Thaumaturgical Prodigies in the New-English Canaan

"If any are scandalized that New England, a place of as serious piety as any I know of, should be troubled so much by witches, they should ask themselves this question: Where would the Devil most wish to make his inroads, but in that place where he is hated the most?" — Rev. Ward Phillips

Overview

Thaumaturgical¹ Prodigies in the New-English Canaan is a Colonial-era account of witchcraft and supernatural phenomena written by the Reverend Ward Phillips, one of the first ministers of the town of New Jerusalem in what was then the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In addition to his work as a preacher, Phillips served as an instructor at Missituk College — his books making up some of the first works held by the library there — and, more importantly for this discussion, was active as a prosecutor during the witch trials in New Jerusalem and in nearby Salem.
Written in 1697 (and revised in a second edition by his son Rev. Lawrence Phillips in 1727, and again reprinted in 1801 by other members of the Phillips family), Thaumaturgical Prodigies in the New-English Canaan is a catalog of witchcraft, spirits, demonic encounters, native shamans, and occult signs in the Massachusetts Bay colony, with a particular focus on events in the Missituk Valley.
Thaumaturgical Prodigies is notable for its full and evocative descriptions of the Reverend’s many topics, including extensive coverage of his witch interrogations. There is an uncanny coherency to much of the work that hints that not only did Rev. Phillips believe what he was writing, but he has left out some material (even in the earlier versions) to spare his readers. He explicitly states that he has purposely omitted much information regarding the various incantations his victims confessed to having performed for the sake of his readers’ souls.
Known to scholars of the witch trials, and more rarely by those students of Colonial history, this book is considered an artifact of an earlier and more fearful age, where superstition was ascendant and pious men did terrible things in the name of their faith. Modern scholars regard it as a catalog of the ignorance of our ancestors and their darkest deeds.

Physical Descriptions:

1697 Edition

An Octavo (6” x 9”) edition on somewhat irregular velum. As this book was sold unbound, cover material varies greatly. Known copies have been bound in calfskin², red buckram³, and tanned goat hide⁴.
The book bears a stamp on the final page saying it was printed by the press of Roger Aubrey in Cambridge, though the work is not recorded in Thomas’ The History of Printing in America, suggesting that the printing was performed clandestinely, perhaps by one of Aubrey’s apprentices or by the printer himself unofficially, no doubt due to the nature of the work’s contents.
The presentation of the text is very plain, and there are no illustrations. The book was poorly printed and hastily edited and requires at least one Read English roll to make sense of the irregular font.

1727 Edition

The 1727 edition was printed as a Medium Octavo (6⅛” x 9¼”) at the Longman Press in New Jerusalem. The printer apparently offered a bound and unbound version. The Longman bound version bears a cover in dyed green leather with the title given on the side as “Philips – New England Prodigies” on the spine in gilt.
The quality of this work is much higher than the earlier version and contains several additional chapters (see above) as well as two-dozen illustrated plates, including a portrait of Rev. Ward Phillips himself. The additional chapters include a preface by the book’s editor, Rev. Lawrence Phillips, the late Ward Phillips’ son. In it he states that while he does not subscribe to his father’s more outlandish claims of witchcraft and deviltry, he thought that there was still much of value in his work

1801 Edition

Printed in Boston by Mann, Tuttle, and de Pirelle as a Crown Octavo (5⅜” x 8”) and bound in Turkish marbled boards with leather spines. The title is stamped and painted onto the spine (given as “Prodigies in New England – Rev Ward Phillips”).
The volume is well printed and contains redone versions of some of the plates from the 1727 version, though nearly one-third were omitted. The much more common 1801 reprint of the 1727 version bowdlerizes the most inflammatory and unwholesome sections and may prove frustrating to students of the occult.

Contents

Chapters in Thaumaturgical Prodigies in the New-English Canaan

1. A Call to Armes for Goode Christian Men
2. Improvements on Mr. Perkin’s Way for the Discoverie of Witches
3. On Heathen Ways Still Pracktised in this New-England
4. A Cataloge of the Divell’s Agents in New Jerusalem Village and Along the Missituk River
5. Abominations of the Divell Made Flesh
6. On Noises Heard in Remote Places
7. Tales of Witchcraft Recently Told, Apparitions and Lights
8. Others Evil Deeds Done in this Colonie
9. What I Know of the Tryals in Salem-Town
10. Five Sermons Against Witchcraft and Sin
11. Advice Given to a Young Man
12. A Sermon Against Pride
13. An Account of the Comet which came in 1686 with an Essay on the Meaning of Heavenly Signs
14. Regarding the Recent Trials in the King's port
15. The Testament of the Reverend Ward Phillips.

Those chapters in bold are only included in the 1727 and 1801 versions, though usually in abbreviated form in the latter.

Quick Skim

Thaumaturgial Prodigies in the New-English Canaan is an account of witchcraft, sorcery, and the occult from the earliest days of the Massachusetts Bay colony. Written by the Reverend Ward Phillips of New Jerusalem, this work is a catalog of various accounts of witchcraft, astronomical oddities, animal deformities, Native religion, and supernatural visions interspersed with religious invocations.
The author took part in the witch trials in New Jerusalem and to a lesser extent in nearby Salem, including the physical examination and torture of witches. Ward argues that his readers should hold firm in the faith against Satan’s agents, be they witches, Indians, or Papists and those evils that cannot be combated with fire and iron can only be bested by an unswerving faith in the Almighty.
Compared to similar authors of that era, Ward’s book is far darker, and it finds unsettling connections between the rites of the witches the author prosecutes and the rumored practices of Indian shamans. Ward claims to have witnessed many of the supernatural events described therein, and perhaps this is what gives this work its frequently horrific quality.

Thorough Reading

Written by the Reverend Ward Phillips, Thaumaturgical Prodigies in the New-English Canaan is an extensive, if discursive survey of witchcraft and other supernatural goings-on in the Massachusetts Bay colony (and occasionally parts beyond) at the turn of the 18th century.
Phillips was a resident of New Jerusalem and was a minister there. He also served as a prosecutor of the several men and women accused of witchcraft in New Jerusalem and its neighboring communities, including Salem. The book provides a full accounting of his recollection of the witch-trials there, from first whispered accusation to final judgment of the accused, including the inexplicable escape from the Essex Gaol of the accused witch Hekeziah Massey. Ward personally interrogated several of the accused, using means that to modern eyes amount to little more than torture, resulting in numerous confessions.
The book collects several of Ward’s essays, in no discernible order, in addition to his comments about the New Jerusalem Witch Trials of 1692. Included are methods to detect witches and to determine if an accused person is guilty of witchcraft, a fearful essay on the sorceries practiced by the Indians, freak births and animal deformities (Ward explains these are proof of supernatural activity), inexplicable noises coming from caverns or the sky, summary accounts of witchcraft trials in the colonies and Europe, notes regarding major crimes and rumored vices in the other colonies, the appearance of ghosts, spirits, and unexplained lights in the sky,
Also included in the 1727 edition are a number of Rev. Phillips' sermons, a few of his letters, an unfinished essay on astronomical phenomena, notes about rumors of witchcraft in New Jerusalem after the Salem trials, and a report of the Blaine's Port witch trials of 1722 – written by his son the Rev. Lawrence Phillips, and the elder Phillips’ Last Will and Testament.
The Reverend was an unambiguous zealot and ceaseless foe of what he believed to be the manifestations of Satan’s evil abroad in the colonies; witchcraft was a real and present danger to him and had to be not only prosecuted when discovered but also looked for at every turn, otherwise diabolical forces would overwhelm everything. Phillips displays an unsettling combination of unwavering belief in the evil that he faces and the ability to draw connections between the occult practices he has uncovered and similar practices among not only classical sources but also to the activities of certain Natives, suggesting some previously unknown source. Additionally, Phillips’ bloody zeal combines with what to modern readers is an unhealthy interest in the most gruesome details, be it his torture of the accused or the occult horrors he claims they practiced. Nevertheless, the only topic the Reverend seems reluctant to discuss are incantations and details of magical rites. These he explicitly states he has uniformly omitted out of concern for the souls of his readers, as he puts it “so that Satan’s Magick mightn’t Temp Ye as such Power is solely the Province of the Divine”.

Research:

Those seeking additional information about this particular work can uncover additional information on the topics below

• Most modern historical accounts of the Salem Witch Trials (include Samuel G. Drake’s several books) regard Phillips as secondary figure in the trials; a lesser provincial minister who was caught up in the furor unleashed in Salem. His written work, when mentioned at all, is regarded as a rough imitation of the more scholarly writings of the Mathers and, while offering a number of colorful, if preposterous, anecdotes, of minimal historical merit.
• Additional research will make clear the existence of the three different editions of the work and note that there is additional material in the latter two printings. The reader will also become aware that portions of this book are directly taken from the otherwise obscure chapbook Of Evill Sorceries Done in New-England of Dæmons in no Humane Shape. Researchers will be able to learn of any publicly held copy of the book (including the edition) in the region. The selections from Of Evill Sorceries...reprinted in Rev. Ward Philips’ compendium of New England witchcraft and horror does not reproduce the chapbook in full in either the 1727 edition or the 1801 reprint.
• 1727—The bulk of the original chapbook’s text is reproduced in a lengthy quotation, though all the proper names, save Billington’s, are replaced with initials. The passage is introduced as further proof of Rev. Phillps’ accusations of endemic witchcraft in Massachusetts, citing it as the work of “a concerned minister of New Jerusalem”. Another section from the chapbook discussing Sadogowah and Ossadawgowah has been inserted into a catalog of “Devils” worshiped by the Indians. Finally the chapbook’s catalog of monstrous births and other supernatural signs is appended to another chapter of the book without attribution.
• 1801—The original text is almost entirely presented in summary form, preserving the basic narrative of Billington’s unnatural interests and connection to Misquamacus but bowdlerizing the lurid details of his crimes and identifying him only as a “Goodman B”. The list of prodigies and horrors is again included, this time misattributed to Rev. Phillips.

Availability:

The availability of this work varies greatly by edition.

• The 1697 edition is by far the rarest, and only a small handful of copies have survived into the present day. Copies are held at the New Jerusalem Historical Society - 537 S Garrison St and the Boston Athenaeum.
• The 1727 expanded version is more common and can be found at the Orne Library (listed in card catalog, but missing from stacks), First Baptist Church archive, and the Blaine's Port Historical Society.
• Most of the larger libraries in Massachusetts have copies of the 1801 edition, though usually set aside in non-circulating stacks due to either its value or in some cases due to the occult content. This includes the New Jerusalem Public Library, Blaine's Port Public Library, Bolton’s Gardner Free Library, and numerous private collections.

Those seeking to purchase a copy can locate a copy of the 1801 edition with the help of a book dealer; base price is $150. This purchase will take several weeks to complete. Earlier versions may be found, though at greater price and requiring a much longer search.

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_{¹Thaumaturgy – from the Greek thauma ergon “the working of magic”
² The Hope Family of New Jerusalem – this version was bound in 1722 with brass hasps and bears the Hope family crest stamped on the cover.
³ Possessed by the Boston Athenaeum; this edition was bound by the Athenaeum after they received a donation of an unbound copy in 1878 as part of a bequest from the estate of Patience Sewall.
⁴ Recovered by the New Jerusalem Police from the effects of Dr. Jasper Bruilard from his room at the Tilden Arms Hotel in the May of 1922. The professor, late of Yale, was last seen entering his room on the evening of May 20 and was discovered to have disappeared the next morning. The room was greatly disturbed, with a broken window and curious symbols carved into the floor and door.}

Purpose

1697 version Sanity loss 1d3/1d6; Cthulhu Mythos +4 (Requires additional Read| Language English roll.)
1727 version Sanity loss 1d3/1d6; Cthulhu Mythos +4
1801 version Sanity loss 1d2/1d4; Cthulhu Mythos +3
All versions require 8 weeks to study and 16 hours to skim. No published version of this work contains any functional spells, though some useful details are provided. Successful reading grants a skill check to History and Occult skills.

Type

Manuscript, Historical

Medium

Paper

Authoring Date

1697

Authors

• Reverend Ward Phillips