Cotton Mather – A 17th Century Jordan Peterson

I find reading about Salem Witch Trials a generally unpleasant experience. When I read Arthur Miller’s The Crucible years ago, I felt a horrible combination of claustrophobia, frustration and rage. I’m assume that my readers have a general background of what happened, but if you’re unaware, about 300 years ago, some stupid, bored teenagers in Salem made up stories about their neighbours being witches, and a bunch of innocent people were executed. I’ve had Cotton Mather’s On Witchcraft (Wonders of the Invisible World) on my shelf for a decade, and even though it’s short, I’ve put off reading it until now.

Cotton Mather – On Witchcraft (Wonders of the Invisible World)

Cotton Mather was a Puritan minister at the time of the witch trials. I had thought he was a Matthew Hopkins, Witchfinder, figure, but his role in the witch trials was minimal. I think he sent a few letters to the judges or something and then wrote this book as a defence of the court proceedings, assuming the guilt of the witches. It’s an extremely boring book, and I managed to get through it by downloading the audiobook version and forcing myself to listen to it every night for a week while I cleaned my kitchen. This Cotton Mather guy was a stupid asshole, but people seemed to value his opinion because he knew the Bible. He was basically a 17th century Jordan Peterson.

I’ve read about the Salem trials elsewhere, and there’s very little in the narrative of the book that was new to me. The most interesting thing here is what Mather’s writing tells us about how he thinks. Either he’s terrified and/or he wants his audience to be terrified. This was written in 1692. British colonies in America were still very new, and the Puritans were still adapting to their new environment. They had exiled themselves from the iniquity of Catholicism and Anglicanism, and they took the Bible seriously. Half of this book is Biblical references, and these references are not limited to the Gospels. Mather’s audience believed that God had a special interest in their daily affairs. It’s a genuinely chilling prospect to imagine yourself in their position, truly believing that the Devil himself was present and trying to destroy their community. Still, it’s pretty hard to forgive people who were stupid enough to condemn 20+ others to death on the testimony of some hysterical teenagers and jealous farmers.

Wonders of the Invisible World is an extremely important primary source for historians, but it’s generally a pretty dull read. I know that The Crucible isn’t entirely historically accurate, but it does a more entertaining job of telling the same story.