The Witchcraft Delusion in Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697)

In its earlier historical conception, witchcraft and its demonstrations centred on the claim of power to produce specific effects, “things beyond the course of nature,” from supernatural causes, and under this general term, all its occult manifestations were classified with magic and sorcery, until the time came when the Devil was identified and acknowledged both in church and state as the originator and sponsor of the mystery, sin and crime—the sole father of the Satanic compacts with men and women, and the law both canonical and civil took cognizance of his evil activities.

The Acropolis mound at Susa in ancient Elam, in the winter of 1901-2, was brought to light by the French expedition in charge of the eminent savant M. de Morgan, one of the most remarkable memorials of early civilization ever recovered from the buried cities of the Orient. It is a monolith—a stele of black diorite—bearing in bas-relief a likeness of Hammurabi (the Amrephel of the Old Testament; Genesis xiv, 1), the sixth king of the first Babylonian dynasty, who reigned about 2250 B.C.; and there is also carved upon it, in the archaic script in black letter cuneiform—used long after the cursive writing was invented—the longest Babylonian record discovered to this day,—the oldest body of laws in existence and the basis of historical jurisprudence.

It is a remarkable code that was quickly made available through translation and transliteration by Assyrian scholars. It was justly named after its royal compiler, Hammurabi’s code. He was an imperialist in purpose and action. In the last fifty-five years of his reign, he annexed or assimilated the suzerainty of Elam, or Southern Persia, with Assyria to the north and Syria and Palestine to the Mediterranean Sea.