Growing up on his parents’ farm with four brothers and five sisters, Jonathan was a sickly child, given to physical ailments and prone to anxiety and depression. “I became afflicted with rheumatic affections at an early age, by exposure and hard labor, which caused my aching limbs at times to disobey the volition of mind in the discharge of their physical office,” he recalled in his 1856 autobiography. “This in effect afflicted the mind also, and I would have ofttimes cheerfully dispensed with my frail physical bark, and launched my mental existence upon the mysterious ocean of a future state.” The only thing that kept him from suicide was the thought of the “horrible scenes and penalities” that religion prescribed.
Peter Koons was from the “old school Presbyterian church,” and accordingly the infant Jonathan was baptized there, among the Friends Cove congregation. But his Lutheran mother, Margaret, provided most of his religious instruction at home. “The first education I received on the subject of man’s immortality, or soul, was impressed on my mind by my kind and affectionate mother,” he wrote. Margaret taught her son Bible stories about the Creation, the flood that wiped wickedness from the earth, Jonah and the whale, Joseph with his coat of many colors, and the downfall of Sampson. From the New Testament she related Christ’s miracles and his mission of redeeming humanity from original sin. “In that age I did not doubt the correctness of all she taught out of her rule of faith—being at that time led by her fascinating charms into implicit confidence of all she declared unto me,” Koons explained.
Despite the trust he had in his mother’s wisdom, young Jonathan was nonetheless possessed of a questioning mind. As he grew older, he wrote, “I was considered a tedious pupil, in consequence of being prone to inquire into all the whys and wherefores of my mental attractions, while under the instruction of my preceptors.” This contrariness caused problems for the boy, as his mother had taught him that God would hold him accountable for “every idle thought” as well as for words and deeds. To covet someone’s property was just as bad as actually stealing it, and “the conception of a false conclusion was the same in effect with God, as if we had proclaimed it.” Jonathan persisted nonetheless; “every pebble in the pathway of my life was turned up under the expectation of finding an index to true knowledge,” he would later write. He asked his mother why God had created hell and the devil. Her answer was that God was an “unfathomable mystery”—and to doubt his word was to sin against the Holy Ghost, “which sin cannot be ratified under the atonement of Christ, neither in this world, or in the future state of man.”
Over the course of these lessons Jonathan became convinced he was going to hell, a certainty that propelled him to a mental health crisis. He told of a short period in his youth (no age given) when he became anxious at bedtime—“a haunted and fearful condition.” He could not sleep, he said, for fear that “Satan would snatch me from the arms of kind Morpheus.” Jonathan would ask his mother to pray with him. She would oblige and tell him a Bible story, which would usually put him to sleep. But the boy’s dreams were filled with “horned and cloven footed devils” that dragged his playmates into hell with evident delight. Jonathan dreamed they were chasing him, too, and he would wake up in the act of jumping out of bed. The nighttime terrors soon became so strong that sunlight could no longer dispel them, and he sank into a deep melancholy from which his loved ones could not arouse him. “This sad predicament of my mind caused me to sob and sigh aloud,” he recalled. “All the kind entreaties of the family for an explanation of the cause, were made in vain.”
Finally, Jonathan fell into a trancelike state in which he imagined that a stranger—“a pure and noble personage”—was leading him through “successive plains [planes]” of heaven, where he recognized “the old prophets and patriarchs.” They eventually reached the zone of ultimate perfection, but Jonathan was allowed only to behold it without actually entering. He begged his guide to let him stay, but he had to go back to Earth to perform important duties before he could return.
When he woke up, Jonathan was troubled to find himself still in mortal form. “The thoughts of prolonging my days upon the earth after [this] experience, afflicted my mind very grievously,” he wrote. “This vision gave me a sort of foretaste of what I began to hope for; and the idea of spending my earthly career in such doubts and fears as those I had already experienced, was painful in the extreme.” Once again the boy turned to his mother for help. She listened intently as he told the story of his visit to the realm of light. “She informed me of her faith in the guardianship of angels, whom she believed hovered around us, and exercised their kind protecting influence in our favor, against temptations of Satan,” he recalled. At last Jonathan had found the comfort his soul required. Perhaps the kind stranger who had led him through heaven was an angel himself.
The healing vision replaced the dark thoughts that had clouded Jonathan’s young mind: “From that time forward . . . I became newly inspired with dawning hopes and prospects, that God could not reasonably act so cruel in his judgments as he is represented by the clerical Bible canonaders of the day and age. I hoped most anxiously that God would be kind enough to overlook my unavoidable fruits of imperfection.” Jonathan Koons not only found a more positive worldview but became intrigued with the altered state of consciousness that was the instrument of his deliverance. From then on, he would meditate—and in doing so, find the space to turn his theological world upside down.
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THE stories Koons heard from his father were entirely different from those of his saintly mother. Sitting around the fire at night back in Bedford, Peter and other relatives would tell tales of magic and wonder—of haunted groves in the woods, a mysterious light seen steadily traversing the ridgetops, and witches shape-shifting into animals. As a grown man, Koons remembered those tales and took the time to write them down. “These were listened to attentively, with a sort of reverential awe, and were generally believed,” he wrote. “Many of these occurrences, as was claimed, took place within my father’s family and circle of friends. This inspired me with a sort of fear and desire to see a ‘ghost’ or ‘spook’ as the Germans denominated a spirit, although I can not positively say that my desires were granted until recently.”
One such story involved his father and a neighbor woman named Mrs. ——, whom the family referred to derisively as “that old rib.” On a Sunday morning Peter went out to round up his cows and took along a rifle in case he chanced upon some game. As the family prepared breakfast, they heard several shots fired in quick succession. They guessed that he had come upon a flock of turkeys. Breakfast was postponed, and the family’s expectations grew high as they waited for Peter’s return. Soon he appeared with the cows—but minus the birds or any type of wild game.
Disappointment spread among the children, but as the head of the household Peter was not questioned. The family silently took their places around the breakfast table. Young Jonathan could tell that something was bothering his father. In fact, Peter had no appetite and Margaret had to beseech him to even sip a cup of coffee. Finally, Solomon, the second-oldest son, who had already taken a wife, summoned up the nerve to ask his father what had happened.
“When I came upon the cows I saw a small deer in the midst of the herd,” Peter related. “I fired upon it. This only caused it to give one or two bounds, and stopped without manifesting any fear or alarm. I repeated my firing; this caused it to act with a sort of contemptuous defiance, without expressing the least degree of alarm. Thus I continued to fire at my object which at times was within five or six paces, until all my balls were exhausted.” When the smoke cleared, the little deer had vanished.
Without another word Peter rose from the table, grabbed his hat, and set off, all the while mumbling something to himself. The family knew exactly where he was headed: to see a witch. Jonathan listened in fascination as his brothers and sisters, sister-in-law, and mother speculated about what would happen next.
“I wonder if that old rib will be able