Cotton Mather: Pop Culture Critic

Can I make a point? If the Mather family was so well off, how come nobody taught little Cotton proper punctuation? Let's talk italics and cApItaLizaTiOn.

Forget it, I can't be fickle, obviously Mather and specifically "On Witchcraft" has something going for it, albeit an old school spin on a really scary story. The book, one of over three hundred other published works from Cotton Mather, is an account of devils, demons and Satan himself in New England. Almost an "Idiots Guide to Outing Witches."

"On Witchcraft," the product of Mather's response to the witch hysteria in and around Boston and Salem, was published in 1692. His career as a theologian and pastor at the Old North Church makes this response all the more valuable and credible to the fearful and pious Christians of the Early American Colonies. Included in the (difficult to read) text includes methods to prevent temptation and the devil's vile ways, detect who is a witch, methods to avoid temptation and how to remain a faithful Christian during the tring times of the Witch outbreak, and ultimately, the Salem Trials.

I want to take a moment to sort of move away from the text of "On Witchcraft," and pose a question: did this hysteria ever cease?


"A particularly harrowing scene from Paranormal Activity in which the Demon visits Mica and Katie"

Of the top grossing films of this year, it was the horror genre that led the charts. Films like "Drag Me To Hell," "The Haunting in Connecticut," "Underworld," "The Unborn," and "Paranormal Activity," we see a new means of entertainment media focusing on those unfortunate occupants of hell, devils, witches, and demons. Although a little different then the cautionary text of "On Witchcraft," you can still easilly see a parallel between perhaps a voyeristic desire to read up on the Salem witches in 1692, to today's wide movie going audience looking for a scare.

Now, follow me here, becuase I know groups of New Englanders aren't quite looking to burn each other at the stake anymore, but what cause for films like these is there other then a curiosity for some netherworldly force?

It's not much more then a head scratcher, but for a second I'll suspend my disbelief of the undead and assume the Salem Witch Trials actually did punish the devil incarnate in Puritan men and women. Fast forward to 2009's "Paranormal Activity," which for the record is completely fiction. Still. The movie's villian, a demon who seems to jump from female to female buring down homes and killing idiot boyfriends before leaving the host woman to ruin a few other lives, is supposedly out there. Yikes!

"a Popish Curate having ineffectually try'd many Charms to Eject the Devil out of a Damsel there possessed, he passionately bid the Devil come out of her into himself," (17) writes Mather of a particularly harmful encounter with the demon; does anybody remember this EXACT SCENE from "The Exceroist"?

This is scary stuff friends: demons posessing people, maliciously entering the willing bodies of the clergey, the townsfolk of Salem, Boston, all over New England have found themselves engaged in an epic battle between the forces of good and God against the very filth of hell. Sounds like one hell of a movie. The catch is, Mather believes what he's writing, the people believe what they are reading, this stuff, in the world of seventeenth century America, is freakin real. Again, YIKES!


How to conclude? The point I'm trying to get across is I think a simple one, "On Witchcraft," although difficult to read and true, embodies one of the first archetypal "lore" of Amerciana pop culture. Put Mather in a movie theater today and something like this text would be the result of his screening of "Paranormal Activity" perhaps. Furthermore, the book makes a benchmark for the beginnings of both American pulp writing (remember, Mather had over three hundred works published) AND literature in general, not to mention evangelical preaching.

I liked "On Witchcraft," it was so hard to read, almost old English seeming at times; the narrative is horrific in the same ways that any scare flick would be these days, difference being, there aren't clever special effects behind what Salem witnessed. Just faith, and that itself is pretty cool.


-Tony