Haunted Cosmos - The Dusty Tome: Salem, Part IV

Episode Date: February 21, 2024

Enjoy this fifth installment of our inter-season sneak peeks at our Patreon-exclusive show: The Dusty Tome.Love Haunted Cosmos? Get access to our exclusive show, The Dusty Tome, early ad-free access to main episodes, monthly AMA's, and livestreams with Ben and Brian by becoming a patron of the show: https://www.patreon.com/c/HauntedCosmosBuy the Haunted Cosmos book: https://www.newchristendompress.com/cosmos PS: It's also available as an audiobook!In this episode, Ben concludes his discourse on the Salem Witch Trials. This episode is sponsored by Joe Garrisi with Backwards Planning Financial. Content Joe today to talk about managing your wealth.Hey! Since you're still reading this, why don't you grab some special coffee here. And since you are still reading (why though?), pick up a ticket to this year's New Christendom Press Conference. It's happening in June in Ogden, UT and Brian and I will be doing a live haunted cosmos recording sesh. Support the show

Hello everyone and welcome to this episode of Haunted Cosmos. Once again, we find ourselves in the off-season between seasons two and three. We are releasing a total of six episodes of our Patreon exclusive show, The Dusty Tome, to the public for everyone to enjoy. This is a series on the Salem Witch Trials and Witchcraft in general that we did a little bit earlier in 2023. We hope that you guys have been enjoying this break from the regular show. rest assured that regular show is now coming quite soon. It's amazing how fast time flies when you're still having fun. So I hope that you guys enjoy part four of our deep dive study into the Salem Witch Trials, and we will see you again next week. And then the week after that, it's going to be the first episode of season three dropping to you all.

Now, if during these Patreon show sneak peeks you like what you hear, consider becoming a patron of the show. It's absolutely necessary that we have them. The show is simply not possible without them. We're so grateful, and we really try to make sure we give our patrons the maximum value possible so that they feel cared for by us with exclusive content, early releases, ad-free specials, and other things as we're able to give it to them. So with all that said, please sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. The Industrial Revolution in America is something I tend to look at with righteous indignation.

Fathers, mothers, and children were ripped away from their homesteads. The life-draining drove of a 9-to-5 schedule began to take root. People had less sunlight. People breathed less fresh air. They had less mental bandwidth and capacity and time to spend on building up their own people. Men and women slowly descended from a general knowledge of how to do and solve most things and problems in their respective spheres of duties and instead began to focus on hyper-spheres specialization in an uber atomized field of study.

I mean, a very solid case could be made that the Industrial Revolution's negative effect on modern society is rivaled only by those of the French Enlightenment romanticist demon seed that is Janjard-Cruceau. But I digress. As it turns out, today's show is not at all about the Industrial Revolution, which, admittedly, also came with a few perks. But in order to properly close out the story of Salem in a way that does its drama and truth, justice. We do have to begin there. Throughout the 19th century, and leading right up into

America's involvement in World War I, the U.S. was plagued with dozens of large-scale industrial fires. Factory life was still relatively new to America, even that recently, that cursed offspring of industrialization. Anyways, some accident would occur in these newfangled mechas of productivity, an accident that would be easily avoided today, and by the next afternoon, an entire quarter of a metropolitan area would be burned to a crisp with no recourse or plan to fix it. This was new territory for the American people, and so far it was proving to be a trying time of growth pains. The last of these great fires occurred in 1914. It is known today as the Great Salem Fire, since it predictably occurred in the storied but vibrant city of Salem, Massachusetts.

In one of her largest factories, a disastrous mixture of acetone, amalicate, alcohol, and celluloid occurred, leading to a series of small explosions that unfortunately began a chain reaction of fast-spreading street fires. The region had been ravaged by a somewhat severe drought for the past few years, one of those droughts that doesn't affect the availability of drinking water, but it does affect the crop yield in some non-negligible way, and this caused the street fires to shoot down roads and through neighborhoods at alarming speeds. After fire districts from 21 surrounding cities and over 90 off-duty out-of-town police officers had done their work to contain and then extinguish the blaze. Immense damage had already occurred. 253 acres of the 5100-acre city was

completely ruined. Almost 1,400 buildings were totally destroyed. 20,000 people lost their homes. 10,000 of those people lost their jobs, too. A handful of people even lost their lives in the Inferno. It was indeed a very dark day for Salem. But something had supposedly happened just the night before the fire began that, in hindsight, could have predicted the whole thing. There is a field right across from the old Salem courthouse where the witch trials took place so long ago. These days, it's a cemetery, which is fitting. And legend has it, there is one spirit whose body is buried there that is particularly restless. Many witnesses have claimed to see this ghost wandering through the rows of headstones on dark nights, lit only by a dim waning moon and

twinkling stars whose light is made ethereal by passing through a misty and cloudy sky. Those who see this apparition have particular reason to worry because, as the stories go, his appearance serves as a harbinger of some doom that is soon to befall the region. And the night before the Great Salem Fire broke out and destroyed so much of the city that so many Americans had worked so hard to build. Someone allegedly saw this old and tired and ugly ghost wandering the epitaphed granite blocks. They had heard the rumors of what his sighting meant but paid no mind to it. Perhaps they were too afraid in general, or perhaps they did not want to dwell on the story of the man that belonged to this spirit. And who was that man? Who is it that people believe roams the

knolls of this old field in Salem? A man named Giles Corey. Giles Corey was born in Northampton, England in the year 1611. He was baptized in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Sheepstreet on August 16th of that year. As the lad grew into manhood and adulthood, he got himself a wife that he loved and who also bore him four lovely children, Martha, Margaret, Deliverance, and Elizabeth. Man, the Puritans had some great names for their kids. Eventually, the happy family grew discontent with the state-run leanings of the Anglican Church and could no longer worship in England with a clean conscience. They had heard of the opportunities afforded to the bold in the new world,

and so shoved off from port sometime in 1639 or 1640 in a vessel bound for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Upon landing on the coast of what would someday be America, the Corries were confident that they had made the right decision. Immediately, they all fell into the higher stakes of life, in the villages of New England, and found particular liking to the quaint but lovely Salem village. Giles, thanks to his savings and earnings from England, was able to purchase a farm on the outskirts of the village and wasted no time in proving his prowess and competence as a land-owning and successful farmer in Salem. It was all coming together just as he'd imagined. But the hammer of

tragedy dropped soon enough. Giles' beloved first wife passed away, leaving him with his four daughters, and a very active farm to tend to alone. He met his second wife, Mary Bright, as his meat and good, at the church in the village. They were married on the 11th of April in 1664 when Giles was 53 years old. Mary bore him a son named John, a male heir to carry on his name. Giles, despite the great loss suffered earlier, was grateful for this return to fortune. Unfortunately, it would be a brief one. You see, there's another side to Giles that,

many people miss in their remembering of all the different threads of Salem. Before he left England, he had developed a reputation that wasn't entirely positive among his countrymen. It seems that the man had a penchant for misplacing things that he borrowed from others. And this pesky habit of theft followed him over the Atlantic and within the first decade of living in Salem, he had been taken to court multiple times for a variety of petty charges. Thief of firewood, and food while on town watch, theft of tobacco, theft of knives, and other small items. He even fell asleep on watch one night and woke up to find that he had gotten his own rifle stolen from him, and he was charged for that too. Isn't it fascinating how, depending on the

setting one is in, one can actually get in trouble for having something stolen from them? Being so far removed from it allows us to admit that it's quite funny, really. Anyways, all of these small and insignificant trips to court did overall very little to tarnish Giles' otherwise great reputation as a responsible farmer and churchman, a sort of subpillar in the community. But then, well, then the murder charge came. In 1676, Corey was charged with murder in Essex County, Massachusetts for beating one of his indentured servants to death. It was a young man named Jacob Goodall, who, according to witnesses, had been brutally beaten by Corey with a big stick, after the young servant was caught stealing apples from Corey's kinsman. After ten days of Goodall, trying and failing to recover from the beating while on bed rest,

Corey finally sent him off for medical attention, but it was too little too late. Jacob Goodall died from the beating he'd received. numerous eyewitnesses, including a neighbor named John Proctor, along with a coroner who examined Goodall's body, testified to Corey's guilt in being the reason behind the young man's death. In fact, Mr. John Proctor even claimed that he had overheard Corey admitting to the whole thing at one point as if it was just some nonchalant issue. Corey didn't put up much of a fight in the court case, partly because he knew the law, since indentured servants belonged to their owners until the indentured debt was paid,

corporal punishment was allowed at the discretion of the owner. The murder charge, therefore, was dropped. Instead, Corey was tried and convicted for the crime of using unreasonable force on his servant. He was charged a fine for this and life went on. But this whole debacle did irreparable damage to Corey's reputation, especially among men like John Proctor and other prominent churchmen in and near Salem. When Proctor's home was set on fire sometime later,

the man immediately assumed it to be the work of his unruly degenerate neighbor, Giles Corey. Proctor accused Corey of the crime before one of Proctor's sons tearfully admitted that he had actually started the fire by mistake. It just goes to show how on edge the social situation was for many people in Salem. The stakes were high. Whatever the reason, they were growing ever more distrustful of their neighbors. Eventually, life did go on. Corey's second wife passed away in 1684, and he remarried for the last time, that same year,

to a woman named Martha. The marriage was confirmed by the church, and the 80-year-old man took Martha to live out the small number of their remaining days together on his farm. If only this was the end of the story for Mr. Corey. But alas, the stench of twisted doom that hung over Salem leading up to 1692 covered the Corey Farm and Shadow as well as the rest of the village. Do you guys know that I'm going to be turning 40 this year? What?

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after trials had already commenced and concluded from many accused to varying results, the townspeople continued to spiral into apparent lunacy. Were you to ask some, they would tell you with a strong, straight face that most of the people in Salem Village were witches or wizards in league with the devil. People believed in a conspiratorial cabal of witches that were sent by the devil himself to terrorize the small settlement. Perhaps I'm showing my cards a bit early, but while I certainly believe witches are real and are perhaps represented in these trials, this sort of deep state operation from the forces of evil on a small, unassuming, and otherwise very pious town

seems to be a bit of a stretch, but I'm getting ahead of myself. In March of that fateful year, Martha Corey, Giles' third wife, was actually accused of being a witch. Now, the accuser is lost to the record, but with all of the confessing and accusing and apparent bewitching going on through the village, Giles believed in the accusations at first. He felt confident that the bewitched accuser must have known something that he didn't, and so he stood by as his wife was arrested for the crime. But about a month later, he changed his tune. You see, a month later, Giles too was accused of wizardry.

And coincidentally, in that moment, he decided that all of this was a total sham, and he was having none of it. He was arrested on the 18th of April, along with the other accused with him, Mary Warren, Abigail Hobbs, and Bridget Bishop. Upon arriving at the jail, Corey would even see his old nemesis, John Proctor, sitting in the stocks right there with him. as one of his fellow accused. The next day, those just mentioned were examined by the authorities to determine their fitness for trial. Abigail Hobbs, for some reason we can't really be sure of, doubled down on Giles and added her own name to the roster of those accusing him of being a wizard. Giles, again very suddenly fed up with the whole thing, denied the charges, but he also refused

to enter any plea in one direction or another. he apparently didn't want to legitimize the operation by playing their game and entering a plea, even though he was a true believer in the whole thing no less than 30 days ago. Mercy Lewis went on to accuse the man Moore, saying she, quote, saw the man Giles Corey come and afflict me, urging me to write in his book, and so he continued most dreadfully to hurt me by times beating me and almost breaking my back, end quote. She went on to swear that she believed in her heart of hearts, in the guilt of Mr. Corey.

In all of this, Corey spoke no word in his defense, apart from just denying the charges, and he refused to enter a plea. You see, in common law courts of yore, someone who refused to enter a plea couldn't actually be tried by the courts. And Corey knew this, but he also knew the method that they had decreed

to elicit a plea from people so that they couldn't just get away with crimes by refusing to play a ball. On the 17th of September in 1692, now into the fall of the dark year of convulsion and trial, Giles' quarry was led out to a lush field across the street from the courthouse. The field would later become a cemetery in which Giles' ghost would supposedly be seen as a portent for tragedy. But what would actually send him to his grave there? It was a French origin and was called, please forgive my French,

Penae Forte Adora, hard and forceful punishment. for those unwilling to enter a plea for the courts for giles cori this was the lot and tool used on them to force out a plea that would allow them to move forward with the trial and so as giles lay completely nude on the grassy field in salem a wooden board was placed on top of him slowly and steadily weights were added to the board giles would writhe in pain but apparently never screamed and when asked For a plea, he would reply with the curt, more weight. The officials would oblige every time, slowly crushing the man. For two full days, Giles lay there as weight was added, and stale bread and standing water were periodically given to him. But at noon on the 19th, as more weight was stacked on to him, he breathed his last. Giles Corey, accused Wizard of Salem, had become the first, and to this day,

only person to suffer the punishment of death by pressing in America. The Salem Witch Trials officially lasted from February 1692 to May of 1693. Over 200 people were accused of witchcraft. 30 of that number was found guilty of the dark arts, and just over a tithe of that number was executed for their crimes. 14 women and 5 men were hung. And of course, one man, Giles Corey, was pressed to death when he refused. to plead his case. What was this? Was it all real? Was it partly real? Was it all made up a power grab

from greedy men who used their daughters as pawns and their political games? I think maybe it was a mixture. I believe that all of this very well may have started legitimately, and I'll just say it, I think it probably did start legitimately. But given that, it's not rocket surgery to figure out that it didn't continue that way. You see, one of the accused, a lady named Elizabeth Proctor, was brought before John Hawthorne and Jonathan Corwin at a meeting in Salem Town, following the course of so many before her. As the questioning wore on, Elizabeth's husband, a man we now know named John Proctor, levied objections against the questioners. Frustrated at their inability to do their job because of John Proctor's interruptions, the Inquisitors had Proctor arrested, and sometime later,

he would be hung as a tried and convicted wizard in Salem, and his wife would go free. The obvious political and societal maneuvering that went on during these events should be obvious to all. In fact, it should be just as obvious as the equally obvious suspicious behavior that was engaged in by some of the accused and accusers, since, After all, many of the players ended up falling under both banners at various points in the whole ordeal. Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne were clear enemies of the townsfolk and of their own kin. Deliverance Hobbs had a history of mocking the church sacraments and profaning the Lord's Day service. She behaved strangely and did indeed spend a weird amount of time in the woods around the village alone,

which again at the time was just not something people did, because it was genuinely dangerous there. And what about Tituba? Whatever came of her? Well, after fully confessing to everything that she was accused of, after providing great detail as to the method and manner of her witchcraft and oppression of the girls in the Paris home, she was imprisoned,

but because of her cooperation so early on and her help in finding Sarah Osborne and Sarah Good, she never actually went to trial. Later on, when public opinion about the trials began to sour, she recanted her whole confession. She claimed that Sam Paris had beaten her until she promised to confess to everything. The only issue is, she showed no signs of being beaten, and no one ever came forward to corroborate the claim, not even her husband who lived in the same home. Of course, this accusation and lack of punishment made Reverend Paris very angry.

angry. So he refused to bail her out of jail, though she was released now. Instead, another family bailed her out and purchased her from the Reverend. That same family also bought her husband, who was another slave named John. You see, the Puritans were slow to separate any married couple, no matter their social status. Ultimately, Tituba's end is unknown. But we do know this. Her husband, John, would sometimes complain of falling into painful and horrible fits of body and mind. On the other hand, the story of the first person to actually be hung shovels heaps of doubt onto the whole thing, proved by the resignation of one of the judges after the forthcoming events

who cited dissatisfaction in the court's process as his reason for leaving. Bridget Bishop, an eclectic and immoral young woman, had already been married three times by the time the witch trials began in earnest. Tragically, her first two husbands had passed away. And though her life was at times sad, she also fed into some wild fancies herself. She publicly, and with very violent words, would fight with her husbands to their embarrassment in front of many people. She dressed in a way that was incredibly immodest for the time. She was a constant source of town gossip and rumor spreading.

She would host families well into the night for dinner and have the booze flowing before talking them into playing card games that were seen as mystical, taboo, and even demonic. Ultimately, she behaved like a young girl who desperately needed direction and discipline in order to be a fruitful and contributing member of the society that she lived in. But instead, she got accused, tried, and hung for witchcraft over the course of just ten days. On the gallows, the young woman displayed no remorse and proclaimed her innocence as her last words. And it leaves one thinking, how could it get to that?

Of course, she had been accused of witchcraft 12 years earlier, but she'd been cleared of all charges. And up to the day of her execution, she even remained a covenanted member in good standing of her church in Beverly. Ultimately, we have to sit back and admit together that whatever was the primary driving force behind what went on here was certainly evil. And I think it was a mixture of evils. I think the odds are good that some people were actually engaged in witchcraft and demonic spiritual activity. Even today, that's more common than people think. How much more back then,

when materialism wasn't holding so strong a grip on people's minds? But to ignore the fumbled trials, the obvious blame shifting, the unjust processes, and the general sociopolitical climate in the village is to ignore very precious and meaningful data. People lie, but people don't only lie. People practice witchcraft, but not everyone does, and even those that do, don't do it all the time. Perhaps some of the greedy men were the real witches. Perhaps those daughters of them were really bewitched, but they accused the wrong people. Who knows? But for me, that is the ultimate question. What caused the horrible fits that afflicted the girls? I've never found a good answer for this, certainly not one that explains all of their symptoms. I mean, sure, epilepsy can

explain convulsive fits periodically, maybe even some of the weird noises they began emitting. And sure, ergo fungus poisoning and the bread can explain many of the same things too. And sure, I guess the girls could have just been making it all up. But then I would call them the witches. But none of these things really explain all of it. Epilepsy doesn't explain the barking that the girls engaged in, nor the throwing of themselves with full force across rooms and into furniture. Ergo fungus poisoning, which is as stupid in explanation here as it is for the dancing plagues in Europe, does not explain the contortions of the girl's body or the length of time in which they were afflicted with these behaviors and ailments. And I'm sorry, they simply just didn't make it all up and then say

nothing as the whole thing spiraled out of their control and cost almost two dozen people their lives. That's the least realistic explanation of them all. So what caused it? Well, we don't know. We can't know. The Lord knows, and he will bring about justice at the end of all things. Let us settle then for epistemic humility and let us enjoy in a non-macab way the mystery of it all. But if I had to put money on it, I would call it, again, a mixture of real witchcraft, greedy power grabs, mass hysteria, and just good old-fashioned pride, an unwillingness to admit that one might be wrong. As I completed my study into the matter, something did strike me. Whatever malevolence was behind these sinners and goading them on to greater mastery of evil deeds,

It succeeded in one thing, devouring and destroying the peace, sanctity, and joy of what used to be Salem Village. And this reminded me of one of the mythical and evil characters that seems to always come up most in my research into these dark topics. Lilith, all of it got me thinking, could this be a grand deception carried on by whatever demonic and evil force is also behind all of the Lilith myths? Brian and I both talk a lot about how so many demonic deceptions throughout history are just the same playbook ran by the same demons who are just wearing a different mask, a mask more suited to the time of the deceiving. The evolution of Lilith throughout history is a perfect example of this. The denominators remain common throughout, but the methods and masks do change quite a bit. Ask yourself, what was ultimately taken away from the people of Salem by all of these events? More specifically, what was taken away from the most vulnerable among them, the women and the children? That's right, a sense of innocence, safety, and security.

The most vulnerable were stolen away into a storm of pain, doubt, fear, and sin. And this is the play of Lilith. The name Lilith derives from an ancient Samarian word for female demon or wind spirit. Her first mention comes from a Samarian epic poem called Gilgamesh in the Hulupu tree. In this story, the Samarian goddess of love, Inana, is nursing what will one day be a massive and beautiful willow tree that she'll harvest and make into a throne and bed for herself. But as she goes to tend to the tree one day, she finds that it's been taken hostage by a triumvirate of villains. The first villain, a dragon, has coiled itself at the base of the tree and guards it.

The second, a mighty firebird, had nested in the tree's crown, and waits to fend off any who would displace them. The third, a lilith demoness, has built her house into the tree and threatens to kill Anana if she attempts an eviction. So the goddess calls upon the hero Gilgamesh, who very well might be the biblical Nimrod, by the way, and he comes to her aid with a suit of heavy armor. The hero kills the dragon first and with great ease. His feet of strength causes the firebird to flee in fear with her young, and the Lilith, also terrified, flees on a self-imposed exile into the desert, the wilderness, the haunt of jackals. Here we have the start of the great Lilith motif, of an evil woman who's cast out of a garden state to wander in bitterness through desolate lands.

And thus begins the long and oft-bastrodized myth of the Lilith demon, the oldest and most well-known demoness in history. Given her prolific nature in the ancient world, it's somewhat surprising that she only makes one small appearance in Scripture. It, however, is a genuine appearance, which lends credibility to the Lillus story not being entirely fictional. As God condemns the nation of Edom for their sins against Israel, he says this about the horrible desert land that Edom will soon become through the mouth and pen of Isaiah in the 34th chapter of his prophecy. Wildcats shall meet hyenas. Goat demons shall greet each other.

There too shall the lilith repose and find herself a resting place. But what's so scary about her? Why is she a demoness? What is she actually supposed to do? Well, she was infamous for cursing young mothers, stealing away their infants, and then also forcing herself upon their husbands in their sleep. She was a thief of innocence and purity, a taker of progeny and a killer of life. In ancient Israel and surrounding countries, household talismans have been found that include

carved incantations and prayers to God and his angels that would supposedly protect that house from the torment of a lilith demon. The mystic Esseney sect of Jews, who dwelt in Kumran during the Second Temple period, and are better known as the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls, were engrossed in demonology to a very unhealthy degree, fixating on it. And on one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, an exorcism hymn is recorded that's titled Song for a Sage. It reads thus, And I the sage, sound the majesty of his beauty to terrify and confound all the spirits of destroying angels and the demons, Lilith and those that strikes suddenly to lead astray the spirit of understanding and to make

desolate their heart. A chronic devourer, consumer, and taker of all that's good and precious and innocent to all. And did you catch that line in the song for his age, to lead astray the spirit of understanding? It seems that the ancients believed Lilith was able to confound the mine and lead it down the road of madness. And it reminds me of a line from C.S. Lewis's The Planets that we read last week about the moon, the cheat, sometimes turning a mind to madness. Could it be that there exists a connection between the myths of Celine, Luna, the Egyptian Hequette, the Greek Hecate, and the Samarian Lilith? Are all of these some version of the demonic proclivity

to wear different masks for different peoples in different times as they try and propagate their deceptions? Well, Mr. Lewis clearly thought so when he made the Queen of Underland character for his wonderful kids novel, The Silver Chair. Lewis wrote each book in the Narnia to correspond to the overarching personifications, good and bad, of the planetary spheres. Aslan always embodies the virtues of the planet, but the villain of the story embodies the vices. And the Silver Chair is the book whose trajectory, character, setting, and morals all sing the song of the moon. And the Queen of Underland in the Silver Chair, who is the book's main antagonist, is clearly modeled after the Greek Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft, and Lamia, the female serpent seductress who steals and kills the children of new mothers.

The Lamia has long been known as the Greek's own incarnation of the more ancient lilith demon. And as I stated before, the Queen of Underland in the Silver Chair is meant to embody every potential sin and evil of our Lady Luna in light canoe. Clearly for Lewis, who was so steeped in these matters that they flowed out of his fingers, Lilith, the fallen phases of the moon, and the goddess of witchcraft were all intrinsically connected. And of course this is all not even to mention, Lewis's explicit use of Lilith and his character Jadis, the White Witch of Winter, that the Pevenseys find in control of Narnia when they first go through the wardrobe. into the modern day, the grotesque and evil nature of Lilith has been sanitized and whitewashed

like the tomb of death that she is to appeal to a largely feminist audience. Lilith Fair, the music festival, bears the name for promoted positive ends for all mankind, but it is an evil name. Many hyper-progressive feminist poets have reworked Lilith into a hero for all young girls to look up to in a number of settings. How do they do this? All of it leaves one with the need to ask and reckon with the answer to the question. Do story and myth have an effect on us?

And what's more? What if the myth is sometimes also true? Oh, you who fly in the darkened rooms, be off with you this instant. This instant, lilith, thief, breaker of bones. Inscription from a limestone wall relief in Syria, dated to the 8th century BC. For a haunted cosmos, then make your way over to Patreon, where you can get early access to our content as well as exclusive content in regular dusty tomes and monthly live streams with Brian and myself.

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