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Cotton Mathers's Wonders of the Invisible World: an Authoritative Edition Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University English Dissertations Department of English 1-12-2005 Cotton Mathers's Wonders of the Invisible World: An Authoritative Edition Paul Melvin Wise Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss Recommended Citation Wise, Paul Melvin, "Cotton Mathers's Wonders of the Invisible World: An Authoritative Edition." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2005. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss/5 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact scholarworks@gsu.edu. COTTON MATHER’S WONDERS OF THE INVISIBLE WORLD: AN AUTHORITATIVE EDITION by PAUL M. WISE Under the direction of Reiner Smolinski ABSTRACT In Wonders of the Invisible World, Cotton Mather applies both his views on witchcraft and his millennial calculations to events at Salem in 1692. Although this infamous treatise served as the official chronicle and apologia of the 1692 witch trials, and excerpts from Wonders of the Invisible World are widely anthologized, no annotated critical edition of the entire work has appeared since the nineteenth century. This present edition seeks to remedy this lacuna in modern scholarship, presenting Mather’s seventeenth-century text next to an integrated theory of the natural causes of the Salem witch panic. The likely causes of Salem’s bewitchment, viewed alongside Mather’s implausible explanations, expose his disingenuousness in writing about Salem. Chapter one of my introduction posits the probability that a group of conspirators, led by the Rev. Samuel Parris, deliberately orchestrated the “witchcraft” and that a plant, the thorn apple, used in Algonquian initiation rites, caused the initial symptoms of bewitchment (41-193). Chapter two shows that key spectral evidence presented in court records, some recorded by Mather in Wonders, appears to have been generated by phenomena known in folklore as the “hag,” suffocating nightmares formerly thought to be witch visitations, resulting from what is today termed sleep paralysis (219-314). Deliberate dosing with the thorn apple plant, phenomena associated with “hagging,” and life-saving confessions thus account for most of the spectral evidence generated at Salem. Chapter three focuses extensively on Mather’s text as a deceptive rewriting of the Salem court records and related documents on witchcraft that Mather synopsized (324- 461). The final section posits a “Scythian” or Eurasian connection between Swedish and Salem witchcraft (409-61). Similarities in shamanic practices witnessed among respective indigenous populations of Lapland, Eurasia, Asia, and New England, including the veneration of deer, the use of drumming and hallucinogenic plants to induce trance, and the handing down of family totems, caused Satan’s ongoing involvement in both the visible and invisible worlds to appear more than theoretical to influential seventeenth- century writers like José Acosta, Johannes Scheffer, Nicholas Fuller, Joseph Mede, Anthony Horneck, inducing Mather to include a lengthy abstract of a Swedish account in Wonders. INDEX WORDS: Cotton Mather, Salem, witchcraft, folklore, folk magic, Paul Wise, Doctor of Philosophy, Georgia State University, Sweden, Swedish witchcraft, Lapland, Algonquian Indians, Native Americans, Samuel Parris, jimson weed, thorn apple, datura stramonium, hag, hagging, Old Hag, Mara, initiation ceremonies, poisoning, nightmares, huskanaw, Wonders of the Invisible World, fly-agaric mushroom, deer, reindeer, Sami, shamanism, drums COTTON MATHER’S WONDERS OF THE INVISIBLE WORLD: AN AUTHORITATIVE EDITION By PAUL WISE A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy In the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2005 Copyright by Paul Melvin Wise 2005 COTTON MATHER’S WONDERS OF THE INVISIBLE WORLD: AN AUTHORITATIVE EDITION By PAUL WISE Major Professor: Reiner Smolinski Committee: John A. Burrison Thomas L. McHaney Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University December 2005 iv DEDICATION To my wife, Sandy, my daughter, Kendra, my parents, Melvin and Emily Wise, my sister, Melanie, and my brother James; and to my friends, Christopher Dean Watts, Marylou Kuestemeyer, and Gilbert and Georgette Fürbringer v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank my wife, Sandra, whose support, encouragement, prodding, input, and, ultimately, patience helped me to complete this dissertation. I also wish to thank my daughter, Kendra, for her encouragement, suggestions, insight, and sacrifice during my time in graduate school and while writing this dissertation. I want to thank my parents, Melvin and Emily Wise, for first exposing me to religious and literary studies and travel and for being there when I needed them. I wish to thank my sister, Melanie, for her kindness, encouragement, and support. I wish to thank Christopher Dean Watts, more than time and space will allow, for his friendship and intellectual camaraderie over most of my life and for our many discussions concerning this dissertation and related topics. I want to thank my dissertation chair, Reiner Smolinski, for his direction, confidence, suggestions, information, prophetic insight, sound judgment, encouragement, and understanding. I cannot imagine a better director than he has been. I also wish to thank Dr. John A. Burrison, whose class in material folk culture taught me to think three- dimensionally and in directions essential to this dissertation. He has been a great inspiration. I wish to thank both Dr. Burrison and Dr. Thomas L. McHaney for their careful reading of my dissertation and for their valuable comments and suggestions. Thanks also to the director of my MA thesis, Dr. Victor A. Kramer, for his guidance, support, and friendship. I want to thank Dr. Kathy Hassall, Director of the Writing Program at the University for North Florida, for her profound humanity, kindness, and understanding and for allowing me to teach while working on this dissertation. I wish to acknowledge my colleague, Dr. Leslie Kaplan, Assistant Director of the Writing Program vi at the University of North Florida, for suggesting David Hufford’s work, which ended up influencing much in this dissertation. I also with to thank Dr. David J. Hufford and Dr. Beverly Butcher and for sending me the most recent of Dr. Hufford’s work on the phenomena linked to sleep paralysis and nightmares. I also want to thank Dr. Patrick Harding, lecturer at the University of Sheffield, for steering me toward useful information on the use of the fly-agaric mushroom among the Inari Sami of Lapland. My gratitude goes to Dr. Marta Werner—recurrent muse—for her deep and clear perceptiveness, articulate voice, lasting friendship, and encouragement. I wish to thank the reference department at the University of North Florida, especially Sarah Phillips, Jim Alderman, and Barbara Tuck for their assistance in locating materials and making them available to me. I also wish to thank the Interlibrary Loan Department at the University of North Florida, especially Alisa Craddock, for the considerable work done in acquiring materials for my research. Finally, I wish to thank everyone I have ever known or met who has inspired me to initiate and finish this project. Ubi sunt: Where are you? vii Table of Contents Acknowledgements v Preface 1 Chapter 1: Light on Salem 41 I. Mixed Motives 43 II. A Means to the End 100 III. The Seeds of Opportunity and the Harvest 163 Notes to Chapter 1 194 Chapter 2: “Between sleepeing & wakeing”: Writing the Night-mare into the Invisible World 219 Notes to Chapter 2 315 Chapter 3: Cotton Mather’s Manipulation of His Sources in The Wonders of the Invisible World 324 I. Jurat in Curia: Cotton Mather’s Manipulation of the Salem Court Papers 331 II. Cotton Mather’s “Rearrangement” of the Witchcraft Guidelines of William Perkins, John Gaule, and Richard Bernard 377 III. Cotton Mather’s Retelling of A Trial of Witches at the Assizes at Bury St. Edmunds 389 IV. Cotton Mather’s Abridgment of Anthony Horneck’s Account of What Happened in the Kingdom of Sweden in the Years 1669, 1670 and Upwards 409 Notes to Chapter 3 462 A Note on the Text 468 Text of The Wonders of the Invisible World 471 viii Notes to The Wonders of the Invisible World 658 Appendix 1: Emendations 778 Appendix 2. Title Pages to the Seventeenth-Century Editions of Cotton Mather’s Wonders of the Invisible World 781 Comprehensive Bibliography 785 ix LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1 A Huskanaw Pen 124 Figure 1.2 The Thorn apple 144 Figure 1.3 Pecos River Cave Painting of Anthropomorphic Figure in Veneration of an Animal-Plant-Spirit 161 Figure 2.1 Olaus Magnus, Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus (Description of the Northern Peoples). Rome, 1555. 180. 296 Figure 3.1. Veneration of an Anthropomorphic Reindeer God 422 Figure 3.2. Scandinavian Distribution of Datura Stramonium (Spikklubba) 430 Figure. 3.3. Entering Ecstatic Trance by Way of Drumbeat in Lapland 431 Figure. 3.4. Animal, Religious, and Other Figures on Lapland Drums 440 1 Preface The witch panic at Salem in 1692 was not just the result of a miasma of circumstances coincidentally falling into place but something that was also consciously and deliberately kindled, fueled, and manipulated. A main difference between Salem and previous New England witch trials was in its virulence, magnitude, and scope. It was, as the Reverend John Hale of Beverley put it, “a dark dispensation by the Lord, letting loose upon us the Devil Anno. 1691. & 92. as we never experienced before” (Modest Enquiry [ix]). The Salem episode is in relation to other New England witch trials analogous to the difference between a fire that occurs naturally from a lightning strike followed by the rainstorm that puts it out and an inferno set deliberately in several places on a windy day in dry season to inflict maximum damage.
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