecuted: he (the devil) has therefore drawn upon his more spiritual ones to make an attack upon us.” (2) Mather’s use of the term “spiritual ones,” is meant to represent the accused witches of the time. Witches, Mather believes, are the work of the devil. Throughout this writing Mather quotes from the Bible. Mather knows that the people of his church would not dare question the validity of the Bible. So, by choosing specific verses that favor the intended goal of his writings he is able to add rock solid validity to the statements he is making to the members of his church. References to past situations illustrated in the Bible prove to Mathers’ audience that these

Henry James’ father was devoted to studying theology, philosophy and mysticism (religion) as he was keen on studying and wanted his