The editor is presumed to have been Henry More, who certainly contributed to the volume;[2] and topical material on witchcraft in Sweden was supplied by Anthony Horneck to later editions. By 1683 this appeared as a lengthy appendix.[3] Horneck's contribution came from a Dutch pamphlet of 1670.[4][5] Its composition is mentioned in the chapter on Transportation by an invisible power in the Miscellanies of John Aubrey.[6]
The book affirmed the existence of witches with malign supernatural powers of magic, and attacked skepticism concerning their abilities. Glanvill likened these skeptics to the Sadducees, members of a Jewishsect from around the time of Jesus who were said to have denied the immortality of the soul. The book is also noted for the account of the Drummer of Tedworth, an early poltergeist story, and for one of the earliest descriptions of the use of a witch bottle, a countercharm against witchcraft.
The book is mentioned in H.P. Lovecraft's short story "The Festival":
"Pointing to a chair, table, and pile of books, the old man now left the room; and when I sat down to read I saw that the books were hoary and mouldy, and that they included old Morryster’s wild Marvells of Science, the terrible Saducismus Triumphatus of Joseph Glanvill, published in 1681, the shocking Daemonolatreia of Remigius, printed in 1595 at Lyons, and worst of all, the unmentionable Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, in Olaus Wormius’ forbidden Latin translation; a book which I had never seen, but of which I had heard monstrous things whispered."
↑ Saducismus triumphatus: or, Full and plain evidence concerning witches and apparitions. In two parts. The first treating of their possibility. The second of their real existence.
1 2 Ankarloo, Bengt and Henningsen, Gustav (editors) Early Modern European Witchcraft: Centres and Peripheries (1990). Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 431-3.
↑ The full-title of the 1682 An account of what happen'd in the kingdom of Sweden in the years 1669, and 1670 and upwards. In relation to some persons that were accused for witches; and tryed and executed by the Kings command. Together with the particulars of a very sad accident that befel a boy at Malmoe in Schonen in the year, 1678. by the means of witchcraft, attested by the ablest and most judicious men of that town. Both translated out of High-Dutch into English, By Anthony Horneck D.D says High Dutch, however, i.e. in German.
Cotton Mather was a Puritan clergyman and author in colonial New England, who wrote extensively on theological, historical, and scientific subjects. After being educated at Harvard College, he joined his father Increase as minister of the Congregationalist Old North Meeting House in Boston, Massachusetts, where he preached for the rest of his life. He has been referred to as the "first American Evangelical".
The Drummer of Tedworth is the case of an alleged poltergeist manifestation in the West Country of England, recorded by Joseph Glanvill in his book Saducismus Triumphatus (1681).
Joseph Glanvill was an English writer, philosopher, and clergyman. Not himself a scientist, he has been called "the most skillful apologist of the virtuosi", or in other words the leading propagandist for the approach of the English natural philosophers of the later 17th century. In 1661 he predicted "To converse at the distance of the Indes by means of sympathetic conveyances may be as natural to future times as to us is a literary correspondence."
The Wonders of the Invisible World was a book written by Cotton Mather and published in 1693. It was subtitled, Observations As well Historical as Theological, upon the Nature, the Number, and the Operations of the Devils. The book defended Mather's role in the witchhunt conducted in Salem, Massachusetts. It espoused the belief that witchcraft was an evil magical power. Mather saw witches as tools of the devil in Satan's battle to "overturn this poor plantation, the Puritan colony", and prosecution of witches as a way to secure God's blessings for the colony.
The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. More than 200 people were accused. Thirty people were found guilty, nineteen of whom were executed by hanging. One other man, Giles Corey, died under torture after refusing to enter a plea, and at least five people died in jail.
Increase Mather was a New England Puritan clergyman in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and president of Harvard College for twenty years (1681–1701). He was influential in the administration of the colony during a time that coincided with the notorious Salem witch trials.
Henry More was an English philosopher of the Cambridge Platonist school.
Spectral evidence is a form of legal evidence based upon the testimony of those who claim to have experienced visions.
Bridget Bishop was the first person executed for witchcraft during the Salem witch trials in 1692. Nineteen were hanged, and one, Giles Corey, was pressed to death. Altogether, about 200 people were tried.
George Burroughs was a non-ordained Puritan preacher who was the only minister executed for witchcraft during the course of the Salem witch trials. He is remembered especially for reciting the Lord's Prayer during his execution, something it was believed a witch could never do.
Blockula was a legendary island where the Devil held his Earthly court during a witches' Sabbath. It was described as containing a massive meadow with no visible end, and a large house where the Devil would stay.
Cultural depictions of the Salem witch trials abound in art, literature and popular media in the United States, from the early 19th century to the present day. The literary and dramatic depictions are discussed in Marion Gibson's Witchcraft Myths in American Culture and see also Bernard Rosenthal's Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692
The Bury St Edmunds witch trials were a series of trials conducted intermittently between the years 1599 and 1694 in the town of Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, England.
Robert Calef was a cloth merchant in colonial Boston. He was the author of More Wonders of the Invisible World, a book composed throughout the mid-1690s denouncing the recent Salem witch trials of 1692–1693 and particularly examining the influential role played by Cotton Mather.
Deodat Lawson was a British American minister in Salem Village from 1684 to 1688 and is famous for a 10-page pamphlet describing the witchcraft accusations in the early spring of 1692. The pamphlet was billed as "collected by Deodat Lawson" and printed within the year in Boston, Massachusetts.
The Lottery and Other Stories is a 1949 short story collection by American author Shirley Jackson. Published by Farrar, Straus, it includes "The Lottery" and 24 other stories. This was the only collection of her stories to appear during her lifetime. Her later posthumous collections were Come Along with Me, edited by Stanley Edgar Hyman, and Just an Ordinary Day and Let Me Tell You, edited by her children Laurence Jackson Hyman and Sarah Hyman Stewart.
George Sinclair (Sinclar) (ca.1630–1696) was a Scottish mathematician, engineer and demonologist. The first Professor of Mathematics at the University of Glasgow, he is known for Satan's Invisible World Discovered,, a work on witchcraft. He wrote in all three areas of his interests, including an account of the "Glenluce Devil", a poltergeist case from c. 1654, in a 1672 book mainly on hydrostatics but also a pioneering study of geological structures through his experience in coal mines.
The Mora witch trial, which took place in Mora, Sweden, in 1669, is the most internationally famous Swedish witch trial. Reports of the trial spread throughout Europe, and a provocative German illustration of the execution is considered to have had some influence on the Salem witch trials. It was the first mass execution during the great Swedish witch hunt of 1668–1676.
Anthony Horneck was a German Protestant clergyman and scholar who made his career in England. He became an influential evangelical figure in London from the later 1670s, in partnership with Richard Smithies, curate of St Giles Cripplegate.
Samuel Wilkins II was an accuser in the Salem witch trials. He was the son of Henry Wilkins, and thus the grandson of Bray Wilkins and nephew of John Wilkins and Margaret Wilkins Knight, two other accusers. He testified against his cousin-in-law, John Willard.
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