book called, De jocose Dictis et Factis Regis Matihim Covirni.

Some of the tenets contained therein were the means of his incurring fresh ill-will from the clergy ; and eventually, their rancour became so great, indeed, that the writer was seized and taken to Venice, where he was imprisoned for a while. He was released anon, chiefly owing to the influence of the Pope, Sixtus IV, whose tutor he is said to have been at an earlier and indeterminate date ; and, thereupon, Galeotti returned to France, where he came under the notice of the king, Louis XL, who appointed him his state-astrol- oger. Thenceforth, for many years, the Italian acted in this onerous capacity, sometimes living within the precincts of the royal castle of Plessis-les-Tours, sometimes at the town of Lyons ; and once, in 1478, while staying at the latter place, and being informed that Louis was approaching, he rode out to meet him, fell from his horse, and died shortly afterwards as a result of injuries sustained in the fall. An especial interest attaches to Galeitli-in that he appears in Sir Walter Scott's inimitable story of mediaeval France, Quentin Durward. Early in the tale, soon after Quentin has entered the Scots Guard of Louis XL, the latter and his new guardsman are depicted as visiting the astrologer, the King being anxious for a prophecy regarding Quentin's immediate future. The scene is a very memorable and graphic one, among the best in the whole book ; and it is historically valuable, moreover, containing, as it does, what is probably a fairly accurate description of the kind of study used generally by an astrologer in the middle ages. Galeotti is represented, " curiously examining a specimen, just issued from the Frankfort Press, of the newly invented art of printing " ; and the King questions him about this novel process, whereupon the seer speaks of the vast changes it is destined to bring about throughout the whole world. Now, it was by no means thoughtlessly or carelessly, that Sir Walter introduced this passage, for, though the novelist himself does not refer to the matter in his notes, and though Andrew Lang says nothing thereon in those annotations which he furnished for the "' Border Waver ley," it is a fact that Louis was keenly interested in printing ; and, soon
after the craft first made its appearance, the King com- missioned the director of his mint, one Nicholas Janson or Jenson,- to give up his present post in favour of studying typography, with a view to its being carried on in France.
Galigai, Leonora : Wife of the Marechal d'Ancre Concino Concini, who was killed by the populace, in 1617. She was believed to be a sorceress, and was said to have be- witched the Queen. In her possession were found three volumes full of magic characters, besides charms and amulets. At her trial, it was established that the Marechal and his wife had consulted magicians, astrologers, and sorcerers, and had made use of waxen images, and that they had brought sorcerers from Nancy to sacrifice cocks, besides working many other sorceries and deeds of dark- ness. It is said that on her own confession, she was con- demned, and was beheaded and burnt in 1617. But when President Courtin asked her by what charm she had be- witched the Queen, she replied, proudly : " My spell was the power of a strong mind over a weak one."
Galitzin, Prince: (See "St. Martin).
Garatronicus : A red-coioured stone, which Achilles is believed to have carried with him in battle. It renders its possessor invincible.
Garden of Pomegranates : A tract reflecting the later spirit of Kabalism (q.v.).
Gardner, Dr. : (See Spirit-Photography).
Gargates : A black species of electrum or amber, now called jet. To electrum are attributed many occult virtues of a tell-tale character, and according to Pliny, a cup of this substance had the property of discovering poison, by showing certain half-circles, like rainbows, in the liquor, which also sparkles and hisses as if on fire.
Garinet, Jules : Author of a History of Magic in France, Paris, 1818. In this curious work will be found a description of the Sabbath, a dissertation on demons, a discourse on the superstitions connected with magic among the ancients and the moderns.
Garlic : A species of onion, cultivated throughout Europe, to which is attributed certain occult properties. It is believed by the Greeks and the Turks that the use of this vegetable, or even the mention of its name, is a sure charm against the " evil eye," and against vampires (q.v.). New-built houses and the sterns of boats belonging to Greece and Turkey, ■ have long bunches of garlic hanging from them as a pre- ventive against the fatal envy of any ill-disposed person.
Garnet : Preserves the health and promotes joy, but in the case of lovers, discord.
Gamier, Gilles : A werwolf, condemned at Dole, under Louis XIII., for having devoured a number of children. He was burned alive, and his body, after being reduced to ashes, was scattered to the winds.
Gassner : '(See Hypnotism).
Gastromancy, or Divination from the Belly, is now generally explained by ventriloquism, the voice in both cases sound- ing low and hollow, as if issuing from the ground. Salverte enforces this opinion, and adds : " The name of En- gastrimythes, given by the Greeks to the Pythiae (priestesses
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of Apollo) indicates that they made use of this artifice." The explanation is only partial, and the text of Isaiah : " Thy voice shall die as one that hath a familiar spirit," is inapplicable in such an argument. Those who are experienced in clairvoyance are aware that the voice is often reduced very low, in consequence of a change in the respiration. This was the .case with some of the ancient Pythonesses, though instances may have occurred when ventriloquism was resorted to, as by the wizards of Green- land in our own time.
Another method of practising the ancient gastromancy connects it with crystal-seeing, as vessels of glass, round, and full of clear water, were used, which were placed before several lighted candles. In this case, a young boy or girl was generally the seer, and the demon was summoned in a low voice by the magician. Replies were then obtained from the magical appearances seen in the illuminated glass vessels.
Gaudillon, Pierre: A sorcerer, who was burned in 1610, for going about at night in the form of a hare.
Gaufridi, Louis : A French ecclesiastic, burned as a sorcerer at Aix, in 1611. He was a cure at Marseilles, where his attractive person and manners gained for him a footing in high society, but for all his priestly garb, he led an evil life. A girl whom he had seduced was sent by her parents to a convent of Ursulines, and here Gaufridi followed her, mak- ing the credulous nuns believe that a legion of demons possessed the convent. At the instance of the exorcist, who relieved the " possessed " nuns Gaufridi was tried at Aix, and condemned to be burned alive.
Gauher-Abad : Meaning the Abode of Jewels. This was the name given to one of the capitals of the peris of Persian romance. These were beings of an angelic or well-disposed nature, who inhabited the earth, along with the divs or evil-disposed, before the creation of man. After this event, the peris became inhabitants of the aerial regions, and had three capitals: Shad-u-kam (pleasure and desire), Gauher- abad, and Amber -abad (city of Ambergris).
Gauthier, Jean : An alchemist. Charles IX. of France, deceived by his promises, had him provided with a hundred and twenty thousand pounds, with which to mike gold, and the adept set to work. But after he had worked for a week, he ran away with the King's money. He was pur- sued, captured, and hanged.
Gauthier of Bruges : It is related that a Franciscan monk, made a bishop by Pope Nicholas III., and deposed by Clement V., appealed to God against his deposition, and asked that he should be buried with his act of appeal in his hand. Some time after his death, Pope Clement V., visited Poitiers, and, finding himself one day in a Franciscan monastery, asked to see the remains of Mm whom he had deposed. He caused the tomb to be opened, and was horrified to see Gauthier of Bruges presenting his act of appeal, with a withered hand.
Gbalo : An order of priests among the Ga people of the Gold Coast, west of Togoland.
Geber, otherwise Abou Moussah Djafar al Sofi, was a native of Haman, in Mesopotamia, or, according to other accounts, a Spanish Moor, born at Savile, somewhere about the end of the eighth century, though all dates concerning him are extremely doubtful. Practically nothing is known of his life. He undertook wide experiments in metallurgy and chemistry, with the object of discovering the constituent elements of metals, in the course of which he stumbled upon nitric acid and red oxide of mercury. It is, indeed, upon actual discoveries that his reputation is based, and not upon the many spurious treatises which have been attributed to him, and which embrace the entire gamut of the sciences. His alleged extant works, which are in Latin, cannot but be regarded with suspicion, especially as several mediaeval writers adopted his name. It is believed, however, that
the library at Leyden, and the Imperial Library at Paris, contain Arabic manuscripts, which might be referred to his authorship. His Sum of Perfection, and his Investigation into the' Perfection of Metals are his most important works, a complete edition of which was pubished at Dantzic, in 1682, and again in the Bibliotheca Chemica Curiosa, of Mangetus, published at Cologne, in 1702. The Sum of Perfection professes to draw its inspiration from alchemical authors, who lived previous to Geber, but as alchemy was then not very far advanced, the derivation . is an un- likely one. We are told in its pages that success in the great art is only to be achieved by rigid adherence to natural law. A spirit of great strength and a dry water are spoken of as the elements of the natural principle. The philosophical furnace and its arrangement is dealt with in detail, as is the philosopher's vessel, a vase of glass with several intricate details difficult of comprehension. There is no dubiety, however, regarding the absolutely physical basis of metallurgy, upon which the work is composed, and it contains no hint of allegory or the achievement of success through supernatural agency.
Gehenna (otherwise Hell) : The word is derived from the Hebrew ge and Hinnom, the Valley of Hinnom— originally a valley in Palestine where the Jews passed their children through the fire to Moloch, the god of the Ammonites. Gehenna is popularly regarded as a place of toiment to which the wicked are consigned when they leave this earth : it is pictured as a bottomless pit, lit only by the fire which is never quenched. In Dante and Milton, we have diverse descriptions of Hell — the one of unutterable anguish, horror and despair ; the other more sublimely imaginative, and pierced with rays of faith and love. The locality of Hell, and the duration of its torments, have for centuries been the subject of much questioning. By some, it is believed, that there is a purgatorial region — a kind of upper Gehenna, " in which the soul's of just men are cleansed by a tem- porary punishment " before they are admitted to Heaven. It was believed that during this period the soul could re- visit the places and persons whom it had loved. By the Persians, Gehenna was understood as the place inhabited by the divs, or rebellious angels, and to which they had been confined when they refused to bow down before the first man. Gehenna is used in the New Testament for Hell, and is practically synonymous with the Greek " Hades."
Gematria : along with temurah, was the science of the dual interpretation of the Kabalistic alphabet, which composed the notary art, which is fundamentally the complete science of the tarot (q.v.) signs and their complex and varied appli- cation to the definition of all secrets.
Genealum Dierum : {See Avieenna.)
Genius : Is generally used as the name of a superior class of atrial beings, holding an intermediate rank between mortals and immortals. That, at least, appears to be the signification of " Daemon," the corresponding term in Greek. It is probable, that the whole system of Demono- logy was invented by the Platonic philosophers, and engrafted by degrees on the popular mythology. The Platonists professed, however, to derive their doctrines from the " theology of the ancients," so that this system may have come originally from the East, where it formed a part of the tenets of Zoroaster. This sage ascribed all the operations of nature to the agency of celestial beings, the ministers of one supreme first cause, to whose most visible and brilliant image, Fire, homage was paid as his representative. Some Roman writers speak of " the Genius" as "the God of Nature," or "Nature" itself, but their notions seem to have been modified by, if not formed from, etymological considerations, more likely to mislead than to afford a certain clue to the real meaning of the term. At a later period, they supposed almost every
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created thing, animate or inanimate, to be protected by its guardian genius, a sort of demi-god, who presided over its birth, and was its constant companion till its death. Thus, Censorinus, who lived about the middle of the third cen- tury, wrote as follows : " The genius is a god supposed to be attendant on everyone from the time of his birth. . . . Many think the genius to be the same as the lars of the ancients. . .• . We may well believe that its power over us is great, yea, absolute. . . . Some ascribe two genii at least to those who live in the houses of married persons." Euclid, the Socratic philosopher, gives two to every one, a point on which Lucilius, in his " Satires," insists we can- not be informed. To the genius, therefore, - so powerful through the whole course of one's life, they offered yearly sacrifices. As the birth of every mortal was a peculiar object of his guardian genius's solicitude, the marriage- bed was called the genial bed, " lectus genialis " ; the same invisible patron was supposed also to be the author of joy and hilarity, whence a joyous was called a genial life, :l genialis vita." There is a curious passage relating to the functions of the Greek "demons in the Symposium of Plato, in which he says : (Speech of Socrates) " from it (i.e., the agency of genii) proceed all the arts of divination, and all the science of priests, with respect to sacrifices, initiations, incantations, and everything, in short, which relates to oracles and enchantments. The deity holds no direct intercourse with man ; but, by this means, all the converse and communications between the gods and men, whether asleep or awake, take place ; and he who is wise in these things is a man peculiarly guided by his genius." We here see the origin of the connection between demono- logy and magic ; an association perpetually occurring in the romances of the East, if the Jinns of the Mussulmans can be identified with the genii of the Platonists. (See also Jinn,) Germany : For early German magic, see Teutons.
Magic as formulated and believed in by the Germans in the Middle Ages, bears, along with traces of its unmis- takable derivation from the ancient Teutonic religion, the impress of the influence wrought by the natural character- istics of the country upon the mind of its inhabitants Deep forests, gloomy mountains, limitless morasses, caverned rocks, mysterious springs, all these helped to shape the weird and terrible imagination which may be traced in Teutonic mythology, and later in the darker and more repulsive aspects of magic and witchcraft, which first arose in Germany, and there obtained ready credence.
As the clash and strife of Teuton and Roman, of Christian and Heathen have left indelible records in folk-lore and history, so we may find them as surely in. the magical belief of the Middle Ages. The earlier monkish legends are replete with accounts of magic and sorcery, indicating plainly the process by which the ancient deities had become evil and degraded upon the introduction of the newer religion. Miracles are recounted, where these evil ones are robbed of all power at the name of Christ, or before some blessed relic, then chained and prisoned beneath mountain, river and sea in eternal darkness, whilst it was told how misfortune and death were the unvarying rewards for those who still might follow the outcast gods.
Again, the sites and periods of the great religious festivals of the Teutons are perpetuated in those said to be the place and time of the Witches' Sabbath and other myster- ious meetings and conclaves. Mountains especially retained this character — as the Venusberg, the Horselberg, and Blocksberg, now become the Devil's realm and abode of the damned. Chapels and cathedrals were full of relics, whose chief virtue was to exorcise the spirits of evil, while the bells must be blessed, as ordained by the Council of Cologne, in order that " demons might be affrighted by their sound, calling Christians to prayers ; and when they
fled, the persons of the faithful would be secure ; that the destruction of lightnings and whirlwinds would be averted, and the spirits of the storm defeated."
Storms were always held to be the work of the Devil, or the conjuration of his followers. In their fury might be heard the trampling of his infernal train above the tossing forests or holy spires, and here is seen the transformation Odin and his hosts had undergone. Another instance of this is found when the Valkyries, the Choosers of the Slain, riding to places of battle, have become the mediaeval witches riding astride broom-sticks, on their missions of evil. Castles of flames, where the Devil holds wild revel ; con- claves of corpses revivified by evil knowledge ; unearthly growths, vitalized by hanged men's souls, springing to life beneath gallows and gibbets ; little men of the hills, malicious spirits, with their caps of mist and cloaks of invisibility ; in these may be seen the meeting of the Heathen and Christian stories, and the origins of that terrible belief in magic, and its train of terror and death, which is one of the darkest mysteries of the Middle Ages.
Witchcraft was at first derided as a delusion by men of sense and education, and belief in it was actually forbidden by some of the earlier councils. It was in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that it attained prominence, helped greatly thereto by the fact that magic, sorcery and witchcraft had now become a crime in the eyes of the Church — a crime punishable by confiscation and death. It may be truly said that the Holy Fathers and Inquisitors first systematised . and formulated Black Magic. Under such authority, beiief in it flourished, filling the people with either an abject fear or unholy curiosity.
The motives for laying the charge of sorcery and witch- craft at a person's door were, of course, many besides that of care for the soul ; for personal feuds, political enmities, religious differences and treasury needs found in this an unfailing and sure means of achieving their infamous ends. However this might be, the charges were hurled at high and low, and death thereby reaped a plentiful harvest.
The famous Council of Constance began the years of terror withits proscription of the doctrines of Wyclif and the burning of John Huss and Jerome of Prague. At this time, too, a work was published by one of the Inquisitors, called the Formicarium, a comprehensive list of the sins against religion and in the fifth volume an exhaustive ac- count was given of that of sorcery. The list of crimes accomplished by witches is detailed, such as second sight, ability to read secrets and foretell events ; power to cause diseases, death by lightning and destructive storms ; to transform themselves into beasts and birds ; to bring about illicit love, barrenness of living beings and crops ; their enmity against children and practice of devouring them.
Papal bulls appeared for the appointment of Inquisitors, who must not be interfered with by the-civil authorities, and the Emperor and reigning princes took such under their protection. The persecutions rose to a ferocity unparal- lelled in other countries, till the following century, and hundreds were burned in the space of a few years. Two Inquisitors of this time, Jacob Sprenger, and Henricus Institor, compiled the famous Malleus Maleficarum, a complete system of witchcraft, also a perfect method of proving the innocent capable and guilty of any and every crime. Yet it was meant partly as an apology — a pointing out of the necessity for the extermination of such a horde of evil-doers. At this time, too, appeared the bull of Pope Innocent VIII., another comprehensive method and process for trials and tortures.
These persecutions were intermittent throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, breaking out again with renewed vigour in the seventeenth century. It was stimu- lated in this by the increasing strife between Catholics
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and Protestants and the condition of the country, devasta- ted by wars, plague and famine, was an ever-ready and fruitful source of charges that might be brought against sorcery. Two cities, Bamberg and Wurzburg attained an unenviable fame for sanguinary trials and number of victims.
In the first-named city, Prince-Bishop George II., and his suffragan, Frederic Forner, prosecuted the holy in- quisition with such energy that between the years 1625 and 1630 nine hundred trials took place, six hundred people being burned. Confessions of whatever the holy fathers wished, were wrung from the victims under extreme and merciless torture. Rich and poor, learned and ignorant, were gathered into the toils, the number often being so great that names were never taken and written down, the prisoners being cited as No. 1, 2, 3, and so on.
At Wurzburg, Lutheranism was gaining ground, and here again the charge of sorcery was brought against its followers. The bishop, Philip Adolph, who came to the see in 1623, did not dare to openly prosecute them, so took this means of punishing those unfaithful to the Church. In Hauber's Bibliotheca Magica may be found a list of twenty-nine burnings, covering a short period prior to 1629. Each burning consisted of several victims, the numbers ranging from two up to ten or more. It is a strange procession we see here, winding their way to death through the flames and bitter smoke, a procession pathetic and terrible. Old men and women, little girls and boys and infants, all emissaries of the Evil One ; noble ladies and washerwomen ; vicars, canons, singers and minstrels ; Bannach, a senator, " the fattest citizen in Wurzburg" ; a very rich man, a keeper of the pot-house, the bishop's own nephew and page, " the most beautiful girl in Wurz- burg," a huckster, a blind girl, living beings beside the decapitated dead — the procession is endless as the conditions were various.
Strangely, it was at Wurzburg, in 1749, that the last trial for witchcraft took place, that of Maria Renata, of the Convent of Unterzell. She was condemned on all the old charges, of consorting with the Devil, bewitchments and other infernal practices, and burned there in the month of June, the last victim of cruel superstition.
Towards the end of the seventeenth century, disbelief in the truth of witchcraft and criticism of the wholesale burnings began to be heard, though earlier than this, some had dared to lift their voices against the injustice and . ignorance of it all. Cornelius Saos, a priest in Mainz, had, before 1593, stated his doubt of the whole proceedings, but suffered for his temerity. Johannes Wier, physician to the Duke of Cleves, Thomas Erast, another physician, Adam Tanner, a Bavarian Jesuit, and last, but not least, Frederick Spree, also a Jesuit, who, more than all helped to end the reign of terror and superstition.
Alchemy, the forerunner of modern chemistry, belonged in those days to the realm of magic, and was therefore Satanic in its derivation, and its followers liable to the charge of sorcery and the penalty of death. In this fratern- ity we find emperors and princes, often devoted to the study themselves, or taking into their service well-known practisers of the art, as when Joachim I. had Johannes Trithemius as teacher of astrology and " defender of magic," and the Emperor Rudolph employing Michael Maier as his physician.
Germany supplies a long roll of names famous for their discoveries made in the name of magic, men who by their search for knowledge and truth laid themselves open to much terrible suspicion. Here we find Paracelsus, — that inexplicable figure who in his search for the Elixir of Life discovered laudanum, perhaps in some magical distillation of black poppies at midnight hour ; the great Cornelius Agrippa ; Basil Valentine, prior and chemist ; Henry
Kuhnrath, physician and philosopher, and a train of stu- dents, all tirelessly searching for the elusive mysteries of life, the innermost secrets of nature.
These men were awesome figures to the ignorant mind. Popular imagination was ever busy weaving strange tales about their doings, such as infernal dealings and pacts with the Dev'l. Such knowledge as the alchemists gained could only be acquired by infernal means, and the soul of the magician was often the price promised and inexorably demanded by the Evil One. These myths and imaginings centred themselves about one magician especially, and in the Faust legend we may find embalmed the general attitude and belief of the Middle Ages towards learning and any attempt to extend the realm of knowledge.
The Alchemists were also mystics as their writings abun- dantly testify, but most notable of all in this department of occultism was Jacob Bohme, the son of peasants, the inspired shoemaker. "•■
During the Thirty Years' War many wild preachers, seers and fanatics appeared, exhorting and prophesying. No doubt the condition of the country contributed towards producing these states of hallucination and hysteria, and in contrast to the terror, misfortune and sorrow on all sides we have accounts of ecstatics absorbed in supernatural visions. Anna Fleischer of Freiburg was such an one, as was Christiana Poniatowitzsch, who journeying throughout Bohemia and Germany related her visions and prophesied.
At the end of the seventeenth century the old tenets of magic were undergoing a gradual change. Alchemy began to separate itself from them, and became merged in the science of chemistry. The residue of the magical beliefs formed their protagonists in members of all kinds of secret societies, many of which were founded on those of the Middle Ages. Freemasonry — whose beginnings are at- tributed by some to a certain guild of masons banded to- gether for the building of Strasburg Cathedral, but by other authorities to Rosicrucianism — formed the basis and pat- tern for many other secret societies.
In the eighteenth century these flourished exceedingly. Occultism became rampant. We hear of Frederick William working with Steinert in a house specially built for evocations ; of Schroepfer, proprietor of a cafe with his magic punch and circles for raising the spirits of the dead ; of Lavater with two spirits at his command ; of the Mopses, a society whose rites of initiation were those of the Tem- plars and Witches' Sabbath in a mild and civilized form ; and of Carl Sand, the mystical fanatic who killed Kotzebue.
The Illuminati, whose teachings, spreading to France, did so much towards bringing about the many violent changes there, were banded together as a society by Adam Weishaupt and fostered by Baron von Knigge, a student of occultism. The object of this society is said to have originally been that of circumventing the Jesuits, but in its development it absorbed mysticism and supernaturalism, finally becoming political and revolutionary as it applied its philosophies to civil and religious life. Though it was disbanded and broken up in 1784 its influence was incal- culable and widespread in its effects for long afterwards.
Many other names occur, coming under the category of mysticism : Jiing Stilling, seer, prophet and healer ; Anton Mesmer, the discoverer and apostle of animal magnetism ; the Marquis de Puysegur, magnetist and spiritualist ; Madame von Krudener, preacher of peace and clemency to monarchs and princes ; Zschokke the mystical seer, a,nd Dr. Justinus Kerner, believer in magnetism and historian of those two famous cases of possession and mediumship, the " Maid of Orlach " and the " Seeress of Prevorst."
Early in the nineteenth century occurred the remarkable cures said to be affected by Prince Hohenlohe, a dignitary
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of the Church. He was led to believe in the power of heal- ing through the influence of a peasant named Martin Michel. Most of these cures took place at Wurzburg, the scenes of former sanguinary witch-burnings, and it is said that up- wards of four hundred people, deaf, dumb, blind and para- lytic were cured by the power of fervent prayer.
About this time also occurred the famous case of " stig- mata " in the person of the ecstatic, Katherine Emerick, the nun of Diilmen. The remarkable features were the appearance of a bloody cross encircling the head ; marks of wounds in hands, feet and side, and crosses on the breast, with frequent bleedings therefrom. This persisted for many years and the case is mentioned by several notable men of the time.
In nineteenth century Occultism we find, as in the earlier periods, stories of hauntings and' doings of mischievous sprites existing beside learned disquisitions by educated men; as that on the " fourth dimension in space" by Zollner in his Transcendental Physics, and another on the luminous emanations from material objects in Baron von Reichenbach's treatise on the Od or Odylic Force ; thus betraying an unmistakeable likeness to its precursor, the magic of the Middle Ages.
Spiritualism. The movement of modern spiritualism, which left such a deep impress on America, France and England, affected Germany in a much less degree. But it would be indeed surprising if the country which gave so great attention to magnetism, wherein somnambules and clairvoyants were so plentiful, the country of seers and mystics, did not interest itself in the wide-spread phenom- ena of spiritualism. And investigators there were in Ger- many, though we have no record of any in the period im- mediately following the Rochester Rappings. Fichte ' declared for the facts of spiritualism ; Hartmann, also, the author of the Philosophy of the Unconscious, desired to give the phenomena a definite place in philosophy. Carl du Prel, in his Philosophy of Mysticism, points to spiritu- alistic manifestations as evidence of a subconscious region in the human mind. Du Prel also founded a monthly magazine, The Sphinx, devoted to the interests of spiritu- alism, and Aksakoff, the wall-known Russian spiritualist, published the results of his researches in Germany, and in the German language, because he was not permitted to publish them in Russian. Another philosophic exponent of the spiritualistic doctrine was Baron Hellenbach, who founded on its tenets a distinct hypothesis of his own — namely, that no change of world, or " sphere," occurs at birth or death, but merely a change in the mode of percep- tion. So much for the philosophical attitude towards the phenomena. The popular view-point was doubtless more influenced by the performances of the mediums who from time to time found their way to Germany. The most im- portant of these was Henry Slade, who sought refuge in that country from his English persecutors. His remarkable manifestations in Germany, under the observation of Zollner the astronomer, left nothing to" be desired from a spiritu- alistic point of view. Gerson, Jean Charlier de : The learned and pious chancellor of the University of Paris, who died in 1429. He was the author of the Examination of Spirits, which contained rules for distinguishing true revelations from false ; and of Astrology Reformed, which had a great success. Cert, Berthomine de : A sorceress of the town of Prechac in Gascogny, who confessed about the year 1608 that when a sorceress returning from the Sabbath was killed on the way, the devil was in the habit of taking her shape and making her reappear and die in her own dwelling so as to preserve her good reputation. But if he who had killed her had a wax candle about him, and made with it the sign of the cross on the body of the witch, the devil could not
with all his strength remove her, and so was forced to leave her there.
Gervais : Archbishop of Rheims, died in 1067. His death was revealed to a Norman knight, returning from a pil- grimage to Rome, by a hermit whom he met on the way, and who told him that on the previous night he had been disturbed by a vision of demons making a great noise. They had, they said, been carrying the body of Gervais from Rheims, but because of his good deeds he had been taken from them. On his return to Rheims the knight found that Gervais was dead, and that the time of his death corresponded exactly with the time of the hermit's vision.
Ghor-Boud-Des, The : The people of " Ghor-bund-land." Mr. Pococke in his India in Greece maintains that these people are the same as the " Corybantes," or ministers of the gods, otherwise known as the Cabiri.
Ghost Seers : Sir William Hamiliton has observed, " however astonishing, it is now proved, beyond all rational doubt, that in certain abnormal states of the nervous organism, perceptions are possible through other than the ordinary channels of the senses." But, without entering into this metaphysical question, folk-lore holds that persons born at a particular time of the day have the power of seeing ghosts. " Thus it is said in Lancashire," says Mi". Thisel- ton Dyer, " that children born during twilight are supposed to have this peculiarity, and to know who of their acquain- tance will next die. Some say that this property belongs also to those who happen to be born exactly at twelve o'clock at night, or, as the peasantry say in Somersetshire, " a child born in chime-hours will have the power to see spirits." The same belief prevails in Yorkshire, where it is commoniy supposed that children born during the hour after midnight have the privilege through life of seeing the spirits of the departed. Mr. Henderson says that " a Yorkshire lady informed him she was very near being thus distinguished, but the clock had not struck twelve when she was born. When a child she mentioned this circum- stance to an old servant, adding that ' Mamma was sure her birthday was the 23rd, not the 24th, for she had in- quired at the time.' ' Ay, Ay,' said the old woman, turn- ing to the child's nurse, ' mistress would be very anxious about that, for bairns born after mid-night see more things than other folk.' "
This superstition prevails on the Continent, and, in Denmark, Sunday children have prerogatives far from enviable. Thorpe, tells how " in Fyer there was a woman who was born on a Sunday, and, like other Sunday children had the faculty of seeing much that was hidden from others. . But, because of this property, she could not pass by a church at night without seeing a hearse or a spectre. The gift became a perfect burden to her ; she therefore sought the advice of a man skilled in such matters, who directed her, whenever she saw a spectre to say, " Go to Heaven ! but when she met a hearse, " Hang on ! " Happening some- time after to meet a hearse, she, through lapse of memory cried out, " Go to Heaven ! " and straightway the hearse rose in the air and vanished. Afterwards, meeting a spectre she said to it, " Hang on ! " when the spectre clung round her neck, hung on her back, and drove her down into the earth before it. For three days her shrieks were heard before the spectre would put an end to her wretched life."
It is a popular article of faith in Scotland that those who are born on Christmas Day or Good Friday have the power of seeing spirits, and even of commanding them, a super- stition to which Sir Walter Scott alludes in his Marmion (stanza 22). The Spaniards imputed the haggard and downcast looks of their Philip II. to the disagreeable visions to which this privilege subjected him.
Among uncultured tribes it is supposed that spirits are visible to some persons and not to others. The " natives "
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of the Antilles believed that the dead appeared on the road when one went alone, but not when they went together ; among the Finns the ghosts of the dead were to be seen by the Shamans, and not by men generally, unless in dreams. It is, too, a popular theory with savage races that the soul appears in dreams to vis;t the sleeper, and hence it has been customary for rude tribes to drink various intoxicating substances, under the impression that when thrown into the state of ecstasy they would have pleasing visions. On this account certain tribes on the Amazon use certain nar- cotic plants, producing an intoxication lasting twenty-four hours. During this period they are said to be subject to extraordinary visions, in the course of which they acquire information on any subject they may specially require. For a similar reason the inhabitants of North Brazil, when anxious to discover some guilty person, were in the habit of administering narcotic drinks to seers, in whose dreams the criminal made his appearance. The Californian In- dians would give children certain intoxicants in order to gain from the ensuing vision information about their ene- mies. And the Darien Indians used the seeds of the Datura sanguines to produce in children prophetic delirium, during which they revealed the whereabouts of hidden treasures. Gilles de Laval : Lord of Raiz, and Marshal of France, the " Blue Beard "' of our nursery legends, and a famous sorcerer, was bora about the year 1420, of one of the most famous families of Brittany. His father died when he Was in his twentieth year, and the impetuous lad found himself possessed of unlimited power and wealth. By birth, he was connected with the Roceys, the Craons, and the Mont- morencys. Through his father's decease he became the lord of fifteen princely domains, yielding a revenue of three hundred thousand livres. He was handsome, lithe, Well-limbed, but distinguished by the appendage of a beard of bluish black. His address was fascinating, his erudition extensive, his courage unimpeachable. Every- thing seemed to promise a splendid and illustrious career, instead of that dark and miserable history which has associated the name of Blue Beard with so many traditions of horror and legends of atrocious crimes.
At the outset he did nothing to justify an evil augury. He served with zeal and gallantry in the wars of Charles VI. against the English, and had fought under Joan of Arc in the ever memorable Siege of Orleans. His exploits pro- cured him from a grateful king the reward of the high dignity of Marshal of France. From this point his career tended downwards. He retired to his Castle of Champtoce and indulged in the display of the most luxurious state. Two hundred horsemen accompanied him on his travels, and his train, when he went hunting, exceeded in magni- ficence that of the King himself. His retainers wore the most sumptuous dresses ; his horses were caparisoned with the richest trappings ; his castle gates were thrown open day and night to all comers, for whom an ox was daily roasted whole, and sheep, and pigs, and poultry, wine, mead, and hippocras provided in sufficient quantities for five hundred persons. He carried the same love of pomp into his devotion. His principal chaplain, whom he called a bishop, a dean, a chanter, two arch-deacons, four vicars, a schoolmaster, twelve assistant chaplains, and eight chori- sters, composed his ecclesiastical establishment. Each of these had his horse and his servant ; all were dressed in robes of scarlet and furs, and had costly appointments. Sacred vessels, crucifixes, all of gold and silver, were trans- ported with them wherever their lord went, together with many organs, each carried by six men. He was exceed- ingly desirous that all the priests of his chapel should be entitled to wear the mitre, and he sent many embassies to Rome to obtain this privilege, but without success. He maintained a choir of twenty-five young children of both
sexes, and these he caused to be instructed in singing by the best masters of the day. He had also his comedians, his morris-dancers, and his jugglers, and every hour was crowned with some sensual gratification or voluptuous pleasure.
In 1443, this magnificent young seigneur wedded Cath- erine, the heiress of the noble House of Thouars, an event which afforded him fresh occasions of displaying his insane passion for luxurious pomp. He gave the most splendid banquets ; he figured in the most chivalric tournaments. His guests, who came from all parts to share in the revels of Champtoce, knew not which to admire the most, his skill in all knightly exercises, or his profound erudition. " He had espoused a young woman of high birth," says Eliphas Levi, " and kept her practically shut up in his castle at Machecoul, which had a tower with the entrance walled up." A report was spread by the Marshal that it was in a ruinous state, and no one sought to penetrate therein. This, notwithstanding, Madame de Raiz, who was frequently alone during the dark hours, saw red lights moving to and fro in this tower ; but she did not venture to question her husband, whose bizarre and sombre char- acter rilled her with extreme terror.
The legal state maintained by the Lord of Retz was ordered on so extensive a scale that it even exhausted his apparently inexhaustible revenues, and to procure the funds for his pleasures and his extravagance, he was com- pelled to sell several of his baronies. Then, the Marshal attempted to dispose of his seignory of Ingrande. But his heirs-at-law, indisposed to see their valuable inheri- tance gradually pared away into nothing, solicited the interference of the King, and a royal edict prohibited him from selling his paternal estates. In this predicament, most men would have curtailed their profusion, and en- deavoured to economize their income, but Gilles de Retz was unable to live in diminished splendour. The luxuries that surrounded him were all that for him made life. To have shorn him of his magnificence would have been to strike a death-blow at his heart. Money, therefore, became the principal object of his desires, and to obtain money it seemed to his excited imagination only necessary that he should turn alchemist.
He sent accordingly into Italy, Spain, and Germany, and invited the adepts in the great science to repair from evei y land to the splendours of Champtoce. Amongst those who obtained the summonses, and continued attached to him during the remainder of his career, were Prelati, an alchemist of Padua, and a physician of Poitou, whose name is not given. . At their instigation he built a stately laboratory, and joined by other adepts, eagerly began the search for the Philosophers' Stone. For a twelve month the furnaces blazed away right merrily, and a thousand chemical combinations disposed of the Marshal's gold and silver. Meanwhile, the alchemists feasted on the most luxurious viands, and quaffed the rarest wines ; and so admirable were their quarters that, as far as they were concerned, they would have prosecuted the quest of the elixir vita, or the Philosophers' Stone, until death cut short their labours.
The impetuosity of the Lord of Retz could not abide such lingering processes. He wanted wealth, and he wanted it immediately. If the grand secret could not be discovered by any quicker method, he would have none of it, nor, indeed, as his resources were fast melting away, would it avail him much if the search occupied several years. At this junction the Poitousan physician and the Paduan alchemist whispered to him of quicker and bolder methods of attaining the desired alkehest, if he had the courage to adopt them. Gilles de Retz immediately dismissed the inferior adepts, and put. himself in the hands of the two
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abler and subtler masters. These persuaded him that the Evil One could at once reveal to them the secret, and offered to summons him ex teuebris, for the Marshal to conclude with him whatever arrangement he thought best. As long as he saved his soul, the Lord of Retz professed himself willing to do anything the devil might command.
In this frame of mind he went to the physician at mid- night to a solitary recess in the neighbouring wood, where the physician drew the magic circle and made the custom- ary conjurations. Gilles listened to the invocation with wonder, and expectant that every moment the Spirit of Darkness would burst upon the startled silence. After a lapse of thirty minutes, the physician manifested signs of the greatest alarm ; his hair seemed to stand on end, his eyes glared with unutterable horror ; he talked wildly, his knees shook, a deadly pallor overspread his countenance, and he sank to the ground. Gilles was a man of dauntless bravery, and gazed upon the strange scene unmoved. After awhile the physician pretended to recover conscious- ness. He arose, and turning to his master, inquired if he had not remarked the wrathful countenance of the devil. De Rets replied that he had seen no devil. Where- upon the physician declared he had appeared in the fashion of a wild leopard, and had growled at him horribly. " You," he said to his lord, " would have been the same, and heard the same, but for your want of faith. You could not determine to give yourself up wholly to his service, and therefore he thrust a mist before your eyes." De Retz acknowledged that his resolution had somewhat faltered, but that now his choice was made, if indeed the Evil One could be coerced into speaking, and revealing the secret of the universal alkahest. The physician said that there grew certain- herbs in Spain and Africa which possessed the necessary power, and offered to go in search of them him- self if the Lord of Laval would supply the funds. As no one else would be able to detect the herbs so miraculously gifted, De Retz thanked the physician for his voluntary self-denial, and loaded him with all the gold he could spare. The physician then took leave of his credulous patron, who never saw him again.
De Retz, as soon as the physician had quitted Charnptoce, was once more seized with the fever of unrest. His days and nights were consumed in ceaseless visions of gold ; gold, without which he must abandon his gilded pomp and unholy pleasures ; gold, without which he could not hope to brave his enemies or procure exemption from the just punishment of his crimes. He now turned for help to the alchemist Prelati, who agreed to undertake the enterprise it De Retz furnished him with the charms and talismans necessary in so troublesome a work. He was to sign with his blood a contract that he would obey the devil in all things, and to offer up a sacrifice of the hands, eyes, blood, heart and lungs of a young child. The madman having willingly consented to these terms, Prelati went out alone on the following night, and after an absence of three hours, returned to his impatient lord. His tale was a monstrously extravagant one, but De Retz swallowed it greedily. The devil had appeared in the shape of a comely young man of twenty, who desired to be called Barron, and had pointed out to him a store of ingots of pure gold, buried under an oak in the neighbouring wood, which was to become the property of the Lord of Laval if he fulfilled the conditions of his contract. But this bright prospect was over-clouded by the devil's injunction that the gold was not to be searched for until a period of seven times seven weeks had elapsed, or it would turn to slates and dust. De Retz was by no means willing to wait so many months for the realisation of his wishes, and desired Prelati to intimate to the devil that he should decline any further correspondence with him if matters could not be expedited. Prelati peisuaded
him to wait for seven times seven days, and then, the two repaired with pick-axe and shovel to dig up the treasure. After some hard work they lighted upon a load of slates inscribed with hieroglyphical characters. Prelati broke out into a fit of rage, and culuminated the Evil One as a liar, a knave, a rogue — De Retz heartily joining in his fierce denunciations. He persuaded his master, however, to give the devil a further trial, and led him on from day to day with dark oracular hints and pretended demoniac intimations, until he had obtained nearly all the valuables remaining to his unhappy dupe. He was then preparing to escape with his plunder, when a catastrophe occurred, which involved him in his lord's ruin.
On Easter Day, in the year 1440, having communicated solemnly in his chapel, and bade farewell to the lady of Machecoul, telling her that he was departing to the Holy Land, the poor creature was even then afraid to question, so much did she tremble at his presence ; she was also several months in her pregnancy. The Marshal permitted her sister to come on a visit as a companion during his absence. Madame de Raiz took advantage of this indul- gence, after which Gilles de Laval mounted his horse, and departed. To her sister, Madame de Raiz communicated her fears and anxieties. What went on in the castle ? Why was her lord so gloomy ? What signified his repeated absences ? What became of the children who disappeared day by day ? What were those nocturnal lights in the wallcd-up tower ? These and the other problems excited the cuiiosity of both women to the utmost degree. What, all the same, could be done ? The Marshal had forbidden them expressly even to approach th.e tower, and before leaving he had expressed this injunction. It must assuredly have a secret entrance, for which Madame de Raiz and her sister Anne proceeded to search through the lower rooms of the castle, corner by corner, stone after stone. At last, in the chapel, behind the altar, they came upon a copper button, hidden in a mass of sculpture. It yielded under pressure, a, stone slid back, and the two curiosity-seekers, now all in a tremble, distinguished the lowermost steps of a staircase, which, led them to the condemned tower.
At the top of the first flight there was a kind of chapel, • with a cross upside down and black candles ; on the altar stood a hideous figure, no doubt representing the demon. On the second floor, they came upon furnaces, retorts, alembics, charcoal — in a word, ail the apparatus of alchemy. The third flight led to a dark chamber where the heavy and fetid atmosphere compelled the young women to retreat. Madame de Raiz came into collision with a vase, which fell over, and she was conscious that her robe and feet were soaked by some thick and unknown liquid. On returning to the light at the head of the stairs, she found that she was bathed in blood.
Sister Anne would have fled from the place, but in Madame de Raiz curiosity was even stronger than disgust or fear. She descended the stairs, took a lamp from the infernal chapel and returned to the third floor, where a frightful spectacle awaited her. Copper vessels filled with blood were ranged the whole length of the walls, bearing labels with a date on each, and in the middle of the room there was a black marble table, on which lay the body of a child, murdered quite recently. It was one of those basins which had fallen, and black blood had spread far and wide over the grimy and worm-eaten wooden floor. The two women were now half-dead with terror. Madame de Raiz endeavoured at all costs to efface the evidence of her indiscretion. She went in search of a sponge and water, to wash the boards, but she only extended the stain, and that which at first seemed black, became all scarlet in hue. Suddenly a loud commotion echoed through the castle, mixed with the cries of people calling to Madame de Raiz.
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She distinguished the awe-stricken words : " Here is Monseigneur come back." The two women made for the staircase, but at the same moment they were aware of the trampling of steps and the sound of other voices in the devil's chapel. Sister Anne fled upwards to the battlement of the tower ; Madame de Raiz went down trembling, and found herself face to face with her husband, in the act of ascending, accompanied by the apostate priest and Prelati.
Gilles tie Laval seized his wife by the arm, and without speaking, dragged her into the infernal chapel. It was then that Prelati observed to- the Marshal : " It is needs must, as you see, and the victim has come of her. own accord. ..." *' Be it so," answered his master. ''Begin -the Black Mass. ..." The apostate priest went to the altar, while Gilles de Laval opened a little cupboard fixed therein, and drew out a large knife, after which he sat down •close to his spouse, who was now almost in a swoon, and lying in a heap on a bench against the wall. The sacrileg- ious ceremonies began. Tt must be explained that the Marshal, so far from taking the road to Jerusalem, had proceeded only to Nantes, where Prelati lived ; he attacked this miserable wretch with the uttermost fury, and threat - ■ened to slay him if he did not furnish the means of extracting from the devil that which he had been demanding for so long a time. With the object of obtaining delay, Prelati declared that terrible conditions were required by the infernal master, first among which would be the sacrifice of the Marshal's unborn child, after tearing it forcibly from the mother's womb. Gilles de Laval made no reply, but returned at once to Machecoul, the Florentine sorcerer and his accomplice, the priest, being in his train. With the- rest we are acquainted.
Meanwhile, Sister Anne, left to her own devices on the Toof of the tower, and not daring to come down, had re- moved her veil, to make signs of distress at chance. They were answered by two cavaliers, accompanied by a posse of armed men, who were riding towards the castle" ; they proved to be her two brothers, who, on learning the spurious departure of the Marshal for Palestine, had come to visit and console Madame de Raiz-. Soon after they arrived with a clatter in the court of the castle, whereupon Gilles de Laval suspended the hideous ceremony, and said to his wife : " Madame, I forgive j'ou, and the matter is at an end between us if you do now as I tell you. Return to your apartment, change your garments, and join me in the" guest-room, whither I am going to receive your brothers. But if you say one word, or cause them the slightest sus- picion, I will bring you hither on their departure ; we shall proceed with the. Black Mass at the point where it is now broken off, and at the consecration you will die. Mark -where I place this knife.
He rose up and led his wife to the door of her chamber, ■and subsequently received her relations and their suite, saying that this lady was preparing herself to come and salute her brothers. Madame de Raiz appeared almost immediately, pale as a spectre. Gilles de Laval never took •eyes off her, seeking to control her by his glance. When her brother suggested that she was ill, she answered that it was the fatigue of pregnancy, but added in an undertone : " Save me, he seeks to kill me." At the same moment, Sister Anne rushed into the hall, crying : " Take us away ; ■save us, my brothers, this man is an assassin," and she pointed to Gilles de Laval. While the Marshal summoned lus people, the escort of the two visitors surrounded the women with drawn swords, and the Marshal's people disarmed instep d of obeying him. Madame de Raiz, with her sister and brothers, gained the drawbridge, and left the castle.
Terrible rumours were now bruited through all the
country-side. It was noticed that many young girls and boys had disappeared. Some had been traced to the Castle of Champtoce, and not beyond. The public voice accused him of murder, and of crimes even worse than murder — of lust in its foulest and most disgusting shapes. It was true that no one dared openly accuse a baron so powerful as the Lord of Retz. It was true that whenever the circumstances of the disappearance of so many children were alluded to in his presence, he always manifested the greatest astonishment. But the suspicions of the people once aroused •are not easily allayed ; and the Castle of Champtoce and its lord soon acquired a fearful reputation, and were surrounded with an appalling mystery.
The continued disappearance of young boys and girls had caused so bitter a feeling in the neighbourhood that the Church had felt constrained to intervene, and on the earnest representations of the Bishop of Nantes, the Duke of Brittany ordered De Ret?, and his accomplice to be ar- rested. Their trial took place before a commission com- posed of the Bishop of Nantes, Chancellor of Brittany, the Vicar of the Inquisition, and Pierre l'Hopital, the President of the Provincial Parliament. De Retz was accused of sorcery, sodomy, and murder. At first he displayed the most consummate coolness, denounced his judges as worthless and impure, and declared that rather than plead before such shameless knaves he would be hung like a dog, without trial. But the overwhelming evidence brought against him — the terrible revelations made by Prelati and his servants of his abandoned lust, of his sacrifices of young children for the supposed gratifi- cation of the devil, and the ferocious pleasure with which he gloated over the throbbing limbs and glazing eyes of those who were equally the victims of his sensuality and his cruelty — this horrible tale, as it unfolded day by day the black record of his enormities, shook even his imper- turable courage, and he confessed everything. The blood- stained chronicle showed that nearly one hundred children had fallen victims to this madman and his insane greed of the Philosophers' Stone. Both De Rets and Prelati were doomed to be burned alive, but in consideration of his rank the punishment of the Marshal was somewhat mitigated. He was strangled before he was given over to the flames. On the scaffold, he exclaimed to Prelati, with a hideous assumption of religious confidence : " Farewell, friend Francis. In this world we shall never meet again, but let us rest our hopes in God — we shall see each other in Para- dise." The sentence was executed at Nantes, on the 23rd of February, 1440. " Notwithstanding his many and atrocious cruelties," says the old chronicler, Monstrelet, "he made a very devout end, full of penitence, most humbly imploring his Creator to have mercy on his manifold sins and wickedness. When his body was partly burned, some iadies and damsels of his family requested his remains of the Duke of Brittany, that they might be interred in holy ground, which was granted. The greater part of the nobles of Brittany, more especially those of his kindred, were in the utmost grief and confusion at his shameful death."
The Castle of Champtoce still stands in its beautiful valley, and many a romantic legend flowers about its gray old walls. " The hideous, half-burnt body of the monster himself," says Trollope, " circled in flames, pale, indeed, and faint in colour, but more lasting than those the hang- man kindled around his mortal form in the meadow under the walls of Nantes — is seen on bright moonlight nights, standing now on one topmost point of craggy wall, now on another, and is heard mingling his moan with the sough of the night-wind. Pale, bloodless forms, too, of youthful growth and mien, the restless, unsepulchred ghosts of the unfortunates who perished in these dungeons unassoiled.
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may at similar times be seen flitting backwards and for- wards in numerous groups across the space enclosed by the ruined walls, with more than mortal speed, or glancing hurriedly from window to window of the fabric, as still seeking to escape from its hateful confinement."
Girard, Jean-Baptiste : A Jesuit born at Pole in 1680, much persecuted by the Jansenists. They accused him of having seduced a girl named Catherine Cadiere, who showed symp- toms of possession, and had to be sent to a convent of Ursulines at Brest. His enemies found it impossible to implicate him in the affair, and the parliament of Aix, before which he was tried, were forced to acquit him.
Gladen, The Root of : Regarded as a remedy for a disease called the " Elf cake," which causes a hardness of the side. The following is the prescription given in A Thousand No- table Things for the making up of the medicine : — " Take a root of gladen, and make powder thereof, and give the diseased party half a spoonful thereof, to drink in white wine, and let him eat thereof so much in his pottage at one time, and it will help him within awhile."
Glamis Castle : {See Haunted Houses.)
Glamour : (See Gypsies.)
Glamourie : The state of mind in which witches beheld ap- paritions and visions of many kinds. Of the same nature as phantasy.
Glanyil, Joseph : (1636 — 1680) An English philosopher who wrote several works dealing with occult affairs, was born at Plymouth, and became a Church of England clergyman with charges at Frome Selwood and Streat and Walton. In 1666 he was appointed to the Abbey Church, Bath, was made a prebendary of Worcester Cathedral, and was chap- lain in ordinary to Charles II. from 1672. In his scepsis Scientifica (1665) his Sorcerers and Sorcery (1666) and his Sadducismus Triumphatus (printed 1681) he undertook the defence of the belief in the supernatural, and supplied many illustrations in support of his theory.
Glas Ghairm : A rhyme or spell of Scottish origin, by the use of which one could keep a dog from barking, and open a lock, and supposed to be of special value to young men in their courtship days. About twenty years ago a well- known character in Skye, named Archibald the Light- headed, was believed to know this incantation ; but he repeated it so quickly that no one could understand what he said. This poor man was insane ; but the fear which dogs had of him was ascribed to his knowledge of the Glas Ghairm. It was believed that this rhyme had some reference to the safety of the Children of Israel on the night before the Exodus : " against any of the children of Israel shall not a dog move his tongue, against man or beast."
Glauber, Johann Rudolph : German mediciner and alchemist, born at Carlstadt, in 1603. No authentic records concern- ing his life appear to exist, although he was a profuse writer and left many treatises on medicine and alchemy. He discovered and prepared many medicines of great value to pharmacy, some of which are in common use, for example the familiar preparation known as Glauber's Salts. He Was a firm believer in the Philosophers' Stone and elixir vitae. Concerning the former, he states : " Let the be- nevolent reader take with him my final judgment concerning the great Stone of the Wise ; let every man believe what he will and is able to comprehend. Such a work is purely the gift of God, and cannot be learned by the most acute power of human mind, if it be not assisted by the benign help of a Divine Inspiration. And of this I assure myself that in the last times, God will raise up some to whom He will open the Cabinet of Nature's Secrets, that they shall be able to do wonderful things in the World to His Glory, the which, I indeed, heartily wish to posterity that they may enjoy and use to the praise and honour of God."
Some of Glauber's principal works are, Philosophical
Furnaces, Commentary on Paracelsus, Heaven ot the Philo- sophers, or Book of Vexation, Miracuhim Mundi, The Prosperity of Germany, Book of Fires.
Gloriana : {See Dee.)
Glosopetra, or Gulosus : This stone is said to fall from Heaven in the wane of the moon. It is shaped like the human tongue, and was used by magicians to excite the lunar motions.
Gloucester, Eleanor Cobham, Duchess of : Wife of Humphrey of Gloucester, uncle of Henry VI., and Lord Protector of England during the King's minority. Though Humphrey was very popular in England, he was not without enemies, and one of the most bitter of these was Henry Beaufort, Cardinal of Winchester, great-uncle to the King. He it was who brought a charge of witchcraft against the Duchess of Gloucester, hoping thus to destroy her husband's power as the actual head of the realm and heir to the throne in the event of the King's death. It was supposed that the Duchess had first resorted to witchcraft in order to gain the affections of Humphrey, whose second wife she was. Then, when she had married him, and the death of the Duke of Bedford had removed the last barrier but one between her and a crown, she set about the secret removal of that barrier, which was, of course, the unfortunate King. To- assist her in her evil designs, she sought the advice of Margery Jourdain (the Witch of Eye), Roger Bolingbroke, Thomas Southwel, and John Hume, or Hun, a priest. All five were accused of summoning evil spirits, and plotting to destroy the King. They were also suspected of making a waxen image, which was slowly melted before a fire, in the- expectation that as the image was consumed, the Efe of . the King would also waste away. For the supposed practice of this common device of witches, they were put upon trial. The priest, Hun, turned informer, and Bolingbroke, having abjured his evil works, was called upon to give- evidence. Margery Jourdain was burned as a witch, and the Duchess of Gloucester was sentenced to walk through the streets of London on three separate occasions bearing a lighted taper in her hand, and attended by the Lord Mayor, sheriffs, and others. Afterwards, she was banished to the- Isle of Man.
Gnosticism : Under the designation " Gnostics," several widely-differing sects were included, the term, derived from the Greek, meaning, " to know " in opposition ta mere theory, and sharing this significance with the words, " wizard," " witch," which also indicate in their original meaning : " those who know."
Simultaneously with Christianity, these sects assumed, a definite form, the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire being their sphere of operations at first. Their doctrines were an admixture of Indian, Egyptian, Babylonian, and Christian creeds, astrology and magic, with much of the- Jewish Kabbala also. From Alexandria, that centre of mystic learning, much of their distinctive beliefs and ritual were dewved, while it seems certain that to a certain extent they became affiliated with Mithraism (q.v.), to whose sheltering kindness Occidental Christianity also owed much. Most of the sects had a priesthood of the mysteries, and these initiated priests practised magic arts- astrology, incantations, exorcisms, the fashioning of charms talismans and amulets, of which many are extant at the- present day. It is said that the Grecian mysteries, the Eleusinian and Cabiric, for instance, were celebrated by the- Gnostic sects down to a late date. They were looked upon as heretics and sorcerers by the Church, and were the victims of relentless peisecution. In Persia also they were- put to death, but some embraced Islamism, and trans- mitted their doctrines to the Dervish sects (q.v.). Mani- cheism, a later sect was founded by Manes, who belonged to the Order of the Magi, and was famous for his skill in.
Abraxas
GNOSTIC GEMS
Talismans, magical charms, and invocations of the Gnostic sect. Illustrative of the mysteries of the Gnostics: it shows Abraxas, the chief Deity, in his manifestations.
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astrology, medicines and magic. This sect was anathema - to the Church, and its later variants, Paulicians, Cathari, Albigensis, Lollards, and later still the Carbonari, never failed to arouse the persecuting fervour of the Church.
Apollonius of Tyana (q.v.), a Pagan, was supposed to have some connection with the Gnostics. The first Gnostic of eminence was Simon Magus (q.v.) contemporary with the Christian apostles. The Simonians are said to have inter- preted the Creation in Genesis as symbolic of the gestation of the foetus, the temptation of Eve and the Garden of Eden having a like character. The Carpocratians, one of the Gnostic sects, derived their mysteries and rites from Isis worship. They used Theurgic incantations, symbols and signs. The Ophites also adopted Egyptian rites, and, as their name indicates, these included much of serpent symbolism, an actual serpent being the central object of their mysteries. Marcos, disciple of Valentinus, and founder of the Marcian sect, celebrated Mass with two chalices, pouring wine from the larger into a smaller, and on pronouncing a magical formula, the vessel was filled with a liquor like blood, which swelled up seething. Other sects practised divination and prophecy by means of female somnambules. Some of the sects became degraded in doctrine and ritual, this often being of an orgiastic character.
The Gnostic talismans were mostly engraved on gems, the colour and traditional qualities of the jewel being part of its magical efficacy. They used spells and charms and mystic formulae, said to " loose fetters, to cause blind- ness in one's enemies, to procure dreams, to gain favour, to encompass any desire whatsoever." In a Greek Gnostic Papyrus is to be found the following spell of Agathocles, for producing dreams : " Take a cat, black all over, and which has been killed ; prepare a writing tablet, and write the following with a solution of myrrh, and the dream which thou desirest to be sent, and put in the mouth of the cat. The text to be transcribed runs : ' Keimi, Keimi, I am the Great One, in whose mouth rests Mommom, Thoth, Nauumbre, Karikha, Kenyro, Paarmiathon, the sacred Ian ice' ieu aeoi, who is above the heaven, Amekheumen, Neunana, Seunana, Ablanathanalba, ' (here follow further names, then,) 'Put thyself in connection with N.N. in this matter (as to the substance of the dream named,) but if it is necessary then bring for me N.N. hither by thy power ; lord of the whole world, fiery god, put thyself in connexion with N.N.' Again, there follows a list of meaningless names, the formula ending : ' Hear me, for I shall speak the great name, Thoth ! whom each god honours, and each demon fears, by whose command every messenger performs his mission. Thy name answers to the seven (vowels) a, e, 6, i, o, u, 6, iauoeead oue$ oia. I named thy glorious name, the name for all needs. Put thyself in connection with.N.N., Hidden One, God, with respect to this name, which Apollobex also used." The repetition of apparently meaningless syllables was always held to be of great efficacy in magical rites, either as holding the secret name of the powers invoked, or of actual power in themselves. In Atanasi's Magic Papyrus, Spell VII., directs you to lay the link of a chain upon a leaden plate, and having traced its outline, to write thereon, round the circumference, the common Gnostic legend in Greek characters (reading both ways) continuously. Within the circle was written the nature of the thing which it was desired to prevent. The operation was called " The Ring of Hermes." The link was then to be folded up on the leaden plate, and thrown into the grave of one dead before his time, or else into a disused well. After the formula above given, was to follow in Greek : " Prevent thou such and such a person from doing such and such a thing " — a proof that the long string of epithets all referred to the same power. These
instances might be multiplied, although much of the more valuable parts of the Gnostic doctrines were destroyed by every persecutor who arose, and this was easily done, for the sacred and mystic teachings, the prayers and spells were inscribed on perishable parchments. That much of the evil was imputed to them by the Church because of their more philosophic habit of thought in opposition to faith and dogma, is beyond doubt.
Goat : The devil is frequently represented under the shape of a goat, and as such presided over the witches' Sabbath. The goat is also the " emblem of sinful men at the day of judgment." (See Baphomet ; Witchcraft.) Goblin : A spirit formerly supposed to lurk in houses. They were generally of a mischievous and grotesque type. Hob- goblins, according to Junius, were so called because they were wont to hop on one leg. God : According to the ancient magical conception of God in the scheme of the universe, evil is the inevitable contrast and complement of good. God permits the existence of the shadow in order that it may intensify the purity of the light. Indeed he has created both and they are inseparable the one being necessary to and incomprehensible without the other.
The very idea of goodness loses its meaning if considered apart from that of evil — Gabriel is a foil to Satan and Satan to Gabriel. The dual nature of the spiritual world pene- trates into every department of life material and spiritual. It is typified in light and darkness, cold and heat, truth and error, in brief, the names of any two opposing forces will serve to illustrate the great primary law of nature — ■ viz. the continual conflict between the positive or good and the negative or evil.
For a scriptural illustration of this point, let the story of Cain and Abel be taken. The moral superiority of his brother is at first irksome to Cain, finally intolerable. He murders Abel, thus bringing on his own head the wrath of God and the self-punishment of the murderer. For in killing Abel he has done himself no good, but harm. He has not done away with Abel's superiority, but has added to himself a burden of guilt that can be expiated only by much suffering.
Suffering is shewn in the Scriptures to be the only means by which evil is overcome by good. Cain re-appears in the story of the prodigal son, who after privation and suffer- ing is restored to his father who forgives him fully and freely.
The possibility of sin and error is therefore entirely con- sistent with and even inseparable from life, and the great sinner a more vital being than the colourless character, because having greater capacity for evil he has also greater capacity for good, and in proportion to his faults so will his virtues be when he turns to God. " There is more joy - in heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine just persons," because more force of character, more power for good or evil is displayed by the sinner than by the feebly correct. And that power is the most precious- thing in life.
This great dual law, right and wrong, two antagonistic forces, call them what we will, is designated by the term duad. It is the secret of life and the revelation of that secret means death. This secret is embodied in the myth of the Tree of Knowledge in Genesis. At death the discord will be resolved, but not till then.
From the duad is derived the triad on which is based the doctrine of the Trinity. Two forces producing equili- brium, the secret of nature, are designated by the duad, and these Three, call them life, good, evil, constitute one law. By adding the conception of unity to that of the triad we arrive at the tetrad, the perfect number of four, the
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source of all numerical combinations. According to the- ology there are three persons in God, and these three form one Deity. Three and one make four because unity is- required to explain the Three. Hence, in almost all lang- uages, the name of God consists of four letters. Again, -two affirmations make two negations either possible or necessary. According to the Kabalists the name of the Evil one consisted of the same four letters spelled back- ward, signifying that evil is merely the reflection or shadow of good — ■" The last reflection or imperfect mirage of light in shadow."
All which exists in light or darkness, good or evil, exists through the tetrad. The triad or trinity, then, is explained by the duad and resolved by the tetrad. Godfrey : A priest of Provence, who had seduced several wo- men. One of them, a nun, to save herself, asserted that Godfrey had bewitched her.
Arrested and imprisoned, he was tortured until he con- fessed that he was a magician, and that he had, by means of his breathing and other enchantments, corrupted this woman and several others. He was even induced, in his extreme agony, to speak of his presence at the Witches' Sabbath, and to give a long description of it. After these confessions had been cruelly extorted from the anguish of failing nature, the Parliament of Aix condemned him, on the 30th of April, 161 1, to be burnt alive, as guilty of magic, sorcery, impiety, and abominable lust — a sentence which was carried into execution without delay.
This horrible affair gave rise to an adventure which has been related by the Abbe of Papon.
" The process," said he, " contained many depositions upon the power of the demons. Several witnesses pro- tested that after being anointed with a magic oil, Godfrey transported himself to the Sabbath, and afterwards re- turned to his chamber down the shaft of the chimney. One day, when these depositions had been read to the Parlia- ment, and the imagination of the judges excited by a long recital of supernatural events, there was heard in the chim- ney an extraordinary noise, which suddenly terminated with the apparition of a tall black man. The judges thought it was the devil come to the rescue of his disciple, and fled away swiftly, with the exception of a councillor Thorton, their reporter, who, finding himself entangled in his desk, could not follow them. Terrified by what he saw, with trembling body and staring eyes, and repeatedly making the sign of the cross, he in his turn affrighted the pretended demon, who was at a loss to understand the magistrate's perturbation. Recovering from the embar- rassment he made himself known, and proved to be a chim- ney sweeper who, after having swept the chimney of the Messieurs des Comptes, whose chimneys joined those of the Tournelle, had by mistake descended into the chamber of the Parliament." Goethe, Johann Wolfgang : German Author, (1 749-1832) : Johann Wolfgang Goethe, probably the most celebrated of all German writers, was born at Fraukfurt-on-the-Main in 1749, his father being a lawyer of some eminence. At an early age the boy showed a persistent fondness for draw- ing, and assimilated the rudiments of learning with sur- prising ease; while in 1759, on a French nobleman of aesthetic tastes coming to stay with the Goethes, a warm friendship between him and the future author sprang up, and proved the means of accelerating the latter's intellectual development. Shortly after this a French theatre was founded at Frankfurt, and here young Goethe became conversant with Racine ; while simultaneously he made some early attempts at original writing, and began to learn Italian, Latin and Greek, English and even Hebrew. Very .soon, however, a little cloud came to darken his horizon — just the cloud which has dimmed the blue skies for so
many youths — for at the age of fifteen he became des- perately enamoured of a young girl, and as his parents disapproved of the match the pair were separated straight- way. At first Goethe declared himself broken-hearted, and being intensely virile, as all men of might are, he sought consolation in loose-living. But a broken heart seldom proves a fatal malady, and the disappointed lover's restora- tion to mental health was facilitated betimes by his removal from his native town to Leipsic, where he entered the uni- versity, intending to become a lawyer.
At Leipsic Goethe showed slender affection for the actual curriculum, and instead he continued in essay writing and drawing, while he even took lessons in etching. He also found time for another love-affair, but this Was cut short in 1768 by his undergoing a serious illness ; and, on his recovering therefrom, he decided to leave his present alma matey in favour of that of Strasburg. Arrived there, he became intimate with Jung Stillmg, while his taste for letters was strengthened, Homer and Ossian being the masters for whom he chiefly avowed affection ; while, though he con- tinued to show himself callous as regards law, he succeeded in becoming an advocate in 1771, whereupon he returned to Frankfurt.
Goethe had already written a quantity of verse and prose, and now, in his native town, he began to do critiques for some of the newspapers there, while simultaneously he commenced writing Goetz von Berlichingen and Werlher. These were followed shortly by Prometheus, and in 1774 the author started working at Faust, while the following year witnessed the production of some of his best love poems, these being addressed to Lilli Schonemann, daugh- ter of a Frankfurt banker. Nothing more than poetry, however, was destined to result from this new devotion ; and scarcely had it come and gone ere Goethe's whole life was changed, for meanwhile his writings had become fa- mous, and now the young Duke Carl August of Weimar, anxious for a trusty henchman, invited the rising author to come to his court. The invitation was accepted, Goethe became a member of the privy-council, while subsequently he was raised to the rank of Geheimrath and then ennobled.
Goethe's life at Weimar was a very busy one. Trusted implicitly by the Duke, he directed public roads and build- ings, he attended to military and academic affairs, and he founded a court theatre. But though having all these outlets for his energy he continued to write voluminously, among the most important works he produced during his first years at the Duke's court being Iphigenia and Wilhelm Meister ; while in 1787 he made a lengthy stay in Italy, visiting Naples, Pompei, Rome and Milan. Returning to Weimar, he began writing Egmont ; while in 1795 he made the acquaintance of Schiller, with whom he speedily became very intimate, and along with whom he worked on the Horen, a journal designed to elevate the literary tastes of the masses. About this period, too, Goethe wrote his play of Hermann und Dorothea, and likewise did sundry translations from Voltaire, Diderot and Benvenuto Cellini ; while the year 1806 is a significant one in his history, marked as it is alike by his marriage and by the entry of Napoleon into Weimar. The conquering general and the German poet each found much in the other to admire, and the latter was decorated with the cross of the Legion of Honour ; nor did his literary activities show any signs of flagging as yet, for in 181 1 he wrote Dichtung und Wahrheit, in 1821 Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre, and a little later he commenced working at a second part of Faust, During the time he was engaged thus he had two famous visitors, Beethoven coming from Vienna and Thackeray from London ; and, though the composer imagined himself coldly received, the novelist on the contrary spoke with enthusiasm of the welcome accorded him. But Goethe was
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now well-stricken in years, his health was beginning to fail, and he died early in 1832.
Few great writers, not even Disraeli or Sir Walter Scott, had fuller lives than Goethe. His love-affairs, besides those cited above, were countless, and his early taste for the graphic arts continued to the end of his days, resulting in his making a vast collection of treasures ; while his interest in mysticism, by virtue of which he is included in this volume, manifested itself in divers forms besides the writing of Faust. For, something of a nympholept as he was, Goethe's mind was essentially an aspirational and speculative one, and during his childhood at Frankfurt he used to do symbolical drawings of the soul's aspirations to the deity, while subsequently he became immersed in the study of the Christian religion. Anon he grew sceptical on this subject, his ideas being altered not only by his own ruminations but by his readings in various inconoclastic philosophers, especially Rousseau ; and it would seem that latterly his intellect was less engaged by Christianity than by those other and probably more ancient Eastern faiths, his leanings in this direction being demonstrated by sundry works from his pen, notably his West-ostliche Divan. One of his note-books, moreover, shows that while a young man at Strassburg he made a close study of Giordano Bruno and other early scientists ; while as a boy he was , a keen student of alchemy, reading deeply in Welling and van Helmont, Basil Valentine and Paracelsus, and even fitting up a laboratory where he spent long hours in arduous experiments. No doubt it was while engaged in this way that he first conceived the idea of writing a drama on the subject of Dr. Faustus, but be that as it may, his alchemis- tic and other scientific researches certainly stood him in good stead when ultimately composing this work. The story's main outlines are so well known already — not only by reason of Calderon's and Marlowe's versions, but by the operas of Gounod, Schumann and Berlioz — that it were superfluous if not impertinent to offer anything of the nature of a paraphrase or synopsis here ; but it should be said, in drawing to a conclusion, that after all it is mainly on account of Faust that Goethe takes rank as a mystic, and a great mystic, for his rendering of the immor- tal theme is acknowledged as among the finest things in the whole of mystical literature.
Goetia : {See Key of Solomon the King.)
Golden Key : Under this title have been published many volumes purporting to reveal an infallible method of attaining success in a lottery. La Clef d'or, or La Veritable irisor de la fortune, reprinted from time to time at Lille, is based on the doctrine of sympathetic numbers, which the author claims to have discovered. Each number drawn, he declares, has five sympathetic numbers which directly follow it. Thus the number 4 has for its sympathetic numbers 30, 40, 50, 20, and 76. Knowing this, of course, it is an easy matter to win fortune at a lottery.
Gormogons : A Jacobite Masonic Society, perhaps related to the Lodges of Harodim (q.v.) They employed pseudonyms like the latter, and had an ambassador at Rome. Their history is sketched in a pamphlet dated 1724, entitled " Two Letters to a Friend," and in the work of Prichard (1730). The Duke of Wharton and the Chevalier Ramsay who were well-known Jacobites, were members of the Order. They had a cipher and secret reception of their own, and used a jargon in which the names of places and individuals were hidden and transposed. A plate of Hogarth's is extant in which the Order is lampooned under the title of '" The Mystery of Masonry brought to light by ye Gormogons."
Graal, The Lost Book of the : The origin of the Graal legend, which is of course speculative. Seven ancient books are cited as being the possible cradle of the story, but none of
them quite meet the case. In the Huth Merlin, a " Book of the Sanctuary" is referred to, but this is a book of records, not containing any special spiritual allusion.
If, and it is very doubtful if, such a book ever existed, it was most probably a Mass book, extant about 1100. Its contents would relate to a Mass following the Last Supper, in which Christ gave Himself, the Priest serving. The mystery is threefold. (1) of Origin, which is part of the mystery of the Incarnation. (2) of Manifestation, which would have-taken place had the world been worthy. (3) of Removal : this world being unworthy, the Graal was said to be removed, yet not hidden, for it is always discernible by anyone worthy, or qualified to see it. As has been said, it is not probable that such a Mass-book ever existed. Grail, Holy : A portion of the Arthurian cycle of romance, of late origin embodying a number of tales dealing with the search for a certain vessel of great sanctity, called the " grail " or " graal." Versions of the story are numerous — the most celebrated of them being the Conte del Graal, the Grand St. Graal, Sir Percy va He, Quete del St. Graal, and Guyot ; but there are many others. These overlap in many respects, but the standard form of the story may perhaps be found in the Grand St. Graal — one of the latest versions, which dates from the thirteenth century. It tells how Joseph of Arimathea employed a dish used at the last supper to catch the blood of the Redeemer which flowed from his body before his burial. The wanderings of Joseph are then described. He leads a band to Britain, where he is cast into prison, but is delivered by Evelach or Mordrains, who is instructed by Christ to assist him. This Mordrains builds a monastery where the Grail is housed. Brons, Joseph's brother-in-law, has a son Alain, who is appointed guardian of the Grail ; and this Alain having caught a great fish, with which he feeds the entire house- hold, is called the Rich Fisher, which title becomes that of the Grail keepers in perpetuity. Alain placed the Grail in the castle of Corbenic, and thence in due time come various knights of King Arthur's court in quest of the holy vessel, but only the purest of the pure can approach its vicinity ; and in due time Percival attains to sight of the marvel.
It is probable that the Grail idea was originated by early mediaeval legends of the quest for talismans which conferred great boons upon the finder : as for example, the Shoes of Swiftness, the Cloak of Invisibility, the Ring of Gyges, and so forth ; and that these stories were interpreted in the light and spirit of mediaeval Christianity and mysticism. They may be divided into two classes : those which are connected with the quest for certain talismans, of which the Grail is only one, and which deal with the personality of the hero who achieved the quest ; and secondly those which deal with the nature and history of the talismans.
A great deal of controversy has raged around the probable Eastern origin of the Grail Legend, and much erudition has been employed to show that Guyot, a Provenfal poet who flourished in the middle of the twelfth century, found at Toledo in Spain an Arabian book by an astrologer, Flegitanis, which contained the Grail story. But the name " Flegitanis " can by no means be an Arabian proper name ; ' and it might perhaps be the Persian feleke- ddneh, a Persian combined word which signifies " astrology," and in this case it would be the title of an astrological work. Professor Bergmann and others believed that the Holy Legend originated in the mind of Guyot himself ; but this conclusion was strongly combated by the late Alfred Nutt. There is, however, good reason to believe that the story may have been brought from the East by the Knights Templar.
The Grail Legend has often been held by certain writers
Grail
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to buttress the theory that the Church of England or the Catholic Church has existed since the foundation of the world. From early Christian times the genealogy of these churches is traced back through the patriarchs to numerous apocryphal persons ; but we are not informed as to whether it possessed hierophants in neolithic and paleolithic times, or how it originated. This mischievous and absurd theory, which in reality would identify Christianity with the grossest forms of paganism, is luckily confined to a small band of pseudo-mystics, comprising for the most part persons of small erudition and less liberality of outlook. The Grail Legend Was readily embraced by those persons, who saw in it a link between Palestine and England and a plea for the special and separate foundation of the Anglican Church by direct emissaries from the Holy Land. Glaston- bury was fixed as the headquarters of the Grail immi- grants, and the finding of a glass dish in the vicinity of the cathedral there not many years ago was held to be con- firmation of the story by many of the faithful. The exact date of this vessel cannot successfully be gauged, but there is not the least reason to suppose that it is more than a few hundred years old. (See Tradition.)
Grail Sword : Associated with the Holy Grail in Arthurian Legend. Its history begins with King David who be- queathed it to Solomon who was bidden to re-cast the pommel. In Solomon's time it was placed in a ship built and luxuriously furnished by Solomon's wife. Subse- quently discovered by the Knights of the Quest, it was assumed and worn by Galahad.
Gram : A magic sword thrust into a tree by Odin and pulled out by Sigmund. It bestowed upon its possessor excep- tional powers and performed many miracles.
Grand Copt : (See Cagliostro.)
Grand Grimoire, The : A work pretended to be edited by a suppositious person, Antonia del Rabina, who, it is alleged, prepared his edition from a copy transcribed from the genuine writings of King Solomon. The work is divided into two parts : the first containing the evocation of Lucifuge Rocofale (See " Ceremonial Magic " in article "Magic") ; the second being concerned with the rite of making pacts with demons. The work is regarded as one of the most atrocious of its type ; but there is little reason for such heavy condemnation, as its childish and absurd, character must be patent to everyone. Eliphas Levi says that it pretends to confer the Powder of Protection, that great mystery of the sages, but that in reality it confers the Powder of Consecution — whatever that may imply. The first portion of the Grand Grimoire in a process for the evocation of evil spirits to assist the operator to discover hidden treasure. The second part, that which deals with facts, suggests the surrender of the magician body and soul to the demon, and it is in this that the diabolical excellencies of the work consist. But the pact, as it stands, is grossly unfair to the devil, for the working of it is such, that the magician can very readily slip through his fingers.
Grand Lodge : Foundation of. (See Freemasonry.)
Grandier, Urbain : Urbain Grandier, a canon of the French church, and a popular preacher of the town of Loudun in the district of Poiriers, was in the year 1634 brought to trial upon the accusation of magic. The first cause of his being thus called in question was the envy of his rival preachers, whose fame was eclipsed by his superior talents. The second cause was a libel falsely imputed to him upon cardinal Richelieu. Grandier, besides his eloquence, was distinguished for his courage and resolution, for the grace- fulness of his figure, and the extraordinary attention he piad to the neatness of his dress and the decoration of his person, which last circumstance brought upon him the imputation of being so much devoted to the service of the
fair. About this time certain nuns of the convent of Ursulines at Loudun (q.v.) were attacked with a disease which manifested itself by very extraordinary symptoms, suggesting to many the idea that they were possessed with devils. A rumour was immediately spread that Grandier, urged by some offence he had conceived against these- nuns, was the author, by the skill he had in the arts of sorcery, of these possessions. It unfortunately happened that the same capuchin friar who assured cardinal Richelieu that Grandier was the writer of the libel against him, also communicated to him the story of the possessed nuns, and the suspicion which had fallen on the priest on their account. The cardinal, seized with avidity on this occasion of private vengeance, wrote to the counsellor of state at Loudun, to cause a strict investigation jto be made into the charges, and in such terms as plainly implied that what he aimed at was the destruction of Grandier. The trial took place in the month of August, 1634 ; and, according to the authorised copy of the trial, Grandier was convicted upon the evidence of Astaroth, a devil of the order of Seraphims, and chief of the possessing devils, of Easas, of Celsus, of Acaos, of Cedon, of Asmodeus of the order of thrones, of Alex, of Zabulon, of Naphthalim, of Cham, of Uriel, and of Achas of the order of principalities, and sentenced to be burned alive. In other words, he was convicted upon the evidence of twelve nuns, who, being asked who they were, gave in these names, and professed to be devils that, com- pelled by the order of the court, delivered a constrained tes- timony. The sentence was accordingly executed, and Grandier met his fate with heroic constancy. At his death an enormous drone fly was seen buzzing about his head, and a monk, who was present at the execution, attested that, whereas the devils are accustomed to present themselves in the article of death to tempt men to deny God their Saviour, this was Beelzebub (which in Hebrew signifies the God of flies), come to carry away to hell the soul of the victim. Graterakes, Valentine : An Irish mesmerist born in the county of Waterford in 1628. In 1662, he dreamed that he had received the gift of healing by laying on of hands. He ignored the dream, but as it occurred again on several occasions, he made an experiment upon his Wife which Was quite successful. He practised the laying on of hands for practically all diseases, and in 1666 went to London where he was summoned to court. Whilst there he healed many persons, but the insults of the courtiers proved too much for him and he was forced to withdraw to a house near London, where he continued his cures. In his Critical History of Animal Magnetism Pechlin says, " Amongst the most astonishing cures which history records, are those of an Irish gentleman in London, Oxford, and other cities of England and Ireland. He himself published in London in 1666 a full account of them. ' Vol. Graterakes, Esq., of Waterford, in the kingdom of Ireland, famous for curing several diseases and distempers by the stroak of his hand only : London, 1660.' "
Pechlin believes that no doubt whatever can be enter- tained of the reality of his cures, as they are related in his own work ; and they are, therefore worthy of being trans- lated into all languages. Pechlin caused a number of letters and testimonials to be printed, which place the veracity and the character of Graterakes in the clearest light. In the first place, Joh. Glanville, the author of Scepsis Scientifica, in which he treated all learning and human science as open to doubt, and who was also a chaplain to Charles II., says in a letter that Graterakes was a simple, amiable, and pious man, a stranger to all deceit. The same testimony was given to him by George Rust, Bishop of Dromore in Ireland. The bishop says that he was three weeks at his house, where he had an opportunity
THE ROUND TABLE OF KING ARTHUR.
From the Original, preserved in the Court-House of the Castle at Winchester
" Sangreale"— or " Holy Grail."
.Lunations.
Royal Seat. SUN. 26 Knights. "■*■*>/ ^ I „ \s~~ " Phallos."
13 Lunations. 2 = " Sun— Moon."
(" Light— Dark.")
J2 (Twin>-K.nights.
(1 Place, each Knight : for '•' Mystic Luna- tion.")
1 each, 24
I Knight, 3 Places
Total, 26
These are the Mystic Guards of the Holy — the " Sancreale,"
or
Holy Graal
or
Grael
Natural — Supernatural.
Mysterious |~I Tau.
• Tradition, that Judas Iscariot left the Table at the words of the Saviour — " What Lhou doest. do quickly !" and had ho {irtiors in the Last Rite. (Refer below.)
A.
r.
B.
II.
C.
.III.
D.
IV.
E.
V.
F.
VI.
Saint MattheW. Saint James. Saint Simon. Saint Peter. Saint James (of Aluhe Saint Bartholomew.
G.
VII.
H.
VIII.
I.
IX.
k.
K.
XI.
L.
XII.
Saint Philip. Saint Libccus. Saint Andrew. Saint Thomas. Vacant. Saint John.
" After the sop, Satan entered into him. Then said Jesus unto him, ' That thou doest, do quickly ! Now 'no man at the table knew for what intent He spake this unto him.
Ho (Judas) "then having received the sap, went immediately out. And it was night.
S. John, Chap. xm.. vers. 27, 2C, 3=
SEAT OF THE HOLY GRAIL AT THE ROUND TABLE
[face p. 188
Graterakes
189
Greece
of observing his sound morals, and the great number of his cures of the sick. Through the simple laying on of hands he drove the pains to the extremities of the limbs. Many times the effect was very rapid and as if by magic. If the pains did not immediately give way, he repeated his rubbings, and always drove them from the nobler parts to the less noble, and finally into the limbs. »
The Bishop relates still further : — " I can as eye- witness assert that Graterakes cured dizziness, very bad diseases of the eyes and ears, old ulcers, goitre, epilepsy, glandular swellings, scirrhous indurations, and cancerous swellings. I have seen swellings disperse in five days which were many years old, but I do not believe by super- natural means ; nor did his practice exhibit anything sacred. The cure was sometimes very protracted, and the diseases only gave way through repeated exertions ; some altogether resisted his endeavours."
It appeared to the bishop that something healing, something balsamic flowed from him. Graterakes himself was persuaded that his power was an especial gift of God. He healed even epidemic complaints by his touch, and on that account he believed it his duty to devote himself to the cure of diseases.
To the bishop's may be added the testimonies of two physicians, Faireklow and Astel, who very assiduously inquired into the reality of his cures.
" I was struck," says Faireklow, " with his gentleness and kindness to the unhappy, and by the effects which he produced by his hand."
Astel says, — ■" I saw Graterakes in a moment remove most violent pains merely by his hand. I saw him drive a pain from the shoulder to the feet. If the pains in the head or the intestines remained fixed, the endeavour to remove them was frequently followed by the most dreadful crises, which even seemed to bring the patient's life into danger ; but by degrees they disappeared into the limbs, and then altogether. I saw a scrofulous child of twelve years with such swellings that it could not move, and he dissipated merely with his hand the greatest part of them. One of the largest, however, he opened, and so healed it with his spittle." Finally Astel says that he saw a number ■of other cures, and repeats the testimonies of Rust and Faireklow on the character of Graterakes.
The celebrated Robert Boyle, President of the Royal Society of London, says: — '\Many physicians, noblemen, clergymen, etc., testify to the truth of Graterakes' cures, which he published in London. The chief diseases which he cured were blindness, deafness, paralysis, dropsy, ulcers, swellings, and all kinds of fevers." Finally.it is said that ' he laid his hand on the part affected, and so moved the disease downwards."
Graterakes was undoubtedly one of the most celebrated of the early mesmerists, and there is no question that the science owed considerable popularity to his cures. There was nothing of the charlatan about him, and he appears as~an unaffected and simple person, whose whole desire was to make the best of the gift which he had received. Great White Brotherhood : (See Adept.) Greatrakes : (See Healing by Touch.)
.Greece : That magic in its widest sense was native to the imagination and genius of the Greeks is apparent in their theogony and mythology, essentially magical in conception and meaning, in their literature, sculpture and history. The natural features of the country appealed powerfully to the quality of their imagination. Mountains and valleys, mysterious caves and fissures, vapours and springs of volcanic origin ; groves, — these according to their character, were dedicated to the gods. Parnassus was the abode of the sun-god, Apollo ; the lovely vale of Aphaca that of Adonis ; the oak-groves of Dodona favoured of
Zeus, the gloomy caves with their roar of subterranean waters the Oracle of Trophonius. Innumerable instances of magical wonder-working are found in the stories of their deities and heroes. The power of transformation is shown in a multitude of cases, amongst them those of Bacchus who, by waving a spear, could change the oars of a ship into serpents, the masts into heavy-clustered vines, tigers, lynxes and panthers to appear amidst the waves, and the terrified sailors leaping overboard to take the shape of dolphins ; in those wrought by Circe who by her magic wand and enchanted philtre turned her lovers into swine. The serpent-staff of Hermes gave, by its touch, life or death, sleep or waking ; Medusa's head turned its beholders into stone ; Hermes gave Perseus wings that he might fly and Pluto a helmet which conferred invisibility. Prome- theus moulds a man of clay and to give it life steals celestial fire from heaven ; Odysseus to peer into the future descends to Hades in search of Tiresias the Soothsayer ; Achilles is made invulnerable by the waters of the Styx.
Dedicated by immemorial belief, there were places where the visible spirits of the dead might be evoked, Heraclea, Acheron, piaces where men in curiosity, in longing or remorse strove to call back for a fleeting moment those who had passed beyond mortal ken. In the month of March, when the spring blossoms broke through the earth and snowed the trees with white, the Festival of the Flowers was held at Athens, also the Commemoration of the Dead, when their spirits were thought to rise from their graves and wander about the familiar streets, striving to enter the dwellings of man and temples of the gods but shut out therefrom by the magic of branches of whitethorn, or by knotted ropes and pitch.
Oracles : Of great antiquity and eminently of Greek charac- ter and meaning were the Oracles. For centuries they ministered to that longing deeply implanted in human nature the longing to know the future, and to invoke divine foresight and aid in the direction of human affairs, from those of a private citizen to the multitudinous needs of a great state. Divination and prophecy were therefore the great features of the oracles. This was inspired by various means, by intoxicating fumes natural or artificial, by the drinking of mineral springs, by signs and tokens, by dreams. The most famous Oracles were those at Delphi, Dodona, Epi- daurus, and that of Trophonius, but others of renown were scattered over the country. Perhaps one of the earliest was that of Aesculapius son of Apollo, and called the Healer, the Dream-sender because his healing was given through the medium of dreams that came upon the applicant while sleeping in the temple-courts, the famous temple-sleep. This temple, situated at Epidaurus, was surrounded by sacred groves and whole companies of sick persons lingered there in search of lost health and enlightment through divine dreams. Famous beyond all was that of Apollo, the Delphian oracle on the Southern Slopes of Parnassus where kings and princes, heroes and slaves of all countries journeyed to ask the questions as to the future and what it might hold for them. The temple was built above a volcanic chasm, amid a wildness of nature which suggested the presence of the unseen powers. Here the priestess, the Pythia, so. named after the serpent Pytho whom Apollo slew, was seated on a tripod placed above the gaseous vapours rising from the chasm. Intoxicated to a state of frenzy, her mouth foaming, wild torrents of words fell from her lips, and these were shaped into coherence and meaning by the attendant priests and given to the waiting questioner standing before the altar crowned with laurel, the symbol of sleep and dreams and sacred to Apollo. Priests and priestesses were also crowned with these leaves, and they were burned as incense ; before the Pythias chamber hung a falling screen of laurel branches
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while at the festival of the Septerion every ninth year a bower of laurel was erected in the forecourt of the temple. One writer has left strange details such as the rule that the sacred fire within the temple must only be fed with fir- wood ; and, though a woman was chosen as the medium of the prophetic utterance yet no woman might question the oracle. The Oracle of the Pelasgic Zeus at Dodona, the oldest of all, answered by signs rather than inspired speech, the rustling of the leaves in the sacred groves, by means of lots and the falling of water, by the wind-moved clanging of brazen-bowls, two hollow columns standing side by side. The three priestesses, Peliades, meaning doves, were given titles signifying the Diviner of the future ; the friend of man, Virtue : the virgin-ruler of man, Chastity. For two thousand years this oracle existed, from the time when it was consulted by those heroes of the ancient myths, struggling in the toils of Fate, Hercules, Achilles, Ulysses and Aeneas; down to the latest vestiges of Greek national- ity. The Oracle of Trophonius was also of great renown. Here there were numerous caverns filled with misty vapours and troubled by the noise of hidden waters far beneath. In this mysterious gloom the supplicants slept sometimes for nights and days, coming forth in a somnambulic state from which they were aroused and questioned by the attendant priests. Frightful visions were generally re- counted, accompanied by a terrible melancholy, so that it passed into a proverb regarding a sorrowful man " He has been in the cave of Trophonius." Thus it may be seen that magic in the sense of secret revelations, miraculous cures and prophetic gifts, of abnormal powers, had always ' existed for the Greeks, the oracles were a purely natural human way of communing with their gods upon earth. But magic in the lower sense of sorcery was unknown till Asiatic and Egyptian influences were introduced. The native conception of Fate as inexorable and inescapable for gods, kings and slaves alike was inimical to the spontaneous growth of a form of magic which had for its primary aim a certain command of the destinities of man. Good and evil and the perpetual strife between these two principles, the belief in demonology, these were foreign to the Greek mind, they were imported. It is said that to the Pytha* gorean school may be traced the first mention of good and evil demons and not till after the Persian War was there a word in the Greek language for magic. As these foreign beliefs were thus gradually introduced and assimilated they were ascribed to the native deities, gradually becoming incorporated with the ancient histories and rites.
After the invasion by the Persians, Thessaly, where their stay was of lengthy duration, became famous for its sorcer- esses and their practices which embraced a wide than- maturgical field, from calling down the moon to brewing magical herbs for love or death, so much so that Apuieius in his romance, The Golden Ass, says, that when in Thessaly he was in the place " where, by common report of the world, sorcery and enchantments were most frequent. I viewed the situation of the place in which I was, nor was there anything I saw that I believed to be the same thing which it appeared to be. Insomuch that the very stones in the street I thought were men bewitched and turned into that figure, and the birds I heard chirping, the trees with- out the walls, and the running waters, were changed from human creatures into the appearances they were. I persuaded myself that the statues and buildings could move ; that the oxen and other brute beasts could speak aiid tell strange tidings ; that I should hear and see oracles from heaven conveyed in the beams of the Sun."
Sorceresses. — Homer tells the tale of Circe the enchant- ress, with her magic philtres and magic songs but makes no mention of Medea, the arch-sorceress of later times. Round her name the later beliefs clustered, to her were attributed
all the evil arts, she became the witch par excellence, her infamy increasing from age to age. The same may be said of Hecate, the moon-goddess, at first sharer with Zeus of the heavenly powers, but later become an ominous shape of gloom, ruler and lover of the night and darkness, of the world of phantoms and ghouls. Like the Furies she wielded the whip and cord ; she was followed by hell hounds, by writhing serpents, by lamise, strygaa and empusae, figures of terror and loathing. She presided over the dark mysteries of birth and death ; she was worshipped at night in the flare of torches. She was the three-headed. Hecate of the cross-roads where little round cakes or a- lizard mask set about %vith candles were offered to her in propitiation, that none of the phantom mob might cross the threshold of man. Love-magic and death-magic, the usual forms of sorcery became common in Greece as else- where. Love philtres and charms were eagerly sought, the most innocent being bitten apples and enchanted garlands. Means of protection against the evil eye became a necessity for tales of bewitchment were spread abroad, and of mis- fortune and death being brought upon the innocent and unwary by means of a waxen figure moulded in their image and tortured by the sorceress. In tombs and secret places leaden tablets were buried inscribed with the names of foes and victims, pierced through with a nail in order to bring disaster and death upon them. At this time it became law that none who practised sorcery might participate in the Eleusinian Mysteries, and at Athens, a. Samian Sorceress, Theoris, was cast to the flames.
Orphic Magic. — The introduction of Egyptian influences, were due generally to the agency of Orpheus and Pythagoras, who, while in Egypt, had been initiated into the mysteries. The story of Orpheus shows him as pre-eminently the- wonder-worker, but one of beneficence and beauty. To men of his time everything was enchantment and prodigy. By the irresistible power of his. music he constrained the rocks, trees and animals to follow him, at his behest storms arose or abated. He was the necromancer, who by his golden music overcame the powers of darkness, and descend- ing to the world of shades, found his beloved Eurydice, and but for the fatal and disobedient look into her face ere they gained the upper air would have brought her back to the living world. Jealous women tore him limb from limb, and his head floating down the waters of the Hebrus was cast on the rocky shores of Lesbos where, still retaining the power of speech, it uttered oracles, the guidance of which people from all parts sought, even those of Babylon. He- was said to have instructed the Greeks in medicine and magic, and for long afterwards remedies, magical formulae, incantations and charms were engraved upon Orphean tablets and the power of healing was ascribed to the Orphean Hymns. Pythagoras, Philosopher and geometrician, to the populace a magician, indefatigable in the pursuit of know- ledge, wielded an immense influence on the thought of his time. After his return from Egypt he founded a school where to those who had previously undergone severe and drastic discipline he communicated his wide and varied knowledge. He was also credited with miraculous powers such as being visible at the same hour in places far apart as Italy and Sicily ; of taming a bear by whispering in its ear ; of calling an eagle from its flight to alight on his wrist.
Mysteries. — Among the greatest features of religious life were the mysteries held at periodic intervals in connection with the different deities, such as the 'Samothracian, the Bacchic and most famous of all, the Eleusinian. Their origin is to be traced mostly to a pre-historic nature-worship and vegetation-magic. All these mysteries had three trials or baptisms by water, fire and air, and three specially sacred emblems, the phallus, egg and serpent, generative emblems
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sacred in all secret rites. The Samothracian centred round four mysterious deities, Axieros the mother, her children Axiocersos, male, Axiocersa, female, from whom sprang Casindos the originator of the universe. The festival probably symbolized the creation of the world, also the harvest and its growth. Connected with this was the worship of Cybele, goddess of the earth, of the citieb and fields. Her priests, the Corybantes, dwelt in a cave where they held their ceremonies, including a wild and orgiastic weapon-dance, accompanied by the incessant shaking of heads and clanging of swords upon shields. The cult of Bacchus was said by some to have been carried into Greece from Egypt by Melampus. He is the god of the vine and vegetation, and his mysteries typified the growth of the vine and the vintage ; the winter sleep of all plant life and its renewal in spring. Women were his chief attendants, the Bacchantes.who, clashing cymbals and utter- ing wild cries in invocation of their god, became possessed by ungovernable fury and homicidal mania. Greatest of all in their relation to Hellenic life were the Eleusinian Mysteries. These were the paramount interest and function of the state religion exerting the widest, strongest in- fluence on people of all classes. The rites were secret and their details are practically unknown, but they undoubtedly symbolised the myth of Demeter, corn-goddess, and were held in spring and September. Prior to initiation a long period of purification and preparation was enforced, during which the higher meaning of the myth was inculcated, the original meaning having become exalted by the genius of the Greeks into an intimate -allegory of the soul of man, its birth, life and death, its descent into Hades and subsequent release therefrom. After this there came the central point of the mysteries, the viewing of certain holy and secret sym- bols ; next, a crowning with garlands, signifying the happi- ness which arises from friendship with the divine. The festival also embodied a scenic representation of the Story of Demeter ; the rape of Persephone, the sorrow of the mother, her complaints before Zeus, the final reconciliation. Women played a great part in this, the reason being that as they themselves " produce," so by sympathetic magic their influence was conveyed to the corn, as when crying aloud for rain they looked upward to the skies, then down to the earth with cries of " Conceive ! " These priestesses were crowned with poppies and corn, symbolical attributes of the deity they implored. (See article Mysteries.)
Divination. — Besides the priests and priestesses attached to the different temples there was an order of men called interpreters whose business it was to read futurity by various means such as the flight of birds and entrails of victims. These men often accompanied the armies in order to predict the success or failure of operations during warfare and thus avert the possibility of mistakes in the campaign : they fomented or repressed revolutions in state and government by their predictions. The most celebrated interpreters were those of Elis, where in two or three families this peculiar gift or knowledge was handed down from father to son for generations. But there were others who were authorised by the state — men who traded on the credulity of the rich and poor, women of the lowest dregs of humanity, who professed to read the future in natural and unnatural phenomena, in eclipses, in thunder, in dreams, in unexpected sight of certain animals, in con- vulsive movement of eyelids, tingling of the ears, in sneez- ing, in a few words casually dropped by a passer-by. In the literature and philosophies of Greece magic in all its forms is found as theme for imagination, discussion and belief. In the hands of the tragic poets, sorceresses such as Circe and Medea become figures of terror and death, embodiments of evil. Pythagoras left no writings but on his theories were founded those of Empedocles and Plato.
In the verses of Empedocles he teaches the theory of re- incarnation, he himself remembering previous existences wherein he was a boy, a girl, a plant, fish and bird. He also claimed to teach the secrets of miraculous medicine, of the re-animation of old age, of bringing rain, storm, or sunshine, of recalling the dead. Aristides the Greek orator gives exhaustive accounts of the many dreams he experienced during sleep in the temples and the cures prescribed therein. Socrates tells of his attendant spirit or genius who warned him, and others through his agency, of impending danger, also foretelling futurity.
Xenophon, treating of divination by dreams, maintains that in sleep the human soul reveals her divine nature, and being freed from trammels of the body gazes into futurity. Plato, while inveighing against sorcery, took the popular superstitions relating to magic, demons and spirits and by his genius purified and raised them, using them as a basis for a spiritual and magical theory of things, unsurpassed for intellectual beauty. On his teaching was founded the school of Neo-Platonists who were among the most fervid defenders of magic. Aristotle states that prediction is a purely natural quality of the imagination, while Plutarch in his writings, wherein much may be found on magic and dreams, gives an exhaustive account or the somnambulic states of the oracular priestess, Pythia, attributing them to possession by the divinity. K.N.
Greece Modem : Although superstition is rife in the Hellenic archipelago it partakes more of the nature of Slavonic tradition than that of the ancient inhabitants of the country, and is more or less petty and ill-defined. But the most notable circumstance in modern Greek superstition is that which relates to Vampirism. The Vampire is called Broucolack by the modern Hellenes, and appears to date from mediaeval times. Says Calmet, "It is asserted by the modern Greeks, in defence of their schism, and as a proof that the gift o f miracles, and the episcopal power of the keys, subsists in their church more visibly and evidently than in the church of Rome, that, with them, the bodies of excommunicated persons never rot, but swell up to an uncommon size, and are stretched like drums, nor ever corrupt or fall to dust, till they have received absolution from some bishop or priest. And they produce many instances of carcasses which have been in their graves uncorrupted, and which have afterwards putrefied as soon as the excommunication was taken off."
"They do not, however, deny that a body's not corrupting is sometimes a proof of sanctity, but in this case they expect it to send forth an agreeable smell, to be white or ruddy, and not black, stinking, and swelled like a drum, as the bodies of excommunicated persons generally are. We are told, that in the time of Manuel, or Maximus, patriarch of Constantinople, the Turkish emperor having the mind to know the truth of the Greek notion concerning the incorruption of excommunicated bodies, the patriarch ordered the grave of a woman, who had lived in a criminal commerce with an archbishop of Constantinople, to be opened. Her body being found entire, black and much swelled, the Turks put it into a chest, under the emperor's seal, and the patriarch having repeated a prayer, and given absolution to the deceased, the chest was opened three days after and the body was found reduced to ashes. It is also a notion which prevails among the Greeks, that the bodies of these excommunicated persons frequently appear to the living, both day and night, and speak to them, call upon them, and disturb them several other ways.
"Leo Allatius is very particular upon this head, and says, that in the isle of Chio,- the inhabitants never answer the first time they are called, for fear of its being a spectre ; but if they are called twice, they are sure it is not a Brouco- lack (this is the name they give these spirits). If any one
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appears at the first call, the spectre disappears, but the person certainly dies.
"They have no way to get rid of these evil genii, but to dig up the body of the person that has appeared, and burn it after having repeated over it certain prayers. By this means the body being reduced to ashes, appears no more. And they look upon it as a clear case, that either these mischievous and spitefui carcasses come out of their graves of their own accord, and occasion the death of the persons that see or speakto them ; or that the devil himself makes use of these bodies to frighten and destroy mankind. They have hitherto discovered no remedy which more infallibly rids them of these plagues, than to burn or mangle the bodies which were made use of for these cursed purposes. Sometimes the end is answered by tearing out the heart and letting the bodies rot above ground before they burn them again, or by cutting off the head, or driving a large nail through the temples.
Sir Paul Rycaut, in his History of the Present State of the Greek Church, observes, that the opinion that, excommuni- cated bodies are preserved from putrefaction, prevails, generally, not only among the Greeks, but also among the Turks, and he gives us a fact which he had from a Caloyer of Candia, who confirmed it to him upon oath. The caloyer's name was Sophronius, a man well known and respected in Smyrna.
There died in the island of Milo, a man, who was excom- municated for a fault which he had committed in the Morea, and he was buried in a private place, without any ceremonies, and in unconsecrated ground. His relations and friends expressed great dissatisfaction at his being treated in this manner, and very soon after the inhabitants of the island were tormented every night by frightful apparitions, which they attributed to this unhappy man. Upon opening the grave his body was found entire, and his ■veins swelled with blood, and a consultation being held upon the subject, the caloyers dismembering his body, cutting it in pieces, and boiling it in wine, which, it seems, is the usual manner of proceeding there in those cases.
However, the friends of the deceased prevailed upon them, by dint of entreaty, to delay the execution, and in the meantime sent to Constantinople to get absolution for him from the patriarch. Till the messenger could return the body was laid in the church, and prayers and masses were said daily for the repose of his soul. One day while Sophronius. the caloyer above mentioned, was performing the service, there was heard on a sudden a great noise in the coffin, and upon examination the body was found reduced to ashes, as if it had been dead seven years. Partic- ular notice was taken of the time when the noise was heard, and it was iound to be the very morning when the absolu- tion was signed by the patriarch. Sir Paul Rycaut, who has recorded this event, was neither a Greek nor Roman Catholic, but a staunch Protestant of the Church of England.
He observes upon this occasion, that the notion among the Greeks is, that an evil spirit enters into the excommuni- cated carcass and preserves it from corruption by perform- ing the usual functions of the human soul in a living body. They fancy, moreover, that these corpses eat by night, and actually digest and are nourished by their food ; that several have been found of a fresh, ruddy colour, with their veins ready to burst with blood, full forty days after their death, and that upon being opened there has issued from them as large a quantity of warm fresh blood as would come from a young person of the most sanguine constitu- tion. And this opinion prevails so universally, that every one is furnished with a story to this purpose. Father Theophilus Raynard, author of a particular treatise upon this subject, asserts that this coming again of deceased
persons is an undoubted truth, and supported by unquest- ionable facts. But to pretend that these spectres are always excommunicated persons, and that the schismatical- Church of Greece has a privilege of preserving from putre- faction the bodies of those that die under her sentence, is what cannot be maintained, since it is certain that excom- municated bodies rot as well as others, and that several who have died in the communion of the church, Greek as well as Roman, have continued uncorrupted. There have even been instances of this nature among the heathens, and frequently among other animals, whose carcasses have been found unputrefied in the ground, and among the ruins of old buildings. Whoever will examine more accurately into this matter, may consult father Goard's Rituel des Grecs, p. 687, 688. Matthew Paris's History of England, t. ii. p. 687. Adam of Bremen, c. ixxv. Albert of Stade, under the year 1050 ; and M. Ducange, Glossar. Lalinit, at the word " Imblocatus."