D. D. Home last visited the principal cities of Italy in

^852, and had been so active in his propaganda that numerous circles were formed after his departure. Violent journalistic controversies arose out of the foundation of these societies, with the result that public interest was so aroused that it could only be satisfied with the publication of a paper issued from Geneva, and edited by Dr Pietro Suth and Signor B. E. Manieri entitled II amove del Vero. In the journal accounts of the spiritual movements in the various countries of Europe, and America, were published although the Church and press levelled the anathemas against the journal. In the spring of 1863 a society was proved at Palermo entitled II Societa Spiritual di Palermo, which had for president Signor J. V. Paleolozo, and for members men of the stamp of Paolo Morelle, professor of Latin and Philosophy.
It was about the autumn of 1864 that lectures were first given on Spiritualistic subjects in Italy. They were started in Leghorn and Messina, and though of a very mixed character, and often partaking largely of the lecturer's peculiar idiosyncrasies on religious subjects, they served to draw attention to the upheaval of thought going on in all directions, in connection with the revelations from the Spirit world. It could not be expected that a movement so startling and unprecedented as that which opened up a direct communication between the natural and the Spirit worlds could gain ground in public acceptance without waking up all the latent elements of enthusiasm, fanaticism, and bigotry, which prevailed in.the Italian as in every other community.
In the year 1870, there had been over a hundred different societies formed, with varying success, in different parts of Italy. Two of the most prominent flourishing at that date were conducted in Naples, and according to the French journal, the Revue Spirite represented the two opposing schools which have prevailed in Continental Spiritualism, namely, the " Reincarnationists " whom we have elsewhere classified as " Spiritists " and the " Immortalists," or those known in America and England merely as " Spiritualists." (See France.)
About 1868, an immense impulse was communicated to the cause of Spiritualism — at least in the higher strata of Italian Society — by the visit of Mr. and Mrs. Guppy to Naples, at which place they took up their residence for two or three years. Mrs. Guppy — nee Miss Nichol — of London,
was renowned throughout Europe for her marvellous powers- as a " Physical force Medium " and as Mr. Guppy's wealth and social standing enabled him to place his gifted wife's services at the command of the distinguished visitors who- crowded his salons, it soon became a matter of notoriety that the highest magnates of the land, including King Victor Emmanuel and many of his nearest friends and counsellors, had yielded conviction to the truth of the astounding phenomena exhibited through Mrs. Guppy's Mediumship.
It was about the year 1863, that Spiritualism began tO' enjoy the advantage of fair and honourable representation in the columns of a new paper entitled, the Annali dello Spiritismo, or " Annals of Spiritualism." This excellent journal was commenced at Turin, and published by Signor Niceforo Filalete, with all the liberality, energy, and talent worthy alike of the subject and its editor.
From the columns of the Annali we learn that a Venetian Society of Spiritualists, named " Atea " elected General Giuseppe Garibaldi their honorary president, and received the following reply by telepraph from the distinguished hero, the liberator of Italy : "I gratefully accept the presidency of the Society Atea. Caprera, 23rd September." The same issue of the Annali contains a verbatim leport of a " grand discourse, given at Florence, by a distinguished literary gentleman, Signor Sebastiano Fenzi, in which the listeners were considerably astonished by a rehearsal of the many illustrious names of those who openly avowed their faith in Spiritualism.
The years 1863-4 appear to have been rich in Spiritualis- tic efforts. Besides a large number of minor associations, the existence of which was recorded from time to time the early numbers of the Annali and Revue Spirite, a. society which continued for a long time to exert a marked influence in promoting the study of occult forces and phenomena, was formed about this time in Florence, under the title of The Magnetic Society of Florence. The mem- bers of this association were without exception persons remarkable for literary and scientific attainments, or those of high influential position in society.
About this time Mr. Seymour Kirkup, a name familiar' to the early initiators of Spiritualism, resided in Florence, and communicated many records of spiritual phenomena to the London Spiritual Magazine. Nearly ten years after' the establishment of the Magnetic Society of Florence, Baron Guitern de Bozzi, an eminent occultist, founded the Pneumatological Psychological Academy of Florence, but upon his demise it was discontinued. 1
Modern Sorcery. — In his Aradia, or the Gospel of the- Witches of Italy, the late Charles Godfrey Leland gives a valuable account of the life and practice of the modern Italian strega or witch. He says : "In most cases she comes of a family in which her calling or art has been practised for many generations. I have no doubt that there are instances in which the ancestry remounts to- mediaeval, Roman, or it may be Etruscan times. The result has naturally been the accumulation in such families of much tradition. But in Northern Italy, as its literature indicates, though there has been some slight gathering of fairy tales and popular superstitions by scholars, there has never existed the least interest as regarded the strange lore of the witches, nor any suspicion that it embraced an incredible quantity of old Roman minor myths and legends, such as- Ovid has recorded, but of which much escaped him and all
other Latin writers Even yet there are old people in
the Romagna of the North who know the Etruscan names of the Twelve Gods, and invocations to Bacchus, Jupiter, and Venus, Mercury, and the Lares or ancestral spirits, and in the cities are women who prepare strange amulets, over which they mutter spells, all known in the old Roman time,.
Italy
234
James IV.
and who can astonish even the learned bv their legends of Latin gods, mingled with lore which may be found in Cato or Theocritus. With one of these I became intimately acquainted in 1886, and have ever since employed her specially to collect among her sisters of the hidden spell in many places all the traditions of the olden times known to them. It is true that I have drawn from other sources but this woman by long practice has perfectly learned what few understand, or just what I want, and how to extract it from those of her kind.
" Among other strange relics, she succeeded, after many years, in obtaining the following ' Gospel,' which I have in her handwriting A full account of its nature with many details will be found in an Appendix. I do not know definitely whether my informant derived a part of these traditions from written sources » or oral narration, but believe it was chiefly the latter
" For brief explanation I may say that witchcraft is known to its votaries as la vecchia veligione, or the old religion, of which Diana is the Goddess, her daughter Aradia (or Herodias) the female Messiah, and that this little work sets forth how the latter was born, came down to earth, established witches and witchcraft, and then returned to heaven. With it are given the ceremonies and invocations or incantations to be addressed to Diana and Aradia, the exorcism of Cain, and the spells of the holy- stone, rue, and verbena, constituting, as the text declares, the regular church-service, so to speak, which is to be chanted or pronounced at the witch-meetings. There are also included the very curious incantations or benedictions •of the honey, meal, and salt, or cakes of the witch-supper, which is curiously classical, and evidently a relic of the Roman Mysteries."
Briefly the ritual of the Italian witches is as follows : At the Sabbath they take meal and salt, honey and water, and say a conjuration over these, one to the meal, one to the salt, one to Cain, one to Diana, the moon-goddess.
They then sit down naked to supper, men and women, and after the feast is over they dance, sing and make love in the darkness, quite in the manner of the mediaeval Sabbath of the sorcerers. Many charms are given connected with stones, especially if these have holes in them and are found by accident. A lemon stuck full of pins we are told is a good omen. Love-spells fill a large space in the little work, which for the rest recounts several myths of Diana and Endymion in corrupted form. (See also Leland's Etruscan-Roman Remains.) Iubdan : In Ultonian romance, the King of the Wee Folk. One day he boasted of the might of his strong man Glower, who could hew down a thistle at one blow. His bard Eisirt retorted that beyond the sea, there existed a race of giants, any one of whom could annihilate a whole battalion of the Wee Folk. Challenged to prove his words, Eisirt brought Creda, King Fergus' dwarf and bard. He then dared Iubdan to go to Fergus' palace and taste the king's porridge. Iubdan and Bebo, his queen, arrived at the palace at midnight, but in trying to get at the porridge so as to taste and be away before daybreak, Iubdan fell in. He was found in the pot next morning by the scullions, and he and Bebo were taken before Fergus, who after a while released them in exchange for a pair of water shoes, wearing which a man could go over or under water as freely as on land. Ivuncb.es : Chilian familiars. (See American Indians.) lynx : A Chaldean symbol of universal being, the name of which signifies " power of transmission." It was repro- duced as a living sphere or winged globe. The first example was perhaps put forth by mind on the plane of reality, to be followed by three others called paternal and ineffable, and latterly by hosts of Iynxs of a subordinate character, described as "free intelligences." The lynx is described by Eliphas Levi as " corresponding to the Hebrew Yod or to that unique letter from which all other letters were formed."
Jacinth, or Hyacinth : A stone which preserves from plague and from lightning, strengthens the heart, and brings wealth, honour, prudence, and wisdom. It is recommended by Albertus Magnus as a soporific, on account of its coldness, and is ordered by Psellus in cases of coughs, ruptures, and melancholy, to be drunk in vinegar. Marbodaeus describes the wonderful properties of three species of the jacinth ; Pliny and Leonardus are also particular in their account of it.
Jacob's Ladder : According to the kabalistic view, Jacob's Ladder, which was disclosed to him in a vision, is a meta- phorical representation of the powers of alchemy, operating through visible nature. The " Ladder " was a " Rain- bow," or prismatic staircase, set up between heaven and earth. Jacob's Dream implied a history of the whole hermetic creation. There are only two original colours, red and blue, representing " spirit " and " matter," for orange is red mixing with the yellow light of the sun, yellow is the radiance of the sun itself, green is blue and yellow, indigo is blue tinctured with red, and violet is produced by the mingling of red and blue. The sun is alchemic gold, and the moon is alchemic silver. In the operation of these two potent spirits, or mystic rulers of the world, it is supposed astrologically that all mundane things were produced.
Jadian, or Were-tiger : (See Malays.)
Jakin and Boas : The names of the two symbolical pillars of Solomon's Kabalistic temple, and which were believed
to explain all mysteries. The one was black and the other white, and they represented the powers of good and evil. It is said that they symbolise the need of " two " in the world : Human equilibrium requires two feet ; the worlds gravitate by means of two forces ; generation needs two sexes. James IV. of Scotland : It was almost inevitable that the romantic nature of James IV. of Scotland should have encouraged the study of alchemy and the occult sciences in the manner he did. Dunbar in his Remonstrance, speaks of the patronage which he bestowed upon alchemists and charlatans, and in the Treasurer's accounts there are numerous payments for the " Quinta Essentia," including wages to the persons employed, utensils of various kinds and so forth. In a letter to one Master James Inglis, James says : —
" James, etc to dear Master James Inglis greeting.
We graciously accept your kindness, by which in a letter brought to us you signify that you have beside you certain books learned in the philosophy of the true Alchemy, and that although most worthy men have sought them from you, you have nevertheless with difficulty kept them for our use, because you had heard of our enthusiasm for the art. We give you thanks ; . . . and we have sent our familiar, Master James Merchenistoun, to you, that he may see to the transfer hither of those books which you wish us to have ; whom receive in good faith in our name. Farewell. From our Palace at Edinburgh."
James VI.
235
Japan
From the Treasurer's Accounts. 27 Sept. — Item, for a pan in Stirling for the quinta
essencia, and " potingary " there. vi. 5. 29 Sept.— For aqua vitae for the quinta essencia. . . 18 Oct. — Gallons aqua vitae for quinta essencia. iii. I.
iiij. s. 10 Nov. — -For four cauldrons to quinta essencia xlv. s. 24 Dec. — V cakes glass for quinta essentia. xxv. s.
31 Dec. — -Paid to William Foular apothecary (potingair for potingary to the King and Queen, dis- tillation of waters, aqua vitae, and potingary books in English, from the 17 day of Decem- ber, 1506. (See Scotland.) James VI. : (See Daemonologie.)
Japan : All that the word " magic " defines is to be found amongst the Japanese, in their religious beliefs and rites in their conception of Nature and in the national customs. To them all forms and objects animate or inanimate possess, equally with man, a soui with good or evil tendencies, and these entities, either of their own volition or by evocation, come into close touch with man either to his advantage or detriment. Their folklore and traditions are wrought of the marvellous and the Japanese thought of to-day is still permeated with a belief in the supernatural.
The predominant feature of the Japanese religion, Shintoism, is the worship of ancestors, allied to that of Nature. There are twelve recognised sects of Shintoism — all with ancestor-worship as their cardinal principle. The belief of the Japanese is that the disembodied spirits acquire the powers of deities and possess supernatural attributes. They become potential for good or evil and they exercise their potentialities in the same mundane sphere upon which their interests and affections centred during life. They thus become guardian divinities, and as such the object of ceremonies in their honour is to show gratitude for their services whilst upon earth and to solicit a continuance of these services beyond the grave. On this point Lafcadio Hearn wrote : — " An intimate sense of relation between the visible and invisible worlds is the special religious characteristic of Japan among all civilised countries. To Japanese thought the dead are not less real than the living. They take part in the daily life of the people,— sharing the humblest sorrows and the humblest joys. They attend the family repasts, watch over the well-being of the household, assist and rejoice in the pros- perity of their descendants. They are present at the public pageants, at all the sacred festivals of Shinto, at the military games, and at all the entertainments especially provided for them. And they are universally thought of as finding pleasure in the offerings made to them or the honours conferred upon them." Every morning, before the family shrine, to be found in all Japanese homes, flowers are set and food-emblems placed as offerings of pious affection, while ancient prayers are repeated, for on the shrine, beside the symbols of the Sun-goddess and the tutelary god of the family are put the memorial tablets containing names, ages and dates of death of members of the household. There are stories of the souls of ancestors taking material form and remaining visible through cen- turies. In the month of July three days are set apart for the celebration of the Festival of the Dead. At this time it is thought that the disembodied souls return from the dismal region of the Shades to gaze for a while upon the beauty of their country and to visit their people. On the first morning new mats are placed upon all altars and on every household shrine, while in all the homes tiny meals are prepared in readiness for the ghostly guests. The streets at night are brilliant with many torches ; in front of every house gaily-coloured lanterns are lit in welcome.
Those who have recently lost some relative go to the cemeteries to pray and burn incense and leave offerings of water and flowers set in bamboo vases. On the third day the souls of those who are undergoing penance are fed, also those who have no friends among the living to care for them. The evening of this day is the time of the ghosts' departure, and for this thousands of little boats are fashioned and laden with food-offerings and tender messages of fare- well. When the night falls, tiny lanterns are lit and hung at the miniature prows and the ghosts are supposed to step aboard. Then the craft are set free upon river, lake and sea, the water gleaming- with glow of thousands of lights. On this day no saiior dreams of putting out to sea — for this one night it belongs to the dead. It is believed that if a ship fails to come to port before the sailing of the ghost- fleet the dead arise from the deep and the sailors can hear their mournful whispering, while the white breakers are their hands clutching the shores, vainly trying to return.
In the Shinto pantheon there are deities representing well nigh everything in heaven and earth ; from the moun- tain of Fiyiyama to the household kitchen, from Wisdom to Scarecrows, from Caligraphy to Poverty, Laughter to Small pox. When babes are a week old they are taken to the temple and placed under the protection of some god chosen by the parents, but in later years he may choose his patron god for himself beside the tutelary one. * In remote parts of Japan may still be found traces of an older form of Shinto in which phallic symbols had their place as representing life-giving power and therefore used as a magical exorcism of evil influences, especially that of disease. In this connection appears a dwarf-god who is said to have first taught mankind the art of magic and medicine In Shinto there are no idols, their place being taken by ■ shintia, god-bodies, concrete objects in which the divine spirit is supposed to dwell, such as the mirror, jewel and sword of the Sun-goddess, worshipped at the famous Ise shrine. Pilgrims from all parts of Japan make their way to this shrine, acquiring merit and purification thereby. These pilgrims receive from the priests objects of talismanic properties called harai, these also serving as evidence of having been at the holy place. In former days they were recognised as passports. The term harai signifies to " drive out," to " sweep away," and has reference to the purification of the individual from his sins. These objects are in the form of small envelopes or paper boxes each containing shavings of the wands used . by the Ise priests at the half-yearly festivals held to purify the nation . in general from the consequences of the sins of the preceding six months. The list includes witchcraft, also wounding and homicide, these latter being regarded more as unclean- ness than as a moral stigma. On the pilgrims return home the harai are placed upon the " god's-shelf."
On fete-days are still practised the ancient ordeals. These are three in number, the Kug'adachi, in which priests, wrought to ecstatic frenzy by participation in a rhythmic dance, pour upon their bodies -boiling water without receiving harm from the process ; the Hiwatari consisting of walking barefoot over a bed of live coals, priests and people alike participating, and Tsurugi-watari, the climbing of a ladder of sword-blades. These are regarded as tests of purity of character, this being thought to confer an immunity from hurt in these ordeals. The attendant rites consist of exorcism of evil spirits by the waving of wands and magical finger-knots, and invocation of the gods who are then believed to be actually present.
Possession by Divinities. — In connection with some of the Shinto sects occult rites are practised to bring about posses- sion of a selected person by the actual spirits of the gods. Priests and laymen alike develop and practice this art, undergoing a period of purification by means of various
Japan
236
Japan
austerities. Prophecy, divination and the cure of disease are the objects of these rites. The ceremony may take place in a temple or ordinary house where the " gods' shelf " makes the shrine. In the rites gohei, the Shinto symbols of consecration are used, the pendant form for purification and exorcism of evil influences, and an upright gohei affixed to a wand signifying the shintai, or god-body, is the central object. The medium, called nak aza takes his seat in the midst. Next him in importance is the functionary, the maeza who presides over the ceremony. It is he who builds the magical pyre in a brass bowl and burns in the flames strips of paper inscribed with characters, effigies of disease and trouble. There is a clapping of hands to call the attention of the gods and chants are intoned, accompanied by the shaking of metal-ringed crosiers and the tinkle of pilgrim bells. After the fire is burnt out, the bowl is removed and sheets of paper placed in symbolic form, upon which is then put the upright gohei wand. There is further chanting, the medium closes his eyes and clasps his hands into which the maeza now thrusts the wand. All then await the advent of the god which is indicated by the violent shaking of the wand and convulsive throes on the part of the medium, who is now considered to have become the god. The maeza reverently prostrates himself before the entranced nakaza, and asks the name of the god who has deigned to come. This done and answered, he next offers his petitions, to which the god replies. The ceremony is concluded by a prayer and the medium is awakened by beating upon his back and the massaging of his limbs out of their cataleptic contraction. These possession-rites are also conducted by the pilgrims who ascend the mountain of Ontake.
Buddhism, which shares with Shinto the devotions of Japan, enjoins meditation as a means of attaining to supernatural knowledge and occult power. It is said that to those who in truth and constancy put in force the doctrines of Buddha the following ten powers will be granted, (i). They know the thoughts of others. (2). Their sight, piercing as that of the celestials, beholds without mist all that happens in the earth. (3). They know the past and present. (4) . They perceive the uninterrupted succession of the ages of the world. (5). Their hearing is so fine that they perceive and can interpret all the har- monies of the three worlds and the ten divisions of the universe. (6). They are not subject to bodily conditions and can assume any appearance at will. (7). They dis- tinguish the shadowing of lucky or unlucky words, whether they are near or far away. (8) . They possess the knowledge of all forms, and knowing that form is void, they can assume every sort of form ; and knowing that vacancy is form, they can annihilate and render nought all forms. (9). They possess a knowledge of all laws. (10). They possess the perfect science of contemplation. It is said that methods are thus known by which it is possible to so radically change the psychological condition of the individ- ual that he is enabled to recognise the character of the opposition between subjective and objective. These two extremes are reconciled in a higher condition of conscious- ness, a higher form of life, a more profound and complete activity which concerns the inmost depths of the self. To the " Zen " monasteries, belonging to a Buddhist sect of that name, anyone who is so inclined may retire for tem- porary meditation and for the development of these special faculties, which are mainly produced by entering upon a calm mental state, not exactly passive, but in which the attention is not devoted to any one thing, but is evenly distributed in all directions, producing a sort of void and " waiting." The spirit thus obtains entire repose and a satisfaction of the thirst for the ideal. This mystical retirement is sought by statesmen and generals, by scientific
professional and business-men, and it is said that the force which accumulates within them by practising the " Zen " methods is of effective service to them in practical life.
Many of the customs of the Japanese have a magical significance. At the Festival of the New Year extending over three days it is considered of the first importance to insure good luck and happiness for the coming year by means of many traditional observances. Houses are thoroughly cleansed materially and spiritually, this last is getting rid of the evil spirits by throwing out beans and peas from the open slides of the houses. The gateways are decorated with straw ropes made to represent the lucky, Chinese numbers of three, five and seven. Mirror cakes, associated with the sun-goddess are eaten, also lobsters, longevity being symbolised by their bent and ancient, appearance, the pine-tree branches used for decoration at . this time also signifying long life.
Divination is performed by various methods : by divining rods, by the reading of lines and cracks in the shoulder- blade of a deer, and by the classical form taken from the Confucian " Yih-king " or Book of Changes, this involving the use of eight trigrams and sixty-four diagrams. One method of " raising spirits " used by the Japanese, especially by girls who have lost their lovers by death, is to put into a paper lantern a hundred rushlights and repeat an incanta- tion of a hundred lines. One of these rushlights is taken out at the end of each fine and the would-be ghost-seer then goes out in the dark with one light Still burning and blows it out when the ghost ought to appear.
Charms are everywhere, fashioned of all substances and in all forms, such as strips of paper bearing magical in- scriptions to avert evil, fragments of temples, carven rice- grains representing the gods of Luck, sutras to frighten the demons, copies of Buddha's footprint, and paper tickets bearing the name of a god are often affixed outside the doors of houses to combat the god of Poverty.
Nature and her manifestations are the result of indwelling soul-life and the Japanese mind, imbued with this belief has peopled nature with multiform shapes. There are dragons with lairs in ocean and river which yet can fly abroad in the air while from their panting breath come the clouds of rain and tempests of lightning. In the mountains and forests are bird-like gnomes who often beset way-faring men and women and steal away their wits. There are also mountain men, huge hairy monkeys, who help the wood- cutters in return for food, and mountain-women, ogres with bodies grown over with long white hair, who flit like evil moths in search of human flesh. Then legend tells of the Senrim, hermits of the mountains, who knew all the secrets of magic, wizards who were attended by wise toads and flying tortoises, who could conjure magical animals out of gourds, who could project their souls into space. To animals were also ascribed supernatural powers. The fox is believed to possess such gifts to an almost limitless extent, for he has miraculous vision and hearing, he can read the inmost thoughts of man, he can transform himself and assume any shape at will. He loves to delude mankind and work destruction thereby to this end often taking the form of a beautiful and seductive woman whose embrace . means madness and death. To the agency of this animal is attributed demoniacal possession, this occurring mostly among ignorant and superstitious women of the lower classes. The cat is not regarded with any kindly feeling by the Japanese, this being ascribed to the fact that this animal, together with the serpent, were the only creatures who did not weep at Buddha's death. This animal has also the power of bewitchment and possesses vampire proclivities. Among sailors, however, the cat is held in estimation, for it is thought to possess the power of warding off the evil spirits which haunt the sea. The images of
Jasper
237
Jeanne D'Arc
• animals are thought to be also endowed with life. There are tales of bronze horses and deer, of huge carven dragons and stone tortoises wandering abroad at night, terrorising the people and only laid to rest by summary decapitation. Butterflies are thought to be the wandering souls of the living who may be dreaming or sunk in reverie ; white butterflies are the souls of the dead. Fireflies keep afar evil spirits, and an ointment compounded of their delicate bodies defies any poison.
Trees occupy a foremost place in the tradition and legends of Japan. The people regard them with great affection, and there are stories of men who, seeing a tree they loved withering and dying, committed hara-kiri before it praying the gods that their life so given might ^pass into the tree and give it renewed vigour. The willow is one of the most eerie of trees, the willow-spirit often becoming a beautiful maiden and wedding a human lover. The pine tree brings good fortune, especially in the matter of happy marriages. It is also a token of longevity. Tree spirits can sometimes be inimical to man and it is recorded of one that to stay its disturbing wanderings it was necessary to cut it down, when from the stump flowed a stream of blood.
The element of Fire figures largely in the Japanese world •of marvels. It is worshipped in connection with the rites of the Sun-goddess and even the kitchen-furnace becomes the object of a sort of cult. There is the lamp of Buddha, while messages from Hades come to this world in the «hape of fire-wheels, Phantom-fires flicker about and flames burn in the cemeteries ; there are demon-lights, fox-flames and dragon-torches. From the eyes and mouths of certain birds, such as the blue heron, fire darts forth in white flames. Globes of fire, enshrining human faces and forms, sometimes hang like fruit in the branches of the trees. The dolls of Japanese children are believed to be endowed with life, deriving a soul from the love expended upon them by their human possessors. Some of these dolls were credited with supernatural powers, they could confer maternity upon a childless woman, and they could bring misfortune upon any who ill-treated them. When old and faded, these dolls are dedicated to Kojin the many-armed, who dwells in the enokie tree, and there are reverently laid upon his shrine, bodies which once held a tiny soul. (See Lafcadio Hearn's Kokoro, Percival Lowell's Occult Japan, F. Hadland Davis' Myths and Legends of Japan.) K.N.
Jasper : Prevents fever and dropsy, strengthens the brain, and promots eloquence ; it is a preservative against defluxions, the nightmare, and epilepsy, and is often met with in the east as a counter-charm. Marbodsus mentions seventeen species of this stone, but that " like the emerald " is most noted for its magical virtues.
.Jean : A magician, votary of Apollonius of Tyana. He went from town to town, wearing an iron collar, and making his living by the performance of deeds of charletanry. At Lyons he attained some measure of fame by his miraculous cures, and was admitted to the presence of the sovereign, to whom he presented a magnificent enchanted sword. In battle this weapon became surrounded by nine score drawn knives. Jean also gave this prince a shield containing a magic mirror which would divulge the greatest secrets The arms vanished, or were stolen.
Jean, or Iwan Basilowitz : Grand Duke of Muscory in the fourteenth century. When at the point of death he fell into terrible swoons, during which his soul made toilsome journeys. In the first he was tormented for having kept innocent prisoners in his dungeons, in the second, he was tortured still more for having ground the people under heavy tasks ; during the third voyage he died, but his body dis- appeared mysteriously before he could be buried, and it was thought that the devil had taken him.
Jean d'Arras : A French writer of the fourteenth century, who compiled a chronicle of Melusine from popular stories which he collected.
Jean de Meung : Jean de Meung owes his celebrity to his poetical genius rather than his alchemical powers ; to his Roman de la Rose, rather than to his rhy mi ng treatise upon the hermetic philosophy. He was born about 1280, and flourished through the reigns of Louis X., Philip the Long,
■ Charles IV., and Philip de Valois. He appears to have possessed a light and railing wit, and a keen appreciation of a jest ; and it may well be doubted whether he was altogether sincere in his praises of alchemy. Having composed a quatrain on woman, which stigmatized her in the strongest terms, the ladies of Charies VI. 's court resolved to revenge their affronted honour, and surrounding him in the royal antechanber, desired the courtiers present to strip him preparatory to their inflicting a sound flag- ellation. Jean solicited to be heard before he was con- demned and punished ; and having obtained an interval of grace, set forth, with fluent eloquence, that he was certainly the author of the calumnious verses, but that they were not intended to vilipend all womankind. He referred only to the vicious and debased, and not to such models of purity as he saw around him. Nevertheless, if any lady present felt that the verses really applied to her, he was her very humble servant, and would submit to a well-deserved chastisement.. Like most of the mediaeval poets, Jean de Meung was a bitter enemy of the priesthood, and he con- trived with great ingenuity a posthumous satire upon their inordinate greed. He bequeathed in his will, as a gift to the Cordeliers, a chest of immense weight. As his fame as an alchemist was wide-spread, the brotherhood accepted the legacy in the belief that the chest contained the golden results of his quest of the Philosopher's Stone. But when they opened it, their dismayed eyes rested only on a pile of slates, covered with the most unintelligible hierogly- phics and cabalistic characters. The perpetrator of this practical joke was hardly, we think, a very sincere believer in the wonders of alchemy. (See Devon, Witchcraft in.)
Jeanne, D'Arc : Jeanne d'Arc was born in the village of Domremy, near Vaucouleurs, on the border of Champagne and Lorraine, on Jan. 6th, 1412. She was taught to spin and sew, but not to read or write, these accomplishments being unusual and unnecessary to people in her station of life. Her parents were devout, and she was brought up piously. Her nature was gentle, modest, and religious f but with no physical weakness or morbidity ; on the con- trary, she was exceptionally strong, as her later history shows.
At or about the age of thirteen, Jeanne began to experience what psychology now calls " auditory hallucinations." In other words, she heard " voices " — usually accompanied by a bright light — when no visible person was present. This, of course, is a common symptom of impending mental disorder ; but no insanity developed in Jeanne d'Arc. Startled she naturally was at first, but continuation led to familiarity and trust. The voices gave good counsel of a very commonplace kind, as, for instance, that she " must be a good. girl and go often to church." Soon, however, she began to have visions ; saw St. Michael, St. Catharine, and St. Margaret ; was given instructions as to her mission ; eventually made her way to the Dauphin, put herself at the head of 6,000 men, and advanced to the relief of Orleans, which was surrounded by the victorious English. After a fortnight of hard fighting, the siege was raised, and the enemy driven off. The tide of war had turned, and in three months the Dauphin was crowned king at Rheims as Charles the Seventh.
At this point, Jeanne felt that her mission was accom- plished. But her wish to return to her family was over-
Jeanne, D'Arc
238
Jinn
ruled by king and archbishop, and she took part in the further fighting against the allied English and Burgundian forces, showing great bravery and tactical skill. But in November, 1430, in a desperate sally from Compiegne — which was besieged by the Duke of Burgundy — she fell into the enemy's hands, was sold to the English, and thrown into a dungeon at their headquarters in Rouen.
After a year's imprisonment she was brought to trial before the Bishop of Beauvais, in an ecclesiastical court. The charges were heresy and sorcery. Learned doctors of the Church, subtle lawyers, did their best to entangle the simple girl in their dialectical toils ; but she showed a remarkable power of keeping to her affirmations and of avoiding heietical statements. " God has always been my Lord in all that I have done," she said. But the trial was only pretence, for her fate was already decided. She was condemned to the stake. To the end, she solemnly affirmed the reality of her " voices," and the truth of her depositions. Her last word, as the smoke and flame rolled round her, was " Jesus." Said an English soldier, awestruck by the manner of her passing : " We are lost ; we have burned a Saint." The idea was corroborated in popular opinion by events which followed, for speedy death — as if by Heaven's anger — overtook her judges and accusers. Inspired by her example and claims, and helped by dissension and weakening on the side of the enemy, the French took heart once more ; and the English were ail- but swept out of the country.
Jeanne's family was rewarded by ennoblement, under the name of De Lys. Twenty-five years after her death, the Pope acceded to a petition that the proces by which she was condemned should be re-examined. The result was that the judgment was reversed, and her innocence estab- lished and proclaimed.
The life of the Maid supplies a problem which orthodox science cannot solve. She was a simple peasant girl, with no ambitious hankering after a career. She rebelled pathetically against her mission. " I had far rather rest and spin by my mother's side, for this is no work of my choosing, but I must go and do it, for my Lord wills it." She cannot be dismissed on the " simple idiot " theory of Voltaire, for her genius in war and her aptitude in repartee undoubtedly prove exceptional mental powers, unschooled though she was in what we call education. We cannot call her a mere hysteric, for her health and strength were superb. It is on record that a man of science said to an Abbe : — " Come to the Salpetriere Hospital, and I will show you twenty Jeannes d'Arc." To which the Abbe responded : " Has one of them given us back Alsace and Lorraine ? " The retort was certainly neat. Still, though the Sal- petriere hysterics have not won back Alsace and Lorraine, it is nevertheless true that many great movements have sprung from fraud or hallucination. May it not have been so with Jeanne ? She delivered France, and her importance in history is great ; but may not her mission and her doings have been the outcome of merely subjective hallucinations, induced by the brooding of her specially religious and patriotic mind on the woes of her country ? The army, being ignorant and superstitious, would readily believe in the supernatural nature of her mission, and great energy and valour would result — for a man fights well when he feels that Providence is on his side.
This is the most usual kind of theory in explanation of the facts. But it is not fully satisfactory. How came it— one may ask — that this untutored peasant girl could persuade not only the rude soldiery, but also the Dauphin and the Court, of her Divine appointment ? How came she to be given the command of an army ? Surely a post of such responsibility and power would not be given to an ignorant girl of eighteen, on the mere strength of her own
claim to inspiration. It seems, at least, very improbable. Now it so happens (though the materialistic school of historians conveniently ignore or belittle it) that there is strong evidence in support of the idea that Jeanne gave the Dauphin some proof of the possession of supernormal faculties. In fact, the evidence is so strong that Mr. Andrew Lang called it " unimpeachable" — and Mr., Lang did not usually err on the side of credulity in these matters. Among other curious things, Jeanne seems to have repeated to Charles the words of a prayer which he had made men- tally ; and she also made some kind of clairvoyant dis- covery of a sword hidden behind the altar of Fierbois church. Schiller's magnificent dramatic poem — " Die Jungfrau von Orleans " — though unhistorical in some details, is substantially accurate on these points concerning clairvoyance and mind-reading.
The best books on the Maid are those of Mr. Anatole France (two vols.), and Mr. Andrew Lang, giving respectively the sceptical and the believing side as to the explanation of her experiences. There is also a very useful little book by Miss C. M. Antony, with preface by Father R. H. Benson.
Jelaleddin, Rumi : A Sufi poet of the thirteenth century, A.D. He teaches the Sufi doctrine that the chief end of man is so to emancipate himself from human thoughts and wishes, human needs and the outward impressions of the senses, that he may become a mere mirror for the Deity. So refined an essence does his mind become that it is as nearly as possible nothing ; yet while in this state it can, by a union with the Divine Essence, mysteriously become the All. In his teachings he declares that names and words must not be taken for the things they represent: — " Names thou mayst know ; go, seek the truth they name Search not the brook, but heaven, for the moon."
Jennings, Hargrave : (See Rosicrucians.)
Jesodoth : The angel through which Elohim, the source of knowledge, understanding and wisdom, was imparted to the earth. This belief is of Jewish origin.
Jet : Its virtues are thus described by Pliny, according to the version of Holland : "In burning, the perfume thereof chaseth away serpents, and bringeth women again that lie in a traunce by the suffocation or rising of the mother ; the said smoke discovereth the falling sicknesse and be- wraieth whether a young damsel be a maiden or no ; the same being boiled in wine helpeth the toothache, and tempered with wax cureth the swelling glandules named the king's evil. They say that the magicians use this jeat stone much in their sorceries, which they practice by the means of red hot axes, which they call axinomancia, for they affirm that being cast thereupon it will burne and consume, if that ewe desire and wish shall happen accordingly." Jet is known in Prussia as black amber.
Jets : {See Siberia.)
Jettatura : The Italian name for the power of the " evil eye." In order to guard against it magicians say that horns must be worn on the body.
Jinn : Singular Jinnee, plural Jineeyeh, Arabian spirits, per- haps animistic, but more probably strictly mythological like the Persian divs (q.v.). The jinn were created out of fire, and occupied the earth for several thousand years before Adam ; they were perverse, and would not reform, although prophets were sent to reclaim them ; they were eventually driven from the earth, and took refuge in the outlying islands of the sea. One of the number named Azazeel (afterwards called Iblees) had been carried off as a prisoner by the angels ; he grew up amongst them, and became their chief, but having refused, when commanded, to prostrate himself before Adam, he was degraded to the condition of a sheytan, and becomes the father of the sheytans, or devils. The jinn are not immortal, but
Jinn
239
John XXIL
destined ultimately to die : they eat and drink and propa- gate their species ; they live in communities, and are ruled over by princes : they can make themselves visible or invisible, and assume the forms of various animals, such as serpents, cats and dogs. There are good jinn and bad jinns. They frequent baths, wells, latrines, ovens, ruined houses, rivers, cross roads and market places. Finally, like the demons of the Rabbins, theyascend to heaven and learn the future by eavesdropping. But with all their power and knowledge, they are liable to be reduced to obedience by means of talismans or magic arts, and become obsequious servants until the spell is broken.
It is far from clear or certain, that the jinn of the east were borrowed from the mythology or philosophy of the west, and the practice of translating the Arabic word jinn by the Latin term " genius " arose more from an apparent resemblance in the names, than from any iden- tity in the nature and functions of those imaginary beings. This similarity of name, however, must have been purely accidental, for the Arabs knew little or nothing of the Latin language, and not a single term derived immediately from it ; dsemon, therefore, and not genius was the word •which they would have used if they had borrowed this part of their creed from the west. Jinn appears, moreover, to be a genuine Arabic word, derived from a root signifying " to veil " or " conceal " ; it, therefore, means properly, " that Which is veiled and cannot be seen." " In one sense,' says Fruzabadi, author of the Camus, " the word Jinn signifies any spiritual being concealed from all our senses, and, for that reason, the converse of a material being. Taken in this extensive sense, the word Jinn comprehends devils as well as angels, but there are some properties common to both angels and Jinn ; some peculiar to each. Every angel is a Jinn, but every Jinn is not an angel. In another sense, this term is applied peculiarly to a particular kind of spiritual beings ; for such beings are of three kinds ; the good, which are angels ; the bad, devils ; and the intermediate, comprehending both good and bad, who form the class of Jinn." Thus the Arabs acknowledge good and bad genii, in that respect agreeing with the Greeks, but differing from the Persians. The genii, so long familiarized to European readers by the Arabian Nights, were not the same beings, mentioned by the Arabian lexicographer, but the Divs and Devatas of Indian romance, dressed up in a foreign attire, to please the taste of readers in Persia and Arabia.
The principal differences, therefore, between the genii of the west and the jinn of the east, seem to have been these ; the genii were deities of an inferior rank, the constant companions and guardians of men, capable of giving useful or prophetic impulses, acting as a species of mediators and messengers between the gods and men. Some were supposed to be friendly, others hostile, and many believed one of each kind to be attached, from his birth, to every mortal. The former was called Agathoda;mon, the latter Cacoda?mon ; and one of the latter who appeared to Cassius is represented as a man of vast stature and of a black hue, whence, no doubt, that colour has been given, in latter times, to the devil. The good genius prompted men to good, the evil to bad actions. That of each individ- ual was as a shadow of himself. Often he was represented as a serpent ; his age also varied ; he was generally crowned with a chaplet of plane leaves. In coins of Trajan and Hadrian the genius places a patera with his right hand on an. altar, and holds a sort of scourge in his left. His sacrifices were wholly bloodless, consisting of wine and flowers, and the person who performed the oblation was the first to taste the cup. They were adored with prostrations, particularly on the birthday, which was placed under their especial care.
The Roman men swore by their Genius, the women by their Juno. The genius of the reigning Prince was an oath of extraordinary solemnity. There were local as well as individual genii, concerning whom many particulars may be found in " Vossius," de Idol.
The Jinn, on the contrary, who seem to be the lineal descendants ofthe Devates and Rakshasas of the Hindu mythology, were never worshipped by the Arabs, nor con- sidered as anything more than the agents of the Deity. Since the establishment of Mohammedanism, indeed, they have been described as invisible spirits, and their feats and deformities which figure in romance are as little believed by Asiatics, as the tales of " Arthur's Round Table " are by ourselves. Their existence as superhuman beings is maintained by the Mussulman doctors, but that has little connection with their character and functions as delineated by poets. Jinnistan : An imaginary country which, according to a popular belief among the Persians, was the residence of the jinn who had submitted to Solomon. Johannites : A mystic sect who follow the tenets of the late Father John of Cronstadt, where they publish an organ, and pursue their propaganda by means of itinerant pam- phlet-sellers. They are said to abduct Jewish children, and because of this rumour they have on more than one occasion come under police supervision. They have several times unsuccessfully fixed the date of the Last Judgment. They declared in Father John's life-time that all the powers of heaven had descended into Cronstadt, and were personified in the entourage of Father John. They exhorted all believers to make confession to Father John, who alone could rescue sinners from the depths of hell. The orthodox clergy would not know the Lord, but Father John would gather together in Cronstadt 144,000 of the blessed, and then " leave the earth." Another affirmation of theirs is that all children who are new-born are " little devils," who must be " stamped out " immediately after birth. The Johannites urged the people to sell all their possessions and send the proceeds to Father John, or entrust them to the keeping of the pamphlet-sellers. Evidence is forth- coming tending to show that Father John was unaware of the abuse of his name, and on one occasion, in reply to a telegram from Bishop Nikander, of Perm, he strongly repudiated any connection with certain Johannite propa- gandists in the Perm Government. John King : A spirit. (See Spiritualism.) John of Nottingham : English Magician. (See England.) John XXIL, Pope : Jacques Duese, subsequently Pope John XXII., was born at Cahors in France towards the close of the 12th century. The exact date of his advent is indeterminate, but it is reported that his parents were in affluent circumstances, and it has even been suggested that they belonged to the noblesse. Jacques was educated first at a Dominican priory in his native village, and after- wards at Montpellier ; while subsequently he proceeded to Paris, where he studied both law and medicine. Leaving the Sorbonne, he was still at a loss to know what pro- fession to follow ; but, chancing to become intimate with one Bishop Louis, a son of Charles II., King of Naples, the young man decided to enter the church, being doubtless prompted to this step by the conviction that his new friend's influence would help him forward in the clerical career. Nor was the future pontiff disappointed herein, for in the year 1300, at the instance of the Neapolitan sovereign, he was elevated to the episcopal see of Frejus, while in 1308 he was appointed Chancellor of Naples. He soon showed himself a man of no mean ability in ecclesiasti- cal affairs, and in 1310 Pope Clement V. saw fit to summon him to Avignon, being anxious to consult him anent certain points ; while in 1312 Jacques was made Bishop of Porto,
John XXII.
240
Kabala
and four years later he was elected to the pontifical crown and sceptre.
Thenceforth he lived always at Avignon, but his life was by no means a quiet or untroubled one. Early in his reign the throne of Germany became vacant, Louis of Bavaria and Frederick of Austria both contended for it, and Jacques gave great offence by supporting the claims of the latter ; while at a later date he raised a storm by preaching a some- what heterodox sermon, its purport being that the souls of those who have died in a state of grace go straight into Abraham's bosom, and do not enjoy the beatific vision of the Lord till after the Resurrection and the last judgment. This doctrine was hotly opposed by many clerics, notably Thomas of England, who had the courage to preach against it openly at Avignon ; and so great was the disfavour which John incurred, in fact, that for several years after his death in 1334 he was widely regarded as Anti-Christ.
Jacques has frequently been credited with avarice, and dt is true that he made stupendous efforts to raise money, imposing numerous taxes unheard of before his regime. Indeed, he manifested considerable ingenuity in this relation, and so the tradition that he dabbled in hermetic philosophy is probably founded on hard fact. It must be conceded, on the one hand, that in the course of his reign he issued a stringent bull against alchemists ; but then, this was directed rather against the charlatans of the craft than against those who were seeking the philosopher's stone with real earnestness, and with the aid of scientific know- ledge. It is more than likely, moreover, that Jacques sent forth this mandate largely with a view to blinding those who had charged him with essaying the practice at issue himself ; and, be that as it may, it is certain that he
believed in magic and was interested in science. His credulity as regards the former is demonstrated by his bringing a charge of sorcery against Geraud, Bishop of Cahors ; while his scientific predilections are evinced by the fact that he kept up a laboratory in the palace at Avignon, and was wont to spend much time therein. Doubtless some of this time was given to physiological and pathological studies, for various works of a medical nature are ascribed to Jacques, in particular a collection of prescriptions, a treatise on diseases of the eye, and another on the formation of the foetus. But it may well be supposed that the avaricious prelate's activities in his laboratory were also bestowed in some measure on alchemistic researches, and the theory is buttressed by his having been a friend of Arnold de Villanova ; while more important still, among the writings attributed to Jacques is L.' Art Transmutatoire, published at Lyons in 1557. Besides, the pontiff left behind him on his death a vast sum of money and a mass of priceless jewels, and it was commonly asserted, among the alchemists of the day, that these and also two hundred huge ingots had all been manufactured by the deceased. The story of the unbounded wealth he had amassed in this way gradually blossomed and bore fruit, and one of Jacques' mediaeval biographers credits him with having concocted a quantity of gold equivalent to £660,000 sterling.
Judah Ha-Levi (1085-1140) : Celebrated Hebrew theologian and mystic. He seems to have had some conception of elementary spirits, for of the angels he says that " some are created for the time being, out of the subtle elements of matter."
Jung-Stilling : {See Spiritualism.)
K
Ka : The Egyptian conception of one of the seven parts of man ; a spiritual double or astral body. Not only did mankind possess a Ka, but animals and inanimate objects as well. Every mortal received a Ka at birth._ When he died his Ka left him, but was supposed to hover near the body and occasionally to reanimate it. For this purpose statues were placed near the mummy in which the Ka might find a temporary shelter. The Ka was provided with food by the friends of the deceased who left provisions in the tomb for its use. (See Egypt and Vampire.)
Kabala, The : A Hebrew and Jewish system of theosophy. The word signifies "doctrines received from tradition." In ancient Hebrew literature the name was used to denote the entire body of religious writings, the Pentateuch excepted . It is only in the early middle ages that the system of theosophy known as Kabalism was designated by that name. We will first consider the Kabala as a literary production before proceeding to examine it in the light of a hand-book of Hebrew occultism. The main sources which went to the making of the Kabala are the Sepher Yesirah or Book of Creation, which is a combination of mediaeval mysticism and science. The date of origin of this work has been matter of great argument, but it is perhaps safest to say that it seems to be earlier than the ninth century A.D. The Bahir or brilliant is first quoted by Nahmanides, and is usually attributed to his teacher, Ezra. It owes much to the Sepher' Yesirah, and to a great extent foreshadows the Zohar, which is a commentary on the Pentateuch, including eleven dissertations on that book, — the most important of which are the Book of Secrets, the Secret of Secrets, the Mysteries of the Pentateuch, and the Hidden Interpretation. It pretends to the authorship of Simon ben Yohai in the second century, and it is alleged that he drew his sources from traditional dialogues between God and Adam in Paradise. It is further stated that it was
discovered in a cavern in Galilee where it had been hidden for one thousand years. It has been proved almost beyond doubt, however, that it was written in the thirteenth century, and the capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders is alluded to. It is also believed that Moses de Leon, who died in 35, and who circulated and sold the Zohar, was himself its author. At the same time there is "no doubt that it enshrines a large number of very ancient and im- portant Hebrew traditions. The matter contained in the Kabala deals with the nature of God, the sephiroth or divine emanations, of angels and of man. God, known in the Kabala as En Soph, fills and contains the universe. As he is boundless, mind cannot conceive him, so in a certain mystical sense he is non-existent. The doctrine of the sephiroth is undoubtedly the most important to be met with in the pages of the Kabala. To justify his existence the Deity had to become active and creative, and this he achieved through the medium of the ten sephiroth or intelligences which emanated from him like rays pro- ceeding from a luminary. The first sephiroth or emanation was the wish to become manifest, and this contained nine other intelligences or sephiroth, which again emanate one from the other — the second from the first, the, third from the second, and so forth. These are known as the Crown, Wisdom, Intelligence, Love, Justice, Beauty, Firmness, Splendour, Foundation and Kingdom. From the junction of pairs of sephiroth, other emanations were formed : thus from Wisdom and intelligence proceeded Love or Mercy and from Mercy and Justice, Beauty. The sephiroth are also symbolical of primordial man and the heavenly man, of which earthly man is the shadow. They form three triads which respectively represent intellectual, moral, and physical qualities : the first, Wisdom, Intelligence and Crown ; the second Love, Justice and Beauty ; the third Firmness, Splendour and Foundation. The whole is
The diagram below illustrates the doctrine of Emanotinos, and has also an alchemistical significance in its metallurgical nomerclature of the several circles.
The Magical Head of Zohar
KABALISTIC DIAGRAMS AND SYMBOLS (I)
[ face p. 240
TUendii
Apzs now
Le triple* Serapis
fffomphta.
\
\ /
Soriu
Hard.
Pcuidockui
Ompfita-
rr^
F) TlepMa.
Midi.
\ I
\ /
Thcl/t
A\pu dlaric*
Za-trcpIeSecxie--
e^ Occident
K
\ \
\ /
jf.luras.
Diagram of the astronomical and alphabetical Tablet of Bembo
Pentagram of the Absolute The Seven Planets and their genii
KABALISTIC DIAGRAMS AND SYMBOLS (II) {facefr.lW
Kabala
241
Kabala
circled or bound by Kingdom, the ninth sephiroth. Each of these triads symbolises a portion of the human frame : the first the head ; the second the arms ; the third the legs. It must be understood that though those sephiroth are emanations from God they remain a portion, and simply represent different aspects of the One Being.
Kabalistic cosmology posits four different worlds, each of which forms a sephiric system of a decade of emanations, which were verified in the following manner : the world of emanations or the heavenly man, a direct emanation from the En Soph, From it is produced the world of creation, or the Briatic world of pure nature, but yet not so spiritual as the first. The angel Metatron inhabits it and constitutes the world of pure spirit. He governs the visible world and guides the revolutions of the planets. From this is formed the world of formation or the Yetziratic world, still less refined, which is the abode of angels. Finally from these emanates the world of action or matter, the dwelling of ■evil spirits, which contains ten hells, each becoming lower until the depths of diabolical degradation is reached. The prince of this region is Samael, the evil spirit, the serpent of Genesis, otherwise " the Beast." But the universe was incomplete without the creation of man ; the heavenly Adam, that is the tenth sephiroth, created the earthly Adam, each member of whose body corresponds to a part of the visible universe. The human form, we are told, is shaped after the four letters Which constitute the Jewish tetragrammation, Jhava, thus, the letters J h a v a . The souls of the whole human race pre-exist in the World of emanations, and are all destined to inhabit human bodies. Like the sephiroth from which it emanates, every soul has ten potentces, consisting of a trinity of triads — spirit, soul, cruder soul or neptesh. Each soul, before its entrance into the world consists of male and female united into one . being, but when it descends to this earth, the two parts are separated and animate different bodies. The destiny of the soul upon earth is to develop the perfect germs implanted in it, which must ultimately return to En Soph. If it does not succeed in acquiring the experience for which it has been sent to earth, it must re-inhabit the body three times till it becomes duly purified. When all the souls in the world of the sephiroth shall have passed through this period of probation and returned to the bosom of En Soph, the jubilee will commence ; even Satan will be restored to his angelic nature, and existence will be a Sabbath without end. The Kabala states that these esoteric doctrines are contained in the Hebrew scriptures, but cannot be perceived by the uninitiated ; they are, however, plainly revealed to persons of spiritual mind.
Next considering the Kabala as occult literature, we find it stated that the philosophical doctrines developed in its pages are found to have been perpetuated by the secret method of oral tradition from the first ages of humanity. " The Kabala," says Dr. Ginsburg, when explaining the story of its birth, " was first taught by God Himself to a select company of angels, who formed a theosophic school in Paradise. After the Fall the angels most graciously communicated this heavenly doctrine to the disobedient child of earth, to furnish the protoplasts with the means of returning to their pristine nobility and felicity. From Adam it passed over to Noah, and then to Abraham, the friend of God, who emigrated with it to Egypt, where the patriarch allowed a portion of this mysterious doctrine to ooze out. It was in this way that the Egyptians obtained some knowledge of it, and the other Eastern nations could introduce it into their philosophical systems. Moses, who was learned in all the wisdom of Egypt, was first initiated into the Kabala in the land of his birth, but became most proficient in it during his wanderings in the wilderness, when he not only devoted to it the leisure hours of the
whole forty years, but received lessons in it from one of the angels. By the aid of this mysterious science the law- giver was enabled to solve the difficulties which arose during his management of the Israelites, in spite of the pilgrimages, wars, and frequent miseries of the nation. He covertly laid down the principles of this secret doctrine in the first four books of the Pentateuch, but withheld them from Deuteronomy. Moses also initiated the seventy Elders into the secrets of this doctrine, and they again transmitted them from hand to hand. Of all who formed the unbroken line of tradition, David and Solomon were the most deeply initiated into the Kabala. No one, how- ever, dared to write it down till Schimeon ben Jochai, who lived at the time of the destruction of the second. After his death, his son, Rabbi Eleazar, and his secretary, Rabbi Abba, as well as his disciples, collated Rabbi Simon Ben Jochai's treatises, and out of these composed the celebrated work called Z H R, Zohar, Splendour, which is the grand storehouse of Kabalism."
The history of Kabalistic origins, however, is as has been shown almost wholly fabulous, and no evidence worthy of the name can be adduced in its support. The mysticism of the Mishna and the Talmud must be carefully distinguished from that of the Kabalistic writings, as they are un- doubtedly of very considerable antiquity. But the Kabala has certain claims upon the modern student of mysticism. Its philosophical vajue is not depreciated by its modern origin, and it is regarded by many as an absolute guide to knowledge in all the most profound problems of existence. Its thesis is extensive and profound, but examination unfortunately proves it to be merely a series of dogmatic hypotheses, a body of positive doctrine based on a central assumption which is incapable of proof. This tradition, says Eliphas Levi, wholly reposes on the single dogma of magic, that the Visible is for us a proportional measure of the Invisible. In fact it proceeds by analogy from the known to the unknown. At the same time, it is a most interesting effort of the human mind.
Mediaeval magic was deeply indebted to Kabalistic combinations of the divine names for the terms of its rituals, and from it it derived the belief in a resident virtue in sacred names and numbers. Certain definite rules are employed to discover the sublime source of power resident in the -Jewish scriptures. Thus the words of several verses in the scriptures which are regarded as containing an occult sense, are placed over each other, and the letters are formed into new words by reading them vertically ; or the words of the text are arranged in squares in such a manner as to be read vertically or otherwise. Words are joined together and re-divided, and the initial and final letters of certain words are formed into separate words. Again, every letter of the word is reduced to its numerical value, and the word is explained by another of the same quantity. Every letter of a word too is taken to be an initial of an abbreviation of it. The twenty-two letters of the alphabet are divided into two halves, one half is placed above the other, and the two letters which thus become associated are interchanged. This a becomes I, b, m, and so on. This cipher alphabet is called albm from the first interchanged pairs. The commutation of the twenty-two letters is effected by the last letter of the alphabet taking the place of the first, the last but one the place of the second and so forth. This cipher is called atbah. These permutations and combinations are much older than the Kabala, and obtained amongst Jewish .occultists from time immemorial.
Lastly, it should be pointed out that the Kabala has been condemned nowhere more strongly than among the Jews themselves. Jewish orthodoxy has always been suspicious of it, and as Mr. A. E. Waite has well said :
Kabo termann ek ens
242
Keingala
" The best lesson we can learn from it is the necessity of scrupulously separating the experimental knowledge of the mystics from their bizarre fields of speculation."
Kabotermannekens : According to the Flemish peasants, little spirits which play tricks on the women of the country, particularly on those who work in the dairy.
Kaf : According to the Musulmans, a great mountain that stretches to the horizon on every side. The earth is in the middle of this mountain, they say, like a finger in the middle of a ring. Its foundation is the stone Sakhrat, the least fragment of which is capable of working untold marvels. This stone it is which causes earthquakes. It is made of a single emerald. The mountain, which is frequently spoken of in Eastern tales, is said to be the habitation of genii. To reach it one must pass through dark wildernesses, and it is essential that the traveller be guided by a supernatural being.
Kai : The seneschal of King Arthur, known in the French romances as Messire Queux, or Maitre Queux or Kuex. He is prominent in the Morte d' Arthur. In the tale of Kilhwuh and Olwen in the Mabinogion, he is identified with a per- sonage whose " breath lasted nine nights and days under water" and who " could exist nine nights and nine days without sleep." A wound from his sword could not be cured ; he could make himself as tall as the highest tree, and so great was the heat of his nature that, during rain, whatever he carried remained dry. Originally a deity, a rain-and-thunder god, he had apparently degenerated, through a series of mythological processes, into a mere hero.
Kale Thaungto : A town of wizards in Lower Burma. (See Burma.)
Kalid : (See Morien.)
Kapila : believed by the Hindus to be the god Vishnu, son of Brahman, in the fifth of his twenty-four incarnations. He Wrote a series of philosophical propositions known as the Sutras, in which he states it is by philosophical study alone that one may attain union with the deity.
Kardec, Allen : The nom de guerre of Denizard Rivail, the French spiritualist whose doctrines were largely accepted on the Continent and especially in France. The chief tenet in spiritism was the doctrine of re-incarnation. Rivail, before his conversion to spiritualism, had occupied himself a great deal with animal magnetism. In 1856 he was intro- duced into a spiritualistic circle by Victorien Sardou. His Livre des Esprits and the works with which he followed it were based largely on communications received through mediums. They had a wide circulation, and the doctrines of spiritism became much more popular, in France at least, than those of the rival spiritualism, which did not include re-incarnation among its tenets. The names Allan and Kardec which M. Rivail assumed were names he had borne in two former incarnations, revealed to him by mediumistic communications. He was the editor of La Revue Spirite, and the founder and president of the Parisian Society for Spiritualistic Studies, at which M. Camille Flammarion, then nineteen years of age, made his first acquaintance with psychic science in 1861. Allan Kardec died in 1869, his doctrines having by that time become firmly established. In Britain, however, they made but little headway, his only disciple of note in this country being Miss Anna Blackwell. (See France and Spiritualism.)
Karma is a doctrine common to Brahmanism, Buddhism and Theosophy though theosophists have not adopted it wholly as it is taught in the two religions mentioned. The word karma itself means " action," but it may be useful to remember that generally the doctrine teaches that every- thing done is done for eternity, that, in short, " thou shalt reap as thou didst sow." Action is not homogeneous but on the contrary, contains three elements, the thought which conceives it, the will which finds the means of accomplish-
ment, and the union of thought and will which brings the action to pass. It is plain, therefore, that thought is very potent for good or evil, for as the thought is, so will the action be. The miser, thinking of avarice, is avaricious, the libertine, thinking of vice, is vicious, and on the con- trary, those of virtuous thoughts show virtue in their actions. Arising naturally from such teaching is the attention devoted to thought-power. Taking the analogy of the physical body which may be developed by regimen and training, based on natural scientific laws, theosophists teach that character may, in exactly the same way, be scientifically built up. Physical weakness can be eradi- cated and an opposite state of affairs brought about by special exercise of the weak part, and by a similar method, weakness of character may be converted into strength Every vice is considered to evidence the lack of a corres- ponding virtue, avarice for instance showing the absence of generosity. Instead, however, of allowing matters to rest at this, under the plea — arising from ignorance — that the man was naturally avaricious, theosophists, on the lines of scientific knowledge, teach that constant thought directed to generosity will in time change the man's nature in this respect. This result cannot, of course, be brought about in a day, and the length of time necessary depends on at least two factors, the strength of thought and the strength of the vice, for the latter may be the sum of the indulgence of many ages and hence correspondingly difficult to eradicate The doctrine of karma must, however, be considered not in its relation to one life only, but in the light of the theo- sophic teaching of re-incarnation (q.v.). Re-incarnation is carried on under the law of karma as well as of evolution. The new-born man bears within him the seeds of what he for- merly was. His character is the same as it was. It is as he made it in past existences and accordingly as he made it, so does it continue unless he himself change it as he had the power to do. Each succeeding existence finds that character . more definite in one direction or another and if it be evil, the effort to change it becomes increasingly difficult, indeed a complete change may not be possible until many exist- ences of effort have passed. In such cases as these, the promptings of evil may be too strong to be resisted, yet the man who has an intelligent knowledge of the workings of Karma, though he must eventually yield, does so only after the most desperate struggle of which his nature is capable, and thus, instead of yielding weakly and increas- ing the power of the evil, he has helped to destroy its potency. Only in the most rare cases can he free himself with one effort. (See also Iheosophy and Evolution.)
Katean Secret Society : A secret society of the Moluccas. Anyone who wished to become a member was introduced into the Katean house through an aperture in the form of a crocodile's jaws or a cassowary's beak. Having remained there for a few days he was secretly removed to a remote spot. At the end of two months he was permitted to return to his relatives — hitherto unaware of his where- abouts— a member of the Katean Society.
Kathari : An heretical sect who excited the wrath of the clergy in mediaeval times. (See Waldenses.)
Katie King : A spirit. (See Materialisation and Spiritualism.)
Katika Lima : Malay system of Astrology. (See Malays.)
Katika Tujo : Malay system of Astrology. (See Malays.)
Kaiiks, hatched from cock's egg : (See Cock.)
Keingala : The weatherwise mare of Asmund in the saga of Grettir the Strong. Her master believed in her weather prophecies, and, in setting his second son, Grettir, to look after the horses, told him to be guided by Keingala, who would always return to the stable before a storm. As she persisted in remaining on the cold hillside, grazing on the scanty grass till the lad was nearly frozen with cold,lGrettir determined to make her return home regardless " of Jthe
Kelly
243
Kiss
•weather. One morning before turning out the horses he tore off a long strip of her skin from wither to flank. This had the effect of making the mare soon seek her stable ; and the same thing occurring the next day, no storm impending, Asmund himself let out the horses, when he discovered what had been done.
Kelly, Edward : (See Dee.)
Kelpie, The : A water spirit which, in Scotland, is believed to haunt streams and torrents. Kelpies appear to be of a mischievous nature, and were often accused of stopping the water-wheels of mills, and of swelling streams. The Kelpie is occasionally used as a name of terror to frighten unruly children ; and it was believed that he also devoured women.
Kephalonomancy : A method of divination which is practised by making divers signs on the baked head of an ass. It was familiar to the Germans and the Lombards substituted for it the head of a goat. The ancients placed lighted carbon on an ass's head, and pronounced the names of those who were suspected of any crime. If a crackling coincided with the utterance of a name, the latter was taken as being that of the guilty person.
Kephu : a Karen Vampire. (See Vampire.)
Kepler, John — 1571-1630 : A great mathematician and astrologer. He was born at Weil in Wiirtemburg and educated at a monastic school at Maulbrunn and after- wards at the university of Tiibingen, where he studied philosophy, mathematics, theology and astronomy. In 1593 he became professor of mathematics and morals at Gratz in Styria, where he also continued his astrological studies, He had an unhappy home life, and was some- what persecuted for his doctrines. In 1626 were printed the famous Rodolphine tables, which he had prepared along with Tycho de Brahe, the astronomer. He died at Ratisbon. The laws of the courses of the planets, deduced by Kepler from observations made by Tycho, and known as The Three Laws of Kepler, became the foundation of Newton's discoveries, as well as the whole modern theory of the planets. His services in the cause of astronomy have placed him high amongst the distinguished men of science, and in 1808 a monument was erected to his memory at Ratisbon. His most important work is his Astronomia nova, seu Physica Coelestis tradita Commentariis de Motibus Stellae Martis (1609) which is still regarded as a classic by astronomers.
Kerheb : Egyptian Scribes. (See Egypt.)
Kerner, Dr. : (See Spiritualism.)
Kether : The Kabbalistic name for the number one, and meaning " Reason " — the Crown, the equilibrating power. Also a Hebrew occult name for one of the three essentials of God — Reason.
Kevan of the Curling Locks : The lover of Cleena who went off to hunt in the woods, leaving her to be abducted by the fairies.
Key of Solomon the King : A magical treatise of mediaeval origin, of which a number of manuscripts are extant. It is supposed to be the work of King Solomon (q.v.), but is manifestly of comparatively modern origin, and was probably written in the fourteenth or fifteenth century. It is permeated with late Jewish ideas, and its chief inten- tion appears to be the finding of treasure, and the making of such experiments as have for their object the interference with the free will of others. The power of the Divine Name is much in evidence, and the entire work is an absurd combination of pomposity and nonsense.
The Lemegeton, or Leeser Key of Solomon, is much more noteworthy. Its earliest examples date from the seven- teenth century, and it invokes the hierarchies of the abyss by legions and millions. It is divided into four parts, which control the offices of all spirits at the will of the
operator. The first part, Goetia, contains forms of con- juration for seventy-two demons with an account of their powers and offices. The second part, Theurgia Goetia, deals with the spirits of the cardinal points, who are of mixed nature. The third book is called the Pauline Art — the significance of which name is unaccountable. It deals with the angels of the hours of the day and night, and of the signs of the Zodiac. The fourth part is entitled Almadel, which enumerates four other choirs of spirits. The usual homilies regarding purity of life are insisted upon, as is the circumstance that none of the conjurations shall be applied to the injury of another.
Khaib : The Egyptian name for the shadow, which at death was supposed to quit the body to continue a separate exist- ence of its own. It was represented under the form of a sunshade.
Khu : The Egyptian name for one of the immortal parts of man, probably the spirit. The word means " clear " or " luminous " and is symbolised by a flame of fire.
Khwaja Ka ISulay : (See Siberia.)
Kian : In Irish legend, Father of Lugh. His magical cow with her wonderful supply of milk having been stolen by Balor, he revenged himself by making Balor's daughter, Ethlinn, the mother of three sons. Of these two were drowned by Balor, and the third Lugh, escaping by falling into a bay, was wafted back to his father, Kian. Some years later, while fighting in Ulster, Kian fell in with the three sons of Turenn whose house was at enmity with him . To escape their notice, he turned himself into a pig, but they recognised him and he was wounded by one of them. He begged to be restored to his human shape before dying. This being granted, he rejoiced in having outwitted his enemies, as they would now have to pay the blood-fine for a man instead of a pig. The brothers, determined that there should be no blood-stained weapon to publish the deed, stoned Kian and buried his body.
King Robert of Sicily : (English romance of the fourteenth century, author unknown). It has never been printed. It tells how King Robert of Sicily was beguiled by pride into sneering at a priest who read mass. To punish him, an angel was sent down by God, and he, assuming Robert's shape, transformed the King into the likeness of his own fool : he is sent out to lie with the dogs. He was at length allowed to resume his proper shape after a long and igno- minious penance. See poem on the subject by Longfellow.
Kinocetus : A stone said to be good in casting out devils.
Kirk, Robert : (See Scotland.)
Kischuph : In the Kabala, the higher magical influence. It is divided into two branches, an elementary and a spiritual, and includes exorcism. Sometimes Kischuph exhibits a striking resemblance to the witchcraft of mediasval times. Sorcerers were said to change themselves into animals, and ' go long distances in a very short time. They may also induce pain and disease and death in men and animals. Still further allied to witches are the " women who make a contract with the Schedim, and meet them at certain times, dance with them, and visit these spirits who appear to them in the shape of goats. In many countries such women are killed." This form of Kischuph is true sorcery ; the other form, material Kischuph, is rather evil sympathy, consisting of disturbing influences on the natural elements produced by exciting false " rapports " in various sub- stances.
Kiss, Bewitched by means of a : Florence Newton, a notorious witch of the Middle Ages, was on several occasions accused of having bewitched people by means of a kiss. The first was a servant-maid who had refused alms to her. About a Week later the witch kissed her violently, from which time she suffered from fits and was transported from place to place, now being carried mysteriously to the top of the
Klinnrath
244
Lady of Lawers
house, now being placed between two feather beds, and so on. The witch also caused the death of one David Jones, who stood sentinel over her in prison, by kissing his hand, and by the same means brought about the death of the children of three Youghal aldermen.
Klinnrath, Henry : A German alchemist and hierophant of the physical side of the Magnum Opus. He was certainly aware of the greater issues of Hermetic theorems and may be regarded as a follower of Paracelsus. He was born in Saxony about the year 1560. Af the age of 28 he graduated in medicine at the University of Basle. He practised in Hamburg and thereafter in Dresden where he died in poverty and obscurity in 1601, at the age of forty-five. The most remarkable of his works, some of which are still in Manuscript, is the Anphitheatrum Sapienlits JEternm solius veres, Christiano Kabbalisticum divino magicum, &c. It is an unfinished work and appeared after his decease with a preface and conclusion by Erasmus Wohlfahrt. It is a purely mystical and magical treatise. The seven steps leading to the goal of universal knowledge are described in a commentary on the Wisdom of Solomon'; The work has been described as being the voice of ancient chaos, and its curious folding plates are particularly suggestive.
Klinschor, or Klingsor : Lord of the Magic Castle wherein are kept Arthur's mother and other queens. He is nephew to Virgilius of Naples and is overcome by Gawain. He is alluded to in the Parsival of Wolfram von Eschenbach.
Knigge : (See Illuminati.)
Knox, John : (See Scotland.)
Koilon is the name applied to the ether by Mrs. Besant and Mr. C. W. Leadbeater in their book on Gccult Chemistry. (See Ether, Theosophy.)
Kommasso : Evil spirits inhabiting trees. (See Burma.)
Koons' Spirit Room : A log seance-room erected in Dover, Athens Count)', Ohio, by a farmer, Jonathan Koons, in 1852. Koons, an early convert to spiritualism, had been told that he and his eight children would develop medium- istic powers, and the spirit-room was intended to be used for manifestations produced by their mediumship. The room was furnished with the appliances incidental to the spiritualistic seance — table for rappings, tambourines, and other musical instruments ; phosphorus, by means of which the spirits might show themselves. The phenomena witnessed by the sitters, including Charles Partridge, editor of the Spiritual Telegraph, were of a varied nature, but in the main identical with the other manifestations of the same period. The spirits who visited Koon's log building claimed to be a band — one hundred and sixty-five in number — of men who had lived before the time of Adam, and from whom were descended the well-known spirit personalities, John and Katie King.
Kosh : The wicked forest fiend of the Bangala of the Southern Congo.
Koshei : (See Slavs.)
Kostchtchie, or " Deathless " : A Russian goblin of the bogle-boe species. This horrid monster is described as having a death's head and fleshless skeleton, " through which is seen the black blood flowing and the yellow heart beating." He is armed with an iron club, with which he knocks down all who come in his path. In spite of his ugliness, he is said to be a great admirer of young girls and women. He is avaricious, hates old and young alike, and particularly those who are fortunate. His dwelling is said to be amongst the mountains of the Koskels and the Caucasus, where his treasure is concealed.
Kostka, Jean : The pseudonym of Jules Doinel. A late Gnostic and initiate of the 33rd degree, who, converted to the Christian standpoint, revealed his diabolic adventures in the pages of La Verite under the title of " Lucifer Un- masked." He tells of diabolic happenings in the private chapel of a lady, " Madame X." who figures frequently in his pages, and who is thought to be the late Countess of Caithness, of visions of Jansen, and the classical deities. It is certain from the evidence that M. Kostka never came into personal contact with a Satanic or Luciferian cultus, and that his diabolic experiences were merely those of the amateur Satanist.
Kramat : (See Magic.)
Krata Repoa, or Initiation into the ancient Mysteries of the Priests of Egypt, written by C. F. Koppen and J. W. B. Von Hymmen, and published at Berlin in 1782. The term Krata Repoa, said to be of Egyptian origin, possesses no affinity to that language so far as the present writer is aware. The work is divided into seven grades. That of Postophoris (a word used by Apuleius to signify a priest of Isis) corresponds to the apprentice or keeper of the sacred threshold. Secondly comes the degree of Neokaros, in which are to be found many ordeals and temptations. The third degree is the State of Death — of degree of judg- ment and of the passage of the Soul. The candidate Was restored to light in the following degree, the Battle of the Shadows. In the fifth grade a drama of Vengeance was enacted, and the sixth is that of the astronomer before the gate of the gods. In the final grade the whole scheme of initiation was expounded. It has been thought that these degrees corresponded to the actual procedure of a secret societ)', and it may be that in some measure they did, as one of their authors was a prominent member of The African Builders (q.v.), but although there would seem to be elements of real tradition in the work, most of it is probably mere invention.
Krstaca : Dalmatian name for a witch. (See Slavs.)
Kund : (See Scandinavia.)
Kyphi : Among the Egyptians, an aromatic substance, with soothing and healing properties, prepared from sixteen materials according to the prescription of the sacred books.
Labadie, Jean : A fanatic of the seventeenth century, born in 1610 at Bourg, on the Dordogne. He declared himself a second John the Baptist, sent to announce the second coming of the Messiah. He even went so far as to claim some measure of divinity for himself. But to his ambition as a votary he joined a taste for more worldly pleasures, which he indulged under the mask of religion. He died in 1674. Among his works (which were condemned) was Le Veritable Exorcisme, aw I' unique moyen de chasser le diable du monde chretien.
Labartu : (See Babylonia, also Semites.)
Laburum is a kabbalistic sign, embodied in the Great Magical Monogram which is the seventh and most important pantacle of the Enchiridion.
Lacteus : A stone applied to rheumatic eyes.
Lady-bird : A rustic mode of divination was that practised . with the lady-bird or lady-fly. The lady-bird was captured by a maid and bidden to fly " north, south, or east, or west " in the direction in which her lover lived. Which- ever way the insect flew, there dwelt her future husband.
Lady of Lawers : -One of the Breadalbane family, of Scottish origin, and married to Campbell of Lawers. This gentle- woman was believed to be gifted with prophetic powers, and her prophecies are sa'd to be written in a book shaped like a barrel and kept in the charter room of Taymouth Castle : it is named '•■ The Red Book of Balloch." These forecasts all have reference to the house and lands of Bread- albane ; we give the following as an example : — " When
Lam
245
Lancashire Witches
the red cairn on Ben Lawers fell the church would split. In the same year that the cairn, built by the sappers and miners on Ben Lawers, fell, the Disruption in the Church of Scotland took place."
Lam : A magical word in Hindu yoga practice.
Lamb : Dr. Lamb was a noted sorcerer in the time of Charles the First. The famous Richard Baxter, in his Certainty of the World oj Spirits, printed in 1691, has recorded an appropriate instance of the miraculous performance of this man. Meeting two of his acquaintance in the street, and they having intimated a desire to witness some examples of his skill, he invited them home with him. He then con- ducted them into an inner room, where presently, to their no small surprise, thev saw a tree spring up in the middle of the apartment. They had scarcely ceased wondering at this phenomenon, when in a moment there appeared three diminutive men, with little axes in their hands for the purpose of cutting down this tree. The tree was felled ; and the doctor dismissed his guests, fully satisfied of the solidity of his pretensions. That very night, however, a tremendous hurricane arose, causing the house of one of the guests to rock from side to side, with every appearance that the building would come down, and bury him and his wife in the ruins. The wife in great terror asked " Were you not at Dr. Lamb's to-day ? " The husband confessed it was true. " And did you not bring something away from his house ? " The husband owned that, when the little men felled the tree, he had picked up some of the chips, and put them in his pocket. Nothing now remained to be done but to produce the chips, and get rid of them as fast as they could. This ceremony performed, the whirl- wind immediately ceased, and the remainder of the night passed quietly.
Dr. Lamb at length became so odious by his reputation for these infernal practices, that the populace rose upon him in 1640, and tore him to pieces in the streets. Nor did the effects of his ill-fame terminate here. Thirteen years after, a woman, who had been his servant maid, was apprehended on a charge of witchcraft, was tried, and in expiation of her crime was executed at Tyburn.
Lamps, Magic : There dwelt at Paris in the time of St. Louis, a famous Jewish Rabbi called Jachiel, a great manufacturer of prodigies, who was regarded by the Jews as one of their saints, and by the Parisians as a sorcerer. During the night when everyone was asleep, he was wont to work by the light of a magic lamp which cast through his chamber a glow like that of day itself. He never replenished this lamp with oil, nor otherwise attended to it, and folks began to hint that he had acquired it through diabolic agencies. If anyone chanced to knock at his door during the night they noticed that the lamp threw out sparks of light of various colours, but if .they continued to rap the lamp failed and the Rabbi turning from his work touched a large nail in the middle of his table which connected magically with the knocker on the street-door, giving to the person who rapped upon it something of the nature of an electric shock. (See France.)
Lamps of this description were supposed to be known to the Rosicrucians, and it is said that in opening the tomb of a daughter of Cicero several lamps were found burning upon it. It is of course possible that the light from these was luminous or phosphorescent and not living flame. The magic lamp of Aladdin will occur to everyone in this connection ; and romance abounds in such vehicles of light. Lancashire Witches : A story with many pathetic and pitiable features, and one which is eloquent of the ignorance and credulity of the age, is that of the Lancashire Witches. Not very far from Manchester lies Pendelbury Forest, a gloomy though romantic and picturesque spot. At the time when
it was inhabited by the witches — that is to say, about the beginning of the 17th century — it was held in such terror by law-abiding folks that they scarcely dared to approach it. They imagined it to be the haunt of witches and demons, the scene of all sorts of frightful orgies and diaboli- cal rites. So that when Roger Nowel, a country magistrate, hit upon the plan of routing the witches out of their den, and thus ridding the district of their malevolent influence, he fancied he would be doing a public-spirited and laudable action. He promptly began by seizing Elizabeth Derr.dike and Ann Chattox, two women of eighty years of age, one of them blind, and the other threatened with blindness, both of them living in squalor and abject poverty. Demdike's daughter, Elizabeth Device, and her grandchildren, James and Alison Device, were included in the accusation, and Ann Redferne, daughter oLChattox was apprehended with her mother. Others were seized in quick succession — Jane Bulcock and her son John, Alice Nutter, Catherine Hewitt, and Isabel Roby. All of them were induced — by what means it were better not to enquire too closely — to make a more or less detailed confession of their communication with the Devil. When this had been extorted from them, they were sent to prison in Lancaster Castle, some fifty miles away, there to await trial for their misdeeds.
They had not lain in prison very long when the authorities were informed-that about twenty witches had assembled on Good Friday, at Malkin's Tower, the home of Elizabeth Device, in order to compass the death of one Covel, to blow up the castle in which their companions were confined, and rescue the prisoners, and also to kill a man called Lister, which last purpose they accomplished by means of diabolical agency. In the summer assizes of 1612 the prisoners were tried for witchcraft, and were all found guilty. The woman Demdike had died in prison, and thus escaped a more ignominious death at the gallows. The principal witnesses who appeared against Elizabeth Device were her grandchildren, James and Jennet Device. Directly the latter entered the witness-box her grandmother set up a terrible yelling punctuated by bitter execrations. The child, who was only nine years of age, begged that the prisoner might be removed as she could not otherwise proceed with her evidence. Her request was granted, and she and her brother swore that the Devil had visited their grandmother in the shape of a black dog, and asked what were her wishes. She had intimated that she desired the death of one John Robinson, whereupon the fiend told her to make a clay image of Robinson and gradually crumble it to pieces, saying that as she did so the man's fife would decay and finally perish. On such evidence ten persons were hanged, including the aged Ann Chattox.
It is shocking to reflect that, at a period when literature and learning were at their height, such cruelty could be tolerated, not only by the vulgar and uneducated, but by the learned judges who pronounced the sentence. The women were old and ignorant and probably weak-minded. No doubt they began in time to invest themselves with those powers, which their neighbours credited to them, and to believe themselves fit objects for the awe and terror of the people. It is even possible that they may have seen some sort of visions, or hallucinations, which they persuaded themselves were evil spirits attending on them Thus their own cunning and ignorance may have hastened their downfall.
Twenty-two years later a similar outrage, on the same spot, was narrowly avoided, by the shrewdness of the judge who tried the case. A certain misguided man, by name Edmund Robinson, thought to profit by the general belief in witchcraft. To this end he taught his young son, a boy of eleven to say that one day he encountered in the fields two dogs, with which he tried to catch a hare. But the
Lapis
246
Lapland
animals would not obey his bidding, and at length he tied them to a post and whipped them, when they immediately turned into a witch and her imp. This monstrous story gained such credence that when Robinson declared that his son possessed a sort of second-sight, which enabled him to distinguish a witch at a glance, no one thought of denying his statement. Accordingly, he took the boy to the neigh- bouring churches, set him on a bench, and bade him point out the witches. No less than seventeen persons were thus accused and might have been hanged had not the judge's suspicions been aroused by the story, for the jury did not hesitate to convict them. However, the doubts of the worthy judge gained a respite for the prisoners, some of whom were sent to London for examination by the King's physician and by the king himself. The bo)''s story was in- vestigated and found to be merely a tissue of lies, as, indeed, the child himself confessed it to be. (See Whitaker, The History of Whalley, p. 215.)
Lapis Exilis : A name applied to the Graal itself. It is this stone which causes the phoenix to renew her youth. Lapis Exilis, according to Wolfram von Eschenbach, was synony- mous with the Holy Grail.
Lapis Judaicus : Also identified with the Graal and the Talismanic stone of inexhaustible feeding power. It is sometimes called Theolithos, and seems but another name for the Lapis Exilis (q.v.) It has been confounded with the Phoenix stone. Another legend clings to it : it is said to have fallen from the crown of Lucifer, as he was banished from heaven, and remains in the keeping of the angels of the air.
Lapland : The Laplanders have a reputation for magical practice which is almost proverbial throughout Europe, and certainly so among the peoples of the Scandinavian Peninsula. Indeed the Finns still credit them with extra- ordinary power in sorcery and divination. Many Scan- dinavian scions of nobility were in ancient times sent to Lapland to obtain a magical reputation, and Eric the son of Harold Haarfager found Gunhild, daughter of Asur Tote, sojourning among the Lapps in A.D. 922 for that purpose. English literature abounds with reference to Lapland witches. But Sorcery in Lapland was a preserve of the male shamans or magicians. Like the Celtic witches the Lapps were addicted to the selling of wind or tempests in knotted ropes.
Scheffer in his Lapponia (1674) writing of Lapp magic says : — " The melancholic constitution of the Laplanders, renders them subject to frightful apparitions and dreams, which they look upon as infallible presages made to them by the Genius of what is to befall them. Thus they are frequently seen lying upon the ground asleep, some singing with a full voice, others howling and making a hideous noise not unlike wolves.
" Their superstitions may be imputed partly to their living in solitudes, forests, and among the wild beasts partly to their solitary way of dwelling separately from the society of others, except who belong to their own families sometimes several leagues distance. Hereafter it may be added, that their daily exercise is hunting, it being observed that this kind of life is apt to draw people into various superstitions, and at last to a correspondence with spirits. For those who lead a solitary life being frequently destitute of human aid, have ofttimes recourse to forbidden means, in hopes to find that aid and help among the spirits, which they cannot find among men ; and what encourages them in it is impunity, these things being committed by them, without as much as the fear of any witnesses ; wh'di moved Mr. Rheen to allege, among sundry reasons which he gives for the continuance of the impious superstitions of the Laplanders, this for one : because they live among inaccess- ible mountains, and at a great distance from the conversa-
tion of other men. Another reason is the good opinion they constantly entertain of their ancestors, whom they cannot imagine to have been so stupid as not to understand what God they ought to worship, wherefore they judge they should be wanting in their reverence due to them, if, by receding from their institutions, they should reprove them of impiety and ignorance.
" The parents are the masters, who instruct their own sons in the magical art. ' Those,' says Tornaeus, ' who have attained to this magical art by instructions receive it either from their parents, or from somebody else, and that by degrees which they put in practice as often as an oppor- tunity offers. Thus they accomplish themselves in this art, especially if their genius leads them to it. For they don't look upon every one as a fit scholar ; nay, some are accounted quite incapable of it, notwithstanding they have been sufficiently instructed, as I have been informed by very credible people.' And Joh. Tornaeus confirms it by these words : "As the Laplanders are naturally of different inclinations, so are they not equally capable of attaining to this art.' And in another passage, they bequeath the demons as part of their inheritance, which is the reason that one family excels the other in this magical art. From whence it is evident, that certain whole families have their own demons, not only differing from the familiar spirits of others, but also quite contrary and opposite to them. Besides this, not only whole families, but also particular persons, have sometimes one, sometimes more spirits belonging to them, to secure them against the designs of other demons, or else to hurt others. Glaus Petri Niurenius speaks to this effect, when he says — ' They are attended by a certain number of spirits, some by three, others by two, or at least by one. The last is intended for their security, the other to hurt others. The first commands all the rest. Some of those they acquire with a great deal of pains and prayers, some without much trouble, being their attendants from their infancy.' Joh. Tornaeus gives us a very large account of it. ' There are some,' says he, ' who naturally are magicians ; an abominable thing indeed. For those who the devil knows will prove very serviceable to him in th's art, he seizes on in their very infancy with certain distemper, when they are haunted with apparitions and visions, by which they are, in proportion of their age, instructed in the rudiments of this art. Those who are a second time taken with this distemper, have more appar- itions coming before them than in the first, by which they receive much more insight into it than before. But if they are seized a third time with this disease, which then proves very dangerous, and often not without the hazard of their lives, then it is they see all the apparitions the devil is able to contrive, to accomplish them in the magical art. Those are arrived to such a degree of perfection, that without the help of the drum (see infra), they can foretell things to come a great while before ; and are so strongly possessed by the devil, that they foresee things even against their will. Thus, not long ago, a certain Laplander, who is still alive, did voluntarily deliver his drum to me, which I had often desired of him before ; notwithstanding all this, he told me in a very melancholy posture, that though he had put away his drum, nor intended to have any other hereafter, yet he could foresee everything without it, as he had done before. As an instance of it, he told me truly all the particular accidents that had happened to me in my journey into Lapland, making at the same time heavy complaints, that he did not know what use to make of his eyes, those things being presented to his sight much against his will.'
" Lundius observes, that some of the Laplanders are seized upon by a demon, when they are arrived to a middle age, in the following manner : — Whilst they are busie in the woods, the spirit appears to them, where they discourse
Lapland
247
Lapland
concerning the conditions, upon which the demon offers them his assistance, which done, he teaches them a certain song, which they are obliged to keep in constant remem- brance. They must return the next day to the same place, where the same spirit appears to them again, and repeats the former song, in case he takes a fancy to the person ; if not, he does not appear at all. These spirits jmake their appearances under different shapes, some like fishes, some like birds, others like a serpent or dragon, ■others in the shape of a pigmee, about a yard high ; being attended by three, four, or five other pigmees of the same bigness, sometimes by more, but never exceeding nine. No sooner are they seized by the Genius, but they appear in the most surprising posture, like madmen, before be- reaved of the use of reason. This continues for six months ; during which time they don't suffer any of their kindred to come near them, not so much as their own wives and children. They spend most of this time in the woods and •other solitary places, being very melancholy and thought- ful scarce taking any food, which makes them extremely weak. It you ask their children, where and how their ■parents sustain themselves, they will tell you, that they receive their sustenance from their Genii. The same author .gives us a remarkable instance of this kind in a young Laplander called Olaus, being then a scholar in the school of Liksala, of about eighteen years of age. This young fellow fell mad on a sudden, making most dreadful postures and ■outcries, that he was in hell, and his spirit tormented beyond what could be expressed. " If he took a book in hand, so soon as he met with the name of Jesus, he threw the book upon the ground in great fury, which after some time being passed over, they used to ask him whether he had seen any vision during this ecstacy ? He answered that abundance of things had appeared to him, and that a mad dog being tied to his foot, followed him wherever he stirred. In his lucid intervals he would tell them, that the first beginning of it happened to him one day, as he was going out of the eyes and touching his ears, a certain person appeared to him all naked. The next day he was seized with a most terrible headache, so that he made most lamentable outcries, and broke everything that came under his hands. This un- fortunate person's face was as black as coal, and he used to say, that the devil most commonly appeared to him in the habit of a minister, in a long cloak ; during his fits he would say that he was surrounded by nine or ten fellows of a low stature, who did use him very barbarously, though at the same time the standers-by did not perceive the least thing like it. He would often climb to the top of the highest fir trees, with as much swiftness as a squirrel, and leap down again to the ground, without receiving the least hurt. He .always loved solitude, flying the conversation of other men. He would run as swift as a horse, it being impossible for anybody to overtake him. He used to talk amongst the woods to himself no otherwise than if several persons had been in his company.
" I am apt to believe, that those spirts were not altogether unknown to the ancients, and that they are the same which were called by Tertullian Paredri, and are mentioned by .Monsieur Valois, in his Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius.
" Whenever a Laplander has occasion for his familiar spirit, he calls to him, and makes him come by only singing the song he taught him at their first interview ; by which means he has him at his service as often as he pleases. And because they know them obsequious and serviceable, they -call them Sveie, which signifies as much in their tongue, as the companions of their labour, or their helpmates. Lun- •dius has made another observation, very well worth taking notice of, viz. : — -That those spirits or demons never appear io the women, or enter into their service, of which I don't
pretend to allege~the true cause, unless one mightTsay, that perhaps they do it out of pride, or a natural aversion they have to the female sex, subject to so many infirmities."
For the purposes of augury or divination the Lapps enployed a magic drum, which, indeed, was in use among several Arctic peoples. Writing in 1827, De Capell Erooke states that the ceremonies connected with this instrument had almost quite disappeared at that date. The en- croachments of Lutheranism had been long threatening the existence of the native shamanism. In 1671 the Lapp drum was formally banned by Swedish law, and several magicians were apprehended and their instruments burnt. But before that date the religion which the drum represented was in full vigour. The Lapps called their drum Kannus (Regnard, 1681), also Kaunus, Kabdas, Kabdes Gabdas, and Keure (Von Duben, 1873.) its Scandinavian designations being troll-trumma, or Rune-bomme, " magic or runic drum," otherwise Spa-trumma, " fortune-telling drum." J. A. Friis has shown that the sampo of the Finnish Kalevala is the same instrument. According to Von Diiben, the best pictures and explanations of the drum are to be found in Friis's Lappisk Mythologi (Christiania, 1871), pp. 30-47, but there are good descriptions in Von Diiben's own work (On Lapland och Lappame, Stockholm, 1873), as also in the books of Scheffer, Leem, Jessen, and others. The appear- ance of the Lapp drum is thus described by Regnard in 1681 : — This instrument is made of a single piece of wood, hollowed in its thickest part in an oval form, the under part of which is convex, in which they make two apertures long enough to suffer the fingers to pass through, for the purpose of holding it more firmly. The upper part is covered with the skin of the reindeer, on which they paint in red a number of figures, and from whence several brass rings are seen hanging, and some pieces of the bone of the reindeer." A wooden hammer, or, as among the Samoyeds (1614), a hare's foot was used as a drum-stick in the course of the incantation. An arpa or divining-rod was placed on a definite spot showing from its position after sounding the drum what magic inference might be drawn. By means of the drum, the priest could be placed en rapport with the spirit world, and was thus enabled to divine the future ; to ascertain synchronous events occurring at remote distances ; to forecast the measure of success attending the day's hunting ; to heal the sick ; or to inflict people with disease and cause death. Although obsolete in Lapland these rites are still performed among the Samoyeds and other race's of Arctic Asia and America. It is interesting to note how exactly the procedure among the Vaigatz Samoyeds in 1556 (Pinkerton's Voyages, London, 1808, 1, 63) tallies with that of the Sakhalin Ainos in 1883 (J. M. Dixon in Trans, Asiatic Soc. of Japan, Yokohama, 1883, 47). The same practices can be traced eastward through Arctic America, and the drum is used in the same fashion by the Eskimo shaman priests in Greenland (Henry Rink's Tales, etc., 1875, 60-61.) The shape of the drum varies a little according to locality. The form of the Eskimo drum is that of a tambourine.
" Their most valuable instrument of enchantment," says Tornaeus, " is this sorcerer's kettle-drum, which they call Kannas or Quobdas. They cut it in one entire piece out of a thick tree stem, the fibres of which run upwards in the same direction as the course of the sun. The drum is covered with the skin of an animal ; and in the bottom holes are cut by which it may be held. Upon the skins are many figures painted, often Christ and the Apostles, with the heathen gods, Thor, Noorjunkar, and others jumbled together ; the picture of the sun, shapes of animals, lands and waters, cities and roads, in short, all kinds of drawings according to their various uses. Upon the drum there is placed an indicator, which they call Arpa, which consists of
Larvae
218
Laurel
a bundle of metallic rings. The drumstick is, generally, a reindeer's horn. This drum they preserve with the most vigilant care, and guard it especially from the touch of a woman. When they will make known what is taking place at a distance, — as to how the chase shall succeed, how business will answer, what result a sickness will have, what is necessary for the cure of it, and the like, they kneel down, and the sorcerer beats the drum ; at first with light strokes, but as he proceeds, with ever louder stronger ones, round the index, either till this has moved in a direction or to a figure which he regards as the answer which he has sought, or till he himself falls into ecstasy, when he generally lays the kettle-dium on his head. Then he sings with a loud voice a song which they call Jogke, and the men and women who stand round sing songs, which they call Daura, in which the name of the place whence they desire information frequently occurs. The sorcerer lies in the ecstatic state for some time — frequently for many hours, apparently dead, with rigid features ; sometimes with perspiration bursting out upon him. In the meantime the bystanders continue their incantations, which have for their object that the sleeper shall not lose any part of his vision from memory ; at the same time they guard him carefully that nothing living may touch him — not even a fly. When he again awakes to consciousness, he relates his vision, answers the questions put to him, and gives unmistakable evidence of having seen distant and unknown things. The inquiry of the oracle does not always take place so solemnly and completely. In everyday matters as regards the chase, etc., the Lapp consults his drum without falling into the somnambulic crisis. On the other hand, a more highly developed state of prophet vision may take place without this instrument, as has already been stated. Claudi relates, that at Bergen, in Norway, the clerk of a German merchant demanded of a Norwegian Finn-Laplander what his master was doing in Germany. The Finn promised to give him the intelligence. He began then to cry out like a drunken man, and to run round in a circle, till he fell, as one dead, to the earth. After a while he woke again, and gave the answer, which time showed to be correct. Finally, that many, while wholly awake, free from convulsions and a state of unconsciousness, are able to become clairvoyant, is placed beyond all doubt by the account of Tornaeus.
" The use which they make of their power of clairvo}7- ance, and their magic arts, is, for the most part, good and innocent ; that of curing sick men and animals ; inquiring into far-off and future things, which in the confined sphere of their existence is important to them. There are instances however, in which the magic art is turned to the injury of others."
In addition to the works quoted, see Jessen's Norske Finners og Lappers Hedenske Religion (1765) ; Sioborg's Tympanum Schamanico-lapponicum (1808) ; Petitot's Les Grands Esquimaux (1887), and Abercromby's Pre- and Proto-historic Finns (1898.)
Larvae : {See Magic.)
Lascaris : (Alchemist of the Eighteenth Century.) It is impossible to determine the date at which this mysterious personage was born, or to say, exactly, whence he came and where he chiefly lived. He is commonly supposed to have been active about the beginning of the eighteenth century, while Germany is held to have been the principal scene of his activities ; but everything recorded concerning him reads like a romance, and suggests the middle ages rather than the day before yesterday. Sometimes he assured people that he was of Oriental origin, sometimes he maintained that his native land was the Ionian Isles, and that he was a scion of the Greek royal house of Lascaris ; while on other occasions he declared that he was an
archimandrite of a convent in the Island of Mytilene, and that his obj ect in coming to Europe was to solicit alms for the ransom of Christian prisoners in the East. Such was his tale when, about 1700, he commenced wandering in Ger- many, and, while sojourning at Berlin, he happened to fall ill and sent for medical aid. This appeared shortly in the shape of a young apothecary, Johann Friedrich Botticher by name, who chanced to be deeply interested in alchemy, so a fiiendship sprang up between physician and patient and ere Lascaris left the Prussian capital he gave Botticher a packet of transmuting powder, at the same time instruct- ing him how to use it successfully, yet refraining from telling him how to manufacture the powder itself. Nothing daunted, Botticher set to work speedily, concocted con- siderable quantities of gold and silver, grew rich, and was raised to the peerage ; while simultaneously he began to find his society, and more especially his services as a scientist, courted by kings and nobles. Meanwhile, however, his supply of the precious powder had run short, and being unable to make more he found his reputation waning apace ; while worse still, he had spent his newly-acquired wealth speedily, and now he found himself reduced to penury. Ultimately he was incarcerated, but during his period of durance vile he set himself to the manufacture of porcelain, and by the sale of this he eventually restored his fallen fortunes.
We presume naturally that it was gratitude to his physi- cian which inspired the crafty alchemist to give Botticher the powder, but why did Lascaris make an analogous present at a later date ? The recipient on this occasion being one Schmolz de Dierbach, a lieutenant-colonel in the Polish Army. He, like the German apothecary, succeeded in making a quantity of gold, and, though we hear no more about him after this transmutation, we learn that a certain Baron de Creux was likewise favoured by Lascaris, the Baron's experiments proving just as successful as those of the others aforesaid. Nor were these the only people on whom our alchemist bestowed his indulgence, for one Domenico Manuel, the son of a Neapolitan mason, was likewise given a packet of transmutatory powder, and, armed thus, he wandered through Spain, Belgium, and Austria, performing operations before princes and noblemen, and reaping wealth accordingly. Pride was the inevitable result of this, and though there is no reason to suppose that any patent of nobility was ever conferred on Domenico, we find him styling himself now Comte Gautano, now Comte di Ruggiero ; while in one town he maintained that he was a Prussian major-general, and elsewhere he declared that he was field-marshal of the Bavarian forces. Going to Berlin in the course of his perambulations, he offered to make gold in the presence of the king ; but alas ! his operation proved utterly futile, and he was hanged as a charlatan in consequence. This was in 1709, and in the same year, according to tradition, Lascaris himself performed some successful transmutations before a German politician named Liebknech, a citizen of Wurtembourg. Nothing further is heard of the mysterious Greek alchemist, however, so it may be assumed that he died soon after these events. His was a curious career indeed : his generosity having- scarcely a parallel in the whole history of hermetic philoso- phy. ,
Latent Impressions : (See Telepathy.)
Launay, Jean : A celebrated doctor of the Sorbonne, born in 1603 at Valderic, in the diocese of Contanas. He has left a pedantic dissertation On the Vision of St. Simon Stock, which he could not understand, being something of a Jansenist, It was published in Paris, in 1653 and 1663.
Laurel : A tree which Apuleius classes among the plants which preserve men from the influence of evil spirits. It. was also believed to give protection from lightning.
Laurin
249
Learmaa
Laurin or Der Kleine Rosengarten : A Tyrolese romance of the late thirteenth century. Laurin, a dwarf, possesses a magic rose-garden into which no one may enter without the loss of a hand or a foot. Dietrich and his follower Witege, enter it, and the latter rides through the rose bushes. Laurin, the dwarf, appears, on horseback and dis- mounts Witege. He is challenged by Dietrich and, assum- ing his cloak of invisibility, wounds him. Dietrich now persuades him to a wrestling match and wrenches off the dwarf's belt which gives him super-human strength. Thus he overthrows Laurin. Laurin then invites Dietrich and his followers to his mountain home, prepares them a banquet, makes them- tipsy, and throws them all into a
" In sheer intellectual strength Law is fully abreast of the very foremost of his illustrious contemporaries, while in that fertilising touch which is the true test of genius, Law stands simply alone." Numerous other encomiums no less enthusiastic than this have been offered to the mystic, and it is noteworthy that he has engaged the interest of many great writers. Sir Leslie Stephen, for example, deals with him in his History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, and again in his pleasant Studies of a Biographer ; while the mystic figures also in the brilliant pages of W. E. H. Lecky, and in Gibbon's Autobiography he is hailed as " a worthy and pious man, who believed all that he professed, and practised all that he enjoined.''
dungeon. They are released by Kiinhild, a mortal woman, Laya Yoga : That practice of the yogi by which he listens
who restores their weapons. They take Laurin prisoner to sounds which can be heard within his own body when
and carry him to Bern where he becomes a Christian convert the ears are closed. These sounds are termed " The Nada,"
and receives Kiinhild in marriage. and are of all kinds, from the roar of the ocean to the
Law, William : English Mystic and Theologian (1686-1761.) humming of bees.
William Law was born at Kingscliffe, Northamptonshire, Lazare, Denys : A prince of Serbia who lived in the year of
in the year 1&86. His father followed the humble calling of the Hegira, 788. He was author of a work entitled Dreams,
a grocer, but it is manifest that he was in tolerably affluent published in 1686. He himself claimed to have had noc-
circumstances nevertheless, and ambitious besides, for in turnal visions.
1705 William was sent to Cambridge University. Entering Le Normand, Marie : Known as " The Sybil of the Faubourg
Emmanuel College, he became a fellow thereof in 1711, but Saint Germain," was born at Alen?on in 1772 and died at
on the accession of George I. he felt himself unable to sub- scribe the oath of allegiance, the inevitable consequence being that he forfeited his fellowship. In 1727 he went to Putney, having acquired there the post of tutor to the father of Edmund Gibbon, the historian of the Roman Empire in decline, and he acted in this capacity for ten years, winning universal esteem the while for his piety and his theological erudition. In 1737, on the death of his employer, Law retired to his native village of Kingscliffe, and it would seem that thenceforth he was chiefly supported by the purses of some of his devotees, notably Miss Hester Gibbon, sister of his guardian pupil, and a widow named Mrs. Hutcheson. These two ladies had a united income of • fully ^3000 a year, so Law must have been comfortable indeed, yet wealth and luxury did not tend to corrupt his piety, and it is recorded that he was wont to get up every morning at five, and spend several hours before breakfast in prayer and meditations. At a considerably earlier stage in his career he had begun publishing theses on mysticism, and on religion in general ; and now, being blessed with abundance of leisure, and having acquired fresh inspiration from reading the works of Jacob Bo.-hme, he produced year after year a considerable mass of writing. Thus his life-passed away placidly, and he died in 1761.
Law's works amount in all to some twenty volumes. His debut as a writer was made in 1717, with an examination of certain tenets lately promulgated from the pulpit by the Bishop of Bangor ; and this was followed soon afterwards by a number of analogous writings, while in 1726 he em- ployed his pen to attack the theatre, bringing out a book entitled The Absolute Uulawfulness of the Stage Entertain- ment fully Demonstrated. In the same year he issued A Practical Treatise upon Christian Perfection, and this was followed shortly by A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, adapted to the State and Condition of all Orders of Christians. This last is the best-known of his works, but others which it behoves to cite are The Grounds and Reason of Christian Regeneration (1739), The Spirit of Prayer (1749), The Way to Divine Knowledge (1752), The Spirit of Love (1752), and Of Justification by Faith and Works (1760). Most of the foregoing, but especially the Serious Call, have been reprinted again and again ; while in 1762 a collected
Paris in 1843. She was one of the most famous occultists and diviners of her day ; but it might justly be said that her art was much more the product of sound judgment than of any supernatural gift. She predicted their futures^ to Marat, Robespierre, and St. Just, but we hear no more of her under the Directory. When Josephine Beauharnais came into prominence as the intended wife of Napoleon, Mile. Le Normand was received at all those houses and salons where the future empress had any influence. Jose- phine was extremely credulous, and used to read her own fortunes to herself on the cards ; but when she found that Mile. Le Normand was an adept at this art, she often had her in attendance to assist her in it. Even Napoleon himself who was not without his own superstitions, had his horoscope read by her. She soon set up her own salon in Paris where she read people's fortunes by means of the cards. It is not stated whether these cards were of the nature of Tarot cards, but it is more than likely that they were ; but we know that she occasionally divined the fortunes of others through playing the games qf piquet, sept, and other card games. She did not hide her methods from others, but the Parisian society of her day appears to- have thought that her power of divination lay not in the cards she manipulated but in her personality. It has been stated by Migne that she did use the Tarot, but as he calls them " German cards," one cannot attach much importance to his statement. After the fall of the Emperor" she was the rage amongst the Russian,. German and English officers in Paris, and even tha Emperor Alexander and other potentates consulted her. Shortly after this she went to Brussels, where she read the fortune of the Prince of Orange, but as she tried to cheat the customs she soon found herself the occupant of a Belgian prison. By the year 1830 she had become quite forgotten, and when the newspapers announced her death on June 25th, 1843, the majority of people failed to remember her name. There is very little doubt that she was a harmless charlatan, though several contemporary historians appear to consider that she possessed mischievous tendencies ; but the air of omniscience and mystery with which she surrounded herself was so absurd that by the majority of people she was looked upon, probably with justice, as a mere impostor.
edition of Law's works was published, and in 1893 there Leannan Sith : Gaelic words meaning "' fairy sweetheart ' appeared a sort of anthology, made up of extracts from the who may be of either sex. Mortals are advised to have ■writer, chosen by Dr. Alexander Whyte. In his preface the nothing to do with such beings, as no good ever comes of editor speaks of Law's " golden books," while he adds that the connection ; so long as the fairy lover is pleased with
iLebran
250
Lewis
his or her mortal, all goes well, but when offended, life may be the forfeit.
Lebrun, Charles : A celebrated painter, born at Paris in 1619, died in 1690. He wrote a Traite sur la physionomie humaine comparie avec celle des aminaux.
lebrun, Pierre : An orator, born at Brignolles in 1661, died in 1729. He has left two works, namely, Leitres qui decouvrent I'illusion des philosophes sur la baguette, et qui ditruisent leurs systemes (1693), and Histoire critique des pratiques super stitieuses qui ont seduit les peuples et em- barrasse les savants (1702).
Ledivi : (See Assassins.)
Leg Cake : The name given in the Highlands of Scotland to a cake given to a herd when he came with the news that a mare had foaled, or to a dairy-maid when she brought word that a cow had calved.
Legions of Demons : (See Demonology.)
Lehman, Mr., of Copenhagen : (See Telepathy.)
Leicester, Earl of : (See Dee.)
Leippya, or soul. (See Burma.)
Lemegeton : (See Key of Solomon.)
Leo, Pope : (See Enchiridion.)
Lescoriere, Marie : A witch of the sixteenth century, arrested at the age of ninety years. On being examined she declared that she was no longer a witch ; that she prayed daily ; and that she had not visited the Sabbath for forty years. Questioned on the subject of the Sabbath, she confessed that she had seen the devil, and that he had visited her in the shape of a dog or a cat. On one occasion, she said, she had killed a neighbour by prajdng to the devil.
Leshy : (See Slavs.)
Lesser Key of Solomon : (See Key of Solomon.)
Levi, Eliphas : Alphonse Louis Constant, better known by his pen-name of Eliphas Levi, was a French occultist of the nineteenth century, who has been called " the last of the magi." He was born about 1810, the son of a shoemaker, and through the good offices of the parish priest was educated for the church at St. Sulpice. In due course he became a deacon, taking a vow of celibacy. Shortly after this he was expelled from St. Sulpice for teaching doctrines -contrary to those of the Church. How he lived during the ensuing years is not known, but about 1839 under the influence of a political and socialistic prophet named Ganneau, he wrote a pamphlet entitled The Gospel of Liberty, for which he received six months imprisonment. In Paris, notwithstanding his vow of celibacy, he married 2. beautiful girl of sixteen, who afterwards had the marriage .annulled. It was probably not until Madame Constant had left him that he studied the occult sciences. At all ■events his writings previous to this show little trace of occult influence. In 1855 he published his Doctrine of Transcendental Magic, followed in 1856 by the Ritual of Transcendental Magic ; in i860 was issued his History of Magic ; in 1861 The Key of the Grand Mysteries ; Fables and Symbols in 1864 ; Le Sorcier de Mendon and La Science des Esprits in 1865. Most of his works have been trans- lated by Mr. A. E. Waite. He died in 1875.
Levi's knowledge of the occult sciences was much more imaginative than circumstantial, and in perusing his works the reader requires to be on his guard against the adoption of hasty generalisations and hypotheses.
Leviathan : (See Devil.)
Levitation : A term in use among spiritualists to denote the raising in the air of the human body or other objects without visible means, and presumably through the agency of disembodied spirits. Thus the levitation of tables and other more or less weighty objects is a common feat among " physical " mediums, whether or not a supernatural •explanation be required. The witches of olden times, too, -were popularly supposed to make use of some occult mode
of locomotion in their nocturnal travels, being transported through the air by the arts of their master, the Devil. And the poltergeist was also thought to suspend in the air, without visible means of support, the agent through whom he manifested himself. As a spiritualistic phenomenon levitation of the human body became known at an early stage of the movement, being recorded in connection with the medium Gordon so early as 1851. But the most im- portant of levitated mediums was D. D. Home, and many accounts of his feats in this direction are given by witnesses who were themselves convinced of their genuineness. It may be noted, however, that levitations usually occurred in a darkened seance-room, when the only indication of any untoward happening was furnished by the medium's own exclamations, by the fact that his voice seemed to come from high in the air, and sometimes by his boots scraping the back of a chair or the hand of one of the sitters. The Rev. Stainton Moses, - who also was levitated on several occasions, seems to have held his seances in darkness also, or at most by the light of the fire. Mrs. Guppy (nee Nicholls) was before her marriage several times levitated, notwithstanding the fact that she was extremely stout, and a curious story concerning a later levitation is told in a letter in the Echo of June 8th, 1871, for whose (anonymous) author's trustworthiness the editor vouches. About that time the writer attended a circle with Messrs. Heme and Williams as mediums, the spirits present being the famous John and Katie King. One of the sitters jokingly expressed a wish that Mrs. Guppy (then in her home some three miles distant) might be brought to the seance-room, and to this Katie King was heard to assent. While the company were laughing at the absurdity of the idea, there was a loud bump, followed by shrieks and exclamations. A match was struck, and there in the centre of the table stood Mrs. Guppy, an account-book in one hand, a pen in the other, and apparently in a state of trance. Less than three minutes elapsed between the expression of the wish and the appear- ance of Mrs. Guppy. The writer adds : " The possibility of her being concealed in the room is as absurd as the idea of her acting in collusion with the media."
Pseudo-historical instances of levitation may be found in abundance, especially among the early saints. St. Dun- stan, archbishop of Canterbury, was observed to rise from the ground shortly before his death in 988. St. Bernard Ptolomei, St. Philip Benitas, St. Albert of Sicily, and St. Dominic, founder of the Dominican order, were all seen to be levitated while engaged in their devotions. An ecstatic nun " rose from the ground with so much impetu- osity, that five or six of the sisters could hardly hold her down." It is related by his biographers that Savonarola, shortly before he perished at the stake, remained suspended at a considerable height above the floor of his dungeon, absorbed in prayer. And such instances might easily be multiplied.
Leviticon : A gospel adopted by the French Templars, and alleged by them to have been discovered in the Temple at Paris, along with other objects. It was supposed to have been composed in the fifteenth century by a Greek monk, Nicephorus, who sought to combine Moslem tenets with' Christianity.
Lewis, Matthew Gregory : Commonly known as " Monk " Lewls,English Author (1775-1818). Matthew Gregory Lewis was born in London in 1775. His father was Matthew Lewis, deputy secretary of war, and proprietor ' of several valuable estates in Jamaica ; while his mother was Anna Maria Sewell, a lady of cultured tastes, devoted to music and various other arts. The future author showed precocity while yet a child, and on reaching boyhood he was sent to Westminster School, but while he was there an ugly cloud rose to dim his horizon, his parents quarrelling and agreeing
Libellus
251
Llthcmancy
to separate. Matthew contrived to remain friendly with both his father and mother, and in 1771 he visited Paris, while about the same time he made his first literary efforts, and in 1792 he went to Weimar in Germany where he made the acquaintance of Goethe, and also learnt German thoroughly. Two years later he was appointed attache to the British Embassy at the Hague, and while staying there he wrote his mystical story, Ambrosio, or the Monk, which earned him his now familiar sobriquet of " Monk Lewis ; " while in 1796 he entered Parliament as member for Hindon, in Wiltshire, and during the next few years he necessarily resided chiefly in London, or near it, becoming friendly the while with most of the notable people of the day. Meantime his interest in the occult had been developing apace, and in 1798 there was staged at Drury Lane a play of his, Castle Spectre, in which ghosts and the like play a prominent part, and which won great popularity among people interested in things of that nature ; while in 1788 lie issued his Tales of Terror, and in 1801 a volume entitled Tales of Wonder, this being virtually an anthology of popular occult verses, some of which were supplied by Sir Walter Scott.
In 1812 Lewis's father died, and the author accordingly found himself a very rich man. His conscience was troubled, nevertheless, by the fact that his wealth was derived from slave labour, and so, in 1815, he sailed to Jamaica, intent on making arrangements for the generous treatment of the negroes on his estates. Returning to England in 181 6, he went soon afterwards to Geneva, where he met Byron and Shelley, while in 1818 he paid a last visit to the West Indies, and died at sea while re- turning home.
Libellus Merlini : (Little Book of Merlin.) A Latin tract on the subject of the prophecies of Merlin written by Geoffrey of Monmouth about 1135. Geoffrey prefaces his account of the prophecies with one concerning the deeds of a super- natural youth named Ambrosius whom he deliberately confounded with Merlin. Vortigern, King of the Britons, asks Ambrose Merlin the meaning of a vision in which appear two dragons red and white in combat. Merlin replies that the Red Dragon signifies the British race which would be conquered by the Saxon, represented by the White Dragon. A long prophetic rhapsody follows, relating chiefly to the Saxon wars, and with this the work, as given in the Seventh Book of Geoffrey's Historia Regum Brit- anniae, concludes. It was, however, known in Iceland before 1218 in a form independent of the Historia. (H. C. Leach, Modem Philology, viii., pp. 607 et seq.) This tract must not be confounded with the Vita Merlini (1145 or 1 14 8) generally attributed to Geoffrey.
Licking, a Charm : The following was believed to be a remedy for enchantment : to lick the child's forehead first upward, then across, and lastly up again ; and then to spit behind its back.
It is said that if on licking a child's forehead with the tongue a salt taste is perceived, this is an infallible proof of fascination.
Life Waves according to Theosophists. are three in number. It is necessary to remember that the Deity, the Logos (q.v.) has three aspects corresponding to the Christian Trinity. These aspects are first that of Will ; second, that of Wisdom ; and third, that of Activity, and each has its definite scope in the creation of a universe. When the Logos sets about the great work of creation he sends the first life wave through his aspect of Activity into the multitude of bubbles in the ether, and thereby forms the various kinds of matter. The universe having been thus far prepared, he through his aspect of Wisdom sends the second life wave, which bringing with it life as we usually understand that term and penetrating matter from above,
gradually descends to the grosser forms and again ascends to the finer forms. In its descent, this life wave makes for an ever-increasing heterogeneity, but in its ascent the process is reversed and it makes for an ever-inci easing homogeneity. The work of creation is now far enough advanced to permit of the creation of man, for matter has now been infused with the capacity of form and provided with life, and the Logos, therefore, through his aspect of Will, bears forth the Divine Spark, the Monad, and, along with the form and the life, ensouls man. (See Theosophy, Logos, Ether, Evolution, Solar System, Monad.)
Light : Spiritualistic Journal. (See Spiritualism.)
Lignite is a beautiful stone like glass ; being hung about a child it preserves it from witchcraft, and if bound on the forehead it stops the bleeding of the nose, restores the loss of senses, and helps to foretell future events.
Likho : (See Slavs.)
Lilith : According to Wierus and other demonologists, Lilith was the prince or princess who presided over the demons known as succubi. The demons under Lilith bore the same name as their chief, and sought to destroy new- born infants. For this reason the Jews wrote on the four corners of a birth-chamber a formula to drive Lilith away. (See Babylonia.)
Limachie : This little curiosity, resembling a chip of a man's nail, is to be squeezed out of the head of a slug, which must be done the instant it is seen. It is a good amulet to pre- serve from fever.
Linton Charles : (See Automatic Writing and Speaking.)
Lippares or Liparia : He who has this stone " needs no other invention to catch wild beasts." On the other hand, no animal can be attacked by dogs or huntsman if it look upon it.
Liquor Alkahest : (See Philalethes.)
Litanies of the Sabbath : On Wednesdays and Saturdays, if the accounts speak truly, it was the custom to sing at the witches' Sabbath the following Litanies : —
Lucifer, Beelzebub, Leviathan, have pity on us. Baal, prince of the seraphim ; Baalberith, prince of the cherubim ; Astaroth, prince of the thrones ; Rosier, prince
. of denominations ; Carreau, prince of the powers ; Belial, prince of the vertues ; Perrier, prince of the principalities ; Oliver, prince of the arch angels ; Junier, prince of the angels ; Sarcueil, Fume-bouche, Pierre-le-Feu, Carniveau, Terrier, Contellier, Candelier, Behemoth, Oilette, Belphegor, Sabathan, Garandier, Dolers, Pierre-Fort, Axaphat, Prisier, Kakos, Lucesme, pray for us.
It must be remarked that Satan is evoked in these litanies only in company with a crowd of others.
Lithomaney : A species of divination performed by stones, but in what manner it is difficult to ascertain. Gale, in a " note upon Iamblichus," confesses that he does not clearly understand the nature of it ; whether it refers to certain motions observable in idols, or to an insight into futurity obtained by demons (familiars) enclosed in particu- lar stones. That these supernatural beings might be so commanded is clear from a passage of Nicephorus. The Rabbis have attributed Lev. XXVI., 1 to Lithomaney ; but the prohibition of stones there given is most probably directed against idolatry in general. Bulenger has a short chapter on Lithomaney. He shows from Tzetzes, that Helenus ascertained the fall of Troy by the employment of a magnet, and that if a magnet be washed in spring water, and interrogated, a voice like that of a sucking child will reply.
The pseudo-Orpheus has related at length this legend of Helenus. " To him," he says, " Apollo gave the true and vocal sideritis, which others call the animated ophites, a stone possessing fatal qualities, rough, hard, black, and heavy, graven everywhere with veins like wrinkles. For
Lithomancy
252
London
one and twenty days Helenus abstained from the nuptial couch, from the bath, and from animal food. Then, washing this intelligent stone in a living fountain, he cherished it as a babe in soft clothing ; and having pro- pitiated it as a god, he at length gave it breath by his hymn of mighty virtue. Having lighted lamps in his own puri- fied house, he fondled the divine stone in his hands, bearing it about as a mother bears her infant ; and you, if ye wish to hear the voice of the gods, in like manner provoke a similar miracle, for when ye have sedulously wiped and dandled the stone in your arms, on a sudden it will utter the cry of a new-born child seeking milk from the breast of its nurse. Beware, however, of fear, for if you drop the stone upon the ground, you will rouse the anger of the immortals. Ask boldly of things future, and it will reply. Place it near your eyes when it has been washed, look steadily at it, and you will perceive it divinely breathing. Thus it was that Helenus, confiding in this fearful stone, learned that his country would be overthrown by the Atridae."
Photius, in his abstract of the life of Isodorus by Dam- ascus, a credulous physician of the age of Justinian, speaks of an oracular stone, the baetulum, to which Lithomancy was attributed. A physician named Eusebius used to carry one of these wonder-working stones about with him. One night, it seems, actuated by an unaccountable impulse, he wandered out from the city Emesa to the summit of a mountain dignified by a temple of Minerva. There, as he sat down fatigued by his walk, he saw a globe of fire falling from the sky and a lion standing by it. The lion dis- appeared, the fire was extinguished, and Eusebius ran and picked up a baetulum. He asked it to what god it apper- tained, and it readily answered, to Gennaeus, a deity wor- shipped by the Heliopolitae, under the form of a lion in the temple of Jupiter. During this night, Eusebius said he travelled not less than 210 stadia, more than 26 miles. He never became perfectly master of the baetulum, but was obliged very humbly to solicit its responses. It was of a handsome, globular shape, white, a palm in diameter, though sometimes it appeared more, sometimes less ; occasionally, also, it was of purple colour. Characters were to be read on it, impressed in the colour called tingari- binus. Its answer seemed as if proceeding from a shrill pipe, and Eusebius himself interpreted the sounds. Dam- ascius believed its animating spirit to be divine ; Isodorus, on the other hand, thought it demoniacal, that is, not belonging to evil or material demons, not yet to those which are quite pure and immaterial. It was with one of these stones, according to Hesychius, that Rhea fed Saturnus, when he fancied that he was devouring Jupiter, its name being derived from the skin in which it was wrapped, and such the commentator supposed to have been the Lapides divi, or vivi, which the insane monster Heliogabalus wished to carry off from the temple of Diana, built by Orestes at Laodicea. Bochart traces the name and the reverence paid to the baatylia, to the stone which Jacob anointed at Bethel. Many of these baetylia, Photius assures us from Damascius, were to be found on Mount Libanus.
Little, Robert Wentworth : (See Rosicrucians.) Little World : The name given to a secret society which conspired in England, in the eighteenth century, to re- establish the Stuart dynasty. Many stories are told of this society — as, for instance, that the devil presided over their assemblies in person. The members were Freemasons.
Loathly Damsel, The : Kundrie or Kundry. The Grail Messenger. One would imagine that the holder of such an office would be saint-like, but Christian describes her as " a damsel more hideous than could be p;ctured outside hell." Wolfram refers to her in his work as " Kundrie la
Sorciere." Kundry in Wagner's music-drama " Parsifal " represents sin.
Lodestone : A precious stone believed to possess magical properties of diverse kinds. If one is ill, one must hold it in one's hands and shake it well. It cures wounds, snake- bites, weak eyes, headaches and restores hearing. The possessor of the lodestone may walk through reptiles in safety, even when they are accompanied by " black death." Orpheus says that " with this stone you can hear the voices of the gods and learn many wonderful things ; " that it has the property of unfolding the future ; and if held close to the eyes it will inspire with a divine spirit.
Lodge, Sir Oliver : (See Spiritualism.)
Logos : Fohat — is the term very commonly used in theosophy to designate the Deity. Along with the great religions, theosophy has as the beginning of its scheme a Deity who, in Himself, is altogether beyond human knowledge or conception, whether in the ordinary or the clairvoyant states. But when the Deity manifests Himself to man through his works of creation. He is known as the Logos. Essentially He is infinite but when He encloses a " ring- pass-not " within which to build a kosmos, He has set limits to Himself, and what we can know of Him is con- tained in these limits. To us He appears in a triple aspect — the Christian Trinity — but this is, of course, merely an appearance, and in reality He is a unity. This triple aspect shews Him as Will, Wisdom and Activity, and from each of these came forth one of the creative life waves which formed the universe. From the third came the wave which created matter, from the second, the wave which aggregated diffuse matter into form, and from the first, the wave which brought with it the Monad, that scintillation of Himself which took posession of formed matter, to start thereby the evolutionary process.
Loiseant : (See France.)
Loki : (See Devil.)
Lombroso, Professor Cesare : A celebrated Italian anthro- pologist. A few years before his death he took up the study of spiritualism and experimented extensively with the well-known medium Eusapia Palladino, in company with Messieurs Richet, Maxwell, Flammarion, and Pro- fessor Schiaparelli. He embodied the results of his investi- gations in several well-known works, and concluded that although man was probably not immortal, his " shell " or shadow, a mere conglomeration of thought forces, remained on earth behind him for some considerable time after his demise. (See " After Death — What ? " 1909.)
London Dialectical Society : In 1869 an important enquiry into the phenomena of spiritualism was undertaken by the London Dialectical Society. A committee of more than thirty members — including Alfred Russel Wallace, Sergeant Cox, Charles Bradlaugh, H. G. Atkinson, and Dr. James Edmunds — was formed, and resolved itself into six sub- committees. During the eighteen months over which their labours extended, the committee received a large quantity of evidence from believers in the phenomena, but very little from those antagonistic to the spirit hypothesis. In " The Dialectical Society's Report on Spiritualism," published by the Society, particulars are given both of the members' own experiences and of testimonies from witnesses whose character and position made their evidence valuable. Practically every form of manifestation, both physical and automatic, is covered in the report, which concluded thus : "• In presenting their report, your Committee, taking into consideration the high character and great intelligence of many of the witnesses to the more extraordinary facts, the extent to which their testimony is supported by the reports of the sub-committees, and the absence of any proof of imposture or delusion as regards a large portion of the phenomena ; and further, having regard to the excep-
Xopez
253
Lucifer
tional character of the phenomena, and the large number of persons of every grade of society and over the whole civilised world who are more or less influenced by a belief in their supernatural origin, and to the fact that no philo- sophical explanation of them has yet been arrived at, deem it incumbent upon them to state their conviction that the subject is worthy of more serious attention and careful investigation than it has hitherto received."
The Dialectical Society's investigations are noteworthy as the first organised attempt to elucidate the problem of spiritualistic phenomena.
Lopez, Senor Manoel : {See Spain.)
Xopoukine, Chevalier : A Russian theologian to whom is attributed a tract, said to be translated from the Russian and entitled Characteristics of the Interior Church (1801). His teaching is similar to that of Eckhartshausen whose work has elsewhere been briefly described — it is a kind of Christian transcendentalism and in its tenour, resembles the higher literature of the Graal.
Lords of the Flame or Children of the Fire Mist, are, according to theosophists, adepts sent from the planet Venus to aid terrestrial evolution. It is necessary to explain that, in the evolution of the Solar System (q.v.) Venus is considerably in advance of the Earth, but by the efforts of these adepts directed towards intellectual development — the inhabitants of the earth are now really farther advanced than in ordinary course they would be. These adepts are not per- manently inhabitants of the Earth, and, while a few yet remain, most of them have returned whence they came, the time of crisis at which they assisted having now passed. (See Theosophy, Evolution, Chains.)
lost Word of Kabbalism : Lost Word in Masonry. A word relating to some mystic plan, which though it is held to have disappeared, will at some time be restored, and will then make the whole system plain. It is not really lost, only withheld for a season. In the same way the Graal was not lost, but withdrawn to its own place and the search for it occupied the noblest figures in chivalry. It repre- sents the Key to the enigma of Creation ; in terms of Christianity, the Kingdom of Heaven.
loudun, Nuns of : In the year 1633, the convent of Ursulines established at Loudun in France was the scene of an out- break of diabolical possession. The numerous nans who inhabited the convent showed signs of diabolic possession, spoke with tongues, and behaved in the most extraordinary and hysterical manner. The affair grew in volume until practically all the nans belonging to the institution were in the same condition of temporary insanity. The Mother Superior of the convent, Jeanne de Belfiel, appears to have been of hysterical temperament, and she was not long in infecting the other inmates of the institution. She, with a sister named Claire and five other nuns, were the first to be obsessed by the so-called evil spirits. The outbreak spread to the neighbouring town and so scandalous did the whole affair become that Richelieu appointed a commission to examine into it. The devils were subjected to the process of exorcism, which, however, proved to be fruitless in this instance, and the attacks of the nuns continued. But on a more imposing ceremony being held, they took themselves .off, but only for a little while, returning again with greater violence than ever. Suspicion, or rather injustice, fixed upon the person of Urbain Grandier (q.v.), confessor of the .convent, as the head and source of the whole affair. He ■was arrested and accused of giving over the nuns to the possession of the Devil by means of the practice of sorcery. The truth is that the neighbouring clergy were madly jealous of Grandier because he had obtained two benefices in their diocese, of which he was not a native, and they had made up their minds to compass his destruction at the jfirst possible moment. Despite his protests of innocence,
the unfortunate priest was haled before a council of judges of the neighbouring presidencies, who found upon his body the various marks which were the undoubted signs of a sorcerer, and it is said that the inquest brought to light the fact that Grandier had none too good a reputation. We must be very careful, however, to refrain from believing the worst about him, as the sources regarding this are undoubtedly tainted by religious prejudice. It is said that on his papers being seized much matter subversive of religious practice was found amongst them. They failed, however, to find that pact with Satan for which they had looked, although afterwards several versions of it were published by more or less credulous persons and sold as broadsheets. The unfortunate man was condemned to be burnt at the stake — a sentence which was duly carried out. After his death, however, the possession of the hysterical sisters did not cease ; the demons became more obstreperous than ever and flippantly answered to their names of Asmodeus, Leviathan, and Behemoth, and so forth. A very holy Brother called Surin was delegated to put an end to the affair. Frail and unhealthy, he possessed, however, an indomitable spirit, and after much wrestling in prayer succeeded in finally exorcising the demons. The whole affair is set forth in the Historie des Diables de Loudun, published in 1839, which gave a detailed account of one of the most extraordinary obsessions of modern times.
Loutherburg : (See Spiritualism.)
Loyer, Pierre Le : Sieur de la Brosse, royal councillor and demonographer, was born at Huille in Anjou in 1550. He was the author of a work entitled Discours et histoires des spectres, visions et apparitions des esprits, anges, demons et dmes se montranl aux homines. The work is divided into eight books dealing with the marvellous visions and prodi- gies of all the centuries, and the most celebrated authors sacred as well as profane, who have dealt with occult sub- jects, the cause of apparitions, the nature of good and evil spirits, of demons, of ecstasy, of the essence, nature and origin of souls, of magicians and sorcerers, of the manner of their communication, of evil spirits, and of impostors It was published at Paris in 1605 in one quarto volume. The first book deals with spectres, apparitions and spirits ; the second with the physics of Loyer' s time, the illusions to which the senses are prone, wonders, the elixirs and metamorphases of sorceries and of philtres ; the third book establishes the degrees, grades and honours of spirits, gives a resume of the history of Philinnion and of Poly- crites, and recounts diverse adventures with spectres and demons ; the fourth book gives many examples of spectral appearances, of the speech of persons possessed of demons, of the countries and dwelling-places of these spectres and demons, of marvellous portents, and so forth ; the fifth treats of the science of the soul, of its origin, nature, its state after death, and of haunting ghosts ; the sixth division is entirely taken up with the apparition of souls, and shows how the happy do not return to earth, but only those whose souls are burning in purgatory ; in the seventh book the case of the Witch of Endor, and the evocation of the soul of Samuel, are dealt with, as is evocation in general and the methods practised by wizards and sorcerers in this science ; the last book gives some account of exorcism, fumigations, prayers, and other methods of casting out devils, and the usual means employed by exorcists to destroy these. The work as a whole is exceedingly curious if disputatious and a little dull in parts, and throws con- siderable light upon the occult science of the times.
Lubin : The fish whose gall was used by Tobias to restore his father's sight. It is said to be very powerful against ophthalmia, and its heart is potent in driving away demons.
Lucifer : Literally light-bringer, a name applied to the con- ception of the devil, who has often been likened to a fallen
Lugh
254
Lutin, The
star or angel. The Miltonic conception of Lucifer as a force potent for good or evil, one who might have done good greatly, intensely proud and powerful exceedingly, is one which is inconsistent with enlightenment. He represents simply the absence of good ; a negative not a positive entity.
He presides over the east, according to the ideas of the old magicians. He was invoked on Mondays, in a circle in the centre of which was his name. As the price of his complaisance in appearing to the magician he asked only a mouse. Lucifer commands Europeans and Asiatics. He appears in the shape of a beautiful child. When he is angry his face is flushed, but there is nothing monstrous about him. He is, according to some students of demon- ology, the grand justiciary of Hades. He is the first to be invoked in the litanies of the Sabbath. (See Devil-worship.)
Lugh : In Irish romance, son of Kian, and father of Cuchulain. He was brought up by his uncle Goban, the Smith, and by Duach, King of Fairyland. It was prophesied of Lugh that he should eventually overcome his father's old enemy Balor, his own grandfather. So instead of killing the three murderers of his father, Kian, he put them on oath to obtain certain wonders, including the magical spear of the King of " Persia " and the pig-skin of the King of Greece, which, if laid on a patient, would heal him of his wound or cure him of his sickness. Thus equipped, Lugh entered the Battle of Moytura, against the Fomorians, and by hurling a stone which pierced through the eye to the brain of Balor, fulfilled the druidic prophecy. Lugh was the Irish Sun-god ; his final conquest of the Fomorians and their leader symbolises the victory of light and intellect over darkness. Balor was god of darkness, and brute force as embodied in the Fomoria,ns. By his title of Ildanach, or " All Craftsman," Lugh is comparable to the Greek Apollo. He was widely worshipped by Continental Celts.
Lully, Raymond : The life of this alchemist was a curious and eventful one, and all its diverse chapters bespeak him a man of titanic physical and mental energy, quite incapable of doing anything in dilettante fashion, but instead throw- ing himself heart and soul into every quest which chanced to appeal to him. Raymond' s father was a Spanish knight, who, having won the approval of John I., King of Arragon, was granted an estate in Majorca ; and it was in that island of the Balearic group that the future alchemist was born, probably in the year 1229, but the date is uncertain. Thanks to the royal favour which his father enjoyed, Raymond was appointed Seneschal of the Isles while he was still a mere youth ; but hardly had he acquired this position ere, much to the chagrin of his parents, he began to show a strong predilection for debauchery. He paid amorous addresses to women of all sorts, while at length, becoming enamoured of a married lady named Eleonora de Castello, he began to follow her wherever she went, making no attempt to conceal his illicit passion. On one occasion, indeed, he actually sought the lady while she was attend- ing mass. And, so loud was the outcry against this bold, if not sacrilegious act, that Eleonora found it essential to write in peremptory style to her cavaliere servente, bidding him desist from his present course. The letter failed to cool the youth's ardour, but anon, when it transpired that the lady was smitten with the deadly complaint of cancer, her admirer's frame of mind began to alter speedily. Sobered by the frustration of his hopes, he vowed that henceforth he would live differently, consecrating his days to the service of God.
So Raymond espoused holy orders, but, as was natural in the case of a man of such active and impetuous tempera- ment, he felt small inclination for monastic life. His aim was to carry the Gospel far afield, converting the children of Mahomet, and with this in view he began to study
Arabic ; while having mastered. that tongue he proceeded to Rome, eager to enlist the Pope's sympathy in his project. Raymond failed in the latter particular, yet, nothing daunted he embarked on his own account at Genoa about the year 1 291, and having reached Tunis he commenced his crusade. His ardour resulted in his being fiercely persecuted and ultimately banished ; so perforce he returned for a while to Europe, visiting Paris, Naples and Pisa, and exhorting all good Christians to aid his beloved enterprise. But in 1308 he ventured to go back to Africa, and at Algiers he made- a host of converts, yet was once more forced to fly for his life before the angry Mussulmans. He repaired to Tunis, thinking to escape thence to Italy, but his former activities in the town were remembered, and consequently he was seized and thrown into prison. Here he languished for a long time, never failing to seize every opportunity which presented itself of preaching the gospel, but at last some Genoese merchants contrived to procure his release, and so he sailed back to Italy. Proceeding to Rome, he made further, and strenuous efforts towards obtaining the Pope's support of a well-equipped foreign mission ; but Raymond's importunity herein-proved abortive, and, after resting for a brief space at his native Majorca, the heroic zealot took his life in his hands, and returned to Tunis. Here he even pro- claimed his presence publicly, but scarcely had he begun preaching when he reaped the inevitable harvest, and after being savagely attacked he was left lying on the sea-shore, his assailants imagining him dead. He was still breathing,, however, when some Genoese found him, and carrying him. to a ship they set sail foi Majorca. But the missionary did not rally, and he died while in sight of his home, the date being 1315.
Raymond's proselytising ardour had made his name familiar throughout Europe, and, while many people regarded him as a heretic because he had undertaken a mission without the pope's sanction, there were others who admired him so much that they sought to make him a saint. But he was never canonized, and the reason, per- haps, lay in the well-known fact that he had engaged in alchemy. He is reported to have made a large sum of gold for the English king, and, while there is really no proof that he ever visited Britain, the remaining part of the story holds a certain significance. For it is said that Lully made the money on the strict understanding that it " should be utilised for equipping a large and powerful band of missionaries, and the likelihood is that he thought to employ his chymical skill on behalf of his beloved object, and approached some European Sovereign with this in view, thus giving rise to the tradition about his dealings with the English monarch. Be that as it may, Raymond' s voluminous writings certainly include a number of alchem- istic works, notably Alckimia Magic Natutalis, De Aquis Super Accurtationes, De Secretis Medicina Magna and De Conservatione Vita ; and it is interesting to find that several of these won considerable popularity and were repeatedly reprinted, while so late as 1673 two volumes of Opera Alchima purporting to be from Raymond's pen were issued at London. Five years before this a biography by Vernon had been published at Paris, while at a later date a German historian of chemistry, Gruelin, referred to Lully as a scientist of exceptional skill, and mentioned him as the first man to distil rosemary oil. Luminous Bodies : Dead bodies are frequently supposed to glow in the dark with a sort of phosphorescent light. Possibly the belief arose from the idea that the soul was like a fire dwelling in the body. Luther, Martin : The Rosicrucian. (See Bosicrucians.) Lutin, The : The Lutin of Normandy in many respects resembled Robin Goodfellow. Like him he had many names( and like him had the power of assuming many forms ;
Lux
255
Lycanthropjr
but the Lutin's pranks were usually of a more serious nature than those of the tricky spirit of Merrie England. Many a man laid his ruin at the Lutin's door, although it must be confessed that in these cases neighbours were uncharitable enough to say, that the Lutin had less to do with it than habits of Want-of-Thrift and Self-indulgence. Thus, on market days, when a farmer lingered late over his ale, whether in driving a close bargain or in enjoying the society of a boon companion, he declared the Lutin was sure to play him some spiteful trick on his way home : his horse would stumble — he would be thrown — he would lose his purse — or else his way. If the farmer persisted in these habits, more serious would become the Lutin's tricks ; the sheep-pens would be unfastened, the cow-house and stable doors left open, and the flocks and cattle be found moving among the standing corn and unmown hay ; while every servant on the farm would swear to his own innocence, and unhesitatingly lay the blame on the Lutin. Similar tricks were played on the fishermen by the Nain Rouge — another name for the Lutin. He opened the meshes of the nets and set the fish free ; he removed the floats and let the nets sink to the bottom, or the sinkers, and let the nets float away on the retiring tide. True, if closely questioned, the fishermen would confess that on these occasions the night was dark and stormy, the bothy warm, and the grog plentiful, and that instead of drawing their nets at the proper time, they had delayed it till morn- ing. Again, he would appear like a black nag, ready bridled and saddled, quietly feeding by the way-side ; but woe to the luckless wight who mounted him ! — unless, indeed, he did so for some charitable or holy purpose, in which, case he was borne with the speed of the wind to his destination. In this form the Lutin played his wildest pranks and was called Le Cheval Bayard. Lux : (See Spain.)
Lyeanthropy : The transformation of a human being into an animal. The term is derived from the Greek words, lukos a wolf, and anthropos a man, but it is employed regarding a transformation into any animal shape. It is chiefly in these countries where wolves are numerous that we find such tales concerning them. (See Wer-wolf.) But in India, and some parts of Asia, the tiger takes the place of the wolf ; in Russia and elsewhere the bear, and in Africa the leopard.
It is usually savage animals regarding which these beliefs are prevalent, but even harmless ones also figure in them. There is considerable confusion as to whether such trans- formations were voluntary, or involuntary, temporary or permanent. The man as transformed into the animal may fee the very individual himself, or, on the other hand may be only his double, that is his spirit may enter the animal and his body remain unchanged. Magicians and witches were credited with the power of transforming themselves into wolves and other animal shapes, and it was asserted that if the animal were wounded that the marks of the wound would be discovered upon the wizard's body.
The belief is current amongst many savage tribes that every individual possesses an animal form which he enters at death, or at will. This is effected either by magic or natural agency.
As has been said, the wolf is a common form of animal transformation in Europe. In ancient Greece the belief was associated with the dog, which took the place of the wolf. Other similar beliefs are found in India and Java and in the former country we find the wer-wolf in a sort of vampire form.
Guyon relates the history of an enchanter who used to change himself into different beasts.
" Certain people," said he, " persuaded Ferdinand, first Emperor of tint name, to command the presence of a
Polish enchanter and magician in the town of Nuremberg to learn the result of a difference he had with the Turks, concerning the kingdom of Hungary ; and not only did the magician make use of divination, but performed various other marvels, so that the king did not wish to see him, but the courtiers introduced him into his chamber. There he did many wonderful things, among others, he transformed himself into a horse, anointing himself with some grease, then he took the shape of an ox, and thirdly that of a lion, all in less than an hour. The emperor was so terrified by these transformations that he commanded that the magician should be immediately dismisssed, and declined to hear the future from the lips of such a rascal."
" It need no longer be doubted," adds the same writer, " that Lucius Apuleius Plato was a sorcerer, and that he was transformed into an ass, forasmuch as he was charged with it before the proconsul of Africa, in the time of the Emperor Antonine I., in the year 150 A.D., as Apollonius of Tyana, long before, in the year 60, was charged before Domitian with the same crime. And more than three years after, the rumour persisted to the time of St. Augus- tine, who was an African, who has written and confirmed it ; as also in his time the father of one Prestantius was transformed into a horse, as the said Prestantius declared. Augustine's father having died, in a short time the son had wasted the greater part of his inheritance in the pursuit of the magic arts, and in order to flee poverty he sought to marry a rich widow named Pudentille, for such a long time that at length she consented. Soon after her only son and heir, the child of her former marriage, died. These things came about in a manner which led people to think that he had by means of magic entrapped Pudentille, who had been wooed in vain by several illustrious people, in order to obtain the wealth of her son. It was also said that the profound knowledge he possessed — for he was able to solve difficult questions which left other men bewildered — was obtained from a demon or familiar spirit he possessed. Further, certain people said they had seen him do many marvellous things, such as making himself invisible, trans- forming himself into a horse or into a bird, piercing his body with a sword without wounding himself, and similar per- formances. He was at last accused by one Sicilius CEmilia- nus, the censor, before Claudius Maximus, proconsul of Africa, who was said to be a Christian ; but nothing was found against him.
Now, that he had been transformed into an ass, St. Augustine regards as indubitable, he having read it in cer- tain true and trustworthy authors, and being besides of the same country; and this transformation happened to him in Thessaly before he was versed in magic, through the spell of a sorceress, who sold him, and who recovered him to his former shape after he had served in the capacity of an ass for some years, having the same powers and habits of eating and braying as other asses, but with a mind still sane and reasonable as he himself attested. And at last to show forth his case, and to lend probability to the rumour, he wrote a book entitled The Golden Ass, a melange of fables and dialogues, to expose the vices of the men of his time, which he had heard of, or seen, during his transformation, with many of the labours and troubles he had suffered while in the shape of an ass.
" However that may be, St. Augustine in the book of the City of God, book XVIII., chapters XVII. and XVIII., relates that in his time there were in the Alps certain sorceresses who gave a particular kind of cheese to the passers by, who, on partaking of it, were immediately changed into asses or other beasts of burden, and were made to carry heavy weights to certain places. When their task was over, they were permitted to regain their human shape."
Xycanthropy
256
Lytton
" The bishop of Tyre, historian, writes that in his time, probably about 1220, some Englishmen were sent by their king to the aid of the Christians who were fighting in the Holy Land, and that on their arrival in a haven of the island of Cyprus a sorceress transformed a young English soldier into an ass. He, wishing to return to his com- panions in the ship, was chased away with blows from a stick, whereupon he returned to the sorceress who made use of him, until someone noticed that the ass kneeled in a church and did various other things which only a reasoning being could do. The sorceress who followed him was taken on suspicion before the authorities, was obliged to ■give him his human form three years after his transforma- tion, and was forthwith executed."
•' We read," says Loys Guyon, "that Ammonius, a peripatetic philosopher, about the time of Lucius Sep- tdmius Severus, in the year 196 A.D., had present at his lessons an ass whom he taught. I should think that this ass had been at one time a man, and that he quite under- stood what Ammonius taught, for these transformed persons retain their reason unimpaired, as St. Augustine and other %vriters have assured us."
•' Fulgose writes, book VIII., chapter II., that in the time of Pope Leon, who lived about the year 930, there were in Germany two sorceresses who used thus to change their guests into beasts, and on one occasion she changed a young mountebank into an ass, who, preserving his human understanding, gave a great deal of amusement to the passers-by. A neighbour of the sorceresses bought the ass at a good price, but was warned by them that he must not take the beast to a river, or he would lose it. Now the ass escaped one day and running to a near-by lake plunged into the water, when he returned to his own shape. Apuleirs says that he regained his human form by eating roses.
" There are still to be seen in Egypt asses which are led into the market-place to perform various feats of agility and tricks, understanding all the commands they receive, and executing them : such as to point out the most beauti- ful woman of the company, and many other things that one would hardly believe ; and Belon, a physician, relates in his observations that he has seen them, and others also, who have been there, and who have a (firmed the same to me. "
"' One day there was brought to St. Macarius, the Egyptian," says Calmet, " an honest woman who had been transformed into a mare by the wicked art of a magician. Her husband and all who beheld her believed that she had really been changed into a mare. This woman remained for three days without taking any food, whether suitable for a horse or for a human being. She was brought to the priests of the place, who could suggest no remedy. So they led her to the cell of St. Macarius. to whom God had revealed that she was about to come. His disciples wished to send her away, thinking her a mare, and they warned the saint of her approach, and the reason for her journey. He said to them : ' It is you who are the animals, who think you see that which is not ; this woman is not changed, but your eyes are bewitched." As he spoke he scattered holy water on the head of the woman, and all those present saw her in her true shape. He had something given her to eat and sent her away safe and sound with her husband." lytton, Bulwer : Author (1803-1873). According to his baptismal certificate, the full name of this once famous author was Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, and in signing some of his early writings he used all these names with occasional variations in their order, an act which was regarded by many people as springing from pride and pompousness, and which elicited the withering satire of Thackeray in Punch. Lytton was born at London in 1803, and his father was a Norfolk squire, Bulwer of Heydon
Hall ; while his mother was Elizabeth Barbara Lytton, a lady who claimed kinship with Cadwaladr Vendigaid, the semi-mythical hero who led the Strathclyde Welsh against the Angles in the seventh century. As a child the future novelist was delicate, but he learnt to read at a surprisingly early age, and began to write verses before he was ten years old. Going first to a small private school at Fulham, he soon passed on to another one at Rottingdean ; and here he continued to manifest literary tastes, Byron and Scott being his chief idols at this time. So clever was the boy thought, indeed, that his relations decided it would be a mistake to send him to a public school ; and accordingly he was placed with a tutor at Ealing, under whose care he pro- gressed rapidly with his studies. Thereafter he proceeded to Cambridge, where he took his degree easily, and won many academic laurels, while on leaving the University he travelled for a while in Scotland and in France, and then bought a commission in the army. He sold it soon after- wards, however, while in 1827 he was married, and now he began to devote himself seriously to writing, his first publications of note being the novels of Falkland, Pelham and Eugene Aram. These won an instant success, and placed considerable wealth in the author's hands, the result being that in 1831 he entered parliament as liberal member for St. Ives, Huntingdonshire ; and during the next ten years he was an active policitian yet found time to produce a host of stories, for instance The Last Days of Pompei and Ernest Maltravers, Zanoni and The Last of the Barons. These were followed shortly by The Caxtons, and simul- taneously Lytton achieved some fame as a dramatist, perhaps his best play being The Lady of Lyons ; while in 1 85 1 he was instrumental in founding a scheme for pen- sioning authors, in 1862 he increased his reputation greatly by his novel entitled A Strange Story, and four years later his services to literature and politics were rewarded by a peerage. He now began to work at yet another story, Kenelm Chillingly, but his health was beginning to fail, and he died in 1873 at Torquay.
The works cited above constitute but a fragment of Lylton's voluminous achievement. Besides further novels too numerous to mention, he issued several volumes of verses notably Ismael and The New Union, while he did trans- lations from German, Spanish and Italian, he produced a history of Athens, he contributed to endless periodicals, and was at one time editor of The New Monthly Magazine. But albeit so busy throughout the whole of his career, and while winning vast fame and opulence, Lytton's life was not really a happy one, various causes conducing to make it otherwise. Long before meeting his wife he fell in love with a young girl who died prematurely, and this loss seems to have left an indelible scar on his heart, while his marriage was anything but a successful one, the pair being divorced comparatively soon after their union. Now as a mere child Lytton had evinced a predilection for mysticism, while he had surprised his mother once by asking her whether she was "not sometimes overcome by the sense of her own identity" (almost exactly the same question was put to his nurse in boyhood by another mj'stic, William Bell Scott) ; Lvtton sedulously developed his leaning towards the occult, and it is everywhere manifest in his literary output. It transpires, for example, in his poem The Tale of a Dreamer, and again in Kenelm Chillingly, while in A Strange Story he tries to give a scientific colouring to old-fashioned magic ; but neither this essay nor those others are really to be called triumphant in the artistic sense, and, as Sir Leslie Stephen shrewdly observes, Lylton's " attempts at the mysterious too often remind us of spirit-rapping rather than excite the thrill of super- natural awe." In a word Lylton's outlook on life was theatrical and his mysticism was not a little stagey.
MYTHOLOGICAL INTERCHANGE OF "MACROCOSM- AND "MICROCOSM."
I face p. 256
Maat Kheru
257
Magia
M
Maat Kheru : According to Maspus, the Egyptian name of the true intonation with which the dead must recite those magic incantations which would give them power in Amenti, the Egyptian Hades,
Macionica : Slavonic name for a witch. (See Slavs.)
Maekay, Gallatin : A disciple of Albert Pike (q.v.) and one of the leaders of Masonry in Charleston, U.S.A. who was charged by Miss Diana Vaughan, Dr. Bataille and others with the practice of Satanism and sorcery — charges entirely without foundation. (See Waite, Devil- Worship in France.)
Mackenzie, Kenneth : (See Rosiciucians.)
Macrocosm, The : The whole universe (Greek Macros, long, Kosmos the world (f. "Microcosm"). A six-pointed star, formed of two triangles, and the sacred symbol of Solomon's seal. It represents the infinite and the absolute — that is, the most simple and complete abridgment of the science of ,all things. Paracelsus states that every magical figure and kabalistic sign of the pantacles which compel spirits may be reduced to two — the Macrocosm and the Microcosm (q.v.) It is the emblem of the world.
Macroprosopus, The : One of the four magical elements in the Kabala ; and probably representing one of the four simple elements, — air, water, earth, or fire. Macroprosopus means " creator of the great world."
Madre Natura : An old and powerful secret society, of Italy, who worshipped and idealised nature, and which seems to have been founded by members of the ancient Italian priesthood. It had a tradition that one of the Popes as Cardinal de Medici became a member of the fraternity, and for this there is good documentary evidence. It accepted the allegorical interpretation which the Neo-Platonists had placed upon the Pagan creeds during the first ages of Christianity.
Magi : Priests of ancient Persia, and the cultivators of the wisdom of Zoroaster. They were institutied by Cyrus when he founded the new Persian empire, and are supposed to have been of the Median race. Schlegel says (Philosophy oj History), " they were not so much a hereditary sacerdotal caste as an order or association, divided into various and successive ranks and grades, such as existed in the mysteries — the grade of apprenticeship — that of mastership — that of perfect mastership." In short, they were a theosophical college ; and either its professors were indifferently " magi," or magicians, and " wise men " or they were distinguished into two classes by those names. Their name pronounced " Mogh " by the modern Persians, and " Magh " by the ancients signified " Wise," and such is the interpretation of it given by the Greek and Roman writers. Stobaeus expressly calls the science of the magi, the service of the gods, so Plato. According to Ennemoser, " Magiusiah, Madschusie, signified the office and knowledge of the priest, who was called " Mag, Magius, Magiusi," and after- wards magi and " Magician." Brucker maintains that the primitive meaning of the word is " fire worshipper," " worship of the light," an erroneous opinion. In the modern Persian the word is " Mog," and " Mogbed " signifies high priest. The high priest of the Parsees at Surat, even at the present day, is called, " Mobed." Others derive the word from " Megh," " Meh-ab " signifying something which is great and noble, and Zoroaster's disciples were called " Meghestom." Salverte states that these Mobeds are still named in the Pehivi dialect " Magoi." They were divided into three classes : — Those who abstained from all animal food ; those %vho never ate of the flesh of any tame animals ; and those who made no
. scruple to eat any kind of meat. A belief in the transmi- gration of the soul was the foundation of this abstinence. They professed the science of divination, and for that
purpose met together and consulted in their temples. They professed to make truth the great object of their study ; for that alone, they said, can make man like God " whose body resembles fight, as his soul or spirit resembles truth." They condemned all images, and those who said that the gods are male and female ; they had neither temples nor altars, but worshipped the sky, as a represen- tative of the Deity, on the tops of mountains ; they also sacrificed to the sun, moon, earth, fire, water, and winds, says Herodotus, meaning, no doubt that they adored the heavenly bodies and the elements. This was probably before the time of Zoroaster, when the religion of Persia seems to have resembled that of ancient India. Their hymns in praise of the Most High exceeded, according to Dio Chrysostom, the sublimity of anything in Homer or Hesiod. They exposed their dead bodies to wild beasts. It is a question " whether the old Persian doctrine and wisdom or tradition of light did not undergo material alterations in the hands of its Median restorer, Zoroaster ; or whether this doctrine was preserved in all its purity by the order of the magi." He then remarks that on them devolved the important trust of the monarch's education, which must necessarily have given them great weight and influence in the state. They were in high credit at the " Persian gates "- — for that was the Oriental name given to the capital of the empire, and the abode of the prince— and they took the most active part in all the factions that encompassed che throne, or that were formed in the vicinity of the court. In Greece, and even in Egypt, the sacerdotal fraternities and associations of initiated, formed by the mysteries, had in general but an indirect, though not unimportant influence on affairs of state ; but in the Persian monarchy they acquired a complete political ascendency. Religion, philosophy, and the sciences were all in their hands, they were the universal physicians who healed the sick in body and in spirit, and, in strict con- sistency with that character, ministered to the state, which is only the man again in a larger sense. The three grades of the magi alluded to are called by Herber the" disciples," the " professed," and the " masters." They were originally from Bactria, where they governed a little state by laws of their own choice, and by their incorporation in the Persian empire, they greatly promoted the. consolidation of the conquests of Cyrus. Their fall dates from the reign of Darius Hystaspes, about 500 B.C., by whom they were fiercely persecuted ; this produced an emigration which extended to Cappadocia on the one hand, and to India on the other, but they were still of so much consideration at a later period, as to provoke the jealousy of Alexander the Great. (See Persia.) Magia Posthuma : A short treatise on Vampirism published at Olmutz in 1706, and written by Ferdinand de Schertz. Reviewing it Calmet (q.v.) says in his Dissertation on Vampires: "The author relates a story of a woman that died in a certain village, after having received all the sacra- ments, and was buried with the usual ceremonies, in the Churchyard. About four days after her death, the inhabi- tants of the village were affrighted with an uncommon noise and outcry, and saw a spectre, sometimes in the shape of a dog, and sometimes in that of a man, which appeared to great multitudes of people, and put them to excessive pain by squeezing their throats, and pressing their breasts, almost to suffocation. There were several whose bodies he bruised all over, and reduced them to the utmost weak- ness, -so that they grew pale, lean, and disfigured. His fury was sometimes so great as not to spare the very beasts, for cows were frequently found beat to the earth, half dead ; at other times with their tails tied to one*
Magic
258
Magic
another, and their hideous lowings sufficiently expressed the pain they felt. Horses were often found almost wearied to death, foaming with sweat, and out of breath, as if they had been running a long and tiresome race ; and these calamities continued for several months."
The author of the treatise examines into the subject in 'the capacity of a lawyer, and discusses both the matter of fact and the points of law arising from it. He is clearly of opinion that if the suspected person was really the author of these noises, disturbances, and acts of cruelty, the law will justify the burning of the body, as is practised in the case of other spectres which come again and molest the living. He relates also several stories of apparitions of this sort, and particularises the mischiefs done by them. One, among others, is of a herdsman of the village of Blow near the town of Kadam in Bohemia, who appeared for a considerable time together, and called upon several persons, who all died within eight days. At last, the inhabitants of Blow dug up the herdsman's body, and fixed it in the ground, with a stake driven through it. The man, even in this condition, laughed at the people that were em- ployed about him, and told them they were very obliging to furnish him with a stick to defend himself from the dogs. The same night he extricated himself from the stake, frightened several persons by appearing to them, and occasioned the death of many more than he had hitherto done. He was then delivered into the hands of the hang- man, who put him into a cart, in order to burn him without the town. As they went along, the carcass shrieked in the most hideous manner, and threw about its arms and legs, as if it had been alive, and upon being again run through with a stake, it gave a loud cry, and a great quantity of fresh, florid blood issued from the wound. At last the body was burnt to ashes, and this execution put a final stop to the spectre's appearing and infesting the village.
The same method has been practised in other places, where these apparitions have been seen, and upon taking them out of the ground, their bodies have seemed fresh and florid, their limbs pliant and flexible, without any worms or putrefaction, but not without a great stench. The author quotes several other writers, who attest what he relates concerning these spectres, which, he says, still appear in the mountains of Silesia and Moravia. They are seen, it seems, both by day and night, and the things which formerly belonged to them are observed to stir and change their place, without any person's being seen to touch them. And the only remedy in these cases, is to cut off the head, and burn the body of the persons that are supposed to appear. Magic : Short for " magic art," from Greek magein the science and religion of the priests of Zoroaster ; or, accord- ing to Skeat, from Greek megas, great, thus signifying the " great " science.
History. — The earliest traces of magical practice are found in the European caves of the middle Palaeolithic Age. These belong to the last interglacial period of the Pleistocene period, which has been named the Aurignacian, after the cave-dwellers of Aurignac, whose skeletons, artifacts and drawings link them with the Bushmen of South Africa. In the cave of Gargas, near Bagneres de Luchon, occur, in addition to spirited and realistic drawings of animals, numer- ous imprints of human hands in various stages of mutilation. Some hands had been first smeared with a sticky substance and then pressed on the rock ; others had been held in position to be dusted round with red ochre, or black pig- ment. Most of the imprinted hands have mutilated fingers ; in some cases the first and second joints of one or more fingers are wanting ; in others the stumps only of all fingers remain. A close study of the hand imprints makes it evident that they are not to be regarded as those of
lepers. There can be little doubt that the joints were removed for a specific purpose, and on this point there is general agreement among anthropologists. A clue to the mystery is obtained by the magical custom among the Bushmen of similarly removing finger joints. Mr. G. W. Stow in his The Native Races of South Africa makes refer- ence to this strange form of sacrifice. He once came into contact with a number of Bushmen who "had all lost the first joint of the little finger " which had been removed with a " stone knife " with purpose to ensure a safe journey to the spirit world. Another writer tells of an old Bushman woman whose little fingers of both hands had been mutilated, three joints in all having been removed. She explained that each joint had been sacrificed as a daughter died to express her sorrow. .No doubt, however, there was a deeper meaning in the custom than she cared to confess. F. Boas in his Report on the N.W. Tribes of Canada gives evidence of the custom among these peoples. When frequent deaths resulted from disease, the Canadian Indians were wont to sacrifice the joints of their little fingers so as, they explained, " to cut off the deaths." Among the Indian Madigas (Telugu Pariahs) the evil eye is averted by sacrificers who dip their hands in the blood of goats or sheep and impress them on either side of a house door. This custom is not unknown even to Brahmans. Impressions of hands are also occasionally seen on the walls of Indian Mohammedan mosques. As among the N.W. Canadian tribes, the hand ceremony is most frequently practised in India when epidemics make a heavy toll of lives. The Bushmen also remove finger joints when stricken with sickness. In Australia, where during initia- tion ceremonies the young men have teeth knocked out and bodies scarred, the women of some tribes mutilate the little fingers of daughters with purpose to influence their future careers. Apparently the finger chopping customs of Palaeolithic times had a magical significance. On some of the paintings in the Aurignacian caves appear symbols which suggest the slaying with spears and cutting up of animals. Enigmatical signs are another feature. Of special interest are the figures of animal-headed demons, some with hands upraised in the Egyptian attitude of adoration, and others apparently dancing like the animal- headed dancing gods of the Bushmen. In the Marsonlas Palaeolithic cave there are semi-human faces of angry demons with staring eyes and monstrous noses. In the Spanish Cave at Cogul several figures of women wearing half-length skirts and shoulder shawls, are represented dancing round a nude male. So closely do these females resemble such as usually appear in Bushmen paintings that they might well, but for their location, be credited to this interesting people. Religious dances among the Bushman tribes are associated with marriage, birth and burial ceremonies ; they are also performed to exorcise demons in cases of sickness. " Dances are to us what prayers are to you," an elderly Bushman once informed a European. Whether the cave drawings and wood, bone and ivory carvings of the Magdalenian, or late Palaeolithic period at the close of the last ice epoch, are of magical significance is a problem on which there is no general agree- ment. It is significant to find, however, that several carved ornaments bearing animal figures or enigmatical signs are perforated as if worn as charms. On a piece of horn found at Lorthet, Hautes Pyrenees, are beautiful incised drawings of reindeer and salmon, above which appear mystical symbols. An ape-like demon carved on bone was found at Mas d'Azil : on a reindeer horn from Laugerie Basse a prostrate man with a tail is creeping up on all fours towards a grazing bison. These are some of the instances which lend colour to the view that late Palaeolithic art had its origin in magical beliefs and practices — that hunters
Magic
259
Magic
carved on the handles of weapons and implements, or scratched on cave walls, the images of the animals they desired to capture — sometimes with the secured co-opera- tion of demons, and sometimes with the aid of magical spells.
Coming to historic times we know that the ancient Egyptians (See Egypt) possessed a highly-developed magical system, as did the Babylonians (See Semites), and other pristine civilisations. Indeed from these the mediaeval European system of magic was finally evolved. Greece and Rome (both of which see) also possessed distinct national systems, which in some measure were branches of their religions ; and thus like the Egyptian and Babylonian were preserves of the priesthood.
Magic in early Europe was, of course, merely an appen- dage of the various religious systems which obtained throughout that continent ; and it was these systems which later generated into witchcraft (q.v.) But upon the foundation of Christianity, the church soon began to regard the practice of magic as foreign to the spirit of its religion. Thus the Thirty-sixth Canon of the (Ecumenical Council held at Laodicea in 364 A.D. forbids clerks and priests to become magicians, enchanters, mathematicians or astrolo- gers. It orders, moreover, that the Church shall expel from its bosom those who employ ligatures or phylacteries, because it says phylacteries are the prisons of the soul. The Fourth Canon of the Council of Oxia, A.D. 525, prohibited the consultation of sorcerers, augurs, diviners, and divina- tions made with wood or bread ; and the Sixtieth Canon of the Council of Constantinople A.D. 692, excommunicated for a period of six years diviners, and those who had recourse to them. The prohibition was repeated by the Council of Rome in 721. The Forty-second Canon of the Council of Tours in 613 is to the effect that the priests shall teach to the people the inemcacy of magical practices to restore the health of men or animals, and later Councils practically endorsed the church's earlier views.
It does not appear, however, that what may be called " mediaeval magic " took final and definite shape until about the twelfth century. Modelled upon the systems in vogue among the Byzantines and Moors of Spain, which •were evolved from the Alexandrian system (See Neopla- tonism), what might be called the " oriental " type of magic gained footing in Europe, and quite superseded the earlier and semi-barbarian systems in use among the various countries of that continent, most of which, as has been said, were the relics of older pagan practice and ritual. To these relics clung the witch and the wizard and the pro- fessors' of lesser magic ; whereas among the disciples of the imported system we find the magician — black and white. — the necromancer and the sorcerer. The manner in which the theosophy and the magic of the East was imported was probably two-fold ; first, there is good evidence that it was imported into Europe by persons returning from the Crusades ; and secondly, we know that in matters of wisaom, Byzantium fell heir to Alexandria, and that from Constantinople magic was disseminated throughout Europe, along with other sciences. It is not necessary to deal in the course of this article with the history of witchcraft and lesser sorcery, as that has already been done in the article " witchcraft " (q.v.) ; and we will confine ourselves strictly to the history of the higher branches of magic. But it is competent to remark that Europe had largely obtained its pneumotology from the orient through Christianity, from Jewish and early Semitic sources ; and it is an open question how far eastern demonology coloured that of the Catholic Church.
Mediaeval magic of the higher type has practically no landmarks save a series of great names. Its tenets ex- perienced but little alteration during six centuries. From
the eighth to the thirteenth century, there does not appear to have been much persecution of the professors of magic, but after that period the opinions of the church underwent a radical change, and the life of the magus was fraught with considerable danger. However, it is pretty clear that he was not victimised in the same manner as his lesser brethren, the sorcerers and wizards ; but we find Paracelsus con- sistently baited by the medical profession of his day, Agrippa constantly persecuted, and even mystics like Boehme imprisoned and ill-used. It is difficult at this distance to estimate the enormous vogue that magic experienced, whether for good or evil during the middle ages. Although severely punished, if discovered or if its pro- fessors became sufficiently notorious to court persecution, the power it seems to have conferred upon them was eagerly sought by scores of people — the majority of whom were quite unfitted for its practice, and clumsily betrayed themselves into the hands of the authorities. In the article entitled " Black Magic," we have outlined the history of that lesser magic known as sorcery or " black magic," and there have shown what persecutions overtook those who practised it.
As has already been mentioned, the history of higher magic in Europe is a matter of great names, and these are somewhat few. They do not include alchemists, who are strictly speaking not magicians, as their application of arcane laws was particular and not universal ; but this is not to say that some alchemists were not also magicians. The two great names which stand out in the history of European magic are those of Paracelsus and Agrippa, who formulated the science of mediaeval magic in its entirety. They were also the greatest practical magicians of the middle ages, as apart from pure mystics, alchemists and others, and their thaumaturgic and necromantic ex- periences were probably never surpassed. With these mediaeval magic comes to a close and the further history of the science in Europe will be found outlined in the division of this article entitled " Modern Magic."
Scientific Theories regarding the Nature of Magic. — General agreement as to the proper definition of magic is wanting, as it depends upon the view taken of religious belief. According to Frazer, magic and religion are one and the same thing, or are so closely allied as to be almost identical. This may be true of peoples in a savage or barbarian condition of society, but can scarcely apply to magic and religion as fully fledged, as for example in mediae- val times, however fundamental may be their original unity. The objective theory of magic would regard it as entirely distinct from religion, possessed of certain well-marked attributes, and traceable to mental processes differing from those from which the religious idea springs. Here and there the two have become fused by the super-imposition of religious upon magical practice. The objective idea of magic, in short, rests on the belief that it is based on magical laws which are supposed to operate with the regularity of those of natural science. The subjective view, on the other hand, is that many practices seemingly magical are in reality religious, and that no rite can be called magical which is not so designated by its celebrant or agent. It has been said that religion consists of an appeal to the gods, whereas magic is the attempt to force their compliance. Messrs. Hubert and Mauss believe that magic is essentially traditional. Holding as they do that the primitive mind is markedly unoriginal, they have satisfied themselves that magic is therefore an art which does not exhibit any frequent changes amongst primitive folk, and is fixed by its laws. Religion, they say, is official and organised, magic prohibited and secret. Magical power appears to them to be determined by the contiguity, simi- larity and contrast of the object of the act, and the object
Magic
260
Magic
to be effected. Mr. Frazer believes all magic to be based on the law of sympathy — that is the assumption that things act on one another at a distance because of their being secretly linked together by invisible bonds. He divides sympathetic magic into homeopathic magic and contagious magic. The first is imitative or mimetic, and may be practised by itself ; but the latter usually necessi- tates the application of the imitative principle. Well- known instances of mimetic magic are the forming of wax figures in the likeness of an enemy, which are destroyed in . the hope that he will perish. Contagious magic may be instanced by the savage anointing the weapon which caused a wound instead of the wound itself, in the belief that the blood on the weapon continues to feel with the blood on the body. Mr. L. Marillier divides magic into three classes : the magic of the word or act ; the magic of the human being independent of rite or formula ; and the magic which demands a human being of special powers and the use of ritual. Mr. A. Lehmann belie.ves magic to be a practice of superstition, and founds it in illusion. The fault of , all these theories is that they strive after too great an exact- ness, and that they do not allow sufficiently for the feeling of wonder and awe which is native to the human mind- Indeed they designate this " strained attention." We may grant that the attention of savages to a magical rite is " strained," so strained is it in some cases that it terrifies them into insanity ; and it would seem therefore as if the limits of :' attention " were overpassed, and as if it shaded into something very much deeper. Moreover it is just possible that in future it may be granted that so-called sympathetic magic does not partake of the nature of magic at all, but has greater affinities (owing to its strictly natural and non-supernatural character) with pseudo- science.
Magic is recognised by many savage peoples as a force rather than an art, — a thing which impinges upon the thought of man from outside. It would appear that many barbarian tribes believe in what would seem to be a great reservoir of magical power, the exact nature of which they are not prepared to specify. Thus amongst certain Ameri- can-Indian tribes we find a force called Orenda or spirit- force. Amongst the ancient Peruvians, everything sacred was huaca and possessed of magical power. In Melanesia, we find a force spoken of called mana, transmissible and contagious, which may be seen in the form of flames or even heard. The Malays use the word kramat to signify the same thing ; and the Malagasy the term hasma. Some of the tribes round Lake Tanganyika believe in such a force, which they call ngai, and Australian tribes have many .similar terms, such as churinga and boolya. To hark back to America, we find in Mexico the strange creed named nagualism, which partakes of the same conception — every- thing nagual is magical or possesses an inherent spiritual force of its own.
Theories of the Origin of Magic. — Many theories have been advanced regarding the origin of magic — some author- ities believing that it commenced with the idea of personal superiority ; others through animistic beliefs [See Animism); and still others through such ideas as that physical pains, for which the savage could not account, were supposed to be inflicted by invisible weapons. This last theory is, of course, in itself, merely animistic. It does not seem, how- ever, that writers on the subject have given sufficient attention to the great influence exerted on the mind of man by odd or peculiar occurrences. We do notfor a moment desire to advance the hypothesis that magic entirely originated from such a source, but we believe that it was a powerful factor in the growth of magical belief. To which, too, animism and taboo contributed their quota. Tne cult of the dead too and their worship would soon-
become fused with magical practice, and ^a " complete demonology would thus speedily arise.
The Dynamics of Magic. — Magical practice is governed by well-marked laws limited in number. It possesses many classes of practitioner ; as, for example, the 'diviner or augur, whose duties are entirely different from those of the witch-doctor. Chief among these laws, as has been already hinted, is that of sympathy, which, as has been said, must inevitably be sub-divided into the laws of similarity, contiguity and antipathy. The law of simi- larity and homeopathy is again divisible into two sections : (i) — -the assumption that like produces like — an illustration of which is the destruction of a model in the form of an enemy ; and (2) — the idea that like cures like — for instance, that the stone called the bloodstone can staunch the flow of bleeding. The law dealing with antipathy rests on the assumption that the application of a certain object or drug expels its contrary. There remains contiguity, which is based on the concept that whatever has once formed part of an object continues to form part of it. Thus if a magician can obtain a portion of a person's hair, he can work woe upon him through the invisible bonds which are supposed to extend between him and the hair in the sorcerer's possession. It is well-known that if the animal familiar of a witch be wounded, that the wound will react in a sympathetic manner on the witch herself. This is called " repercussion."
Another widespread belief is that if the magician procures the name of a person that he can gain magical dominion over him. This, of course, arose from the idea that the name of an individual was identical with himself. The doctrine of the Incommunicable Name, the hidden name of the god or magician, is well instanced by many legends in Egyptian history, — the deity usually taking extra- ordinary care to keep his name secret, in order that no one might gain power over him. The spell or incantation is connected with this concept, and with these, in a lesser degree, may be associated magical gesture, which is usually introduced for the purpose of accentuating the spoken word . Gesture is often symbolic or sympathetic ; it is sometimes the reversal of a religious rite, such as marching against the sun, Which is known as walking " widdershins." The method of pronouncing rites is, too, one of great impor- tance. Archaic or foreign expressions are usually found in spells ancient and modern ; and the tone in which the incantation is spoken, no less than its exactness, is also important. To secure exactness rhythm was often em- ployed, which had the effect of aiding memory.
The Magician. — In early society, the magician, which term includes the shaman, medicine-man, piage, witch- doctor, et cetera, may hold his position by hereditary right ; by an accident of birth, as being the seventh son of a seventh son ; to revelation from the gods ; or through mere mastery of ritual. In savage life we find the shaman a good deal of a medium, for instead of summoning the powers of the air at his bidding as did the magicians of mediaeval days, he seems to find it necessary to throw him- self into a state of trance and seek them in their own sphere. The magician is also often regarded as possessed by an animal or supernatural being. The duties of the priest and magician are often combined in primitive society, but it cannot be too strongly asserted that where a religion has been superseded, the priests of the old cult are, for those who have taken their places, nothing but magicians. We do not hear much of beneficent magic among savage peoples, and it is only in Europe that White Magic may be said to have gained any hold.
Medicsval Definition of Magic. — The definitions of magic vouchsafed by the great magicians of mediaeval and modern times naturally differ greatly from those of anthropologists.
Magic
261
Magical Diagrams
For example Eliphas Levi says in his History of Magic : " Magic combines in a single science that which is most certain in philosophy with that which is eternal and infallible in religion. It reconciles perfectly and incontestably those two terms so opposed on the first view — faith and reason, science and belief, authority and liberty. It furnishes the human mind with an instrument of philosophical and religious certainty, as exact as mathe- matics, and even accounting for the infallibility of mathe- matics themselves There is an incontestable truth,
and there is an infallible method of knowing that truth ; while those who attain this knowledge and adopt it as a rule of life, can endow their life with a sovereign power, which can make them masters of all inferior things, of wandering spirits, or in other words, arbiters and kings of the world." Paracelsus says regarding magic : " The magical is a great hidden wisdom, and reason is a great open folly. No armour shields against magic for it strikes at the inward spirit of life. Of this we may rest assured, that through full and powerful imagination only can we bring the spirit of any man into an image. No conjuration, no rites are needful ; circle-making and the scattering of incense are mere humbug and jugglery. The human spirit is so great a thing that no man can express it ; eternal and unchangeable as God Himself is the mind of man ; and could we rightly comprehend the mind of man, nothing would be impossible to us upon the earth. Through faith the imagination is invigorated and completed, for it really happens that every doubt mars its perfection. Faith must strengthen imagination, for faith establishes the will. Because man did not perfectly believe and imagine, the result is that arts are uncertain when they might be wholly certain." Agrippa also regarded magic as the true road to communion with God — thus linking it with mysticism.
Modern Magic : With the death of Agrippa in 1535 the old school of magicians may be said to have ended. But that is not to say that the traditions of magic were not handed on to others who were equally capable of preserving them. We must carefully discriminate at this juncture between those practitioners of magic, whose minds were illuminated by a high mystical ideal, and persons of doubtful occult position, like the Comte de Saint-Germain and others. At the beginning of the seventeenth century we find many great alchemists in practice, who were also devoted to the researches of transcendental magic, which they care- fully and successfully concealed under the veil of hermetic experiment. These were Michael Meyer, Campe, Robert Flood, Cosmopolite, D'Espagnet, Samuel Norton, Baron de Beausoleil, and Van Helmont ; another illustrious name is also that of Philalethes. The eighteenth century was rich in occult personalities, as for example the alchemist Lascaris (q.v.) Martines de Pasqually, and Louis de Saint- Martin (q.v.) who founded the Martinist school, which still exists under the grandmastership of Papus. After this magic merges for the moment into mesmerism, and many of the secret magical societies which abounded in Europe about this period practised animal magnetism as well as astrology, Kabalism and ceremonial magic. Indeed mesmerism powerfully influenced mystic life in the time of its chief protagonist, and the mesmerists of the first era are in direct line with the Martinist and the mystical magicians of the late eighteenth century. Indeed mysticism and magnetism are one and the same thing, in the persons of some of these occultists (See Secret Tradition) the most celebrated of which were Cazotte, Ganneau, Comte, Wronski, Du Potet, Hennequin, Comte d'Ourches, and Baron de Guldenstubbe, and last of the initiates known to us, Eliphas Levi (all of which see).
That Black Magic and sorcery are still practised is a ■well-known fact, which requires no amplification in this
place (Seel Devil Worship) : but what of that higher magic which has, at least in modern times, attracted so many gifted minds ? We cannot say that the true line of magical adepts ended with Levi, as at no time in the world's history are these known to the vulgar ; but we may be certain that the great art is practised in secret as sedulously as ever in the past, and that men of temperament as exalted as in the case of Ihe magacians of older days still privately pursue that art, which, like its sister religion, is none the less celestial because it has been evolved from lowly origins in the mind of man, whose spirit with the march of time reflects ever more strongly the light of heaven, as the sea at first dimly reddened by the dawn, at length mirrors the whole splendour of day. (See also Abraham the Jew, Black Magic, Ceremonial Magic, Egypt, Magic Darts, Magical Diagrams, Magical Instruments, Magical Numbers, Magical Union of Cologne, Magical Vest- ments, Mediaeval Magic.) Magic Darts : The Laplanders, who passed at one time for great magicians, were said to launch lead darts, about a finger-length, against their absent enemies, believing that with the magic darts they were sending grevious pains and maladies. (See Magic.) Magic Squares : (See Abraham the Jew.) Magical Diagrams : These were geometrical designs, repre- senting the mysteries of deity and creation, therefore supposed to be of special virtue in rites of evocation and conjuration.
The chief of these were the Triangle, the Double Triangle, forming a six-pointed star and known as the Sign or Seal of Solomon ; the Tetragram a four-pointed star formed by the interlacement of two pillars ; and the Pentagram, a five-pointed star.
These signs were traced on paper or parchment, or engraved on metals and glass and consecrated to their various uses by special rites.
The Triangle was based on the idea of trinity as found in all things, in deity, time and creation. The triangle was generally traced on the ground with the magic sword or rod, as in circles of evocation where the triangle was drawn within it and according to the position of the magician at its point or base so the spirits were conjured from heaven or hell.
The Double Triangle, the Sign of Solomon, symbolic of the Macrocosm, was formed by the interlacement of two triangles, thus its points constituted the perfect number six. The magicians wore it, bound on their brows and breasts during the ceremonies and it was engraved on the silver reservoir of the magic lamp.
The Tetragram was symbolic of the four elements and used in the conjuration of the elementary spirits— sylphs of the air, undines of the water, the fire salamanders and gnomes of the earth. In alchemy it represented the magical elements, salt, sulphur, mercury and azoth ; in mystic philosophy the ideas Spirit, Matter, Motion and Rest ; in hieroglyphs the man, eagle, lion and bull.
The Pentagram, the sign of the Microcosm, was held to be the most powerful means of conjuration in any rite. It may represent evil as well as good, for while with one point in the ascendant it was the sign of Christ, with two points in the ascendant it was the sign of Satan. By the use of the pentagram in these positions the powers of light or darkness were evoked. The ■ pentagram was said to be the star which led the Magi to the manger where the infant Christ was laid.
Ihe preparation and consecration of this sign for use in magical rites is prescribed with great detail. It might be composed of seven metals, the ideal form for its expression ; or traced in pure gold upon white marble, never before used for any purpose. It might also be drawn with
Magical Instruments an! Accessories
262
Magical Numbers
vermilion upon lambskin without a blemish prepared under the auspices of the Sun. The sign was next consecrated with the four elements ; breathed on five times ; dried by the smoke of five perfumes, incense, myrrh, aloes, sulphur and camphor. The names of five genii were breathed above it, and then the sign was placed successively at the north, south, east and west and centre of the astronomical cross pronouncing the letters of the sacred tetragram and various Kabalistic names.
It was believed to be of great efficacy in terrifying phantoms if engraved upon glass, and the magicians traced it on their doorsteps to prevent evil spirits from entering and the good from departing.
This symbol has been used by all secret and occult societies, by the Rosicrucians, the Illuminati, down to the Freemasons of to-day. Modern Occultists translate the meaning of the pentagram as symbolic of the human soul and its relation to God.
The symbol is placed with one point in the ascendant. That point represents the Great Spirit, God. A line drawn from there to the left-hand angle at base is the descent of spirit into matter in its lowest form, whence it ascends to right-hand angle typifying matter in its highest form, the brain of man. From here a line is drawn across the figure to left angle representing man's development in intellect, and progress in material civilization, the point of danger, from which all nations have fallen into moral corruption, signified by the descent of the line to right angle at base. But the soul of man being derived from God cannot remain at this point, but must struggle upward, as is symbolised by the line reaching again to the apex, God, whence it issued. Magical Instruments and Accessories : In magical rites these were considered of the utmost importance. Indispensable to the efficacy of the ceremonies were the altar, the chalice, the tripod, the censer ; the lamp, rod, sword, and magic fork or trident ; the sacred fire and consecrated oils ; the incense and the candles.
The altar might be of wood or stone, but if of the latter, then of stone that has never been worked or hewn or even touched by the hammer.
The chalice might be of different metals, symbolic of the object of the rites. Where the purpose was evil, a black chalice was used as in the profane masses of sorcerers and witches. In some talismans the chalice is engraved as a symbol of the moon.
The tripod and its triangular stand was also made in symbolic metals.
The censer might be of bronze, but preferably of silver.
In the construction of the lamp, gold, silver, brass and iron must be used, iron for the pedestal, brass for the mirror, silver for the reservoir and at the apex a golden triangle. Various symbols were traced upon it, including an androgynous figure about the pedestal, a serpent devouring its own tail, and the Sign of Solomon.
The rod must be specially fashioned of certain woods and then consecrated to its magical uses. A perfectly straight branch of almond or hazel was to be chosen. This was cut before the tree blossomed, and cut with a golden sickle in the early dawn. Throughout its length must be run a long needle of magnetized iron ; at one end there should be affixed a triangular prism, to the other, one of black resin, and rings of copper and zinc bound about it. At the new moon it must be consecrated by a magician who already possesses a consecrated rod.
The secret of the construction and consecration of magical rods was jealously guarded by all magicians and the rod itself was displayed as little as possible, being usually concealed in the flowing sleeve of the magician's robe.
The sword must be wrought of unalloyed steel, with copper handle in the form of a crucifix. Mystical signs were engraved on guard and blade and its consecration took place on a Sunday in full rays of the sun, when the sword was thrust into a sacred fire of cypress and laurel, then moistened with the blood of a snake, polished, and next, together with branches of vervain, swathed in silk. The sword was generally used in the service of Black Magic.
The magic fork or trident used in necromancy was also fashioned of hazel or almond, cut from the tree at one blow with an unused knife, from whose blade must' be fashioned the three prongs. Witches and sorceresses are usually depicted "using the trident in their infernal .rites.
The fire was lit with charcoal on which were cast branches of trees, symbolic of the end desired. In Black Magic these generally consisted of cypress, alderwood, broken crucifixes and desecrated hosts.
The oil for anointing was compounded of myrrh, cinna- mon, galingale and purest oil of Olive. Unguents were used by sorcerers and witches, who smeared their brows, breasts and wrists with a mixture composed of human fat and blood of corpses, combined with aconite, belladonna and poisonous fungi, thinking thereby to make themselves invisible.
Incense might be of any odoriferous woods and herbs, such as cedar, rose, citron, aloes, cinnamon, sandal, reduced to a fine powder, together with incense and storax. In Black Magic, alum, sulphur and assafcetida were used as incense.
The candles, belonging solely to practices. of Black Magic were moulded from human fat and set in candlesticks of ebony carved in the form of a crescent.
Bowls also were used in these ceremonies, fashioned of different metals, their shape symbolic of the heavens. In necromantic rites skulls of criminals were used, generally to hold the blood of some victim or sacrifice. Magical Numbers : Certain numbers and their combinations were held to be of magical power, by virtue of their repre- sentation of divine and creative mysteries.
The doctrines of Pythagoras furnished the basis for much of this belief. According to his theory numbers contained the elements of all things, of the natural and spiritual worlds and of the sciences. The real numerals of the universe are the primaries one to ten and in their com- bination the reason of all else may be found. To the Pythagoreans One represented unity, therefore God ; Two was duality, the Devil ; Four was sacred and holy, the number on which the}' swore their most solemn oaths ; Five was their symbol of marriage. They also attributed certain numbers to the gods, planets and elements ; one represented the Sun, two the Moon ; while five was fire, six the earth, eight the air, and twelve water.
Cornelius Agrippa in his work Occult Philosophy pub- lished in 1533, discourses upon numbers as those characters by whose proportion all things were formed. He enu- merates the virtues of numerals as displayed in nature, instancing the herb cinquefoil, which by the power of the number five exorcises devils, allays fever and forms an antidote to poisons. Also the virtue of seven as in the power of the seventh son to cure king's evil.
One was the origin and common measure of all things. It is indivisible ; not to be multiplied. In the universe there is one God ; one supreme intelligence in the intellec- tual world, man ; in the sidereal world, one Sun ; one potent instrument and agency in the elementary world, the philosopher's stone ; one chief member in the human world, the heart ; and one sovereign prince in the nether world, Lucifer.
Two was the number of marriage, charity and social communion. It was also regarded sometimes as an unclean
) / , ( 7ja /yt c/c /:s ,mi {/ _ \7/r
;'/■/,,■.,- /;.„„, .,//■,■ /;;■,■/,■ /;„■//.,■,!/. ,//.-,-„„, //„:,-/>;//,„:r .,.-, ,
/'it/i />r,i, ,>,,,■ .
\ //,;,„: r„r,„ \ \I„J AWemr
T7ief>i-o /.i fft.lt tir/LeJ 7i i>Jpi rih 1 1 i/f ii/j/j ear
/,': X.' / .)/,>/„■„,;.■/ -7 .
MAGICAL DIAGRAMS AND REQUISITES
[face p. 262
Magical Papyri
263
Maginot
number ; beasts of the field went into the Ark by twos.
Three had a mysterious value as shown in Time's trinity — Past, Present and Future ; in that of Space — length, breadth and thickness ; in the three heavenly virtues — faith, hope and charity ; in the three worlds of man — brain, the intellectual ; heart, the celestial ; and body, elemental.
Four signifies solidity and foundation. There are four ■seasons, four elements, four cardinal points, four evangelists.
Five, as it divides ten, the sum of all numbers, is also the •number of justice. There are five senses ; the Stigmata, the wounds of Christ were five ; the name of the Deity the Pentagram is composed of five letters ; it also is a pro- tection against beasts of prey.
Six is the sign of creation, because the world was com- pleted in six days. It is the perfect number, because it alone by addition of its half, its third and its sixth reforms ■itself. It also represents servitude by reason of the Divine injunction " Six days shalt thou labour."
Seven is a miraculous number, consisting of one, unity, and six, sign of perfection. It represents life because it contains body, consisting of four elements, spirit, flesh, bone and humour ;' and soul, made up of three elements, passion, desire and reason. The seventh day was that on which God rested from his work of creation.
Eight represents justice and fulness. Divided, its halves are equal ; twice divided, it is still even. In the Beatitude eight is the number of those mentioned — peace-makers, they who strive after righteousness, the meek, the perse- cuted, the pure, the merciful, the poor in spirit, and they that mourn.
Nine is the number of the muses and of the moving spheres.
Ten is completeness because one cannot count beyond it except by combinations formed with other numbers. In the ancient mysteries ten days of initiation were pre- scribed. In ten is found evident signs of a Divine principle.
Eleven is the number of the commandments, while Twelve is the number of signs in the Zodiac, of the apostles, of the tribes of Israel, of the gates of Jerusalem.
This theory of numbers Agrippa applied to the casting •of horoscopes. Divination by numbers was one of the favourite methods employed in the Middle Ages.
In magical rites, numbers played a great part. The instruments, vestments and ornaments must be duplicated. The power of the number three is found in the magic triangle : in the three prongs of the trident and fork ; and in the three- fold repetition of names in conjurations. Seven was also of great influence, the seven days of the week each repre- senting the period most suitable for certain evocations and -these corresponded to the seven magical works ; i .• — works of light and riches ; 2. — works of divination and mystery ; 3. — works of skill, science and eloquence ; 4. — works of wrath and chastisement ; 5. — works of love ; 6. — works of ambition and intrigue ; 7. — works of malediction and death. Magical Papyri : (See Egypt.)
Magical Union of Cologne : A society stated in a MS. of the Rosicrucians at Cologne to have been founded in that city in the year 11 15. In the Rosenkreutzer in seiner blosse of Weise it is stated that the initiates wore a triangle as symbolising power, wisdom and love. The more exalted orders among them were called Magos, and these held the greater mysteries of the fraternity. Magical Vestments and Appurtenances : These were prescribed needful adjuncts to magical rites, whose colour, name, form and substance, symbolic of certain powers and elements, added, it was supposed, greater efficacy to the evocations. Abraham the Jew, a magician of the Middle Ages, pre- scribed a tunic of white linen, with upper robe of
scarlet and girdle of white silk. A crown or fillet of silk and gold was to be worn on the head and the perfumes cast on the fire might be incense, aloes, storax, cedar, citron or rose.
According to other authorities on the subject it was advisable to vary colour of robe and employ certain jewels and other accessories according to the symbolism of the end desired. A magician of the nineteenth century, Eliphas Levi, gives a detailed description of ritual, from which the following is taken.
If the rites were those of White Magic and performed on a Sunday, then the vestment should be of purple, the tiara, bracelets and ring of gold, the latter set with a chrysolith or ruby. Laurel, heliotrope and sunflowers are the sym- bolic flowers, while other details include a carpet of lion- skins and fans of sparrow-hawk feathers. The appropriate perfumes are incense, saffron, cinnamon and red sandal.
If, however, the ceremonial took place on a Monday, the Day of the Moon, then the robe must be of white embroi- dered with silver and the tiara of yellow silk emblazoned with silver characters ; while the wreaths were to be woven of moonwort and yellow ranunculi. The jewels appro- priate to the occasion were pearls, crystals and selenite ; the perfumes, camphor, amber, aloes, white sandal and seed of cucumber.
In evocations concerning transcendent knowledge, green was the colour chosen for the vestment, or it might be green shot with various colours. The chief ornament was a necklace of pearls and hollow glass beads enclosing mer- cury. Agate was the symbolic jewel ; narcissus, lily, herb mercury, fumitory, and marjoram the flowers ; whilst the perfumes must be benzoin, mace and storax.
For operations connected with religious and political matters, the magician must don a robe of scarlet and bind on his brow a brass tablet inscribed with various characters . His ring must be studded with an emerald or sapphire, and he must burn for incense, balm, ambergris, grain of para- dise and saffron. For garlands and wreaths, oak, poplar, fig and pomegranate leaves should be entwined.
If the ceremonial dealt with amatory affairs, the vestment must be of sky-blue, the ornaments of copper, and- the crown of violets. The magic ring must be set with a turquoise, while the tiara and clasps were wrought of lapis-lazuli and beryl. Roses, myrtle and olive were the symbolic flowers, and fans must be made of swan- feathers.
If vengeance was desired on anyone, then robes must be worn whose colour was that of blood, flame or rust, belted with steel, with bracelets and ring of the same metal. The tiara must be bound with gold and the wreaths woven of absinthe and rue.
To bring misfortune and death on a person, the vest- ment must be black and the neck encircled with lead. The ring must be set with an onyx and the garlands twined of cypress, ash and hellebore ; whilst the perfumes to be used were sulphur, scammony, alum and assafcetida.
For purposes of Black Magic, a seamless and sleeveless robe of black was donned, while on the head was worn a leaden cap inscribed with the signs of the Moon, Venus and Saturn. The wreaths were of vervain and cypress ; and the perfumes burned were aloes, camphor and storax. Maginot, Adele : One of the mediums whose trance utterances have been recorded by the French spiritualist Alphonse Cahagnet, who published his Ar canes de la vie future devoilis in 184S. Her seances, of which Cahagnet strove to obtain a written account from as many as possible of those present, are among the most valuable evidence which spiritualism can produce. Her descriptions of absent or deceased friends of the sitters were singularly accurate, though her supposed conversations with their spirits would
Magnst
264
Malays
appear to be fictitious. At the least her seances are excel- lent examples of telepathic communication.
Magnet : {See Hypnotism.)
Magnetism : (See Spiritualism, Hypnotism.)
Magnetismus Negativus : (See Fludd.)
Magnus Microcoism : (See Crystallomaney.)
Magpie : The chattering of a Magpie was formerly considered a sure omen of evil.
Mahan, Rev. Asa : (See Spiritualism.)
Mahatma : (See Adept.)
Maier, Michael : A German alchemist born at Rindsburg in Holstein about the year 1858. He was one of the principal figures in the Rosicrucian Controversy in Germany and the greatest adept of his time. He diligently pursued the study of medicine in his youth and settUng at Rostock practised with such success that the Emperor Rudolph appointed him as his physician, ennobling him later for his services. Some adepts eventually succeeded in luring him from the practical work he followed so long into the mazy and tortuous paths of alchemy. In order to confer with those whom he suspected were possessed of the transcen- dent mysteries he travelled all over Germany. The Biographie Universelle states that in pursuit of these " ruinous absurdities " he sacrificed his health, fortune and time. On a visit to England he became acquainted with Robert Fludd the Kentish Mystic.
In the controversy which convulsed Germany on the" appearance of his Rosicrucian Manifestoes, he took a vigorous and enthusiastic share and wrote several works in defence of the mysterious society. He is alleged to have travelled in order to seek for members of the " College of Teutonic Philosophers R.C.," and failing to find them formed a brotherhood of his own, based on the form of the Fama Fraternibus. There is no adequate authority for this statement, but it is believed that he eventually, towards the end of his life, was initiated into the genuine order. A posthumous pamphlet of Maier' s called Ulysses was pub- lished by one of his personal friends in 1624. There was added to the same volume the substance of two pamphlets already published in German but which in view of their importance were now translated into Latin for the benefit of the European literati. The first pamphlet was entitled Colloquium Rhodostauroticum trium personarium per Famem et Confessionem quodamodo revelatam de Frater- nitate Rosce Crucis. The second was an Echo Colloquii by Hilarion on behalf of the Rosicrucian Fraternity. From these pamphlets it appears that Maier was admitted as a member of the mystical order. He became the most pro- fuse Writer on alchemy of his time. He died in the year 1622. Most of his works, many of which are adorned with curious plates, are obscure with the exception of his Rosi- crucian Apologies. (See Rosicrucians.i
Maimonides, Moses (1 135-1204) : A great Spanish-Hebrew philosopher and theologian, the author of the Guide of the Perplexed. His theories are Aristotelian and rational, but there remained in his view-point a touch of mysticism.
Malachite : Used to preserve the cradle of an infant from spells.
Malays : Magic among the Malays is -for the most part of that type known as " sympathetic " (See Magic), that is, it possesses more of the nature of pseudo-science than that of wonder. Says Clifford : —
" The accredited intermediary between men and spirits is the Pawang ; the Pawang is a functionary of great and traditional importance in a Malay village, though in places near towns the office is falling into abeyance. In the inland districts, however, the Pawang is still a power, and is regarded as part of the constituted order of Society, without whom no village community would be complete. It must be clearly understood that he had nothing what-
ever to do with the official Muhammadan religion of the mosque ; the village has its regular staff of elders — the Imam, Khatio, and Bilal — for the mosque service. But the Pawang is quite outside this system and belongs to a different and much older order of ideas ; he may be re- garded as the legitimate representative of the primitive ' medicine-man,' or ' village-sorcerer,' and his very existence in these days is an anomaly, though it does not strike Malays as such
" The Pawang is a person of very real significance. In all agricultural operations, such as sowing, reaping, irrigation works, and the clearing of jungle for planting, in fishing at sea, in prospecting for minerals, and in cases of sickness, his assistance is invoked. He is entitled by custom to- certain small fees ; thus, after a good harvest he is allowed in some villages five gantangs of padi, one ganlang of rice (beras), and two chupaks of emping (a preparation of rice and cocoa-nut made into a sort of sweetmeat) from each householder."
The Pawang regulates taboos, and employs a familiar spirit known as hanlu pusaka — a hereditary demon. He also acts as a medium and divines through trance. To- become a magician " You must meet the ghost of a mur- dered man. Take the midrib of a leaf of the ' ivory ' cocoa-nut palm (jyelepah my or gading), which is to be laid on the grave, and two midribs, which are intended to represent canoe-paddles, and carry them with the help of a companion to the grave of the murdered man at the time of the full moon (the 15th day of the lunar month) when it falls upon a Tuesday. Then take a cent's worth of incense, with glowing embers in a censer, and carry them to the head-post of the grave of the deceased. Fumigate the grave, going three times round it, and call -upon the mur- dered man by name : —
' Hearken, So-and-so,
And assist me ;
I am taking (this boat) to the saints of God,
And I desire to ask for a little magic'
Here take the first midrib, fumigate it, and lay it upon the head of the grave, repeating ' Kur A llah ' (' Cluck, Cluck, God ! ') seven times. You and your companion must now take up a sitting posture, one at the head and the other at the foot of the grave, facing the grave post, and use the canoe-paddles which you have brought. In a- little while the surrounding scenery will change and take upon itself the appearance of the sea, and finally an aged man will appear, to whom you must address the same request as before."
Malay magic may be sub-divided into preparatory rites, sacrificial, lustration, divination and possession. Sacrifice takes the form of a simple gift, or act of homage to the spirit or deity. Lustration is magico-religious and puri- ficatory, principally taking place after child-birth. It may be performed by fire or water. Divination consists for the most part of the reading of dreams, and is, as elsewhere, drawn from the acts of men or nature. Omens are strongly believed in.
" When a star is seen in apparent proximity to the moon,, old people say there will be a wedding shortly ....
" The entrance into a house of an animal which does not generally seek to share the abode of man is regarded by the Malays as ominous of misfortune. If a wild bird flies- into a house it must-be carefully caught and smeared with oil, and must then be released in the open air, a formula being recited in which it is bidden to fly away with all the ill-luck and misfortunes (sial jambalang) of the occupier. An iguana, a tortoise, and a snake, are perhaps the most dreaded of these unnatural visitors. They are sprinkled with ashes, if possible to counteract their evil influence.
Malays
265
Malleus
" A swarm of bees settling near a house is an unlucky omen, and prognosticates misfortune."
So, too, omens are taken either from the flight or cries of certain birds, such as the night-owl, the crow, some kinds of wild doves, and the bird called the " Rice's Husband " (laki padi.)
Astrology. — Divination by", astrology is, however, the most common method of forecasting the future. The native practitioners possess long tables of lucky and unlucky periods and reasons. These are mostly translations from Indian and Arabic sources. The oldest known of these systems of propitious and unpropitious seasons is known as Katika Lima, or the Five Times. Under it the day is divided into five parts, and five days form a cycle. To each division is given a name as follows : Maswara, Kala, S'ri, Brahma, Bisnu (Vishnu) names of Hindu deities, the last name in the series for the first day being the first in that of the second day, and so on until the five days are exhausted. Each of these has a colour, and according to the colour first seen or noticed on such and such a day will it be fortunate to ask a boon of a certain god. Another version of this system, known as the " Five Moments " is similar in origin, but possesses a Mohammedan nomencla- ture. Another scheme Katika Tnjoh is based on the seven heavenly bodies, divides each day into seven parts, each of which is distinguished by the Arabic name for the sun, moon, and principal planets. The astrology proper of the Malays is purely Arabic in origin, but a system of Hindu invocation is in vogue by which the lunar month is divided into parts called Rejang, which resembles the Nacshatras or lunar houses of the Hindus. Each division has its symbol, usually an animal. Each day is propitious for something, and the whole system has been committed to verse for mnemonic purposes.
Demonology. — The demoniac form common to Malaysia is that of the Jinn, with some leaven of the older Hindu spirit. They are one hundred and ninety in number. They are sometimes sub-divided into " faithful " and " infidel," and further into the Jinns of the royal musical instruments, of the state, and of the royal weapons. The Afrit is also known. Angels also abound, and are purely of Arabic origin. Besides these the principal supernatural beings are as follows : — the Polong, or familiar ; the Hantu Pem- buru, or spectre Huntsman ; the Jadi-jadian, or wer- tiger ; the Huntu, or ghost of the murdered ; the Jemalang, or earth-spirit.
Minor Sorcery. — The rites of minor sorcery and witch- craft, as well as those of the shaman, are widely practised among the Malays, and are practically identical in character with those in use among other peoples in a similar state of culture.
See : — -W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic ; Swettenham, Malay Sketches ; Clifford, In Court and, Kampong ; Studies in Brown Humanity. Malchidael : (See Astrology.)
Mallebranche : A marker of the game of tennis, living in the Rue Sainte-Genevieve, Paris, who in 1618 was visited by an apparition of his wife, who had died five years before She came to advise him to repent and live a better life, and to pray for her also. Both Mallebranche and his wife (for he had married a second time) heard the voice, but the apparition did not become visible. In 161 8 a brochure was published at Paris, entitled : Histoire nouvelle et remarquable de Vesprit d'une femme qui c'est apparue au Faubourg Saint-Marcel apris qu'elle a demeue cinq ans entiers ensevelie ; elle a parte a son mari, lui a commande de faire prier pour elle , ay ant commence de parler le mar di 11 Decembre, 1618. Malleus Malelcarum : A large volume published in Germany at the end of the fifteenth century, written by two inquisi-
tors under the papal bull against witchcraft of 1484, — Jacob Sprenger and Henricus Institor. Says Wright concerning it : " In this celebrated work, the doctrine of witchcraft was first reduced to a regular system, and it was the model and groundwork of all that was written on the subject long after the date which saw its first appear- ance. Its writers enter largely into the much-disputed, question of the nature of demons ; set forth the causes which lead them to seduce men in this manner ; and show why women are most prone to listen to their proposals, by reasons which prove that the inquisitors had but a mean estimate of the softer sex. The inquisitors show the most extraordinary skill in explaining all the difficulties which seemed to beset the subject ; they even prove to their entire- satisfaction that persons who have become witches may easily change themselves into beasts, particularly into- wolves and cats ; and after the exhibition of such a mass of learning, few would venture any longer to entertain a doubt. They investigate not only the methods employed to effect various kinds of mischief, but also the counter- charms and exorcisms that may be used against them. They likewise tell, from their own experience, the dangers to which the inquisitors were exposed, and exult in the fact that they were a class of men against whom sorcery had no power. These writers actually tell us, that the demon had tried to frighten them by day and by night in the forms of apes, dogs, goats, etc.; and that they frequently found large pins stuck in their night-caps,, which they doubted not came there by witchcraft. When we hear these inquisitors asserting that the crime of which the witches were accused, deserved a more extreme punish- ment than all the vilest actions of which humanity is capable, we can understand in some degree the complacency with which they relate how, by their means, forty persons had been burnt in one place, and fifty in another, and a still greater number in a third. From the time of the publication of the Malleus Maleficarum, the continental press during two or three generations teemed with publi- cations on the all-absorbing subject of sorcery.
" One of the points on which opinion had differed most was, whether the sorcerers were carried bodily through the- air to the place of meeting, or whether it was an imaginary journey, suggested to their minds by the agency of the- evil one. The authors of the Malleus decide at once in favour of the bodily transmission. One of them was- personally acquainted with a priest of the diocese of Frisingen, who declared that he had in his younger days been carried through the air by a demon to a place at a very great distance from the spot whence he had been taken. Another priest, his friend, declared that he had seen him. carried away, and that he appeared to him to be borne up on a kind of cloud. At Baldshut, on the Rhine, in the diocese of Constance, a witch confessed, that offended at not having been invited to the wedding of an acquaintance, she had caused herself to be carried thorugh the air in open daylight to the top of a neighbouring mountain, and there, having made a hole with her hands and filled it with water, she had, by stirring the water with certain incantations, caused a heavy storm to burst forth on the heads of the wedding-party ; and there were witnesses at the trial who swore they had seen her carried through the air. The inquisitors, however, confess that the witches were some- times carried away, as they term it, in the spirit ; and- they give the instance of one woman who was watched by her husband ; she appeared as if asleep, and was insen- sible, but he perceived a kind of cloudy vapour arise out of her mouth, and vanish from the room in which she lay — this after a time returned, and she then awoke, and. gave an account of her adventures, as though she had been, carried bodily to the assembly
JMalphas
266
MargaritomaEcy
! " The witches of the Malleus Malefic arum appear to have been more injurious to horses and cattle than to mankind. A witch at Ravenspurg confessed that she had killed twenty-three horses by sorcery, ffe are led to wonder most at the ease with which people are brought to t>ear witness to things utterly beyond the limits of belief. A man of the name of Stauff in the territory of Berne, declared that when pursued by the agents of justice, he escaped bv taking the form of a mouse ; and persons were found to testify that they had seen him perform this transmutation.
" The latter part of the work of the two inquisitors gives minute directions for the mode in which the prisoners are to be treated, the means to be used to force them to a confession, the degree of evidence required for conviction of those who would not confess, and the whole process of the trials. These show sufficiently that the unfortunate -wretch who was once brought before the inquisitors of the holv see on the suspicion of sorcery, however slight might be the grounds of the charge, had very small chance of escaping out of their claws.
" The Malleus contains no distinct allusion to the pro- ceedings at the Sabbath. The witches of this period differ little from those who had fallen into the hands of the earlier inquisitors at the Council of Constance. We see plainly how, in most countries, the mysteriously indefinite crime of sorcery had first been seized on to ruin the cause of great political offenders, until the fictitious importance thus given to it brought forward into a promi- nent position, which they would, perhaps, never otherwise have held, the miserable class who were supposed to be more especially engaged in it. It was the judicial prose- cutions and the sanguinarj- executions which followed, that stamped the character of reality on charges of which it required two or three centuries to convince mankind of the emptiness and vanity. One of the chief instruments in fixing the belief in sorcery, and in giving it that terrible hold on society which it exhibited in the following century7, was the compilation of Jacob Sprenger and his fellow inquisitor. In this book sorcery was reduced to a system but it was not yet perfect ; and we must look forward, some half a century before we find it clothed with all the horrors which cast so much terror into every class of society."
Malphas : Grand president of the infernal regions, where he appears under the shape of a crow. \Yhen he appears in human form he has a very raucous voice. He builds
■ impregnable citadels and towers, overthrows the ramparts of his enemies, finds good workmen, gives familiar spirits, receives sacrifices, and deceives the sacrificers. Forty legions are under his command.
Mamaloi : An obeah priestess. (See West Indian Islands.)
Mana : (See Magic.)
Mananan : Son of the Irish sea-god Lir, magician and owner of strange possessions. His magical boat " Ocean-sweeper " steered by the wishes of its occupant ; his horse Aonban, able to travel on sea or land ; and his sword Fragarach, a match for any mail ; were brought by Lugh from " The Land of the Living " (Fairyland). As lord of the sea he •was the Irish Charon, and his colour-changing cloak would flap gaily as he marched with heavy tread round the camp of the hostile force invading Erin. He is comparable with the Cymric Manawiddan and resembles the Hellenic Proteus.
Mandragoras : Familiar demons who appear in the figures of little men without beards. Delrio states that one day a mandragora, entering at the request of a sorcerer, who was being tried before a court for wizardry, was caught by the arms by the judge, who did not believe in the existence •of the spirit, to convince himself of its existence, and
thrown into the fire, where of course it would escape un- harmed. Mandragoras are thought to be little dolls or figures given to sorcerers by the Devil for the purpose of being consulted b}- them in time of need ; and it would seem as if this conception had sprung directly from that of the fetish, which is nothing else than a dwelling-place made by a shaman or medicine-man for the reception of any wandering spirit who chooses to take up his abode therein. The author of the work entitled Petit Albert says that on one occasion, whilst travelling in Flanders and passing through the town of Lille, he was invited by one of his friends to accompany him to the house of an old woman who posed as being a great prophetess. This aged person conducted the two friends into a dark cabinet lit only by a single lamp, where they could see upon a table covered with a cloth a kind of little statue or mandragora, seated upon a tripod and having the left hand extended and hold- ing a hank of silk very delicately fashioned, from which was suspended a small piece of iron highly polished. Plac- ing under this a crystal glass so that the piece of iron was suspended inside the goblet, the old woman commanded the figure to strike the iron against the glass in such a manner as she wished, saying at the same time to the figure : "I command you, Mandragora, in the name of those to whom you are bound to give obedience, to know if the gentleman present will be happy in the journey which he is about to make. If so, strike three times with the iron upon the goblet." The iron struck three times as demanded without the old woman having touched any of the apparatus, much to the surprise of the two spectators. The sorceress put several other questions to the Mandragora, who struck the glass once or thrice as seemed good to him. But, as the author shows, the whole was an artifice of the old woman, for the piece of iron suspended in the goblet was extremely light and when the old woman wished it to strike against the glass, she held in one of her hands a ring set with a large piece of magnetic stone, the virtue of which drew the iron towards the glass.
The ancients attributed great virtues to the plant called mandragoras or mandrake, which was supposed to be somewhat in the shape of a man, and when plucked from the earth to emit a species of human cry. It was also worn to ward off various diseases. (See Exoreism.)
Manen : The priest of the Katean Secret Society- of the Moluccas.
Manicheism : (See Gnosticism.)
Manieri, B. E. : (See Italy.)
Manu is a grade in the theosophical hierarchy below the Planetary Logoi or Rulers of the Seven Chains. The charge given to Manus is that of forming the different races of humanity and guiding its evolution. Each race has its own Manu who represents the racial type.
Manuscript Troano : [See Atlantis.)
Maranos : A Jewish secret fraternity- which arose in Spain in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries during the persecu- tion of the Hebrew race in that country. Its members met in the greatest secrecy at inns, disguised, and used grips, signs and passwords. (See Freemasons' Magazine, i860, III., p. 416.)
Marcellus Empirieus : A Gallic-Roman writer born at Bor- deaux in the fourth century. He was magister officiorum under Theodosius (379-395.) He wrote a work called De medicamenlis conspiricis physicis ac rationalibus, a collection of medical recipes, for the most part absurd and worthless, and having more in common with popular superstition than with medical science.
Marcians : (See Gnostics.)
Margaritomancy : Divination by pearls. A pearl was covered with a vase, and placed near the fire, and the names of suspected persons pronounced. \Yhen the name
Margiotta
267
Mascots
of the guilty one was uttered the pearl was supposed
to bound upwards and pierce the bottom of the vase. Margiotta, Domenico : Author of Adriano Lemmi, and
Palladism, in which books he violently impeaches the
Grand Master Lemmi of the crimes of Satanism and str-
cery. These statements have been amply proved to be
without foundation. Marie Antoinette : (See Cagliostro.) Marigny, Enguerrand de : A minister of Louis X., king of
France. His wife and her sister were accused of having
recourse to enchantments to harm the king, his brother
Charles, and other barons, with the intention of freeing
Enguessand, who was imprisoned. The ladies were arrested.
Jacques Dulot, a magician, who was believed to have helped
in these sorceries, was also committed to prison, where
he took his own life, after his wife had been burnt. Dulot's
suicide was considered a conclusive proof of Marigny' s
guilt, and the ex-minister was tried, condemned, and
hanged on a gibbet which he himself had had erected during
his term of office. The tide of popular opinion turned at the
sight of his misfortune, and the judges dared not condemn
his wife and sister-in-law. The king himself repented of
having abandoned Marigny to his enemies, and in his will
left a sum of money to his family. Marriage of Heaven and Hell : (See Blake.) Marrow of Alchemy : (See Philalethes.) Marshall, Mrs. : An English medium who gave open seances
from 1858 onwards. Unlike many of the early mediums
she practised professionally, and was for some time the
only professional medium of note in this country. The
phenomena witnessed included communication by means of
rapping, playing on musical instruments, touchings by
invisible hands, and all the more familiar forms. A writer
in All the Year Round, July 28th, i860, characterised Mrs.
Marshall's performance as a " dull and barefaced imposi- tion," but Robert Bell, the celebrated dramatist, writing
in the Cornhill Magazine was satisfied that the phenomena
were genuine spirit manifestations. (See Spiritualism.) Marsi, The : According to Pliny, these people were from the earliest times skilled in magical practices and sorceries. They were able to charm poisonous serpents by means of songs. Marthese, J. N. T. : (See Holland.)
Martian Language : A language purporting to be that of the inhabitants of the planet Mars, written and spoken by the medium known as Helene Smith. Helene, the medium studied by a celebrated investigator, M. Flournoy, pro- fessor of psychology at Geneva, had in 1892 joined a spiritualistic circle, where she developed marvellous me- diumistic powers. In 1896, after Professor Flournoy had begun his investigations, she was spirited during a trance to the planet Mars, and thereafter described to the circle the manners and customs and appearance of the Martians. She learned their language, which she wrote and spoke with ease and consistency. Unlike most of the " unknown tongues " automatically produced the Martian language was intelligible, its words were used consistently, and on the whole it had every appearance of a genuine language. That it was in any way connected with Mars is out of the question. The descriptions of that planet and its inhabitants are quite impossible. And the language itself bears a remarkable resemblance to French, the native tongue of the medium. The grammar and construction of both languages are the same, and even the Vowel-sounds are identical, so that the source of the Martian language is not far to seek. Martin, Saint (exorcist) : (circa 316-400). Most of the
pristine luminaries of the Christian Church are credited Martini :" (See Alchemy.) with working miracles, and indeed the great majority of Martinists : (See St. Martin.) them maintained that, would the rude populace be won Mascots : (See Amulets.)
for Christ, the one sure way was to show them extraordinary marvels. Even Columba, most engaging of saints, was not averse to practising deception with a view to making converts ; and it has often been suggested, not without considerable reason, that some of these early thaumaturgists brought science to their aid. Perhaps St. Martin was among those who essayed this practice, and certainly the muster-roll of his miracles is formidable, for he is tradition- ally credited with considerably over two hundred.
Martin was born about the year 316 at Sabaria, in Pannonia. His parents were heathen, yet he very soon came into contact with Christians, and their teaching impressed him greatly. As a young man he entered the army, and it was soon after this step that, while stationed with his regiment at Amiens, he performed his famous act of charity, dividing his cloak with a beggar who was shivering with cold. The night after this generous act he was vouchsafed a vision, Christ appearing to him and giving him his blessing ; and thereupon Martin espoused the Christian faith formally, he was baptised and renounced soldiering once and for all. Going to Poitiers, he then made the acquaintance of Hilary, who wished to make him a deacon, but at his own request ordained him to the humbler office of an . exorcist ; and a little later, during a visit to his home, Martin experienced the joy of winning his mother from heathendom to the new faith. However, his open zeal in opposing the Arians raised persecution against him, and for a considerable space he found it advisable to live at the island of Gallinaria, near Genoa, in which quiet retreat he had ample leisure for scientific researches and theological studies ; but by the year 365 he was back with Hilary at Poitiers, when he founded the Monasterium Locociagense. Then, in 371, the people of Tours chose him as their bishop, and for some time subse- quently he showed great activity in trying to extirpate idolatry in his diocese, and in extending the monastic system. Nevertheless, he was anything but a ^fierce proseletyser, and at Treves, in 385, he entreated that the lives of the Priscillianist heretics should be spared, while he ever afterwards refused to have anything to do with those bishops who had sanctioned their execution. Meanwhile, being anxious for another period of quiet study, Martin had established the monastery of Marmontier les Tours, on the banks of the Loire ; and here much of his remaining life was spent, yet it was at Candes that his death occurred about the year 400.
Martin left no writings behind him, the Confessio with which he is sometimes credited being undoubtedly spurious. His life was written by his ardent disciple, Sulpicius Severus, and a curious document it is, filled with accounts of the miracles and marvels worked by the quondam bishop. Thanks to his triumphs herein, Martin was duly sanctified by the church, and he is commemorated on the nth of November ; but the feast of Martinmas, which occurs on that date, and which of course derives its name from him, is, nevertheless, a survival of an old pagan festival ; and it inherited certain usages thereof, this accounting for the fact that Martin is regarded as the patron saint of deep potations. Certain of his miracles, and other incidents in his life, were figured by numerous painters of note, perhaps the finest picture of him being one by the Flemish master, Hugo van der Goes, which is now in the Municipal Museum at Glasgow ; while it behoves to add that the term Martinet, signifying a severe and punctilious person, is not derived from the saint's name, but from one Jean Martinet, a French soldier who, during the reign of Louis XIV., won fame by his ardour in promoting discipline in his regiment.
Mashinashu
268
Matikoc
Mashmashu : {See Babylonia.)
Masleh : The angel whom the Jews believed ruled the Zodiac. According to one of their rabbinical legends, Masleh was the medium through which the power and influence of the Messiah was transmitted to the sphere of the Zodiac.
Massey, C. C. : {See Psychological Society.)
Master : {See Adept.)
Mastiphal : The name given to the prince of demons in an apocryphal book entitled Little Genesis, which is quoted by Cedrenus.
Materialisation : A term denoting the formation by a spirit of a temporary physical organisation, visible and palpable, by means of which it can come into touch with material objects. Materialisation is the most important of the physical phenomena of spiritualism, and in its earlier stages was confined to the materialising of heads and hands, or vague luminous figures. In common with much of the physical phenomena, it had its origin in America, where it was known at a comparatively early period in the history of the movement. So early as i860 seances were held with the Fox sisters by Robert Dale Owen and others, at which veiled and luminous figures were witnessed. One sitter, Mr. Livermore, saw and recognised the spirit of his dead wife many times during a series of seances with Kate Fox, extending over some six years. In this case, however, there were no other sitters, and the seances were held in the dark, the whole atmosphere being peculiarly favourable to fraud. In 1871 another American medium, Mrs. Andrews, held sittings at which materialised forms were seen, and in the following year Mrs. Guppy and another medium attempted the production of a similar phenomenon in England, but without marked success. The mediums, Heme and Williams, succeeded a few months later in materialising shadowy forms and faces in a dark seance- room. It was, however, Miss Florence Cook, to whose phenomena Sir William Crookes has so abundantly testified, who was to give the most remarkable demonstration of this form of spirit manifestation. Miss Cook was, at the commencement of her spiritualistic career, a young girl of sixteen or seventeen years, described by a contemporary writer as " a pretty, Jewish-like little girl." She was at that time a private medium, though at the outset she held some materialisation seances with Heme. From her childhood, it was said, she had been attended by a spirit- girl, who stated that her name on earth had been Annie Morgan, but that her name in the spirit-world was Katie King. Under the latter name Miss Cook's control was destined to become very famous in spiritualistic circles. Usually the medium was put in a sort of cupboard, or cabinet, tied to her chair, and the cords sealed. A short interval would ensue, during which the sitters sang spiritual- istic hymns, and at length there would emerge from the cabinet a form clad in flowing white draperies, and not to be distinguished from an ordinary human being. On one occasion a seance was held at Mr. Cook's house, at which several distinguished spiritualists were present. Among the invited guests was Mr. W. Volckman, who thought to test for himself the good faith of the medium and the genuineness of " Katie." After some forty minutes close observance of the materialised spirit Mr. Volckman con- cluded that- Miss Cook and Katie were one and the same, and just as the white-robed figure was about to return to the cabinet he rushed forward and seized her. His indig- nant fellow-sitters released the " spirit," the light was extinguished, and in the confusion that followed the spirit disappeared. Miss Cook was found a few minutes later bound as when she was placed in the cabinet, the cords unbroken, the seal intact. She wore a black dress, and there was no trace of white draperies in the cabinet. Sir William Crookes, whose investigations into the phenomena
of this medium extended over a period of some years, had better opportunity of examining Katie's pretensions than Mr. Volckman had, and. he had left it on record that the- spirit form was taller than the medium, had a larger face and longer fingers ; and whereas Florence Cook had black hair and a dark complexion, Katie's complexion was fair, and her hair a light auburn. Moreover Sir William, enjoying as he did the complete confidence of Katie, had on more than one occasion the privilege of seeing her and Miss Cook at the same time. But Miss Cook was not the only medium who was controlled by Katie King, who, with her father, John King, became in time a most popular spirit with materialisation mediums. From that time onwards materialisation was extensively practised both by private and professional mediums, among the number being Mrs. Showers and her daughter, Rita, Miss Lottie Fowler, William Eglinton and £>. D. Home ; while in recent years materialisations are stated to have occurred in the presence of Eusapia Palladino. Many sitters claimed to see in these draped figures and veiled faces the form and features of deceased relatives and friends, though frequently there was but the smallest ground for such a claim — parents recognised their daughter by her hair, a man recognised his mother by the sort of cap she wore, and so on. There is no doubt that fraud eniered, and still enters, very largely into materialisation seances. Lay figures, muslin draperies, false hair, and similar properties- have been found in the possession of mediums ; accom- plices have been smuggled into the seance-room ; lights are frequently turned low or extinguished altogether. Add to this the fact that other spirits besides " Katie " have on being grasped resolved themselves into the person of the medium, and it will be seen that scepticism is not altogether unjustified. Then, as already mentioned, the rash and premature recognition of deceased friends in draped forms whose resemblance to the medium is patent to the less-interested observer, has also done much to ruin the case for genuine spirit materialisation. Yet that there is a case we must believe on the assertion of some of the most distinguished of modern investigators, men fully alive to the possibilities of fraud, trained to habits of correct observation. M. Flammarion felt constrained to attribute the materialisations he had witnessed in the presence of Eusapia Palladino to fluidic emanations from the medium's person, while judging the recognition accorded to them the result of illusion. Others state that the physical organisation formed by the spirit is composed of fine particles of matter drawn from the material world. By way of explaining the numerous exposures that have been made from time to time various theories of a more or less ingenious character have been advanced by spiritualists. In a case of obvious fraud they declare that tie spirits have controlled the medium to secrete wigs and draperies in the cabinet. If a spirit on being held by a sitter proves to be the medium herself an explanation is also forthcoming. The medium, it is said, imparts, to the spirit a certain portion of her vital energy, so that the spirit may " mani- fest." When the latter is ruthlessly grasped these two portions of the medium's vital spirits tend to re-unite, so that either the medium will draw the spirit into the cabinet, or the spirit will draw the medium out. The reason that the union generally takes place without the cabinet is that the medium has imparted to the control more of her energy than she had retained.
Mather, Cotton, and Increase : Father and son, two eminent divines of Boston, notorious for their crusade against persons suspected of witchcraft. {See America, U.S. of.)
Matikou : A mystical work printed at Frankiort in 1784, whose theories resemble the doctrines of the Brahmins. The following is an example of its teachings. Before the
Maurier
269
Mediaeval Magic
Fall, Adam was a pure spirit, a celestial being, surrounded by a mystic covering which rendered him incapable of being affected by any poison of nature, or by the power of the elements. The physical body, therefore, is but a coarse husk in which, having lost his primitive invulner- ability, man shelters from the elements. In his condition of perfect glory and perfect happiness Adam was a natural king, ruling all things visible and invisible, and showing forth the power of the Almighty. He also bore " a fiery, two-edged, all-piercing lance," — a living word, which united all powers within itself, and by means of which he could perform all things.
Maurier, George Du : (See Fiction, Occult English,)
Maxwell, Dr. Scotch Physician : (See Hypnotism.)
Mayas : {See Mexico and Central America.)
Mayavi-rupa is the invisible part of the physical body. Its appearance is exactly similar to that of the physical body. (See Seven Principles, Rupa, Theosophy.)
Mbwiri : (See Africa.)
Medea : An enchantress, daughter of the king of Colchis, who fell in love with Jason when he came to that country, and enabled him to slay the sleepless dragon that guarded the golden fleece. She fled from Colchis with Jason who made her his wife, and from whom she exacted a pledge never to love another woman. Her young brother, having been found on board the ship they sailed in, she tore him in pieces and flung him into the sea. She accompanied Jason to Greece, where she was looked on as a barbarian, but having conciliated King Peleus who was now a very old •man, she induced him to try to regain youth by bathing in s. magic cauldron of which sHe was to prepare the contents. So great was his faith in' her powers, that the old man unhesitatingly plunged into her cauldron and was boiled alive. Her reason for this frightful act of cruelty was to hasten the succession to the throne of Jason, who in due •course would have succeeded Peleus ; but now the Greeks would have none of either him or Medea, and he was forced to leave Iolcos. Growing tired of the formidable enchantress to whom . he had bound himself, Jason sought to contract an alliance with Glauce, a young prin- cess. Dissembling her real intentions, Medea feigned friendship with the bride-elect and sent her as a wedding present a garment, which as soon as Glauce put it on, caused her to die in the greatest agony. She — Medea — parted from Jason ; having murdered her two children by him, she fled from Corinth in her car drawn by dragons, -to Athens, where she married Argeus, by whom she had a son, Medus. But the discovery of an attempt on the life of Theseus, forced her to leave Athens. Accompanied by her son, she returned to Colchis, and restored her father to the throne, of which he had been deprived by his own brother Perses. A great amount of literature has been Written around Medea : Euripides, Ennius, Aeschylus, and later, Thomas Corneille having made her the theme of tragedies. (See Greece.)
Medici, Catherine de : (See France.)
Medicine, Occult : " The whole power of the occult physi- cian," says Eliphas Levi, " is in the conscience of his will, while his whole art consists in exciting the faith of his patient. ' If you have faith,' says the Master, ' all things are possible to him who believes.' The confidence must be dominated by expression, tone, gesture ; confidence must be inspired by a fatherly manner, and cheerfulness stimulated by seasonable and sprightly conversations. Rabelais, who was a greater magician than he seemed, made pantagruelism his special panacea. He compelled his patients to laugh, and all the remedies he subsequently gave them succeeded better in consequence ; he established .a magnetic sympathy between himself and them, by means of which he communicated to them his own confidence
and good humour ; he flattered them in his prefaces, termed them his precious, most illustrious patients, and dedicated his books to them. So are we convinced that Gargantua and Pantagruel cured more black humours, more tendencies to madness, more atrabilious whims, at that epoch of religious animosities and civil wars, than the whole Faculty of medicine could boast. Occult medicine is essentially sympathetic. Reciprocal affection, or at least real good will, must exist between doctor and patient. Syrups and juleps have very little inherent virtue ; they are what they become through the mutual opinion of operator and subject ; hence homcepathic medicir.es dispenses with them and no serious inconvenience follows. Oil and wine, combined with salt or camphor, are sufficient for the healing of all afflictions, and for all external frictions or soothing applications, oil and wine, are the chief medica- ments of the Gospel tradition. They formed the balm of the Good Samaritan, and in the Apocalypse, when des- cribing the last plagues, the prophet prays the avenging powers to spare these substances, that is, to leave a hope and a remedy for so many wounds. What we term extreme unction was the pure and simple practice of the Master's traditional medicine, both for the early Christians and in the mind of the apostle Saint James, who has included the precept in his epistle to the faithful of the whole world. ' Is any man sick among you,' he writes, ' let him call in the priests of the church, and let them pray over him , anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.' This divine therapeutic science was lost gradually, and Extreme Unction came to be regarded as a religious formality necessary as a preparation for death. At the same time, the thaumaturgic virtue, of consecrated oil could not be altogether effaced from remembrance by the traditional doctrine, and it is perpetuated in the passage of the cate- chism which refers to Extreme Unction. Faith and charity were the most signal healing powers among the early Christians. The source of most diseases is in moral disorders ; we must begin by healing the soul, and then the cure of the body will follow quickly." Mediaeval Magic : In the belief of the mediaeval professors of the science of magic, it conferred upon the adept power over angels, demons, elementary spirits and the souls of the dead, the possession of esoteric wisdom, and actual knowledge of the discovery and use of the latent forces and undeveloped energies resident in man. This was supposed to be accomplished by a combination of will and aspiration, which by sheer force germinate a new intellectual faculty of psychological perception, enabling the adept to view the wonders of a new world and communicate with its inhabitants. To accomplish this the ordinary faculties were almost invariably heightened by artificial means. The grandeur of the magical ritual overwhelmed the neo- phyte, and wondrously quickened his senses. Ceremonial magic was a marvellous spur to the latent faculties of man's psychic nature, just as were the rich concomitants of religious mysticism. In the mediesval mind, as in other periods of man's history, it was thought that magic could be employed both for goodand evil purposes, — its branches being designated " white," and " black," as it is used for benevolent or wicked ends. The term " red " magic is also occasionally employed, as indicating a more exalted type of the art, but the designation is fanciful. White magic, to a great extent, concerned itself with the evocation of angelic forces and of the spirits of the elements. The angelology of the Catholic Church was undoubtedly derived from the ancient faith of Israel, which in turn was indebted to Egypt and Babylon ; and the Alexandrian system of successive emanations from the one and eternal substance, evolved a complex hierarchy of angels, all of whom appear to have been at the bidding of him who was in possession of
Mediaeval Magic
270
Mediaeval Magic
the Incommunicable Name, — a concept borrowed purely from that of the Name of Power so greatly made use of in Egyptian magic (See Egypt.) The letters which composed this name were thought to possess a great measure of occult significance, and a power which in turn appears to have been reflected upon the entire Hebrew alphabet (See Kabala), which was thus endowed with mystical meaning, each of the letters representing a vital and creative number. Just as a language is formed from the letters of its alphabet, so from the secret powers which resided in the Hebrew alphabet, were evolved magical variations. From the letter " aleph " to that of " jod " the angelical world was symbolised. From " caf " to " tsed " were represented the several orders of angels who inhabited the various spheres, each of which was under the direction of a particu- lar intelligence. From " tsed " to " thau " is in secret correspondence with the elemental world ; so that there were intelligences in correspondence with each of the Hebrew letters, — " aleph " with the Haioth-ha-kodesch of the seraphim, the first and supreme angelical rank ; " beth " the second letter with the ophanim or angels of the second order ; " gimel " with the aralim or angels of the third order, and so on to the tenth letter " jod," which com pletes the enumeration of the angelical spheres. The rest of the Hebrew alphabet, however, corresponds to individual principalities and powers — all of whom hold an important place in the mystical universe. Thus " caf " the eleventh letter is in correspondence with Mettatron who belongs to the first heaven of the astronomic world. Final " caf," the next letter, corresponds to the intelligences of the secret order whose supreme chief is Raziel ; and " lamed " the twelfth letter corresponds to those of the third sphere, that of Saturn, whose lord is Schebtaiel ; and so on: these intelligences under their queen, with the sixteenth letter " ain " and -' pe " the seventeenth of the Hebrew alphabet, refer to the first of the mystical elements — that of Fire, which is ruled over by the seraphim. Final " pe " corresponds to the air where dwell the sylphs, who are presided over by Ariel. " Tsade " refers to water where dwell the nymphs under their queen Tharsis ; and " koph " corresponds to earth, the sphere of the gnomes, ruled over by the cherubim. The twentieth letter " resh " applies to the animal kingdom, including man. " Shin " corresponds to the vegetable world. " Tau " the last symbol of the Hebrew alphabet refers to the world of minerals. There are besides these many other species of angels and powers, as will be seen from reference to the articles on " Angels " and " Kabala." More exalted intelligences were conjured by rites to be found in the ancient book known as the Key of Solomon, and perhaps the most satisfactory collection of formulae for the invoca- tion of the higher angels is that included in the anonymous Theosophia Pneumatica, published at Frankfort in 1686, which bears a strong family resemblance to the Treatise an Magic by Arbatel. The names in this work do not tally with those which have been already given, but as it is admitted by occult students that the names of all unseen beings are really unknown to humanity, this does not seem of such importance as it might at first sight. It would seem that such spiritual knowledge as the medicsval magus was capable of attaining was insufficient to raise him above the intellectual limitations of his time, so that the work in question possesses all the faults of its age and type. But that is not to say that it is possessed of no practical value ; and it may be taken as well-illustrating the white magic of mediceval times. It classifies the names of the angels under the title of Olympic or Celestial Spirits, who abide in the firmament and constellations : they administer inferior destinies and accomplish and teach whatever is portended by the several stars in which they
are insphered. They are powerless to act without a special command from the Almighty. The stewards of Heaven are seven in number — Arathron, Bethor, Phaleg, Och, Hagith, Ophiel, and Phul. Each of them has a numerous host at his command, and the regions in which they dwell are 196 in all. Arathron appears on Saturday at the first hour, and answers for his territory and its inhabitants ; as do the others, each at his own day and hour : and each presides for a period of 490 years. The functions of Bethor began in the fiftieth year before the birth of Christ 430. Phagle reigned till A.D. 920 ; Och till the year 1410 ; Hagith governed until A.D. 1900. The others follow in succession. These intelligences are the stewards of all the elements, energising the firmament and, with their armies, depending from each other in a. regular hierarchy. The names of the minor Olympian spirits are interpreted in divers ways, but those alone are powerful which they themselves give, which are adapted to the end for which they have been summoned. Generic- ally, they are called Astra, and their power is seldom . prolonged beyond one hundred and forty years. The heavens and their inhabitants come voluntarily to man and often serve against even the will of man, but how much more if we implore their ministry. That evil and troublesome spirits also approach men is accomplished by the cunning of the devil, at times by conjuration or attrac- tion, and frequently as a penalty for sins ; therefore, shall he who would abide in familiarity with celestial intelligences take pains to avoid every serious sin ; he shall diligently pray for the protection of God to vanquish the impediments and schemes of Diabolus, and God will ordain that the devil himself shall Work to the direct profit of the Theoso- phist. Subject to Divine Providence, some spirits have power over pestilence and famine, some are destroyers of cities, like those of Sodom and Gomorrah, some are rulers over kingdoms, some guardians of provinces, some of a single person. The spirits are the ministers of the word of God, of the Church and its members, or they serve creatures in material things, sometimes to the salvation of soul and body, or, again, to the ruin of both. But nothing, good or bad, is done without knowledge, order, and administration.
It is unnecessary to follow the angelical host farther here, as we have outlined it elsewhere. Many preparations, however, are described by the author of the Theosophia Pneumatica for the successful evocation of these exalted beings. The magus must ponder during his period of initiation on the method of attaining the true knowledge of God, both by night and day. He must know the laws of the cosmos, and the practical secrets which may be gleaned from the study of the visible and invisible creatures of God. He must further know himself, and be able to distinguish between his mortal and immortal parts, and the several spheres to which they belong. Both in his mortal and immortal natures, he shall strive to love God, to adore and to fear him in spirit and in truth. He must sedulously attempt to find out whether he is fitted for the practice of magic, and if so to what branch he should turn his talents, experimenting in all to discover in which he is most naturally gifted. He must hold inviolate such secrets as are communicated to him by spirits, and he must accustom himself to their evocation. He must keep him- self, however, from the least suspicion of diabolical magic, which has to do with Satan, and which is the perversion of the theurgic power concealed in the word of God. When he has fulfilled these conditions, and before he proceeds to the practice of his art, he should devote a prefatory period to deep contemplation on the high business which he has voluntarily taken in hand, and must present himself before God with a pure heart, undefiled mouth and innocent
Mediaeval Magic
271
Medium
hands. He must bathe frequently and wear clean gar- ments, confess his sins and abstain from wine for the space of three days. On the eve of operation, he must dine sparely at noon, and sup on bread and water, and on the day he has chosen for the invocation he must seek a retired and uncontaminated spot, entirely free from observation. After offering up prayer, he compels the spirit which he has chosen to appear : that is, he has passed into a con- dition, when it is impossible that the spirit should remain invisible to him. On the arrival of the angel, the desire of the magus is briefly communicated to him, and his answer is written down. More than three questions should not be asked, and the angel is then dismissed into his special sphere. Besides having converse with angels, the magus had also power over the spirits of the elements. The reader is referred to the special article upon these, and we shall confine ourselves in this place to describing the manner of their evocation. To obtain power over the salamanders for example, the Comle de Gabalis gives the following receipt : " If you would recover empire over the salaman- ders, purify and exalt the natural fire that is within you. Nothing is required for this purpose but the concentration of the Fire of the World by means of concave mirrors in a globe of glass. In that globe is formed the ' solary powder, which being of itself purified from the mixture of other elements, and being prepared according to Art be- comes in a very short time a sovereign process for the exaltation of the fire that is within you, and transmutes you into an igneous nature." There is very little matter extant to show in what manner the evocation of Elementary spirits was undertaken, and no ritual has survived which will acquaint us with the method of communicating with them. In older writers it is difficult to distinguish between angels and elementary spirits, and it is probable that the lesser angels of the older magicians were the sylphs of Paracelsus, and the more modern professors of the art. The lower hierarchies of the elementary spirits were also frequently invoked by the black magician. Eliphas Levi provides a method for the interrogation and government of elementary spirits ; but he does not acquaint us with its source, and it is merely fragmentary. " It is necessary," he says, " in order to dominate these intelligences, to undergo the four trials of ancient initiation, and as these are unknown, their room must be supplied by similar tests. To approach the salamanders, therefore, one must expose himself in a burning house. To draw near the sylphs he must cross a precipice on a plank, or ascend a lofty mountain in a storm ; and he who would win to the abode of the undines must plunge into a cascade or whirl- pool. Thus power being acquired through courage and indomitable energy this fire, earth and water must be consecrated and exorcised."
The air is exorcised by the sufflation of the four cardinal points, the recitation of the prayer of the sylphs, and by the following formula : — The Spirit of God moved upon the water, and breathed into the nostrils of man the breath of life. Be Michael my leader, and be Sabtabiel my ser- vant, in the name and by the virtue of light. Be the power of the word in my breath, and I will govern the spirits of this creature of Air, and by the will of my soul, I will restrain the steeds of the sun,, and by the thought of my mind, and by the apple of my right eye. I exorcise thee O creature of Air, by the Petagrammaton, and in the name Tetragrammaton, wherein are steadfast will and well- directed faith. Amen. Sela. So be it.
Water is exorcised by the laying on of hands, by breath- ing and by speech, and by mixing sacred salt with a little of the ash which is left in an incense pan. The aspergillus is made of branches of vervain, periwinkle, sage, mint, ash, and basil, tied by a thread taken from a virgin's distaff,
with a handle of hazelwood which has never borne fruit, and on which the characters of the seven spirits must be graven with the magic awl. The salt and ashes of the incense must be separately consecrated. The prayer of the undines should follow.
Fire is exorcised by casting salt, incense, white resin, camphor and sulphur therein, and by thrice pronouncing the three names of the genii of fire — Michael, Samael, and Anael, and then by reciting the prayer of the salamanders. The Earth is exorcised by the sprinkling of water, by breathing, and by fire, and the prayer of the gnomes. Their signs are — the hieroglyphs of the Bull for the Gnomes who are commanded with the magic sword ; of the Lion for the Salamanders, who are commanded with the forked rod, or magic trident ; of the Eagle for the Slyphs, who are ruled by the holy pentacles ; and, finally, of Aquarius for the Undines, who are evoked by the cup of libations. Their respective sovereigns are Gob for the Gnomes, Djin for the Salamanders, Paralda for the Sylphs, and Necksa for the Undines. These names, it will be noticed, are borrowed from folklore.
The " laying " of an elementary spirit is accomplished by its adjuration by air, water, fire, and earth, by breath- ing, sprinkling, the burning of perfumes, by tracing on the ground the Star of Solomon and the sacred Pentagram, which should be drawn either with ash of consecrated fire or with a reed soaked in various colours, mixed with pure loadstone. The Conjuration of the Four should then be repeated, the magus holding the pentacle of Solomon in his hand and taking up by turns the sword, rod and cup, — this operation being preceded and terminated by the Kabal- istic sign of the cross. In order to subjugate an elementary spirit, the magus must be himself free of their besetting sins ; thus a changeful person cannot rule the sylphs, nor a fickle one the undines, an angry man the salamanders, or a covetous one the gnomes. We have given elsewhere (See Necromancy) the formula for the evocation of spirits, so there is no necessity to repeat it in this place. The white magician did not concern himself as a rule with such matters as the raising of demons, animal transformations and the like, his whole desire being the exaltation of his spiritual nature ; and the questions put by him to the spirits he evoked were all directed to that end. (See Magic.)
Medina, Michael : (See Healing by Touch.)
Medium : A person supposed to be qualified in some special manner to form a link between the dead and the living. Through him the spirits of the departed may communicate with their friends still on earth, either by making use of the material organism of the medium himself (" automatic phenomena ") or by producing in the physical world certain manifestations which cannot be explained by known physical laws. The essential qualification of a medium is an abnormal sensitiveness, which enables him to be readily " controlled " by disembodied spirits. For this reason mediums are also known as sensitives. There is some doubt as to whether mediumship is an inherent faculty, or whether it may be acquired ; and among some spiritualists at least, the belief is held that all men are mediums, though in varying degrees, and consequently that all are in communication with the spirits, from whom proceeds what we call " inspiration." Those who are ordinarily designated " mediums " are but gifted with the common faculty in a higher degree than their fellows.
Mediumship, like all the central doctrines of spiritualism, dates back to very early times. Demoniac possession affords an excellent instance ; so also does witchcraft, while the somnambule of the mesmerists was identical with the modern medium. In its usual application, how- ever, the term medium is used only of those sensitives who belong to the modern spiritualistic movement, which had
Medium
272
Medium
its origin in America in 1848 (See Spiritualism.) In this sense, then, Mrs. Fox and her daughters, the heroines of the Rochester Rappings, were the earliest mediums. The phenomena of their seances consisted mainly of knockings, by means of which messages were conveyed from the spirits -to the sitters. Other mediums rapidly sprang up, first in America, and later in Britain and the Continent. Their mediumship was of two kinds, " physical " and automatic. Taese phases were to be found either separately or com- bined in one person, as in the case of the Rev. Stainton Moses (q.v.) Indeed, it was practically impossible to find a trance speaker who did not at one time or another practise the physical manifestations, until the time of Mrs. Piper, whose phenomena were purely subjective. The early rappings speedily developed into more elaborate manifesta- tions. For a few years an epidemic of table-turning (q.v.) caused wide-spread excitement, and the motions of the table became a favourite means of communicating with the ■spirits. The playing of musical instruments without visible agency was a form of manifestation which received the attention of mediums from an early date, as was also the bringing into the seance-room of " apports " of fruit, flowers, perfume, and all manner of portable property. Darkness was found to facilitate the spirit-manifestations, .and as there are certain physical processes, such as those in photography, to which darkness is essential, no logical objection could be offered to the dimness of the seance- room. The members of the circle were generally seated round a table, holding each other's hands, and they were -often enjoined to sing or talk pending the materialisation of a spirit. All this, though offering grounds of suspicion to the incredulous, was plausibly explained by the spiritual- ists. As time went on, and the demand for physical mani- festations increased, these became more daring and more varied. The moving of objects without contact, the levitation of heavy furniture, and of the persons of medium -or sitters, the elongation of the human body, the fire-ordeal, were all practised by the medium Home. At the seances of the Davenport Brothers musical instruments were played and moved about the room, and objects moved without being touched, while the mediums were bound hand and foot in a small cabinet. The slate-writing of " Dr." Slade and William Eglinton had a considerable vogue. The tying of knots in endless cords, the passage of solids, through solids, were commonplaces of the mediumistic circle. The crowning achievement, however, was the materialisation of the spirit-form. Quite early in the history of spiritualism hands were materialised, then faces, and finally the complete form of the " control." Thereafter the materialised spirits allowed themselves to be touched, and even condescended, on occasion, to hold •conversations with the sitters. Further proof of the actuality of the spirit " control " was offered by spirit photography (q.v.).
To those for whom spiritualism was a religion, however, much the most important part of the mediumistic per- formances is the trance-utterances and the like which come under the heading of " automatic," or psychological phenomena. These dealt largely with the conditions of life on the other side of the grave, and in style they tended to be verbose and incoherent. The spirit-drawings, also, were lacking in depths and distinction. Clairvoyance and ■crystal vision are included in the psychological phenomena, and so also are the pseudo-prophetic utterances of mediums, and the speaking in unknown tongues. According to the spiritualistic hypothesis already referred to, that " all men are mediums," it would be necessary to class inspiration, not only the inspiration of genius, but all good or evil impulses — as spiritual phenomena, and that in turn suggests that the every-day life of the normal individual is to some
extent directed by spirit " controls." And therein lies the responsibility of mediumship, for if he would be con- trolled by pure spirits from the higher spheres, it behoves the medium to live a well-conducted and principled life. Misuse of the divine gift of mediumship carries with it its own punishment, for the medium becomes the sport of base human spirits and elementals (q.v.), his will is sapped, and his whole being degraded. Likewise he must be wary of giving up his personality to the first spirit who comes his way, for the low and earth-bound spirits have least difficulty in communicating with the living, having still more affinity with the things of the earth than with those of the spirit.
Of the physical mediums perhaps the most successful was Daniel Dunglas Home (1S33-1886), who claimed to be of Scottish birth. He went to America, however, at an early age, and it was there that his mediumistic powers were first developed, though not until he came to Britain in 1855 did he rise to fame. It is worthy of note that Home was never detected in fraud — as the bulk of physical mediums have been at one time or another — though his performances were similar in kind to those of other mediums. This may be due in part to the fact that he did not act as a professional medium, and his sitters, being either his guests or his hosts, were doubtless restrained by courtesy from a too close enquiry into his methods. Again, all who came into contact with him were impressed by his simple manners, and frank and affectionate disposition, so that he possessed the most valuable asset of a medium — the ability to inspire confidence in his sitters. Mediums of a different stamp, though widely popular in their day, were the brothers Davenport. Their performance consisted of allowing themselves to be securely bound in a cabinet by the sitters, and while thus handicapped producing the usual medium- istic phenomena. The Davenports were shown to be mere conjurers, however, and when Maskelyne and Cook success- fully imitated their feats the exposure was complete. Slate- writing, which proved one of the most widely-accepted forms of psychic phenomena, had as its principal exponents Henry Slade and William Eglinton. The best argument which can be advanced against their feats is to be found in the pseudo-seances of Mr. S. J. Davey, given in the interests of the Society for Psychical Research. Mr. Davey's slate-writing exhibitions were so like to those of the professional mediums that the spiritualists refused to believe that he was conjuring, and hailed him as a renegade medium ! Automatic drawing was principally represented by David Duguid, a Glasgow medium who attained con- siderable success in that line. Prominent trance speakers and writers were Duguid, J. J. Morse, Mrs. Hardinge Britten, and Mrs. Cora L. V. Tappan-Richmond. One of the best-known and most respected of private mediums was the Rev. Stainton Moses (1839-92), a clergyman and schoolmaster, whose normal life, at least, was beyond reproach. He produced both automatic and physical manifestations, the former including the writing of a work Spirit Teachings, dictated from time to time by his spirit " controls," while the latter comprised levitations, lights, " apports," and so on. His position, character, and education gave to his support of spiritualism a stability of considerable value.
It is to later mediums, however, that we must look for proof worthy of scientific consideration, and of these the most important are Eusapia Palladino and Mrs. Piper. Eusapia Palladino, an Italian medium, was born in 1854, and for a good man}' years had acted as medium for scientific investigators. In 1892 seances were held at Milan, at which were present Professors Schiaparelli, Brofferio, Lobmroso, Richet, and others. In 1894 Professor Richet conducted some experiments with Eusapia at his house in the He Roubaud, to which he invited Professor Lodge, Mr.
Medium
27c
Medium
Myers, and Dr. Ochorowiez. The phenomena occurring in Eusapia's presence were the ordinary manifestations of the mediumistic seance, but their interest lay in the fact that all the distinguished investigators professed themselves satisfied that the medium, with her hands, head, and feet •controlled by the sitters, could not of herself produce the phenomena. Credible witnesses asserted that Eusapia possessed the ability to project false or psychic limbs from her person. Professor Lodge and Mr. Myers were disposed to look for a new force (ectenic force) emanating from the medium. In 1895, however, some seances with Eusapia were held at Mr. Myers' house at Cambridge, where it became apparent that she habitually freed a hand or a foot— in short, habitually resorted to fraud. Yet even these exposures were not conclusive for in 1898, after a further series of experiments, Mr. Myers and Professors Lodge and Richet once more declared their belief in the genuineness of this medium's phenomena.
Mrs. Piper, the Boston medium whose trance utterances and writings contain the best evidence forthcoming in, Tecent years for the truth of spiritualism, first fell into a spontaneous trance in 1884, and in the following year was observed by Professor James of Harvard. Thereafter her case was carefully studied by the Society for Psychical Research. Her first important " control " was a French physician, Dr. Phinuit, who was probably a fiction, but in 1892 she was controlled by George Pelham, a young author who had died in February of that year. So complete was her impersonation of Pelham that more than thirty of his friends claimed to recognise him, and so well did he establish his identity by the mention of many private matters, known only to himself and a few of his friends, that the hypothesis of spirit-control was almost inevitable. In 1896 George Pelham gave place to" Imperator," "Rector," and other spirits, who had formerly controlled Stainton Moses. From that time, and especially after 1900, the interest of the sittings declined, and they offered less material for the investigator. Another automatic medium, Helene Smith, came under the observation of Professor Flournoy. Helene's trance utterances were spoken in the " Martian language," a variant of the " unknown tongue " of the early ecstatics, and she claimed to be a re-incarnation of Marie Antoinette and a Hindu princess.
Of the various theories advanced to explain the medium- istic manifestations the most important is the spiritualistic explanation, which claims that the phenomena are pro- duced by the spirits of the dead acting on the sensitive organism of the medium. The evidence for such a theory, though some investigators of the highest distinction have found it satisfactory, is nevertheless generally acknowledged to be inconclusive. Conscious fraud, though it is no longer considered to cover the whole ground, yet plays a definite