Wonders of the Invisible World

in English, written by Cotton Mather, 1692

A ponderous work compiling and rewriting Reverend Mather's diaries from the Salem witch trials, over which he presided. Written at the request of the Governor of Massachusetts, Mather sought to chronicle and ultimately explain the witch hysteria that consumed Salem and the greater Massachusetts Bay area. The work is divided into three parts, "Enchantments Encountered", "A Discourse on the Wonders of the Invisible World: An Hortatory and Necessary Address, to a Country now Extraordinarily Alarum'd by the Wrath of the Devil", and finally "The Devil Discovered". The first section describes the storm of evil lately unleashed upon the colony, and explains how the Devil may tempt even upright people through excess of passion. By Mather's reasoning the people of Salem, in their hysteria, were nearly as valuable to Satan as the witches who had fallen to his infernal will. Several methods for identifying witches are described, and great caution is urged in the hunting of witches "lest the latter end be worse than the beginning." The second section describes the trials themselves, including accounts of Keziah Mason, Edmund Carter, Edward Hutchison, and many others. The third section describes the methods by which mortal men may face the Devil. These are few: faith and prayer are essential, but reason equally so, to ensure that the hunters do not fall victim to excess of zeal. This fabulously rare handwritten manuscript was referred to extensively by Rev. Ward Phillips during the composition of Thaumaturgical Prodigies In The New-England Canaan, and still contains some of Phillips' annotations. The manuscript was donated to the Orne Library by the Phillips family in 1805. (Johnson, Sam, and Sandy Antunes. "Miskatonic University: A Handbook to the Pride of Arkham." Chaosium, Oct. 2005.)