The religion of Salem and Boston was well fitted for developing this very theory of malignant power in “possessed” persons.  The teachings that there was a personal devil, that God allowed him to tempt mankind, that there were myriads of devils under Satan’s control at all times, ever watchful to entrap the unwary, that these devils were rulers over certain territory and certain types of people—­these teachings naturally led to the assumption that the imps chose certain persons as their very own.  Moreover, the constant reminders of the danger of straying from the strait and narrow way, and of the tortures of the afterworld led to self-consciousness, introspection, and morbidness.  The idea that Satan was at all times seeking to undermine the Puritan church also made it easy to believe that anyone living outside of, or contrary to, that church was an agent of the devil, in short, bewitched.  As it is only the useful that survives, it was essential that the army of devils be given a work to do, and this work was evident in the spirit of those who dared to act and think in non-conformity to the rule of the church.  The devil’s ways, too, were beyond the comprehension of man, cunning, smooth, sly; the most godly might fall a victim, with the terrible consequence that one might become bewitched and know it not.  At this stage it was the bounden duty of the unfortunate being’s church brethren to help him by inducing him to confess the indwelling of an evil spirit and thus free himself from the great impostor.  And if he did not confess then it were better that he be killed, lest the devil through him contaminate all.  Why, says Mather, in his Wonders of the Invisible World:  “If the devils now can strike the minds of men with any poisons of so fine a composition and operation, that scores of innocent people shall unite in confessions of a crime which we see actually committed, it is a thing prodigious, beyond the wonders of the former ages, and it threatens no less than a sort of dissolution upon the world.”

To avoid or counteract this desolation was the purpose of the legal proceedings at Salem.  It was believed by fairly intelligent people that Satan carried with him a black book in which he induced his victims to write their names with their own blood, signifying thereby that they had given their souls into his keeping, and were henceforth his liegemen.  The rendezvous of these lost and damned was deep in the forest; the time of meeting, midnight.  In such a place and at such an hour the assembly of witches and wizards plotted against the saints of God, namely, the Puritans.  According to Cotton Mather’s Wonders of the Invisible World, at the trial of one of these martyrs to superstition, George Burroughs, he was accused by eight of the confessing witches “as being the head actor at some of their hellish rendezvouzes, and one who had the promise of being a king in Satan’s kingdom, now going to be erected.  One of them falling into a kind of trance affirmed that G.B. had carried her away into a very high mountain, where he shewed her mighty and glorious kingdoms, and said, ’he would give them all to her, if she would write in his book.’”