Entry: Witches & Van Wirts

## Entries of Note

Verity Snow
Deliverance Snow
 Constable Peter Hopkins
Ruth Whatcott

## Witches & Van Wirts: The Introduction of Warlocks to the Salem Coven

### Preface

Despite their outstanding rivalry, the histories of American witches and warlocks have long since been intertwined. The divisiveness between the two ‘factions’ is a considerably new belief; one which arose some time after the migration of the Salem Witch Coven from Salem Towne, Massachusetts to what is now New Orleans, Louisiana. It was only once these early magic users reached some modicum of safety that disparity between the two could be fostered. From this disparity, there came the idea of the Alpha: a prophesied warlock with powers equivalent to the witches’ Supreme. While there has never been any evidence of an existing Alpha, this newfound belief gathered enough of a following to drive a wedge between witches and warlocks where there used to be a commonality: one that came to us by means of the Van Wirt family.

Exceedingly little is known about the existence of the Van Wirts prior to the late-1600s. Information extracted from Salem Towne often omitted families that lived on the fringes of civilization- with the Van Wirts being one such family. Most of the townsfolk of Salem Towne are referred to, at least once in frequency, through records of some fashion: birth and death certificates, declarations of marriage, estate catalogues, appearances in court, and other things of similar nature. If the governing bodies of Puritan Salem deemed you as being recognized in the eyes of God, then you would be reflected, in some way, through these papers.

Not all those who lived in early Salem Towne, however, were bound as tightly to this recognition as others. Any who did not subscribe entirely to the theocracy under which Salem Towne was governed found themselves essentially removed from society and, as a result, deprived of any historical tie to the town’s records.

As such, the earliest surviving record which mentions a Van Wirt is not a mention of a birth or contribution to the settlement, but rather a swift and unlucky trial. In August of 1687, a certain Verity Snow–the adopted daughter of weaponsmith and executioner Deliverance Snow–accused a farmhand by the name of Arthur Van Wirt of witchcraft. While the witch trials in Salem primarily concerned women, Arthur marked the first of the very few men to have been sentenced to hang for witchcraft in Salem Towne. It was an unusual circumstance, but the accusation was entertained by Constable Peter Hopkins and the clergy of Salem Towne nonetheless.

### The Trial & Execution of Arthur Van Wirt

Arthur Van Wirt’s trial was, unfortunately, an unwinnable one. Before the court and townsfolk of Salem Towne, Verity Snow testified that Arthur had confided in her regarding his unnatural abilities. The Devil, Verity claimed, had bestowed upon Arthur the power to understand beasts and other inhuman creatures, through which he was meant to conduct his ungodly will. Verity’s proximity to Deliverance Snow, and thus the witch-hunters of Salem Towne, only added to her credibility: she conducted herself around those instructed to recognize the existence of witches. Certainly, the townsfolk believed, she knew of what she spoke.

Yet another factor which contributed to Arthur’s conviction was his estrangement from that all-important center of Puritan Salem Towne: the church. Orphaned and living in squalor at the edge of town, Arthur did not regularly attend church as his neighbors did. Once this was brought to the attention of the judge, it was deemed additional proof of Van Wirt’s ungodliness, and essentially sealed his fate as a suspected witchcraft practitioner.

Arthur Van Wirt was hanged just before sundown on the day following his trial, where surviving recounts detailed the process as an incredibly slow, unexciting death which compelled even those who most eagerly awaited his sentencing to abandon the gallows after some time and return home, leaving him to suffocate as night fell. In the night, however, Van Wirt’s body apparently disappeared from the gallows, rendering Salem Towne residents confused and unsettled, believing that a servant of the Devil was still somewhere in their midst. One diarist recalled the discovery in his personal journal, having written the following.

> *“[Arthur] stood trial August the 17th, 1687, and hanged at sundowne one day afterwards. The gallows emptied early, as the good people of Salem soon grew weary of his suffering. The Devil fought to keep him alive; animating him withe spirit to contest the will and ultimate judgment of our almighty God. When we came the next morning, we beheld his body missing from the gibbet with the rope cut: I suspect it to have been stolen away in the night, carried away on shadows and down into the infernal kingdom. If our God is righteous in His punishment, he shall not find rest there. I pray he is among the last of the sinners in Salem; that any other witches shall heed his crimes as a warning and be turned from their wicked ways and towards the truth of His word.”*
>
>

Van Wirt was presumed dead following the execution, despite the fact that his body was not recovered. In time, the circumstances of his death faded from public discussion, resurfacing only during the infamous trials which took place in-between February of 1692 and May of 1693, wherein the accused were questioned regarding the means of his disappearance.

### The Arrival of Patience Whitlock

Contrary to what the people of Salem eventually came to believe, however, Arthur managed to survive the attempted execution. In the nearly five years following his disappearance, he sought refuge within the home of Patience Whitlock: one of the first appointed members of the Witches’ Council in Salem and another accused witchcraft practitioner who was hanged in March of 1692. Similarly to Arthur, Whitlock was regarded to have died a sort of ‘false death’, as she was later confirmed to be one of the surviving members of the Salem Coven who fled to Louisiana after the commencement of the trials.

There is minimal information with regards to Van Wirt’s circumstances between 1687 and 1692, although documents recovered from the early Salem archives of Miss Robichaux’s Academy for Exceptional Young Ladies detail that he was incorporated into the Salem Coven shortly after his supposed execution as a sort of aide to the reigning Supreme, Prudence Mather, and her Councillors. Van Wirt vanishes briefly from Coven writings around March of 1692–which marked the beginning of the official witch trials–but reappears later in various Louisianan estate documents which lead into the early 1700s and accompany the establishment of the Van Wirt Toy Company.

During this time, the Witches’ Council sought to better log and identify different magical abilities as they existed outside of the Seven Wonders, and thus created rosters detailing Coven members’ respective powers. Upon fleeing southwards to Louisiana, the Coven members’ names were added to these lists, providing witchcraft historians with the extent of Arthur Van Wirt’s magic, as well as marking him as the first officially-recognized warlock in the United States. Likewise, these records helped to determine the scale of power existing between witches and warlocks.

Warlocks, like witches, were capable of manifesting unique abilities of various strengths, and were also able to display mastery of multiple of the Seven Wonders. A 1689 record authored by Patience Whitlock christens Van Wirt’s primary ability as ‘Lectio Motus’, or ‘Emotion Reading’ in Latin. An addendum from 1695 elaborates on this further, providing Arthur’s name and further differentiating the ability from forms of telepathy, providing that Arthur’s manifestation of the ability was purely empathetic in nature, as opposed to communicative. For that reason, Lectio Motus was not expressly recorded within other surviving Coven records, leading historians to presume that it has not yet presented itself in the same way again.

### The Migration of the Salem Coven

After the ritual of the Sacred Taking proved a failure in 1692, resulting in the death of Prudence Mather and no clear candidate for Supremacy, Coven affairs became understandably jumbled as the Salem witches scrambled to determine how to move forwards. As such, the number of surviving documents dwindled significantly during this time, and little is known about Van Wirt’s role in the Salem Coven’s escape southwards. It can be assumed that he continued to assist Councillor Whitlock and Prudence Mather’s eventual successor, Supreme Ruth Whatcott, in their preparations, but there is no definitive confirmation given until the Coven records pick back up again in mid-1694.

Continuing to serve as a Coven aide, Arthur Van Wirt eventually married Patience Whitlock sometime before the year 1700, though there is no official date recorded (New Orleans was established as a city in spring of 1718, and existed tentatively as part of ‘New France’ until the the territory was purchased as part of the United States in 1803; records of lesser-importance prior to its incorporation have largely been lost to time). Shortly following their marriage, Van Wirt–a hobbyist toymaker–founded the Van Wirt Toy Company, which grew considerably throughout the American colonies during the 18th century and remained a market leader until the 1940s or so.

Documents from the company’s early history reveal Patience’s eager involvement in her husband’s work, where she assisted with much of the record-keeping. Little is known of Patience’s history outside of the Salem Coven, where she then disappears considerably from Coven documentation in the years leading up to her death in 1708, where she was survived by Arthur and their child. Prior to this time, however, the exchange of effort between the two can be clearly observed- an unusual partnership, considering the circumstances and the eventual deterioration of the relationship between witches and warlocks.

### Witches and Warlocks: The Great Divide

That being said, this was a relationship which remained intact even following Arthur’s own death, and some time afterwards. It’s unknown how exactly this disparity came to be, but theories have been presented: just as witches gathered and formed Covens, so too did warlocks. From within these groups, a divining warlock is proposed to have eventually prophesied the existence of the Alpha, and gradually begun to have led other warlocks away from the ideals and power hierarchies held by witches. The two groups weren’t necessarily outright hostile to one another, but the observable difference in belief and ability was enough to make tensions high at best.

The divide between witches and warlocks was cemented with the construction of the Hawthorne School for Exceptional Young Men in the early 1900s, over a century after that of Miss Robichaux’s. The Hawthorne School, named after the city in which it was located, served as a similar safe-haven for practicing warlocks, and was presided over by a Grand Chancellor: a powerful warlock entrusted with the mentorship of male magic users by the Supreme. Even despite the festering disdain between the two, the warlocks were magically inferior to the Supreme, and still deferred to her for matters of diplomacy.

While the witches’ establishments had no clear ranking of magical ability outside of the completion of the Seven Wonders for Supremacy, the Hawthorne School operated on a level-based scale in order to define the strength of its students. The Grand Chancellor and Warlock Council–Hawthorne’s counterpart to the Salem Coven establishment–operated at Level Three, the highest attainable level, whereas the prophesied Alpha was alleged to operate at Level Four.

The Hawthorne School was considerably more well-endowed than its New Orleanian equivalent, with an expansive campus and more available resources. Where the attendance of witches at Miss Robichaux’s dwindled post-1970 as a result of many Salem descendants opting not to further their bloodlines, the attendance of Warlocks at the Hawthorne School flourished. Although still cautious, residents and wards of the Hawthorne School evaded many of the traditional prejudices and dangers of magic practitioners that were usually cast towards witches. That being said, they were not without distrust.

In 2014, after reigning Supreme Cordelia Goode publicly revealed the existence of witches and Warlocks–in addition to their safe havens–California locals grew fearful of the Hawthorne School and its proximity to their non-magical livelihoods. A molotov cocktail was thrown through one of the windows, igniting the building and destroying the facade in its entirety. The school’s operations halted temporarily for means of safety, and eventually resumed underground the site of the original school building, in a bunker that was now only accessible by elevator. This subterranean relocation further stoked tensions between witches and warlocks.

Even so, there was still a sole commonality between the two groups: the belief of Arthur Van Wirt as the first warlock to have been recognized by the Salem Coven. But, after the death of Patience Whitlock, what exactly became of the Van Wirts? Little is definitively known, but the family eventually vanished entirely from both Coven and warlock spaces. It is also unknown whether any magical ability was carried on through the bloodline- even if additional practicing Van Wirts did exist, they were likely too estranged from Coven resources to reconnect with their abilities. The Van Wirt Toy Company continued to flourish in the centuries after its establishment, though it did so without any sort of magical aid.

### Return to the Coven and Conclusion

The fates of the Van Wirt family and the Salem Coven crossed once again in 1961, where Mississippian witch Coby Dellum was abducted by Van Wirt Toy Company owner Samuel Van Wirt. Van Wirt held several women hostage in an effort to find a surrogate mother for his son, Otis ‘Spalding’ Van Wirt. After Dellum was chosen as the unfortunate successor, the witches of Miss Robichaux’s were notified of her existence following an accidental telekinetic earthquake. Tracking her magic, the witches confronted Samuel in his home, having come to remove Dellum and bring her to safety. Dellum, unwilling to leave Otis behind, agreed to return with the witches on the condition that he could accompany her as her ward.

The witches agreed, and together they returned to New Orleans after setting Van Wirt’s estate aflame. The Coven was never suspected in the death of Samuel Van Wirt, given the elusive nature of their operations, and records show that the recruitment Councillors were only regretful that they could not have reached the estate sooner. In an effort to protect both Otis and the Coven from suspicion following the millionaire’s death, Otis adapted his middle name, Spalding, as his moniker going forwards. From then on, a Van Wirt was once again an aid to the foremost witch colony in America, entirely unknowing of his family’s history within the Coven, and without the benevolent graces of his ancestor. In November of 2013, Spalding was murdered on the grounds of Miss Robichaux’s Academy by Councillor Zoe Benson, a decision which effectively ended the direct Whitlock & Van Wirt bloodline once and for all.

Even despite the centuries of distance between the Van Wirt family and the Salem Coven, however, the contributions of both Arthur and Otis Van Wirt to Coven efforts cannot be overstated. Now, as tensions between witches and warlocks are gradually being relieved, it can only be hoped that the two factions can be united as they once were, with Van Wirt’s loyalty as that all-important foundation.