The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1909-11-27
MODERN WITCHCRAFT.

Some two hundred and twenty-five to sixty
years ago there existed peculiar delusiQn known
as witchcraft which in the American colony of
Salem resulted in the death of nineteen persons by
hanging and one by pressing, the Imprisonment of
less than one hundred and fifty persons and the
accusation of some two hundred. No one at this
time attempts to say just where the deusion would
have led if those accused of association with the
Evil One had uniformly been among the old and
the poor, but when the wife of the governor was
accused, in 1888, there seemed to be an awakening
The enormity of the crime of condemning to death
those whose actions were in any way different from
what ordinary and the Stiffness of the charges
of witchcraft made against the unfortunates was
recognized and the whole moral delusion passed
out of existence, though fortunately the records
have been preserved. We say fortunately in this
connection advisedly, for there has grown up in
America, with Boston again the center of attrac-
ton, new diabolism not unlike the witchcraft of
the seventeenth century, though the penalty at
tached in the latest evidence of moral deusion is
case so severe as that which characterized the
Salem witchcraft
The newest witchcraft makes It's appearance in
the suspension of Mrs. Augusta Stetson from the
accused by the first reader of that church of at
tempting mental assassination of her enemies and
of preaching false doctrine of dual existence"
Mrs Stetson was recently litigant in a suit over
bequest made to her of $4,000 by one of her for
mer students, and in the trial of the case, as we
understand it she permitted herself by avarice to
wander from the strict code of Mrs Eddy's church
and projected her mental forces to the injury of an
other. In Mrs Stetson's trial before the govern
ing body of the mother church" at Boston. which
partook more less of the qualities of any other
trial for heresy, Mrs. Stetson was found guilty and
was thrown out of the church
The difficulties which were deveIoped in the
squabbe served to bring out some of the remark
able beliefs entertained by this latest religions cult
The revelations to the effects of malicious ami
NAL magnetism" mental assassination of ono
mics" mental malpractice" and the "fourtb dimen
SION of the spirit and other extraordinary things
reads so much like the peculiar beliefs of the neo
pie of Cotton Mather's day that comparison is
Immediately suggested It has long been the he
lief among the people of America that "witchcrafty
was thing long forgotten and this latest evidence
of its resuscitation has been the cause of ,o,,ob
amazement 1t has long been accented bv tho fol-
lowers of Mrs Eddy. that they can "thinkD a ner-
son well when he thinks" he is sick, and if this
tenet is accepted, it is hard to understand nh,
amazement should be aroused when # Is c1o;r,a J
that mental assassination" may also be practiced
II ought to excite no more incredulty in the minds
OF those who do not accept the vagaries of rbe+io
Science than its eorollary 'l'il
Men are disposed to be tolerant of tho oo,,,-;,
lions of their fellows in matters of ra1;;o,, -
politics, but when mental assassination and nn,o
hcious animal magnetism" are set rln for +be;r 80
r1ous consideration they think of the olden DAVIS
when the EVIL eye" and the Dutch hecks~ PLAYED
SO important part in the religious supersti+ions
OF the people, and they become insuperably incred-
uIous. The only feature which redeems the mod.
ern witchcraft from that of Salem is that tho ~
ishment inflicted upon dissenters consists merely
IN accommodation from the parent body, rather
than the execution of the victims In this resnect
the Christian Science witchcraft is only less CEN
the scaffold